Was just thinking about this while taking a boring regular shower with water. A sonic shower just vibrates at high intensity to pulverize dirt and knock it from your body; but what about oils and lipids and all that other stuff that makes you stinky?
On a side note, I realized that the only time any dental care is brought up, it’s with the ferengi. The race with quite possibly the worst teeth in the galaxy are the only ones seen using cleaning utensils on them.
In-universe explanation: they’re advanced enough to be able to kill, dissolve, and sonically motivate bacteria and dirt - even in pores. This would leave you incredibly clean. Remember: they’ve got transporters. They reconstruct you from an energy beam in a split second, not noticeably disrupting your perception of consciousness. Sonic-shower precision like that would be considered child’s play.
Two things:
- Woah, I never really thought about it, but the not disrupting your perception of consciousness thing is huge. Not only do they have to replicate all of the electrons and neurochemicals in the right locations, but they also have to ensure that their motion continues in exactly the same way.
- If they’re able to do all of that, why the fuck does anyone ever leave a transporter dirty? They clearly already do some level of this with the bio-filters. Same with teeth, why don’t the transporters keep your teeth sparkly and your breath fresh?
Bonus points:
- Are water-based showers a luxury? Surely you could just slap a replicator in there and not have to worry about plumbing.
- Speaking of plumbing, I can’t recall seeing a toilet in Star Trek. Even if there are, they’d just have a matter decompiler in there, right?
- So, why not just use the transporters to clear your bowels then? Can’t shit your pants on an away mission if you got cleared out on the beam down.
- Like, why can’t you just roll out of bed, hop on the transporter pad, and show up to your classes at Starfleet Academy having had a Shower, a Shit and a Shave on the way!
The teleporter is already at the edge of their technological capabilities anyway, to the point they have to resort to some hacks to make it work.
ST Picard
Like keeping “common biology” like common DNA sections in the transporter’s firmware to not have to care about all individual aspects.
And this is even without accounting for malfunctions. Can you imagine eating the wrong vegetable and ending up tuvixed with poop?
New Debate just dropped: Was Janeway right to murder Poovix?
But it was a two for one special!
So if I was in a rush, I could just transport myself across the room, but leave all the dirt and oil behind?
With some of the transporter specific jargon heard throughout the shows, I suspect it’s possible, but would take some modifications to the targeting scanners to separate the crud from the person. Like how they separated Tuvok and Neelix from each other in Tuvix.
Tuvix was exceuted!
I’m familiar with enough transportation duplication accidents, where it seems entirely plausible to duplicate people. They just don’t do it for politeness? For Tuvix I think they should have tried to duplicate him, and then murder one of the duplicates. Then you have three crew members
I just can’t imagine section 31, not taking the opportunity to duplicate diplomats, and high ranking officials, when they get transported, and then torturing the duplicate for information…
If you have transporters a lot of problems become super easy
Schlock Mercenary is a webcomic that actually handles that exact situation regarding the duplicates for torture information. It can be considered a Space Opera like star trek, but with mercenaries.
