DS9 is a Bajoran station, not a Federation one. The Bajoran economy is not post-scarcity and still runs on money. Either Starfleet officers get a stipend to purchase things when posted on such assignments, or Quark simply bills Starfleet. Either way, Starfleet/the UFP likely has a reserve of latinum and other resources for trade with other nations.
VindictiveJudge
joined 1 year ago
Vulcans as a whole, or at least Vulcan leadership, definitely seem to lean toward caution and a dash of fear. ENT showed a lot of this with how the pre-Federation Vulcan government reacted to Earth's rapid technological advancement.
Individually, they seem to vary a lot. Spock and T'Lyn have goals they use logic to both choose and achieve, but are fine with experiencing emotions along the way, so long as it doesn't interfere with achieving their goal (after heavy character development for Spock). Sarek privately admits, in a roundabout way, that at least some of his decisions are driven by emotion, such as marrying Amanda, but doesn't let his emotional private life interfere with his strictly rational professional life, often to the consternation of his children. And then you have Solok, the speciesist captain from DS9, who is totally driven by his emotions and deeply in denial about it. And, finally, Tuvok, who very specifically operates entirely based on logic, rejecting his emotions to the point that he sometimes has problems recognizing emotional behavior in others. Tuvok seems to be what the average Vulcan aspires to be, and many believe they already are, but a significant number seem to be more like Solok, with the better adjusted of them being like Sarek. Spock and T'Lyn actually seem to be a very small minority.
I don't think the Romulans are really any better, they just solved the problem with external control rather than internal control, that external control being an inescapable police state.
T'Lyn is one of the most rational and logical Vulcans in the franchise and she was booted from the Vulcan fleet for not fitting into their strict dogma.
Depending on who's writing the episode, yeah, and it's a great concept that I felt was explored well. Other times, however, we have an episode where Tuvok talks at length about the training and conditioning he underwent to control his emotions, then in the very next episode, talk at length about how Vulcans are naturally emotionless and incapable of feeling emotion at all. This chronic lack of consistency in the writers' room is a big part of why Moore left the show to reboot BSG.
Unfortunately, the writers often forget this. VOY waffles a lot on whether or not Tuvok is literally emotionless.
Are tribbles the new popplers?
I still think this would have been better with VOY sets for the background than TNG sets.
If it was mentioned, it was probably in ENT. They talked a lot more about grav plating in that show than any of the others, probably more than all of them combined.
That was entirely dependent on Stewart's contract negotiations, though, rather than anyone wanting to kill off Picard.
They didn't want to fire her, but she did want to quit. She wasn't happy with the direction they were taking her character. I wouldn't be surprised if she also had issues with the same guy McFadden did. Jadzia was killed off because Berman wouldn't let Farrell switch to being a recurring rather than a regular, which may be what you're thinking of.
Historical items definitely have non-monetary value. They can't truly be replaced since, no matter how accurate the replica, only the one chair will be the Enterprise-A's captain's chair, for example. Replicators have software restrictions on what you can make with them, so you can't just replicate weapons under normal circumstances, which creates scarcity and gives them value. Starfleet replicators also seem to be restricted from creating alcohol, which means most of the characters we see can only get it on shore leave, which also creates scarcity and therefor value. Alcohol is probably significantly less scarce when sourced through civilian replicators. The ones on DS9 are programmed with Starfleet's restrictions, though.