Originally Posted by
The Tatterdemalion King
My favourite part of the DS9TM is the part where it basically says, "Look, replicating stuff is great if you're flying around with a gigantic, potentially lethal, highly unstable reactor underneath you, and it saves a lot of space and time with storing and recycling foodstuffs, but it's actually grossly inefficient compared to mechanized agriculture and specialized, non-replicator industrial production methods." It's a nice bit of reframing the Trek-tech along DS9's presentation of the world as a balanced only-kinda-utopia.