Cooking with Phasers!

Part 3: Star Trek

The Original Series (TOS, as a geek might term it) of Star Trek — featuring Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Bones McCoy, and all the rest — is firmly ensconced in the Space Age. Food is instantly produced in Food Synthesizers. Entire meals are delivered on disks to the ship’s computer, which takes only a second or so to create food from elementary particles (talk about from scratch!). In later series, Replicators responded to voice commands to do the same thing.

What this really is of course are TV Dinners. Microwave ovens. Hot Pockets. Tang. Dominos: if it’s not there in 30 microseconds, it’s free.

As the other series arrive, real food begins to make appearances: in the Ten Forward Lounge and Quark’s Bar, with Sisko’s and Neelix’s cooking.

Now, this isn’t to disparage untroubled food preparation. Sometimes, instant is useful, especially if you’re too busy on a particular day. Fast food can be good at times.

But to exclude cooking, as pointed out earlier, is to let a part of being human atrophy….

Continue “Cooking with Phasers!” in Part 4: Star Wars

Or see previous section, Part 2: Goo doesn't cut it

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