It would have made an interesting ST: TNG episode where the Federation orders the Enterprise to attack a planet where the National Potato Council claims there are pirates writing replicator software to distribute free food. Meanwhile, the B plot is Data struggling to manage his subscriptions to holodeck sims.
Tricky to make that work in the (moneyless) Federation. Maybe the Enterprise gives a Whateverian ship asylum against the Ferengi just inside Federation borders, and then the Nagus (Wallace Shawn’s Nagus, of course, I can’t imagine that Rom would do such a thing) demands that they extradite the Whateverians to face prosecution for theft. An investigation ensues, and it turns out that they didn’t actually take anything physical, they just pirated a replicator pattern for the Whateva root, the root of an extinct plant which the people of Whatever III desperately need and are running out of. So now Picard has to figure out how to not cause an interplanetary patent incident and still make sure that the Whateverians get what they need.
The B-plot is pretty solid, though. That can basically stay as-is.
It would have made an interesting ST: TNG episode where the Federation orders the Enterprise to attack a planet where the National Potato Council claims there are pirates writing replicator software to distribute free food. Meanwhile, the B plot is Data struggling to manage his subscriptions to holodeck sims.
Tricky to make that work in the (moneyless) Federation. Maybe the Enterprise gives a Whateverian ship asylum against the Ferengi just inside Federation borders, and then the Nagus (Wallace Shawn’s Nagus, of course, I can’t imagine that Rom would do such a thing) demands that they extradite the Whateverians to face prosecution for theft. An investigation ensues, and it turns out that they didn’t actually take anything physical, they just pirated a replicator pattern for the Whateva root, the root of an extinct plant which the people of Whatever III desperately need and are running out of. So now Picard has to figure out how to not cause an interplanetary patent incident and still make sure that the Whateverians get what they need.
The B-plot is pretty solid, though. That can basically stay as-is.