In SNW 2x09 Subspace Rhapsody, the opening song includes the following lyrics:
We can confirm there’re no injuries
Just the daily Mundane
A headache, a splinter
A left ankle sprain
Which leaves the question, how did that splinter happen? And how is that particular minor ailment common enough to be considered a “daily mundane”?
Most splinters today come from rough or unfinished wooden objects, which I would expect to be quite rare on a starship. Other materials (plastics, metals) can create splinters which could plausibly impale somebody in a superficial way, but by and large those materials shouldn’t be splintering outside of catastrophic failures, which again should be quite rare.
Does the enterprise have some particularly lackadaisical hobbyist woodworkers on staff? How else could this have happened?
When you control panels regular explode with rocks flying all over the place … I’m pretty sure splinters can be common as well
Space pallets.
I forget, do the replicators produce utensils to go with the food or is there like a reusable set somewhere? If the former, maybe some dish or another comes with wooden chopsticks or such out of tradition? Or perhaps some species or another might have a diet that includes wood in some way and they can accidentally leave splinters around like crumbs or something.
I was going to say maybe an away mission, but now I’m wondering if the transporter wouldn’t just filter it out when beaming back?
I imagine it’s programmed to not do that in case it accidentally removes an impaled artery and the subject bleeds out.
“Oh, good Lord, didn’t anybody here build ships in bottles when they were boys?”
It’s always Sally from hydroponics.
They have hand-made objects and can replicate wood. Tho this made me wonder… If the holodeck’s safety protocols are working as intended, could Sisko end up getting a splinter from his holographic wooden baseball bat? 🤔
A flake of chipped paint could become a splinter
Possibly from handling artifacts, cargo, etc? Maybe the replicators of the era leave some rough edges (literally)?
Yes, I imagine metal and glass splinters would happen, but we routinely get hair-splinters (something about how a sock holds it, skin flexes, and body weight). So yeah, sounds plausible to me even with so little as “wearing socks”.
Cable stranding is a common way to get a metal splinter, but they already established that copper cables are not used on a ship (which I find just unrealistic, you can’t just wirelessly power and transmit everysingle thing on a ship).
They probably a tree-species crewmember onboard.