WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery Season 3, Episode 12, "There Is a Tide...", now streaming on CBS All Access.
As long as Star Trek has been around, fans have looked at the lives of Starfleet officers in the future and wondered two things: Where is their replicated food from, and where/how do they go to the bathroom? Surprisingly, the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery is somehow able to answer both.
In "There is a Tide...," Osyraa, the confident and malevolent leader of the Emerald Chain, infiltrates Starfleet headquarters to have a sit-down conversation with the Federation. She is met by Admiral Vance, and proposes a symbiotic relationship between the two groups that allows them to make use of scarce dilithium supplies and cutting-edge scientific advancements. Speaking of those advancements, one scene opens on Osyraa commenting on the replicated apples she's been given, calling them "a thing of beauty."
"It’s made of our shit, you know," Vance dryly replies. "That’s the base material that we use in our replicators. We deconstruct it to the atomic level and then reform the atoms."
Osyraa's shocked reaction mirrors the audience's. In previous series, replicated material, including foodstuffs, was made from everything from protein resequencers to glucose matrices. Replicators use matter-energy conversion similar to a transporter, transforming matter back to energy, then reshaping that matter. But Vance just revealed, in the 32nd century, what that matter was exactly.
It's unknown whether all matter-energy-run replicators specifically use fecal matter as their base material. If so, it explains why there's never been a need for waste management or a sewage system on starships, considering the use of recycling. It also shows the "new normal" that can come with living in a futuristic setting like Star Trek. On paper, we may blanch at the idea of eating something made out of atoms that came out of someone else. But as Vance himself puts it, "It’s pretty good for shit, and we don’t have to commit atrocities for it."
Streaming on CBS All Access, Star Trek: Discovery stars Sonequa Martin-Green as Commander Michael Burnham, Doug Jones as Commander Saru, Anthony Rapp as Lt. Commander Paul Stamets, Mary Wiseman as Ensign Sylvia Tilly, Wilson Cruz as Dr. Hugh Culber, David Ajala as Cleveland "Book" Booker, Blu del Barrio as Adira, Ian Alexander as Gray, Tig Notaro as Chief Engineer Reno and Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou. New episodes of Season 3 air on Thursdays.