Sonic Shower
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In the fictional Star Trek universe, a sonic shower is a device used for personal hygiene onboard starships, shuttlecrafts and starbases.
On a Federation starship, all quarters are equipped with a sonic shower, which theoretically works by emitting high frequency sound (sonic) waves that disintegrate dirt and other substances that may be deposited on the skin.
This particular piece of technology was not explored in the shows nearly as much as others, such as the transporter or the replicator, for which reason little is known about how it actually works. The creators of the shows have established, however, that one of its parts is an "acoustic inverter". It has also been established that it takes several isograms of dilithium to run a sonic shower.
In fact, it was not until Voyager's season 5 that a sonic shower was actually shown on screen (in the 21st episode of the season, "Juggernaut"). The design of the sonic shower depicted on that episode is proof of the writers' uncertainty towards this piece of technology: on the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Game" (05x6), Wesley Crusher tells Commander Data of a practical joke of which he was a victim at the Starfleet Academy, when a cadet named Adam Martoni programmed his sonic shower to emit mud. The design finally shown on screen, however, makes it difficult to conceive that such an alteration of its normal functions would be possible, since the sonic waves appear to emanate from flat walls. In all likelihood, when the TNG episode was written the creators of the two shows had not yet decided on a definitive appearance for the sonic shower, and when they finally did, that design contradicted the presumptive layout that they had in mind when the "gag" was written into the dialogue of said TNG episode.
Since its on-screen debut, the sonic shower has appeared in the episodes "Drone" and "Live Fast and Prosper"; it has also been mentioned in "Resolutions", "Pathfinder", "Memorial" and "Equinox, Part I".
In the prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise, the sonic shower does not yet exist; the crew of the Enterprise are often seen using regular water showers.
[edit] External links
- Sonic shower at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
