Within the “Star Trek: Deep Area 9” episode “Progress” (Could 9, 1993), Nog (Aron Eisenberg) and Jake (Cirroc Lofton) bump into a weird enterprise alternative. It appears that evidently Nog’s uncle Quark (Armin Shimerman) has by accident bought a big quantity of yamok sauce, a condiment loved primarily by Cardassians. As a result of there is just one Cardassian on Deep Area 9, Quark has no use for the stuff. Nog asks his uncle if he and Jake can have it, and Quark agrees, completely happy to have it off his arms.
Nog feels that he and Jake can promote the sauce, and so they cleverly discover a purchaser. Sadly, the Lissepian freighter captain they communicate to has no latinum with which to purchase the sauce. The one factor he has is a gross of self-sealing stem bolts, which he provides in trade. Realizing the sauce will quickly spoil, and understanding there will not be too many different takers, Nog and Jake settle for the provide. The gross of self-sealing stem bolts is loaded into one of many area station’s cargo bays. However now a brand new conundrum has arisen: What are they going to do with all these stem bolts? Truly, they discover {that a} extra elementary query must be requested first: What the heck is a self-sealing stem bolt?
Ultimately, Nog and Jake commerce the bolts for a number of acres of land on the planet Bajor. Nog hates the concept, feeling that land is nugatory; I suppose there is no such thing as a actual property market on Ferenginar. Fortunately, their land features worth when the Bajoran authorities requires it for a building undertaking. To get their cash, Nog and Jake promote their land to Quark for a tidy revenue. All the things works out for them ultimately.
About these stem bolts? Jake and Nog by no means did discover out what they had been used for.
What are self-sealing stem bolts used for?
Paramount
The central joke of the episode is that neither Nog nor Jake — nor anybody else for that matter — is aware of precisely what a self-sealing stem bolt is. Solely as soon as they have already got hundreds of the buggers in DS9’s cargo maintain do they assume to ask an engineer, Chief O’Brien (Colm Meaney), what a stem bolt is. O’Brien, nonetheless, is simply as stumped. He would not know what a stem bolt does, what they’re used for, or why anybody would need one. Solely the identify signifies that they can be utilized to bolt issues down, and that it might be a bonus for a bolt to seal itself.
A self-sealing stem bolt is, in short, a ineffective widget. A obscure factor with an unspecified technical operate. The uselessness of stem bolts has turn out to be one thing of a operating gag all through “Star Trek,” and the franchise’s many writers have playfully stored their precise utilization virtually fully indirect. “Progress” was the final time anybody would see a self-sealing stem bolt on display screen on “Deep Area 9,” however they had been stated to be helpful on not less than one different event. Within the episode “Prophet Motive” (February 20, 1995), Quark would notice that he additionally got here into possession of a gross of self-sealing stem bolts on his personal, and that he had discovered a reputable purchaser who would pay good cash for them.
The customer was going to supply Quark ten bars of gold-pressed latinum for the bolts, saying that they may extra simply construct a number of reverse-ratcheting routing planers with them. And what precisely is a reverse-ratcheting routing planer? One other widget whose operate stays simply as obscure as a self-sealing stem bolt. The one factor we learn about routing planers is that stem bolts are required of their manufacture.
Different occasions stem-bolts had been talked about on Star Trek
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In one other wink to the widget, each a self-sealing stem bolt and a reverse-ratcheting router had been as soon as urged as potential instruments to stage a jailbreak within the “Deep Area 9” episode “By Inferno’s Mild” (February 17, 1997), and O’Brien namechecked them once more within the present’s remaining episode, “What You Go away Behind” (June 2, 1999). O’Brien famous that engineers had been invaluable to Starfleet officers who had graduated from Starfleet Academy, and that he was wanting to take a brand new place as an teacher there. Somebody, he stated, needed to train Starfleet officers the variations between a flux capacitor and a self-sealing stem bolt.
It will take 21 years earlier than one other stem bolt confirmed up on “Star Trek,” as they had been talked about in a third-season episode of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Particularly, within the episode “Scavengers” (November 19, 2020). That season takes place after the usS. Discovery had jumped ahead in time over 900 years, and located that almost all of Starfleet had been worn out in a galaxy-wide cataclysm. The cataclysm, referred to as The Burn, brought on all starships with dilithium crystals to blow up, stymying most high-speed area journey. It was famous that the corpses of exploded starships had been cannibalized for elements, and that even their self-sealing stem bolts have been taken.
The animated collection “Star Trek: Decrease Decks” was rife with references to previous “Star Trek” episodes, so it was solely a matter of time earlier than that present’s writers dropped in a reference to the bolts. It lastly occurred within the episode “Parth Ferengi’s Coronary heart Place” (October 5, 2023), an episode whereby Boimler (Jack Quaid) discovered a nervous Mariner (Tawny Newsome) tinkering with the featured widget in a match of nerves. “You have been weathering that stem bolt so lengthy,” Boimler notes, “that it most likely cannot self-seal anymore.” There is no such thing as a notice that Mariner is constructing a reverse-ratcheting routing planer, or anything for that matter.
Will the bolts return in future exhibits? Solely time will inform.
