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Phlebotinum Dependence: Difference between revisions

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Phlebotinum Dependence (view source)

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* The dinosaurs in ''[[Jurassic Park]]'' are engineered not to produce lysine, requiring humans to administer it. [[Critical Research Failure|Pity nobody told the engineers that no vertebrates known to man do it either, and we all still survive.]] The book and sequels realize this and show how well it worked—i.e. not at all.
 
== [[Live -Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' has many examples:
** A Goa'uld symbiote provides a Jaffa with great health and stamina, as well as regenerative powers, but at puberty the Jaffa become incapable of living without these symbiotes for more than a few hours; it acts as their immune system.
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** So rare in fact that only one was ever found. [[Reset Button|And then quickly]] [[Status Quo Is God|forgotten about.]]
** Two, if you count Taran'atar from the [[Expanded Universe]], specifically chosen for his experience and immunity to the White by Odo to be the Dominion representative on Deep Space Nine.
* Played with in '''[http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Symbiosis_%28episode%29 "Symbiosis"]''', a first season episode of ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]''. The Ornarans contracted a plague two hundred years earlier, and believe they need continued "treatments" provided by the Brekkans to stay alive. Upon witnessing two Ornarans receiving a "treatment", Dr. Crusher instantly realizes that the "treatment" is actually a ''narcotic''; the plague is long gone, but the Ornarans find withdrawal so traumatic that they're sure that they're still sick - not to mention that [[Drugs Are Bad|the drugs are making them so stupid]] they can no longer effectively perform basic maintenance on their ships, let along think clearly about the plague. The Brekkans are fully aware of this, but no longer need to work as long as they can trade the "treatments" for Ornaran goods. While the [[Alien Non-Interference Clause|Prime Directive]] forbids [[The Captain|Picard]] from revealing the truth to the wronged race, he finds a way to correct the situation by refusing repairs to their few remaining ships. Without the ships, they will have no way to get the "treatments" and will eventually realize they're not actually sick.
** Of course, the Brekkans are going to have an [[Inferred Holocaust|economic holocaust]], but after ''two centuries'' of enslaving the other world with needles to the point that they're no longer coherent enough to ''repair their own ships'', you might call it [[Laser-Guided Karma]].
* In ''[[Lexx]]'', Divine Assassin Kai needs protoblood {{spoiler|the blood of an Insect}} to maintain his undead existence. It stops being an issue after the first season when the crew manages to get a good supply of protoblood.
* In the 1970s-vintage [[Invisibility|"invisible man"]] series ''[[Gemini Man]]'', main character Sam Casey was caught in a radiation accident that rendered him invisible -- with the side effect that the invisibility was also slowly ''killing him''. He must wear a watch-like device called a "DNA stabilizer" which suppresses the invisibility and holds his inevitable death at bay. He can still be invisible if he needs to be... but for no more than fifteen minutes a day or his body will suffer more damage from the invisibility than it can cope with, and he will die.
 
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
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