Why did he always order it "tea, earle grey, hot"?

Why did he always order it "tea, earle grey, hot"?

Does anyone drink earle grey cold? If so this has to be rare, and the computer would reasonably assume he wants it hot.

Hot might have been a relative setting to default for that drink. So if earl grey is served reasonably hot he might be specifying he wants it extra hot.

Hot, as opposed to warm, the way I like my tea.

You'd think there would be some kind of preprogrammed action with Picard's voice authentication that all he would have to say is "tea" and it would know what kind he liked and at what temperature. He never drinks any other kind of tea at any other temperature.

We never see him drinking any other kind of tea at any other temperature. It's also very possible that he had fully expected to drink many other kinds of tea at varying temperatures when he set up his replicator but then became accustomed to Earl Gray, hot.

TNG was written for syndication, therefore all character traits and preferences need to be constantly communicated throughout the series.

That sounds like an invasion of privacy, and it would be really stupid if a spy could walk up to any replicator in the Federation and get it to tell you everything they've ever replicated just by recording their voice.

Huh?

Most television shows written in the pre-binge watching era is written to assume any episode could be the first episode the viewer sees flipping the channels. This is also known as "writing for syndication" because at the time it was not uncommon for channels to broadcast episodes for series they had the rights to rebroadcast out of order after the original run of the series on the original channel.

Not Trek but local Fox affiliates were terrible for this throughout the 80s and 90s. They were always broadcasting reruns of Seinfeld totally out of order.

EARL GREY,

NICE AND HOT.

>has never heard of iced tea

Even when Picard had downtime he'd have some interest to pursue, he's never bored enough to dick around with adding pre-sets to his replicator.
Trying to pre-set "tea" is probably asking for trouble anyway if he ever wants to order another flavor for a guest.

Neither have the French

Is there even a point in saying "tea"?

He could just say "earl grey". It's not like there's earl grey soda or earl grey malt liquor or earl grey hot dogs.

By the 24th century, there might be.

EARL GREY

NICE AND HOT

That's like asking why people have to walk up to Picard and hand him a brand new PADD with info on it instead of just emailing him the file so he can open it on the 50 other PADDs he has on his desk, or his little non laptop.

Five seconds on google will reveal iced earl grey tea.

That totally makes sense.

So why people have to walk up to Picard and hand him a brand new PADD with info on it instead of just emailing him the file so he can open it on the 50 other PADDs he has on his desk, or his little non laptop?

Because it's extremely boring to watch a person sitting alone reading text on his monitor all day. That's why you don't have any friends, for example.

In fact, why would he even need to say it at all? With 24th century predictive systems, surely the replicator already knows what Picard wants, even before he does. Why doesn't it replicate pre-emptively?

Because predictive systems can be annoying as fuck and even if they're in place most people would likely keep them turned off.

in the future, people like cold tea

Hot as in no milk. Pleb.

Right, surely it can figure out what times of the day and under what circumstances he would want it when he walks over to the replicator. If he says "no, fuck off I don't want tea" it would just dump it back into the replicator recycling bin with a minimum amount of energy expended.

The productivity gained by even just a few seconds, over time, would offset the few times it was wrong in productivity.