Because the idea of Beast Mentats filled me with the sort of horror that could only be lessened by sharing.
To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
-
- Tags
- star trek exploration fully automated luxury gay space communism top level canon (canon) #hashtagcontent all-encompassing space amoeba cardassian boy bands cardassian magical girls darkest bureaucracy debate makes the qm cackle like palpatine hoh is an empire quest it has to be foreign infiltrators more ships ship happens singers delenda est starfleet this is not an empire quest ur waifu is collective?
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yesss... and no.
I mean, another way to do it would just be to invent the guaranteed minimum income and ensure that members of an out-of-demand caste are financially supported and cared for by generous Mother Church. So what if they don't actually do much woodworking these days? They're still woodworkers and their responsibilities are sacred.
[Warmaster Halkh takes one look at T'Rinta]
[Halkh, normally a healthy forest green, turns the approximate shade of mint ice cream]
"...You have a torpedo-fairy too?"
And that is what you get for firing a torpedo cobbled together from cast-off spare parts left over from four different marks of the mentat Tarenda's prototypes. All the properly working models went into combat aboard the Pride.
The good news is that Huascar now performs like a Rennie for event response purposes, aside from having a 'glass jaw.'
Ghost of Tarenda:
"Wait you mean you ACTUALLY FIRED that bucket of bolts you cobbled together from the spares I left back at base for being defective are you OUT OF YOUR MINDS?"
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
Man, someone should do something about the Federation and their crazy mad scientists before they get us all killed!
- Location
- Patriarchova
So when you say "we should build the Enterprise at UP - regardless of whether it is optimal to do so - because all Enterprises are built at UP" what you really mean is "we need to build the Ent-C at UP because that's what eventually happened in the show timeline that we have already significantly diverged from?"
I guess we shouldn't try to save Bajor either, because god forbid we contradict the shows. Also, we'd better make damned sure that the Ent-C gets destroyed by Romulans or else the entire quest will disappear in a puff of logic.
Last edited:
- Location
- Peterborough, NH, USA
Salty, but you have a point. At this point, attempts to preserve the out-of-universe timeline are going to fail from sheer butterflies.
Edit: For example, all the OC species are going to have long-term effects of some kind.
Last edited:
- Location
- Patriarchova
Also, I kinda want to play the Admiral of Starfleet as if she was actually the Admiral of Starfleet, not as a rambling lunatic who makes decisions based on the idea that her reality needs to conform to the events of a TV show.
RE: Bajoran castes, @Leila Hann mentioned that maybe Bajor went through some sort of collapse and then caste-dominated dark ages. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case, and its actually fairly 'recent' for them, in the last 200 years. People talk like Bajor had an active part in interstellar society and made great contributions to art and culture, which doesn't seem to mesh well with the fact they're religious fanatics struck in castes as narrow as 'craftsman'.
My going theory? Some asshole either misinterpreted or fabricated an orb experience to expedite his or her own political control. Kai Winn probably read their secret writings
My going theory? Some asshole either misinterpreted or fabricated an orb experience to expedite his or her own political control. Kai Winn probably read their secret writings
- Location
- Peterborough, NH, USA
RE: Bajoran castes, @Leila Hann mentioned that maybe Bajor went through some sort of collapse and then caste-dominated dark ages. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case, and its actually fairly 'recent' for them, in the last 200 years. People talk like Bajor had an active part in interstellar society and made great contributions to art and culture, which doesn't seem to mesh well with the fact they're religious fanatics struck in castes as narrow as 'craftsman'.
My going theory? Some asshole either misinterpreted or fabricated an orb experience to expedite his or her own political control. Kai Winn probably read their secret writings
This makes a disturbing amount of sense.
That said, I suppose there is an argument for building the Ambassador(s) at UP on the grounds that Utopia Planitia is the home of the group that designed the Ambassador. They have the best knowledge base on how to address issues that come up during the prototype build, etc. Particularly if we're using the Chen dual build system that Patricia Chen pioneered at UP fleetyard.
- Location
- Patriarchova
Now, see? This is an actual argument.
- Location
- Central Standard Time
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Sometimes I just roll a crit I guess?
[looks bewildered but happy]
That said, if anyone could get something useful out of what bits and pieces were left of Tarenda's work, it would be her Vulcan metaphysical sister.
I'm pretty sure we would have noticed that. And yes, there have been logs involving interactions with Klingons, just not many.
There was a Klingon science vessel more recently; I think it was Saavik who encountered them?
If I didn't capture just how scary quantum torpedoes are compared to early 24th century weaponry in my The Worlds Wonder omakes, it wasn't for lack of effort.
The state of Bajoran society is likely dependant on the state of the wormhole. If it, say, popped open and someone on the other side flew through and went "look, a rich planet ripe for conquest" that would have a major effect on local culture and development, especially after it closed again. If the wormhole in certain states can cause anomaly issues that would wreck certain technology states or even set back industrial or pre-industrial cultures, that would also be a thing. A wormhole with 50y or 100y or even 500y cycles could be orders of magnitude more disruptive than a particularly active star would be, for example.
My guess is that at one point the Bajorans were able to go interstellar, then the state of the wormhole changed and they got wrecked back to industrial or pre-industrial, but with technology and wonders from when they were interstellar here and there. This may even have happened multiple times. The economic reasons for the caste system are to preserve knowledge through repeated rapid cataclysms. In time, this would lead to people perpetuating it without remembering why. You can see how wonderous remnants of the past would lead to a religious society too.
My guess is that at one point the Bajorans were able to go interstellar, then the state of the wormhole changed and they got wrecked back to industrial or pre-industrial, but with technology and wonders from when they were interstellar here and there. This may even have happened multiple times. The economic reasons for the caste system are to preserve knowledge through repeated rapid cataclysms. In time, this would lead to people perpetuating it without remembering why. You can see how wonderous remnants of the past would lead to a religious society too.
Last edited:
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
You are assuming that the Doylist reasons lack Watsonian ones in-universe, rather than serving to confirm they exist; i.e. you are choosing to assume the canon is not a functional universe but a bunch of random crap on a screen. Well okay, but then this quest is also a bunch of random crap on a screen driven entirely Doylist rather than at all Watsonian by the same token.
- Location
- Patriarchova
No. You're the one making that argument.
If there are good reasons, in-universe, for us to build the Enterprise-C at utopia planitia, then we will be presented with those reasons. And we may decide to build it there based on them (presumably, they had good reasons for doing that in the show timeline as well, even if we didn't get to see it).
On the other hand, if characters within the story act not for in-character reasons, but just in order to conform to nebulously justified non-diagetic ones, then it really IS reduced to just random crap on a screen (or forum).
EDIT: originally phrasing was needlessly harsh.
Last edited:
- Location
- Peterborough, NH, USA
I think it's more a problem of wanting the story to conform to canon when that might hurt the story, despite wanting the opposite. Kind of like the Cardassians in the Bajoran occupation want the Bajorans to conform to their idea of civilized whether they like it or not, but the ground troops think they'll benefit in the long run.
Personally, I look at canon as a sort of signpost, but about the time the Amarki became our fifth member species -- and arguably before that -- we wildly diverged from canon. If we can make the dedication plaques line up, great. If that's too inconvienent, I'm not going to lose any sleep.
Far more important, in my mind, is making sure every canon species and polity behaves in a way you expect. That includes the Federation as a whole btw. Hippy Cardassians and hyperagressive Betazoids would seriously fuck with us.
Far more important, in my mind, is making sure every canon species and polity behaves in a way you expect. That includes the Federation as a whole btw. Hippy Cardassians and hyperagressive Betazoids would seriously fuck with us.
- Location
- Patriarchova
Derek58
Rocket Punch is Best Punch
- Location
- Getter Valhalla
"I'm sensing PAIN coming from you. Probably from the gaping hole I just put in your torso." :lol
- Location
- Patriarchova
If your telepathic powers are limited to making painfully obvious observations about people's emotional states, you might as well make badass quips out of it.
- Location
- Cyberspace
On the bright side, a re-appearance of the biophage would quite likely allow the Federation to get the Klingons and Romulans to stop their warring and start some serious patrolling. I don't think either wants to deal with that nastiness again.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
And then the patrols run into each other and...
I think we're "the avalanche has started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote", especially with the newly decentralized Klingons.
Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
More likely the Klingons will accuse the Romulans of trying to weaponize it again and escalate even further.