Why the Xindi never appear in TOS / TNG / DS9 / VOY

[MacLeod]

NrobbieC wrote:

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Andorians were never seen TNG, neither were Orions iirc so it's not much of a stretch to say they were there just never seen.

I think we saw an Andorian twice in TNG

"The Offspring" Hologram only
"Captain's Holiday"

[Timo]

The Xindi might be everywhere, really. Their culture consisted of multiple species, was governed in a somewhat repressive manner, and (largely for the latter reason) managed to remain ignorant of the existence of at least one further, now extinct species. Several other "member species" might have been discovered later on, accounting for the Xindi Starbase of "The Battle" and for the Feline Xindi of "Slaver Weapon" etc.

On the other hand, whatever killed the Avian Xindi might have been built in to the entire spectrum of species originating from their birthworld - or related to the Sphere Builder designs on the culture. Perhaps the species died off one by one soon after the Delphic Expanse was dissipated?

Or perhaps whatever need or will or sentiment connected the different species originally was removed by Archer's antics, and the species still exist, but none of them call themselves Xindi any more. Any of the named but not shown species of TOS, TNG or DS9 could have formerly been part of the Xindi culture, but would now go by a different name.

Timo Saloniemi

[King Daniel]

Deimos Anomaly wrote:

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(According to Daniels they eventually joined the UFP.)

Obviously the real life reason is that Enterprise was made after those other series.

Other than that though I wondered if anything had ever been put in canon (or even quasi-canon, like a producer or writer or one of the ST bigwigs making a statement in an interview or what have you) by way of explaining why they are never seen "again".

The Xindi get occasional mention in the 24th century post-series novels. There was a Suliban member of the DTI in Watching the Clock.

As for why they weren't ever seen on-screen, it's a BIG galaxy. We never saw the Remans until Nemesis, although they were supposedly part of the Dominion War. We never see many of the cool background aliens from The Motion Picture, The Voyage Home or JJ's Star Trek in any of the chronologically later series' or movies either.

Back to the novels for a second, Spock's World mentions that the Federation has had contact with 800+ alien races. They can't all be on screen all the time!

[Methos]

i find that number to be a bit iffy honestly...

Spock's World is set just after the end of the original series... so 800+ races just around the Alpha Quadrant... if that were true then space would be packed and like a zoo lol

M

[King Daniel]

Timo wrote:

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The Xindi might be everywhere, really. Their culture consisted of multiple species, was governed in a somewhat repressive manner, and (largely for the latter reason) managed to remain ignorant of the existence of at least one further, now extinct species. Several other "member species" might have been discovered later on, accounting for the Xindi Starbase of "The Battle" and for the Feline Xindi of "Slaver Weapon" etc.

Kzinti. A totally unrelated species created by Larry Niven for his Known Space universe. Not Xindi. At all.

[King Daniel]

Methos wrote:

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i find that number to be a bit iffy honestly...

Spock's World is set just after the end of the original series... so 800+ races just around the Alpha Quadrant... if that were true then space would be packed and like a zoo lol

M

I used to think it was too much, too - until I read that current real-life estimates put an insane ten billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...illion-earths/

[billcosby]

Xindi Crawford.

[Methos]

still seems off...

I mean at the end of TOS, they'd barely mapped a 1/4 of the alpha quadrant... given the Enterprise's top speed back then, they would have mapped a tiny fraction of the alpha quadrant, I seriously doubt 800+ individual species existed around their tiny area of exploration...

M

[yenny]

They had never had said when the Xindi join the Federation. They only said that they had only join the Federation. Most likely they join the Federation either in the late 24th century or in the 25th century.

[Timo]

I mean at the end of TOS, they'd barely mapped a 1/4 of the alpha quadrant...

Where does this datapoint come from? We get the figures 11% and 19% at the start of TNG, which would be from 1/2 of Alpha (or a comparable volume) to 2/3 of it.

given the Enterprise's top speed back then, they would have mapped a tiny fraction of the alpha quadrant

We know the ship could do at least a couple of thousand lightyears per season, from the sum total of explicit distance references in episodes like "Squire of Gothos". A dozen ships like that would quickly cover much of Alpha, even if only in the sense of making UFP-explored space look like a really tiny hedgehog with really long spikes. The thing is, though, those other cultures would also be exploring, and it would be the sum total of these explorations that would bring together 800 cultures in an eyeblink.

I seriously doubt 800+ individual species existed around their tiny area of exploration...

I rather suspect the number would be much higher, as the current estimates for life-supporting planets are based on the idea that such planets developed naturally. In Trek, cultures would have been terraforming them for millions or billions of years already. And it's rather uncommon to find such a world without a native or visiting humanoid culture to it...

Kzinti. A totally unrelated species created by Larry Niven for his Known Space universe. Not Xindi. At all.

...Although associating the cats with the Xindi culture is just about the only way we could accept "them" as having had four wars with mankind two centuries before TAS. After all, ENT makes it pretty clear that only the Xindi had had anything approaching a "war" with Earth by that time. Unless we assume they were the mercenaries of the Romulans in that war, and recognized as such (so humans would know they don't know what the actual Romulans look like)...

Timo Saloniemi

[MacLeod]

Methos wrote:

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still seems off...

I mean at the end of TOS, they'd barely mapped a 1/4 of the alpha quadrant... given the Enterprise's top speed back then, they would have mapped a tiny fraction of the alpha quadrant, I seriously doubt 800+ individual species existed around their tiny area of exploration...

M

I suspect the Federation has maps for at leasta 1/4 of the Galaxy. After all in the DSN pilot, the Runabout was able to identify the star Idran based on data from the Quadros 1 probe. So that system could be considered to be mapped.

Though I take it you mean explored with manned starships, but if we take the 800 figure from the novel, set circa 2369. That would be around 200 years of Human space exploration. Once you start to factor in increasing speeds of ships, greater numbers of ships a large volume of space could have been explored. Now of course some of those 800+ could have been contacted prior to the development of not contact directive. And some contacted races might not fall within the region of space claimed by the UFP.

So it is plausbale

[Methos]

Timo wrote:

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Where does this datapoint come from? We get the figures 11% and 19% at the start of TNG, which would be from 1/2 of Alpha (or a comparable volume) to 2/3 of it.

We know the ship could do at least a couple of thousand lightyears per season, from the sum total of explicit distance references in episodes like "Squire of Gothos". A dozen ships like that would quickly cover much of Alpha, even if only in the sense of making UFP-explored space look like a really tiny hedgehog with really long spikes. The thing is, though, those other cultures would also be exploring, and it would be the sum total of these explorations that would bring together 800 cultures in an eyeblink.

Timo Saloniemi

The stellar disk of the Milky Way Galaxy is approximately 100,000 light-years in diameter, and is, on average, about 1,000 ly thick.

So, if we do that into quarters for the quadrants, we have 25,000 light years across and 25,000 light years in length, for the alpha quadrant, and still 1,000 light years thick... that gives a standard volume of 625,000,000,000 light years cubed just for the Alpha Quadrant... basic math there.

So given the Enterprise (Constitution class), had a maximum speed of Warp 8, and a maximum safe speed of Warp 6 (As explained in TOS: That Which Survives), we can avarage that the Enterprise did a comfortable speed of 216c

So again, back to maths...

Warp 6 = 216c...

So it would take about a week to reach Alpha Centauri (4.3 light years from earth)

Just to put that into context for you... it would take just over 115 years to fly from one side of the alpha quadrant to the other at Warp 6... Hardly fitting within the '5 year mission' perameters...

M

[Timo]

So given the Enterprise (Constitution class), had a maximum speed of Warp 8, and a maximum safe speed of Warp 6 (As explained in TOS: That Which Survives), we can avarage that the Enterprise did a comfortable speed of 216c

Patently false, as our only datapoints into how fast the TOS warp factors are indicate speeds in the range of hundreds of lightyears in a DAY, not in a year.

We really can forget all about that nonsense and start picking-and-choosing between actual datapoints, which may not be in complete agreement with each other but certainly debunk the idea that a nearby star could only be reached in a week. After all, Kirk in TOS hopped from star to star in a matter of days at the very most, without indication that those would be neighboring stars.

Those speeds would allow for the galactic hedgehog to extend its spikes across a thousand neighboring cultures easily enough in the couple of centuries the UFP has existed before Spock's World. And that only by using the frontline starships; lesser probeships could also establish contact, or at least make others curious about the UFP and cause them to make contact.

Timo Saloniemi

[Methos]

I used the information specificallhy available on Tech Specs for the Constituion class around the internet...

Constitution Class Speed:

Warp 6 (maximum safe speed)
Warp 8 (maximum speed)
Warp 9 (attainable at extreme risk)

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Constitution_class

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(NCC-1701)

http://www.ufstarfleet.org/wiki/inde...Class_Starship

If you can site sources where the Constitution class ships regularly travelled faster than any starship in TNG, DS9 or Voy, please do...

M

[King Daniel]

Speed and distance in Trek fluctuates wildly. Look at the video in my sig, at 8:00. Warp 8.4 in TOS would have managed Voyager's "75 years at warp 9.975" in a month!