life-extension technology in Star Trek (or lack thereof)

[Timo]

It might also be that there exists advanced biotech to make possible such hybrid offspring in the first place, apparently available at a reasonable price since the hybrids are so common - and that anybody could obtain and misuse such technology for personal body modification. Alexander might have bought pills designed for balancing the natural growth spurt differences between Klingons and humans, and then adjusted the dose to obtain a warrior's body somewhat ahead of time. Both humans and Klingons would frown on the practice, but hybrids are already outcasts...

Timo Saloniemi

[Crazy Eddie]

Timo wrote:

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...Inside one building, an important one where many people would be doing business. Obviously, the same isn't going on outdoors, on a world with actual open terrain and bodies of water.

And what would a gigantic forest composed of billions upon billions of PEOPLE actually look like? I don't suppose it would look all that different from a forest made out of trees... except, like Gideon from orbit, it wouldn't be green.

People today live in conditions exactly as cramped as that. In a busy street, it's literally shoulder to shoulder. In a standard apartment in a really big city, it's easily twenty people living in five square meters of floor space, not just wandering through it on their business.

Yes, in major cities where people voluntarily flock because that's where their business actually is. THEY HAVE A CHOICE. Project that onto a planetwide situation where there isn't any place you can go that DOESN'T have those conditions: the entire surface of a planet with the population density of downtown Tokyo.

It's either leadership fail or widespread logic fail to allow things to get that bad. Either way, it's a world begging for a darwinian weedwacker.

Forgetting for now that we only have one species to meet the specs...

Not in Star Trek we aren't.

Out of those twenty people living in the five square meters, any two might be having sex

You have a fascinating imagination there, Timo.

[Crazy Eddie]

TheRoyalFamily wrote:

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Memory Alpha has Worf being born in 2340; Khitomer was attacked in 2346, so he was five or six.

About what I figured. If Alexander is any indication of the Klingon lifecycle, Worf would have been the equivalent of a fourteen year old when he was adopted. That seems a bit awkward, except going by Worf's putative family history, his family always had a pretty close cultural/social relationship with humans anyway (much like Duras was close with the Romulans) and the Rozhenkos might have actually been family friends at the time.

Apparently he went back to Qo'nos at 15 do do his Klingon adulthood rites

Probably more like 8 or 10, about the same age Alexander was when he joined the Rotarran. Old enough to make a choice, but young enough that he still went back to Galt when it was over.

[TheRoyalFamily]

newtype_alpha wrote:

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Probably more like 8 or 10, about the same age Alexander was when he joined the Rotarran. Old enough to make a choice, but young enough that he still went back to Galt when it was over.

In "The Icarus Factor," Worf celebrates the tenth anniversary of his Rite of Ascension. Since it's the second season, that makes him about 25, so his actual Rite of Ascension would have taken place at about 15.

I don't think Alexander would have gone through that before joining the Rotarran. Perhaps some sort of preparation is necessary before doing it - like service on a ship, or going on a hunt, or whatever (Worf killed a kid playing soccer; maybe that counts ). Plus, looking at the rest of the new recurits that episode, the Klingons were hurting for people, and would take just about anyone willing, adult or no, just as long as they were halfway competent (and only halfway, as Alexander's performance showed ).

[SoM]

Alexander wasn't really MEANT to be eight when he appeared on DS9, though - it was a straightforward case of SORAS, similar to Molly O'Brien between her birth and Rascals (who, as an unhybridised human, has no biological excuse).

In-continuity, given the number and variety of weird anomalies that litter the Trekverse, perhaps he fell into a time-dilation anomaly at some point between ST:G & DS9 S6, and emerged a decade older a year later.

[Pavonis]

I think the easiest explanation is that stardates and calendar years - for any homeworld - don't coincide.

[Crazy Eddie]

TheRoyalFamily wrote:

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In "The Icarus Factor," Worf celebrates the tenth anniversary of his Rite of Ascension. Since it's the second season, that makes him about 25, so his actual Rite of Ascension would have taken place at about 15.

Did he say ten YEARS anniversary? I cannot recall if he was measuring in human or Klingon years.

I don't think Alexander would have gone through that before joining the Rotarran.

This is Alexnader we're talking about... I doubt he would have gone through that EVER.

[TheRoyalFamily]

newtype_alpha wrote:

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This is Alexnader we're talking about... I doubt he would have gone through that EVER.

That's what I was getting at

[Dream]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Son'a from Insurrection.

So yeah, that's what happens to you when you try to extend your life...

[Timo]

Yes, in major cities where people voluntarily flock because that's where their business actually is. THEY HAVE A CHOICE.

Well, hardly. Except of course between doing that and dying of hunger.

Project that onto a planetwide situation where there isn't any place you can go that DOESN'T have those conditions: the entire surface of a planet with the population density of downtown Tokyo.

Why? "Mark of Gideon" doesn't call for any of that. All we hear is that they have a population problem, and one of their buildings is seeing a lot of traffic. That's the extent of it, although of course we're free to postulate whatever we wish beyond the canonical parameters.

It's either leadership fail or widespread logic fail to allow things to get that bad.

Yup, plus a damn interesting concept dramatically.

You have a fascinating imagination there, Timo.

Naah. I just browse National Geographic, plus various eyewitness accounts on how things were a hundred years ago right around where I live. An entire room dedicated to just the privacy of two people is an incredibly rare luxury that only exists in a very narrow window of time and space. And I can still practically touch the window frames from where I stand.

It's not my fault the world currently harbors a very small group of perverts who think sex should be a "private" thing...

Timo Saloniemi

[Crazy Eddie]

Timo wrote:

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Why? "Mark of Gideon" doesn't call for any of that. All we hear is that they have a population problem, and one of their buildings is seeing a lot of traffic. That's the extent of it...

Their population problem is apparently bad enough that the bodies of their population are pressed up against the sides of their Enterprise facsimile as well; that they were able to construct something of that size and complexity but couldn't keep half a million pedestrians from sitting on it tells you all you need to know about the nature of their population problem: the people of Gideon are as numerous as cockroaches and probably just as prolific.

That, plus the fact that their best option is to introduce a pandemic among that seething population, tells us this is no ordinary "overpopulation" issue. It just reinforces that when Hodin says his planet is encased in a "living mass who can find no rest, no peace, no joy" he is not exaggerating much.

An entire room dedicated to just the privacy of two people is an incredibly rare luxury that only exists in a very narrow window of time and space.

Except you're perfectly aware that conditions such as these did not exist in the overwhelming majority of American and European cities and do not exist there now; nor have they been common to nations and regions that were NOT heavily urbanized, nor do they persist OUTSIDE of urban population centers.

You know all of that. You're just being contrarian.

[Timo]

Their population problem is apparently bad enough that the bodies of their population are pressed up against the sides of their Enterprise facsimile as well

...But a project of such importance would be in a populated area anyway - not to mention it would have to be close enough to the government building that the discrepancy in beamdown coordinates would not be blatantly obvious. Probably buried right beneath the building, actually.

OTOH, Gideonites would have quite an interest in the project, and spectators would be a natural phenomenon! Having a one-way mirror briefly fail isn't all that unexpected, either. Note that all the people behind that mirror were spectating, rather than just wandering around like in the government building.

http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albu...Gideon_124.JPG

Except you're perfectly aware that conditions such as these did not exist in the overwhelming majority of American and European cities and do not exist there now; nor have they been common to nations and regions that were NOT heavily urbanized, nor do they persist OUTSIDE of urban population centers.

Incorrect. Twenty people per room was fairly standard for the early age of industrialization in the major cities of Europe, and remains so in many places where migrant workers are a prominent phenomenon (examples can even be found in my own extremely sparsely inhabited Finland today, although these tend to involve illegal or "grey area" activities and a degree of secrecy).

In rural areas of all but the warmest climes, a typical dwelling consisted of but one winterproof room, and having a family of three or four generations stuffed in there for months at an end (and occasionally having sex, because there was no reason not to) was a very common phenomenon.

I can't fathom why you would think otherwise.

Timo Saloniemi

[Crazy Eddie]

Timo wrote:

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...But a project of such importance would be in a populated area anyway

Right. Of course it would.

Incorrect. Twenty people per room was fairly standard for the early age of industrialization in the major cities of Europe

For major cities, in factory housing, where the workers voluntarily moved as a requisite for their jobs (work houses, dormatories, etc). That is by no means standard accommodation for all or even most Europeans; there simply weren't that many people LIVING in Europe for that to be the case. Nor is it the case today, as even you conceded in Finland that one can find EXAMPLES here and there, in specific cases, some of which are illegal.

In rural areas of all but the warmest climes, a typical dwelling consisted of but one winterproof room, and having a family of three or four generations stuffed in there for months at an end (and occasionally having sex, because there was no reason not to) was a very common phenomenon.

And "huddling together in the one warm room in the house" is exactly what the Gideonites were NOT doing.

You're creating false equivalencies fifty times a minutes just to be argumentative. That's kind of annoying.

[Timo]

What are you talking about? You were babbling about it being impossible for sex to take place in a crowded room, and then trying to claim that such rooms categorically didn't exist. Obviously they did and do exist, and there's no requirement for them to cover the entire globe in order to defeat your argument.

If people with a basically empty planet available to them (us Earthlings) have sex in crowded rooms as a matter of routine, there's no particular reason to think the Gideonites who don't even have a choice would find the practice in any way inconvenient or abhorrent.

A lifestyle encompassing the busy streets and jam-packed dormitories of a big Southeast Asian city along with the penthouses and golf courses, and just omitting anything but the confines of the city, would be both plausible and interesting in human terms already, without throwing in any alien psychology or physiology. What would stretch the limits of plausibility would be the logistics of such a Trantor- or Coruscant-like world, especially if it categorically refused interstellar interaction.

Timo Saloniemi

[Crazy Eddie]

Timo wrote:

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What are you talking about? You were babbling about it being impossible for sex to take place in a crowded room

No, I'm saying it's asinine that a sentient species packed in like sardines, in a planet "encased in a living biomass" would be having sex and giving birth to children in the writhing human rainforest that is the planet Gideon. Not because it's impossible -- by story logic, it clearly is -- but because a society that allows this to happen is just BEGGING for the evolutionary weedwhacker.

If people with a basically empty planet available to them (us Earthlings) have sex in crowded rooms as a matter of routine

We don't, as a matter of routine, nor was there a time when it was. Even YOU conceded that it was something that sometimes occurred under unusual circumstances -- bitterly cold winters, overcrowded communities, etc -- but is not and has never been the norm.

That IS the norm on Gideon. That is the whole premise of the story. And it's gotten so bad that they've been forced to abduct an amorous foreigner in the hope he'll give the boss' daughter the clap.

there's no particular reason to think the Gideonites who don't even have a choice would find the practice in any way inconvenient or abhorrent.

That's kinda my point. Most of them are obviously perfectly happy living in a society so overpopulated you can't even take a shit without hitting somebody's shoes.