Star Trek Maps (1980)

[Timo]

...Have I offended you somehow? Wasn't intentional.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lakenheath 72]

No, you have not offended me. It's just that when discussing Star Trek, it becomes very unpleasant, very Sisyphean, for me.

 

[Timo]

I can see how that might be. (And I guess that's where the fun is in it for me - the work of a Trek apologist is never done! )

The Charts tried to be as inclusive of evidence as possible, mainly as regards onscreen maps and secondly as regards dialogue (because the latter is slightly more malleable - the audience can endlessly interpret what it hears, but what is seen is seen and sticks to the occipital lobe). One aspect of this is that you can even overlay the Probert map from "Conspiracy" on the Alpha/Beta area, after a fashion, with the major highlights falling in place whenever possible, meaning chiefly the fictional highlights. That something like this is even remotely possible suggests that the people working on Trek cartography for real had at least some sort of a mutual understanding from "Conspiracy" on, placing Klingons and Romulans and Cardassians consistently where they are in relation to Earth. But nobody in the "real team" ever drew borders. Just the occasional Zone or two...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Novak Senkovic]

The Borg issue ties to the maps issue in many ways. Space simply is vast, and a lot of it remains unexplored by UFP parties - endless rumors no doubt abound, and only a certain percentage turn out to be true. The Borg just stand out because what was "known" about them in the 2340s turned out to be more or less true in the 2360s, whereas several other such "knowns" proved to be misunderstandings, hoaxes or enduring mysteries...

The Borg also move across the map at will. Beelines matter little to them, at the speeds they utilize: that they would head straight for Earth one day does not mean they wouldn't head equally straight for Romulus some other day. And if they did, would Romulans be eager to tell?



Among the refugees was Guinan, who by her own words never was on the El-Aurian (home?)world when it got assimilated, and supposedly never saw the Borg in action. Quite possibly everybody who managed to flee would be similarly unable to testify much.

El-Aurian ships were not seen, unless El-Aurians give their ships human names (as one of the refugee ships was named Robert Fox, not mentioned in dialogue but glimpsed in the graphics). Sensor sweeps thus might never have reached Earth.

Yet Guinana recognised the Borg ship in QWho and the Borg and Seven at age 4 on Earth was playing with a Borg ship


Or were so obscure that several hours of searching at Data speeds would reveal nothing relevant. Nothing would be listed under "Borg", after all, while overwhelming amounts of data might exist on "scary cyborgs".



Basically all we know about the Borg comes from VOY - anything the TNG thought they knew has turned out to have been a misunderstanding. And VOY "Child's Play" shows the Borg toying with civilizations to stimulate them into developing better and better countermeasures, which will be harvested in due time; what we see in "BoBW" would appear to match that mode of operations pretty well, with lots of pitched battles with Starfleet even when the Borg could simply ignore Starfleet and go assimilate Earth at their leisure.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[psCargile]

Dominion forces may have been planning to enter Romulan territory, but nothing suggests they are moving across a border from their own territory. Now picture interstellar space...It's bigger than that. They could approach through Federation actual or claimed territory, or through unclaimed coreward space, or through space above or below the the stellar concentrations of the galactic plane.

 

[Timo]

Yet Guinana recognised the Borg ship in QWho and the Borg and Seven at age 4 on Earth was playing with a Borg ship

UFO photographs would probably be the easiest piece of "evidence" to obtain, right after the "blip in the long range scanners" thing. They'd tell little or nothing about who the Borg really are, though. And I rather think Guinan knew very little in the end, too. Or at least all she can offer in "Q Who?" is a "please head back now" that is so vague and unhelpful that Picard totally ignores it - supposedly (hopefully!) only after pumping Guinan for further information, and thus clearly failing in obtaining anything useful. Of the Borg, she can only tell that "her people" encountered them, not that she did.

Guinan: "From what I'm told, they swarmed through our system. And when they left, there was little or nothing left of my people."

This would be the perfect time to mention the one important thing about the Borg: that they assimilate. Apparently, Guinan doesn't know even that much! (Of course, the writers didn't know it yet, either, but in-universe, it's a Guinan shortcoming.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Avro Arrow]

UFO photographs would probably be the easiest piece of "evidence" to obtain

Federation News Service
September 18, 2352

PHOTOGRAPH OF UNKNOWN ALIEN VESSEL DISMISSED AS HOAX

A widely-circulated image of a large, cube-shaped spaceship has been dismissed as a hoax by a Federation official, who has requested to remain unidentified. "I mean, it's obviously just a box with some plastic and metal bits glued on", the official is quoted as saying. "Come on, we've had Photoshop for 300 years now; at least put some effort into it!"

This would be the perfect time to mention the one important thing about the Borg: that they assimilate. Apparently, Guinan doesn't know even that much! (Of course, the writers didn't know it yet, either, but in-universe, it's a Guinan shortcoming.)

Unless this supposition is based on something more than that quote, then I'm not sure it's a given. The quote can still be completely factually accurate... the Borg assimilate people and then take then with them, so there would be nothing left of the El-Aurians, since they'd be gone, and be Borg, now. Guinan could reasonably be referring to assimilation, and everything she said still makes sense.

 

[Timo]

It's more an issue of lack of quotes: "Q Who?" shows Q claiming to our heroes that the Borg are not interested in them, only in their technology. In retrospect, this is just because the heroes are such unimportant dullards; they would be assimilated in due course, but the Borg have other priorities at the moment. But if Guinan knew better, she would certainly take the opportunity to contradict Q - she's standing right next to him, still seething with rage (for whatever reason)!

Guinan doesn't contradict Q offscreen, either, as our heroes in "BoBW" are still in the belief that the Borg are not interested in humans, just their technology. Shelby explicates this after Riker expresses general confusion; Picard then confirms he, too, believed like Shelby until this latest development of the Borg wanting to capture him.

So Guinan either doesn't know, or doesn't tell (except in cryptic phrases such as "you are just raw material for them"). Either would be consistent with the UFP not knowing despite interrogating a shipful of El-Aurian refugees: they'd probably be worse sources than Guinan, who at least deigns to interact with humans without villainy, and is friends of sorts with Picard to boot!

As for UFOs, the time window of everybody having cameras on the ready for recording such phenomena but everybody not having the means of falsifying such recordings has recently slammed shut. AFAWK, no results. Did the frequency of UFO visits briefly drop to zero, or has it always been that?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

It's more an issue of lack of quotes: "Q Who?" shows Q claiming to our heroes that the Borg are not interested in them, only in their technology.

Q was causally lying to Picard, big surprise huh?

Another possibility is Q actually didn't know, his statement was based on incomplete information.


+

 

[Timo]

...The point being that Guinan was standing right next to the God of Lies, and basically nodding in agreement.

Although Q was probably completely right, even if not completely truthful: Picard was too uninteresting to be assimilated at that stage! Else why didn't he get assimilated?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Steve Willis]

Ladies and gentlemen,
With regard to the Cardassian, Romulan border problem, let us remember that not only is space 3 dimensional, but Star Trek is notorious for treating space like a Rand-McNally road map. " Quick, head straight out this way and fix,destroy,find it"
At no time do you get x,y,z coordinates for any star system or boarder position.

 

[Darkwing]

http://i1069.photobucket.com/albums/u475/mizuanjin/1CEL25.jpg
http://i1069.photobucket.com/albums/u475/mizuanjin/n9zw.jpg
http://i1069.photobucket.com/albums/u475/mizuanjin/CEL MOD RIGEL_1.png
http://i1069.photobucket.com/albums/u475/mizuanjin/1RIGEL UFP.jpg
So I've gotten back to working on this a bit. Having some trouble, though. Using Celestia, I got Rigel about 4 o'clock. Cool. I merge it into the base picture and rotte to replace the Star Trek Maps Rigel, and it looks ok. Remove STM Canopus and install Celestia Canopus. All good. Then go to replace Beta Canopus with Miaplacidus, and another trip back to Celestia. Now Rigel is either at 7 o'clock or 10 o'clock, depending on which time I go in.
How do I get Celestia to give me consistent positions? How do I make the equatorial grid point 0 degrees at the Galactic Core and lock it there?

 

[psCargile]

I used Celestia to visualize the maps from the more recent Stellar Cartography book, and you can't lock views with its normal features—you maybe able to script something in CEL.

I placed a marker on Sol, turned on the galactic grid, rolled my view point until the galactic south pole was under Sol, rotated the 0 longitude into place. I bookmarked too, but bookmarks don't keep markers when you place markers on key stars.

 

[Darkwing]

Thanks, I will have to try that. Still learning Celestia, but I;ll look up how to do that in the user guide.

 

[MAGolding]

Yeah, I'm thinking about putting Bajor/DS9/Cardassia around 10 o'clock on STM (between Vedala space and the former Slaver Empire), and a ways outside the treaty zone. Anyone know what date the UFP made contact with Bajor or Cardassia?
From the unused script for ST:V, IIRC, Chekov was losing at chess to a Betazoid, so it's reasonable they were known, if not members, in the 2280's. Anyone know anything like that for other TNG/DS9 races?

Don't forget that Bajor is between about 120 and 480 light years from Earth.

Except that STSC uses a "small Federation" theory (pretty much necessitated by later DS9, which established that Bajor, beyond the Federation border, was only days' travel from Earth).

As I said Bajor is between about 120 and and 480 light years from Earth. Most people would say between about 220 and 380 light years from Earth but I prefer to allow for stated distances being very inexact.

 

[Christopher]

As I said Bajor is between about 120 and and 480 light years from Earth. Most people would say between about 220 and 380 light years from Earth but I prefer to allow for stated distances being very inexact.

I take it that estimate is based on the claim in "Fascination" that Bajor was 300 ly from Regulus, which would put Bajor an absolute maximum of 380 ly from Earth if it were on the exact same bearing as Regulus and 220 ly if it were on the exact opposite bearing. I can buy a degree of inexactness of a few dozen light-years, but nobody would say "300" when they meant "400" or "200." If a character says "300 light years," they probably mean something between 250 and 350 at the most.

 

[MAGolding]

I take it that estimate is based on the claim in "Fascination" that Bajor was 300 ly from Regulus, which would put Bajor an absolute maximum of 380 ly from Earth if it were on the exact same bearing as Regulus and 220 ly if it were on the exact opposite bearing. I can buy a degree of inexactness of a few dozen light-years, but nobody would say "300" when they meant "400" or "200." If a character says "300 light years," they probably mean something between 250 and 350 at the most.

Very good.

But you use of the word "claim" is a little amusing. Using the word "claim" makes me picture Quark selling a ticket on a spaceliner to someone. "Will it get me all the way to Regulus?" they ask. "Sure, it says right here it's good for 300 light years - that's all the way to Regulus." Quark answers.

Actually a despondent Jake says:

JAKE: Mardah's gone, Dad. She got accepted to the Science Academy on Regulus Three.
SISKO: That's a good school.
JAKE: It's three hundred light years away.

A lot of people would say 300 if they mean between 275 and 325. A smaller group of people would say 300 if they mean between 266.66 and 333.33. A smaller group of people would say 300 if they mean between 250 and 350. A smaller group of people would say 300 if they mean between 225 and 375. And an even smaller group of people would say 300 if they between 200 and 400.

And I think that allowing for the possibility that 300 might sometimes mean between 200 and 400 may sometimes be necessary in Star Trek.

For example, in the sick bay in "Space Seed" Kirk says:

KIRK: What was the exact date of your lift off? We know it was sometime in the early 1990s, but

Earlier:

KHAN: How long?
KIRK: How long have you been sleeping? Two centuries we estimate. Landing party to Enterprise. Come in.

And:

KHAN: I remember a voice. Did I hear it say I had been sleeping for two centuries?
MCCOY: That is correct.

If the "two centuries" they estimate can be 150 to 250 years since the early 1990s (1990.00 to 1993.33) in the calendar used in "Space Seed", the possible date of "Space Seed" should be between 2140.00 and 2243.33 SS. SS being the abbreviation for the "Space Seed" calendar.

If the "two centuries" they estimate can be 100 to 300 years since the early 1990s (1990.00 to 1993.33) in the calendar used in "Space Seed", the possible date of "Space Seed" should be between 2090.00 and 2293.33 SS.

Later:

KIRK: Name, Khan, as we know him today. (Spock changes the picture) Name, Khan Noonien Singh.
SPOCK: From 1992 through 1996, absolute ruler of more than a quarter of your world. From Asia through the Middle East.

In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Khan says:

KHAN: ...On Earth, ...two hundred years ago, ...I was a prince, ...with power over millions.

Khan is probably speaking about the years from 1992 to 1996 SS.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan should be between 2142 and 2246 SS if "two hundred years ago" means 150 to 250 years and between 2092 and 2296 SS if if "two hundred years ago" means 100 to 300 years.

Captain Terrell looks about 45 years old so assume that Khan thinks he is somewhere between 30 and 60 years old.

KHAN: Captain! Captain! Save your strength. These people have sworn to live and die at my command two hundred years before you were born. Do you mean he never told you the tale? To amuse your Captain? No? Never told you how the Enterprise picked up the Botany Bay, lost in space in the year nineteen hundred and ninety-six, myself and the ship's company in cryogenic freeze?

Khan probably means they swore allegiance to him sometime between about 1992 and 1996 SS.

So Terrell should have been born between about 2142 and 2246 SS if "two hundred years" means 150 to 250 years and between about 2092 and 2296 SS if "two hundred years" means 100 to 300 years.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan should be between about 2172 and 2306 SS if "two hundred years" means 150 to 250 years and between about 2122 and 2356 SS if "two hundred years" means 100 to 300 years.

Combining the two calculated date ranges, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan should be between about 2172 and 2246 SS if "two hundred years" means 150 to 250 years and between about 2122 and 2296 SS if "two hundred years" means 100 to 300 years.

Khan and Kirk both say how long Khan's people were on Ceti Alpha V:

KHAN: You are in a position to demand nothing, sir. I, on the other hand, am in a position to grant ...nothing. What you see is all that remains of the ship's company and crew of the Botany Bay, marooned here fifteen years ago by Captain James T. Kirk.

KIRK: There's a man out there I haven't seen in fifteen years who's trying to kill me. You show me a son that'd be happy to help him. My son. ...My life that could have been, ...and wasn't. And what am I feeling? ...Old. ...Worn out.

If "fifteen years" is between 14.0 and 17.0 years, then "Space Seed" should be
between about 2155 and 2232 SS if "two hundred years" means 150 to 250 years and between about 2105 and 2282 SS if "two hundred years" means 100 to 300 years.

The assumptions made in the official Star Trek Chronology: The History of the Future are that all Earth dates are given in the Gregorian calendar. Thus all dates I give in the SS calendar would be dates AD. The official chronology also has "Space Seed" in AD 2267 and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in AD 2285. If dates SS are dates AD, the official dates for "Space Seed" and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan are certainly wrong if "two hundred years" means 150 to 250 years but possibly correct if "two hundred years" means 100 to 300 years.

 

[Christopher]

A lot of people would say 300 if they mean between 275 and 325. A smaller group of people would say 300 if they mean between 266.66 and 333.33. A smaller group of people would say 300 if they mean between 250 and 350. A smaller group of people would say 300 if they mean between 225 and 375. And an even smaller group of people would say 300 if they between 200 and 400.

And I think that allowing for the possibility that 300 might sometimes mean between 200 and 400 may sometimes be necessary in Star Trek.

There's possibility and then there's likelihood. Yes, there are some people who might do that, but we don't know whether Jake Sisko is one of those people. As you say, the group that would do that is the smallest of the groups under discussion. Therefore, it's the group that Jake is least likely to belong to. Favoring the least likely possibility over more likely ones is not something that should be done unless there's specific evidence supporting it, and there isn't any here. Jake is a well-educated Starfleet brat. He probably has a good understanding of interstellar distances and experience in basic arithmetical practices like rounding. And his father, an experienced officer who no doubt has an even better understanding of astrocartography and math, does not correct him when he says Regulus is 300 ly from Bajor. So the most likely interpretation is that the distance is indeed pretty close to 300 ly.

 

[Idran]

A smaller group of people would say 300 if they mean between 225 and 375. And an even smaller group of people would say 300 if they between 200 and 400.

I honestly don't think anyone would ever say "300" for anything under 250. Like, I could halfway see someone doing it for something strictly above 350 (though even that's pretty ehhhhh to me), but I can't see any circumstances in which someone would say it for something strictly below 250. I'd need to see actual examples of people purposefully doing something in that vein in practice to believe that, because that's not even rounding at that point, that's just being wrong.

 

[MAGolding]

Christopher said:

There's possibility and then there's likelihood. Yes, there are some people who might do that, but we don't know whether Jake Sisko is one of those people. As you say, the group that would do that is the smallest of the groups under discussion. Therefore, it's the group that Jake is least likely to belong to. Favoring the least likely possibility over more likely ones is not something that should be done unless there's specific evidence supporting it, and there isn't any here. Jake is a well-educated Starfleet brat. He probably has a good understanding of interstellar distances and experience in basic arithmetical practices like rounding. And his father, an experienced officer who no doubt has an even better understanding of astrocartography and math, does not correct him when he says Regulus is 300 ly from Bajor. So the most likely interpretation is that the distance is indeed pretty clos

I honestly don't think anyone would ever say "300" for anything under 250. Like, I could halfway see someone doing it for something strictly above 350 (though even that's pretty ehhhhh to me), but I can't see any circumstances in which someone would say it for something strictly below 250. I'd need to see actual examples of people purposefully doing something in that vein in practice to believe that, because that's not even rounding at that point, that's just being wrong.

Then you two are in effect claiming that the official star trek chronology is in error.

As I wrote in post # 237:

The assumptions made in the official Star Trek Chronology: The History of the Future are that all Earth dates are given in the Gregorian calendar. Thus all dates I give in the SS calendar would be dates AD. The official chronology also has "Space Seed" in AD 2267 and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in AD 2285. If dates SS are dates AD, the official dates for "Space Seed" and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan are certainly wrong if "two hundred years" means 150 to 250 years but possibly correct if "two hundred years" means 100 to 300 years.