Stuck on the windshield: a proto-universe!

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

It's never fun to get bugs 'n stuff stuck on your windshield when driving - or to be unable to dodge roadkill that ends up under your tire. [Gross!] But one day when Dax was driving the runabout, she got an entire UNIVERSE stuck on the starboard nacelle of the ship.

Among the more random stand-alone episodes of DS9, this one stands out for a few reasons. First, a look at the dialogue from the episode ("Playing God"):
DAX: What we have here, Benjamin, is a proto-universe in its earliest stages of formation. Unfortunately, as it grows, it's displacing our own universe.
SISKO: Can we get it back where it came from?
DAX: This has turned into an energy mass with properties that don't conform to our own laws of nature. I have no idea what might happen if we tried to move it, let alone take it back into the wormhole.....
BASHIR: And if we don't do anything, it'll eventually obliterate this system and beyond.

So, you've got a universe in your lab, and it's expanding rapidly, displacing the existing universe and expanding at an exponential rate. The solution? A force field, then chuck it back into the Gamma Quadrant.

How exactly was that a solution? Rather than displacing the Alpha Quadrant (and then the rest of the universe), they decided to displace the Gamma Quadrant (and then the rest of the universe)? Of course, being a stand-alone episode, we never hear what becomes of it, so all must be well.

Some parts of the action seemed to suggest the universe would stay small and burn itself out before it became a galactic threat, but isn't a universe supposed to expand rather than stay the size of a coat rack?And how are they able to conveniently beam an entire universe from point A to point B using the transporter?

The premise & outcome behind this episode was kind of silly, in my opinion. I don't think there's even a rewrite that could've been done for it to make it better, it's just a concept that deserved to be on the cutting room floor rather than used for an episode.

 

[Tosk]

Or...it only started expanding when removed from where it belonged and once it was put back, all the natural stresses and forces inherent to the area caused it to revert to its original state.

 

[kkt]

It was an interesting problem, to which they never found a plausible solution.

(Hey, maybe that's why the Dominion is so mad at the Alpha Quadrant!)

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

It was an interesting problem, to which they never found a plausible solution.

(Hey, maybe that's why the Dominion is so mad at the Alpha Quadrant!)

Exactly. "Implausible" definitely defines the episode from start to finish! There was never any rationale given for putting it back in the GQ, and they seemed to think it would expand indefinitely, so it was a bizarre solution to a bizarre scenario.

 

[Timo]

Or...it only started expanding when removed from where it belonged and once it was put back, all the natural stresses and forces inherent to the area caused it to revert to its original state.

At least that seemed to be the theory. And it would be pretty darn simple for the heroes to put that theory to a test: all they need to do is hang around the proto-universe for, oh, a bit less than five hours and see if it keeps on expanding in predictable spurts like it did in Alpha. And we have no real reason to think they did not do exactly that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DS9forever]

The proto-universe came from the Gamma Quadrant didn't it?

 

[Timo]

Yup. And right next to the Gamma mouth of the wormhole, too, because when our protagonists Dax and Arjin first emerge from that mouth on their innocent little training flight, they have continuous dialogue for barely a minute while flying at sublight speeds, at the end of which they bump into a "subspace interphase pocket".

Now, is "subspace interphase pocket" how the computer describes the proto-universe, or is it the place within which the proto-universe was lurking? Definitely the latter: Dax says they "snagged something from the subspace pocket". So obviously this pocket is where the universe belongs, and where our heroes will return it at the conclusion of their hair-raising second navigation of the wormhole at the end of the episode.

The pocket being but a single minute away from the wormhole mouth also excuses how the returning-the-thing-where-it-belongs bit is glossed over with a single sentence: there really isn't anything more to it. Also, one wonders if the pocket isn't a side effect of the wormhole somehow. And if there aren't several such pockets around, possibly at both ends of the wormhole...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Farscape One]

Also, one wonders if the pocket isn't a side effect of the wormhole somehow. And if there aren't several such pockets around, possibly at both ends of the wormhole...

Interesting theory. Extending that logic, could that pocket universe and any other possible ones have been created on purpose by the wormhole aliens? Especially given how the wormhole has existed for thousands of years and nothing like this has occured before... but suddenly, only a year and a half after Sisko makes contact with them, this appears.

 

[Timo]

Well, finding the wormhole in the first place involved stumbling to within a hundred meters of it - calling this statistically astronomically unlikely would be the understatement of the aeon. But once one starts frequenting this specific spot of space, perhaps stumbling onto its byproducts is more or less inevitable. That is, if we define hitting a subspace pocket a few meters across while within a few thousand kilometers of the wormhole inevitable, but in comparison with the original feat, it's exactly that.

Divine guidance might have been involved in both cases, of course. Dax correlated multiple prior wormhole encounters and then terminally homed in using "proton counting", but those prior encounters would have needed all the celestial help they could get in order to defeat the original odds - and perhaps Dax got some, too. But the Prophets then work in subtle and mysterious ways, since we do not actually see any divine intervention. Okay, perhaps the Prophets sent the protons in "Emissary" to lure Dax and Sisko in. But they sent nothing in "Playing God".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

As always, fan theories are fun to throw around in regards to these things, but in-show, there are no such explanations. That's part of why this episode was lacking. Clearly, the main story of the episode was Dax & Arjin, so the proto-universe was really just a plot device that didn't get thoroughly explored. [Yes, that's true for much of sci-fi.] But most of '90s Trek was pretty good at balancing 2 stories in the same episode, and telling each one in a complete way. This one was not.

In any case, with the fan theories, the implication is that several billion years ago, somebody rammed into a proto-universe, failed to get it back into its original spot, and POOF, our universe was born.

 

[Timo]

I'm really not seeing the fan theory part. There's plenty of dialogue on the thing originally coming from a subspace pocket, and then some on getting it back where it belongs. What could possibly be left unclear there?

At most it's a case of raiding the fridge at the exact wrong moment.

(Now, the gauntlet of whachamacallem nodes inside the wormhole is just plain silly - where did those come from; why and how; and where did they subsequently go? That part could have been utterly omitted, and Arjin could have demonstrated his flying skills by skillfully managing to bump into the right subspace pocket again...)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tosk]

As always, fan theories are fun to throw around in regards to these things, but in-show, there are no such explanations.

The relevant dialogue is sparse, but it makes it clear what happened. The proto-universe came from a subspace pocket. They put it back there. The theories are only expanding on that, not inventing an excuse out of whole cloth.

In any case, with the fan theories, the implication is that several billion years ago, somebody rammed into a proto-universe, failed to get it back into its original spot, and POOF, our universe was born.

I'm not seeing that implication myself. Perhaps I missed something.