Was Kataan another victim of the secret of the Zhat Vash?

Could it be that the Kataanians were destroyed by the same species that the Zhat Vash were frightened about?

It's an interesting detail that Kataan was also destroyed by a nova and that the main theme of the show is based on Batai's song from "The Inner Light"

 

No.

 

Who?

 

The species from TNG"The Inner Light"

 

Picard's son, he had as Kamin in "The Inner Light".

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Batai_(Kamin's_son)

 

i think there's some interesting story potential in revisiting kataan, but this season of picard does not need to tie any more threads back to the synth ban and soji. it's making the world feel awfully small. sometimes things just happen in isolation, they don't all need to add up to a bigger plot.

 

As much as they love callbacks, why not?

 

The Kataan supernova occurred a millennium ago, though, and what we saw suggests that they were not up to building synthetic life. They died too long after the creation of the octuple and the Admonition, IMHO, to have been caught up in that.

 

They didn’t seem advanced enough yet to be anywhere close to developing synthetic life so I don’t see why they’d be targeted.

 

No.

Kataan was destroyed by a supernova, not a species.

 

Don't forget the probe. It's an awesome piece of technology. Altering the memories of unknown species is an amazing feat. Not to speak about simulating the personalities and memories of the kataanian people. Maybe it's even on par with Federation technology.

A civilization that can create something like that, shouldn't have any troubles creating artificial life...

 

That’s a good point. Still they didn’t seem to have done anything involving synthetic life and certainly not at the level that would trigger this alien race from wiping them out.

 

Probably not.

...Although, the theme song to Picard is a Kataanian melody.

 

This. Kataan had 20th Century technology at best. I'm amazed the probe they had was even able to make Picard live someone else's life. They didn't have AI.

If they tie "The Inner Light" into Picard at all, it'll be another way.

 

I need to disagree here. Simulating an entire world based on the memory of the people of an entire civilization in the mind of another person hints at a very strong A.I.

Not to speak of doing this with a member of a species totally unknown to the Kataanians, with a possibly totally different body and brain structure.

 

I suppose it could be. From what we saw of Kataan, it did not seen to be a world where AI, or other technologies, were that advanced.

More, Kataan was a planet-bound society. If the threshold is something that the 24th century Federation is coming close to, how could Kataan be near it?

 

We only saw Kamin's life in a small community on the planet. So we don't know what happened on the rest of the planet.

And the technology of the probe hints at the possibility that they were far more advanced than what one could expect if one only visits a village.

It's actually like visiting Jean Luc's Vineyard in La Barre to determine the state of technology on Earth or the entire Federation...

 

Well planets don't process in a "checklist" pattern.. As in, a planet with a peaceful society may have a more advanced computer/ai system then a planet that is constantly at war "cough Earth cough"
So Kaatan "could" have a bucolic peaceful society built on the foundations of an ai controlling the planet.. And it having primitive rockets may just mean they don't care about going to the stars alot so there progressing slowly on that end.

 

I'm not sure about that. What we saw of the vineyard suggests a highly advanced and technological civilization, robots about and the like.

I am not saying that it could not be established that Kataan was advanced enough to be a victim of the Threshold Hunters. I just think the evidence is lacking.

 

Actually the probe is evidence enough, at least imo.

If you just look at Picard's experience without any of the stuff happening on the Enterprise, i guess you couldn't get the idea that the people on Kataan could create remotely something like a piece of tech that could manipulate the brains of aliens and let them experience their memories.

I'm not even sure the Federation or any other alpha quadrant species could create something like this.