"THE SHIP" Changeling...

[Farscape One]

Something always bothered me.

We've Changelings die before... the Krajensky one and the Martok one. They were from energy based weapons or being by the warp core.

But this one... we know the Jem'Hadar died on the ship because they got their bones smashed, basically.

So how did the Changeling die? He started to die toward the end of the episode. He clearly was able to take a different form, which was why he was hidden for so long.

And given how we see Laas able to fly in open space without a problem, this doesn't exactly make sense to me. (Granted, Laas was over 2 years later from this episode and the writers might ave simply overlooked this. Still begs the question.)

 

[Angry Fanboy]

Any number of reasons I suppose. Standing next to the obligatory Star Trek console explosion when the ship was taking fire?

I do tend to agree that a Changeling wouldn't suffer fatal injuries from the impact due to their very nature.

 

[at Quark's]

That changeling might have been dying for a reason unrelated to the ship crash.

For all we know, the ship could have crashed because it was ferrying a dying Founder with extreme urgency and neglecting all normal safety regulations and margins to the great link, the only location where he could still be saved .... and perhaps it could still shift shape to some extent, but no longer well enough to fly through open space itself

 

[Angry Fanboy]

Certainly possible, but I think we can all agree that the clear implication was that the Changeling was severely injured by the crash or the events leading to the crash?

 

[Tosk]

but I think we can all agree that the clear implication was that the Changeling was severely injured by the crash or the events leading to the crash?

It's certainly possible, but I personally would shy away from declaring it a "clear implication".

There's the curiosity of the ship being "three weeks from the nearest Dominion outpost", then after suffering a catastrophic system failure, the rescue party arrives in less than a day. Perhaps the second ship was already rushing to them to pick up the dying Changeling.

Inertial damper failure is seemingly quite rare, so I'd wonder what caused that in the first place. The entire crew died at their point of departure. That could very easily be due to urgency-induced neglect, like at Quark's suggested.

 

[Angry Fanboy]

Certainly my take away is that the crash that killed the Jem'Hadar crew also critically injured the Changeling, from where I'm sitting that's the clear implication.

When you've got a crashed ship, a crew that died on impact and one critically injured passenger it seems unnecessary to start postulating that the passenger was injured beforehand, but whatever people want to believe is fine.

Personally if I found a downed plane with ten dead passengers and one with severe head injuries my thought process wouldn't be 'maybe these head injuries are from a car crash on his way to the airport...' :-)

 

[at Quark's]

When you've got a crashed ship, a crew that died on impact and one critically injured passenger it seems unnecessary to start postulating that the passenger was injured beforehand, but whatever people want to believe is fine.
Personally if I found a downed plane with ten dead passengers and one with severe head injuries my thought process wouldn't be 'maybe these head injuries are from a car crash on his way to the airport...' :-)

Except we don't know if that changeling was injured. We only know it was dying.

We do know that changelings can survive explosions and blasts that are lethal to humanoids with ease. For example there's the incident where an explosion killed 27 Romulan and Federation delegates in the room, but the Founder that was in the same room disguised as a vase escaped unharmed. Assuming that this wasn't intended as a suicide mission by the changeling who probably set up that explosive, there probably wasn't too much of a risk of him being killed by that explosion. Or take the founder that impersonated Martok; it required the concentrated simultaneous disruptor blasts of about a dozen Klingons to be killed. And even with that dozen firing blasts continuously at point blank range, it still took about 15 seconds. And we're tallking about Klingons, so they're probably not firing on a stun or minimum-energy setting. So we know that changelings are a lot harder to kill by blunt force than your average humanoid. Hence I think it might be quite possible that the crash didn't even injure it.

Please note that I'm not saying this is the more likely explanation. I'm merely offering the possibility that the crash isn't what killed it.

 

[Angry Fanboy]

We'll agree to disagree then. As I said we know the ship crashed, the crash killed everyone on board bar one survivor, who died days later from critical injuries.

To my mind to look for an explanation for those critical injuries other than a ship crashing into the ground from orbit seems completely unnecessary.

If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, chances are it's a duck.

 

[at Quark's]

The summary of what we know is "The ship crashed, the crash killed everyone on board bar one survivor, who died days later." The 'from critical injuries' part already is conjecture, since the episode doesn't state or show anything to that effect explicitly. It might be a conjecture with a high degree of plausibility, but it's still conjecture.

And yes, let's agree to disagree.

 

[Timo]

We do know that changelings can survive explosions and blasts that are lethal to humanoids with ease. For example there's the incident where an explosion killed 27 Romulan and Federation delegates in the room, but the Founder that was in the same room disguised as a vase escaped unharmed. Assuming that this wasn't intended as a suicide mission by the changeling who probably set up that explosive...

...And assuming this ever happened.

The Antwerp bombing is what gets Leyton's coup going. And the only reason we have for thinking that a Founder was involved at all is a surveillance video presented by Leyton. Could the video really be assumed to be genuine?

But I agree that the fact that help arrives in one day when the nearest outpost is far away is highly suspicious. We could plead coincidence, with a ship sent to intercept Sisko's scouting party just happening on the crash site. But that would presume that the place was swarming with Dominion assets to begin with... Which Sisko's pre-mission analysis suggested was the opposite of the truth.

Why would the Dominion ship crash on a planet? The odds against that would appear astronomical in the most literal sense. The same thing happens in "Rocks and Shoals" as well, though. To two ships in a row! Possibly Dominion ships of this type have an autopilot that brings fatally wounded ships to the nearest planet, and furthermore as close as possible to any preceding Dominion crash site. The same system might also always summon other ships to assist downed ones.

Or then the summons only applies to ships that are flagged as ferrying Founders. The ship from "The Ship" would be one - but the very same ship would later crash in "Rocks and Shoals" and invite another battlebug to crash right next to it!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Angry Fanboy]

To be fair virtually any chance meeting between ships is quite literally astronomical, like two plastic toy boats getting sent out to sea from different parts of the world bumping into each other. Just multiples less likely again.

How many 'known' people did Voyager happen to bump into along that exact course they were taking home? That Talaxian colony they stumbled upon seven years and thirty thousand light-years later, on that EXACT path Voyager followed across the galaxy? Give me strength.

It's the inevitable price you pay to make a television show in space I guess.

 

[DS9forever]

The Changeling is both scary and pitiful in that episode, a good achievement as it was a CGI-only character.

 

[Timo]

How many 'known' people did Voyager happen to bump into along that exact course they were taking home?

Umm, none, exactly?

Some folks with an ax to grind, like Culluh, Kes and the Ballard zombie, went out of their way to find Voyager. Apparently, the scientist Jetrel did the same, although this is the one encounter where the method is not all that clear, since he's only operating a humble shuttlecraft (even Ballard supposedly operated out of a mothership).

That Talaxian colony they stumbled upon seven years and thirty thousand light-years later, on that EXACT path Voyager followed across the galaxy?

One out of tens of thousands, probably. Nobody Neelix knew personally was there, or had heard of anybody he'd know.

Granted that it did happen on their exact path. But we don't know what dictated that path. Perhaps the same thing had originally dictated that the Talaxians settle there?

Ships meeting each other in space by chance is not really a Trek phenomenon. Ships have sensors and communications systems, and often access to the sensor data and flight plans of others, and generally meet because at least one wants to meet the other.

Having Dominion ships meet each other is even less of a surprise than having ships from cultures X and Y meet. But ending up on a planet should generally involve the ship having initial interest in said planet. If not for any other reason, then as a refuge in their current crisis. Which is why the "already injured Changeling" is so attractive. I mean, yeah, the planet did have some mineral riches our heroes were interested in (although it was probably completely useless for strategic reasons), but we never learned of a Dominion interest in said.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Angry Fanboy]

Umm, none, exactly?

Umm, literally off the top of my head: Amelia Earhart, the female Caretaker, that Cardassian missile, the two Ferengi, the Klingon ship in one of the later seasons.

Doubtless there are more if I was of a mind to check.

"None." Behave!

 

[Farscape One]

Regarding Ballard on VOYAGER, she was killed by Hirogen at least 2 years before that episode... and over 20,000 light years ago. A big hiccup by the writers... the crew didn't think to ask, "Wow, Lyndsey. 20,000 light years in a SHUTTLE? Can we take a better look at that engine to see if we can use it to get home faster?"


Regarding "ROCKS AND SHOALS", Sisko's ship was severely damaged and out of power when flying into the nebula, and it's the gravity well of the planet that made them crash. Not sure why Keevan's ship ended up doing the same.


The Antwerp bombing... I never thought of Leyton planning to gave a bomb put there and killing those people. As crazed as he was, his original plans didn't seem to be violent. When he got the power grid shut off, there was no dialogue about casualties. And if Sisko hadn't intervened on his plans, he lijely wouldn't have ordered the attack on the Defiant, which ended up killing officers on both ships. Honestly, I can't see Admiral Leyton blowing up the conference.

 

[at Quark's]

...And assuming this ever happened.

The Antwerp bombing is what gets Leyton's coup going. And the only reason we have for thinking that a Founder was involved at all is a surveillance video presented by Leyton. Could the video really be assumed to be genuine?

Well, I'd say that the chain of ensuing events (energy grid going down, a changeling that shows himself to Sisko present on the planet claiming that there are four of them creating a lot of havoc) increases the odds significantly one of them actually was, but you are right, we don't know for certain ...

As for meeting people in the DQ, they met quite some species and relics from the AQ by sheer coincidence, as said before. If you actually mean "known people" in the narrowest possible sense (i.e. persons already known from other Trek incarnations), I'd say that would still leave the two Ferengi from TNG's The Price.

 

[Timo]

How do you define 'known', is very much the question. The Ferengi, say, were just two Ferengi: the skies could be littered with those. Sure, a different set of heroes once met them, but that doesn't make them particularly special.

Would Earhart be 'special'? Humans were getting abducted off Earth in droves before the Vulcans came. If Janeway didn't run into the Briori, he could run into some other generic copy of the Skagarrans or the Preservers.

Anything abducted by the Caretaker would probably be encountered sooner or later, if this something had a desire to return to home base. (Did the Dreadnought have that desire? Well, it very much desired to hit a target in Alpha; even if it declared ignorance of being in Delta, this need not have applied during the earlier stages of its voyage.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

Well, I'd say that the chain of ensuing events (energy grid going down, a changeling that shows himself to Sisko present on the planet claiming that there are four of them creating a lot of havoc) increases the odds significantly one of them actually was, but you are right, we don't know for certain ...

Now there's another question all right. Should we think that the Changeling saying that there are four of them at Earth and that the four are creating havoc should be taken as evidence that there are four and that they are creating havoc? Or as evidence of the opposite?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[at Quark's]

Well, of course the statement that there were four needn't have been true, there could be more or less. But at least one there was, the one that spoke with Sisko. And regardless of whether they actually were involved in the mishaps or not, they were more than willing to exploit it- so for me it isn't too much of a leap of faith to assume they indeed were involved. But you're right, we can't prove it.

Or are you willing to entertain the idea that there were actually no changelings and it was really O' Brien, who just liked to pull Sisko's leg ? Or Q? I mean, if we are willing to go with less likely alternatives, let's not overlook that possibility ...

 

[Angry Fanboy]

Apologies - let me try and explain/simplify my comments above for those who needed clarification.

I used 'known' in the context that the characters in the show knew/had records of these people they encountered by happenstance during their journey home.

Earhart was from Earth and known to the crew by virture of historical records and education (Janeway in particular knew who she was).

The female Caretaker - hopefully self explanatory.

The beings connected to Chakotay's tribe - again hopefully self explanatory.

The assimilated Starfleet officer on the crashed Borg Cube - known about via records.

Crashed SS Raven - self explanatory.

USS Equinox - self explanatory although admittedly likely to be taking the same course home.

That Klingon ship - pretty self explanatory.

Known as in 'known quantity' - familiar with if not literally met before. Like how I've used 'bumped into' to mean encountered, not literally 'the ship collided/made physical contact with'.

Hope this helps!