ORGANIAN PEACE TREATY????

[bionicbob]

Just finished reading IDW's STY4:The Enterprise Experiment by D.C. Fontana and greatly enjoyed it. The art was average but the story was loaded with lots of "fill in the blanks" continuity.


SPOILER WARNING!!!!!

The story explains what happened to the Organian Peace Treaty, since it clearly does not exist in the TNG era. It also explains both the Organians and Metrons are "children" of the Preservers and the Preservers created the Galactic Barrier to keep out some great threat to our Galaxy.


It got me to wondering if any of these TOS dangling storylines have been dealt with in current Trek Lit continuity?

In particular, has it been explained why there is no Organian Peace Treaty by the time of TNG?

 

[DarKush]

I don't think there has been an explanation on TNG. However, I thought ST6 pretty eliminated the need for the Organian Peace Treaty.

Would've been interesting perhaps to revisit the idea during the Fed.-Klingon war on DS9 though.

 

[Christopher]

I've never felt it needed to be explained. "Errand of Mercy" clearly established that the Organians were strict isolationists who found contact with corporeal life to be intensely distasteful. The only reason they intervened in the 2267 war was because it infringed on their territory; basically, it was a "Hey, you noisy kids, get off my lawn!" kind of deal. So it seems unlikely that the Organians would be interested in intervening in any UFP/Klingon conflict that didn't directly affect Organia itself. (And I did include some discussion of this in The Buried Age.)

Also, let's consider that term, Organian Peace Treaty. A treaty is a compact between governments, so the signatories to that treaty would've been the sitting governments of the UFP and the Klingon Empire as of 2267. Indeed, we have no proof that the Organians had any direct involvement in the treaty; its existence wasn't established until "The Trouble With Tribbles," after all. It could've been negotiated by the two powers and simply called that because it was a response to the Organians' ultimatum, or perhaps was negotiated/signed in the Organian system. But given that the "smoothie" Klingons suddenly disappear by 2273 (TMP), it seems maybe there was an overthrow of that Klingon government, which might have rendered the treaty null and void.

 

[Emissary of the Prophets]

It's been a while since I read it, but from what I remember there was a reference to the Organians in the novelisation of STVI. If I remember rightly Klingon attacks had increased against the Federation (including the colony that Carol Marcus was then working at), that had not been stopped by the Organians. From what I can remember they had 'evolved' again to a much higher level & left the Klingons & the Federation to it. It's been about 17 years since I read the book, so my facts maybe a bit fuzzy.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

It also explains both the Organians and Metrons are "children" of the Preservers and the Preservers created the Galactic Barrier to keep out some great threat to our Galaxy.

Wow, another explanation for the creation of the Galactic Barrier? That's what, the third one now? I've lost track.

 

[Elemental]

It also explains both the Organians and Metrons are "children" of the Preservers and the Preservers created the Galactic Barrier to keep out some great threat to our Galaxy.

Wow, another explanation for the creation of the Galactic Barrier? That's what, the third one now? I've lost track.

What have the others been?

 

[Christopher]

And another work assuming the Preservers are immeasurably ancient and godlike, even though the only canonical information we have about them is that they trucked some Indians from one planet to another a few centuries ago and weren't even smart enough to "preserve" them by putting them on a planet that wasn't in the middle of a freaking asteroid field. Based on that, it seems they should be a much younger race than the Organians, a race that exists in the present rather than the ancient past; and there's no evidence their technology is any more advanced than the 24th-century Federation. And yet people keep magnifying them into these monumentally powerful, eternal, godlike entities and give them credit for every ancient mystery in the Trekverse. I guess it's because so little is known about them; it's possible to read anything into a blank slate. And the mystery of their nature lends itself to romanticizing.

The idea of the Preservers creating the Galactic Barrier as a defense was also used in the Shatnerverse Totality trilogy, IIRC. So perhaps Fontana intended The Enterprise Experiment to take place in the Shatnerverse?

Wow, another explanation for the creation of the Galactic Barrier? That's what, the third one now? I've lost track.

What have the others been?

In The Wounded Sky, Diane Duane said the barrier was just a large wavefront from a massive supernova, a local phenomenon that happened to coincide with part of the galactic rim but didn't fully surround it (which has always been my preferred explanation, since nobody ever said onscreen that the Barrier surrounded the entire galaxy, just that it was "at the edge"). Greg Cox's Q Continuum trilogy went with the "erected by ancients to protect the galaxy from a great evil" explanation, but it was the Q who put it up (I think).

 

[The Nth Doctor]

It also explains both the Organians and Metrons are "children" of the Preservers and the Preservers created the Galactic Barrier to keep out some great threat to our Galaxy.

Wow, another explanation for the creation of the Galactic Barrier? That's what, the third one now? I've lost track.

What have the others been?

Looking at Memory Beta, just two others: Captain's Blood (as mentioned by Christohper) and Q-Strike (of the Q-Continuum trilogy).

 

[bionicbob]

And another work assuming the Preservers are immeasurably ancient and godlike, even though the only canonical information we have about them is that they trucked some Indians from one planet to another a few centuries ago and weren't even smart enough to "preserve" them by putting them on a planet that wasn't in the middle of a freaking asteroid field. Based on that, it seems they should be a much younger race than the Organians, a race that exists in the present rather than the ancient past; and there's no evidence their technology is any more advanced than the 24th-century Federation. And yet people keep magnifying them into these monumentally powerful, eternal, godlike entities and give them credit for every ancient mystery in the Trekverse. I guess it's because so little is known about them; it's possible to read anything into a blank slate. And the mystery of their nature lends itself to romanticizing.

The idea of the Preservers creating the Galactic Barrier as a defense was also used in the Shatnerverse Totality trilogy, IIRC. So perhaps Fontana intended The Enterprise Experiment to take place in the Shatnerverse?

This is just conjecture on my part, but I got to thinking after my post, since Fontana worked so closely with Roddenberry for so many years on various Trek projects (TOS,TAS, TNG), maybe her interpretation of the Preservers/Organians/Galactic Barrier is what Roddenberry envisioned all along? Roddenberry certainly liked creating omni-potent beings as foils. And who would have more insight into Roddenberry's cohesive vision of the Trekverse than Fontana? Just a thought....

 

[Christopher]

This is just conjecture on my part, but I got to thinking after my post, since Fontana worked so closely with Roddenberry for so many years on various Trek projects (TOS,TAS, TNG), maybe her interpretation of the Preservers/Organians/Galactic Barrier is what Roddenberry envisioned all along?

I'd call that very unlikely. For one thing, Roddenberry didn't have that much involvement in the third season, when the Preservers were introduced. For another, there wasn't a lot of continuity of that sort in TOS, no attempt to tie concepts from individual episodes together into a larger tapestry. That's not the way TV writers or producers thought back then, so any attempt to combine them into a larger whole has to be a more recent idea. Samuel Peeples created the Barrier, Gene Coon created the Organians, and Margaret Armen created the Preservers. Two of the three were freelancers; shows back then didn't have the kind of large, dedicated writing staffs they have today. So there was no overarching plan that combined these concepts. Indeed, the only instance onscreen (in any series) where any of these concepts was revisited was "By Any Other Name," which was co-written by Fontana herself.

 

[Corran Horn]

It's been a while since I read it, but from what I remember there was a reference to the Organians in the novelisation of STVI. If I remember rightly Klingon attacks had increased against the Federation (including the colony that Carol Marcus was then working at), that had not been stopped by the Organians. From what I can remember they had 'evolved' again to a much higher level & left the Klingons & the Federation to it. It's been about 17 years since I read the book, so my facts maybe a bit fuzzy.

yeah, that's what it was. The events (and tensions) in that movie occurred because the Organians had disappeared.

 

[Timo]

Good old The Final Reflection was probably the first book (apart from Spock Must Die!?) to refer to continuing Organian interest and to their habit of heating up weapons and weapon controls if Klingons and Feds tried a direct fight; How Much For Just a Planet followed suit. Later on, the Peter Morwood novel Rules of Engagement describes the Organians as "still" altruistically interested in peace, and with the characters dreading their interference at any moment.

But apart from the ST6 novelization, are there other books that describe the Organians this way? Certainly there is no onscreen indication that they would in any way interfere with, or be in contact with, or even be visible to, the Feds or the Klingons after the end credits of "Errand of Mercy" roll.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Stevil2001]

A few books deal with their continued administration of the treaty, though, as I recall-- I think Pawns and Symbols does, for example.