The mystery of the Breen language

[Timo]

Timo - what alternate mechanisms are you talking about?

1) A nail on the wall, with the suit hanging from it.

After all, the Breen seemed to be present in some force. If their suits are just for camouflage and don't serve a "practical" function, they are likely to be taken off rather often. There would also be spares around.

2) A costume prepared using standard technologies available to the average 24th century citizen of Cardassia - or at least to an insurgent willing to do what the average citizen dare not.

After all, replicators are around every corner in TNG...

Stun phasers could not be stopped by any body armor seen in trek (except for the borg one) - not klingon armor, not cardasian armor. Why should the breen armor be any different? - their tech level is ~the same.

Neither of those covers the wearer - they leave the head and the limb extremities quite exposed. The Breen suit is a rare exception to that, possibly for a reason.

And if Ezri and Worf don't know how a breen looks like, they will, of course, speculate about it - fur and beyond

But that makes very little sense. If it is known that the Breen evaporate, then speculating "what they look like" is just plain silly, as one should instead be quoting the pertinent fact of evaporation! Essentially, a Breen would look like "evaporating"... And the speculation would begin with this, and only then tackle other things, such as what the Breen looks before evaporation specifically.

(How likely would it be that something as conventional as a furry humanoid would evaporate at exposure anyway? Ezri should have been talking about walking icicles or something.)

The whole bit about "never seen and lived to tell" would be nonsensical, since Kira would have come back alive with the knowledge that the Breen evaporate. The "live to tell" angle would have no bearing whatsoever on one's ability to report the true Breen apperance, then: even an immortal and invincible observer would come back empty-handed, because the obstacle would be the evaporation aspect.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[apenpaap]

Maybe they don't evaporate by themselves, but maybe those suits are designed to evaporate whoever wears it when they are forcibly opened, to protect the secret of what they look like.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Timo - what alternate mechanisms are you talking about?

1) A nail on the wall, with the suit hanging from it.

After all, the Breen seemed to be present in some force. If their suits are just for camouflage and don't serve a "practical" function, they are likely to be taken off rather often. There would also be spares around.

2) A costume prepared using standard technologies available to the average 24th century citizen of Cardassia - or at least to an insurgent willing to do what the average citizen dare not.

After all, replicators are around every corner in TNG...

I already analysed these possibilities in my previous post:
"A replicator materializing near her on two occasions - with specs for the suit in its memory?
Or did Kira break into a heavily defended breen garnizon on Cardassia Prime/into the guards lockers in the slave mine and stole a suit?
I find such explanations convoluted."

Stun phasers could not be stopped by any body armor seen in trek (except for the borg one) - not klingon armor, not cardasian armor. Why should the breen armor be any different? - their tech level is ~the same.

Neither of those covers the wearer - they leave the head and the limb extremities quite exposed. The Breen suit is a rare exception to that, possibly for a reason.

I find the armor's coverage irrelevant to the strength of the materials/the effectiveness of the tech incorporated in said armor.
The borg are the only ones with a military tech advanced enough to make truly effective body armor. The breen are nowhere near their level.

And if Ezri and Worf don't know how a breen looks like, they will, of course, speculate about it - fur and beyond

But that makes very little sense. If it is known that the Breen evaporate, then speculating "what they look like" is just plain silly, as one should instead be quoting the pertinent fact of evaporation! Essentially, a Breen would look like "evaporating"... And the speculation would begin with this, and only then tackle other things, such as what the Breen looks before evaporation specifically.

Timo, as Cat in a blender said, the breen don't evaporate on their own; the suit disintegrates them much like a phaser set on maximum power.

I already adressed this point in my previous post:
"Kira incapacitating breen with a stun phaser is quite beleivable. The suit then disintegrated the breen in it when Kira tried to remove the suit/when the breen soldier was incapacitated."

 

[Timo]

I already analysed these possibilities in my previous post:
"A replicator materializing near her on two occasions - with specs for the suit in its memory?"

But that is highly probable in Star Trek. Replicators are everywhere, including Cardassian households. And the pattern for the suit could be rather trivially created, as it wouldn't need any of the real functionalities, just a passable voicebox plus the exterior shell.

I find the armor's coverage irrelevant to the strength of the materials/the effectiveness of the tech incorporated in said armor.
The borg are the only ones with a military tech advanced enpugh to make truly effective body armor. The breen are nowhere near their level.

Yet in "Business as Usual", Quark sells a Breen weapon that (according to a nice demonstration we see) is optimal for destroying powered armor. The Breen battlefield thus does seem to feature the concept of effective armor that needs special armor-piercing countermeasures.

We see something like semi-effective anti-disruptor armor in "Nor the Battle to the Strong", too - a thin and flexible suit that nevertheless more or less stopped a direct Klingon hit in the chest. And somehow, wide area stun never is a valid military tactic, and is only ever used for crowd control...

Timo, as Cat in a blender said, the breen don't evaporate on their own

How does that affect anything? It still means that the fact would be known that the Breen evaporate when the suit is breached. The part about "getting a look and living to tell the tale" would still make no sense, then. It would be like saying "nobody has solved Fermat's theorem and lived to tell the tale". There would be no inherent risk to one's life involved there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ProtoAvatar]

I already analysed these possibilities in my previous post:
"A replicator materializing near her on two occasions - with specs for the suit in its memory?"

But that is highly probable in Star Trek. Replicators are everywhere, including Cardassian households. And the pattern for the suit could be rather trivially created, as it wouldn't need any of the real functionalities, just a passable voicebox plus the exterior shell.

Kira had the suit+breen weapon on both occasions. One can't do these with a food replicator - not that a food replicator is available to Kira on Cardassia Prime, on an alley, at night/in a slave mine. One needs an industrial replicator - and these are rare even in the trekverse.
Also, Kira memorised the molecular structure of a breen weapon?
As I said - convoluted.

I find the armor's coverage irrelevant to the strength of the materials/the effectiveness of the tech incorporated in said armor.
The borg are the only ones with a military tech advanced enpugh to make truly effective body armor. The breen are nowhere near their level.

Yet in "Business as Usual", Quark sells a Breen weapon that (according to a nice demonstration we see) is optimal for destroying powered armor. The Breen battlefield thus does seem to feature the concept of effective armor that needs special armor-piercing countermeasures.

We see something like semi-effective anti-disruptor armor in "Nor the Battle to the Strong", too - a thin and flexible suit that nevertheless more or less stopped a direct Klingon hit in the chest. And somehow, wide area stun never is a valid military tactic, and is only ever used for crowd control...

We never saw an alphan armor stop effectively even a stun phaser. As for the rest - the tech required to actually make an effective armor - I already adressed that:
"The borg are the only ones with a military tech advanced enough to make truly effective body armor. The breen are nowhere near their level."

Timo, as Cat in a blender said, the breen don't evaporate on their own

How does that affect anything? It still means that the fact would be known that the Breen evaporate when the suit is breached. The part about "getting a look and living to tell the tale" would still make no sense, then. It would be like saying "nobody has solved Fermat's theorem and lived to tell the tale". There would be no inherent risk to one's life involved there.

Timo Saloniemi

"The breen don't evaporate on their own; the suit disintegrates them much like a phaser set on maximum power."
This means the breen could look like anything - they're probably humanoids, though.

"They say no one has ever seen one and lived to speak of it."
It makes perfect sense. The breen suits prevented most from seeing how the breen look like. The few who managed to see a breen despite their secrecy (suits and who knows what else) died before they could impart this knowledge to the galaxy at large.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Timo, as Cat in a blender said, the breen don't evaporate on their own

How does that affect anything? It still means that the fact would be known that the Breen evaporate when the suit is breached. The part about "getting a look and living to tell the tale" would still make no sense, then. It would be like saying "nobody has solved Fermat's theorem and lived to tell the tale". There would be no inherent risk to one's life involved there.

Timo Saloniemi

I have no idea if this is even scientifically possible, but could it be that when they evaporate, it's into something that's toxic to inhale? So in other words, if you don't back up really quickly when you remove the helmet, if you're trying to hover around for a look before the process completes, you're dead? (And some who tried it in closed areas might've died even at a distance?)

Just a random thought...no idea if it's even possible.

 

[Myasishchev]

Timo - what alternate mechanisms are you talking about?
A replicator materializing near her on two occasions - with specs for the suit in its memory?
Or did Kira break into a heavily defended breen garnizon on Cardassia Prime/into the guards lockers in the slave mine and stole a suit?
I find such explanations convoluted.

Really? Ambushing a hostile alien in a hostile environment to steal an environmental suit full of God knows what kind of atmosphere at God knows what kind of temperature that happens to fit well is less convoluted than "Computer, replicate a suit to specifications xyz"?

Stun phasers could not be stopped by any body armor seen in trek (except for the borg one) - not klingon armor, not cardasian armor.

And by human flesh, when sufficiently pumped full of "vitamins."

I mean, yeah, we've seen that, I can't say we haven't, but we've also seen phasers set on kill stopped by crates and random crap. Hell, we've seen phasers set on kill virtually stopped by nothing more substantial than Starfleet uniforms. People stopped evaporating around the time the First Contact uniforms were introduced.

Why should the breen armor be any different? - their tech level is ~the same.

Indeed, why should they be different? Why shouldn't their armor provide at least as much protection as the fabric of a Starfleet uniform?

Edit: that said, one particular Breen is one of the very few creatures we see vaporized-by-phaser in DS9. The Breen Prisoner's suit of armor was apparently so fragile that the Jemmies could totally wipe it out with one shot. These being the same guns, presumably, that gave Jadzia a pretty minor (as far as Trek goes) abdominal wound. Weird, right? I'm gonna say VFX error on that.

Kira incapacitating breen with a stun phaser is quite beleivable. The suit then disintegrated the breen in it when Kira tried to remove the suit/when the breen soldier was incapacitated.

This is less the convoluted explanation, right? Timo's and my explanation require only one thing that we didn't see direct evidence of; this requires--at least-three: planning an ambush, conducting an ambush, and an auto-disintegrator device integrated into the Breen armor for some unexplained reason (explaining it makes four).

Also, I dunno about you, but I would hesitate, I mean really hesitate, about jumping in a suit that just annihilated its former occupant.

 

[Myasishchev]

Timo, as Cat in a blender said, the breen don't evaporate on their own

How does that affect anything? It still means that the fact would be known that the Breen evaporate when the suit is breached. The part about "getting a look and living to tell the tale" would still make no sense, then. It would be like saying "nobody has solved Fermat's theorem and lived to tell the tale". There would be no inherent risk to one's life involved there.

Timo Saloniemi

I have no idea if this is even scientifically possible, but could it be that when they evaporate, it's into something that's toxic to inhale? So in other words, if you don't back up really quickly when you remove the helmet, if you're trying to hover around for a look before the process completes, you're dead? (And some who tried it in closed areas might've died even at a distance?)

Just a random thought...no idea if it's even possible.

Supposing Breen use ammonia instead of water as their internal solvent of choice (and ammonia is competitive if not commensurate with water), being exposed to our "room temperature" or even subzero (Celsius) weather would heat it well past its boiling point. Any ugly bag of mostly liquid ammonia would, unless capable of resisting enormous internal pressures, as the scientists put it, "asplode."

Naturally, it would thus asplode with great health risks to unprepared water-using life, since ammonia is gross--as, of course, is water to one based on ammonia, which would explain the suits even if ammonial Breen didn't burst from their insides boiling.

Realistically, a vaporized human body would be pretty poisonous as well--but I'd be more worried about being scalded by over a hundred kilograms of steam blasting out of the body than the threat of carbon monoxide/dioxide poisoning.

 

[apenpaap]

You can make some pretty nasty acids from Carbon, Oxygen and Hydrogen (of which all life on Earth largely exist), so by vapourizing a body with a specific reaction you could probably make these.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Supposing Breen use ammonia instead of water as their internal solvent of choice (and ammonia is competitive if not commensurate with water), being exposed to our "room temperature" or even subzero (Celsius) weather would heat it well past its boiling point. Any ugly bag of mostly liquid ammonia would, unless capable of resisting enormous internal pressures, as the scientists put it, "asplode."

Naturally, it would thus asplode with great health risks to unprepared water-using life, since ammonia is gross--as, of course, is water to one based on ammonia, which would explain the suits even if ammonial Breen didn't burst from their insides boiling.

Realistically, a vaporized human body would be pretty poisonous as well--but I'd be more worried about being scalded by over a hundred kilograms of steam blasting out of the body than the threat of carbon monoxide/dioxide poisoning.

OK...so a couple of questions. Please bear with me, because I am not sure of the answers.

You state that the internal boiling point of ammonia is much lower than water. Also, I know ammonia is VERY dangerous to breathe.

Which would someone have to worry about more--skin contact with the a-splody ammonia-based Breen, or lung damage and asphyxiation?

 

[Myasishchev]

Inhalation would be more instantly fatal, much moreso. Afaik the dangers are due to the ionizing interaction with water (ammonial life would consider this an acidic reaction, with water as the acid). Chemistry isn't my strongest suit, so someone else might be able to tell you better.

You know, I probably oversold my case about the asploding. That might not be the best way to characterize it. I'm pretty sure it'd be pretty nasty.

 

[apenpaap]

I don't know if an ammoniabased lifeform would actually explode when exposed to room temperature. Ammonia boils at -33, so room temperature for them would roughly be the equivalent of 150 degrees. Humans don't explode at that temperature, and can even survive short periods of it. If Breen vapourize it is more likely because of something the suit does.

 

[PTRACER]

I think you're just all trying to justify inconsistencies with the Trek writing.

Everything that was written about them was fine until Kira stole a Breen suit and that's introduced an inconsistency which can't be explained without silly reasoning like "Maybe they evaporate when they take the suit off".

From Memory Alpha:

The Breen have no blood or other liquid circulatory system. The Breen brain is structured into four lobes; this protects them from the probing of some empathic species, such as the Betazoids, who are unable to detect the thoughts or emotions of the Breen. (DS9: "In Purgatory's Shadow"; TNG: "The Loss")

Having no blood or liquid circulatory system is a bit of a problem - can you therefore call them non-humanoid or are they humanoid because they have two arms and two legs? They couldn't evaporate if they weren't made mostly of liquid, as "real" people are. Put a person in a fire and they burn, because we're all carbon based. Maybe Breen aren't carbon based life forms.

 

[Myasishchev]

I don't know if an ammoniabased lifeform would actually explode when exposed to room temperature. Ammonia boils at -33, so room temperature for them would roughly be the equivalent of 150 degrees. Humans don't explode at that temperature, and can even survive short periods of it. If Breen vapourize it is more likely because of something the suit does.

Yeah, like I said, I think I was overstating it a tad... it would almost definitely cause massive tissue damage and seep outward, though. The analogy of a human at 150 C is probably a good one. What would the life expectancy be there, I wonder? A few seconds? How long would the body last in any recognizable form?

I wish I knew more chemistry, so I could work out a plausible basic biochemistry for an ammonial being. I'm rather confident that using oxygen in any sort of glycolysis would be horrible, since that reaction (which is a precursor reaction to adenosine triphosphate (ATP) formation) has water as a product, and water is highly acidic in ammonia solution. I guess it's conceivable that ammonial life could have a monumentally effective excretion mechanism. What the alternatives are to ATP, I have no idea.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Kira incapacitating breen with a stun phaser is quite beleivable. The suit then disintegrated the breen in it when Kira tried to remove the suit/when the breen soldier was incapacitated.

This is less the convoluted explanation, right? Timo's and my explanation require only one thing that we didn't see direct evidence of; this requires--at least-three: planning an ambush, conducting an ambush, and an auto-disintegrator device integrated into the Breen armor for some unexplained reason (explaining it makes four).

Also, I dunno about you, but I would hesitate, I mean really hesitate, about jumping in a suit that just annihilated its former occupant.

Myasishchev - your explanation requires for Kira to have access to an industrial replicator (which, according to DS9:For the uniform, are rare and valuable) out of the blue, in a slave mine and on Dominion occupied Cardassia Prime and to relicate a breen suit and a BREEN WEAPON - meaning that Kira knows by heart the molecular composition of the breen weapon!
I find both of these assuptions improbable and convoluted.

My explanation requires for Kira to have a starfleet phaser, stun a breen soldier, remove the uniform (at which point the soldier disintegrates - we've seen phaser/disruptor disintegration many times in trek - it's a common technology) and wear the uniform.
So - Kira plans to stun a breen soldier, stuns him, removes its weapon/suit and wears it. That's it - and it's all well within Kira's skill set.

Now - I think the breen are humanoid due to the fact that their tech is humanod-friendly.
The fact that their homeworld is warm indicates that they can normally function in a warm environment - meaning they don't evaporate due to their biology when the refrigeration suits are removed.
Why are they wearing the suits?
"Perhaps it's simply secrecy. Maybe it's something vital - they could be ill and those suits could be keeping them alive. Maybe they refrigerate themselves simply as a means of attaining biological immortality."

My explanation requires for the breen suits to disintegrate them in ceratin situations.
Why do the suits disintegrate the breen to prevent facts about their biology from being known?
Secrecy, obviously.
Part of it is logical - knowing an enemy's biology enables one to make tailored biological wepons. In large part, it's due to xenophobia - something the breen have in abundance.

About breen suits - you yourself provided canon evidence that they're nothing special: DS9:By inferno's light.

 

[Timo]

I think you're just all trying to justify inconsistencies with the Trek writing.

No shit, Sherlock!

Myasishchev - your explanation requires for Kira to have access to an industrial replicator (which, according to DS9:For the uniform, are rare and valuable) out of the blue

Why? What is "industrial" about a suit of armor? Standard household ("food") replicators can produce other types of clothing just fine. They can produce extremely complicated pieces of technology, including pieces so complicated that UFP science doesn't understand them ("Rivals"). They can also produce weapons if certain security codes are overridden ("Field of Fire"). Significantly, too, all these feats were achieved by standard Cardassian hardware...

Getting new clothes or new furniture or new stereos is a significantly different process in the 24th century from what it is in our 21st. You don't go to the commercial outlet of an industrial process. You just press a button. Why would the same not hold true for a simple suit of armor?

Kira knows by heart the molecular composition of the breen weapon!

Or then has it in her back pocket. On the same datachip with the blueprints for a thousand types of IED, a hundred effective ways to break a Jem'Hadar neck, a dozen common chemicals that can kill a Vorta, and the pass keys to Cardassian security systems that were current when Damar last had access to them.

While the Breen energy damper was a mystery to the UFP, our heroes appeared to be quite familiar with Breen Type 3 rifles, in TNG "Hero Worship" and ST:GEN at least.

Of course, I'm open to the idea that Kira stole the rifle, too. The existence of the fake suit would help a lot with that...

fact that their homeworld is warm indicates that they can normally function in a warm environment - meaning they don't evaporate due to their biology when the refrigeration suits are removed.

Perhaps, perhaps not. All sorts of hostile environments can be "warm"... Or, as Weyoun put it, "the climate" can be "quite comfortable". It's pretty balmy on Mars, too - but deadly to humans.

Edit: that said, one particular Breen is one of the very few creatures we see vaporized-by-phaser in DS9. The Breen Prisoner's suit of armor was apparently so fragile that the Jemmies could totally wipe it out with one shot. These being the same guns, presumably, that gave Jadzia a pretty minor (as far as Trek goes) abdominal wound. Weird, right? I'm gonna say VFX error on that.

Umm, I'm gonna vote different phaser settings. The Trek rayguns do have those, after all.

That was the very point: you can vaporize a starship if you really try, but that doesn't mean you can stun or kill the crew of a starship without marring the exterior of the ship so that everybody will see you stole that ship by stunning or killing the crew. So, different settings for different tasks - but some tasks just aren't possible if correct countermeasures are taken. Such as the suit of armor from "Business as Usual". And, arguably, the Breen suit of armor.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[apenpaap]

I don't know if an ammoniabased lifeform would actually explode when exposed to room temperature. Ammonia boils at -33, so room temperature for them would roughly be the equivalent of 150 degrees. Humans don't explode at that temperature, and can even survive short periods of it. If Breen vapourize it is more likely because of something the suit does.

Yeah, like I said, I think I was overstating it a tad... it would almost definitely cause massive tissue damage and seep outward, though. The analogy of a human at 150 C is probably a good one. What would the life expectancy be there, I wonder? A few seconds? How long would the body last in any recognizable form?

The warmest saunas are a bit over 100 degrees, so you could probably survive a minute or two of 150. I think the body would remain pretty recognizible for a long time. It takes another 100 degrees before it will actually combust, so all it has to worry about is the water inside boiling. So I'd say no big changes on the outside (apart from being dead) for a few hours.

 

[PTRACER]

All the evidence points to the Breen homeworld being very cold, Weyoun is the only character to describe it as a "temperate climate". He could have been saying it in a sarcastic way, although there's no indication of what temperatures the Vorta are happy living in.

 

[Timo]

It was pointed out already that one of the Weyouns started to shiver when runabout temperatures dropped only slightly (i.e. little or no condensation) in "Treachery, Faith and the Great River".

So our primary options here are

1) The other Weyoun was just mindfucking Damar.
2) The rebellious Weyoun was defective in more ways than one, including an atypical susceptibility to cold.
3) The Breen homeworld is warm, but the one where the Cardassian Embassy is on is cold, so both versions are true - it's just that the Breen confuse their enemies about the identity and location of their homeworld.

In all of these versions, it may be that the suits are actually needed for fighting the heat, just as most people surmise. In 1) and 2), this goes without saying, and contrary beliefs are mere disinformation. In 3), the Breen homeworld happens to be uninhabitable for the Breen, possibly as the result of a natural disaster, possibly because of enemy action...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Myasishchev]

Global warming, when will it stop?

Also, there's no particular telling what the temperature was in that runabout. It could be well below freezing.