Picture yourself as Captain of the USS Enterprise registry NCC-1701-D seeing the Yamato explode because of a warp core malfunction and learning that your own ship was going to suffer the same fate. Would you have done waht Captain Picard did and risked the treaty by going into the neutral zone? Would you have helped the Romulans by sending them information on how to rid their ship of the virus?
Contagion;What would you have done?
- Thread starter DataLoreSpock
- Start date
They should have found away to access the info with out down loading it in to the computer, and having the virus/over-ride problem.
Possibly remove the power source from the tricorder and load it into a stand alone computer later on, where they could have studied it and the Iconians later.
And in answer to your questions yes to both, by not giving the Romulans info on how to rid their ship of the Virus, the Romulans would have thought the federation had destroyed their ship as an act of war.
Possibly remove the power source from the tricorder and load it into a stand alone computer later on, where they could have studied it and the Iconians later.
And in answer to your questions yes to both, by not giving the Romulans info on how to rid their ship of the Virus, the Romulans would have thought the federation had destroyed their ship as an act of war.
First thing I'd have done was separate the saucer and shut off anything in it that could lead to its destruction. I'd have kept a minimum crew on the star drive and investigated that way, so even if the warp core went kerpow I'd have saved the bulk of the people on the ship.
Those courses of action sound very logical.
I would have thought that the Enterprise could have detected the Iconian virus.
Yes,Romulans have a tendency to find any way of ending the treaty.(As seen in The Defector, The Enemy, Coontagion and other episodes)
I would have thought that the Enterprise could have detected the Iconian virus.
Yes,Romulans have a tendency to find any way of ending the treaty.(As seen in The Defector, The Enemy, Coontagion and other episodes)
Vent all antimatter or eject all antimatter containers. Then there's no danger of destroying the entire ship. But the warp core instability thing has always been a pet peeve of mine in all Trek.
I gather the Iconian weapon was designed to countermand countermeasures, to defeat attempts at erecting a firewall, and (as we see from its deployment mode from the probes, and from the jump into Data) even to hop across actual physical barriers with relative ease.
The measures suggested for preventing infection would have been prudent, but I doubt they would have been completely effective. Remedial measures would also have to have been taken eventually.
I guess it's possible that a merely partially successful entry of the virus leads to an only partially successful infection, and the virus cannot reach its full destructive potential unless it arrives whole and undamaged. But it's also perfectly plausible to assume a viral program that can grow into a deadly "adult" from a teeny weeny fractal component and then make its assault. Unlike the Borg, who act like a force of nature and thus always seem to settle for the barely adequate, the Iconians would have been thinking in terms of humanoid guile, and would have built their weapon to provide absolute overkill against the starships of their enemies.
"Safing" the ship by venting antimatter sounds like a good idea - until you remember that faults in the antimatter handling system were the virus' chosen means of killing the Yamato. A complex purging operation might go horribly wrong even in the best of situations, and more so if supposedly inviolable components were compromised. And this would be basically the only thing our heroes knew about how the starship-killing threat worked... So they'd probably steer well clear of touching the antimatter if they could avoid it.
Timo Saloniemi
The measures suggested for preventing infection would have been prudent, but I doubt they would have been completely effective. Remedial measures would also have to have been taken eventually.
I guess it's possible that a merely partially successful entry of the virus leads to an only partially successful infection, and the virus cannot reach its full destructive potential unless it arrives whole and undamaged. But it's also perfectly plausible to assume a viral program that can grow into a deadly "adult" from a teeny weeny fractal component and then make its assault. Unlike the Borg, who act like a force of nature and thus always seem to settle for the barely adequate, the Iconians would have been thinking in terms of humanoid guile, and would have built their weapon to provide absolute overkill against the starships of their enemies.
"Safing" the ship by venting antimatter sounds like a good idea - until you remember that faults in the antimatter handling system were the virus' chosen means of killing the Yamato. A complex purging operation might go horribly wrong even in the best of situations, and more so if supposedly inviolable components were compromised. And this would be basically the only thing our heroes knew about how the starship-killing threat worked... So they'd probably steer well clear of touching the antimatter if they could avoid it.
Timo Saloniemi
I thought the virus was just an over advanced greeting that accidentally destroyed the computer systems, and not a weapon.
^Indeed. They referred to it as a probe, not a weapon.
Given what was happening, I don't think the warp core malfunction was something the probe did intentionally, it was just the most lethal malfunction the Yamato suffered. Ejecting the core and all antimatter, or separating the saucer, might delay the onset of a terminal problem without actually preventing it....who knows what the probe software could do to fusion engines?
Then again, it's possible that if the Yamato had survived 5 more minutes the probe software would have realized it was adversely affecting the ship and stopped itself, or at least learned English.
Heck, if you assume the software was a weapon, why would it stop with the warp drive? Turn off the gravity. Pump noxious gas through the life support system. Set the ship on course for a sun. There's an infinitude of ways to disable or destroy a Galaxy-class ship.
Given what was happening, I don't think the warp core malfunction was something the probe did intentionally, it was just the most lethal malfunction the Yamato suffered. Ejecting the core and all antimatter, or separating the saucer, might delay the onset of a terminal problem without actually preventing it....who knows what the probe software could do to fusion engines?
Then again, it's possible that if the Yamato had survived 5 more minutes the probe software would have realized it was adversely affecting the ship and stopped itself, or at least learned English.
Heck, if you assume the software was a weapon, why would it stop with the warp drive? Turn off the gravity. Pump noxious gas through the life support system. Set the ship on course for a sun. There's an infinitude of ways to disable or destroy a Galaxy-class ship.
But what did they know?
Worf argues that the virus must be a weapon because a) it kills starships (and androids) and b) the Iconians were at war. Picard argues against the latter only by saying that it's uncertain whether the Iconians were the aggressors of the war. But that argument does not negate the fact that even a meek defender would need to arm himself if others were raining aggression upon him from orbit (as physical evidence suggests did happen).
I guess it would be natural to assume that the weapon would have to do quite a bit of fumbling around to find the means to defeat a ship hundreds of thousands of years from an unknown future.
One wonders if the technology that moves the virus from a probe to a starship isn't related to the known Iconian forte of sending physical things (like themselves) across space. If the virus moves as if through a Gateway, it may be quite unstoppable by physical defenses, and the only hopes of defeating it lay in preempting a deployment attempt (by destroying the probe) and in somehow surviving the viral attack.
Timo Saloniemi
That is some greeting.
Similar to a giant attempting to pet a small human.
The human gets crushed in the end.
Similar to a giant attempting to pet a small human.
The human gets crushed in the end.
These are very logical maneuvers.
I would have thought to shut down the ship initially because that is the equivalent to rebooting.
I would have gone into the neutral zone to study the Iconian planet to learn more about the technology.
Then I would destroy all the labratories.
I would know that the Romulans would try to harness the technology.
I would have thought to shut down the ship initially because that is the equivalent to rebooting.
I would have gone into the neutral zone to study the Iconian planet to learn more about the technology.
Then I would destroy all the labratories.
I would know that the Romulans would try to harness the technology.
Enterprise should have separated the saucer before going anywhere near the Neutral Zone, moving all of the families and children there. Those people on Enterprise were just lucky they didn't suffer the same fate brought upon their counterparts by the incompetent Donald Varley, or an assault from a fleet of Romulan warbirds.
I'm not convinced it would ever be possible to shut down a starship so completely that it would really amount to a rebooting. It sounds like far too complex and integrated piece of equipment for that; the results might well be fatal for at least part of the crew. So, a possible last-ditch attempt at saving the ship, but not yer first choice for a cure.
Yes, starships get "shut down" all the time when they lose power due to a spatiotemporal anomaly or alien attack. But shutting down the computing systems would be something completely different again. And if the shutdown does not involve any actual purging, then the virus will simply be back up again when the computing systems are reactivated.
And if shutting down the computers does result in purging of the data inside, then we're basically talking about killing the starship. If the data currently inside the memory banks is lost, then it's likely that nothing will work, or worse still, that nothing will work the way it should.
Timo Saloniemi
I would not have called him incompetent. The probe program was, indeed, an alien thing. When dealing with anything alien, especially a new one, one has little to no knowledge about it. Plus had Varley not do what he did, the Romulans might have gotten to the Iconian home world, and Picard and the Enterprise crew would have probably wound up being pulled back to inner Federation space to fight a war, rather than an exploring.
Woah.
Your avatar is cool FKnight!
Your avatar is cool FKnight!
I would have found the nearest M-Class planet and evacuated as many personnel as possible. Then, I would have shut down all non-essential systems and worked to purge the computer core and restore from the core backups. Regardless of the repair method, I think that the Enterprise should have been evacuated.
Evacuate to where? They were in the Neutral Zone, with a pissed off Romulan captain who wants to both scrag the Enterprise, and locate the Iconian home world. I'm sure the Romulan captain would have had no problem taking prisoners or worse, not taking prisoners. Plus the Enterprise blowing up could have caused some problems if it blew near some planet for the crew to evacuate to (I don't think they had enough shuttle craft for moving 1,000+ crew) I think Picard and the crew made the right decisions from the beginning. Plus I would not trust the transporters with the Iconian computer program, which I do not feel was a weapon, re-writing all the software, one could end up being materializing inside-out.
The saucer was "infected" before they knew anything more. Remember the door to Picard's Ready Room didn't open, until his second approach? So the virus had spread into different systems around the ship already.
The saucer was "infected" before they knew anything more. Remember the door to Picard's Ready Room didn't open, until his second approach? So the virus had spread into different systems around the ship already.
I think the point here was more to get the bulk of the crew away from the warp core. No doubt other things could kill the crew (life support comes to mind). But at least the risk of a warp core breach was removed.
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