How the hell is she Captain?

[Edit_XYZ]

The evidence - as in Bracco's direct admission in PoD - shows that Andor's secession is a devastating blow to the federation: due to it being a founding member AND due to the resources it once brought to the federation.

Andor joins the Typhon Pact in the next Titan book - meaning the Typhon Pact gains strength, while the federation became weaker (by a significant margin).
And the Typhon Pact gains all the scientific and technological secrets that Andor and Andorians had.
And Andor's position as a beachhead deep inside federation territory puts Earth, Vulcan, etc within easy striking distance for Typhon Pact forces, in case of a hot war.
etc

 

[Christopher]

I’ve heard Ro got a captaincy, but not read the novel that occurs in.

The actual promotion doesn't occur in a novel; it's revealed as a fait accompli in the Typhon Pact novels, one of the events that happened in the 4-year gap between The Soul Key and Rough Beasts of Empire.

Also what happened to Kira? The only way I could see her giving up the station would be if she was carried out in a coffin.

Spoiler: Kira

She became a vedek. The events that motivated her to enter the clergy have not, I think, been explained in detail yet.

Yes she got backing from Picard when Bajor entered the UFP and her commission was ‘reactivated’, but still I would think Starfleet would be highly dubious about putting her in charge.
...
As for Chakotay, Paris, Torres and the rest of the Maquis, they had seven years to prove themselves (which they did time and again) onboard Voyager. That combined with the severe lack of trained personnel following the end of the war would be in their favour.

Ro re-entered Starfleet when Bajor joined the Federation in 2376. She served as its chief of security for three years until Vaughn promoted her to first officer when he became station commander in 2379. She became commander of DS9 when he left the station later that year, and was promoted to the rank of captain three years later in 2382. So she had six years to prove herself in service before being promoted to captain's rank.

And the lack of trained personnel after the Borg Invasion of 2381 would've been far worse than the equivalent lack after the Dominion War.

Andor is located in the Federation's core, Star Charts placing it in orbit of Procyon, a mere dozen light years or so from Earth and Vulcan.

Which is a problematical placement for me. For one thing, it's not a star that would be likely to support life. For another, it's way too close to Earth, considering that we never met any Andorians until nine decades after we met the Vulcans (whose star system is half again as far as Procyon). There's also the fact that Mandel based his placements of planets from ENT on the mistaken impression that NX-01 returned to Earth between the pilot and episode 2 rather than continuing outward from Qo'noS, so a lot of the things he placed close to Earth should probably be much farther away.

On the other hand, ENT did establish that Andoria was a "neighboring" system to Vulcan, and later confirmed that Vulcan was only 16 light-years from Earth, the distance of 40 Eridani. So the show itself gave conflicting information.

 

[captcalhoun]

'neighbouring' is relative in space...

 

[Travis Chesser]

As I've posted elsewhere in regards to the whole DS9 being ignored, I don't see it. The events of the time jump are possibly being ignored (one could argue), but they are being alluded to. But outright ignored? Come on, the Typhon Pact books have been more DS9 heavy than any of the others, whether you want to see it or not. The only exceptions are Seize the Fire and The Struggle Within. Zero Sum Game was a DS9 book. I'm sorry, but Paths of Disharmony was heavily DS9 theme heavy, considering the entire plotline of the Andorian genetics crisis was established in DS9, and Shar was a major character of the DS9 relaunch. Rough Beasts of Empire was highly based on DS9 factors. And Plagues of Night, hoo boy, dream come true for this DS9 fanboy right here. I think what is bothering most is the events of the time jump. Yes, it sucks. We all want to see the what happened with the Ascendents, etc. However, if Full Circle is any indication, there can still be a great novel covering that period of time. Hell, DRG has said he wants to read the conclusion to the Ascendents, and would love to write it if offered. I believe (and I maybe am just being naively hopeful) that we will get some good DS9 stuff in 2013 (20th anniversary), maybe even the fill-in novel.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I do wish the Ascendants story had actually been shown.

If there's a story there worth telling, someone will tell it.

 

[Sjaddix]

The evidence - as in Bracco's direct admission in PoD - shows that Andor's secession is a devastating blow to the federation: due to it being a founding member AND due to the resources it once brought to the federation.

Andor joins the Typhon Pact in the next Titan book - meaning the Typhon Pact gains strength, while the federation became weaker (by a significant margin).
And the Typhon Pact gains all the scientific and technological secrets that Andor and Andorians had.
And Andor's position as a beachhead deep inside federation territory puts Earth, Vulcan, etc within easy striking distance for Typhon Pact forces, in case of a hot war.
etc

True but they cannot exactly camp forces there unless they have a wormhole seeing as they would still have to fly through federation space to get there. Still yes serious blow and gives the Typhon Pact access to lots of Federation Tech and Information on the Federation Fleet that is potentially devastating. Although I am suprised Bracco is not getting impeachment/ resignation demands.

I’ve heard Ro got a captaincy, but not read the novel that occurs in.

The actual promotion doesn't occur in a novel; it's revealed as a fait accompli in the Typhon Pact novels, one of the events that happened in the 4-year gap between The Soul Key and Rough Beasts of Empire.

Also what happened to Kira? The only way I could see her giving up the station would be if she was carried out in a coffin.

Spoiler: Kira

She became a vedek. The events that motivated her to enter the clergy have not, I think, been explained in detail yet.

Yes she got backing from Picard when Bajor entered the UFP and her commission was ‘reactivated’, but still I would think Starfleet would be highly dubious about putting her in charge.
...
As for Chakotay, Paris, Torres and the rest of the Maquis, they had seven years to prove themselves (which they did time and again) onboard Voyager. That combined with the severe lack of trained personnel following the end of the war would be in their favour.

Ro re-entered Starfleet when Bajor joined the Federation in 2376. She served as its chief of security for three years until Vaughn promoted her to first officer when he became station commander in 2379. She became commander of DS9 when he left the station later that year, and was promoted to the rank of captain three years later in 2382. So she had six years to prove herself in service before being promoted to captain's rank.

And the lack of trained personnel after the Borg Invasion of 2381 would've been far worse than the equivalent lack after the Dominion War.

Andor is located in the Federation's core, Star Charts placing it in orbit of Procyon, a mere dozen light years or so from Earth and Vulcan.

Which is a problematical placement for me. For one thing, it's not a star that would be likely to support life. For another, it's way too close to Earth, considering that we never met any Andorians until nine decades after we met the Vulcans (whose star system is half again as far as Procyon). There's also the fact that Mandel based his placements of planets from ENT on the mistaken impression that NX-01 returned to Earth between the pilot and episode 2 rather than continuing outward from Qo'noS, so a lot of the things he placed close to Earth should probably be much farther away.

On the other hand, ENT did establish that Andoria was a "neighboring" system to Vulcan, and later confirmed that Vulcan was only 16 light-years from Earth, the distance of 40 Eridani. So the show itself gave conflicting information.

Lets just go with the fact that Andoria is in the core of the federation and therefore close to Earth and Vulcan.

 

[Christopher]

True but they cannot exactly camp forces there unless they have a wormhole seeing as they would still have to fly through federation space to get there.

Except that space is mostly empty, and it's unrealistic to expect an entire immense volume of it to be completely controlled territory. Even with FTL ships and sensors, it would be prohibitive to patrol and regulate the entire volume of interstellar space. Say you have one monitoring station every cubic light year -- if the UFP can be approximated by a sphere, say, 150 ly in radius, you'd need over 14 million monitoring stations to cover it all.

So realistically, different territories in space wouldn't be solid blobs, but more like branching networks made up of member star systems and the travel routes between them. There'd be plenty of empty space in between that could allow different political entities to interpenetrate or overlap. Which could actually explain some of the inconsistent astropolitics of ST, like Klingons being able to get to Cardassia despite being on the opposite side of the Federation.

 

[Sci]

True but they cannot exactly camp forces there unless they have a wormhole seeing as they would still have to fly through federation space to get there.

Except that space is mostly empty, and it's unrealistic to expect an entire immense volume of it to be completely controlled territory. Even with FTL ships and sensors, it would be prohibitive to patrol and regulate the entire volume of interstellar space. Say you have one monitoring station every cubic light year -- if the UFP can be approximated by a sphere, say, 150 ly in radius, you'd need over 14 million monitoring stations to cover it all.

On the other hand, if the Federation honestly feels that the Andorian system could become a beachhead from which an attack could be launched, it would be considerably less difficult to simply control traffic into and out of their single star system.

ETA:

Andor joins the Typhon Pact in the next Titan book

Maybe. It'll be exciting to find out!

And the Typhon Pact gains all the scientific and technological secrets that Andor and Andorians had.

Let me put it this way:

In the real world, the United States Government has not shared the secrets of thermonuclear weaponry with the Government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. If Massachusetts were to secede and join Venezuela, Hugo Chávez would not suddenly have access to all of the secrets of Los Alamos.

What makes you think the Federation's scientific and technological secrets are shared with Member governments?

 

[rfmcdpei]

And the Typhon Pact gains all the scientific and technological secrets that Andor and Andorians had.

Let me put it this way:

In the real world, the United States Government has not shared the secrets of thermonuclear weaponry with the Government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. If Massachusetts were to secede and join Venezuela, Hugo Chávez would not suddenly have access to all of the secrets of Los Alamos.

What makes you think the Federation's scientific and technological secrets are shared with Member governments?

The whole point of Andorian secession was that the Andorians were not given access to the whole of the Federation's secret scientific and technological data.

As for Andor's importance in the Federation, the secession of one member government out of two hundred in the late 24th century is rather less catastrophic than the secession of one member government out of five back when the Federation began. Andor's history of Federation participation in the previous century was marked by previous disengagement; the idea of an Andorian birth dearth gained credibility because of this disengagement.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Andor is located in the Federation's core, Star Charts placing it in orbit of Procyon, a mere dozen light years or so from Earth and Vulcan.

Which is a problematical placement for me. For one thing, it's not a star that would be likely to support life. For another, it's way too close to Earth, considering that we never met any Andorians until nine decades after we met the Vulcans (whose star system is half again as far as Procyon). There's also the fact that Mandel based his placements of planets from ENT on the mistaken impression that NX-01 returned to Earth between the pilot and episode 2 rather than continuing outward from Qo'noS, so a lot of the things he placed close to Earth should probably be much farther away.

On the other hand, ENT did establish that Andoria was a "neighboring" system to Vulcan, and later confirmed that Vulcan was only 16 light-years from Earth, the distance of 40 Eridani. So the show itself gave conflicting information.

You can get a world orbiting within Procyon A's life zone if it has a retrograde orbit. Agreed that having a class-M planet orbiting a white sub-giant that has started to evolve off the main sequence is a bit low-probability.

Past a certain point the astrographics don't make sense. Enterprise depicted a near-clash between Vulcan and Andorian fleets at Regulus, apparently located within range of the Andorian home system. Regulus is on almost the exact opposite side of Sol from 40 Eridani, separated by fifty or sixty light years. Conceivably the Andorian system would be around Regulus.

(In your most recent DTI novel, didn't you have Regulus as an Andorian stronghold in the no-Earth alternate?)

 

[Christopher]

Regulus and 40 Eri are more like 90 degrees apart in the sky, if I did my sums right, and about 80 ly apart in real space. They're in roughly the same direction in the 2D projection of the Star Charts map, but they must be pretty far apart in the Z axis.

But my impression from that episode was that the battle at Regulus was just along the border between Vulcan and Andorian territories, not necessarily close to either homeworld. It was the staging area for V'Las's invasion of Andoria, but it was chosen because it was beyond the reach of Andorian listening stations.

Another problem with astrocartography in ENT is where the Delphic Expanse is. "The Expanse" says that Vulcan is not too far out of the way for a journey from Earth to the Expanse, suggesting it's roughly in the direction of 40 Eridani, just much further away. But "Twilight" says that Ceti Alpha (presumably Menkar/Alpha Ceti) is far from the Expanse -- and Alpha Ceti and 40 Eri are actually rather close together in the sky, with Menkar being a lot further away. So if "The Expanse" is right, Ceti Alpha should be very near the Expanse.

Of course, we shouldn't single out ENT. All of Trek has been kind of random about astronomical distances and locations.

 

[Sjaddix]

True but they cannot exactly camp forces there unless they have a wormhole seeing as they would still have to fly through federation space to get there.

Except that space is mostly empty, and it's unrealistic to expect an entire immense volume of it to be completely controlled territory. Even with FTL ships and sensors, it would be prohibitive to patrol and regulate the entire volume of interstellar space. Say you have one monitoring station every cubic light year -- if the UFP can be approximated by a sphere, say, 150 ly in radius, you'd need over 14 million monitoring stations to cover it all.

So realistically, different territories in space wouldn't be solid blobs, but more like branching networks made up of member star systems and the travel routes between them. There'd be plenty of empty space in between that could allow different political entities to interpenetrate or overlap. Which could actually explain some of the inconsistent astropolitics of ST, like Klingons being able to get to Cardassia despite being on the opposite side of the Federation.

True but its not like the Federation would not notice a bunch of Typhon Pact Ships camping in the System. Unless you expect them to fly in then immediately start the assault which is possible.

Yeah the Andorians don't have everything but they have a lot of the Federation Tech probably a whole lot of Military related

 

[Edit_XYZ]

Andor joins the Typhon Pact in the next Titan book

Maybe. It'll be exciting to find out!

And the Typhon Pact gains all the scientific and technological secrets that Andor and Andorians had.

Let me put it this way:

In the real world, the United States Government has not shared the secrets of thermonuclear weaponry with the Government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. If Massachusetts were to secede and join Venezuela, Hugo Chávez would not suddenly have access to all of the secrets of Los Alamos.

What makes you think the Federation's scientific and technological secrets are shared with Member governments?

The fact that Andor is NOT a random federation member species that joined the federation at some point down the road.
It is - was - a founding member with influence and power in the federation - as in, it is the one in the know, keeping secrets, not the one secrets are being kept from.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

As for Andor's importance in the Federation, the secession of one member government out of two hundred in the late 24th century is rather less catastrophic than the secession of one member government out of five back when the Federation began.

Bracco admitted directly at the end of PoD that Andor's secession was a devastating blow to the federation.

You obviously don't like it and keep trying to justify an a priori opposite conclusion - which, in the context of trek lit, was directly established as false.
All your rationalizations won't change this.

 

[Christopher]

True but its not like the Federation would not notice a bunch of Typhon Pact Ships camping in the System. Unless you expect them to fly in then immediately start the assault which is possible.

Yeah the Andorians don't have everything but they have a lot of the Federation Tech probably a whole lot of Military related

I don't understand why you'd imagine that the Andorians would want to abet a war with their longtime allies. Just because you've had a falling-out with a lifelong friend who betrayed your trust, that doesn't mean you'd suddenly try to murder them. True, there are some groups on Andor, like the Treishya, whose isolationism is so extreme that they'd use violence to support it, but most Andorians would oppose such a thing.

Anyway, I suppose you haven't read Plagues of Night yet. It's the best refutation yet of the kneejerk assumption that the only possible UFP/Pact interaction is a hostile or military one.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

Spoiler: Plagues of night

Apparently, in 'Plagues of Night', andorians were key operatives in blowing up DS9 (the station).

And, of course, the fact that the andorians join the Typhon Pact, which is a state of cold war with the federation, proves that the andorians don't view the federation as a friend in the least anymore and are not at all opposed to being enemies of said federation.

 

[DigificWriter]

Spoiler: Plagues of night

Apparently, in 'Plagues of Night', andorians were key operatives in blowing up DS9 (the station).

And, of course, the fact that the andorians join the Typhon Pact, which is a state of cold war with the federation, proves that the andorians don't view the federation as a friend in the least anymore and are not at all opposed to being enemies of said federation.

Which is an attitude that makes complete and total sense given the Andorians' history as a fierce and brutal warrior society.

 

[Christopher]

If the Andorians are nothing but a one-dimensional race of "brutal warriors," how did they manage to be stalwart members of a peaceful Federation for 221 years?

Also, we don't actually know that the Andorians will join the Pact; a cover blurb is claiming that, but blurbs have been inaccurate in the past. Also, it's not true that a "cold war" state existed in Plagues of Night; there were open borders, cooperative exploration missions, and the like. Yes, there are some factions within the Pact that were working to exploit that peaceful cooperation toward harmful ends, but the official state of relations between the two governments was guardedly friendly, and did not fit the definition of a cold war, i.e. a state of declared hostility that falls short of open combat. As I keep pointing out, it's a fundamental mistake to think the Pact has only one singular agenda. PoN makes it crystal-clear how much the Pact is divided within itself. There's the potential for both peace and war there, which is what makes it interesting.

As for the spoiler,

Spoiler: PoN

we only know that there's evidence seeming to implicate the Andorian Treishya movement in the planting of the bombs. It hasn't been proven yet whether that's actually true.

 

[rfmcdpei]

As for Andor's importance in the Federation, the secession of one member government out of two hundred in the late 24th century is rather less catastrophic than the secession of one member government out of five back when the Federation began.

Bracco admitted directly at the end of PoD that Andor's secession was a devastating blow to the federation.

1. The President's family name is Bacco.

2. The effect of Andor's secession on the Federation is arguably as much one of morale as anything else. As I've noted, in the more than two centuries since the Federation's formation almost two hundred governments joined after Andor. Andor's relative importance to the Federation has diminished sharply, especially with everything that the novelverse suggests about Andorian introspection and birth dearth leading to a substantially lower profile.

This is not a rationalization. There are many different degrees of "devastating", mutually distinguishable. If we don't distinguish between these degrees, then we'll come to false conclusion, i.e. that since the word devastating was used to describe both events that Andor's secession from the Federation was just as devastating as the Borg invasion that killed 63 billion people on dozens of planets scattered throughout the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

rfmcdpei

About 'devastating' - any degree of 'devastating' implies huge levels of loss, immense failure. Do read the definition of the word.

I already told you - your rationalizations don't change information directly established in trek lit:
http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=6454255&postcount=73
Repeating yourself also changes nothing.
Deal with it already.



As for Christopher's passionate and ill-supported reply:

It was in an interview that the writer of the next titan book explicitly said the andorians will join the Typhon Pact; no 'blurb' misunderstanding. It's practically a certainty.

Bacco directly said as far back as 'Zero sum game' that the federation and the Typhon Pact are in a state of cold war. Which was more than confirmed in the subsequent books:

Spoiler: Plagues of night

Blowing up of DS9 by several members of the Pact - not cold war? I guess you can make a case the war became hot.

As for him hoping that the andorians are a red herring - ; good luck with this - argumentation for this idea is being fueled by wishful thinking only.