Was there ever an explanation given for how Iconian Gateways worked? Are they similar to Stargates? Or have then been left unexplained to make them more 'magical'?
No explanation of them was ever given onscreen, except that they can last deactivated for a really long time (at least 200,000 years) without anyone maintaining them. The Iconian tech was so advanced that it was often described by other races during their time as magical in the way it worked. Presumably, it's not known how many gateways are left, even less so where any of them might be. So far, only two have been discovered in modern history (both on opposite ends of the Galaxy) and were both subsequently destroyed.
I know there is the Gateway book series but the couple of books I read never explained anything as I recall. Just curious, as its something I might explore further.
The tech is many centuries more advanced than anything the Federation has. Or it is down a technological pathway they have not even considered exploring due to warp drives and transporters.
The Iconian gateway technology does have some fundamental similarities to STARGATE, but there are important differences, as seen in TNG's "Contagion": The Iconian wormholes do not need another mechanism at the destination, and the wormholes seem able to appear virtually anywhere the control operator can manipulate them to go to. Once a traveller arrives at his/her destination, it is unclear whether this technology allows a return pathway to the point of origin. We clearly do not know the entire story on the Iconians, their motives, their intentions, or their abilities. Assuming there are still living Iconians buzzing about the TREK Universe, are they still using their technology? Are they still in this Galaxy, or have they migrated far beyond? If an Iconian travels through a gateway, can the gateway be made to reverse itself so that the traveler can just step back through the wormhole even if there is no apparatus on the far end? What other technologies did the Iconians posses? Did the Iconians go underground after the bombardment of the planet in the Neutral Zone, or are they thriving on some distant world, far away? What did the Iconians believe in? What did they look like? How did they treat other lifeforms? We may never know. The one thing I didn't like about the DS9 ep "To the Death", is that the supposed Iconian technology seen there has little resemblance to what was originally seen in TNG's "Contagion". Is this another ancient relic, or a newer more advanced one? Is this evidence that the Iconians survived, or is it another abandoned artifact? It's a shame that there was no further story development. It would be a thrill if a Federation command officer accidentally discovered and activated another gateway, leading to a distant Galaxy where the Iconians still lived and control everything.
Very nicely summed up Wingsley, thanks It's all things I'll consider, though some aspects have already been bubbling away in my mind regarding them--such as the intergalactic travel and the fate of the Iconians. Sometimes its nice when Trek gives us a piece of tech and doesn't explain it, showing that despite all their advancements, Starfleet is not all-knowing. I think working with the Gateway's will be a lot of fun
Carl Sagan pointed out in his original COSMOS series that any civilization capable of mastering wormholes would have the ability to transcend the limitations of space and time. If you can create and control a stable wormhole, you can transport yourself to somewhere else, somewhen else, in this Universe or any other.
This topic is a central theme in Star Trek Online. Spoiler: Iconians in STO in the game the Iconians have been plotting to return and manipulating several races and orchestrating wars since the original release. With the latest expansions they have indeed returned waging a massiv war on a galactic scale to reaffirm their ruling over the entire milky way. There a numerous gateways of different sizes hidden everywhere. They can be linked together like stargates, but can deliver you anywhere in space and ground. The Iconians have been shown to generate gateways themselves, as well, but it heavily drains the energy they are partly made of. Forcing one to deplete it's energy this way allolwed the players to kill it. Several other races have been shown to be linked to them. The "Silent Enemy" from Enterprise, the subspace beings who were so fond to abduct crewmembers in their sleep, the neural parasites from Conspiracy and even the dyson sphere architects were all shown to be servitor races of them. The gateways turned out to be powered by omega particles. A known weekness of them is their inability to time travel, as their brains can't deal with that. All none canon of course,
Imagine finding a gateway in orbit, one big enough to send a ship to another galaxy! Could be the basis for a new series.
This would be a situation somewhat similar to the Arcbuilders universe, in which humans use the transportation network of a vanished species. A species that had reached a towering pinacle of achievment. In a Trek context, this would mean using the artifacts of a technology beyond that of the Kelvins.
I think it is less important how the Iconian gate works, and more important in what its effects are. They can move things but what things? If they're cheap and ubiquitous, how would Iconian society be different structurally? Do they need ships? Ships move people, materials, goods, and weapons. The gates obviously move people, so ships are not needed for that. Raw materials are possibly needed, but they could be extracted with ease by shoving a gate aperture around underground anywhere in the galaxy. Each refinery type, if different types are even needed, could each have their own gate swinging around under ground and inside asteroids just scrapping out continuous projections of door shaped materials. For capturing gasses from gas giants, or liquids from oceans, use a gate with a regular size opening in the refinery, and a giant opening on the collecting end. What about finished goods? It's questionable finished goods need shipping if the Iconians have replicators as advanced as their gates. They would only need raw materials as feed stock. However, if they have straight energy to matter conversion, they would have vice versa, and the whole idea of refining anything is pointless. They could run everything off anything. That also assumes they don't have some sort of perpetual motion machine as their power source, and they would probably have one or something very close to one. But, let's assume they do need to move finished goods. They don't need space ships at all, instead have a conveyor belt, arm, or tractor beam feed a rapidly fluctuating gate, and send all items directly to where they need to go, with no middle process. Every time an order goes though the gate, it changes location, and the faster an item clears the gate, the faster it can switch to the next location. That leaves weapons. Again the Iconians don't need ships to delivery destruction to a target. They can build their weapons on planets, and put a gate at the muzzle, and fire the weapon into the gate, sending the attack anywhere in the universe. Unlike a ship they would have the power of an entire world, or entire multi-planet civilization if all power grids are gate linked, powering their weapons. The weakness is easy to imagine, such a system would make it very easy to over centralize all things on the homeworld, even though it would be just as easy to over decentralize. Let's assume they were bombed to death only because they had the psychology which lead to over centralization. But why put gates on other worlds, as seen in DS9? It might indicate gates really are only one way devices and that a colony does require a return gate. Although, why bother at all with a near completely centralized society? Maybe it was a vacation spot in the wild, since the Iconian homeworld would likely be completely urbanized. I would just accept it as an older gate used for a different purpose. I has a much messier effect than the TNG gate, but other than the inrush of gas like energy it is the same as the TNG gate in its special effects.
What I didn't get is that the Iconian technology was depicted as far, far beyond Starfleet technology (by several centuries at least) in the TNG episode and that would presumably hold for the gateways, too. Yet a bunch of jem'Hadar seizes one and is apparently able to repair it! Now, I could believe the jem'Hadar to have appreciable engineering skills (could come in handy on the battlefield), but they don't strike me as the science type. Also, the Dominion does seem to be only slightly more advanced than the Federation. So, how could they repair it? Did they find a technical manual on-site ? Or would it be more like how you don't have to understand the finer details of computer technology if you only have to replace a broken battery to make a laptop work again?
Sure, a wormful is a tunnel that connects two space-time paradigms, with the tunnel going through the atemporal in-between. I see no evidence though to show that the gateways work via wormhole physics... the transition is two immediate and smooth. It doesn't seem like a wormhole at all. I posit the possibility that the work more like a Co-Axial warp drive. You fold space in such a way that you step from one folded piece to the next, a seamless transition. Ad some Chronicles dor your time travel. This seems reasonable to me, We know starfleet has struggle with co-axial drive. We know a ship in the Delta quadrant was capable of it, meaning that this method could explain why the gateways did not appear to have much overhead as far as a power-source. That ship wasn't very big. Not that ships haven't opened vortexes and tunnels before, such that the needed energy to do so isn't at a premium... seemingly.
Re: Star Trek - New Frontiers There was a bit of wonder in one TNG episode, Where No One Has Gone Before, when the crew discovers that they have arrived in the Triangulum galaxy, M33. I think that after the initial realization, there would be a sense of being far, far away in a completely unknown place.