20th century warp races

[Crewman47]

Just after watching TOS Tomorrow is Yesterday last night and I thought that after they mentioned that they were trapped in the past with no way to replenish there fuel, and power and supplies why they couldn't have visited a friendly warp capable species, maybe even the Vulcans, and explain there situation and see what could happen from there. I mean we do know that at least Vulcans were warp capable at this point and did know something of Earth and HUmans and with SPock as Kirk's XO then could Kirk have convinced the Vulcans of who they were and where they were from without any interfering of the timeline?

To keep this topic relevant to GenTrek I was also wondering what other races were warp capable in the late 20th cetury and what one's, apart from the Vulcans, could you go to if you found yourself trapped in the past from the 23rd/24th century?

 

[mvkemp]

Klingons, probably the Andorians and Denobulans from listening to how these species talk about themselves. I get the sense that most other major Trek races had been warp faring civilizations for quite some time before humans came along.

 

[Anwar]

Back in TOS the implication was that it was humanity that developed warp travel in the Federation, and that instead of conquering other races like the Klingons and Romulans did, they just let them join the Human organization as weaker partners. IE the Federation was a more humane Terran Empire.

So back then apparently no warp races existed since the Humans, Klingons and Romulans all developed it at the same time and began expanding then and they were the only ones who had warp tech.

 

[Jaro Stun]

That is one of the things, that makes TOS look silly...IMHO

 

[yenny]

They can't for two reason. One the prime directive. Two the writers never thought of it at the time.

 

[captcalhoun]

Tellarites are warp capable as early as the 1950s per "Carbon Creek" - ENT S2 - as they relay the automated distress call to Vulcan from the crashed ship.

 

[Zeppster]

Before TNG it was always implied that Cochran invented warp all together. Even in Metamorphosis it is basically said that he's the father of the warp engine. For some reason in TNG and the newer series it was put the other way around. Humans were the last to develop warp.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

well they would need warp drive just to get to a warp friendly planet.. if they used communictions, that planet would not know who they were.. who would believe timetravel?

 

[votd]

^They could use the ship's library to quote something relating specifically to the civilisation they were contacting, something about their situation only someone from the future would know.

 

[DanTheGrey]

I always worked under the assumption that the Federation/humans were relatively new kids on the block with warp technology.

I remember watching that episodes and figured that everyone was just warping around in their neighbourhoods and it was the humans that really went pushing for the frontier in our area and preferred to cooperate rather than conquer to expand the sphere of influence.

I just pictured a bunch of small colonial states (like the B5 Earth Alliance with a few nearby colonies) for how most of this area was organized wrt Centaurians, Andorians, Vulcans and Tellerites

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Jaro Stun said:
That is one of the things, that makes TOS look silly...IMHO

Uh, why? Why is it any sillier than the idea that a bumbling bigot of a captain with all the gravitas and charisma of balsa wood could strike out into a galaxy full of races who've been in space centuries and even millenia longer and teach 'em how to be civilized?

Warp speed violates all the laws of physics as we know them. It stands to reason that developing it would be rare--TOS ran into relatively few warp capable species. (I'd always thought it would be cool if Vulcans, locked into their logic and blessed with scientific curiosity and long lives, tooled around at high sublight for ages before Cochrane discovered warp.) In NuTrek, stumbling across it is as basic as the wheel and most races have been to 100 star systems before we've even launched Sputnik yet we become the dominant race in the quadrant in a few decades? That's awfully sill, IMAO.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Brutal Strudel said:

Jaro Stun said:
That is one of the things, that makes TOS look silly...IMHO

Uh, why? Why is it any sillier than the idea that a bumbling bigot of a captain with all the gravitas and charisma of balsa wood could strike out into a galaxy full of races who've been in space centuries and even millenia longer and teach 'em how to be civilized?

Warp speed violates all the laws of physics as we know them. It stands to reason that developing it would be rare--TOS ran into relatively few warp capable species. (I'd always thought it would be cool if Vulcans, locked into their logic and blessed with scientific curiosity and long lives, tooled around at high sublight for ages before Cochrane discovered warp.) In NuTrek, stumbling across it is as basic as the wheel and most races have been to 100 star systems before we've even launched Sputnik yet we become the dominant race in the quadrant in a few decades? That's awfully sill, IMAO.

Seems that most of the Races TOS encounterd were either more primitive than the UFP or so advanced they didn't need Warp to travel. The ones that did seem to be on par with the UFP: Klingons, Romulans, Gorn, The First Federation, the Tholians, the Kelvans, the ancestors of the Morg and Eymorg, Kaladans, Medusans and Cherons.

 

[Jaro Stun]

Well, I said one of the things , not the only thing :-)

1.) Warp speed violates laws of physics....well, it violates only the laws we know / are aware of NOW. In 200-300 years we may discover many different laws of physics, and also we may discover that some current laws don't apply at all.

Actually, I've read somewhere, that at molecular/atomic particle level, some german (?) physicists accelerated matter to higher speed than c (speed of light) and proved, that Einstein's theory of relativity may not bee correct.

A few decades in the past, ppl thought that crossing the sound barrier will result in destruction of accelerating object.

2.) To quote Babylon 5's G'Kar: Humans form communities We've become a dominant race in the quadrant because we didn't try to conquer, but we sought cooperation. We made friends. And together (in Federation), we're stronger. That's the basic idea of humanity's dominance. We were, in some view, innovators. We brought new ideas of cooperation to multiple different races. Before humanity came around, they cared only for themselves, weakened themselves by fighting each other...and so on

I hardly think, that in ENT's time frame humanity was a dominant or superior race. If I'm correct, they were getting their asses kicked pretty much. It's only after cooperation with Vulcans and Andorians started, that we became a voice to be recognized.

In the end, humanity has profited from technology exchange and from ability to incorporate it into it's own tech. And from the ability to make friends.

 

[Vic Sixx]

Bajorans had warp speed when Humans were still living in caves according to Sisko. But seem to have really bad luck.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Jaro Stun said:
2.) To quote Babylon 5's G'Kar: Humans form communities We've become a dominant race in the quadrant because we didn't try to conquer, but we sought cooperation. We made friends. And together (in Federation), we're stronger. That's the basic idea of humanity's dominance. We were, in some view, innovators. We brought new ideas of cooperation to multiple different races. Before humanity came around, they cared only for themselves, weakened themselves by fighting each other...and so on

I hardly think, that in ENT's time frame humanity was a dominant or superior race. If I'm correct, they were getting their asses kicked pretty much. It's only after cooperation with Vulcans and Andorians started, that we became a voice to be recognized.

In the end, humanity has profited from technology exchange and from ability to incorporate it into it's own tech. And from the ability to make friends.

To listen to G'Kar or a history in which we have slaughtered and enslaved and exploited other populations of humans for being .0000001% different from ourselves? I'll take the actor in a rubber mask reciting comic book dialogue any day! (Not a B5 fan, in case you couldn't tell.)

ENT gave us a 12 year old's allegory of how the U.S., a late-comer to global imperial politics, came to dominate the globe by getting all our friendss to sit around a campfire and sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" (sorry, wrong shitty and infantile iteration of Trek) while ignoring the genocides, enslavements, holocausts, assassinations, wars and generally nasty skullduggery--internal and external to the country--that made it happen.

As far as light speed is concerned: scientists have been trying to find an end run around it for decades and, who knows, they may one day succeed. I'm just saying that I like the idea that it is a rare species that does so. In Robert J. Sawyer's Neanderthal novels, he posits an alternate earth where the Geico Gavemen lived and we died out. Their science is far more advanced than ours in many ways but one: they never made it off planet. When they learn of our moon shots, they are amazed and humbled even though they have been much better caretakers of their world than we've been of ours. It would be neat, I think, if Vulcans viewed humans and warp speed much the same way--if, indeed, most of the space-faring races in the early pre-Federation did.

Anyway, all of Trek is pretty goddamn silly when you apply scientific reality or even common sense to it. I just prefer the brash, exciting, ground-breaking silliness of forty years ago--when SF on the tube was either one-off anthologies like Twilight Zone and Outer Limits or sub-moronic cretin fare like the products of Irwin Allen--to the unimaginative, derivative and boring silliness of the last 20 years or so.

 

[Guartho]

votd said:
^They could use the ship's library to quote something relating specifically to the civilisation they were contacting, something about their situation only someone from the future would know.

I think everyone but the Vulcans would be too paranoid/greedy to help. As tot he Vulcans well... -"The Vulcan Science Directorate has concluded that time-travel is impossible."

 

[LadyNRA]

I agree with you about the Denobulans. I got the sense that they were using Warp engines within the previous 300 years for their war with the Antarans. Others like the Orions might have used it too because they stole technology as did the Ferengi. so both of those might have gotten warp tech from folks like the Denobulans (though at that point they might have strenuously fought back) and the Vulcans.

 

[Jaro Stun]

You're right about the true human nature, I just can hope it will change some day.

Many times I've thought, that our universe really is the evil mirror one (when looking at the athrocities ppl commited in the past and are most likely to commint in the future)

But we're speaking about imaginary universe, where, as displayed, the WW3 was a turning point (it had to be quite bad) and since then, humanity changed for the better. It took time, but it did (more so in ST, in B5 the change isn't that big after all :-) )

In real world, I just hope we won't have to learn that lesson (WW3).

In ST, the warp capability (the discovery of physical laws that lead to this, i suppose) is considered a measurement of civilization's advancement level. So it is likely that many species, developing for longer times than humans achieved that technological knowledge.

And as for applying scientific fact to scientific fiction...now it may look silly, but so did landing on the moon when J.Verne wrote his book. I wouldn't underestimate our technology advancement capabilities. In 100-200 years, our views on modern physics are likely to be considered "silly".

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Don't get me wrong--I recognize that our understanding of the universe is incomplete and that there may be a way around Einstein's theories (though I doubt it), I just like the idea that--if there is--it is rarely discovered and a big deal when it is. (However, there are a laundry list of scientific things Trek has fudged or just plain gotten wrong in all its incarnations, sound in space being the most obvious but hardly the most egregious example.)

Anyway, you make some good points based on the Star Trek universe as it was developed since TNG. I fear that means we are talking past each other since I am saying I wish things had been developed very differently. But that's cool.

 

[Arpy]

What comes to mind:

Vulcans

Romulans via the Vulcans

Klingons via the Hur'q?...around 1400 AD

Tellarites? Could the freighter in ENT's "Carbon Creek" have been sub-warp? Their version of a Weyland-Yutani ship?

Denobulans and Antares - though the war did last 300 years...due to subwarp tech?

Borg - were a handful of systems 900 years ago, VOY "Dragons Teeth"

Dominion - been around for millennia

Possibly the Cardassians...from ST.com:
"Once while on Vulcan, Tobin Dax met exiled Cardassian poet Iloja of Prim... The exact time of Tobin Dax's joined life is unknown, but it was probably in the late 21st or early 22nd century." But I hope he was ferried over by the Vulcans.

Maybe Cochrane was the first to develop warp among his fellow Humans, and then we shared it with the Andorians and Tellarites? ...For Andorian artificial grav tech and Tellarite replicators or whatnot?