Alien history, technological parity and other stuff

[Finn]

^There's no Los Angeles in the 24th Century. It sank under the sea according to Janeway.

 

[RegFan]

In some cases, it could be because only a small part of a planet is habitable, so there wouldn't be so many people inventing new technologies. That could have happened on Vulcan (In Trek XI, Vulcan's population is roughly the same as Earth's. That could be because they had developed technologies to survive on the other parts of the planet).

 

[Anwar]

There's a theory going around that Vulcan used to be a world like Earth, but the devastation of the wars turned it into a desert planet.

If there was that level of damage, and the Vulcans weren't able to undo it to Trek's present I'd say that's plenty reason for their space tech to also stagnate.

On the other hand, maybe it would drive them to further explore space since their world was now less hospitable.

Maybe once they realized the Klingons and Andorians were out there, they focused more on their local space with the threats therein as opposed to spreading themselves out too much and leaving their core worlds open to attack. Plenty of time to expand AFTER these threats are neutralized.

I try to ascribe the tech parity to the Progenitor seedings. Since they created most Trek races, they may have all developed at the same time across the galaxy due to the Progenitors so the odds of there being more elder races around were lessened.

 

[Anticitizen]

Riker in ST:FC claims that all the major cities were destroyed, but perhaps he meant Mexico City and Cairo? Certainly it doesn't seem that US cities suffered any significant damage. Or perhaps Chicago, Houston and Memphis utterly ceased to exist, even though Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and New Orleans survived undamaged?

Handwavium to the rescue:

The cities were irradiated or otherwise contaminated by weaponry that rendered them uninhabitable for years but left the infrastructure intact. A desirable weapon, if you wish to seize your enemy's resources, actually...

 

[Timo]

Possible, I guess. I wonder how the cities would have been cleaned up? Perhaps the Vulcans had mastered the art.

^There's no Los Angeles in the 24th Century. It sank under the sea according to Janeway.

To be sure, all that Janeway said was that "this entire area" sank. And she was standing on a beach boulevard when she said that. Considering that the mechanism for Los Angeles to sink would be that continental plates or fragments thereof would slide against each other, it's quite possible that only small parts of the city sank, while others actually rose higher.

To be sure, the beach boulevard sinking under 200 meters of water is a pretty extreme geological upheaval. Then again, Janeway said the area later became a coral reef. You don't get coral reefs in water that's 200 meters deep, so obviously not all of the coastline sank that deep.

Anyway, Janeway asks Chakotay if he has been to southern California before. Presumably, it's possible to visit that region even without scuba gear. Also, Paris knows Los Angeles like the back of his hand...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Anticitizen]

Concerning the idea that species will 'transcend' at a certain point - I feel this is hinted at in some ways in TNG. Q's obsession with Picard and the Enterprise seems to be akin to a mother bird trying to push its young out of the nest; especially in 'All Good Things' where Q is specifically trying to get Picard to think in four-dimensional terms. Overall, he seems to be trying to prep humanity, in his own strange way, to take the next big step ahead, challenging and prodding them.

That, or he's just a mischievous dick, but that doesn't seem to really be the case, as whenever he causes trouble, he usually relents at the end and does a sort of wagging-finger 'I hope you learned something from all this' act.

Then you have Wesley Crusher and the Traveler, a more obvious example. Bending warp fields with your miiind, dude.

And then we have The Sisko...

 

[Pauln6]

This is why I preferred Babylon 5. A certain amount of cross-pollenation took place but races generally had slightly different technology with differing levels of sophistication in different areas. So the Vree might have very powerful defence shields while the Drazi had more powerful armour and weapons. Then you had the Minbari with their magnetically powered vessels and above them the Vorlons and Shadows with planet-killing organic technology.

I'm hoping that the NuTrek writers make better use of the Orions in the upcoming sequels.

 

[Sector 7]

This is why I preferred Babylon 5. A certain amount of cross-pollenation took place but races generally had slightly different technology with differing levels of sophistication in different areas. So the Vree might have very powerful defence shields while the Drazi had more powerful armour and weapons. Then you had the Minbari with their magnetically powered vessels and above them the Vorlons and Shadows with planet-killing organic technology.

I'm hoping that the NuTrek writers make better use of the Orions in the upcoming sequels.

I miss Babylon 5 and agree that they did a better job of portraying different species at varying levels of development.

So far, we have Orions in new Trek, but it is also limited to Kirk 'bangin' a green chick'. Perhaps they will be developed more in future installments.

 

[nahuatl]

I wonder how the Voth would fit into all of this?

 

[SgtPinback]

outstanding question. i've often wondered about this myself. aliens don't just suddenly morph into perceived gods overnight, so where are all the hella old species.

how old are the borg btw?

edit: anyone got the link for the list of in order of how evolved/advanced they are?

clever_username, that must be a reference to Wil Wheaton's slashdot handle. Right?