Borg

[Therin of Andor]

Anyone who could squeeze a story out of the caeliar (such a sterile source) could make a much more interesting story by utilizing other players.

Perhaps, but story ideas are not "boring". It's all in the execution. A great story idea can be an amazing novel or a boring one, depending on the writer's skill. Even a seemingly dreadful story idea can be an amazing novel or a boring one, again depending on the writer's skill.

I'm sure many story ideas have been pitched in such a way that they seemed boring to the editor, and those ideas never get through to the next stage. I'm not expecting anyone to resurrect the Caeliar story arc any time soon, but don't second guess the writers who may yet think of new twists we haven't even dreamed of.

The Borg are popular ST aliens. I have no doubt they shall return in some way, shape or form eventually.

 

[TerraUnam]

Hehehe, I have always thought that "perfection" was one of those ironic words. Those who claim to have seen/attained it almost certainly haven't. That which seems to be perfect is always flawed.

The Caeliar have cool toys, though as LightningStorm said they may or may not match up to the Q. Aside from that, the Federation has turned itself into an interstellar democracy and has been going for over 200 years. I give the point in social (possibly political skills too) to the Federation. The fact that the Federation has met beings like the Q who would give the Caeliar a run for their money underlines how narrow and provincial the Caeliar had become.

It's almost a given in Trek that isolationism never works out well for the isolationists.

And yes, you put a few billion former Borg drones and mix them into a less-than-perfect Caeliar society that is itself undergoing wrenching change, add up the emotions of losing yourself, or never having yourself and trying to build yourself, and you have the ingredients for character conflict.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

LightningStorm

"But even then, it wouldn't be the first time later writers come along and change what another writer intended in the interest of good story telling."

You are making my point, LightningStorm:
The caeliar are a mary sue.
In order to use the caeliar effectively, one has to 'devolve' them - either societally or technologically:

"The Caeliar have been actively trying to hide from the rest of the galaxy/universe for millions of years and have been doing so only somewhat successfully."

The klingons/romulans can completely hide their ships from the federation; the people from 'When the bough breaks' can do the same with an entire planet.
Their technology is PRIMITIVE by comparison to that of the caeliar, in every respect.
If they could hide completely, the caeliar can do so effortlessly.

What we saw in destiny was a half-assed effort on the part of the caeliar to hide themselves.
Real world reason - our 'heroes' had to find them in order to be saved by them.
In story reason - easy enough to make one; in any case, the caeliar don't care much about being discovered - during the romulan was their world was not even hidden in any way.


"Unless David Mack comes in and says this specifically I don't see it that way. "
You need the writers to confirm what they redundantly described in the book in order to accept it?
Changing the caeliar's mary sue status is a retconn - not a gigantic one, but not very subtle, either.

 

[MNM]

What I'm getting at with this is that the Caeliar do have one apparent thing they can't do, and that's screw with the minds of other living things in such a way that they simply forget that they ever encountered the Caelier to begin with...

I dont think that's true, I'm sure they said they could remove the memories of the Columbia's crew so as to make them forget they ever encountered the Caeliar, but said it wasnt worth it as those missing memories would only cause the crew to try and figure out what happened and lead them back to the Caeliar anyway.

 

[LightningStorm]

The caeliar are a mary sue.
In order to use the caeliar effectively, one has to 'devolve' them - either societally or technologically:

Mary Sue? Whatever you may think of the Caeliar they are very clearly not Mary Sues. As Destiny illustrated clear flaws with their society notably their xenophobia, their apathy, and their lack of care of what comes of other intelligent beings. I'm quite sure David Mack didn't create them based on what he wants or hopes to be.

But even then, my point is that the Caeliar have stories to be told, and they DO exists without needing to devolve them. That specific example was to illustrate that yes stories can be told by "devolving" them if a writer decided to do that, but that is not the only way to tell a good story about them. Not to mention that the Caeliar are far from perfect to begin with as they contain the flaws I mentioned above.

The klingons/romulans can completely hide their ships from the federation; the people from 'When the bough breaks' can do the same with an entire planet.
Their technology is PRIMITIVE by comparison to that of the caeliar, in every respect.
If they could hide completely, the caeliar can do so effortlessly.

You keep saying this, but this is based on things not in the book(s), what I'm saying is based on what we saw in the books and we saw it multiple times. If it's so easy for them why didn't they do it? Arrogance? This sounds like yet another imperfect Caelier flaw.

I dont think that's true, I'm sure they said they could remove the memories of the Columbia's crew so as to make them forget they ever encountered the Caeliar, but said it wasnt worth it as those missing memories would only cause the crew to try and figure out what happened and lead them back to the Caeliar anyway.

I'd think a society that advanced with that much apparent "magical" power could implant memories that would not cause them to go investigating memory gaps. If I woke up one day and it was suddenly two days later, I'd be concerned about that sure, but if I woke up on Friday morning and remembered doing all my normal stuff on Thursday (even if I didn't actually do all that) I'd not suspect or investigate anything.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

The caeliar are a mary sue.
In order to use the caeliar effectively, one has to 'devolve' them - either societally or technologically:

Mary Sue? Whatever you may think of the Caeliar they are very clearly not Mary Sues. As Destiny illustrated clear flaws with their society notably their xenophobia, their apathy, and their lack of care of what comes of other intelligent beings.

But even then, my point is that the Caeliar have stories to be told, and they DO exists without needing to devolve them. That specific example was to illustrate that yes stories can be told by "devolving" them if a writer decided to do that, but that is not the only way to tell a good story about them. Not to mention that the Caeliar are far from perfect to begin with as they contain the flaws I mentioned above

All of these flaws ("their xenophobia, their apathy, and their lack of care of what comes of other intelligent beings", etc) being unequivocally gone from the caeliar society at the end of 'Destiny'.
That's when the caeliar became mary sues.

Which is why they have to be devolved to be somewhat interesting - as you yourself pointed out in previous posts:
"But even then, it wouldn't be the first time later writers come along and change what another writer intended in the interest of good story telling."

The klingons/romulans can completely hide their ships from the federation; the people from 'When the bough breaks' can do the same with an entire planet.
Their technology is PRIMITIVE by comparison to that of the caeliar, in every respect.
If they could hide completely, the caeliar can do so effortlessly.

You keep saying this, but this is based on things not in the book(s), what I'm saying is based on what we saw in the books and we saw it multiple times. If it's so easy for them why didn't they do it? Arrogance? This sounds like yet another imperfect Caelier flaw.

The caeliar superlative technology was more than proven at the end of "Destiny":
"The caeliar, in all of 5 minutes, assimilated the borg:
They beat the borg by playing the game it was expert at (assimilation), got pass all the collective's formidable defenses, transformed trillions of drones, uncounted artifacts - all this FAR faster than it would take even a subspace message to reach all the collective."

That's so far above anything the klingons/romulans/etc, etc can do, it's ridiculous.

As for why the caeliar didn't hide properly, I already addressed the issue:
"What we saw in destiny was a half-assed effort on the part of the caeliar to hide themselves.
Real world reason - our 'heroes' had to find them in order to be saved by them.
In story reason - easy enough to make one; in any case, the caeliar don't care much about being discovered - during the romulan was their world was not even hidden in any way."

 

[Brit]

The caeliar are a mary sue.

In order to use the caeliar effectively, one has to 'devolve' them - either societally or technologically:

I don't think the Caeliar are Mary Sues, that term is way over used anyway because the nature of writing makes all characters Mary Sues anyway.

The Caeliar are "Dei ex machina" and have to be what they are because other writers made the Borg too strong for the Federation to defeat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina

Brit

 

[David cgc]

Why don't we just skip to the end and have someone accuse the Caeliar of being a Magical Negro? I mean, since we're just throwing around literary criticism terms around all willy-nilly anyway.

 

[DonIago]

Can they be onomatopoeic too?