Ceti Alpha 6 blown up..How?

[Timo]

There would be a limiting factor, though: how far could Kirk go from the site of discovery of the Botany Bay without arousing Starfleet's interest about strange inconsistencies in Kirk's navigation logs?

The very fact that the Botany Bay remained undiscovered for so long seems to be due to there being no Earth traffic in that vicinity in the recent years. So Kirk's best bet might actually be to leave Khan on a planet very close to the site of discovery, trusting that no Earth traffic would spring up in the near future, either. And of course, the less time the dangerous supermen would spend aboard, the better!

Alas, Starfleet would be aware of the traffic issue, too, and would thus think it an excellent idea to place their secret Genesis development facility in the neighborhood...

So basically, both Ceti Alpha and Regula would still be out in the sticks in terms of traffic, and probably far enough so that subspace telescopes and the like wouldn't spot any planetary explosions or DDM activity or whatever. But they'd still be rather close to Earth in terms of lightyears, allowing Kirk's training cruise to reach them rather quickly.

Also, it would indeed be plausible that Kirk's ship would be the nearest Starfleet asset in this area that was almost devoid of Federation traffic. She need not be the only one in the entire universe this time: there could be a dozen other starships just a few hours farther away, but Starfleet wouldn't consider sending any of them in for what looked like a simple communications problem or a bureaucratic mix-up, one that personally involved the VIP guest of the Enterprise to boot.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Goliath]

I like the doomsday-machine explanation. Very elegant.

There is one thing that bothers me, though: how was Ceti Alpha V mistaken for Ceti Alpha VI?

Presumably, planets are numbered from the star outward. Even if Ceti Alpha VI was the outermost planet in the system when it exploded, a planetary head count should have revealed that something was wrong in the Ceti Alpha system.

 

[Trekker4747]

I like the doomsday-machine explanation. Very elegant.

There is one thing that bothers me, though: how was Ceti Alpha V mistaken for Ceti Alpha VI?

Presumably, planets are numbered from the star outward. Even if Ceti Alpha VI was the outermost planet in the system when it exploded, a planetary head count should have revealed that something was wrong in the Ceti Alpha system.

Sadly the only answer is a meat one.

"Because otherwise the plot wouldn't work."

 

[Manticore]

I like the doomsday-machine explanation. Very elegant.

There is one thing that bothers me, though: how was Ceti Alpha V mistaken for Ceti Alpha VI?

Presumably, planets are numbered from the star outward. Even if Ceti Alpha VI was the outermost planet in the system when it exploded, a planetary head count should have revealed that something was wrong in the Ceti Alpha system.

Because measuring distance in space is actually surprisingly difficult. If the Reliant knew how many planets were supposed to be in the system, and were counting down, and if V and VI were roughly similar in mass, it would send off too many red flags. I imagine that, before Kirk went there, most of the exploration was in the form of a cursory long-range scan that determined how many planets there were, the rough order, and maybe basic chemical composition. It's quite possibly that V is roughly the same size and mass as VI was, and has somewhat similar atmospheric chemistry post-explosion, hence the confusion.

It's quite possible that, when the deeper scans were finished, they would have realized their error, had Captain Terrell and Chekov not stepped knee-deep into supermen. Even failing that, by the time that Dr. Marcus and her team had gotten there, she'd have surely noticed the difference...and ripped Captain Terrell a new one.

BTW, Timo, your "close to Earth, but in a traffic-dead area" idea also nicely accounts for how, in Twilight, the Rag-Tag Fleet managed to get to Ceti Alpha V in only a year, and also expected to fly under the radar as well. It all fits together quite nicely!

 

[Timo]

...Also, constellation Cetus is a relatively large one, covering a lot of the sky towards the galactic rim - so we can assign the identity of "Ceti" to just about any star in a wide variety of directions, such as the relatively nearby Sigma Ceti or Chi Ceti. "Alpha" would then denote the first half of the binary (actually, it would be properly written as "Sigma Ceti A" or "Chi Ceti A", but our heroes could drop the first part and expand the letter using standard phonetic alphabet).

Things get more complicated if we assume that "Ceti Alpha" means "Alpha Ceti", the brightest star in the Cetus constellation. That star is relatively distant, perhaps too distant to be within the reach of the Botany Bay. Also, we'd lack explanation as to why our heroes invert the word order.

As for the heroes being less than careful in their analysis of planetary identity, let's remember that they had one of the dullest jobs imaginable: going through known desert worlds in the hopes of finding nothing. Khan's system was apparently the umpteenth in the row; no wonder they'd skip a few chapters of the book when checking out the local desert planet.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dayton3]

I really like the Doomsday Machine explanation myself.

You know it is possible that the Doomsday Machine chopped up Ceti Alpha 6 and that the damage to Ceti Alpha 5 was the Planet Killer taking a few chunks for dessert.

Severely damaging the biosphere of the world.

Khan and his followers look up one night and Ceti Alpha 6 is breaking apart (the planet killer unseeable naturally given its small size comparted to a world, remember, the Constellation didn't detect the planet killer when they first entered the system they found it in either).

The next day, Ceti Alpha 5 has changed from a relatively living world to hell on earth (pun not intended).

So naturally, Khan's observations are "Ceti Alpha 6 blew up six months after you left, the gravitation shift devastated this world".

It isn't like Khan probably had time and opportunity for a lot of scientific research at that point.

 

[Timo]

The one shortcoming in the theory is that the observed modus operandi of the DDM is to destroy the entire star system, not sparing a single rocky planet there. (Or gas giant, for all we know.)

It might of course be that the DDM is selective about what it eats, and that CA5 was not to its liking whereas all the planets in the systems mentioned in the TOS episode were. Perhaps the DDM only enters star systems when it knows they will provide the maximum amount of nourishment - unless it is very, very hungry. And at Ceti Alpha, it was so starved that it stopped for just a single edible planet.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Manticore]

Or, to be slightly more speculative, it usually only takes out one planet when it's hungry, but when a system closely matches one of its original targets, it goes whole-hog? We're extracting our data on the doomsday machine from only the one system, if I recall.

 

[Dayton3]

In "The Doomsday Machine" IIRC, the planet killer destroyed all the planets in four solar systems, but in the one where both Constellation and Enterprise encountered it, the machine had left two of the planets intact.

Because Kirk asked Spock if the Constellation crew might've beamed down to either. Spock said unlikely as one had a very poisonous atmosphere and the other had a surface temperature of molten lead (sounds like Mercury and Venus in other words).

 

[Ronald Held]

I do not believe the Doomsday machine would leave planets uneaten, unless it was full at the time. Still, it could wait until it was hungry and eat the rest of them.
A different explanation is needed.

 

[Timo]

For all we know, Kirk only killed one out of several DDMs operating in the area, and somebody else offed another at Ceti Alpha after it had only managed to consume one planet there...

Either that, or some other sort of a battle took place in the system. While Starfleet has trouble keeping watch over rocky planets, it has also been known to miss an epic engagement or two. And Khan would probably be unaccustomed to space battles and unlikely to pick up the telltale signs of one.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SicOne]

Guys, you have missed the most plausible of explanations regarding the dissapearance of Ceti Alpha 6.

The Death Star was in town.

Seriously, though, I agree with 137th Gebirg and Dayton 3's takes on this, but with a twist. I'm thinking Ceti Alpha 5 and 6 were colocated, sharing a common orbit around a fixed point, sort of like Romulus and Remus, so when CA6 "exploded" (the DDM is a good twist), debris fell onto CA5, rendered it a wasteland.

Regarding Section 31, if they were involved, it would have been a far, far easier allocation of assets to photon-torpedo Khan's settlement from orbit than to blow up the entire neighboring planet (which, if they were not colocated as described above, may not have the desired effect anyway).

I'm trying to think of which TNG book I read that described Rom/Rem as colocated, but drawing a blank. I'm sure I'll remember after submitting this post.

 

[Timo]

...It's too bad that the graphics in ST:NEM explicitly show the planets as not co-orbiting, but rather going about the core star on their own, seemingly undisturbed orbits.

Then again, that brings a nice aspect to the relationship between Romulus and Remus: it's only relatively seldom that they get close to each other. One might suspect that such close conjunctions are the best time for slave revolts... They might also be the most difficult times for the Reman slaves, as the tidal effects might intensify the inferno quite a bit.

One wonders if the arrangement between Vulcan and its large "not-moon" is like that, too. Perhaps the Vulcan exiles deliberately settled in a system remniscent of their native one?

No reason why Ceti Alpha couldn't be similar; the close passage of a fellow planet might be important to the climate of CA5, and lack thereof might be harmful.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

Remus's tidal locking to its sun would be quite difficult if it orbiterd Romulus instead.

 

[Jimmy_C]

Maybe the DDM was in the process of eating the Ceti Alpha system, but detected the Constellation before it could consume Ceti Alpha 6. They were chased to a near-by system for their last stand shortly before the Enterprise arrived. Then the DDM resumed eating that system and forgot about Ceti Alpha?

 

[SPOCKED]

How?

Electrical Superstorms

 

[Ronald Held]

The DDM eating part of a system, and stops to going after a starship seems unreasonable. Much more mass/energy in a planet plus a starship would have to be very close to get its attention.

 

[Jimmy_C]

Ya, but that's what it did in the episode! It deviated from its course for dinner to chase the Enterprise. The DDM is a war machine. It is logical it would engage other warships in case they try to stop it.

 

[Timo]

Frankly, we don't know what the DDM is. Sure, we get lots of baseless speculation from Kirk, but nothing of substance to corroborate his claims.

For all we know, the DDM is the benign ambassador of an alien intellect, designed to make contact with other intellects of similar kind on distant star systems. And since it is obvious to the builders that intelligent life can only exist in the atmospheres of gas giants, there's no harm in having the DDM eat worthless rocky planets for fuel... Or to swat away the uncoordinated attacks of lower lifeforms.

Really, if we had some reason to think that the DDM does not destroy every planet in every star system it enters, then it would be far easier to understand Decker's seemingly utterly insane decision to send his crew over to a rock planet when the monster attacked. But Spock claims that all the previous systems were completely devoured, and Decker must have been following the same trail of evidence... No doubt the uninhabitable planets in the final system would have been eaten eventually, too.

Timo Saloniemi