Clone armies in Trek...
- Thread starter Yevetha
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Cloning is a galaxy wide felony as was revealed in DS9 due to the Eugenics War. Khaless was cloned by a secret Klingon religious sect I believe. Where they got their "funding" from is unknown if they even needed it given Trek economics.
The Jem'Hadar are probably the closest you're going to get, since they were vat grown soliders. Whether they're cloned from a set of templates, or something different, was never explored.
As for Kahless, I guess there wouldn't be much in the way of funding needed, since it didn't seem difficult to create clones (there was an episode in Deep Space 9 where a man murdered his own clone to get away from some trouble), just a case of legality.
As for Kahless, I guess there wouldn't be much in the way of funding needed, since it didn't seem difficult to create clones (there was an episode in Deep Space 9 where a man murdered his own clone to get away from some trouble), just a case of legality.
Is it a Galaxy wide crime?....The Romulans had no problem cloning Picard?
It's banned in DS9's Federation, but that's it. According to behind-the-scenes notes, one of the TMP background species were "Arcturian clones"
I don't think cloning itself is a crime, even in DS9. After all, the episode A Man Alone a Bajoran cloned himself and then killed the clone to frame Odo for murdering him. When all was revealed in the end, the Bajoran was still charged with murder since "murdering your clone is still murder."
Cloning isn't considered criminal anywhere in Trek that I'd know of - but "Up the Long Ladder" shows that if a Starfleet officer is cloned against his or her will, it's then possible for him or her to terminate that clone without further ado (at least if the clone hasn't yet reached maturity/awareness).
Would cloning be a good way to create armies? We haven't seen much need for manpower in Trek style warfare; the bottlenecks might lie more in manufacturing of weapons or troop deployment ships/vehicles. OTOH, some players have rather extensively used smallish drones instead of infantry (notably in ST:Insurrection), and that could well be a competitive way of boosting your ranks - much as in Star Wars, where both clones and drones are mass-produced for operating the sort of weaponry that an ordinary humanoid could also wield (handheld guns, artillery, vehicles, spacecraft).
Timo Saloniemi
Would cloning be a good way to create armies? We haven't seen much need for manpower in Trek style warfare; the bottlenecks might lie more in manufacturing of weapons or troop deployment ships/vehicles. OTOH, some players have rather extensively used smallish drones instead of infantry (notably in ST:Insurrection), and that could well be a competitive way of boosting your ranks - much as in Star Wars, where both clones and drones are mass-produced for operating the sort of weaponry that an ordinary humanoid could also wield (handheld guns, artillery, vehicles, spacecraft).
Timo Saloniemi
I think the kind of warfare we see in Trek is pretty much starship dominated. You need boots on the ground to hold key installations planetside, but things like armoured ground vehicles etc. seem to be redundan. Could be that since hand held weapons seem more than powerful enough to destroy relevant sized vehicles, or such vehicles could easily be targetted by orbiting vessels, that most factions don't bother with producing them.
Cloning people for any purpose is pretty sketchy, morality-wise. The Federation might or might not tolerate it, but they definitely wouldn't tolerate it if it was used in effect to create slaves. Cloning people in order to induct them into armies sounds like slavery to me, and I would be appalled if upstanding Starfleet allowed it. Only the bad guys like the Dominion and the Rommies do it, but they don't care about humanoid rights and all that stuff.
I meant it is a Federation wide felony, should have been more specific.
...But if you are going to have that army in the first place, this could be considered "lesser slavery" than the dragging of young people from their families and everyday lives and putting them in uniform.
The Jem'Hadar example (or the Jango Fett one) also shows how such cloning probably would proceed - the end products would be designed not to have any desire for another kind of life.
Is that immoral? Well, consider the fish. They're born without the desire to bicycle! The inability to even desire to partake in this greatest of all the benefits of culture surely is the pinnacle of immorality, yet we accept it because it's "natural order". Why is nature allowed to be cruel but mankind is not?
Creating of supermen is somethind the UFP (or perhaps just Earth or mankind?) condemns. But cloning has never been indicated to play any role in the creation of supermen, and hasn't been declared criminal.
Timo Saloniemi
Aborting a yet un-self-aware clone seems legal in the Federation.
Genetic-engineering seems to be illegal in the UFP but they don't harm the subjects once alive/altered or Bashir would have been terminated. They just don't let them compete for the same opportunities as others.
Murdering your own living clone is illegal in the Federation and/or Bajor. (Whose law was Odo citing?)
We don't know what interstellar law says about it or what the laws are within the Klingon and Romulan empires. Shinzon was a clandestine operation by the Romulan thug government, not J'hn Q. Romulus's trip to Ye Olde Clonery for himself.
My bet is that wars are fought more in space by ships that can frag continents at will. Or against planetary defense shields, weapons, and satellites. But once attacking ships win the battle, planetside governments bend to the will of the orbiting power or are charred like Lakarian City on Cardassia Prime. No different than the US dropping nukes on Japan rather than losing thousands of troops over years to take the Japanese mainland. Whatever soldiers they use are more for securing territory after the battle than taking it.
Genetic-engineering seems to be illegal in the UFP but they don't harm the subjects once alive/altered or Bashir would have been terminated. They just don't let them compete for the same opportunities as others.
Murdering your own living clone is illegal in the Federation and/or Bajor. (Whose law was Odo citing?)
We don't know what interstellar law says about it or what the laws are within the Klingon and Romulan empires. Shinzon was a clandestine operation by the Romulan thug government, not J'hn Q. Romulus's trip to Ye Olde Clonery for himself.
My bet is that wars are fought more in space by ships that can frag continents at will. Or against planetary defense shields, weapons, and satellites. But once attacking ships win the battle, planetside governments bend to the will of the orbiting power or are charred like Lakarian City on Cardassia Prime. No different than the US dropping nukes on Japan rather than losing thousands of troops over years to take the Japanese mainland. Whatever soldiers they use are more for securing territory after the battle than taking it.
1) Bajoran law, obviously, because that's what he was used to, and this was only the second episode with the Feds looking over his shoulder. Plus, "Dax" would soon show Bajoran law being enforced on the station, even over a UFP citizen; here, the victim/murderer was a Bajoran national.
2) UFP law, obviously, because that's what Starfleet would have insisted on when they took over. Plus, the victim/murderer was already convicted of murder under Bajoran law once, then granted amnesty, so Odo wouldn't want to try that route again if he could avoid it. He didn't think highly of the Provisional Government even much later in the show. Also, for all we know, the PG had not yet gotten around to properly revising the laws to reflect Bajoran independence, and we know Odo didn't value Cardassian law that much, either.
3) Whichever law better suited Odo's sense of right and wrong, obviously, because Odo enforces justice, not law. And at that point, matters would not have settled enough yet to force Odo to conform to the new rulers on things like this.
Timo Saloniemi
Most likely the Jem'Hadar - led of course by the clone officer corps, the Vorta
The background on Arcturians from TMP was that they were a race of clones. Now that probably just means that they are an asexual species that are capable of asexual reproduction. However, the background also said that the Arcturians provided the bulk of the Federation's ground troops and that they could literally produce an army overnight. That suggests that either their rate of growth to adulthood is very rapid or that culturally and technologically they have no issue with advancing the age of their offspring.
I think many of the basic ideas for the Arcturians were ported across to the Jem'Hadar. I think that the touchy feely folk of TNG thought that breeding troops for combat was a bit unFederation-like so all the Federation characters act aghast at the concept as if the Arcturians never existed. I rather liked the idea, although I'm happy with them simply remaining an asexual species.
Maybe an ashamed Federation wiped the Arcturians out with a virus and the remnants of their species roams the space lanes as Reavers...
I think many of the basic ideas for the Arcturians were ported across to the Jem'Hadar. I think that the touchy feely folk of TNG thought that breeding troops for combat was a bit unFederation-like so all the Federation characters act aghast at the concept as if the Arcturians never existed. I rather liked the idea, although I'm happy with them simply remaining an asexual species.
Maybe an ashamed Federation wiped the Arcturians out with a virus and the remnants of their species roams the space lanes as Reavers...
...One might also interpret this as the Arcturans being an undifferentiated species: at any time, they could take 90% of their population and declare them "army", then leave the 10% to slowly reproduce and fill the society again, there being no individualism or specialization to limit the drafting. "Clones" in the figurative rather than biological sense!
Timo Saloniemi
Keep in mind that these notes were prepared by Robert Fletcher (wardrobe) with Fred Phillips (makeup) to give them a context for creating the alien races for TMP. They don't hold up to canonical scrutiny.
Star Trek dolls by Therin of Andor, on Flickrhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/37203498@N00/3388855867/
...I think that the touchy feely folk of TNG thought that breeding troops for combat was a bit unFederation-like so all the Federation characters act aghast at the concept as if the Arcturians never existed...
Maybe an ashamed Federation wiped the Arcturians out with a virus and the remnants of their species roams the space lanes as Reavers...
Right because genocide and zombiegenesis is exactly what a "touchy feely" Federation would do. It's like that time when the Nazis dismantled fascism and bought the world a Coke.
...Can you tell I wasn't a big fan of Firefly?
Actually, I enjoyed the evil Federation/North in Firefly. I was intrigued by what Whedon had to say about what if the North shouldn't have won the Civil War and the dystopian threat of nanny supercorporations.
But fans annoy me when they make the wrong on multiple levels connection between the Alliance (I think it was) and the Federation. It's just an easy comparison to make even though it's totally wrong.
Lol - well I'm not American and I didn't study the Civil War at school so I have nooooo idea what you are talking about but I would say it was a looong time ago and it's about time you let go of the pain...
I was simply making an off-the-cuff comment based on the fact that in Serenity the ruling government took steps to hide its shame and if Arcturian culture is to be retconned out of existence then clearly the Federation must be hyprcritical murdering scum. That was all.
Sometimes a cloning vat is just a cloning vat.
I was simply making an off-the-cuff comment based on the fact that in Serenity the ruling government took steps to hide its shame and if Arcturian culture is to be retconned out of existence then clearly the Federation must be hyprcritical murdering scum. That was all.
Sometimes a cloning vat is just a cloning vat.
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