Dominion War - Why Didn’t Starfleet Station Betazoids on Each Ship?

[DWF]

Re: Dominion War - Why Didn’t Starfleet Station Betazoids on Each Ship

People, this isn't Babylon 5 we're talking about here. The ST universe doesn't deal with/use telepaths is way that actually makes, you know, sense. Don't get me wrong, I love DS9 especially and Trek in general, but I think B5 did a much better treatment of telepaths than Trek ever did.

People already accuse DS9 of being a B5 ripoff! Now suddenly we're throwing telepaths on every ship to stop the evil Shado...err...Dominion? Terrible idea.

Of course, the big difference there is that telepathy is a very different phenomenon in Babylon 5 than in Star Trek. On B5, telepaths are a minority group within each of the sentient species, and in the Earth Alliance, all are members of and regulated by the Psi Corps, an officially government agency with a monopoly on the provision of telepathic services to the government, the courts, businesses, and private citizens. (And which has devolved into its own authoritarian cult with its own agenda to take over the government, but I digress.)

On Star Trek, on the other hand, telepathy is a widespread talent of various non-Human species who are equal partners with Earth within the Federation, and telepathic Humans are both exceedingly rare and exceedingly limited. So it apparently just can't be regulated or channeled the way it could on B5.

The race in Voyager's Counterpoint ep. tried to control telepaths. And I doubt if using telepaths would violate Federation laws and in any event DS9 is outside of the Federation, Lwaxana used her powers in Manhunt to stop an assassination.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Re: Dominion War - Why Didn’t Starfleet Station Betazoids on Each Ship

^Plus Trek had telepaths first!

Well, yeah, but only in the same sense that it had, say, spaceships first. Star Trek happens to be older, that's all. And plenty of other works of science fiction featured telepathy before Star Trek -- the telepathic Charles Xavier first appeared in Marvel Comics's X-Men #1 in 1963, for instance; Robert Heinlein used it in his 1956 novel Time for the Stars; A.E. van Vogt used it in 1940's Slan; etc. So telepathy is hardly original to Star Trek.

I didn't say it was original to ST. But it would be somewhat rich to accuse Trek of ripping off B5 by having telepaths on board, given that Trek had telepaths not only in the original show, but had a regular telepath character in TNG, which ran from 1987 - 1994 and was still on the air when B5 first aired.

 

[DS9 Gal AZ]

Re: Dominion War - Why Didn’t Starfleet Station Betazoids on Each Ship

I never claimed Trek ripped off B5 for having telepaths. I just said that (in my opinion), B5 handled telepaths better than Trek did. Trek never dealt with the invasion-of-privacy and regulation issues like B5 did. Lwaxana Troi regularly violated people's privacy by reading their thoughts without permission. And she was a Federation Ambassador, no less! Yet there were never any consequences. Now mabye there's no such thing as privacy on Betazed, or maybe they can shield their thoughts from each other because they're all telepaths there, but you'd think there would be some laws in place to protect the privacy of non-telepaths when they're off-world.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: Dominion War - Why Didn’t Starfleet Station Betazoids on Each Ship

Lwaxana Troi regularly violated people's privacy by reading their thoughts without permission.

Actually, it was mainly just Picard, and only because Lwaxana was so smitten with him and enjoyed teasing him.

 

[Spock/Uhura Fan]

Re: Dominion War - Why Didn’t Starfleet Station Betazoids on Each Ship

I never claimed Trek ripped off B5 for having telepaths. I just said that (in my opinion), B5 handled telepaths better than Trek did. Trek never dealt with the invasion-of-privacy and regulation issues like B5 did. Lwaxana Troi regularly violated people's privacy by reading their thoughts without permission. And she was a Federation Ambassador, no less! Yet there were never any consequences. Now mabye there's no such thing as privacy on Betazed, or maybe they can shield their thoughts from each other because they're all telepaths there, but you'd think there would be some laws in place to protect the privacy of non-telepaths when they're off-world.

Realistically, it should have been dealt with. I do like what Bab5 did with telepaths, but I just wish they'd played that storyline out more before the series ended.

 

[Jono]

Re: Dominion War - Why Didn’t Starfleet Station Betazoids on Each Ship

That could happen, but hopefully if someone was accused you’d have a number of telepaths around so that you could “double check.” And then you have to hope that all of the telepaths weren’t replaced by Changlings! But, in reality, it isn’t like the Federation has a death penalty or anything. They would put the Changling in a prison, in which case you should be able to verify if the accused really is a Changling or not.

You don't need the death penalty for this to have an impact. Forcing important people out of the loop for any time could have a major impact. Leyton showed that and he wasn't even a Changeling. He had Sisko imprisoned on fake Changeling charges and nearly took over the Federation. If something like this had happened during Operation Return the Federation could have lost the war right then.

Wasn’t Deanna able to sense sentient beings (within a reasonable amount of distance) whether or not she could physically see them? If that is the case, then Betazoids should have been able to sense a Changling masquerading as a PADD.

Except we have evidence that a full Betazoid can't sense a Changeling when its been an object. In "The Muse" Lwaxana Troi plays hide and seek with Odo and picks the wrong object as been Odo. When we see her she isn't just standing there trying to sense him, she's trying to find him physically by touch.

If you wanted to argue against this you could suggest that her hormone level, which was impacting others through projecting her emotions, also impacted her ability to read thoughts/feelings. Or that she was losing on purpose in a sense of fun/fair play.

That’s why any telepaths in sensitive areas would need to have security clearance! And, it isn’t like they have to be in a room listening to the Admirals making all their war plans. They could be at building entrances or hallway entrances or door entrances… just like regular security guards.

River Tam was locked up in a research centre and managed to pull out the Alliance's darkest secret from some officials who simply visited to see if the experiment, so she wasn't witness to any secret meetings either. Unless the Admirals minds are blank they would probably still pick up a lot of secrets as the Admirals think about their last meeting or intel report.

Plus as you mentioned about Deanna been able to sense people even when they are on another ship, so that raise the possibility they might be able to read any minds inside the entire HQ. We do know Betazoids can (usually) limit their mind reading so not to be bombarded ceaselessly, but the risk is still there that they could accidentally pull in info.

The only thing that would make them more valuable than an admiral would be the range of their exposure. Very few would be across everything, but if they all have to walk past a Betazoid s/he becomes the largest secrets bank.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Re: Dominion War - Why Didn’t Starfleet Station Betazoids on Each Ship

I never claimed Trek ripped off B5 for having telepaths.

I wasn't suggesting that you did. Someone else, I think it was RojoHen, suggested that if DS9 had gone down the 'telepaths to detect Changelings' line, it might have been accused of ripping off B5. So I was responding to that point.

And if I read him correctly, I don't think Rojohen was suggesting plagiarism either; just that the accusation might have been made in such a case.

I tend to agree with you about B5 having better plots and storylines regarding telepaths, incidentally.

 

[neozeks]

Re: Dominion War - Why Didn’t Starfleet Station Betazoids on Each Ship

Of course, you could say that perhaps the Changlings, in assuming the forms of different personnel / items, that they assumed the mindset of them too. As in, they were able to mask their true thoughts and trick Betazoids by only thinking what they thought the person they imitated would think.

Why not just accept this as the simplest explanation? We know the Changelings can essentially become what they are mimicking to the point that you can't tell the difference. When they mimic a brain, they simply also mimic it's thoughts too.

 

[DS9 Gal AZ]

Re: Dominion War - Why Didn’t Starfleet Station Betazoids on Each Ship

Why not just accept this as the simplest explanation? We know the Changelings can essentially become what they are mimicking to the point that you can't tell the difference. When they mimic a brain, they simply also mimic it's thoughts too.

The problem with this theory is that I seem to remember Lwaxana remarking when she first met Odo that she couldn't read his thoughts, and it was part of what she found so intruiging about him. Of course, you could argue that Odo wasn't bothering to mimic a humanoid brain when he assumed humanoid form, but then, how did he have ideas, speech, etc. ...?

 

[neozeks]

Re: Dominion War - Why Didn’t Starfleet Station Betazoids on Each Ship

The problem with this theory is that I seem to remember Lwaxana remarking when she first met Odo that she couldn't read his thoughts, and it was part of what she found so intruiging about him. Of course, you could argue that Odo wasn't bothering to mimic a humanoid brain when he assumed humanoid form, but then, how did he have ideas, speech, etc. ...?

I don't think Changelings need a brain in order to think, be conscious and control their bodies, whatever shape that body takes. I mean, when a Changeling becomes a rock it clearly has no central nervous system yet it's still aware and conscious (it would simply remain a rock forever otherwise). The Changeling "seat of consciousness", so to call it, seems to be somewhere else, perhaps somehow distributed on a molecular level throughout the whole body or shifted to an unseen dimension or something. I don't think Odo had any real humanoid organs, let alone a brain. In fact, seeing how he was a complete amateur at shapeshifting when compared to the other Changelings, I doubt he could even mimic a working humanoid brain.

 

[Timo]

Re: Dominion War - Why Didn’t Starfleet Station Betazoids on Each Ship

In the end, did we ever see an effective Changeling detector? The phaser-tickle thing was only known to work on Odo; the blood test was worthless; the polaron emitters of "Apocalypse Rising" were never tried again.

When Odo shook hands with "Leyton" and exposed him, was that because Odo was able to detect something Founder-like about the high-quality imitation of a man, or was it just a hunch based on what "he" said?

The Changelings themselves seem to think that their imitations are always perfect and undetectable. Even "Martok" destroying the polaron devices doesn't necessarily mean he feared that they could be used against "him". He might just have been pulling a double feint while further framing Gowron - making our heroes think that a Changeling in Gowron's shape was afraid of the devices, so they'd mistakenly also think that the devices really would have worked. But quite possibly there is no way to tell the difference because adult Changelings can completely remove the difference...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Sindatur]

Re: Dominion War - Why Didn’t Starfleet Station Betazoids on Each Ship

The flaw with this plan, is who watches the watchers?

The easiest way around this Security Protocol (assuming it would work) is simply to replace the Betazoid. Then, you've got everyone feeling all cozy and comfortable, lulled into a false sense of security, and you could replace any other crew member you wanted, because the crew member you're relying upon, is already compromised.

Doubling up on Betazoids wouldn't do any good, because you just replace both of them.

As big as the Link is, there could be millions or billions of Changlings, so, if needed, there would be no shortage of Changlings

 

[dahj]

Re: Dominion War - Why Didn’t Starfleet Station Betazoids on Each Ship

In the end, did we ever see an effective Changeling detector?

Nope.
Although by the latter stages of the war it wasn't much of an issue anymore seeing as they began to fall apart from the plague.
So they couldn't impersonate anyone with any believability, they barely impersonated themselves...