Doomday Machine's Riddle

[RobertScorpio]

So Captain Kirk gave us his theory. I know that Vendetta went into more detail. a great book by the way.

But since the books are not canon and so we can still speculate, what do you think the Doomsday Machine was if Kirk wasn't right?

I think Spock says it came from outside our Galaxy, which means it could be literally millions of years old. I am not sure if its ever mentioned if it can travel at warp speeds. And if it can't travel warp, and came from outside the milky way (we need a new name for our galaxy other than a candy bar title) any way..if it came from outside then just think how long it has been traveling between the galaxies with out warp speed...mind boggling

Our universe is really really big.

 

[Noname Given]

RobertScorpio said:
So Captain Kirk gave us his theory. I know that Vendetta went into more detail. a great book by the way.

But since the books are not canon and so we can still speculate, what do you think the Doomsday Machine was if Kirk wasn't right?

I think Spock says it came from outside our Galaxy, which means it could be literally millions of years old. I am not sure if its ever mentioned if it can travel at warp speeds. And if it can't travel warp, and came from outside the milky way (we need a new name for our galaxy other than a candy bar title) any way..if it came from outside then just think how long it has been traveling between the galaxies with out warp speed...mind boggling

Our universe is really really big.

They never really go into it; but given the 1701 was able to outrun it on Impuse, it's assumed it has no FTL capability - HOWEVER; were that the case, the Federation wuld have little to worry about (qand time to come up with a method to destroy/de-activate it as it should have taken years to reach Rigel and decades/centuries to make it to "the heart of out Galaxy.."

Bit yes, I think the indication was that it was multiple millenia old; and already heavily damaged and barely fuctioning when our heroes happened on it. I say that because if it could be taken out by a 100 MT bomb 'down the throat' so to speak - that some of military group wouldn't have already done that; so it MUST have been near dead/heavily damaged at the point the 1701 encountered it.

 

[StolenThunder]

This largely concerns a TOS episode, so I think I'll move this there now.

 

[Timo]

My bet is that it was a pure, unapologetic berserker. Some civilization decided early on that it would be a good idea to wipe out all other civilizations, preferably before they learned how to fight back. So they sent out monsters like that to sterilize the galaxy.

They knew some might get destroyed by advanced enemies, but the weapons would not have any ID on them to allow those enemies to backtrack them to their creators and exact vengeance. Moreover, just in case, the creators would send all the weapons on paths that made it look as if they came from outside the galaxy...

By the time Kirk got to it, most of the weapons were already gone. But so were thousands upon thousands of star systems, making the galaxy safer for whomever built these devices originally.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Noname Given]

Timo said:
My bet is that it was a pure, unapologetic berserker.

Did anyone pay Fred Saberhagen?

 

[Wingsley]

Since Spock said that "sensors recroding only debris where we charted seven planets last year" while the Enterprise was still searching for the Constellation in star system L-370, and the Enterprise went on to find the Constellation (and the Planet Killer) in system L-374, it is reasonable to assume that the Planet Killer has at least minimal warp capability.

As for what the original purpose of the Planet Killer might have been, Kirk could only speculate. We are never left with a clear idea. Was it meant as a weapon? Perhaps. Could it have been originally used as a mining tool? That possibility seems at least as likely. Perhaps the Planet Killer was part of a more elaborate apparatus, used to crush whole planets and gather their remains to build Dyson Spheres around local stars; and, maybe like the Kalaandans, the builders died off and the Planet Killer simply wandered aimlessly for millenia before encountering the Constellation.

We really have no idea.

 

[Son_of_Soong]

Some novel touched on this and I cant remember why... built as a weapon to fight the Borg but got out of control...

 

[Jack Bauer]

Son_of_Soong said:
Some novel touched on this and I cant remember why... built as a weapon to fight the Borg but got out of control...

That would be Vendetta.

 

[Son_of_Soong]

Was it? I thought it was something different, lol

 

[Jack Bauer]

There's also Before Dishonor which is a sequel to Vendetta.

 

[Maurice]

I dislike the anti-Borg weapon idea for the same reason I usually dislike such things... it's too pat and makes the galaxy too small. I *like* that the DDM's origin is a mystery.

 

[Son_of_Soong]

Does that include the Defiant?

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

DS9Sega said:
I dislike the anti-Borg weapon idea for the same reason I usually dislike such things... it's too pat and makes the galaxy too small. I *like* that the DDM's origin is a mystery.

I agree; it takes away from the wondrous aspect of the universe and sometimes you can't explain everything out there. That's one of the things I disliked about ModTrek was that there was an attempt to explain everything and the galaxy seemed so much smaller than it did in TOS and the early seasons of TNG.

 

[Trekwatcher]

While in the episode the machine itself has a battered and pitted appearance, it is hard to say it was "barely functioning." It was moving quickly between star systems and systematically destroying all of their planets-seems to me like it was working just fine.

As for a 97.835MT explosion stopping it, maybe it had never been tried before, or maybe it had not been used against a spacefaring opponent, etc. Maybe everyone had just tried what Decker had tried-shooting the outside and not trying to get at the central mechanism.

 

[Son_of_Soong]

Borg arn't a threat anymore now that Janeway brought back all that technology which guarantees Federation domination of the galaxy... talk about sucking the fun out of anything to happen after that point in the timeline.

If you couldnt tell I'm also not very fond of Anti Borg technology.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

My reasoning is that the planet killer did indeed have warp drive, but that when Spock told McCoy "we have outrun it, Doctor" he meant that the Enterprise had outrun the PK at impulse power.

Why didn't Spock engage the warp engines to escape the planet killer? Simple... the Enterprise (and the PK) were still inside the asteroid field remnants of System L-374 and they couldn't go to warp speed at that point.

 

[Noname Given]

Professor Moriarty said:
My reasoning is that the planet killer did indeed have warp drive, but that when Spock told McCoy "we have outrun it, Doctor" he meant that the Enterprise had outrun the PK at impulse power.

Why didn't Spock engage the warp engines to escape the planet killer? Simple... the Enterprise (and the PK) were still inside the asteroid field remnants of System L-374 and they couldn't go to warp speed at that point.

^^^^
Actually, the 1701's Warp engines were damaged by the Planet Killer when Commadore Decker did his suicidal attack run on it - so they COULDN'T use the Wap Drive from that point on as it was estimated to "be out for a Solar Day'.

 

[Timo]

But there was no damage to the warp engines during the initial chase. Indeed, we hear a damage report just after Spock says he has outrun the monster, and the report states that both drive systems are doing just fine. So perhaps Spock did escape from the DDM with a short warp hop in that early encounter?

Yet this chase doesn't take Spock very far from Kirk. Indeed, none of the chases during the episode seems to happen at such a speed that the crippled Constellation, limited to 1/3 impulse at very best, couldn't easily follow. OTOH, the monster never quite catches our heroes despite having pummeled their ships to warp-incapability - our heroes always have to fly to the DDM themselves to get caught.

We might blame the asteroid belt for keeping Spock's speed down. But that sure shouldn't slow down the DDM much. Perhaps the monster just liked to stay down at impulse while digesting the star system most recently eaten, and would have accelerated to warp in a matter of days?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Professor Moriarty]

^^^ You've been peeking at my "script" for my pet "TDM" project.

 

[RobertScorpio]

Well stop teasing Moriarty..SHOW it to us!