"Emergence" questions

[infinix]

I watched "Emergence" again last night and it reminded me of some questions I had the first time I watched this episode all those years ago.

Question: If this happened on-board the Enterprise, wouldn't we expect the same thing to happen to many other Starfleet ships? At least to the other Galaxy class star ships?

Question: Even if what Enterprise created was truly unique, it wouldn't stay unique for long. This new life form would most likely seek out ways to create more of itself, and the best method would be to look for other Starfleet vessels and repeat what happened on the Enterprise.

Conjecture: What powers does this new life form have? It was obviously able to control computer systems, but now that it is a separate entity, what would enable it to survive in the universe?

I thought this was one of the more fascinating ideas that was worth revisiting. I would have loved it if the floating geometric life form showed up during the wedding of Riker and Troi in some way.

 

[Cpt. Chris Pike]

Question: If this happened on-board the Enterprise, wouldn't we expect the same thing to happen to many other Starfleet ships? At least to the other Galaxy class star ships?

Possibly, but you have to remember. Life isn't just some random happening, many things have to fall into place for the situation to be just right, I believe the Enterprise met that criteria at the right time. Other star ships may not.

Question: Even if what Enterprise created was truly unique, it wouldn't stay unique for long. This new life form would most likely seek out ways to create more of itself, and the best method would be to look for other Starfleet vessels and repeat what happened on the Enterprise.

You are correct. One of the goals of every life form is create more of it's own kind. I think it's safe to assume this particular life form did just that, only the enterprise may never be aware of it.

Conjecture: What powers does this new life form have? It was obviously able to control computer systems, but now that it is a separate entity, what would enable it to survive in the universe?

I think it's safe to assume this life form is formidable. Meaning it is made up of high energy and is intelligent. I am sure it has many abilities that humanoid creatures do not.

I thought this was one of the more fascinating ideas that was worth revisiting. I would have loved it if the floating geometric life form showed up during the wedding of Riker and Troi in some way.

Perhaps in the future, we will once again see this life form. Would make a good episode. After all, we seen Q on more than one occasion.

 

[Brian]

Question: If this happened on-board the Enterprise, wouldn't we expect the same thing to happen to many other Starfleet ships? At least to the other Galaxy class star ships?

Possibly, but you have to remember. Life isn't just some random happening, many things have to fall into place for the situation to be just right, I believe the Enterprise met that criteria at the right time. Other star ships may not.

That's a good point. Enterprise had many unique experiences... such as characters being digitized into the computer ("Lonely Among Us") and sentient holograms developing (Moriarty). And who knows how much interaction with Data might have affected the ship's computer and the way it processes data? It's not necessarily just a Galaxy class computer's logical end. It probably has a lot to do with the specific chain of events Enterprise went through.

 

[Christopher]

Question: If this happened on-board the Enterprise, wouldn't we expect the same thing to happen to many other Starfleet ships? At least to the other Galaxy class star ships?

Not necessarily. The very nature of an emergent phenomenon is that it's unpredictable, that it doesn't arise linearly or straightforwardly from the sum of its raw ingredients. To make a rough analogy, emergence is like a roomful of monkeys banging on typewriters and producing Shakespeare. Put the same monkeys in an identical room with identical typewriters and they'll probably produce gibberish (or at best Twilight).

In any case, I would imagine that after the incident, Starfleet engineers instituted design safeguards to prevent the process from repeating.

Although I would submit that this was the second time the Enterprise computer produced an emergent sentience, the first being Moriarty. And another emergent sentience arose aboard Voyager, namely its EMH.

Question: Even if what Enterprise created was truly unique, it wouldn't stay unique for long. This new life form would most likely seek out ways to create more of itself, and the best method would be to look for other Starfleet vessels and repeat what happened on the Enterprise.

The emergent intelligence needed to use the Enterprise's warp capability to take it to the MacPherson Nebula so it could find the vertion particles it needed to reproduce. It stands to reason that the entity thus created is not capable of independent FTL travel, and would thus be confined to that nebula.

Also, it seems likely that if the intelligence had any foresight underlying the design process for its final form, it would've included the capacity to procreate without reliance on a starship's replicators.

Conjecture: What powers does this new life form have? It was obviously able to control computer systems, but now that it is a separate entity, what would enable it to survive in the universe?

The ability to metabolize random made-up particles-of-the-week that nobody ever heard of before or since? (Seriously, why did they call them "vertions" instead of just going with the established "verterons"?)

 

[ALF]

I loved the jumble of colored straws that represented the sentience of the ship. From a production standpoint, that's just an effective and hilarious and effectively hilarious design.

And The "Big" Lebowski as the conductor. For a "holodeck trap" episode, I think it's the easiest of them all to watch.