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Genesis Torpedo

Johnny7oak

Lieutenant Commander
Red Shirt
"There better not be one microbe or the show is off" - Carol Marcus

Presumably the torpedo would be not only Carol and David Marcus's love for the developing worlds, but also a hint that the life would disrupt the planed reaction? Perhaps a foreshadowing for star trek 3?
 
"There better not be one microbe or the show is off" - Carol Marcus

Presumably the torpedo would be not only Carol and David Marcus's love for the developing worlds, but also a hint that the life would disrupt the planed reaction? Perhaps a foreshadowing for star trek 3?
Yeah, she's adamant it needs to be a lifeless planetoid, so the assumption must be that she knows any existing life will throw off the calibration of the Genesis matrix. There must be further requirements, otherwise it wouldn't have taken Reliant long to find a suitable chunk of rock. To be any use, it would need to be the Goldilocks zone around a suitable star. It seems in Star Trek, most of those planets have life already.
 
I always took it as an ethical matter -- they didn't want Genesis to destroy anything that might evolve over time -- rather than a concern over disrupting the Genesis Effect.

And in III, wasn't it established that Genesis was unstable due to the use of protomatter in its matrix and not because of any living organisms caught in the explosion?
 
What about those eel things on the photon tubes surface ('these were microbes on the tubes surface we mustve shot them here from Enterprise') those things disturbed me almost as much as the Ceti eels (no doubt included to give III the yuk factor II had) even David's description of them was icky ('they were fruitful and multiplied'). remember in 84 I initially thought they were something to do with Spock dead body (his mutated blood seeping out the photon tube or something hideous)
 
I always took it as an ethical matter -- they didn't want Genesis to destroy anything that might evolve over time -- rather than a concern over disrupting the Genesis Effect.

That's the way I always understood it, too. I'm sure the Federation explicitly stipulated it.

However, it's possible she also wanted to make sure to have a controlled experiment where no other variables could affect the outcome, such as pre-existing organisms.
 
That's the way I always understood it, too. I'm sure the Federation explicitly stipulated it.

However, it's possible she also wanted to make sure to have a controlled experiment where no other variables could affect the outcome, such as pre-existing organisms.

While I suppose that's at least plausible, it doesn't seem probable given what we know of Genesis. Carol Marcus described it as "a process where by molecular structure is reorganized at the subatomic level" (link). Given that, I'd find it hard to believe a preexisting* microbe wouldn't just be broken apart into its constituent particles -- along with everything else -- and reorganized according to the program.

* I say preexisting since, as we saw with the microbes on Spock's photon tube (and, indeed, Spock himself), introducing life after the initial effect is applied can have unpredictable results... But I'd still wager that the last remnants of the Genesis Effect affected the newly introduced living matter rather than that matter polluting the entire matrix and destabilizing all the preceding work.
 
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The Genesis effect had mostly completed its work by the time Spock's torpedo landed. There was residual, background radiation left over, which must have been what rejuvenated Spock and the microbes. That background radiation would be much less powerful than the full force of the blast.
 
"There better not be one microbe or the show is off" - Carol Marcus

Presumably the torpedo would be not only Carol and David Marcus's love for the developing worlds, but also a hint that the life would disrupt the planed reaction? Perhaps a foreshadowing for star trek 3?

That's not what I got out of that line. I interpreted it that they didn't want to take a chance that there was any life on the old world that they'd be inadvertently killing to create the new one. Not that that life would disrupt the reaction.

And anyway, David already gave the reason why Genesis didn't work: protomatter.
 
And anyway, David already gave the reason why Genesis didn't work: protomatter.

Possibly.

Although it is also possible that the reason Genesis failed, as we saw it, was because it was used in a nebula. Perhaps if it was deployed on a lifeless planet, as intended, it would have worked. There's really no way to know.
 
Possibly.

Although it is also possible that the reason Genesis failed, as we saw it, was because it was used in a nebula. Perhaps if it was deployed on a lifeless planet, as intended, it would have worked. There's really no way to know.

Actually, that would have been my preferred reasoning behind why the planet was unstable. I mean, that would have been a perfectly plausible explanation. But the writers apparently felt that David needed to have done something wrong so that he could act all guilty about Genesis not working.
 
Similar to what some of said here, I don't think that the quote relates to a fear that organic material would hinder the stability of the Genesis matrix; at the same time, I also don't believe that the quote specifically refers to wanting to avoid destroying life that may already be on the planet (though I am sure that that is a paramount concern and something they would want to avoid it in the event as ethical scientists.).

Instead, I took the quote to mean something a bit different. Remember, this is a scientific experiment, and it is also meant to be a proof of concept to show that the genesis device actually works. Scientific experiments are conducted in very controlled situations – not only to avoid some unforeseen variable affecting the stability of the outcome, but also so that, the scientist can defend the results – especially favorable ones – as not being attributable to some external or uncontrolled variable or contaminant.

And what is Genesis, after all – it is "life from lifelessness." As such, in order to prove that the device actually worked and pass rigorous scientific review, they had to be able to demonstrate that the experiment of creating life from lifelessness was conducted in setting where there was absolutely no life. Had there been even more microbe on the test site, their results would always be subject to future attack on grounds that it didn't really create life, it just took existing life and accelerated it, mutated it, etc. – obviously, much less useful in transforming a truly dead world.

M
 
Actually, that would have been my preferred reasoning behind why the planet was unstable. I mean, that would have been a perfectly plausible explanation. But the writers apparently felt that David needed to have done something wrong so that he could act all guilty about Genesis not working.
There's that and they probably didn't want the Federation to actually have such supertechnology. It was a good call to make it unworkable.
 
^ I think that genie was already out of the bottle, @Longinus . I mean, terraforming planetoids is cool and useful, but I don't think the ability to do so quickly and cheaply would make the Federation any more of a superpower than it already was at that time (or, indeed, would become by TNG's era). The real superpower of Genesis is in its potential as a weapon -- which was Dr. McCoy's observation from the get-go -- and in this capacity, it absolutely works.

The only reason it proved not to be an advantageous technology is because the Federation -- excepting Section 31, which hadn't been conceived yet -- isn't inclined toward weapons of mass destruction. So its ultimate failure as a terraforming device sealed its fate.

As an off-topic aside, I wonder how the engagements at Wolf 359 and the Typhon Sector might have gone if Section 31 (which, I know, still had not yet been conceived) had kept Genesis for a rainy day. Would the Borg have been able to survive the Genesis Effect if a torpedo detonated on their hull?
 
I always took it as an ethical matter -- they didn't want Genesis to destroy anything that might evolve over time -- rather than a concern over disrupting the Genesis Effect.

And in III, wasn't it established that Genesis was unstable due to the use of protomatter in its matrix and not because of any living organisms caught in the explosion?


Well I believe Saavik's line was something along the lines of

Protomatter. An unstable substance which every ethical scientist in the galaxy has denounced as dangerously unpredictable.

A number of factors to consider

1.>Just because it has been unpredctable in the past doesn't hold true for the future as someone could work out a way to overcome it's unpredictablity. i.e David Marcus not saying he had just that it is possible

2.>The Genesis device wasn't used as it was meant to be, so the results or rather the instability in the Genesis planet doesn't mean that it wouldn't have worked had it been used correctly.

3.>Around 80 years later, protomatter was used to help reginite a dead star, which appeared to have worked.
 
I'm with mkstewartesq here. The Marcuses worried about eliminating variables.

Life in Trek is not sacred. It's everywhere, it's dime-in-a-dozen, and nobody gives a shit. But if there did exist a policy of preserving life, even if it were just a personal policy of the Marcuses, then proceeding with that experiment in the absence of microbes would be just as much a violation of this policy as proceeding in the presence of microbes. After all, the planet can support life, whether there's some there now or not: by Genesis-bombing it, the Marcuses will be destroying the planet's potential to evolve life later.

The Marcuses clearly don't give a damn about natural evolution, least of all some fictional, potential sort. They want to hold the reins themselves. That's what Genesis is all about!

Timo Saloniemi
 
Exactly. By definition, Genesis needs to be used on a planet which could potentially support life, or once did. Genesis doesn't create a star or magically make it precisely the right distance from the sun to sustain life, so therefore the planet must be in that life-supporting belt in the first place. In the Star Trek universe, that means it's almost certain to have lifeforms already, or else Reliant wouldn't have taken so long to find a test planet. If it was just a matter of finding a dead lump of rock, that shouldn't take long.

Worth bearing in mind that most of what we know comes from Carol's bidding presentation, when Genesis was purely theoretical. It's possible as things developed practically, past stage two, the requirements of stage three altered.
 
There were a couple of wonderful lines added in the novelization that clarified this is an ethical issue when Terrell tells Marcus that they can transplant any microbes detected. Not exact, but something like this:

Marcus: "And what if someone had transplanted us when we were just microbes?"
Terrell: "Maybe someone did."
 
Also, the TSFS novelization mentions that the Genesis device did, in fact, create a star out of the remnants of the Mutara Nebula, in addition to the planet -- indeed, it's mentioned that this protocol was what largely contributed to the Genesis planet's eventual disintegration.

Basically, according to the novel, there were two different pre-programmed protocols in the device -- the first, used when the detonation-site occurs close enough to a pre-existing star (i.e., no star needed), with substantially more resources directed into the formation of the actual planet itself.

The second protocol was the one seen in the film, with the Reliant detonating too far away from a sun for a potential Genesis planet to be habitable; therefore, the parallel star-formation matrix was also activated by the Genesis device at detonation, repurposing nearby matter formerly belonging to the Mutara Nebula (and the former starship and its crew).

However, in the novel Saavik theorizes that because this second protocol diverted so many resources into stellar-accretion, the Genesis planet itself got shortchanged slightly, contributing to its instability and abruptly-shortened lifespan. She says something to the effect that, had the Reliant exploded close enough to a pre-existing star, the Genesis planet likely never would have disintegrated.
 
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I always took it as an ethical matter -- they didn't want Genesis to destroy anything that might evolve over time -- rather than a concern over disrupting the Genesis Effect.

Yep.

McCoy: Suppose, what if this thing were used where life already exists?
Spock: It would destroy such life in favor of its new matrix.

And in III, wasn't it established that Genesis was unstable due to the use of protomatter in its matrix and not because of any living organisms caught in the explosion?

Yes. And that explanation unnecessarily made David Marcus look unethical, IMO.

Kor
 
What struck me about the Genesis device is that it's hardly much bigger than a set of golf clubs.

Talk about carrying around a portable planet and a star.
 
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