How big are the other major powers in the Alpha Quadrant?

[Guy Gardener]

All quadrant boundries are arbritary anyway. Rather than split it in a grid like "+", they could have split it into grid like "X" and got the same distinctions.

The map in my Encyclopedia has the aq/bq border run straight through Earth.

Exact Time, GMT was needed by the British explorers to work out Longitude, and therefore cartography. A dinky village in Britain globally determined how maps were made.

If Humans charted the galaxy and made the maps the Humans used by the Federation, then of course Earth or the star it circles would be a concerning point in galactic astronavigation. Humans didn't. According to Enterprise, Humans got their maps from the Vulcans. Vulcan maps would centre on Vulcan, or at least Vulcan with respect to the centre of the galaxy.



As Earth became the seat of the Federation, and the Humans Joined the Federation, and the Vulcans joined the Federation, the star charts would be rewriten to reflect that shift in political power, which again would leave Earth bisected by the aq/bq border just like in my 22nd birthday present.

However...

The Universal Translator.

Everyone still uses their own maps, and the Universal Translator, makes everyone elses maps look like every one elseelses maps because everybugger is the same level of important.

 

[MacLeod]

^Yes. My point was that Voyager should have been able to go around it. Several months has to be worth it not risking their telepaths... unless the Devore has neighbors much worse than them

At worst it would have been a couple of weeks not months after all 20ly is what 5 days travel at warp speed.

 

[Timo]

Well, the BoT Map also called Remus "Romii" and that story implied the Romulan Empire was ONLY their Home system and nothing else. So we have to assume things changed from the original idea.

The map itself does neither of those things. There's just a place called Romii (or perhaps Rom II?) there. And then a great many dots that supposedly are stars (as planets would be dots arranged on concentric ellipses!), suggesting a multi-star volume where the two sympathetic antagonists could have fought their "many campaigns" together despite not being allowed to leave Romulan space. Although of course with them being Romulans, it's also possible they fought other Romulans, or were old enough to have fought the Earthlings...

Basically all the onscreen maps of the RNZ show two volumes of space separated by a monotonically curving thin line; some show a chain of outposts on one side ("BoT") or both (Senate mosaic); and most have "background" stars there that probably don't lie inside the Romulan volume despite being on that side of the Zone (in some Okudagrams, these background stars are also shown moving, supposedly due to parallax). Just about any and every theory of the RNZ can be argued to meet these factoids, ranging from a single-system eggshell to a wavy plane that divides the entire universe in two halves, "ours" and "theirs". But both these extremities would seem to ill fit the actual behavior of the Romulans, who are never overconfident in their power nor depressed by their gross inferiority.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JRoss]

Cardassians always have been and always will be a military joke. One Nebula-class ship cut through them like a hot knife through butter. They've never actually won against a challenging opponent. Admiral Nechayev's concern about "millions of casualties" on both sides of a hypothetical Federation/Klingon war can only be explained by the fact that Cardassians murder civilians (per Garak's comment about there being no such thing as a war crime).

 

[Anwar]

The map itself does neither of those things. There's just a place called Romii (or perhaps Rom II?) there. And then a great many dots that supposedly are stars (as planets would be dots arranged on concentric ellipses!), suggesting a multi-star volume where the two sympathetic antagonists could have fought their "many campaigns" together despite not being allowed to leave Romulan space. Although of course with them being Romulans, it's also possible they fought other Romulans, or were old enough to have fought the Earthlings...

Thing is, Kirk himself said that the Neutral Zone was to separate Romulus and Remus from the rest of the Galaxy. So "Romulan Space" was merely meant to be their own Solar System and nothing else.

 

[Timo]

That's not something indicated on the map, though. And the episode dialogue contradicted itself in suggesting that the Romulans were still fighting space wars despite the existence of the RNZ.

It's quite simple to interpret Kirk differently and more figuratively there, then - I'm not even convinced that the original writer intent would have been for the Romulans to be that puny.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

Cardassians always have been and always will be a military joke. One Nebula-class ship cut through them like a hot knife through butter.

Maxwell fought and destroyed a single warship, his "hot knife through butter" consisted primarily of cargo ships.

If the Cardassians were that much of a push over, why did the Dominion want them for allies? Why were the Cardassians able to force the Federation into negotiating a treaty?

.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Old Movie.

The Mouse that Roared.

The plan was...

Trick America into accepting declaration of war.

Instantly surrender.

Receive billions in financial aid to rebuild from America.



Unfortunately, Peter Sellers and William Hartnell cocked it up and won the war against America before they could surrender.

 

[Timo]

...why did the Dominion want them for allies?

Location, location, location. It's not as if they could get the Bajorans, so they took the second best.

And they indeed often seem to take allies (there being no chance of refusing) rather than conquer or destroy outright. After all, their intent is to rule from the shadows afterwards...

Why were the Cardassians able to force the Federation into negotiating a treaty?

Who says they did the forcing?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Anwar]

That's not something indicated on the map, though. And the episode dialogue contradicted itself in suggesting that the Romulans were still fighting space wars despite the existence of the RNZ.

It's quite simple to interpret Kirk differently and more figuratively there, then - I'm not even convinced that the original writer intent would have been for the Romulans to be that puny.

Timo Saloniemi

It wouldn't surprise me if the original writer was using the Kzinti for inspiration, since they're in the same situation (isolated to their home system) in Larry Niven's books.

 

[JRoss]

Maxwell fought and destroyed a single warship, his "hot knife through butter" consisted primarily of cargo ships.

If the Cardassians were that much of a push over, why did the Dominion want them for allies? Why were the Cardassians able to force the Federation into negotiating a treaty?

.

You are right about the single warship, but the Cardassians didn't seem to have the resources to stop him. They wouldn't have been asking for help.

The Dominion wanted a beachhead. With Cardassia's territory they can set up white-processing facilities, shipyards and more without having to conquer anyone.

 

[T'Girl]

Why were the Cardassians able to force the Federation into negotiating a treaty?

Who says they did the forcing?

Okay, there is the fact that the Cardassian got anything at all in the way of territory, star systems, and planets at the conclusion of the treaty negotiations. If the Federation were capable of casually bulldozing the best the Cardassian fleet had to offer, this wouldn't have happen, the Cardassians would have been simply excluded from the disputed territory by way of lack of access.

Starfleet simply wouldn't have let them in.

 

[Timo]

I don't see how we could argue that Cardassia got anything at all. Their only known possession, Bajor, is their next-door neighbor - and as of "Emissary" already, it sits in the middle of neutral space! If anything, the UFP conquered half of the Cardassian Union (the half on the Bajoran side), and then set those worlds free, little figuring (or caring) that by "Emissary", they'd all be pro-Cardassian again anyway.

OTOH, why would the UFP decide to act as thieves and villains, taking planets away from Cardassia? The border negotiated for "Journey's End" might represent the minimum level of theft they'd stoop to. Of course the territory would be the more "disputed", the more the UFP grabbed, as its rightful original owners would have a stronger claim.

I mean, seriously, what alternative scenario are you proposing for the implied hands-down UFP victory? That Cardassians be stripped of all their possessions, and then of their gold fillings, and cremated? A definition of victory popular in the 20th century, but the UFP supposedly looks down on those savage ancestors...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JRoss]

As per Timo. This attitude would likely also prevent vengeful Cardassians from warping to lightly defended colonies and vaporizing the inhabitants.

 

[Timo]

That the Cardassians even dared consider the re-escalation seen in "The Wounded", culminating in the attempted attack in "Chain of Command", speaks of a rather desperate wish to expand. Odds are against the UFP having been the principal aggressor in the old war if this is what they were facing.

Yet the UFP, too, is expanding - possibly even against its own wish. It was rampant colonization that caused all the postwar problems, and may have been an issue in the first half of the century already, creating soft targets like Setlik III for Cardassian "counterattacks". The treaty of "Journey's End" would appear to make UFP the winner against two enemies: Cardassians, and UFP colonists!

One wonders - would Central Command have had enough clout to keep up the anti-UFP activities in the DMZ if not for the discovery of the wormhole and the sudden military importance of this backwater region that includes the Cardassian Union?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

The map itself does neither of those things.

Spock: " Referring to the map on your screens, you will note beyond the moving position of our vessel, a line of Earth outpost stations ..."
Something that the map does show is the Enterprise at maximum speed is basically crawling along the line of outposts towards outpost four.

Sulu: "Our speed is now maximum, sir."
Stiles: "... eight minutes from Outpost four at this velocity, sir."
If the maximum speed spoken of in the episode is warp eight (and using the old cube the warp factor) the Enterprise is going to travel nearly 45.8 billion miles in eight minutes.

That's seventeen times the current distance to the planet Neptune (2.7 billion miles).

Going by this, a squares is 6.5 billion miles, this is also about the width of TNZ. Distance between outpost four and Romulus is 36.8 billion miles.

.

 

[Timo]

If the maximum speed spoken of in the episode is warp eight (and using the old cube the warp factor) the Enterprise is going to travel nearly 45.8 billion miles in eight minutes.

...Unless the ship suffers from the Paradise Syndrome, due to being so close to the Romulan homestar and essentially in the outskirts of the single Romulan star system.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Salvek]

Really The Romulan Star Empire is one system? First waged a war with the Federation, than they have fought The Klingon Empire, been blood enemies with the Klingon Empire for 75 years-So combat over decades, yet the Klingons never just smashed these 2 worlds, than were a key factor in the Dominion War-considered a threat by the Dominion prior to the war.
just a single system? Sorry never heard of this theory before.

 

[Timo]

It's not a "theory" - it is the intent behind the original appearance of the Romulans. Those guys never fought the Federation, or the Klingons. They only ever fought Earth, a hundred years before Kirk.

Whether we could somehow integrate this original writer intent into the later portrayal of the Romulans is an interesting exercise as such. But there's no real reason to think we should. Writer intent is among the least durable elements in Star Trek, and among the least relevant, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[FormerLurker]

Looking at that map, writer intent went out the window once the map showed up on the screen. There's no way that border surrounds a single star system. If each square is 6.5 billion miles, the map isn't to scale to begin with, and Romii, or Rom II (as I like to think of it) is either there merely representatively, or is a second star system. Possibly the first the Romulans would have taken over in their spread across their territory.