Kironide

[Vandervecken]

In the really ridiculous and bad episode "Plato's Stepchildren," Kirk describes kironide as "a very rare and long-lasting source of great power." I have no idea what that really means, other than that the Feds must have had some experience with it. As a power source? For what? Beats me.


Anyway, seems all you need are a few megadoses of the stuff and you're a powerful telekinetic. Just like that. Ok, it's rare. But it isn't so rare that the Feds aren't acquainted with it before the Enterprise arrives at Platonius. And, hell, couldn't the Platonians now (post-end-of-episode) get uber-rich selling the stuff to anyone who wants it? Even if they don't have the tech to isolate it like McCoy did, they can sell mining/refining rights. Assuming it's mined.

And somebody ought to be working on synthesizing the stuff. Somebody like the Klingon High Council. Or Romulan High Command, or Section 31, or...

 

[Timo]

The obvious way to install a very welcome reset button to this is to claim that kironide only works on the planet Platonius and a handful of other worlds with similar properties.

Its main "power", and perhaps its only one, seems to be telekinesis. Perhaps you need a planet with massive amounts of kironide in the soil so that tiny amounts within your body will interact to create a "levitation field", essentially a tractor beam you project by subtly contracting your kironide-laden muscles. If the soil has too little kironide, then there's no interaction and no levitation, no matter how severely you poison your body with the stuff.

The substance as such might be found everywhere, but its ability to do powerful things would be highly theoretical because nobody would dream of some planets actually having so much of the stuff that the power would macroscopically manifest. Synthesizing a few tons would get you nowhere, because the telekinesis trick would require billions of tons in the soil or bedrock.

OTOH, we could certainly speculate that kironide possesses some fairly conventional "power" similar to, say, radioisotopes, because for some reason our heroes immediately realize the planet is laden with the stuff - a likely characteristic of this substance thus is its tendency to emit some easily recognizable energies.

Then there's the mystery of the power not being cumulative, i.e. every user having a personal "frequency". If the power derives from the interaction of muscular kironide and bedrock kironide, though, it would be fairly simple to assume that multiple users trying to exploit the local bedrock-kironide "field" would just mess up the field: three levitation beams wouldn't combine to a triply strong beam, but would degenerate to something capable of levitating barely a toothpick. It wouldn't be related to "personal frequencies", only to the inability to coordinate, but it would also be easy to see why the Platonians would misunderstand this!

Finally, one wonders if kironide is in any way related to (di)kironium...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vandervecken]

So the whole thing about not being cumulative would really be more like using up bandwidth? As you imply by describing it as a mystery, that odd claim never made sense. Why wouldn't forces be cumulative? A telekinetic push should add up to another as easily as pushes from arms.


I like your explanation, although I'm still a little unsure that Kirk would be so sure in his log that it was a source of great power without some empirical displays of that power not being known to him. He's not the sort to think of something as a source of great power, when only theoretically, known as one.

I have to say I do like this explanation, though, especially because it deals with that strange "not cumulative" claim.

 

[Grant]

A waste of Michael Dunn--what a shame.

 

[Timo]

So the whole thing about not being cumulative would really be more like using up bandwidth?

More like ten people pushing a big round rock and wondering why it doesn't move - when the explanation is simply that the people are blind as bats, and stone deaf, and they all push in different directions as the result. Since they are Platonians, though, they refuse to even consider the idea that they don't know exactly what they are doing.

Probably the powers of kironide originally came as a surprise to the Platonians, too - and since power corrupts, they never really bothered to investigate the details and limitations of their telekinesis, not properly. "Modern" Earth, OTOH, has an excess of abstract thinkers who would dream up very convincing theories about a substance they cannot even study in sufficient quantity. Perhaps convincing enough for Kirk, who does believe in the power of dilithium even though he is unlikely to have Scotty's practical or theoretical knowledge of the substance.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Therin of Andor]

In the really ridiculous and bad episode "Plato's Stepchildren," Kirk describes kironide as "a very rare and long-lasting source of great power." I have no idea what that really means, other than that the Feds must have had some experience with it. As a power source? For what? Beats me.

Perhaps a coincidence, but David Gerrold names the planet of Data's origin as Kiron III in the TNG novelization of "Encounter at Farpoint", as did Andrew Probert's early sketches of Dr Soong's lab. The episode "Datalore", after Gerrold left TNG, named the system canonically as Omicron Theta, and "Silicon Avatar" made it also the name of the planet.

But was it also the origin of kironide, and part of Data's power source?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Imagine a Trek where they used what they learned each episode to the fullest.... telekinetic powers, cure-all transporters (also: young forever), transporter xerox armies, godmode transporters the size of rank pips... makes you wonder if the Q's powers actually might rely on hidden tech.

 

[Timo]

Hiding should not be a problem either, consistency wise. A cursory study of Borg nanotech ought to allow Q to construct these gadgets within his bloodstream at will, and then disband them when no longer needed...

I'm not quite sure whether telekinesis would be all that nifty a superpower. It didn't appear as if the Platonians could deflect phaser beams with it or anything; they simply disarmed Kirk instead, and that wouldn't work against prepared opponents. Firing first would defeat the other instances of physical control, just as nicely as applying telekinetic counter-control would.

Whatever powers Parmen used to "freeze" the systems of the starship and jam her sensors would be more appealing... But that could simply be even stronger telekinesis, gripping key components in some sort of a gravitic vice. And perhaps it takes 2,000 years of exposure and practice, as opposed to the cheap parlor tricks or counter-tricks that our recently exposed, novice heroes utilized to gain their freedom.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vandervecken]

The small applications of tk--or whatever this should really be called--maybe "kironide-activated pressor ability"--would be very useful too. Like stilling someone's heart or heart analogue. Pinching a blood vessel in a brain.

And benign versions of the above--imagine a surgeon with the power, someone well trained in various anatomies and physiologies.

And if you aren't trying to immobilize a ship, but just want to destroy it, how hard would it be to mess up a warp core?