Origin of Armus - Exiled Founder?

[Timo]

What are you talking about? It's you who is insisting that Armus is being more magical than anybody else, and therefore somehow so special he can't be a Founder.

On the other hand, making objects move is a feat independent of whether the object doing the moving is here or there. Moving through vacuum without visible means is physically identical to making objects move through vacuum without visible means. (Replace vacuum with air and you get nuances, i.e. wings work in air but not in space, but the two things remain conceptually quite identical.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[NrobbieC]

What are you talking about? It's you who is insisting that Armus is being more magical than anybody else, and therefore somehow so special he can't be a Founder.

"more magical than anybody else"

Q, Kes, those Vulcan priests, that Vorta woman...telekinesis is hardly unique or anything special or even magical in Star Trek.

Short of being a pile of goo there's no similarity between Armus and the Founders. You're the one who insists things are magical because they aren't 100% realistic/explainable.

I'm done talking to you, you're giving me a headache.

 

[Timo]

telekinesis is hardly unique or anything special or even magical in Star Trek.

Which is the entire point. It doesn't make Armus special.

You're the one who insists things are magical because they aren't 100% realistic/explainable.

Nope. You just don't grasp either basic physics or, apparently, English.

I'm done talking to you, you're giving me a headache.

Glad to be of service.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[chrinFinity]

Timo, it seems NrobbieC just doesn't grok newtonian physics.

One cannot swim in nothingness. One can only project against other objects to generate motion (or blast some kind of exhaust to generate thrust). Anything we've seen move in that "swimming" way is generating force somehow, or it wouldn't be able to move through space.

And like it or not, Laas can generate his own warp field. We have seen it.

 

[Timo]

...To nitpick, Laas only appeared to fly at impulse. (Although this doesn't mean he couldn't have flown at warp, or that flying at impulse does not involve generating warp fields.)

And there's no magic to it if one insists that magic is the unexplained and then proceeds to explain it. But there's no magic to telekinesis that way, either: it's all done with tractor beams or quadropumatron matrices or lots of quagga lymph extract. Just like flying at impulse.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tiberius]

Well, at impulse, Bajor is a long way from anywhere.

Unless he caught a ride on a ship and then jumped out in mid-space, Laas could fly at warp.

 

[chrinFinity]

I agree, it is terribly unlikely Laas couldn't travel FTL. I agree we never "saw" it, but to me it was pretty obviously implied.

I would suggest that "swimming" creatures in space are probably adjusting their bodies in order to alter the field geometry of naturally generated warp fields that allow them to move through space, and anything that can traverse interstellar distances is either capable of FTL or incredibly patient and long lived. I tend to think once you can generate a warp field, FTL is not much harder than speeds equivalent to impulse.

 

[Timo]

Well, at impulse, Bajor is a long way from anywhere.

But we have no reason to think Laas would have been in a hurry.

(Or that he wouldn't have been at Bajor to begin with! But that's a different issue.)

I mean, we know too little about how the Hundred were deployed. Odo was supposedly discovered in the form of an infant incapable of anything much - but he "cheated" by falling through the wormhole, apparently before reaching even the first of the worlds he was sent to study. Perhaps Laas was supposed to evolve the ability to proper himself through space all by himself, while drifting. That would have taken some time (Odo got help/stimulus from Dr. Mora there), but Laas could have started making better progress thereafter.

But it is also possible that Laas (and Odo) had drifted in the infantile form for hundreds of thousands of years, at sublight speeds, since we get no clear timetable of when the Hundred were deployed (the closest we get is Odo saying "centuries ago" in "The Begotten", but that can be simply read as "long ago" in English). Or Laas and Odo were deployed by using automated warp-capable starships, and the one carrying Odo did not reveal its existence to the Bajorans.

Unless he caught a ride on a ship and then jumped out in mid-space, Laas could fly at warp.

I'd think that's exactly what he would do. He was famished for experiences. He'd probably avoid flying through empty space if he could, and would instead hitchhike on various interesting ways of transport. He would of course also try out spaceflight at least once for the thrill, but he wouldn't necessarily wish to adopt that as his mode of traveling.

Timo Saloniemi