Redemption & tachyon detection grid

[Grendelsbayne]

Presumably, Romulan intelligence would already have knowledge of Data, since he is basically one of a kind and represents some pretty advanced and unique technology. How much they would know is hard to say, but based on just his rank and general responsibilities, it doesn't seem strange for them to be able to deduce that he's in charge of the ship given the facts. Ie, here is a command officer with proven ability who is mysteriously not on board the ship he's assigned to, and the ship he is on board is a much smaller vessel with a subordinate role in things - it's not hard to draw 'temporary command' from that. Then, of course, there is the question of just how good the sensors are - transporter sensors can tell you exactly where a lifeform is standing, so if ship-to-ship sensors are just as accurate, then they could easily see that the android is sitting in the captain's chair.

 

[Armored Saint]

Perhaps the Gowron forces had been briefed about the Federation ships present at the battle, then the Duras forces were able to intercep that kind of information.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Didn't they say something about it being too big to go around it and still get to the Duras in time to help?

Maybe the speed they could travel around the disc-shaped detection grid was limited to lower warp speeds because of the 'Phase variance' revealed in The Search.

 

[Marsden]

Speed and distance never hold up to too much scrutiny in Star Trek, in my opinion.


However, an over simplified explanation is that the galaxy is a disc not a sphere. Even though it's around 100,000 light years in diameter but it's about 1,000 light years thick, so not for real, but for purposes of a story, a net of starships could block off a section.

Kind of like log across a highway, yes you can take the back road, but it's about 4 miles out of the way, and it will take an extra 10 minutes. Now extrapolate that to light years and warp drives and it's still a long way around, possibly going through other hostile territory. Hostile like Gorns, Tholians and Breen, a greater risk even though not explicitly mentioned.

 

[JesterFace]

One solution to the tachyon problem would be to just watch part 1 and end it before the cliffhanger, maybe around the moment when Gowron returns Worf's family honor.

 

[Robert Comsol]

Another explanation might be that warp capable ships still rely on some kind of exotic energy (dark matter and/or dark energy) you'll not get above or below the "disc".

Bob

 

[Timo]

A couple of points of interest:

1) Even after Picard orders his forces deployed for the detection grid arrangement, the Romulans keep on considering them a "fleet", as if the odd maneuver never registered. Would the Romulans really fail to comment if the 23 ships dispersed so widely that only one or two would remain in immediate sensor range of the Romulan convoy? Or does this mean that the deployment involved only very short distances?

2) The trap that Picard creates is based on the Excalibur faking warp drive problems. Why would a failing warp drive force a starship to fall back if the grid is stationary? If you don't have warp to take you home for repairs, your reason for falling back cannot be "for repairs"! You would conduct them while doing your grid duty, unless grid duty itself calls for warp. So this might indicate that the grid is at constant movement at warp speeds, either so that it constantly changes shape in a complex warp ballet (but what would be the point?) or so that it tags alongside the Romulans who also move at warp (but everybody on the Romulan side appears to be at a standstill, and supposedly the Feds can't detect the Romulans' whereabouts for certain anyway). Or then this means that in order to be credible, the net absolutely must be capable of extending itself at warp speed at a moment's notice... But falling back still makes no sense in such a case.

3) When the Excalibur does fall back with "warp drive problems", she moves at the same speed as all the "functional" ships on the Okudagram. Then again, her drive was only in the process of failing, not gone yet, so the movement we witness could still represent at least moderate warp rather than impulse. In any case, we never get any warp streaks beyond the E-D windows, or any indication the Sutherland would be at warp, during the normal operations of the grid.

4) O'Brien says that fifteen Romulan ships are detected "spreading out along the border". Indeed, when Data fires his torpedoes, only three are witnessed close to each other. Does the expression "along the border" suggest great astrographical distances, or is O'Brien just emphasizing that the minor shuffling is not taking place across the border?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JesterFace]

That grid thing is so annoyingly poor written that I'm going to use my tactic, only watch part 1 and press stop before Sela shows her face, literally...

Ronald D. Moore, wake up!

 

[Daveros]

It's like that episode of Enterprise where they have to hide in a bunker on the ship from the space storm for three weeks. The big problem with that one is the CGI, they show it's a very long space storm, but it's only just wider than the Enterprise itself, why they couldn't just fly up, or down, for thirty seconds is beyond me and it spoils the premise of the episode.

 

[Vanyel]

Well part of the whole plan was for Gowron's forces to make a massive attack on the Duras' forces, that might have forced the Romulans to take shortest, quickest possible route to help. The net could have been just big enough that even if the Romulans went around they would be too late to help.

Admittedly, saying something along those lines would have cleared up the whole problem.

Sela also made a tactical error in saying the Federation fleet along the Romulan Klingon border could be considered an aggressive act by the Federation. By doing that she committed herself to staying right next to the Federation fleet in order to make her statement hold water.

 

[Last Redshirt]

I had assumed that where they had put it, it was at the shortest and quickest route to wherever the supply convoy was supposed to go. Going 'above' or around the grid would've taken too much time, so running the blockade, as it were, and being detected would've been worth it in the long run. As for that latter statement, I'm not saying that I think that, I'm saying that Sela probably would've reckoned that. She never seemed that good at tactics/strategic movements to me.

 

[Amaris]

Space is really, really big. I don't care if you have a hundred starships creating a net the size of our own solar system, all it takes is a ship moving at warp, for a couple of seconds, to get around it.

 

[Randy H.]

Using current understandings, tachyons always move faster than light. The less energetic the faster they go, the more energetic the slower they go. A tachyon would need infinite energy to go slower than light. They are odd particles.

If we assume that to be true, and also assume that the center of the tachyon net is the Qo'noS system, then here's how the net could have worked:

• The Federation ships were deployed in an area around the Qo'noS system, with Qo'noS in essentially the center
• The ships sent out very low energy tachyon beams toward the other ships, so the tachyons moved much faster than light
• The ships then expanded, contracted, and reshaped the net at warp speed to blanket the area as best they could

This explains why the Romulans couldn't just go around since Qo'noS was at the center; it is consistent with and not contradicted by any dialogue; it works given the faster than light speed of the tachyons; it accounts for the varying distances over time and how ships can move further and closer apart as the story needs; and it explains why Riker's ship's (faked) engine problems were at all relevant.

That only leaves the massively-not-to-scale Okudagram on the Romulan ship. Looked at in 2D the display appears to possibly be a linear barrier. But if the display were actually 3D it could with a little squinting match my suggestion above. The area around Qo'noS would be fully covered with Qo'noS in the middle of an extended octahedron. There would be no need for a perfect sphere at all times, as the Federation ships would want to randomize the net's nodes given the paucity of available ships and potentially for other unknown technical reasons.

It works for me, at any rate! And let's me watch an enjoy an excellent episode.

 

[Ithekro]

I was assuming that Picard's force was in a relatively small point where the Romulan and Klingon Empire touched and that around that area was Federation Space (where there would be a static detection systems to prevent Romulans from entering Federaion space undectected) or other such obstructions to going around the easy way. It is possible that there are other points were the Romulans and Klingon Empire touch, but they might be months away from any reasonable part of the Civil War combat zones. So the Romulans and Duras camp would send ships form this one direction because they could get supplies in days or weeks rather than months or a year from the other side of the border.

Borders could be: the galactic barrier, Federation Space. Cardassian Space. Another power that would not care to find Romulans in their territory. Or perhaps a large stellar body like a Nebula or some other hazard that might at the least give away the Romulan's position to Klingon or Federation sources.

 

[Timo]

The Okudagrams are more damning than they at first look... When the Romulans jam the net, we see the jamming effect spreading across the grid, and then dialogue indicates that the jamming only affects an area mere ten million kilometers around the Sutherland.

Even if the Okudagram is massively nonlinear (all distances are at least logarithmically displayed or worse), the distance from the Sutherland to the Hornet is still less than ten million kilometers, as the jamming effect is shown to extend all the way to this nearby vessel. If the display is anywhere near linear, then the entire grid is only 50 million kilometers across, or a third of an AU.

That's way too small to work even as a cork in an astronomical or astropolitical bottleneck - nothing can create a bottleneck that narrow.

In theory, this net could still surround the planet where Gowron's forces are making their move and Duras' forces await reinforcements. But the battle there would be basically at visual range, yet never gets mentioned in that context. And "falling back to Gamma Eridon" would make zero sense in such circumstances.

I guess the only way this midget net could work is if it kept constantly moving and blocking the path of Romulan intruders whose position has already been otherwise established. But that would only stop one Romulan, be it a ship or a fleet; the Romulans could get their shipments in simply by splitting their convoy.

The other way out is to completely ignore the Okudagram. Or at least claim that even though the net is completely down those 10,000,000 km around Data's ship, this is only a tiny dot on the Okudagram, and the disruption effect we see spreading all the way to the Hornet is less severe than "completely down" and indeed extends across several lightmonths or at least lightweeks.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Locutus of Bored]

How did Sela learn that Data was on that ship? The prelude to the aforementioned scene suggested the Romulans could only observe the movement of the ships but didn't listen to com-traffic.

Well, as Nemesis so helpfully revealed (not), apparently Soong-type androids broadcast a positronic signature that's detectable light years away, which the Romulans possibly knew about depending on how early they recovered B4 (unless Shinzon recovered him independently somehow). So I guess Data was like a big old lighthouse giving away his ship's position every time they were trying to be subtle.

 

[Melakon]

How did Sela learn that Data was on that ship? The prelude to the aforementioned scene suggested the Romulans could only observe the movement of the ships but didn't listen to com-traffic.

Well, as Nemesis so helpfully revealed (not), apparently Soong-type androids broadcast a positronic signature that's detectable light years away, which the Romulans possibly knew about depending on how early they recovered B4 (unless Shinzon recovered him independently somehow). So I guess Data was like a big old lighthouse giving away his ship's position every time they were trying to be subtle.

It's too bad the Enterprise didn't know that whenever Data was lost, missing, or kidnapped. Or whenever they thought they were rid of Lore. Data was in Starfleet over 30 years, and no one ever figured it out.

 

[Timo]

That B4 gave off such a signal doesn't mean that Data would have. All we really learned was that Soongian androids were the only known source for such signals - but that still leaves open the rather likely possibility that the B4 signal was atypically strong. Basically, Worf would be saying "I'm detecting an obvious human heartbeat from, oh, about fifteen lightyears away"... The fact that he is detecting it in the first place is at least as big a mystery as the supposed presence of a heart there.

Yet in a universe where giant human hands can grip entire starships, an android heartbeat that can be heard across lightyears is a mystery waiting for an explanation, but not a surprise as such, and certainly not something the heroes would dismiss as an impossibility.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

Could B4 have been there however many years as part of a long term Romulan trap? Assuming the signal travels at the speed of light. Though why Starfleet happened to pass within that distance at that time....eh.

 

[Nebusj]

That B4 gave off such a signal doesn't mean that Data would have. All we really learned was that Soongian androids were the only known source for such signals - but that still leaves open the rather likely possibility that the B4 signal was atypically strong.

I'm quite willing to believe that B-4's positronic signature was freakishly strong for whatever reason, possibly as part of Shinzon's Needlessly Complicated Trap, possibly just because his shielding was damaged in whatever incident disassembled him. (Though there must be some way to take off a Soong-type android's head without broadcasting it to the whole sector, or else Data's Buried Head would have been found rather quicker.)

 

[Timo]

I'm all for Shinzon having engineered a deliberate "Huh?" moment for Picard - it would serve the villain's interests to keep Picard confused and not to give him time to think. Which is why Shinzon would also pay the locals to harass Picard off the planet. And I don't think it would take that much effort or planning.

More like improvisation: you have been given the keys to your cell, placed in the lead of a Spartacus rebellion, and allowed to take over first Remus and then Romulus. You now have access to all sorts of resources you never dreamed of, including the tools provided for making the rebellion possible, but also loot from the rebellion itself. And lo and behold, the loot includes a Soongian android, either a genuine article or then a cheap Romulan copy (from back when Romulans were interested in copying Starfleet officers). Why not make use of it, when you need some sort of a lure to get Picard to be the closest captain to Romulus when you send out a call for a Federation envoy? You can then build in the double agent functionality and get extra bang for the buck - although I think that spying on Starfleet would have been a functionality already built in to B4, were he a cheap Romulan copy.

Of course, keeping Picard from thinking is not best accomplished by keeping him waiting for seventeen hours...

As for signals in general, I'd think continuity would best be served if it were trivially simple for Romulans to tell what Starfleet ships across the RNZ were doing. After all, Romulans are always laying traps for those.

Timo Saloniemi