I wouldn't sweat minor details like shield strength or transporter range - the UFP fought the Dominion on an even footing regardless. What bothers me is the absence of civilizations that can blow up Earth by snapping their fingers, but aren't yet demigods or gods with inhuman lifestyles and philosophies and a general reluctance to mess in the affairs of lesser species much. Does the ability to blow up planets immediately elevate you to the level where you decide not to? We know of one mechanism that eliminates baddies that are growing dangeously powerful - ascension to noncorporeal existence, as with the Ocampa or the Zalkonians. Neither species was yet out of the comfort zone where their tech is roughly on par with Starfleet's and poses no insurmountable threat. But we only hear of two such ascending species, plus witness a few who have already ascended. Bajorans in all their dozens or hundreds of millennia failed to ascend - or if they did, and became the Prophets, they still left behind some mortals for those millennia. Perhaps ascension is what stopped them from becoming a galactic power, and the ones left behind are in a reservate of some sort, being held back by the ascended for their own safety and comfort (or for the rather sadistic enjoyment of the ascended, as it may be)? We might still need further mechanisms to clear the galaxy of cultures that love war but can skip the tedious step of waging it and proceed directly to winning it... Timo Saloniemi
Right, except for the little fact that during the Romulan and Klingon cold wars, there were "neutral zones" of space, undefined but containing habitable planets, presumably including colony worlds or military bases. Certainly zones of non-interference measuring in the light years. We see that again with the Cardassian Demilitarized Zone. Oh and before thinking the all-powerful federation can beat all the other advanced AQ races, just remember that during the TOS-Movie era, there were a number of skirmishes between the Feds and the Klingons, and that it was only the destruction of the moon Praxis in TUC (or whatever exactly happened) that prevented the klingons from declaring all out war (which would have hurt just as hard as the war with the Dominion) and allowed a peace treaty to finally be signed.
That doesn't wash. There was an episode where they were giving industrial replicators to the Cardassians, and it is mentioned they also gave them to the Bajorans. So, obviously the Prime Directive isn't in play from a technological standpoint.
Maybe the Bajorans somehow learned of warp drive technology from their Cardassian oppressors since the Cardassians obviously did have warp drive, to make it to and from Bajor 5 light years away. I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud. I remember one DS9 ep. (I don't forgot the title) in which Ben and Jake Sisko travel through space on an ancient Bajoran design that involves "solar sails." And we know that solar sails can only travel a fraction of light speed.
And we also know from that same ep (Explorers) that ancient Bajorans did travel faster than light in one of those ships.
But that wasn't the doing of the Bajorans and their technology, it was through a spacial phenomenon that the Bajorans didn't understand. It was more you fall into a river and get swept down stream. So, the Bajorans didn't have FTL. If (hypothetically) the Klingons and the Federation each had a billion people, the Klingons one species and the Federation many, why should that give the Federation an advantage? The Klingons (on display) are a technological, innovative, advanced, curious civilization. Now I think that both the Klingons and the Romulans (and others) are multi-species in fact, but setting that to the side I don't understand your basic point.
How do you know they didn't understand it? The Bajorans explored their own star system and were said to have made it to Cardassia (which we learn is actually true), which implies not only reproduction of the effect, but also maybe even returning home afterwards.
In any case, there's the fact that this travel is but a legend by the time of the episode. If it got forgotten, then either it was purely accidental and unique, or then something so massive happened to the archives and memory of the species that they might just as well have forgotten they had a working warp drive powering a major interstellar fleet. Bajor having solar sails 800 years before "Explorers" doesn't stop them from having conventional warpships 1,000 years before the episode. We still build sails here centuries after the invention of steam power - and often employ sailcraft well separated from the powered sort. What "Explorers" means to the argument is that interstellar contact, of the most basic sort - with a neighboring system - must be considered as not having been a regular thing, and/or something big must be assumed to have happened to Bajor afterwards. We know of at least one big thing that did happen to Bajor. Did the Cardassians perhaps diligently destroy all Bajoran records during the occupation, and invent a false history for the culture? But this would only work if the Bajoran warp being silenced to death was utterly petty, limited to Bajor and Cardassia. Not that much of a limitation, perhaps, if "Cardassia" were this mighty and expansive Union, and if the former subjects remained loyal still at the time of the show, like the Kressari or the Xepolites etc. Bajoran warp might have spanned large distances, but remained unknown to outsiders. Much like Earth warp in the pre-Archer days, I guess. This would work best if Cardassian warp preceded Bajoran, and inether were ancient. Timo Saloniemi
I feel like once you're an important trading hub or in an important position in the quadrant like Bajor is, getting warp would be a piece of cake. I mean they seemed to pay a ton of merchants like Cassidy to run shipping, right? Trek might not be Star Wars level with the amount of ships running around, but there still seems quite a lot of civilian ships out there with warp capability.
The thing is, though, Bajorans flew at warp right after "Emissary"; the very next "Past Prologue" has a resistance hero enter the system in an interstellar scoutship, with the Cardassians in hot pursuit. The ship is identified as "Bajoran" from the get-go, too. So yes, Bajorans having warp after the Cardassians leave is well established - but the likelier idea is that they had it some time before that already. In TNG "Ensign Ro", Orta's "Bajora" group operates a ship that has lost its warp drive at some point; Cardassians mistakenly believe Orta is still flying at warp and therefore can be framed for interstellar terrorism. If Cardassians believe in Bajoran warp during the occupation, we should as well. How does this work with the "trading hub" model? During the occupation, Cardassians would have regulated everything. Also, during and before it, there was no wormhole there; would there have been trade? If not, how did Bajor get warp, and was it a piece of cake - or a hard-won, bitter morsel, stolen from somebody else or developed after millennia of effort, perhaps in secrecy against caste rules that didn't cater for either an Engineer or an Explorer Caste? If Bajor was a trading hub before Cardassians ruined that, the mystery of their earlier contact with their neighbors being mere legend just deepens. Timo Saloniemi