The Buried Age

[rfmcdpei]

Most trek stories made a point in showing that moral values are effective, have practical value; 'Destiny' fails to do so - it shows that power is what matters; without it, all the morals in the universe are useless, won't help you.
The borg were superior to the federation despite having atrocious morals; the federation inferior to the borg despite having 'enlightened values'; and the Caeliar were better than the borg because they were more powerful

What?

The Caeliar saved the Federation (and everyone else) from the Borg because they realized that they had to change in order to survive, that they had to take responsibility for their mistakes and that they had to adapt, become more flexible, in the best human fashion. Without that, as Hernandez said, even if the Borg did not find them in the end they would still be a terrifically vulnerable species. One nova and they would be gone.

Instead, they chose to change for the better. All that the power did was give them the ability to implement their decision.

 

[rfmcdpei]

And I don't think they would necessarily be incompatible in an expanding interstellar civilization. I mean, really, we're talking about a post-industrial society, not an industrial one. Without as much need for people to work for a living, a high birth rate wouldn't necessarily be commensurate with gender inequality and universal education/suffrage. Men and women might both choose to commit more to family life if they didn't need to do the nine-to-five grind to get by.

It's also worth noting that populations, and migrations, are always "lumpy," never uniform. Some subpopulations behave quite differently from other populations. Why would humans on Deneva, self-selected for whatever reason, necessarily fit the same demographic trends of humans on Earth?

 

[rfmcdpei]

The best explanations that can be provided are:
From childhood, humans are indoctrinated in leaving their homes and going somewhere else, starting from scratch, in order to do their duty towards the federation.

There may be underlying cultural biases seeing emigration as an option, but there's not the infrastructure for the kind of totalitarian education you describe.

Humans are just bored with their perfect lives and yearn to go 'into the wilderness' for a more vital life. But why go to Deneva and not a frontier world?

Why do nearly all immigrants to (say) Canada head to the country's half-dozen largest cities, instead of the vast rural expanses? Immigrants head to places where there are economic and other opportunities. In some cases these are frontiers, although even in Earth's history frontier societies--Australia, northeastern China, Argentina, Canada--quickly urbanized. In many more cases these are "mature" developed societies which already offer plenty of opportunties. From its description, Deneva was such a society.

Even so, the enormous number of immigrants to Deneva (over 1 billion in a century) is rather silly.

It's not possible to imply that. Deneva had a total population of a bit more than a billion people. The immigrants who went to Deneva presumably had children, thus bolstering numbers a bit.

Forgive me for going into this at length, but demographics are a major interest of mine and, well, they have to be gotten right. So far I've seen little in the Star Trek novels that contradicts what we know. The whole post-industrial/scarcity economy that the Trekverse enjoys by the 24th century would introduce new patterns.

It is worth noting that the developed countries with the highest net replacement rates are the societies that are the most gender-egalitarian and treat all their members as equals; more traditional societies don't reproduce nearly as well. I can see as a possibility the sort of sustained above-replacement fertility among humans that would provide the impetus for interstellar colonization.

That's just for humans. We have little to no idea what other species go through. We do know, from the Terok Nor trilogy, that the Bajorans' short pregnancy--six months--made it at least possible for Bajorans to have a substantially higher rate of population growth than what the Cardassians considered seemly. Maybe that explains why Bajorans are so visually prominent.

The question of the demographics of Vulcan and Romulan populations, with their very extended lifespans but postponed family formation, is likewise interesting. What schedule do they bear children at? Is the main difference between Vulcans and Romulans a tendency among Romulans to form families on less constrained schedules, perhaps boosting their fertility?

Et cetera.

 

[rfmcdpei]

And all human trek families we saw didn't have more than 1-2 children.

Eyeballing something isn't a very good barometer. I may as well judge, from the environments of the two Toronto neighbourhooods I've lived in, that Portuguese-Canadians form a vast and growing minority. Not so.

To go from 27 million to 2 billion in a century due to immigrants you'll have to make Deneva the immigrant capital of the entire federation.

Rapid population growth, from a million to a billion, while rapid isn't impossible considering the very very large starting populations. Even on Earth, the population of Uruguay grew from 130 thousand in 1796 to almost 4.3 million now--almost 50 times--while Argentina saw its population grow 80 times over in the same time frame.

 

[rfmcdpei]

In 'Articles of the federation'

Articles of the Federation is a great book and has inspired some writers, but it isn't canon, certainly not having been adopted into the novelverse.

 

[rfmcdpei]

I also don't agree that transhumanism would make characters less relatable. There are already plenty of transhuman characters in Trek -- Spock, Data, Deanna, Worf, Odo, Dax, Kes, Seven -- all sorts of characters who have superhuman abilities or attributes. Not to mention comic-book superheroes, who are almost all transhuman or nonhuman yet still relatable. Then there's something like Andromeda, where all the human characters except one (Harper) were genetically enhanced, and even Harper had a built-in data port that made him a cyborg. So the whole cast was transhuman, and it didn't break the makeup budget (and believe me, that show had a tiny budget).

In my occasional fantasies, I wondered how a classically transhuman society--a certain amount of eugenic genetic editing, a certain amount of cybernetic implants, a lot of technophilia--might relate, with the dynamics between its members and with the wider galaxy.

There's no reason, I agreed with a friend last night, to think that transhuman characters or people would be unrelatable; it'd be at least as easy to argue that, by giving people more ways in which to interact (subspace livelinks for everyone, say), it could intensify individualism.

(How would these people have reacted to the Borg, I wonder? Separate issue.)

Anyway, the human population of the Federation is slowly becoming transhuman. Even without genetic engineering, or even without technological upgrading, as a poster noted intermarriage with other species like the Vulcans and the Betazoids has created rather remarkable inflows of genes into the human gene pool. The ratio of the number of telepaths of substantially human descent on 24th century Earth as opposed to the number of telepaths of pre-contact 20th century Earth must be spectacularly high.

 

[JarodRussell]

I also don't agree that transhumanism would make characters less relatable. There are already plenty of transhuman characters in Trek -- Spock, Data, Deanna, Worf, Odo, Dax, Kes, Seven -- all sorts of characters who have superhuman abilities or attributes. Not to mention comic-book superheroes, who are almost all transhuman or nonhuman yet still relatable. Then there's something like Andromeda, where all the human characters except one (Harper) were genetically enhanced, and even Harper had a built-in data port that made him a cyborg. So the whole cast was transhuman, and it didn't break the makeup budget (and believe me, that show had a tiny budget).

In my occasional fantasies, I wondered how a classically transhuman society--a certain amount of eugenic genetic editing, a certain amount of cybernetic implants, a lot of technophilia--might relate, with the dynamics between its members and with the wider galaxy.

There's no reason, I agreed with a friend last night, to think that transhuman characters or people would be unrelatable; it'd be at least as easy to argue that, by giving people more ways in which to interact (subspace livelinks for everyone, say), it could intensify individualism.

(How would these people have reacted to the Borg, I wonder? Separate issue.)

Anyway, the human population of the Federation is slowly becoming transhuman. Even without genetic engineering, or even without technological upgrading, as a poster noted intermarriage with other species like the Vulcans and the Betazoids has created rather remarkable inflows of genes into the human gene pool. The ratio of the number of telepaths of substantially human descent on 24th century Earth as opposed to the number of telepaths of pre-contact 20th century Earth must be spectacularly high.

If you go by Roddenberry's TMP novel, humanity was transhuman by the 23rd century. And of all people he should know.

 

[Dayton Ward]

In 'Articles of the federation'

Articles of the Federation is a great book and has inspired some writers, but it isn't canon, certainly not having been adopted into the novelverse.

None of the books are canon.

However, Articles of the Federation is indeed part of the current, "primary," mostly-consistent-with-the-occasional-goof-here-and-there "novelverse."

 

[Christopher]

^Yep, and the characters and concepts introduced in A Time for War, A Time for Peace and Articles of the Federation have been referenced in multiple other novel-continuity works, including Greater Than the Sum, the Destiny trilogy, and A Singular Destiny, and don't be surprised if they show up in my upcoming Star Trek DTI novel as well.

 

[Rosalind]

rfmcdpei, posting 3+ times in a roll is considered spamming on this board. In future, please use the "edit" button if you have something more to say, or use the "multiquote" button to reply to several post in one go.

 

[William Leisner]

posting 3+ times in a roll is considered spamming on this board.

Mmmmmm... spam on a roll....

 

[TerraUnam]

I also didn't say anything about transhumanism, that was a misattribution. The quote came from ProtoAvatar.

Be that as it may, Titan does have Ensign Torvig, a Choblik, who is a cybernetic/organic being. Chris Bennett stated in Orions Hounds that the Choblik partially pass on their cybernetics through their sperm/eggs.

It's all classically transhuman.

Torvig was scared stiff of the Borg in Destiny as he couldn't stand losing control of his cybernetics which made him what he was and made life worth living for him.

 

[thribs]

A very enjoyable read. It was fun seeing the different personalities of Picard; from the social easy going Picard we see at the beginning on the Stargazer (and later on in the movies), to the more strict, more reserved person we see in the TV series. We even get to see his more obsessed side that we see also in First Contact.
Ariel was a interesting character. I know he gave a description to what she looks like but I kept imagining her to look like the princess from Valerian.
So I take it she ascended to a “B” level being? She’s got a way to go before she’s at “Q” level.
Seemed rather cruel of Picard to force her to ascend. I’ve watched a lot of Stargate to know that it’s not worth it. Too many rules. I also though she did it rather easily. Aren’t you supposed to mediate to get your EEG reading between 0.1 to 0.9 Hz in order to do it? She seemed far too active to get that.
Christopher L. Bennett is really knocking these Star Trek novels out of the park in the last 10 years. The way he seamlessly takes random threads in the continuity and combines them together to make a even better story is really impressive. Sure he does have a lot of sexual imaginary in the majority of his Trek books but that doesn't bother me. Sex is part of everyone's life and it's only natural it would come up.

This book also highlighted another idiotic thing from that Space Show Discovery. When Picard lost the Stargazer, he was put on trial to question why he didn’t destroy it before abandoning it. In the show, they just left the Shenzhou and did nothing to retrieve or destroy it for 6 months. So much so that “Klingons” were allowed to board it and steal Starfleet components. It’s not like they didn’t know where it was. I don’t see someone who understands Star Trek to put in the script.

 

[Christopher]

^IIRC, Starfleet couldn't salvage the ships from the Battle of the Binary Stars because that system was in Klingon-held territory, so they couldn't safely get to it.

Picard didn't force Giriaenn to do anything. He convinced her that it was time to do something she should've done long ago.


Anyway, I just skimmed through this thread to refresh my memory of it, and it's weird how a thread titled "The Buried Age" ended up mostly being arguments about plot minutiae in Destiny.

 

[thribs]

^IIRC, Starfleet couldn't salvage the ships from the Battle of the Binary Stars because that system was in Klingon-held territory, so they couldn't safely get to it.

Even still you would think they would risk it to either scrap or retrieve the ship. it wasn't even that badly damaged. Did they even try to destroy it? I can't remember.
Thank god they didn't give those idiots a Connie. That would have been a disaster.

 

[Tuskin38]

Even still you would think they would risk it to either scrap or retrieve the ship. it wasn't even that badly damaged.

It would have been too risky. Especially since they didn't have the cloaking frequency yet.

The ship was pretty old too.
Plus the middle of a war is bit different from a one time battle.
The show is also ~100 years before this book, it may not have been Starfleet policy yet.

I don’t see someone who understands Star Trek to put in the script.

If you fired every Star Trek writer who did something like this, you wouldn't have any writers. Star Trek Discovery isn't the only show to probably done something like this. Stop treating it like it's in a vacuum.

 

[thribs]

The ship was pretty old too.

True but there might be valuable information onboard that could be dangerous if the Klingons got hold of it.
I wonder if that lead to the prefix codes. Allowing other vessels to set the self destruct by remote.

 

[Sci]

True but there might be valuable information onboard that could be dangerous if the Klingons got hold of it.
I wonder if that lead to the prefix codes. Allowing other vessels to set the self destruct by remote.

Is there any reason to think 2250s Federation starships even had prefix codes?

 

[Tuskin38]

I always thought the prefix code was invented for the very purpose Kirk used it for in WoK.

Though that seems pretty dangerous if a rogue captain/admiral were to use them.

 

[thribs]

Is there any reason to think 2250s Federation starships even had prefix codes?

No but examples like this could have lead to their invention.

I always thought the prefix code was invented for the very purpose Kirk used it for in WoK.

Though that seems pretty dangerous if a rogue captain/admiral were to use them.

The prefix codes allow you access a other ship's computer remotely. From there it should be easy enough to activate the self destruct if you had enough people with the authorization codes.