The Great Power Geopolitics of the 2390s

[Arpy]

Given everyone including Picard uses Holograms liberally even within a society that is hostile to AI - clearly either that movement failed or modern holograms have better safeguards to prevent them becoming sentient (although software might make it difficult to tell the difference).

It's curious that the Synths were all dismantled after the attack on Mars. The holograms, like the one at the Archives, sure; they don't appear sentient. But the Synths seemed to be modeled after Data... Were they, say, half-sentient? Could the government dismantle thousands of sentient or partly-sentient artificial lifeforms?

 

[FederationHistorian]

The Orions seem more like mobsters than belligerents. But the Talarians, Sheliak, Jarada...Tamarians, Vissians, others?

I think in the case of the Orion’s, it’s the opportunity to expand their criminal syndicate. Basically, they have the opportunity to hire many displaced Romulans into their ranks who are either looking for work or a new purpose in life, and can expand the black market in the process.

The Sheliak would be an interesting one for sure.

 

[Arpy]

I think in the case of the Orion’s, it’s the opportunity to expand their criminal syndicate. Basically, they have the opportunity to hire many displaced Romulans into their ranks who are either looking for work or a new purpose in life, and can expand the black market in the process.

The Sheliak would be an interesting one for sure.

It's been a while since we saw them last, and everyone's borders may have expanded closer to each other still.

900 million Romulans died in the supernova, then the dissolution of the Star Empire? That could mean a lot of Romulans scattered about, "the alien trash of the galaxy." Or not. It's interesting that PIC is now the New Romulan Trek show and DSC was the New Klingon one? Maybe the Section 31 one will have a heavy familiar Trek alien presence too?

I don't mean to be dismissive of the Orions. They, like, the Ferengi, might be hugely important to interstellar politics, whether or not that means war, snore, after war.

This is a bit fan-fic-y...but I wonder if the Gorn Hegemony is a thing again because they were previously conquered by (or were somehow members of) the Romulan Star Empire, but now with its dissolution are once again more active players? Although, I think they're just a favorite of Chabon or one of the other PTB.

 

[dinzy]

is it still geopolitics, when we're talking about a semigalactic federation of planets?

The writers really need to coin the appropriate term for this. I tried to google for a minute and gave up. Geo stands for geography so what is the analog in the galaxy? I am sure they would have something similar and probably have classes on it. I.e. planet X is located in this sector next to planets T, U, V, W; contains a,b,c,d resources in abundance; climate profile is ___, Technology level = Prewarp, early warp, federation equivalent, etc.

geo is from greek ge = Earth
Galaxy is from greek galaxias = milky
geography -> geo + graphia
Galaxiagraphy does not roll off the toung
Galagraphy is not bad. This would make galapolitical the word.

 

[Paul Weaver]

It's curious that the Synths were all dismantled after the attack on Mars. The holograms, like the one at the Archives, sure; they don't appear sentient. But the Synths seemed to be modeled after Data... Were they, say, half-sentient? Could the government dismantle thousands of sentient or partly-sentient artificial lifeforms?

Lets take Maddox's sentience tests

Intelligence -- No real evidence they could adapt to brand new situations, certainly any more than a starship computer. They were programmed to cope with certain situations, but so's siri.
Self awareness -- Again no real evidence. We didn't have much evidence either way, but there seemed to be far more self awareness from some holodeck characters
Consciousness -- How can you prove anyone is conscious?


Lets look at Crusher's musings with the exocomps on whether something is alive (a lower requirement for sentience)

"Well, the broadest scientific definition might be that life is what enables plants and animals to consume food, derive energy from it, grow, adapt themselves to their surroundings and reproduce. "

For some reason it doesn't apply to Fire or Crystals. Synths presumably take in fuel, but do they grow or adapt themselves? Data certainly does, but we had 150 episodes to see that, not 150 seconds.

If we take a level of sentience which includes
Data, Lore, Julianna, The Doctor (Voyager), Exocomps, the wierd things in Phantasms, and I think Moriarty

But doesn't include
The Enterprise D computer, the residents of Fair Haven, Leonardo, the characters in Dixon Hill

I don't see evidence that the Synths are even approaching the level of Leonardo or Michael Sullivan, let alone Moriarty

 

[Timo]

The sentience of holograms is adjustable: the same physical form can be ordered to be clever or stupid, self-aware or oblivious.

The sentience of androids, presumably not quite so easily - possibly because their brains are so small, merely the size of a skull rather than the size of a starship. Or then because they were deliberately built to be incapable of being full of intelligence and initiative and other threatening things. But building a second Data seems eminently doable, so the building of the likes of F8 would appear to be by choice. A society that thinks it can decide to build things with limited sentience would probably have little trouble thinking it can also dismantle those at will. And the UFP is such a society - they have already been doing this with their holograms for the better part of a century.

The third PIC episode doesn't yet make it clear when and why the synths of F8 ilk were created; Picard and Musiker think they would solve the problem of crewing the Romulan evacuation effort, but this discussion only comes when the Synth Rebellion has rendered the point moot. So what originally prompted X to start building the things? Was there a demand, or was Maddox' team just trying out fancy new tech, or what?

We don't see this sort of stuff in the Klingon or Romulan or Cardassian circles, where one'd think it would be visible if extant. What reaction did the Synths cause politically in the UFP's neighbors? (Who all seem to be fine with relatively clever holograms, FWIW.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DEWLine]

"Astropolitics".

 

[rfmcdpei]

I am not sure that we can speculate without more information, not least without knowing what happened to Romulan civilization after its homeworld was destroyed. There seems to be a new regime, a "Free State". Is it the only Romulan state? What are its politics like? What resources are available to it?

I wonder if it is at all like the STO Romulan Republic.

 

[Annorax849]

Episode 3 used a figure of “tens of millions” when referring to the evacuation. I’ve given up trying to figure out scales, at least for now.

 

[rfmcdpei]

The Last Best Hope and the prequel comic depict Picard and his fleet successfully evacuating entire planetary populations to safe havens. The total could well number in the millions. What the Romulans did during the 2381-2385 period is unclear, though I gather it was substantial but not enough.

The 2385 destruction of the evacuation fleet meant that the whole of the 900 million people the Romulans initially wanted to evacuate from endangered worlds near Romulus could not be evacuated. The proportion is unclear, but substantial.

The lethal zone of the supernova, IIRC, was projected at 10 light-years. The only thing we can get from that is that apparently there are more stars with more densely populated planets near Romulus than Earth does in its neighbourhood. If Sol was to explode with a similar radius, the only major Federation system that would be hit is Alpha Centauri. Other core worlds, like Vulcan and Andor, would be beyond that range.

 

[Arpy]

Also, where was the Romulan Star Navy in all this? You’d think they’d recall the entire fleet back to the homeworld if need be to evacuate. They’re more or less as advanced as the Federation, couldn’t they do it?

 

[Timo]

As advanced, yes. As large, probably not.

Romulus didn't need to keep up with the Joneses quantitatively in any arms race, as it was isolated from its enemies and only performed expeditionary actions. For those, it had what looked like an all-capital-ship navy, perhaps lacking in support assets because there would be no combat involving ranges where those would be needed. For all we know, the fleet was fundamentally Potemkine, all for show.

The compact Star Empire would have much less need for logistics ships - not only because of featuring fewer worlds and shorter distances than the UFP, but because trade would just plain not be relevant within or without. That is, sure, the colonies could be made dependent on trade, and created solely to promote the monetary economy by artificial means. But they could also be built to be self-sufficient and merely productive, lacking in nothing and trading in nothing.

The option thus exists that Romulus didn't have much of a fleet. The writing need not use that option: we can just as easily accept that the Romulans never decided to apply their existing ships or shipbuilding capacity to this task, preferring to pretend hard that there was no threat. Or that the evacuation was a splendid success, with just a few miners' wives dying, and the billions under threat ultimately saved by Spock's snuffing out the supernova right after it had pulverized the largely evacuated twin capital planets. There's no pressing need to see a contradiction in the figures so far mentioned, either, then.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[rfmcdpei]

As advanced, yes. As large, probably not.

Romulus didn't need to keep up with the Joneses quantitatively in any arms race, as it was isolated from its enemies and only performed expeditionary actions. For those, it had what looked like an all-capital-ship navy, perhaps lacking in support assets because there would be no combat involving ranges where those would be needed. For all we know, the fleet was fundamentally Potemkine, all for show.

The compact Star Empire would have much less need for logistics ships - not only because of featuring fewer worlds and shorter distances than the UFP, but because trade would just plain not be relevant within or without. That is, sure, the colonies could be made dependent on trade, and created solely to promote the monetary economy by artificial means. But they could also be built to be self-sufficient and merely productive, lacking in nothing and trading in nothing.

The option thus exists that Romulus didn't have much of a fleet. The writing need not use that option: we can just as easily accept that the Romulans never decided to apply their existing ships or shipbuilding capacity to this task, preferring to pretend hard that there was no threat. Or that the evacuation was a splendid success, with just a few miners' wives dying, and the billions under threat ultimately saved by Spock's snuffing out the supernova right after it had pulverized the largely evacuated twin capital planets. There's no pressing need to see a contradiction in the figures so far mentioned, either, then.

Timo Saloniemi

Trek atlases have been relatively consistent since the 1980s at suggesting that the Romulan home system might have a population of twenty billion or so. Based on what was described in The Last Best Hope, of an evacuation that was substantial but far from complete, I could easily believe that ten billion Romulans got removed from the danger zone. That would still leave a terrible number of dead.

 

[DEWLine]

And that 20 billion would have been all worlds, moons, artificial habitats in the system. Whether we call it "Eisn", "Ket-Cheleb" (and judging from "The End is the Beginning", the latter looks to be the more popular name amongst Romulans in 2399) or something else.

 

[Arpy]

And that 20 billion would have been all worlds, moons, artificial habitats in the system. Whether we call it "Eisn", "Ket-Cheleb" (and judging from "The End is the Beginning", the latter looks to be the more popular name amongst Romulans in 2399) or something else.

How do you pronounce Eisn anyway? Is it like Isengard?

 

[Timo]

Depends on whether Duane was on her Swiss or Irish mode. Isen for the former, (H)ey-Sin for the latter, I guess.

I wonder if Spock's mission actually went exactly as planned. That is, Romulus always was going to be lost, but an evacuation of billions to the next system over would be feasible while an evacuation completely out of the blast radius of the supernova wouldn't. So the plan was to let Romulus die, even if this was "unthinkable", but to let it die in a manner that would stop the supernova blast in its tracks and save those evacuated to the minimum safe distance. Spock then arrived at exactly the right time, a bit after the kaboom so that his ship wouldn't have to weather that, but a bit before the moment when the blast would have spread too far to be contained by Spock's super-duper black hole.

The plan might have been public, and unpopular with the likes of Nero. Few would be in a position to do anything about it, though. But Nero's bunch might have chosen to linger in the doomed system in the hopes of exacting vengeance on the cold Vulcan who had acted for the good of the many. Heck, their "mourning tattoos" then could have been exactly that, done several weeks in advance of the inevitable explosion; if necessary, the Narada could have had the comic-reputed Borg tech, too, with Nero spending a fortune in clandestinely mined precious minerals to get that from the pre-apocalyptic black market.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Arpy]

So, if Worf shows up in season 2...what's he going to look like? It's going to be about, what, six months after the end of DSC? And if he doesn't show but the Klingons do, how will they look? I almost wouldn't mind a little updating of the makeup, but I really hope they don't go full latex helmet on him.

Part of me wants to see the Klingons entered the Federation and the bulk of Romulus reunified with Vulcan. I don't think the Romulan thing will happen because of whatever the Big Bad Secret is going to be. I'd like to see the dissolution of their empires and maybe new baddies arise from formerly conquered aliens? Is that where the Gorn were? Is that why the Tal Shiar spied in the Hegemony? To see what their pissed-off former subjects were up to?

I'd like to see updated Cardassian makeup but them having learned from their ways and set a different interesting course for themselves.

If we need baddies from those already known, there's the Tholians, Sheliak, Jarada, and Tzenkethi, among others.

Depending on contemporary warp speeds, maybe even peoples of the Delta Quadrant. Nomadic Hirogen or Vaadwuar or Voth? Maybe the Dominion's back under Vorta control while the Founders have gone silent. Or maybe these should be left for VOY and DS9 limited-series?

Mostly I want to see what TNG did with the Cardassians and the Borg...create interesting new baddies. Maybe ones that speak to our contemporary fears.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Kurtzman has stated that if Worf appears, he'll look like Worf. And we've already seen him on the show, albeit in a still from TNG.

 

[DEWLine]

If B'Elanna shows up, I expect to be able to assume the same for her as promised for Worf.