The hirogen space station network thingy

[The_Baroness]

Y'know, the one what they use to send the Doctor to the Prometheus off of Message in a bottle.

We know they can send stuff over it right?

Well...we also know that they can bounce transporter signals off of satellites and probes and stuff, they did it through the wormhole in Eye of the Needle, and they MUST use satellites to beam someone to the other side of a planet.

Now, I'm not saying it would have worked, but after making contact with Starfleet, how come noone for a second even entertained the notion that they might be able to bounce a transporter signal across the network?

They could have at least tried to send one of them glowy tubey things over it?

Don't know til you try right?

 

[F. King Daniel]

The next episode they destroyed the whole network. It existed for 150,000 years and Janeway destroyed it in a matter of hours

 

[The_Baroness]

That I can believe. It probably 'looked at her funny'

 

[Captrek]

Y'know, the one what they use to send the Doctor to the Prometheus off of Message in a bottle.

We know they can send stuff over it right?

Well...we also know that they can bounce transporter signals off of satellites and probes and stuff, they did it through the wormhole in Eye of the Needle, and they MUST use satellites to beam someone to the other side of a planet.

Now, I'm not saying it would have worked, but after making contact with Starfleet, how come noone for a second even entertained the notion that they might be able to bounce a transporter signal across the network?

For that matter, I wonder if they could relay a transporter signal with the Hubble telescope. I mean, a satellite’s a satellite, right? They all do the same things in the same way.

The Hirogen network can’t relay a transporter signal because technobabble technobabble reverse polarity technobabble quantum singularity technobabble technobabble technobabble subspace tachyon inverse phase variance harmonic field chronoton anomaly annular confinement beam technobabble technobabble technobabbletechnobabbletechnobabble.

They could have at least tried to send one of them glowy tubey things over it?

Don't know til you try right?

If it will make you feel any better, assume that relaying a transporter signal is one of a zillion possible uses they investigated and found not to be within the capabilities of this system. There were within range of and investing the network for about two weeks (judging by the stardates in Message in a Bottle and Hunters), and spent hundreds if not thousands of man-hours in the astrometrics lab working on it. Of all that, we see only a few minutes actually depicted on screen.

Recall that the reason they sent the Doctor in MIAB is because the network was incapable of relaying a standard Starfleet comm signal. It’s not exactly a crazy wild-eyed idea that a transporter beam is another kind of signal it can’t relay.

 

[froot]

^ I tend to agree with captrek. Might have been nice to hear in passing dialog or something, though, I think.

The next episode they destroyed the whole network. It existed for 150,000 years and Janeway destroyed it in a matter of hours

Actually, the black hole (microsingularity, whatevers) the station was using was the cause of destruction. The Hirogen kept firing until the containment field took a dump and the whole thing went poof. It wasn't a matter of hours; it was a matter of seconds.

It's actually kind of an awesome scene. Black holes are the coolest.

 

[Shatnertage]

^That was a pretty cool scene. I like how the satellite just collapsed in on itself.

 

[kimc]

Actually, the black hole (microsingularity, whatevers) the station was using was the cause of destruction. The Hirogen kept firing until the containment field took a dump and the whole thing went poof. It wasn't a matter of hours; it was a matter of seconds.

It's actually kind of an awesome scene. Black holes are the coolest.

Janeway is obviously responsible for the black hole. That's why she's the coolest captain summoning black holes like that.

 

[F. King Daniel]

(*Makes incredibly improper red matter/time of the month gag, hides under table*)

 

[froot]

(*Makes incredibly improper red matter/time of the month gag, hides under table*)

Boy, the galaxy would be in a hell of a lot of trouble once every 28 Terran days.

 

[Destructor]

I'm pretty sure the signal would degrade being sent over that distance. Or not. Whatever!

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Yep. The satellite network was too old and too unstable to risk sending a transporter beam. The Doctor, OTOH, is a program that can't degrade like a transporter signal can, so there was no risk to him.

 

[Captrek]

The Doctor, OTOH, is a program that can't degrade like a transporter signal can, so there was no risk to him.

You’re not recalling that quite right.

EMH: When I requested more away missions, this isn't exactly what I had in mind.
JANEWAY: You may be our only chance to communicate with that ship.
TORRES: When you get there you'll be downloaded into their EMH system. I'm sending an initiation code along with your programme so you'll be activated immediately.
SEVEN: We have less than ninety seconds before that ship moves out of range.
EMH: How am I supposed to get back here?
JANEWAY: When you've completed your mission, instruct them to move within range of the sensor network. With luck, they can send you back the same way you came.
EMH: Luck?
JANEWAY: I won't lie to you, doctor. A lot of things could go wrong. We're relying on an alien technology to send you across thousands of light-years.
EMH: So there's a chance my programme could be lost.
JANEWAY: Yes. I'm asking you to take that chance.
SEVEN: Thirty five seconds.
EMH: Far be it from me to turn down an opportunity to become a hero. I'm ready.
TORRES: Torres to Bridge.
CHAKOTAY [OC]: Standing by.
TORRES: I'm downloading him into the transceiver array.
SEVEN: Ten seconds.
JANEWAY: Good luck, Doctor.
EMH: There's that word again.

 

[Timo]

FWIW, the condition that made it possible to treat a transporter signal like a communications signal in "Eye of the Needle" was described this way by Torres:

"The phase amplitude of the visual link with the Romulan ship is within just a few megahertz of meeting transporter protocols."

Apparently, that's not a very common occurrence, and might be thanks to all the jury-rigging Kim did to make that visual link work through a wormhole in the first place. We may deduce that the communication systems normally used in the Trek universe never feature this sort of "phase amplitude" (curiously measured in units of frequency), because they are not used for relaying transporter signals and nobody normally considers this possible. It would then probably follow that the Hirogen network (or the network controlled by the Hirogen, to be exact) would also be a normal communications net optimized for sending communications signals and thus not for sending transporter signals.

Also, sending people across the "Eye of the Needle" conduit was said to require adjusting the matter transmission rate "substantially", probably meaning that it would take hours to get a single person to the other side. Thanks to the wormhole, the distance across which this signal would have to travel would probably be just a few thousand kilometers or at most a couple of lightseconds (the probe didn't move at warp speed, after all, and got stuck after a very short time but did reach scanning range of the Alpha end). Spending an hour on such a trip might carry considerably fewer risks than spending it on a trip tens of thousands of lightyears long.

Or then it might not. We don't really know the pertinent technobabble, but we can assume our heroes do. And since they never sent transporter signals across commnets before, apart from "Eye of the Needle", not doing so now doesn't really break precedent.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The_Baroness]

another thought actually.

Was getting a message home, that much more important to Janeway than potentially being without a doctor for what could have been the next 70 years. The amount of casualties they'd already suffered in just a few years should have told Janeway that they really couldn't survive without him.

Sure, they had Tom, but it'd be like asking a burger-flipper from McDonalds to take over as head chef in a Michelan star restaurant for the next 7 decades.

Another opportunity to contact home might come up. And they're not going to be in any different a position if they don't than they already were, but where are they gonna get another doc' from?

 

[Shatnertage]

^ Yeah. Why not send DaVinci? Or that lecherous guy from the pool hall?

 

[BlobVanDam]

^ Yeah. Why not send DaVinci? Or that lecherous guy from the pool hall?

In the time they had, they barely got the Doctor through. They (conveniently) wouldn't have had time to reconfigure a holodeck character to know the objectives etc.

 

[The Librarian]

another thought actually.

Was getting a message home, that much more important to Janeway than potentially being without a doctor for what could have been the next 70 years. The amount of casualties they'd already suffered in just a few years should have told Janeway that they really couldn't survive without him.

Sure, they had Tom, but it'd be like asking a burger-flipper from McDonalds to take over as head chef in a Michelan star restaurant for the next 7 decades.

Another opportunity to contact home might come up. And they're not going to be in any different a position if they don't than they already were, but where are they gonna get another doc' from?

Better yet, why just hit "copy & paste" instead of "cut & paste", thereby sending the Doctor and yet also keeping him on Voyager? He's a computer program, after all. There's also the question of why you can send such a huge and complex set of files for an entire person and not send a text message or even Morse code if you have to. It really makes no sense that the Doctor works and not a regular message - it's all one and zeros in the end.

 

[BlobVanDam]

another thought actually.

Was getting a message home, that much more important to Janeway than potentially being without a doctor for what could have been the next 70 years. The amount of casualties they'd already suffered in just a few years should have told Janeway that they really couldn't survive without him.

Sure, they had Tom, but it'd be like asking a burger-flipper from McDonalds to take over as head chef in a Michelan star restaurant for the next 7 decades.

Another opportunity to contact home might come up. And they're not going to be in any different a position if they don't than they already were, but where are they gonna get another doc' from?

Better yet, why just hit "copy & paste" instead of "cut & paste", thereby sending the Doctor and yet also keeping him on Voyager? He's a computer program, after all. There's also the question of why you can send such a huge and complex set of files for an entire person and not send a text message or even Morse code if you have to. It really makes no sense that the Doctor works and not a regular message - it's all one and zeros in the end.

There are a dozen situations in Voyager where I have thought the exact same thing, particularly that one. Even though for the sake of sentience it would ethically make sense to keep him as one copy, he is just a computer program that can be copied any number of times. If Voyager wanted to, they could technically have two EMH's at all times. One in the holoemitter, and one in the ship's memory (I believe they've mentioned that they don't have the space for a backup on the ship's computer?)

 

[exodus]

Was getting a message home, that much more important to Janeway than potentially being without a doctor for what could have been the next 70 years. The amount of casualties they'd already suffered in just a few years should have told Janeway that they really couldn't survive without him.

Please, most of the casualties are in reset episodes. So the death toll on Voyager wasn't much at all.
Why else would the EMH being singing all the time.

 

[Captrek]

another thought actually.

Was getting a message home, that much more important to Janeway than potentially being without a doctor for what could have been the next 70 years. The amount of casualties they'd already suffered in just a few years should have told Janeway that they really couldn't survive without him.

Sure, they had Tom, but it'd be like asking a burger-flipper from McDonalds to take over as head chef in a Michelan star restaurant for the next 7 decades.

Another opportunity to contact home might come up. And they're not going to be in any different a position if they don't than they already were, but where are they gonna get another doc' from?

We can’t really evaluate the decision without knowing the level of risk, which is not made at all clear. We are told that “things could go wrong” and that “there’s a chance” the doctor will be lost. If that chance is one in a thousand, it’s enough to cause nervousness, but it’s probably a risk worth taking.

Also keep in mind that this is Captain Kathryn Janeway we’re talking about. She takes a lot of crazy risks for questionable reasons. In Scientific Method she flies Voyager into a pulsar where the risk is a 95% chance the whole ship will be lost.