The Voyage Home-How Do They Know It Is A Probe?

[Dayton3]

In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home the "Whalesong Probe" comes toward Federation space where it is encountered by the U.S.S. Saratoga (Miranda class).

As the probe is a considerable distance away and we switch to the Saratoga bridge, one of the officers tells the captain that "it appears to be a probe" or something to that effect.

How is the officer able to make any kind of analysis like that?

By most accounts a "space probe" both in our time and in Star Trek tends to be a rather small, unmanned, instrumented craft.

Seems to me on size alone, the Saratoga crew should've wondered if the probe was actually simply a giant starship of some kind.

 

[cardinal biggles]

"It appears to be a probe, captain. From an intelligence unknown to us."

We don't know how long they've had it on sensors or what kind of scans they've subjected it to. The fact that it's traveling in a specific direction while broadcasting some sort of transmission, yet not answering Saratoga's "universal peace and hello" messages could lead to a hypothesis that the vessel is a probe. And just because Starfleet sends probes not much larger than two meters in length doesn't mean that some other civilization can't send a probe that's miles long.

 

[The Borg Queen]

What happened to the probe afterwards? I forget. Did Starfleet follow it back home?

 

[cardinal biggles]

The giant floating hand of Apollo reaches down, grabs the probe, and sticks it in the Sun to light it. Then Apollo wags his eyebrows like Groucho Marx and a duck falls from the heavens bearing an index card.

Hilarity ensues.

 

[DonIago]

Canonically we never find out.

At least one novel (aptly named "Probe") has dealt with the matter though.

 

[Cyke101]

The giant floating hand of Apollo reaches down, grabs the probe, and sticks it in the Sun to light it. Then Apollo wags his eyebrows like Groucho Marx and a duck falls from the heavens bearing an index card.

Hilarity ensues.

When I was a youth, I always thought the whale probe looked like a huge polish sausage than a cigar. In either case, in the cosmos, Apollo's Groucho Marx impression is legendary.

 

[nx1701g]

Canonically we never find out.

At least one novel (aptly named "Probe") has dealt with the matter though.

It went toward Romulan Space in the novel and the Enterprise followed for peace talks with the Romulans and to analyze it. They learned that the race that sent it were whale like and technologically advanced, but they were killed by a race in large metal cubes (The Borg).

The Probe

 

[sbk1234]

The giant floating hand of Apollo reaches down, grabs the probe, and sticks it in the Sun to light it. Then Apollo wags his eyebrows like Groucho Marx and a duck falls from the heavens bearing an index card.

Hilarity ensues.

When I was a youth, I always thought the whale probe looked like a huge polish sausage than a cigar. In either case, in the cosmos, Apollo's Groucho Marx impression is legendary.

As Freud said, "Sometimes, a probe is only a probe."

 

[Peach Wookiee]

What Biggles said.

 

[RoJoHen]

It was actually an anal probe. That little ball dangling off of it...dingleberry.

 

[CoveTom]

They learned that the race that sent it were whale like and technologically advanced, but they were killed by a race in large metal cubes (The Borg).

What is it with this incessant desire on the part of novelists to try to make everything in the Trek universe relate to everything else somehow? The Borg indeed.

 

[DonIago]

Given that the novel came out quite some time ago, if anything I would suspect it was one of the first to do so.

 

[Therin of Andor]

What is it with this incessant desire on the part of novelists to try to make everything in the Trek universe relate to everything else somehow? The Borg indeed.

It's not "incessant" at all, but if you study a list of ST novels, the bestsellers are usually prequels, sequels and crossovers. Completely "standalone" novels are a much harder sell, and may as well be regular, original, non-ST, science fiction novels. Indeed, some ST novels, especially early ones, were suspiciously like original, unpublished SF novels with ST characters grafted onto them.

The majority of ST licensed tie-in fiction readers (including me) really enjoy little "aha!" moments in the books and comics, where someone connects two seemingly unconnected ST factoids. There are thousands/millions of moments that are not connected to any previous canonical ST at all, but the ones that get reported to non-book readers are the worthy "aha!" ones: the ones people think others would be interested to hear about.

It makes the ST universe smaller and more incestuous, perhaps, but otherwise the distances between stars in real space is just really, really, really big, and boring. Which we know it is.

 

[RAMA]

In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home the "Whalesong Probe" comes toward Federation space where it is encountered by the U.S.S. Saratoga (Miranda class).

As the probe is a considerable distance away and we switch to the Saratoga bridge, one of the officers tells the captain that "it appears to be a probe" or something to that effect.

How is the officer able to make any kind of analysis like that?

By most accounts a "space probe" both in our time and in Star Trek tends to be a rather small, unmanned, instrumented craft.

Seems to me on size alone, the Saratoga crew should've wondered if the probe was actually simply a giant starship of some kind.

You would think the strength of the scans given off by the probes that damaged Earth and starships would be a dead giveaway they were looking for something right?

RAMA