The Vulcans, Red Matter, Countdown and the novels.

[F. King Daniel]

I'm putting this in Treklit because the Red Matter backstory is from Countdown. Also, the timeline/era it's from is only being explored in the novels for the foreseeable future (of course, the novels may ignore Countdown and do their own thing, but still...)

In Countdown, we're told Red Matter is a Vulcan invention made from the rare mineral Decalithium. They're unwilling to share this technology with Romulus, even in the face of their cousins' desruction.

But shouldn't Red Matter be highly illegal? It would appear to be based on similar principles to the subspace weapon used by the Son'a against the Enterprise in Star Trek: Insurrection. In that film we're told that subspace weapons are banned by the Khitomer Accords. Were the Vulcans developing illegal WMD's?

Also, FWIW, we've seen similar weapons in Treklit before: The Grigari from the Millenium trilogy used a "singularity bomb" to destroy the Guardian of Forever planet and surrounding space fleet in an alternate 2400.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

If I remember correctly, the background material/back story for Star Trek Online went into this a little. The Vulcan Science Academy was apparently given a stern telling off for investigating Red Matter without informing or seeking the approval of the Federation. I suppose their cooly intellectual curiosity got the better of them and they acted on the Vulcan equivalent of impulse. A very steady, methodical impulse........Irresponsible of them, but I can easily see some overly-confident-in-their-own-intellect-and-judgement Vulcan scientists getting frustrated with the confines and requirements of the system and just running investigations on their own, permission be damned.

Anyway, the Federation apparently gave them a slap on the wrist, the Vulcan representative to the council (not T'Latrek, someone else) resigned over this and the other mishandlings of the Vulcan government in regards to its obligations to the UFP and the wider galaxy, and all further research was cancelled.

I doubt the Vulcans were motivated by the desire to make WMDS or such, but I can see their researchers getting fixated on the sheer intellectual challenge or the scientific properties of that which could easily be used as a weapon without considering what they're really doing. Too insular a mindset (which we've seen in a lot of Vulcans before as a major character flaw).

 

[F. King Daniel]

Thanks, Nasat I'd totally forgotten about the existance of "The Path to 2309" (or whatever year it is). I found them a little dry and gave up after the first couple. Gonna have to go back and read through!

With the Son'a having similar weapons already, I was wondering if the Vulcans had realized that more and more species would eventually develop or stumble onto the technology, and were perhaps developing their own because they'd logically reasoned that a time when everyone had their own Red Matter weapons was inevitable. Mutually Assured Destruction, and all that.

 

[JD]

Do we know that Red Matter can only be used as a weapon? Maybe the Vulcan's actually developed it as a power source or something like that.

 

[Timo]

Subspace weapons may be banned by a treaty, but the definition probably isn't all-encompassing: tricobalt devices are carried aboard Starfleet vessels without anybody but the slightly crazed 7 of 9 considering it worth remarking on...

Also, other potentially hugely destructive technologies have been studied by the Federation. Manipulation of stars is okay in "Cost of Living" and "Second Sight", soliton waves are considered fine in "New Ground", and there appears once to have been Omega research as well. There doesn't seem to be a categorical suppression of research into potential weapons of interstellar destruction, just a few point cases where the Feds and sometimes even their neighbors agree that enough is enough.

Timo Saloniemi