Times Arrow Question

[Brannigan]

This episode was just on Spike today and I watched it on again off again. But there was a comment made that made me think: why San Francisco?
I cant remember who makes a comment that said: if you were looking for (technobabble) what better place than to go to Earths past were disease is rampant and collect people that are dying? No one would notice people dying if there was death all around. (it was something like that)
But my thought was: why San Francisco and not the Medieval ages? The black plague claimed millions of lives, and so if you needed the humans, it would be much easier to go to that time, than 1890s San Francisco were a cholera outbreak was occuring, and less people were dying (im not saying that alot didnt die, but again, as an alien, I wouldve thought if all you wanted was humans who were dying, the Medieval Ages wouldve been easier).

 

[od0_ital]

It seems to me that the folks could go anywhere, they just happened to go to San Francisco that time. Odds are they had been to the Dark Ages, or possibly planned to go there if they hadn't been stopped.

But, it would be easier to costume the characters for turn of the century San Francisco rather than London in the 1500s.

 

[Kirby]

I've always wondered why San Francisco for Starfleet Headquarters?
I'm sure in the future they can deal with earthquakes better, but I don't know if I'd want my headquarters in one of the most seismically unstable regions of the world... But that may just be me; earthquakes really freak me out.

 

[Trekker4747]

I kind of wondered what the problem was, exactly.

The aliens were only taking the energies, or whatever, from people who were already dying right? So what was the problem?

 

[Kegek]

Brannigan said:
But my thought was: why San Francisco and not the Medieval ages? The black plague claimed millions of lives, and so if you needed the humans, it would be much easier to go to that time, than 1890s San Francisco were a cholera outbreak was occuring, and less people were dying (im not saying that alot didnt die, but again, as an alien, I wouldve thought if all you wanted was humans who were dying, the Medieval Ages wouldve been easier).

They're aliens, not history majors. They probably don't know that much about our history... so they picked a random time at which point our technology was inferior to theirs, inferior enough not to be of any problem - and picked the time nearest to the present as that would probably be easiest.

Then you look for somewhere were a lot of people are dying. You might start in San Fransisco - it's the head of SF HQ. Probably one of the few cities they'd even be sure exists. You find the cholera, it's perfect. You check out their clothes, get your own, have a snake-head and you're all set to do whatever kind of harvesting it was they were doing again.

Maybe if they'd checked Wikipedia they'd have gone to the Medieval Ages, but our snake-head boys didn't do their homework.

 

[DostoyevskyClone]

Interesting point by the OP. I would much rather have seen something set during The Plague-era anyway - San Francisco had almost already been overused by that point in Trek. Sure, I get the budget constraints and everything, but would it have *really* cost that much more? I mean, they must have spent quite a bit anyway for that particular time period.

 

[The Borg Queen]

Trekker4747 said:
I kind of wondered what the problem was, exactly.

The aliens were only taking the energies, or whatever, from people who were already dying right? So what was the problem?

They were taking energy from healthy people and killing them, so that their deaths would be disregarded as due to Cholera and not properly investigated.

 

[Mojochi]

The Borg Queen said:

Trekker4747 said:
I kind of wondered what the problem was, exactly.

The aliens were only taking the energies, or whatever, from people who were already dying right? So what was the problem?

They were taking energy from healthy people and killing them, so that their deaths would be disregarded as due to Cholera and not properly investigated.

I think it was a bit of both. They were taking people who were seriously ill, & I'm sure some of them were deathly ill, but likely not all of them, As Crusher made note of the fact that Cholera is not virulent enough to claim the number of dead that was occurring

The aliens needed the energy to survive, & probably weren't too picky, so long as their cover wasn't blown. So all they were really doing was hiding behind the fact that medical science was primitive, & disease was present. It was enough for them to go unnoticed, by the locals

As for why they didn't go to the time of Black Plague, well... maybe they did, or were, until stopped by the TNG crew. How many aliens did you see? Maybe a handful in the cave, & a couple in San Francisco? That's really only enough to be a clan or small community.

Assume that this is an entire species, & that there are others, possibly a planet full, & that they may already have been traveling to other periods in Earth history, or maybe even other worlds, & drawing too much or too often from any one time period might get them busted. So they send proportional amounts of collector aliens to any given place in time. Two for San Fran, & maybe more for Black Plague era

This is consumption we're talking about. It would require vast amounts, in order to sustain a species

 

[Guy Gardener]

The recent creation of hospitals and medication means that the sick would have been collected and processed in a scientific manner which could be hijacked by these pesky aliens.

 

[Christopher]

Mojochi said:

The Borg Queen said:

Trekker4747 said:
I kind of wondered what the problem was, exactly.

The aliens were only taking the energies, or whatever, from people who were already dying right? So what was the problem?

They were taking energy from healthy people and killing them, so that their deaths would be disregarded as due to Cholera and not properly investigated.

I think it was a bit of both. They were taking people who were seriously ill, & I'm sure some of them were deathly ill, but likely not all of them, As Crusher made note of the fact that Cholera is not virulent enough to claim the number of dead that was occurring

The aliens needed the energy to survive, & probably weren't too picky, so long as their cover wasn't blown. So all they were really doing was hiding behind the fact that medical science was primitive, & disease was present. It was enough for them to go unnoticed, by the locals

Exactly. The mortality rate for untreated cholera is no more than 50 percent, and surely the hospital was able to provide some treatment, rehydration at least. So even if the Devidians did limit themselves to people infected with cholera, the majority of the people they killed would have survived if left alone.

 

[K-Star]

Why San Francisco? So Starfleet could easily find Data's head in a cave and thus get the whole episode going. It'd be complicated if it were anywhere else.

 

[the_wildcard]

Kirby said:
I've always wondered why San Francisco for Starfleet Headquarters?
I'm sure in the future they can deal with earthquakes better, but I don't know if I'd want my headquarters in one of the most seismically unstable regions of the world... But that may just be me; earthquakes really freak me out.

Are you from the California? Because for people who live in California, earthquakes aren't scary at all. In fact, I think living on the East Coast and the Mid West is scarier. Unlike hurricanes and tornadoes, there isn't an earthquake "season."

But I seem to remember reading in a recent Star Trek novel that they have "scheduled" earthquakes in the future. So they are able to either predict when the next earthquake is happening, or are able to directly control the release of energy.

 

[StarShrek]

I'm pretty sure that Captain Janeway said something about California being under water in one Voyager episode, I guess San Francisco was saved, dunno.

 

[Trekker4747]

StarShrek said:
I'm pretty sure that Captain Janeway said something about California being under water in one Voyager episode, I guess San Francisco was saved, dunno.

They were in LA, on the Boardwalk IIRC, and she simply says "this entire area" fell under the sea during a 21st century earthquake turning it into a undersea coral reef.

I'd venture to guess that "this enitre area" was just the boardwalk area, and maybe a bit more, but nothing more signifigant than that.

 

[Timo]

...The problem is that she says it's under 200 meters of water in her time. That's 600 feet; for the broadwalk to go down that deep, a great deal of the neighboring areas would probably have to suffer significant displacement as well.

We don't know if LA survives into Janeway's time. We don't even know it survives into Archer's, for that matter. WWIII might have done it in already as a center of habitation, stopping people from caring whether there were earthquakes there or not.

Good points about why the aliens might consider San Francisco an optimal place for harvest, or why we might be mistaken in whether San Francisco really was optimal. Also note that the aliens are sucking up human energy from across vast interstellar distances in addition to going through time. If they go to that sort of trouble, they probably have a big racket going: dozens if not hundreds of planets being harvested, at dozens if not hundreds or thousands of locations and times. It's not as if they explicitly need human life energy in particular, after all, even if all their known victims are humans.

On the other hand, perhaps we're mistaken about the scale of this all. Perhaps this isn't a species or even a clan sustaining itself in this manner - perhaps it's more like a band of castaways trying to survive until help comes. Much like the Briori in VOy "37s" only seemed to be using that planet, not actually living there, the aliens on Devidia might be but visitors.

Then again, we might also speculate that their time-and-space-transporter could not find any other "resonance chamber" within range but the one beneath San Francisco.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kirby]

the_wildcard said:

Kirby said:
I've always wondered why San Francisco for Starfleet Headquarters?
I'm sure in the future they can deal with earthquakes better, but I don't know if I'd want my headquarters in one of the most seismically unstable regions of the world... But that may just be me; earthquakes really freak me out.

Are you from the California? Because for people who live in California, earthquakes aren't scary at all. In fact, I think living on the East Coast and the Mid West is scarier. Unlike hurricanes and tornadoes, there isn't an earthquake "season."

Actually I'm from Colorado. Except for an occasional blizzard or a tornado, we're pretty much natural disaster free.... so far...
My aunt and uncle live in San Francisco and seem to have your attitude about earthquakes. I guess it's just scarier if you've never been through one.