Even if they had AI I don’t think it reaches the threshold that triggers extinction. Life like synths like Soji seem to be where the line in drawn. They didn’t appear to have gotten that far.
Was Kataan another victim of the secret of the Zhat Vash?
- Thread starter Unimatrix Q
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Trends in storytelling lately seem to gravitate toward connecting anything and everything in a particular universe together. This doesn't seem like the correct way to go if you're trying to build the illusion of a larger world with a near-infinite amount of stories that could be told. And IMO, stifles original ideas.
Maybe the threshold isn't so much about creating synthetic bodies but how advanced the A.I. is...
Imagine if the Admonition had been placed on that space station, instead of a chill life memory and a flute, mindwarping starship captains into hating all androids.
Picard wakes up from Admonition-induced hibernation.
Picard: Die, Data die!!!
Troi: I sense anger.
Riker: What did that station do to you captain?!
Picard wakes up from Admonition-induced hibernation.
Picard: Die, Data die!!!
Troi: I sense anger.
Riker: What did that station do to you captain?!
Agreed, and their spaceflight capability seemed to be early 1960s.
Well, the farther one travels...the less one knows.
It's an interesting detail that Kataan was also destroyed by a nova and that the main theme of the show is based on Batai's song from "The Inner Light"
Romulus was destroyed by a supernova, but the supernova wasn't caused by the Zhat Vash.
The Zhat Vash were only responsible for the synth attack on Mars, not the Romulan supernova. As far as we know, the supernova was a natural occurence. So there's no reason to think Kataan had anything to do with the Zhat Vash.
I really don't understand why so many underestimate the technological abbilities of the Kataanians. Spaceflight capability is just one area of technology.
Just because they weren't warp capable doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't much more advanced in other fields.
We could never have produced anything like the probe. Neither in 1960 nor today
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I didn't mean that the Zhat Vash caused the nova, but the species/entity the admonition warned against might have caused all three of them (Tkon, Kataan and Romulus).
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Having warp capability could have saved at least some of them.I really don't understand why so many underestimate the technological abbilities of the Kataanians. Spaceflight capability is just one area of technology.
Just because they weren't warp capable doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't much more advanced in other fields.
We could never have produced anything like the probe. Neither in 1960 nor today
Yeah, but that was not the point. No one can doubt that there could have been some survivors if they were warp capable.
Just saying that they may have gone another way and became much more advanced in other technologies like possibly artificial intelligence.
And when they learnt about the nova, it may have been far too late for them to develop a warp drive or slipstream...
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I don't think Kataan deserves to be on this list, but in canon we have two other surprising supernovae (besides the ones the Q started during their civil war): Sarpeidon and Bynaus.
The Sarpeidon (Beta Niobe) supernova destroyed a civilization that had mastered time travel to an amazing extent. Certainly more advanced than the Federation at the time (although oddly planetbound). They may have been anti-AI amongst their other eccentricities.
The Bynars were hugely pro-cyborg, of course. It's weird to think of them as anti-AI or anti-synthetic, but maybe their promotion of combining synthetic life with organic life was viewed as a threat to the Supreme Extragalactic Synthetic Federation (SESF). That supernova was prevented, but maybe they went back later.
Their are also some canonical novae, which may or may not be supernovae. The one that destroyed the superadvanced Fabrini. The survivors of that ended up being ruled by an AI (the Oracle) on their asteroid spaceship.
The Platonians' original star, Sahndara, went nova thousands of years ago. They seem to be anti-AI types.
The Vians of the Minara system were also more advanced than the Federation, but showed no signs of AI technology. Gem's empathic species was pre-warp, but may have been collateral damage in the Minara explosion.
Good point. These might also be caused by the ancient enemy. But i'm not sure if we should exclude the Kataanians from the list.
As i mentioned before, i doubt their probe could have worked like it did, without a really sophisticated A.I.
Whatever be said of the technology of Kataan, there was more of it , and more to it, than was shown in Kamin's village.
Not only do these seemingly barely medieval-looking folks suddenly have rocketry, they also have near-instantaneous communications with the global capital, even though no communications technology or vehicular travel whatsoever is shown around Kamin. So it's fake medieval, the village being "behind the times" by choice of some sort.
Yet the simulation involves the Administrator directly stating that the planet doesn't have anything more advanced than modest missiles. But whatever this simulation is, it's not a truthful portrayal of the life of a guy named Kamin - it's an interactive environment that perverts the life of Picard into something else altogether, by feeding him false cues and reacting to his actions. And if it's not truthful, it need not be realistic, either. Perhaps the village depicts the golden age of Kataan (real or imagined), perhaps it's purely symbolic and tells us little about life on Kataan and the heroes and the audience just totally misunderstood what it was all about.
It would indeed be interesting to consider a pattern here: Earthlike planets succumbing to stars blowing up is contrary to currently known astronomy, because the stars hosting such planets would be the wrong sort to blow up on their own, yet all these civilizations getting blown up are masters of a technology the surviving places like Earth either do not possess or do not exploit. Kataan could have been punished for its mastery of illusion, and Sarpeidon then for its time travel etc., just like suggested above.
Timo Saloniemi
Not only do these seemingly barely medieval-looking folks suddenly have rocketry, they also have near-instantaneous communications with the global capital, even though no communications technology or vehicular travel whatsoever is shown around Kamin. So it's fake medieval, the village being "behind the times" by choice of some sort.
Yet the simulation involves the Administrator directly stating that the planet doesn't have anything more advanced than modest missiles. But whatever this simulation is, it's not a truthful portrayal of the life of a guy named Kamin - it's an interactive environment that perverts the life of Picard into something else altogether, by feeding him false cues and reacting to his actions. And if it's not truthful, it need not be realistic, either. Perhaps the village depicts the golden age of Kataan (real or imagined), perhaps it's purely symbolic and tells us little about life on Kataan and the heroes and the audience just totally misunderstood what it was all about.
It would indeed be interesting to consider a pattern here: Earthlike planets succumbing to stars blowing up is contrary to currently known astronomy, because the stars hosting such planets would be the wrong sort to blow up on their own, yet all these civilizations getting blown up are masters of a technology the surviving places like Earth either do not possess or do not exploit. Kataan could have been punished for its mastery of illusion, and Sarpeidon then for its time travel etc., just like suggested above.
Timo Saloniemi
The tie in novel seems to suggest that it was not a natural occurrence. Although it does not go into detail. Just an Astrophysicist being puzzled that the data does not make sense, and reporting to Starfleet Intelligence that it may be an act of malice.
I thought it significant that Federation and Romulan scientists, each working separately, concluded that the supernova was unnatural. They ended up not getting wed tightly to this partly because they had no evidence for such an act, partly because they were so shocked at the idea they could not beat to consider it.
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If there is someone going around triggering supernovas directed against technologically precocious cultures, I am curious about the thresholds involved. Why go after a wholly planet-bound Kataan but let the Romulans thrive and develop a large empire, say? What did the Kataanians do that was so wrong, and why were the Romulans allowed to grow to the point where their household's destruction was a relative setback?
[/QUOTE]
If there is someone going around triggering supernovas directed against technologically precocious cultures, I am curious about the thresholds involved. Why go after a wholly planet-bound Kataan but let the Romulans thrive and develop a large empire, say? What did the Kataanians do that was so wrong, and why were the Romulans allowed to grow to the point where their household's destruction was a relative setback?
