DS9 is set two centuries after Enterprise. Maybe Andor(ia) had a change of climate in the interim as well as a change of name.
What about Coridan Prime?
- Thread starter rfmcdpei
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One of the Myriad Universes stories features an artificial global warming project to increase the size of Andor's agricultural zone as a response to mounting trade deficits. It apparently took place prior to the divergence point, so it's supposed to have happened in the "prime universe" too. I'm pretty sure the point was to reconcile "ice ball Andor" with the novels' "warmer, lots-of-major-flooding" Andor.
Also, unless I'm overlooking something, the early DS9 books suggested that Andorians preferred warm climates, not that they required them or evolved in them. And the novels then suggested that Andorian family life was largely subterranean and centred on hot springs, which links in nicely to the TV presentation.
Also, unless I'm overlooking something, the early DS9 books suggested that Andorians preferred warm climates, not that they required them or evolved in them. And the novels then suggested that Andorian family life was largely subterranean and centred on hot springs, which links in nicely to the TV presentation.
Also, I for one see no reason to presume that the entire moon has a cold climate just because Archer and Shran beamed down to the Andorian arctic.
yeah, but the Kumari was the "first icecutter to circumnavigate Andor". you're not going to sail an icecutter around the world if you don't need to are you? also Shran claims ice produces true strength, not the heat.
Yep, and the sudden flash flood in "Andor: Paradigm" tallies nicely with the later canonical ice (of "The Aenar" ep.) undergoing unexpected massive thaws.
Why not? Are you expecting a circumnavigator to switch vessels during his journey? It also didn't necessarily mean they followed the equatorial line of maximum distance. A cutter was needed on at least part of the journey.
I mean, obviously that was the producers' intent, but it wasn't explicitly established. We could interpret that line, for instance, as indicating that Andor has some significant arctic zones, but still retains other areas with more tropical climates, and that thus an icebreaker would be needed to reach certain ports. Indeed, I find it hard to believe that they'd even have naval technology if there weren't parts of Andor that were warmer.
And as an Ohioan native to the shores of Lake Erie, I'm convinced everyone who lives in the Washington Metropolitan Area is an absolute wimp when it comes to snow and should spend a winter by the Great Lakes to get just a taste of what a real snowstorm feels like. That doesn't mean the entire State of Ohio lives under permanent winter conditions; it means I'm from a certain area and know how to handle its weather. Same thing with Shran.
We're of course assuming and ice cutter is a boat on Andor and not something else like one of those diggers from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Occam's Razor: simplest explanation is the truest. they have lots of icebergs and ice floes, it's an icy planet, they used an icecutter.
and, no i wouldn't expect the crew to swap vessels, but you don't circumnavigate Earth in an icecutter, you do it in a yacht (these days) or in another sailing vessel (when it was done orignally) and come on, you think the Kumari just sailed around the north polar region or the south? get outta town, that'd hardly be an achievement of note.
and, no i wouldn't expect the crew to swap vessels, but you don't circumnavigate Earth in an icecutter, you do it in a yacht (these days) or in another sailing vessel (when it was done orignally) and come on, you think the Kumari just sailed around the north polar region or the south? get outta town, that'd hardly be an achievement of note.
I mean, obviously that was the producers' intent, but it wasn't explicitly established. We could interpret that line, for instance, as indicating that Andor has some significant arctic zones, but still retains other areas with more tropical climates, and that thus an icebreaker would be needed to reach certain ports. Indeed, I find it hard to believe that they'd even have naval technology if there weren't parts of Andor that were warmer.
And as an Ohioan native to the shores of Lake Erie, I'm convinced everyone who lives in the Washington Metropolitan Area is an absolute wimp when it comes to snow and should spend a winter by the Great Lakes to get just a taste of what a real snowstorm feels like. That doesn't mean the entire State of Ohio lives under permanent winter conditions; it means I'm from a certain area and know how to handle its weather. Same thing with Shran.
Try Minnesota if you want a 'real winter', the recient winter doesn't count.
It's highly implausible that all of Andor is an ice planet. Besides, our goal is to reconcile seemingly contradictory depictions of Andor in the lit vs. the canon, not to decide what the simplest canonical explanation would be.
While it is certainly possible for a planet's surface to be completely frozen over (our own planet went through a "Snowball Earth" phase billions of years ago), it's hardly "simple" to posit that a completely glaciated planet could support a technological humanoid civilization. It's so unlikely that it would require some very complicated ad hoc rationalizations to justify it, and that defeats the whole purpose of Occam's Razor. "The simplest explanation" doesn't mean proposing that the planet itself has the simplest possible climate; it means the explanation that requires the fewest and least extravagant conjectures to justify. If a planet hosts an advanced humanoid civilization -- one that is clearly comfortable existing in the same environments as humans, Vulcans, and other humanoids -- the simplest explanation is that at least a sizeable portion of that planet holds liquid water and temperate climates a majority of the time.
Given that we know Earth's climate is variable and has gone through periods of greater and lesser glaciation over time, it's quite simple to conclude that another M-class world would have the same variability. Particularly given that it's an inhabited moon of a Jovian planet, so there are more variables that could affect its climate, such as changes in the amount of infrared radiation emitted by the Jovian or in the amount of tidal heating Andoria experiences due to the orbits of its sister moons. (Adding those variables doesn't violate Occam's Razor because they are known variables, rather than unsupported conjectures. We know Andoria' s a Jovian moon, and we know things about how Jovian planets and their moons behave.)
Given that we know Earth's climate is variable and has gone through periods of greater and lesser glaciation over time, it's quite simple to conclude that another M-class world would have the same variability. Particularly given that it's an inhabited moon of a Jovian planet, so there are more variables that could affect its climate, such as changes in the amount of infrared radiation emitted by the Jovian or in the amount of tidal heating Andoria experiences due to the orbits of its sister moons. (Adding those variables doesn't violate Occam's Razor because they are known variables, rather than unsupported conjectures. We know Andoria' s a Jovian moon, and we know things about how Jovian planets and their moons behave.)
And given the complexities of a Jovian lunar orbit, it's entirely possible that Andor has a "seasonal" precession that takes centuries (by human standards, anyway). Perhaps Andorians originally evolved in another season and simply adapted to the new climate when the rest of their ecology died out or went into hibernation.
(Fridge logic: maybe that's related to their overly-complex reproductive strategy. They evolved to reproduce in an environmental niche that no longer exists.)
(Fridge logic: maybe that's related to their overly-complex reproductive strategy. They evolved to reproduce in an environmental niche that no longer exists.)
My point was not to say the whole planet was ice, but to posit that circumnavigate and icecutter are vague enough terms that they could mean anything to a different culture. Circumnavigate, while traditionally used for sea travel, can be used for land, sea or air.
While the point of the comment in the show is to say that the planet is very glaciated or completely icy, it's still anecdotal.
I do like the idea of a complex orbit, though. That perhaps Andor spends ages behind the larger planet and ices over and then gets exposed to the sun and becomes a large oceanic planet. (Isn't there some RPG module that says Andor only has two continents?)
While the point of the comment in the show is to say that the planet is very glaciated or completely icy, it's still anecdotal.
I do like the idea of a complex orbit, though. That perhaps Andor spends ages behind the larger planet and ices over and then gets exposed to the sun and becomes a large oceanic planet. (Isn't there some RPG module that says Andor only has two continents?)
But Shran's line about the ice-cutter in "United" was: "My vessel, the Kumari, was named for the first ice-cutter to circumnavigate Andoria. Perhaps future ships will be named after our vessels, especially if we do something historic together." I think that makes it pretty clear that the ice-cutter Kumari was a vessel, i.e. a ship.
Although of course, as stated above, it could easily be that only portions of the route required icebreaking -- that the shape of the continents required passing through areas covered in icecaps, or that the icecaps were considerably more extensive than they are on Earth in the present epoch (more like they've been in past ice ages).
Doesn't work that way. A moon's orbit around a Jovian would last only days. (In my calendar calculations for Watching the Clock, I postulated an orbital period of 4.7 days.) And unless it's very close to the Jovian, it would spend a fairly small portion of its orbital period in the planet's umbra -- maybe none at all, depending on how far its orbital plane is tilted relative to the planet's. And the Jovian couldn't be very far out if the moon were to have Class-M conditions, so its year couldn't be too long (I set it at 3.7 Earth years). So any long-term fluctuations on the order of centuries would require more subtle explanations. Maybe a resonance with the orbit of some outer planet could cause periodic changes in the Jovian's orbital radius, or could affect the orbits of the moons so as to increase their tidal stress/heating or expose them to more infrared from the Jovian, as I suggested above.
Andoria can easily be an icy planet, but it doesn't have to be entirely glaciated. On our world, currently in the middle of the interglacial, icerbergs can be present as far south in the North Atlantic as the latitude of Newfoundland, almost halfway down from the north pole to the equator. I have no exact idea how far south icebergs could have gotten in ice ages, but it stands to figure that even in habitable latitudes there'd still be enough calved glaciers floating to make a vehicle suited for icy conditions worthwhile.
This is one of the things I love about Christopher's writings, he does calculations in his creative process.
They're fun! Building detailed models of a fictional world is one way to ensure that the world's believable as fiction.
When I heard "Icecutter" I thought of the Slanderscree from ADF's Icerigger trilogy. Imagine Andor as Tran-ky-ky except the Andorians tunneled down into the rock instead of adapting to the surface like the Tran. Subterranean hot springs could provide a lot of warmth. If Andor's orbit is in resonance with some of the other moons, tidal heating could make it quite volcanically active.
But parts of Andor's oceans might be iced up most of the time, so comparisons to Earth circumnavigations don't apply.
Maybe they sailed from pole to pole to pole?
Like I said, the continents of an alien world would certainly be shaped differently, and the icecaps could be larger. Earth is not fixed and unchanging; there have been times in the past where the icecaps have covered far more of the planet and it would have been impossible to circumnavigate the world by sea without either crossing or cutting through a fair amount of ice.
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