What did the Cythereans get out of the deal?

[at Quark's]

In the Nth degree, the Enterprise meets the Cythereans, whose feats are nothing short of impressive. They reprogram Barclay, giving him an IQ of between 1200 and 1450 (taking his own statement at face value), making him 'invent' entirely and radically new stuff on the run ...

... and they are looking for an exchange of knowledge. The information the Enterprise gets back with will take their scholars 'decades to examine'. But what did the Cythereans get out of it?

You'd almost think that the Federation would have precious little new scientific knowledge to offer to a civilization that can pull off stuff like that- just cultural, antropological, and 'regional' knowledge. Or had they?

Stated differently-- are the Cythereans really much more advanced, or just very, very different ?

 

[Finn]

They got all the knowledge of the Federation, I'd imagine.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Knowledge of all the races in the Federation more than technology, most likely.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The galaxy's best liquor stash.

 

[publiusr]

Their drive systems may have helped on the Ent-E design--but it still used warp.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

My impression of that episode was that the Cytherians were interested firstly in learning about other cultures, not so much in scientific knowledge.

 

[Triskelion]

Bipedal locomotion. All right! Giggity.

 

[sbk1234]

My impression of that episode was that the Cytherians were interested firstly in learning about other cultures, not so much in scientific knowledge.

this

 

[Leviathan]

All of Barclay's holodeck novellas. Cytherian civilization collapsed shortly thereafter.

 

[JesterFace]

My impression of that episode was that the Cytherians were interested firstly in learning about other cultures, not so much in scientific knowledge.

Yep, like Barclay said when they met the Cytherians, "they want to know us."

While Picard's log said it'll take decades to examine all the data they got from the Cytherians, I've always suspected that the Cytherians didn't reveal everything, perhaps they let the Federation to discover that weird superfast warpdrive thingy by themselves, they just used it to get Enteprise to them and then sent them back.

BTW, what is that Nth Degree wordplay... I haven't got it to this day, perhaps because English is not my number 1 language.

 

[at Quark's]

I looked up the script and what Picard literally says is:

We bring back knowledge of their race that will take our scholars decades to examine. (italics mine),

'Scholars', not 'scientists' ... and 'knowledge of their race'... both terms could suggest a primarily cultural (rather than scientific) exchange. So perhaps the Federation didn't get too much 'science' out of this encounter either.

 

[Leviathan]

Yep, like Barclay said when they met the Cytherians, "they want to know us."

"know"?...as in the Biblical sense? Might explain what the Cytherians got...

 

[JesterFace]

"know"?...as in the Biblical sense? Might explain what the Cytherians got...

I'm not exactly sure did Reg say "know", it might have been "meet us" ? Someone here might remember the quote...

 

[Kevman7987]

Bow chicka wah wah

 

[publiusr]

The probe seemed to move even without (detectable) field effects.