Whatever happened to the Genesis technology?

[Timo]

in TBOBWs it is stated that once the crew of a borg cube find themselves compromised, ie the "go to sleep trick" they self destruct.

It happens there once. Nothing is "stated", and the Borg have signed no contract obligating them to self-destruct the next time around.

Cubes may be blown up as a precaution, as in the episode "Unimatrix Zero", but they may also make a stand against a threat, or lash back in unpredictable ways. Without Seven of Nine, Starfleet would have zero knowledge on how the Borg really behave, and even Seven's testimonies have proven suspect at times.

Which is why applying an ultimate one-shot-to-kill-everybody superweapon should be done with utmost care and true rather than false confidence that it really will get the job done. Genesis won't kill all the Borg at once, as it is an effect that moves at a snail's page, allowing even wounded 23rd century Starfleet ships to outrun it. So it's probably worse than nothing as an anti-Borg defense.

Once things went boom Starfleet stepped back, looked at each other, asked "who thought THAT was a good idea" and stuffed whatever they had in a room alongside the Ark of the Covenant and Shatner's Toupee.

One wonders how many people really knew the specifics about Genesis tech. Kruge got something from Valkris, and ST4:TVH shows that the Klingons got something out of Kruge. Enough to make it futile to try Illuminati-style archiving? Or just enough to tell the Klingons and the rest of the universe that Genesis can be done, making their scientists struggle all the harder?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[topcat]

well the snippet of video that kruges girlfriend looked at was exactly what marcus showed kirk... so it can be assumed he got the full data.
and it was given the appearance that kruge was a lone operator doing something on his own.
and the ship ended up in san Francisco bay...

And I rmember that the final end shot of the enterprise leaving the nebula was the ship after it went to warp. Saw one fan article that did some interesting math and estimated the genesis wave had a 7 light year blast zone.

 

[Timo]

Hmm. Kruge got all that Valkris had to offer. What did he do next? Fly to Genesis, deep in UFP territory, in an attempt to capture scientists who might know about Genesis.

This sort of suggests that Valkris only got a barebones "sales pitch" video, with scant technical data, and this made Kruge aware of a need to secure the actual data ASAP.

Did he get anything out of the scientists? He killed all of them at sight, save for Saavik - so any data he might have sent to the Empire would have to come from Saavik, more or less. And Saavik didn't even know about the protomatter thing. So it does seem the Klingons only learned that Genesis exists, not how it was supposed to work.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vandervecken]

Genesis won't kill all the Borg at once, as it is an effect that moves at a snail's page, allowing even wounded 23rd century Starfleet ships to outrun it. So it's probably worse than nothing as an anti-Borg defense.



One wonders how many people really knew the specifics about Genesis tech. Kruge got something from Valkris, and ST4:TVH shows that the Klingons got something out of Kruge. Enough to make it futile to try Illuminati-style archiving? Or just enough to tell the Klingons and the rest of the universe that Genesis can be done, making their scientists struggle all the harder?

Timo Saloniemi

IMO, Genesis is nothing special as, and probably insanely costly and difficult to make, as weapons tech. It's got to be WAY more costly and difficult (same thing at that level) to make Genesis "torpedoes" than just dropping destabilized antimatter cores on a planet. Or outfitting some big planetary system rocks with engines, ie, mass drivers. Or just fricking General Order 24ing a planet. Or maybe beaming away a big and deep chunk of its crust, if it has an active core/mantle, etc.

And even if ever useful it is so only against planets or systems. As an anti-ship weapon it's largely meaningless.

 

[Timo]

But its big forte is that it's a wave. Which is why in the (rather silly) novels, the big fright comes from scaling it up with an emphasis on that wave property, meaning it goes places and leaves all of them changed.

You can always at least try and shoot down an incoming projectile, or a starship trying to do nasty things from orbit. There's nothing we know of that could stop the wave from an already detonated Genesis device, though.

Not that we'd know much. Kirk's ship didn't have shields - would those have made a difference? If not, then it's an awesome anti-ship weapon, because there's no need to aim, and a hundred ships go down just as easily as one, with a single shot. Unless they escape to warp, which is often a good outcome as well.

The big problem is that since there's no aiming a Genesis wave, there's no way to keep it from hurting your own assets, either...

TImo Saloniemi

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Imagine a cross between Genesis and the weapon in Nemesis with a light year range upon detonation? Fun times.

 

[Griffeytrek]

But its big forte is that it's a wave. Which is why in the (rather silly) novels, the big fright comes from scaling it up with an emphasis on that wave property, meaning it goes places and leaves all of them changed.

You can always at least try and shoot down an incoming projectile, or a starship trying to do nasty things from orbit. There's nothing we know of that could stop the wave from an already detonated Genesis device, though.

Not that we'd know much. Kirk's ship didn't have shields - would those have made a difference? If not, then it's an awesome anti-ship weapon, because there's no need to aim, and a hundred ships go down just as easily as one, with a single shot. Unless they escape to warp, which is often a good outcome as well.

The big problem is that since there's no aiming a Genesis wave, there's no way to keep it from hurting your own assets, either...

TImo Saloniemi

I could be wrong on this (and honestly the movie people probably never really thought it through as much as we nerdy fans do.) but I always assumed the wave effect was tied to more or less solid matter. It only really worked where it did because it was set off in the cloud, and had the cloud to feed on. That's why in the animations the wave moves across the planet, not bursting from it. Like a fire it needs fuel. At the end the Enterprise had to get out of the nebula. In normal open space it was likely just a powerful bomb used to start the reaction.

 

[RAMA]

In all the years since the TOS movies I have never heard it mentioned. But what became of the Genesis technology?

Did Starfleet really just abandon it and never looked at it again to fix what went wrong?

I always wondered why no one wrote about it in future instalments of Star Trek in any form.

According to the producers, man played god and the technology was too much to handle.

 

[Vandervecken]

But its big forte is that it's a wave. Which is why in the (rather silly) novels, the big fright comes from scaling it up with an emphasis on that wave property, meaning it goes places and leaves all of them changed.

You can always at least try and shoot down an incoming projectile, or a starship trying to do nasty things from orbit. There's nothing we know of that could stop the wave from an already detonated Genesis device, though.

Not that we'd know much. Kirk's ship didn't have shields - would those have made a difference? If not, then it's an awesome anti-ship weapon, because there's no need to aim, and a hundred ships go down just as easily as one, with a single shot. Unless they escape to warp, which is often a good outcome as well.

The big problem is that since there's no aiming a Genesis wave, there's no way to keep it from hurting your own assets, either...

TImo Saloniemi

Hmm. If waves are the thing, then hasn't Genesis been surpassed by the soliton wave in TNG New Ground, direction of which can be controlled? And the wavefront of that is, although directional rather than radial, way way bigger, or at least can be way way bigger. Probably that size can be controlled, too, down to some minimum size for ignition and cohesion.

Huh, and I bet that THAT could stop a Genesis wave (in that unlikely situation).


-----------------------

Not being able to get out of the way of your own weapon is for sure one hell of a drawback, but that can be overcome with a longer countdown after planting it. It seems like a lot of trouble for not much gain to me though. Ok so it's a wave. Just commit some more conventional resources and get the same destructive effect. It isn't even necessary to destroy as much as Genesis would in order to destroy an enemy's capacity to make war, which is not the same as annihilating them--it comes at a much lower commitment of resources. And Genesis leaves no plunder/battle loot/intelligence-worthy materials behind.

I guess Genesis could come into play when you are nearly down to an enemy's last several worlds in one relatively compact volume of space and you really hate them SO much that genocide is preferable to even conquering, but that would be an unusual strategic goal in war as we know it. Even then, as I've written, that goal can be accomplished with less. How are several asteroids dropped on a world any less destructive than Genesis? Warp core explosions could rip away an atmosphere. Do it on the worlds that are near each other--you don't really need to fry the intervening space, another waste of energy and force by Genesis, that's just pointlessly flashy--and you have the same effect.

 

[topcat]

true it would be simpler to take a type 9 shuttle craft, put a proto matter device in back, and let it detonate inside a sun and take most of the solar system out...

 

[Timo]

It only really worked where it did because it was set off in the cloud, and had the cloud to feed on. That's why in the animations the wave moves across the planet, not bursting from it. Like a fire it needs fuel. At the end the Enterprise had to get out of the nebula

That's one way to interpret the visuals. But we can also note that there is no nebula when Genesis detonates - the explosion of the starship happens in clear space (it was probably too expensive to do the VFX for the nebula and the explosion simultaneously), as if the Reliant blowing up also blew away the clouds first. And there is no dialogue mention of a significance to getting out of the nebula.

Whatever Genesis does in that simulation, it has to be viewed in light of what it did in reality before. It animated the innards of a cave, and then stopped, failing to turn Regula in its entirety into a sperm whale. So the effect can be controlled to some degree. Would that control allow the wave to be used as a weapon in free space? A directional one, even, keeping the firing vessel safe? Difficult to tell when we know so little of the technology.

If waves are the thing, then hasn't Genesis been surpassed by the soliton wave in TNG New Ground, direction of which can be controlled?

More or less. Although it sounded as if the experimental soliton wave required a massive generator, while Genesis can be seeded by a thin tube two meters long.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

What if you crossed Genesis with the Thelaron weapon in Nemesis?

 

[Timo]

Thalaron was quite an oddball: it was supposed to kill everybody regardless of their level of protection, but was shown depending on the victims being contaminated by some sort of a dust-like fallout. Does that dust go through all matter and shielding like hot neutrinos through butter? Does it sometimes travel faster than the snail's pace shown? Or is it in fact tactically useless, trivially stoppable in space (by physical barriers of counter-dust, by wide-beam phasers etc) and ground (by face masks and gloves in addition to the usual clothing)?

Genesis already has all the destructive power of thalaron, so crossbreeding might not be of any tangible benefit.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Rob]

Genesis has the advantage of the wave moving in all directions. Unlike the thalaron weapon that fires in only one direction.
Which is one of my big beefs with "Nemesis". Don't back away from the thing as it's about to go off. GET OUT OF THE WAY! It's like the old movie trope of a train bearing down on people and they try to save themselves by running down the track. GET OFF THE DAMNED TRACK!

 

[2takesfrakes]

Genesis isn't really necessary for its said purpose. For example, in our own Solar System, it makes sense to use Genesis on Venus, but there are so many moons and icy asteroids that could be moved into The Habitable Zone, that Venus is almost a waste of effort. Already, in reality, NASA's given serious thought to securing an asteroid to orbit the Moon, for exploration and training purposes. Yes, Genesis gives instant results, but just how long would Europa take to thaw out as a captured moon of Venus? Without being a scientist, myself, I would guess it wouldn't even take a decade to become a WaterWorld. No Protomatter Required.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Genesis isn't really necessary for its said purpose. For example, in our own Solar System, it makes sense to use Genesis on Venus, but there are so many moons and icy asteroids that could be moved into The Habitable Zone, that Venus is almost a waste of effort. Already, in reality, NASA's given serious thought to securing an asteroid to orbit the Moon, for exploration and training purposes. Yes, Genesis gives instant results, but just how long would Europa take to thaw out as a captured moon of Venus? Without being a scientist, myself, I would guess it wouldn't even take a decade to become a WaterWorld. No Protomatter Required.

And how would they move Europa? And what if there really is life there, would thawing the place kill that life?

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Thalaron was quite an oddball: it was supposed to kill everybody regardless of their level of protection, but was shown depending on the victims being contaminated by some sort of a dust-like fallout. Does that dust go through all matter and shielding like hot neutrinos through butter? Does it sometimes travel faster than the snail's pace shown? Or is it in fact tactically useless, trivially stoppable in space (by physical barriers of counter-dust, by wide-beam phasers etc) and ground (by face masks and gloves in addition to the usual clothing)?

Genesis already has all the destructive power of thalaron, so crossbreeding might not be of any tangible benefit.

Timo Saloniemi

I always called the weapon in Nemesis the "gorgon device" as it looked like it not only killed its target but turned them into stone.

 

[Captain Rob]

I ran "Nemesis" at the theater I used to manage. So I saw the beginning a huge number of times. As with most movies. It seemed like the effect was some sort of cellular incineration. Resulting in a large compact form of ashes that fell apart when the dead corpse fell over.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I ran "Nemesis" at the theater I used to manage. So I saw the beginning a huge number of times. As with most movies. It seemed like the effect was some sort of cellular incineration. Resulting in a large compact form of ashes that fell apart when the dead corpse fell over.

Ah........... OK I thought the victims were incinerated and petrified ...... So that's why I called it a Gorgon device.

 

[Maurice]

I...Resulting in a large compact form of ashes that fell apart when the dead corpse fell over.

As opposed to all those live corpses.