They must have pretty decent cloaks.
How else would they have gotten changelings not only to Earth but to Qo'nos?
How else would they have gotten changelings not only to Earth but to Qo'nos?
Where did Eris transport to?
- Thread starter kkt
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As one of them was able to pose as a high-ranking Romulan military official for what must have been a significant amount of time without ever falling under suspicion, I don't have a problem with it.
It's an interesting question whether Tain reached out to the Romulans or whether "Lovok" reached out to Tain.
ETA: IIRC, it's said in "The Die is Cast" that it was Tain's plan and the Founders just did what they could to make it happen when they found out about it.
It's an interesting question whether Tain reached out to the Romulans or whether "Lovok" reached out to Tain.
ETA: IIRC, it's said in "The Die is Cast" that it was Tain's plan and the Founders just did what they could to make it happen when they found out about it.
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When I first watched the episode, I assumed that she beamed out to some ship near the station, maybe a cloaked one.
And that's still my assumption after watching the episode some more times. In fact, I haven't thought of any possibilities since this thread showed up.
I don't think she committed suicide. She had valuable information about the station which she was about to give to her superiors, The Founders. Not to mention that suicide wasn't a Vorta thing.
She wasn't a changeling either. If she had been, she could have turned herself into Quark's ear-cleaner or something like that and spent the journey to DS9 in Quark's bag. When at the station, she could have turned herself into a vole, a dabo girl or anything to get the information she wanted.
A cloaked ship nearby whichshe beamed to is the most logical assumption.
According to Memory Alpha, the producers did plan to bring back Eris on two occasions but the actress was occupied with other things both times so the plan was eventually scrapped.
From Memory Alpha:
The producers intended to bring back Eris in "The Search, Part II" and "The Ship", but the actress was unavailable both times. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (p. ?)) Hagan commented: "Well, I took a gamble and I lost, on both counts. I was not available because I was testing for an NBC pilot with Dabney Coleman called Madman of the People. Needless to say, I didn’t get that role, and by then DS9 had moved on and retooled the character, so Dennis Christopher took over as Borath. I was deeply, deeply disappointed. But it was my fault." [4]
In the novelization of "The Search", it is Eris and not Borath who is running the mental simulation from "The Search, Part II". In "The Search, Part II", Sisko asked Borath, "And you're one of the founders?" to which Borath replies, "that is correct. You seem surprised." Sisko implies that he did not ever formerly suspect that Eris was one of the Founders. However in a prior episode ("The Jem'Hadar") he asks Eris, "you're one of the founders, aren't you?" As such Sisko is hiding from Borath some of his former insight.
A pity indeed! I think that Eris was a great character and I would have liked to see more of her and Kilana who also was an interesting character.
And that's still my assumption after watching the episode some more times. In fact, I haven't thought of any possibilities since this thread showed up.
I don't think she committed suicide. She had valuable information about the station which she was about to give to her superiors, The Founders. Not to mention that suicide wasn't a Vorta thing.
She wasn't a changeling either. If she had been, she could have turned herself into Quark's ear-cleaner or something like that and spent the journey to DS9 in Quark's bag. When at the station, she could have turned herself into a vole, a dabo girl or anything to get the information she wanted.
A cloaked ship nearby whichshe beamed to is the most logical assumption.
According to Memory Alpha, the producers did plan to bring back Eris on two occasions but the actress was occupied with other things both times so the plan was eventually scrapped.
From Memory Alpha:
The producers intended to bring back Eris in "The Search, Part II" and "The Ship", but the actress was unavailable both times. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (p. ?)) Hagan commented: "Well, I took a gamble and I lost, on both counts. I was not available because I was testing for an NBC pilot with Dabney Coleman called Madman of the People. Needless to say, I didn’t get that role, and by then DS9 had moved on and retooled the character, so Dennis Christopher took over as Borath. I was deeply, deeply disappointed. But it was my fault." [4]
In the novelization of "The Search", it is Eris and not Borath who is running the mental simulation from "The Search, Part II". In "The Search, Part II", Sisko asked Borath, "And you're one of the founders?" to which Borath replies, "that is correct. You seem surprised." Sisko implies that he did not ever formerly suspect that Eris was one of the Founders. However in a prior episode ("The Jem'Hadar") he asks Eris, "you're one of the founders, aren't you?" As such Sisko is hiding from Borath some of his former insight.
A pity indeed! I think that Eris was a great character and I would have liked to see more of her and Kilana who also was an interesting character.
A cloaked ship is only one piece of an explanation, though. A ship can't come through the wormhole cloaked without being noticed on DS9. Ops always notices traffic through the wormhole, but didn't remark on any traffic after Sisko, Jake, etc., went to the Gamma Quadrant. The other ship has to be prepared for Eris to signal at any time, and beam her out immediately. The Dominion couldn't have known when Sisko, Jake, Nog, and Quark were coming to the planet they were surveying; they didn't know themselves until about a day before. Did the Dominion have a cloaked ship sitting somewhere in the Bajor system for months/years just in case a Vorta or Founder needed a beamout in a hurry? Maybe they have a ship that can sit there cloaked and unattended for years, if necessary. Maybe the hunters in Captive Pursuit brought a cloaked shuttlecraft with them and left it in the Bajoran System, that was set for immediate beamout when a certain code was received? Just to do the bosses, the Dominion, a favor? Possibly wasteful, leaving shuttles behind possibly unneeded, but maybe the Dominion has more ships that they know what to do with.
Yes, it would have been nice to see more of Eris and Kilana. Too bad it didn't work out.
Just because Keevan betrayed the Dominion and his Jem Hadar subordinates to avoid dying doesn't prove all the Vorta did. Keevan seems to be the exception, not the shining example of great Vorta behavior!
Just because Keevan betrayed the Dominion and his Jem Hadar subordinates to avoid dying doesn't prove all the Vorta did. Keevan seems to be the exception, not the shining example of great Vorta behavior!
I assume so. It shrouds their clothes, after all.
We already know it's mental, that is, it requires concentration. It's probably psychic through and through - possibly also so that sensors easily show there's a bogeyman (or a ship!) there, but the brain decides there's nothing there and no alarms are sounding...
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
I was being facetious.
She shrouded using Jem'Hadar technology modified to look like a transporter effect and strolled away at her leisure.
I think of it as a "world under construction" issue. The writers at the time thought it a good idea to give the Dominion technology far more advanced than they ended up with: mere fighters that could battle a Galaxy Class ship to a standstill (and destroy one by ramming it), weapons and transporters that could penetrate shields, and presumably unlimited range transporters. By Season 3, they had decided to scale back Dominion tech so that the Federation would have a fighting chance.
By moving out of their way? Is that a real question?
I'm going to assume that any stealth device that can be defeated by putting everone's arms out or standing in the lift with weapons is at least situationally useless.
I think the Dominion was portrayed as being beyond the Federation in that respect at first. A few diminutive Jem' Hadar fighter taking out a Galaxy Class, one of the finest vessels of Starfleet? (And even if you leave out the finishing suicide run, it got a severe thrashing by those fighters). It's just that the Federation proves to be very quick learners and adept at improving their technology. In time, they learn to create shielding that can withstand the Dominion weaponry (which surprises Weyoun), but that's three years later, and eventually, the Defiant slices through those fighters as through hot butter. But this early in the series, the Dominion seems to have the technological edge.
Unless of course, if they'd hitch a ride immediately behind another vessel (and being cloaked of course) that's going through the wormhole anyway, say, one of those returning from a GQ exploration expedition. That's probably detectable, but probably not if you're not expecting it and therefore not actively scanning for it.
A few stray thoughts:
- The 'suicide hypothesis' (there being no ship in the neighborhood to help out Eris) would suggest the Dominion has personal transporters. I don't think they're that advanced, and we probably would have seen more evidence of that in the series since it would have come in handy in several situations.
- Generally I would expect the Federation to be able to trace transporter trails to unknown destinations. They apparently can't in this instance. So either it's because it's an unknown transporter type, or the transport has been 'encrypted', or because it's longer range than they anticipated. I expect the Dominion to have very long-range transporters but of course not up to cross-galactic distances, otherwise they wouldn't need the wormhole or view those Iconian gateways as a threat in the first place. Perhaps their transporters are similar to Nyrian transporters (those from VOY: Displaced) in that you can extend the transporter range but at the cost of capacity (i.e. transport more persons shorter range or just one person long-range).
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Good points there.
The suicide hypothesis would have assumed that Eris had a mundane personal disintegration bracelet, instead of an advanced personal transporter bracelet - much like she had an obfuscation collar, instead of a telepathy-blocking collar. That our heroes would mistake the disintegration for transportation would then explain their inability to track the nonexistent beam.
Tracking a transporter beam isn't universally doable, though: incoming beams are only occasionally spotted, and when villains do beam out, the more usual means of determining where they went is guessing: they tend to have their own ships nearby in the general case, after all.
How are beams tracked? In "Assignment: Earth", Spock claims to be able to determine that Gary Seven's beam is coming from at least a thousand lightyears away. Can he scan a thousand lightyears in a given direction and see there's no originating emitter there? This would be bullshit in the 23rd century context - Spock should admit to possibly missing an originator mere half a lightyear in the direction from which the beam in his estimate is coming from. So the likelier case here is that the beam itself contains some sort of origin information.
Outright coordinates embedded in the signal? "At least" 1k ly would not make any sense then - Spock should be saying "3487.987 ly, give or take" instead. Some sort of measurable decay in the signal? Spock could well make educated guesses there, even if the beam is somewhat alien to him (and it isn't totally alien since it's readily interfacing with Starfleet systems). But the ability to analyze decay would not translate to a general ability to track a path, or into any other particularly useful ability.
We could well assume that transporter signals themselves can't be tracked through space at all, and that tracking is solely via interrogating the waypoint machinery. Spock thus could tell there were no waypoints within the past 1,000 ly of the beam's travels, suggesting beeline travel, but cannot (and does not) give any sort of directional information anyway. But perhaps transporter signals normally rely on very firm and long handshakes with all sorts of relaying machinery, sometimes quite alien, and interrogating the handshake history isn't particularly demanding. And yes, bad guys can obfuscate that, but to their own peril if some machine in the chain loses grip of the signal due to the obfuscation...
Timo Saloniemi
The suicide hypothesis would have assumed that Eris had a mundane personal disintegration bracelet, instead of an advanced personal transporter bracelet - much like she had an obfuscation collar, instead of a telepathy-blocking collar. That our heroes would mistake the disintegration for transportation would then explain their inability to track the nonexistent beam.
Tracking a transporter beam isn't universally doable, though: incoming beams are only occasionally spotted, and when villains do beam out, the more usual means of determining where they went is guessing: they tend to have their own ships nearby in the general case, after all.
How are beams tracked? In "Assignment: Earth", Spock claims to be able to determine that Gary Seven's beam is coming from at least a thousand lightyears away. Can he scan a thousand lightyears in a given direction and see there's no originating emitter there? This would be bullshit in the 23rd century context - Spock should admit to possibly missing an originator mere half a lightyear in the direction from which the beam in his estimate is coming from. So the likelier case here is that the beam itself contains some sort of origin information.
Outright coordinates embedded in the signal? "At least" 1k ly would not make any sense then - Spock should be saying "3487.987 ly, give or take" instead. Some sort of measurable decay in the signal? Spock could well make educated guesses there, even if the beam is somewhat alien to him (and it isn't totally alien since it's readily interfacing with Starfleet systems). But the ability to analyze decay would not translate to a general ability to track a path, or into any other particularly useful ability.
We could well assume that transporter signals themselves can't be tracked through space at all, and that tracking is solely via interrogating the waypoint machinery. Spock thus could tell there were no waypoints within the past 1,000 ly of the beam's travels, suggesting beeline travel, but cannot (and does not) give any sort of directional information anyway. But perhaps transporter signals normally rely on very firm and long handshakes with all sorts of relaying machinery, sometimes quite alien, and interrogating the handshake history isn't particularly demanding. And yes, bad guys can obfuscate that, but to their own peril if some machine in the chain loses grip of the signal due to the obfuscation...
Timo Saloniemi
I'm pretty sure one episode established that Dominion transporters have a 10 light year range, so I assume she was plucked up by a ship way out of DS9's sensor range.
At the time maybe I would have thought she just beamed onto some cloaked Dominion ship. Seeing as how good they were with giving Jem Hadar built in cloaks you'd think they'd have some cloaking tech but we never see it in action. Covenant says about three light years for Dominion transporters with the crystal homing transponder which could be a good retcon for how Eris got away. As for why they don't use that as a tactical advantage, maybe there's some downside to it, maybe it's just something you have to overlook like other weird Trek stuff.
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