Who mourns for Trelane's cousin?

[BlastHardcheese]

I was "Watching who Mourns for Adonais" again and I wondered about Apollo and his godlike power being very similar to Trelane's. They were both powerful enough to grab hold of the Enterprise (in different ways) and perform other godly feats. But they both had sources of power which when destroyed, weakened them in some unspecified way. Could Apollo have been one of Trelane's race who went so far as to believe he was a god?

I'm not sure I subscribe to the "Q theory" however. There were other godlike beings in TNG aside from Q so there's no reason to think the godlike beings in TOS should be retconned.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, one might speculate that all godlike beings are roughly alike to the casual observer, including a sub-genre of them (cripples, children, senior gods) who have to make use of physical machinery to support their otherwise lacking powers. Trelane and Apollo may not really belong to a "race" any longer, as any sufficiently advanced entity would be a "race" or a "species" unto itself, extensively self-modified. But they may belong to a broader category that shares characteristics despite not sharing ancestry.

Could Apollo have been one of Trelane's race who went so far as to believe he was a god?

Why shouldn't he believe that? For all practical purposes, he was.

I mean, probably not a creator god, or at least he didn't boast on such things. Perhaps not a guardian-of-afterlife god, either - although he himself stands proof of an "afterlife" of sorts. But certainly a ruler and guardian god.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[seigezunt]

why do all the similar aliens have to be related?

 

[BlastHardcheese]

why do all the similar aliens have to be related?

Parallel evolution is certainly a good theory in this case. But to me, the similarities were too great for it to be just that.

 

[Christopher]

The similarities aren't that great at all. Trelane was evidently from a race of incorporeal energy beings and only took on an illusory human form; Apollo was explicitly described as a humanoid, corporeal being with an extra organ that harnessed energy to enable him to wield his powers. Trelane needed his "instrumentality" to help him perform his tricks; Apollo's temple was merely a source of energy to power his innate abilities. Trelane had no knowledge of humanity beyond what he was able to discern from a distance; Apollo and his kin had lived on Earth for several thousand years. Though there are certain parallels in the stories about the two individuals, that doesn't change the fact that there are fundamental differences between the entities themselves, differences that preclude any possibility of kinship.

 

[Timo]

Why would it count as a "difference" that the two deities had lived in dissimilar neighborhoods? We don't declare you and I different species even if you have never hugged a reindeer and I have never written a novel.

Also, for a humanoid with an extra organ, Apollo sure behaved in a surprisingly nonhumanoid fashion when growing tall and dispersing to the winds - without help from his already-destroyed temple. Perhaps the "humanoid plus strange doodad" appearance was a mere disguise, an incarnation among many possible. In that case, designating Apollo and Trelane as separate species would be a bit like doing the same to two people who happen to be wearing different clothes.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[EnsignHarper]

I kinda liked how Peter David postulated in Q-Squared that Trelane was nothing but an immature Q, needing a mechanical aid to help boost his powers at the time he meets the the original crew. David also does a neat job of tying in Q with WNMHGB and Mitchell...

 

[Timewalker]

Why would it count as a "difference" that the two deities had lived in dissimilar neighborhoods? We don't declare you and I different species even if you have never hugged a reindeer and I have never written a novel.

Timo Saloniemi

You've hugged a reindeer?!

Trelane has never been described as any sort of deity. It was made clear in the episode that he was a bratty little child, and while Peter David's story of him being a Q child was entertaining, it doesn't mesh with later canon as set forth in the Voyager series.

Still, I remember the first time I saw "Encounter at Farpoint" and Q's first appearance; one of the people I was with made the observation: "That's Trelane, all grown up."

So maybe Trelane and Q exist as members of the same species, but in slightly different timelines...

 

[Christopher]

The only real similarity between Q and Trelane is in their personalities. Hardly enough to establish kinship.

 

[Timewalker]

The only real similarity between Q and Trelane is in their personalities. Hardly enough to establish kinship.

Why did you edit your post? I got the longer version in my email and wanted to address a different point you made, re the technology angle...

 

[Christopher]

I rethought the technology angle. My original comment was that aside from moving Gothos (apparently), Trelane did nothing that couldn't be done with a transporter, a replicator, and a holodeck. But Trelane did claim to have made Gothos, and at the end his father said "Stop that nonsense at once, or you'll not be permitted to make any more planets," apparently verifying the claim. So I realized I was understating Trelane's evident power to serve my argument, and that wouldn't have been kosher.

So yeah, creating planets for play does seem to suggest a power similar to the Q. But given how many superbeings there are in the Trek universe, it seems unlikely that any random two would be related, even if they do have similar personalities. I mean, humans and humanoids are very young in comparison to the universe, so they must be grossly outnumbered by the older, incorporeal races that we know are abundant in the Trekverse.

 

[Neutral Zone]

So yeah, creating planets for play does seem to suggest a power similar to the Q. But given how many superbeings there are in the Trek universe, it seems unlikely that any random two would be related, even if they do have similar personalities. I mean, humans and humanoids are very young in comparison to the universe, so they must be grossly outnumbered by the older, incorporeal races that we know are abundant in the Trekverse.

But the one thing that I have noticed about these godlike beings, they always have a weak point and get out smarted by the weaker race, usually the humanoids. The only exception to this rule ppears to be our friend Q from TNG etc. We have no way of beating him physically only by luck when it comes to mind games, and we know that a Q can be killed just not by humans.

 

[Wingsley]

Perhaps the greatest similarity (and possibility) for related "godlike" beings would be connecting Apollo and his ilk to the mutant human Gary Mitchell of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" fame. If you want to connect the dots, why not speculate on Delta Vega being Apollo's homeworld, or a colony for Apollo, Sargon and who knows who else? Maybe there's more than an accidental relationship between "esper" powers and the "negative energy" barrier outside of our galaxy.

 

[Christopher]

But the rim of the galaxy is a huge expanse of space. What are the odds that a randomly chosen rim planet like Delta Vega would happen to be Apollo's people's homeworld even if there were some connection to the barrier?

 

[Wingsley]

It could be that Delta Vega is naturally the "last stop" in the stellar arrangement before travelers would hit the barrier, and it was therefore ideal for Apollo's race to live on at one time in the distant past. Keep in mind that just because it could have been their "homeworld" or a major colony doesn't mean the first evolved there.

 

[Christopher]

It could be that Delta Vega is naturally the "last stop" in the stellar arrangement before travelers would hit the barrier...

But travellers in which direction???? The galaxy isn't a straight line. It's a huge, huge disk. And if the barrier surrounds its entire rim (in three dimensions, mind, not just the edge of the disk but its faces as well), then "the last stop before hitting the barrier" is meaningless, because you'd hit the barrier in any direction. Even if the barrier just extends across a certain percentage of the face of galactic disk (which is far more plausible than some kind of magic shrink wrap encasing the whole galaxy), it would still have to cover a vast surface area to qualify as a barrier at all, otherwise people could just go around it.

See, this is the problem with trying to draw arbitrary connections between different things seen in Trek episodes. It requires ignoring the fact that there should be a vast, expansive universe beyond just what we've seen in Trek episodes. That everything the five televised starship crews have encountered in their journeys is just a tiny fraction of what the Federation as a whole has encountered or learned, and everything the Federation knows is just an infinitesimal fraction of what exists in our galaxy alone.

Besides, how often do enormous coincidences like that happen in your own life? Is every person you meet, every place you go to, directly connected in some way to a person or place you encountered 20 years ago in another city? No, of course not! Such coincidental connections crop up extremely rarely. Most of the people you meet, most of the places you go, have no cutesy, contrived connection to one another, even when they do have one or two superficial similarities. So why try to force such pointless interconnections onto a fictional world?

 

[Wingsley]

Ah, but "Operation -- Annihilate!" and "Errand of Mercy" seemed to establish that there could be "natural invasion routes", like a string of stars in a constellation, within a galaxy. Why not natural traveling routes as well? Think if it like the "island hopping" campaigns during the Pacific War. Maybe ancient humanoids discovered the powers of dark energy in the galactic barrier, and colonized chains of habitable worlds nearby to take advantage of the dark energy. Delta Vega could be the closest to the barrier along the outer tip of that arm of the galaxy.

 

[Christopher]

^"Could be" is meaningless in a vast universe. The question is whether the probability is high enough to be worth bothering with. You can use "could be" arguments to justify any nonsensical premise. There could be an invisible, intangible elephant looking over your shoulder right now. Does that mean it's a plausible suggestion? Hell, no.

 

[ahkyahnan]

For my own 2 cents, I personally never got the impression the various 'godlike' beings were supposed to be related. Each was presented with their own unique characteristics, and I always felt the intention was that they represented separate 'races' if you will...just like humans and the other corporeal beings we saw. (Before bringing up the 'seeding' theory, read further below.)

Another big issue I believe though, is that most of the godlike beings stated widely different points in the distant past as being the time when their corporeal ancestors evolved into incorporeal form. That would seem to preclude very many of the godlike beings we saw as having originally come from the same ancient corporeal race. I don't have that charted out here, but I think the old Trek chronology has that info when given.

Now on the seeding theory...or maybe canon I guess based on TNG...I know that many of the humanoid races we saw in TOS are now said to have been seeded from a common ancestor. (Haven't watched the ep in a long time to remember the details.) But the humanoid seeding appears to have occurred over a short timespan...relative to the age of the galaxy...and we've all evolved further within fifty thousand or so years of each other, up to where we all start meeting in TOS.

So the only way I could see the godlike entities being 'related' somehow would be if they'd all evolved from an even earlier seeding by an even earlier common ancestor, but again you'd think they would've all evolved to incorporeal status over a shorter timespan than they apparently did. Granted, I have no idea how evolution to incorporeal form works exactly, how long it takes, is it chosen or natural, etc. I just think they'd be closer in age, relatively speaking, if they were related.

Mark