Why is the Alpha Quadrant not under the Raptor's Wings?

[Prax]

I know why they didn't conquer earth or Vulcan...it was too far away.

T'Pol says that in the days prior to Cochrane, their corner of the galaxy was a quiet place, with very few species possessing interstellar ships.

These aren't "Galactic Empires." Even in the time of DS9, the Klingon, Federation, and Romulan territory combined would just be a small(albeit respectable) blip compared to the rest of the "Alpha Quadrant." In TNG, at the height of the Federation, they've only explored like 4% of the galaxy.

 

[Vger23]

I don't even know what the hell this is.

 

[Farscape One]

I think I remember that line of dialogue, and it was 11% of the galaxy.

Still, agreed that is tiny compared to the rest of the quadrant.

 

[Tim Thomason]

The Galaxy is huge, and unlike (apparently) real life, every major named star has a civilization in its orbit. So, it seems Earth had skated by the same way the Mintakans or the Malcorians or the Alkaalis did: By being used by occasional alien pirates for fun and games but otherwise ignored for being a humdrum planet in the middle of nowhere.

The fact that Spock (and T'Pol) do not seem aware of Romulan origins, means that the Star Empire is a new occurrence. The Klingons too seem to be entering a new stage of conquest in less than generation prior to Enterprise (corresponding, interestingly, with the change from a monarchy to a Chancellory).

Maybe the greatest battle of the Promellian-Menthar War took place in orbit of Saturn, but humans were kept in the dark just like the Veridians of Veridian IV.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Kukulkan

Julian's teddy bear?

 

[Farscape One]

You mean Kukalaka?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Julian's teddy bear?

Mayan "god" as seen in How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth,

 

[Timo]

I know why they didn't conquer earth or Vulcan...it was too far away. T'Pol says that in the days prior to Cochrane, their corner of the galaxy was a quiet place, with very few species possessing interstellar ships.

Which just makes one wonder why the people farther away (say, Romulans) didn't exploit the vacuum and take over. After all, "far" would at worst mean "a few years away" for these folks who live in the quiet place, and surely flying across a few years' worth of travel time would be doable and desirable for folks like Romulans, who already had done some heavy flying?

Of course, we can define "far" in several other ways as well. Back in ENT, there was this vast hostile region called the Delphic Expanse, only about thirty lightyears from Earth as per indirect dialogue (Xindi Council sits 50 ly from Earth, the edge of the Expanse is 23 ly from them). Vulcans didn't venture inside - or if they did, they had a choice between becoming violent zombies or succumbing to the local inside-out-turning anomaies. Presumably this would likewise hinder Romulans.

So... What if the Expanse sat between Romulus and Earth/Vulcan? It was supposedly about 2000 ly across, yet the Xindi Council was just a couple of dozen ly from the edge - coincidence, or an artifact of it in fact being a mostly flat shield (as quite possibly suggested by the graphics in ENT S3) that would mean a horrible detour for any Vulcanoid unification movement?

For all we know, the Expanse Expanded to divide the Vulcanoids after the Romulan exodus - after all, expansion was a chief characteristic of the phenomenon. When Archer's team turned it off, the stage was set for the Romulan War...

These aren't "Galactic Empires." Even in the time of DS9, the Klingon, Federation, and Romulan territory combined would just be a small(albeit respectable) blip compared to the rest of the "Alpha Quadrant." In TNG, at the height of the Federation, they've only explored like 4% of the galaxy.

As mentioned, either 11% or 19 %, as stated in two separate early eps. Either contradictorily, or then because most data gained on the galaxy comes in nice parcels donated by new members, and the UFP indeed gained a 8% parcel between those eps. And 4% is probably fine for the TOS era, then.

The actual UFP would no doubt be much smaller. And we get plenty of dialogue hints that Vulcan and Romulus are very close to each other in TNG era travel time terms. Perhaps a "star empire" need not span more than two dozen light years in order to be sizeable or at least formidable, considering more or less every star system offers wealth and strength to the conqueror.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MAGolding]

What is canonical is First Contact, Enterprise and Deep Space Nine, which is where I got said information. From what is stated in text in Awakening the ancestors of the Romulans were on Vulcan during the Time of Awakening

As for your narrative about Vulcan being an interstellar power tens of thousands of years ago, it begs more questions than it answers. First and foremost of which is "Why is Earth not a Vulcan Colony?" As for other offshoots, we know that there were dissenters from Surak's teachings (some were seen in Fusion).

Zor

Here are other examples of former interstellar powers that Earth is not presently ruled by:

According to "The Last Outpost" in the first season of TNG 600,000 years ago the Tkon Empire had a population of trillions and could move stars. The empire ended when the central star became a supernova. That would have destroyed all the planets orbiting the central star. Radiation from the supernova would eventually reach neighboring star systems and might wipe out all life on their planets too.

People living in outer solar systems of the empire would have been unharmed by the supernova. But apparently the Tkon Empire was very highly centralized and the outer planets collapsed into barbarism and lost space flight capabilities.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Tkon_Empire[1]

According to "Contagion" in the second season of TNG the ancient Iconians presumably discovered warp drive and used it for centuries and millennia before developing their superior gateway technology to travel instantly between worlds, even across the galaxy. The enemies of the Iconians destroyed their home world Iconia with an orbital bombardment 200,000 years ago.

Thus the Iconians presumably had warp drive before developing a superior technology and abandoning warp drive. Then Iconia was bombarded and the Iconians either became extinct, and thus totally without warp drive, or escaped and lost all memory of both warp drive and gateway technology and all memory of their history on Iconia.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Iconian[2]

The episode "Booby Trap" in the third season of TNG mentioned the ancient war between the Menthars and the Promelians during Earth's 14th century. Both species had warp drive until the war, which seems to have been one of extermination. Apparently the last members of both species exterminated each other in the final battle at Orelious IX.

So the Menthars and the Promelians both had warp drive until they were extinct, and then they really, really did not have warp drive any more.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Menthar[3]

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Promellian[4]

IN the episode "Ensign Ro" in the fifth season of TNG the Bajorans are introduced.

When Picard visits a Bajoran resettlement camp his log says:

> Captain's log, supplemental. I read about the achievements of the ancient Bajoran civilisation in my fifth grade reader. They were architects and artists, builders and philosophers when humans were not yet standing erect. Now I see how history has rewarded them.

The ancient Bajoran civilization must have been very ancient.

As far as I know all members of the genus *Homo* walked erect, including *Homo sapiens* (c. 200,000 years ago to present), *Homo rhodesiensis* (300,000 to 120,000 years ago), *Homo heidelbergensis* (600,000 to 300,000 years ago), *Homo ergaster* (1,800,000 to 1,300,000 years ago), *Homo erectus* (1,900,000 to 70,000 years ago), and *Homo habilis* (2,100,000 to 1,500,000 years ago).

According to this article, many earlier species were partially bipedal, but *Homo erectus* 1,890,000 years ago was the first full time bipedal human ancestor.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scie...an-the-evolution-of-walking-upright-13837658/[5]

So depending on how broad or narrow one's definition of "humans" is, Bajorans could have been civilized 200,000 to 1,800,000 years ago at the latest and possibly many thousands or millions of years before that.

But the present Bajoran civilization is much younger, going back at most tens of thousands of years.

In the episode "Rapture" in the fifth season of DS9, a 20,000-year-old painting is the only proof that the legendary lost city of B'hala ever existed. Oral stories and legends about B'hala may have been written down centuries or millennia later, but there are no surviving records contemporary with the occupation of the city except for the painting.

This strongly suggests that the era of B'hala was more or less the equivalent of ancient Sumeria or Old Kingdom Egypt in the history of the current Bajoran Civilization. The present Bajoran religion involves worshipping the Prophets who sent the Orbs to Bajor over the last last 10,000 years.

Thus it seems obvious to me that Bajor was civilized hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago, and that civilization fell, and the present Bajoran civilization arose merely tens of thousands of years ago.

But how could Bajoran artifacts and ruins survive on the surface of a planet with weather for hundreds of thousands or millions of years?

My theory is that modern Bajoran, Cardassian, and Federation archaeologists have found the remains of ancient Bajoran spaceships, space stations, space colonies, etc. in the Bajoran system and thus learned of the lost ancient Bajoran civilization.

And if the ancient Bajoran civilization was advanced enough to have interplanetary space travel, it could easily have been advanced enough to have discovered warp drive and left remains of it's activities in nearby solar systems, including the Cardassian system, thus giving Cardassians an inferiority complex and making them want to conquer Bajor.

Thus I think that the Bajorans were probably another society that once had warp drive and later lost it.

[1]: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Tkon_Empire
[2]: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Iconian
[3]: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Menthar
[4]: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Promellian
[5]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scie...an-the-evolution-of-walking-upright-13837658/

These examples make me think that the ancient Vulcans could have had an ancient space empire without Earth being ruled by the Vulcans at the present.

 

[Tenacity]

Thus it seems obvious to me that Bajor was civilized hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago, and that civilization fell, and the present Bajoran civilization arose merely tens of thousands of years ago.

Or, the Bajoran were civilized for hundreds of thousands of years, a steady stable spiritual people. Their population alternated between slow growth and gradual declines. Their natural resource use was sustainable, after achieving space (and later star) flight, new resources would have become available to them.

The Human example doesn't have to be ubiquitous, explosive population growth following the Bajorans becoming a technological people.

Their path could have been different.

 

[Tim Thomason]

These examples make me think that the ancient Vulcans could have had an ancient space empire without Earth being ruled by the Vulcans at the present.

I usually go with the Sargonian theory, that Vulcan is just a long-lost colony of Sargon's Empire from 500,000 years prior. It just seems that they didn't evolve on such a hot, intemperate planet (especially when Romulans have it so easy on their world).

That gives us the idea that these space empires/federations/cultures reach a natural point where they begin "evolving" (a la Zalkonians, or maybe just discovering thought power like Wesley), and this causes such social upheaval that the society collapses in on itself and all these colonies lose access to spacefaring and eventually their way of life. Vulcanoid Rigellians and Mintakans might be Sargonian offshoots as well.

The Federation is easy to break-up, because they are all seperate cultures anyway. Which might be the ultimate fate of all the interpecies alliances after a few centuries or even millennia.

I don't have citations, but I'm pretty sure it's been implied multiple times that the Orions had a vast polity in the past and may have been the major players on the scene before their society collapsed into piracy and crime syndicates (Roman Empire analogue?).

 

[Tenacity]

The Federation is easy to break-up, because they are all separate cultures anyway.

The series is kind of vague as to whether there is a "federation culture" even after two centuries of existence.

but I'm pretty sure it's been implied multiple times that the Orions had a vast polity in the past

Source books for games advance this idea of the Orions at one time being vast, and old too. My thought is that the piracy and crime syndicates are fairly small parts of the overall Orion society. It's like "The Mob" in America, it's there but not like you see in the movies.