Would Spock's death had been covered up?

[Sci]

I suppose my question might be more accurately asked as: How would the Federation explain Spock's death and resurrection?

By telling the truth, presumably.

I don't think they need to explain the "Vulcan Mysticism" part of it, but rather its connections to Project Genesis?

Project Genesis led to the creation of an entire planet and star system, the disappearance of a nebula, and was openly spoken about with a foreign ambassador on the floor of the Federation Council. The cat was out of the bag there; it was already part of the public record. No reason to hide it from there.

You're assuming that meeting was open to the public.

Why would it be open to the Ambassador of the Klingon Empire to the United Federation of Planets -- a hostile foreign power -- but not the public? It's not like they'd be able to trust the Klingon Ambassador not to leak everything to the press; the Klingons certainly wouldn't obey Federation laws about classified information.

 

[DonIago]

I'm reasonably sure that even in this day and age closed-door meetings with hostile powers can and do occur.

 

[Timo]

But as said, such meetings would have the consequence of the dirtiest UFP secrets leaking out because the hostile power would have it in its interest to leak them.

That means Genesis would be public knowledge, and indeed was in ST3 already. But Spock's resurrection wouldn't be dirty enough that Klingons would bother advertising it, so supposedly it might remain behind those doors. That is, if the UFP chose to treat it as a secret. At which point the Klingons might spill it, just for the spite.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Sci]

I'm reasonably sure that even in this day and age closed-door meetings with hostile powers can and do occur.

Sure.

Behind closed doors. In meeting rooms. Not on the floor of the United States Congress or British Parliament.

And when they do occur? The hostile foreign government has something to gain from keeping it secret.

The Klingons have nothing to gain from keeping Genesis a secret for the Federation. Hell, their entire point is that they want a Federation citizen extradited to the Empire because of Genesis -- it's in their interests to expose Genesis to the public and claim it was a weapons system that Kirk was developing against them.

And then there's the fact that in Star Trek III, a civilian transport owner knew that the Mutara Sector was off-limits. And on top of that, there's the very simple fact that you can't hide the destruction of an entire nebula and the existence of an entirely new planet from the rest of the universe. Everyone has subspace sensors.

The cat was out of the bag. The best the Federation could do was keep the specific details of the Genesis Device classified. The existence of the device itself would be impossible not to expose to the public, however. Between all the deaths aboard the Reliant and the Enterprise, the destruction of the Mutara Nebula, the creation and then destruction of the Genesis Planet, the deaths aboard the Grissom, the presence of a captured Klingon Bird-of-Prey at a civilian monastery on a Federation Member Planet, the sabotage of the Excelsior on the eve of her maiden voyage, and the theft and destruction of the most famous starship in Starfleet, the U.S.S. Enterprise....

... to say nothing of how hard it would be to cover up the death of the son of one of the most important politicians in the entire Federation, Sarek of Vulcan...

... there's just no way the events of the Genesis Trilogy could be hidden.

 

[Timo]

...there's the very simple fact that you can't hide the destruction of an entire nebula and the existence of an entirely new planet from the rest of the universe. Everyone has subspace sensors.

Apparently, you can. Not even Starfleet had any idea that the Doomsday Machine was eating up entire star systems, or that the Ceti Alpha system was undergoing redecoration (and under new management, but that was Kirk's fault for not telling).

Probably subspace sensors exist but have a limited range and/or resolution: you can't get detailed data (such as planet counts) realtime from across anything more than a few dozen lightyears. Perhaps you can get coarser data realtime, and you certainly get fine data if you wait with your telescope for the appropriate number of centuries. But, say, the Rigel Colony had no idea the supposedly next-door system L-374 was being gobbled up.

Genesis would be exposed eventually, but rapid exposure would require that the Regula system and the adjoining Mutara nebula be located next to a busy shipping lane. Which isn't all that probable because Starfleet chose the location for secret research.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Malleus]

...Just check out "South Of The Border" directed by Oliver Stone, and the Chavez part specifically to see what Im talking about...

Well yeah, that movie is all lies, that Chavez is a lousy dictator who is running Venezuela to the ground

Restructuring of foreign, social, and economic policy can involve running things to the ground, like in the 1970s and 1980s.

I do think there would still be Federation media bias, despite all the claims to objectivity.

 

[Neumann]

Well yeah, that movie is all lies, that Chavez is a lousy dictator who is running Venezuela to the ground

Restructuring of foreign, social, and economic policy can involve running things to the ground, like in the 1970s and 1980s.

I do think there would still be Federation media bias, despite all the claims to objectivity.

Well friend, I live here, if by any chance you would like to see this in first person you are welcome to stay at my home. Chavez is not restructuring anything, the country is riding on high inflation 27% and in a recession -1% growth. His policy is based on ideological and gut feeling and he has been destroying the private sector for years. Venezuela has become one of the slowest growing and least competitive countries in the continent thanks to his policies... sorry.

 

[T'Girl]

^ I know it sounds harsh, but maybe we need a country like Venezuela to come around every once and a while to show the rest of the nations on Earth what not to do, we had the USSR to show us that "okay that doesn't work," we had Greece and Iceland's financial problems recently "okay that doesn't work," and we also currently have Venezuela.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

"How do you get better from death?!" the press demands.

 

[Sci]

"How do you get better from death?!" the press demands.

"By use of a combination of Vulcan telepathy and classified technology that proved destabilizing, destroying the planet it created and nearly killing the resurrected Captain Spock in the process," the Palais de la Concorde Press Liaison replies. "It's pretty much a freak occurrence that can't be repeated."

 

[Timo]

Or then it can. It's not as if coming back from the dead would be a rare event or anything in Trek. Even if McCoy is more than mildly curious about how Spock took it, a man of the street not closely associated with Spock might not be interested. He probably had a cousin of an uncle who came back, too...

As much as we disparage Crusher's "we no longer fear death" sentiments in TNG "The Neutral Zone", that's actually a pretty good and necessary dodge for the fact that dying shouldn't be all that common any more in the 24th century. TOS featured all sorts of ways to eternal life, ranging from body swaps to Sargon spheres to becoming God to fooling with time itself. If fountain of youth still were something people would fight galactic wars over or kill their own babies for, we should have seen those wars and feasts already.

The fountain in ST:INS was probably of interest mainly because it was the easiest and least inconvenient cure for death so far...

Timo Saloniemi