Yet Another Doomsday Machine Thread

[Commishsleer]

Although if I fly to the US mainland via Hawaii that doesn't mean I came from Hawaii. So there must be something else Spock used to determine the Doomsday machine came from outside the galaxy. Say like they'd never heard of it before, it had magical out of galaxy particles on it or it had a design he'd read about that say came from the Canis Major civilisations which is another galaxy both outside and inside our galaxy.
Although these dwarf galaxies were apparently known from the 1950s, I have always been taught the Andromeda is our closest galaxy and I was at school umm later than the 1950s. Have these other closer galaxies always been known as galaxies?
I'm guessing that during TOS and even TNG Andromeda was referred to as our closest galaxy.

Not that Spock even said it came from the nearest galaxy.

 

[johnnybear]

In school days Andromeda has always been our closest galactic neighbour and Trek too visits that theme in a couple of episodes including a small invasion force of Kelvans from there in By Any Other Name! It's similar to the how many moons does Jupiter have theme from the seventies where twelve were known of but nowadays there are seventy nine, fifty three of which are named! Now that really does play havoc with a certain Doctor Who serial from the seventies although they got around that by saying there were twelve major moons!
JB

 

[Timo]

Happily, I don't think Trek ever claims that Andromeda would be "the closest galaxy". Nor do they specify any other galaxy as such, for that matter.

There's fairly little screwy astronomy in older Trek - even the existence of "quasarlike phenomena" within the Milky Way has later been established ITRW. What counts as a "nebula" is of course somewhat different in Trek than ITRW, but the teeny weeny color clouds of Trek would have every right to exist ITRW, too, being too small to be visible to us currently. More modern Trek has done poorly by going into specifics and then fumbling it, though, such as referring to a star type and then showing the wrong color.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BK613]

I have always been taught the Andromeda is our closest galaxy

n school days Andromeda has always been our closest galactic neighbour

Respectfully, I would suggest that you weren't paying attention closely enough and you missed some qualifiers. M31 is the closest galaxy that is similar to the Milky Way but we've known for almost a century that the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds were galaxies and closer than M31.

Have these other closer galaxies always been known as galaxies?

Short answer is yes, at least since they were identified as being outside the Milky Way.

 

[Commishsleer]

Google sti

Respectfully, I would suggest that you weren't paying attention closely enough and you missed some qualifiers. M31 is the closest galaxy that is similar to the Milky Way but we've known for almost a century that the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds were galaxies and closer than M31.

Short answer is yes, at least since they were identified as being outside the Milky Way.

Must not have had as good an education beng in the Antipodes.
Just asked my 12 and 16 year old to see if education has improved here over the years and their answers were don't know, don't care and Alpha Centauri. How disappointing!

 

[BK613]

Must not have had as good an education beng in the Antipodes.

No disparagement intended: people just seem to be unaware of the other galaxy options. My thinking, to use an Antipodal example , is Spock is standing in Sydney stating "it came from outside, another city' and the only city being thrown up in response is Melbourne. The suburbs of Sydney aren't being considered nor is Canberra, Brisbane or any other fine Australian city.

 

[Timo]

...Plus Spock bases his Melbourne argument solely on Sulu's analysis of it having come to the Bridge along the Western Distributor.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[johnnybear]

Actually my school education was pathetic and knowledge of the solar systems and other galaxies was not even touched upon! My reading of books gave me the accumulation of facts and interesting data! Those books though were quite old...
JB

 

[Maurice]

I don't think much astronomy was taught in public schools anywhere.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Actually my school education was pathetic and knowledge of the solar systems and other galaxies was not even touched upon! My reading of books gave me the accumulation of facts and interesting data! Those books though were quite old...
JB

Yep. I taught myself 'most everything I know about the solar system and the universe because Star Trek, Lost in Space, and the Apollo Program made me into a space nut.

An early interest was extremely common among boys of our generation, with the moon landings going on, and a smaller number of us stuck with it for life. I could never let it go; space is in my bones. In an unrelated matter, Bones is in my space.

 

[BK613]

And I remember learning about the Ptolemy model; about the Copernicus Model; about Galileo and his telescope; about the Moon going around the Earth and the phases of the Moon; about the tilt of the Earth as the reason for the seasons. I remember doing experiments with magnets to explain why compasses point north. I remember learning the names of the nine planets and that the Solar System was in the Milky Way and the Milky Way was one of many galaxies.

But hey maybe I was lucky; after all, I went to school in that intellectual bastion known as East Texas.

 

[johnnybear]

Yep. I taught myself 'most everything I know about the solar system and the universe because Star Trek, Lost in Space, and the Apollo Program made me into a space nut.

An early interest was extremely common among boys of our generation, with the moon landings going on, and a smaller number of us stuck with it for life. I could never let it go; space is in my bones. In an unrelated matter, Bones is in my space.

Agreed. The same with mythology and aliens turning up in various series and claiming to be this God or that...
JB

 

[Maurice]

And I remember learning about the Ptolemy model; about the Copernicus Model; about Galileo and his telescope; about the Moon going around the Earth and the phases of the Moon; about the tilt of the Earth as the reason for the seasons. I remember doing experiments with magnets to explain why compasses point north. I remember learning the names of the nine planets and that the Solar System was in the Milky Way and the Milky Way was one of many galaxies.

But hey maybe I was lucky; after all, I went to school in that intellectual bastion known as East Texas.

I got some of the same but I don't recall spending much time learning about nebulae or galaxies and the like, or what constitutes a solar system beyond our nine eight planets.

 

[Commishsleer]

It would have run something like this in Year 4 - "The Earth is in a solar system consisting of 9 planets with an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. And our solar system is part of the galaxy called the Milky Way and there are billions of galaxies in the universe. Our nearest galaxy is Andromeda." Thats it end of discussion. No talk of dwarf galaxies, nebulae, magellanic clouds. In university I studied physics of theoretical rockets going from one planet to another but again not much talk of galaxies - too big picture I suppose.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

In my public middle school, Bode's law got more attention than galaxies.

 

[Maurice]

The only mystery here is this line...

SULU​

It's veering off, back on course for the next solar system. The Rigel colony, sir.​

¿"back on course"? By rights it should have been heading deeper into L-374 to chow down planets 2 and 1, as it has apparently all the other systems. I think this is just a writer's error. Spinrad (or a staff writer tweak) basically forgot about the inner two planets as soon as Spock concludes the machine's course will send it through the most densely populated region of the galaxy.

Now I want to dig out the earlier drafts and see if they differ on this point.

Having re-read the early script drafts I see how this discrepancy happened. In the early scripts the "eater" was never said to be FTL. In fact, there's no mention of it being a danger to the Federation. The danger is all immediate: both starships are damaged and can't go to warp and the "eater" is gonna get them if they don't figure out a way to stop it. So the thing never tried to leave the system; it was just chasing the ships around presumably before chowing down on the remaining planets. When the script added the threat to the Rigel colonies et al that was just inserted without reviewing the scenario. This kind of thing happens in scripts all the time.

 

[Mytran]

So originally the DM was an artefact of a single solar system, built by a civilisation who's hubris eventually destroyed themselves?
That's very TOS

 

[Timo]

Or then simply slooooow, so that it would need to be billions of years old to have consumed multiple systems in potentially multiple galaxies. A cool concept as such.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Warped9]

The key part of Spock’s report is that the robot appeared to originate from “outside” our own galaxy. The rest is left to interpretation.

 

[BK613]

I got some of the same but I don't recall spending much time learning about nebulae or galaxies and the like, or what constitutes a solar system beyond our nine eight planets.

Not oblivious to the anecdotal nature of my comment.