Yet Another Doomsday Machine Thread

[BK613]

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.

What Spock said was: "Projecting back on our star charts, we find that it came from outside, from another galaxy."
The point of contention for the last couple of pages has been what "from another galaxy" means in terms of the point of origin. Turns out that the fact that there are galaxies closer than the Andromeda Galaxy was new info to some and I, as is my wont, presented that info in way that ruffled more than a few feathers.
I apologize for that.

 

[Maurice]

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

Originally it's a creature that travels at impulse speeds (hence the "atomic rocket" at its tail end), and presumably takes many years to migrate from one solar system buffet to the next.

Then it's a machine that apparently also is sublight and migratory at sublight speeds. In those early scripts the destroyed solar systems are in an area that had never been explored, so there's no indication how long ago the "eater" blew them apart.

The final episode perhaps inadvertently suggests the planet killer is FTL because Spock says they charted the destroyed solar systems "a year ago" and then adds the threat to Rigel, which seems immediate. The result is a bit of a kluge. In fact, now that I think about it, maybe leaving the "atomic rocket" off the back end was deliberate because that would imply sublight.

 

[Mytran]

Originally it's a creature that travels at impulse speeds (hence the "atomic rocket" at its tail end), and presumably takes many years to migrate from one solar system buffet to the next.

Then it's a machine that apparently also is sublight and migratory at sublight speeds. In those early scripts the destroyed solar systems are in an area that had never been explored, so there's no indication how long ago the "eater" blew them apart.

The final episode perhaps inadvertently suggests the planet killer is FTL because Spock says they charted the destroyed solar systems "a year ago" and then adds the threat to Rigel, which seems immediate. The result is a bit of a kluge. In fact, now that I think about it, maybe leaving the "atomic rocket" off the back end was deliberate because that would imply sublight.

Ah, I didn't realise that the destroyed solar systems were in the original draft as well

 

[Maurice]

Ah, I didn't realise that the destroyed solar systems were in the original draft as well

From the original Story Outline:

Spock informs Kirk that the ship has entered the latest solar system in their search pattern, and we learn that it, like the last three, seems to have been totally reduced to rubble and dust. [...] Spock corrects himself, tells Kirk that this solar system has two intact planets.​

As to the "Eater" itself...

[...]a kind of cylindrical "living atomic rocket" at least ten times the size of the Constellation, apparently from beyond the Galaxy, with a big posterior rocket and a great anterior funnel-mouth big enough to swallow a ship with a cluster of atomic blaster beams and tractor beams around the funnel, not a machine, but a living organism with a nuclear metabolism.​

Then from the script received by the Star Trek offices April 5. 1967:

On screen, looming ever-larger as it closes with the Enterprise, we see the Eater: a great funnel of a mouth extended before its huge, almost endless metallic, undulating body, as if to devour the Enterprise, and a trail of what might be rocket exhaust dribbling off behind it.
​

Now we get an idea of its size... eight miles, or about 44 starships long; much bigger than portrayed in the episode...

SPOCK'S VOICE OVER​

Approximately eight miles in length, metallic sheen, and yet I sense that it's a living organism, not a machine....​

[...]

DECKER​

[...]the only way to destroy it is to get inside its guts...right down that monstrous mouth at full emergency speed...smash its internal organs with the momentum of the shuttlecraft....​

[...]

KIRK​

[...]Neutronium is a nuclear dampener, isn't it? That means the thing's guts must be made of something else, something more vulnerable.[...]​

In the May 8, 1967 "final" draft...

DECKER​

[...]a thing ten times the size of a starship and far more powerful[...]
​

If he means length, Decker's description of the thing slightly would be maybe 10,000 feet long, or a bit shy of two miles. What we see in the finished episode—if scaled in profile views with the Enterprise—measures to about 14 starships long or ~13,330 feet, so Decker's description would be about 20% smaller than portrayed, and less than a quarter the 8 mile length Spock gave in the previous draft.

But then we then get Sulu's and Spock's estimates of its length, are even smaller than what Decker described. Here's the description of what it looks like and its size:

On screen, looming ever-larger as it closes with the Enterprise, we see the Eater: a great funnel of a mouth extended before its huge, almost endless metallic, undulating body, as if to devour the Enterprise.

SULU VOICE OVER​

Gigantic...thousands of meters long....

SPOCK'S VOICE OVER​

Metallic body...a large funnel-mouth...at least a mile long.​

[...]

SPOCK​

A most fascinating device...it's solid neutronium, and by isotope dating, it's at least three billion years old!​

I could go on, but you get the idea.

 

[MAGolding]

In my post number 155 on page 8 of this thread I point out that the Adnromeda Galaxy is not the closest galaxy to our Miky Way Galaxy.

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/yet-another-doomsday-machine-thread.306036/page-8

See my anser here:

https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/39879/what-is-the-closest-galaxy/39933#39933

And see the list here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_galaxies

For more evidence about knowledge of nearby galaxies among astronomers and the pubic in the 1960s, I found my copy of an astronomy textbook Exploration of the Universe: Brief Edition, George Abell, 1964, 1969. Like most astronomy books it has tables, including a table of the nearest stars, and a table of the twenty brightest stars (as seen from Earth), etc. in the Appendixes. The table of the then 17 known members of the Local Group, is on page 402. In that table the Andromeda Galaxy is the second farthest galaxy in the Local group, second only to NGC 598 (M33). the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are the first and second closest galaxies to our galaxy in that list.

The sentence that:

Altogether, there are 3 spirals, 4 irregulars, and 10 ellipicals, of which 6 are dwarf elliptical galaxies.

Shows that dwarf elliptical galaxies are counted as galaxies. On page 398 it is said:

Elliptical galaxies range all the way from the giants, just described, to dwarfs, which are believed to be the most common kind of galaxy. An example is the Leo II system, in figurge 21-11. There ae so few bright stars in this galaxy that even its central regions are transparent. The total number of stars, however (most too faint to show in Figure 21-11), is probably at least several million. The absolute magnitude of this typical dwarf is about - 10, it's luminosity is about 1 million times that of the sun.

If a galaxy as "small" as the Leo II dwarf galaxy is a typical dwarf galaxy, some dwarf galaxies could be a lot smaller than Leo II, and still count as galaxies.

And many other astronomy books from that era might have tables of the galaxies in the Local Group, or mention the Large Magellanic Cloud as the closest galaxy to our Mikly Way Galaxy.

The Guinness Book of Astronomy Facts & Feats, Pactrick Moore, 1979,1983, page 112, gives a similar but not identical list of 16 galaxies in the Local Group, inludingone, Maffei I, which is no longer considered part of the Local Group.

Considerng how large and conspicuous the Large Magellanic Cloud looks from Earth, it should have been one of the first external galaxies to have its distance measured in the 1920s, and so should have been recognized as an external galaxy much closer than the Andromeda Galaxy since before 1930.

The term "The Local Group" was introduced by Edwin Hubble in Chapter VI of his 1936 book The Realm of the Nebulae.[8] There, he described it as "a typical small group of nebulae which is isolated in the general field" and delineated, by decreasing luminosity, its members to be M31, Milky Way, M33, Large Magellanic Cloud, Small Magellanic Cloud, M32, NGC 205, NGC 6822, NGC 185, IC 1613 and NGC 147. He also identified IC 10 as a possible part of the Local Group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Group#History

In the climax of James Blish's novel Earthman, Come Home (1955) New York City travels to the Large Magellanic Cloud, clearly described as a different galaxy. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2026 This section is based on earlier stories, "Sargasso of Lost Cities" and "Earthman, Come Home", both published in 1953. It is quite possible that the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud is mentioned in Earthman, Come Home (1955) and/or its sequel, The Triumph of Time (1958) http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?961

Since the Andromeda Galaxy is rather similar in size to our Milky Way Galaxy, being a bit larger, the Milky Way Galaxy should look with unaided vision just as small and dim from the Andromdea Galaxy as the Andromeda Galaxy looks from Earth in the Milky Way Galaxy, a tiny smudge of dim light just barely visible to the unaided eye. But if I remember correctly both Earthman, Come Home (1955) and The Triumph of Time (1958) mention how large and spectacular the Milky Way Galaxy looks from the Large Magellanic Cloud, thus showing that the Large Magellanic Cloud is much closer to Earth and the Milky Way Galaxy than the Andomeda Galaxy is.

Similarly the climax of Robert A. Heinlein's novel Have Spacesuit--Will Travel (1958) is set in the Small Magellanic Cloud and the spectacular view of our Milky Way Galaxy is mentioned, thus showing that the Small Magellanic Cloud has to be much closer to our galaxy than the Andromeda Galaxy is.

A.E. Van Vogt's novel The Mixed Men (1952) http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?22964 involves an Earth ship (which makes the Enterprise seem as primitive as a Project Mercury capsule) finding a secret colony of Earth people in the Large Magellanic Cloud with lots of political and military intrigue. It is a combination of shorter stories first published in 1943 to 1945. And it is likely that the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud may be mentioned, or the Large Magellanic Cloud might be described as the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way.

So it was certainly possible when TOS was being made for amateur astronomers or science ficiton fans to know that there are galaxies closer to the Milky Way than the Andomeda Galaxy is.

 

[publiusr]

Well, if space lanes are cosmic strings allowing for a variable speed of light (and boosting warp transit similarly), the DM could have stumbled upon it and followed this artifact left behind by an Ur civilization.

Rigel then became threatened a bit earlier.
that’s my head canon

 

[CorporalCaptain]

What Spock said was: "Projecting back on our star charts, we find that it came from outside, from another galaxy."
The point of contention for the last couple of pages has been what "from another galaxy" means in terms of the point of origin. Turns out that the fact that there are galaxies closer than the Andromeda Galaxy was new info to some and I, as is my wont, presented that info in way that ruffled more than a few feathers.
I apologize for that.

Just for the record, my feathers weren't ruffled. I just had something else in mind.

In "By Any Other Name," Andromeda is described as a neighboring galaxy. This does not outright exclude the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way from either being considered neighbors of the Milky Way or other galaxies in the minds of the TOS writers. Plus, given the existence of the galactic barrier in "Where No Man...," "By Any Other Name," and possibly "Is There in Truth...," in fairness, "it came from outside" could mean not only that the doomsday machine came from outside the galaxy but also specifically from outside the barrier.

However, given that AFAIK the only data point we have in TOS regarding exactly what sort of object constitutes another galaxy. i.e. M31, I simply had in mind the suggestion that the machine was intended to be from an object either about or at least that far away, and therefore at least from outside the Milky Way's subgroup (itself and its satellites).

That is all.

 

[Commishsleer]

The National Geographic website and the NASA kids website still cite Andromeda as the nearest galaxy even though they acknowledge the closer baby galaxies at the same time. I think when they say closest it means closest 'real' galaxy.
Anyway Spock didn't say Andromeda or even closest galaxy or closest spiral galaxy he just said another galaxy and the thing was 3 billion years old.
So say it did come from Andromeda which is 2.5 million light years away and say is took 2.5 billion years to travel across to us it would only have to travel 1/1000 the speed of light. Just have trouble thinking it wasn't rusting away all that time.

 

[BK613]

Oh really?
https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/features/cosmic/nearest_galaxy_info.html
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/universe/galaxies/
From that Nat Geo site (emphasis added): "Despite the immense distance, Andromeda is the closest large galaxy to our Milky Way, and it's bright enough in the night sky that it's visible to the naked eye in the Northern Hemisphere."
Edit to add: When did he say it was 3 billion years old? Not in the transcript.

 

[Commishsleer]

Nearest big galaxy. I mean why qualify it at all. I bet you if you did a survey, most people would say Andromeda is our nearest galaxy (or Alpha Centauri). I'd guess less than 1/50 would say Canis Major.

Someone said 3 billion here.
I assumed it was in the transcript.
Is someone trying to trick me?
OK it was probably in some version. And it would have made sense if we assume no FTL.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The idea that the machine is at least three billion years old is dialog from the "'final' draft", as stated upthread by @Maurice, but not in the final episode as aired.

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/yet-another-doomsday-machine-thread.306036/page-11#post-13616054

 

[Maurice]

Nearest big galaxy. I mean why qualify it at all. I bet you if you did a survey, most people would say Andromeda is our nearest galaxy (or Alpha Centauri). I'd guess less than 1/50 would say Canis Major.

Someone said 3 billion here.
I assumed it was in the transcript.
Is someone trying to trick me?
OK it was probably in some version. And it would have made sense if we assume no FTL.

Scrolling back up that difficult?

 

[Keith1701]

The best episode of three seasons.

 

[johnnybear]

Unlikely I know but maybe the lesser galaxies are not as close to us in the twenty third century as they are now that or they have been reclassified as something else? Andromeda is clearly the focus in a few of the TOS episodes like I, Mudd and By Any Other Name. So when Spock speaks of outside our galaxy we naturally think of the great spiral galaxy of Andromeda!
JB

 

[Henoch]

Unlikely I know but maybe the lesser galaxies are not as close to us in the twenty third century as they are now that or they have been reclassified as something else? Andromeda is clearly the focus in a few of the TOS episodes like I, Mudd and By Any Other Name. So when Spock speaks of outside our galaxy we naturally think of the great spiral galaxy of Andromeda!
JB

I never picked up on the Andromeda connection in I, Mudd, before.

KIRK: Norman, who created you?
NORMAN: The makers designed us. They came from the galaxy of Andromeda.
MCCOY: Then your makers weren't humanoid?
NORMAN: They were, as you say, quite humanoid, but, unlike your civilisation, robots were common. We performed the necessary service functions and freed our makers to evolve a perfect social order.
KIRK: What became of them?
NORMAN: Our home planet's sun became a nova. Only a few exploratory outposts survived. This unit, myself, was part of one such outpost in your galaxy.
KIRK: Then some of your makers survive.
NORMAN: No, Captain. They died over the stretch of time.

Since Norman's race didn't go extinct from war, I conclude they weren't responsible for building the DDM. Based on the "compassionate" robots they left behind, I get the feeling that they were lovers and not haters.

 

[johnnybear]

I thought they were idle dreamer types myself that way they never saw the robots take over their society or maybe doing their own thing!
JB

 

[publiusr]

I do think it is possible for an object to swim through spacetime.

I love to see the TOS doomsday machine gullet surrounded by the Narada’s arms.

Spinrad would have loved that

 

[Maurice]

I do think it is possible for an object to swim through spacetime.

I love to see the TOS doomsday machine gullet surrounded by the Narada’s arms.

Spinrad would have loved that

Maybe. I've seen what I think is his actual drawing of the thing from the 60s.

 

[publiusr]

I think I remember that.
Somewhat like a vampire squid also

Now if the gullet could also look like a giant Langolier—something like The Mangler chewing on Constellation’s saucer just as the blast knocked the neutronium teeth out of alignment...