(Part 3) Top products from r/DaystromInstitute

While the idea that the Great Link can create a planetary scale warp field is undeniably a cool one, I'm not sure that it's supported by on-screen evidence. That being said, there's nothing that explicitly says they can't do something like that, but like the other commenters in this thread, I think that if they had the ability they would have used it at some point during the Dominion War.

I don't think, however, that the Founders rest on any delusion that they are gods. Unlike say, Apollo from TOS or the Ori from Stargate, they don't present themselves as gods to those they encounter. They certainly take advantage of the perception that they are gods to the Jem'hadar and the Vorta, but those are species which they have had a direct hand in genetically manipulating.

The question then becomes, where does the perception that they are gods from those species come from? Sure, there could have been a grand demonstration of their divinity as OP posits, but the problem which such grand displays that they need re-enacting every generation or couple of generations or else they just vanish into myth and eventually somebody is going to start questioning.

So it comes back to the inference that if they had this grand power of planetary scale warp travel, they would have used it. Or even if they had some kind of epic god-like power, they would have used it.

So how do they maintain that iron-clad grip of certainty on the part of the Jem'hadar and the Vorta that they are gods? Maybe the answer lies in the fact that both the Jem'hadar and the Vorta are genetically engineered. Can it be that the belief in the Founders' divinity is hard-wired into the genetic code of their servitor species?

Odo suggests this to the defecting Weyoun 6 in "Treachery, Faith and the Great River":

> ODO: Has it ever occurred to you that the reason you believe the Founders are gods is because that's what they want you to believe? That they built that into your genetic code?


> WEYOUN: Of course they did. That's what gods do. After all, why be a god if there's no one to worship you?

Did Odo know this for a fact from his contact with the Great Link or was this just a dig? And was Weyoun 6 being snarky back?

But even if Odo was guessing, perhaps Weyoun 6 wasn't being facetious in his retort. In a 2002 book, Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief, Andrew Newberg and Eugene d'Aquili talk about studies on brain activity during moments of religious experience. The studies used single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) to image regions of the brains of Tibetan Buddhists and Franciscan nuns which responded to altered states of consciousness during prayer and deep meditation.

They found that the human brain is genetically wired to encourage religious beliefs and to have spiritual and mystical experiences. During deep meditation, there is an increased activity in the frontal lobe area of the brain — it lights up at the peak of meditation. This was seen in an image of the brain taken during a transcendent experience.

The idea that there is a region of the human brain devoted to spirituality is not new. A few years before that, neuroscientists at UCSD identified such a "God Spot". The question is, I suppose, did God create our brains or did our brains create God? Is evolution predisposed to the idea of spiritual realms as an advantage or is the development of such a center pure chance?

That aside, maybe Odo's remark to Weyoun 6 really is correct: that the Founders, in creating the Jem'hadar and uplifting the Vorta into humanoids, inserted code that made them view the Founders as gods - they would literally have no choice in the matter, even in the face of contradictory thoughts or evidence (unless a chance mutation or defect took away or muted that genetic predisposition, like it did for Weyoun 6 in "Treachery"). This would also explain Weyoun 5's certainty about the divinity of the Founders even when, at the same time, he scoffed at the Prophets and Pagh-wraiths ("Tears of the Prophets"), and Weyoun 6's reaction to the suggestion of genetic manipulation as above.

This magazine-style book, "Starship Design," may be a fan-production so not officially canon, but it's so well done that I have always considered it to be canon. Beta-canon anyway.

Enlarge pages 11 and 13 and you will see clearly-labeled aft phaser emitters (just above the hangar bay) and an array of 5 ventral phaser emitters on the bottom of the engineering hull. The aft phaser emitters are seen used in Enterprise - "In A Mirror, Darkly," although that is a pre-refit Connie, USS Defiant. I have checked on various models, screenshots, and other schematics available and those that show a ventral view all have those bumps clearly labeled as phasers.

Even though this is, as far as I know, beta-canon at best, we have to admit that having no ventral phasers of any kind (the aft phaser emitters can at least cover part of the aft dorsal arc) would be an enormous tactical oversight with almost the entire secondary hull unprotected from a huge angle. While ships and phaser emitters of that era don't have nearly the same 360x360 degree phaser coverage of TNG-era phaser strips, even the Miranda class variants have the megaphaser units for aft weaponry, and the greater maneuverability and smaller profile to make up for its blind spots.

For Connie-variant comparison, the Decatur/Belknap class designs show that along with the lowered pylon/nacelle assemblies, the aft phaser banks are relocated at the top of the neck aft of the saucer, where they canprovide far greater coverage than the placement on the Constitution class, where peripheral firing arcs are blocked by the nacelles and pylons.

Something else I've always loved about this book is how the articles details design changes to various pylon/nacelle assemblies and the experiments with them, which suggests a far greater degree of modular design than we thought, at least in experimentation if not in large-scale production. We could reasonably expect a lot of these experimental variants in a postwar period where modernization and fleet reconstruction are both high, so they can be produced and tested quickly, and the idea scrapped and refit to a working module if it doesn't meet expectations.

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Even ignoring this book completely, a previous write-up of mine posited this: The Constitution class was meant to fill a major gap in the fleet - a true modern ship of the line, heavy cruiser classification, that could stand toe-to-toe with the Klingon D-7 and K'Tinga battlecruisers as well as the fleets of other encountered species. It was overpowered and crammed with every last bit of top-of-the-line technology it could get, with zero free space for future expansions and upgrades. By comparison, the fully-canon Rick Sternbach blueprints of the Enterprise-D --full hi-res Imgur album link-- show an enormous amount of empty space all over the ship, earmarked for "future expansion," or "mission-specific space," to say nothing of the absurd number of small crew lounges and recreation spaces on every deck, easily removed to cram in new stuff.

The Constitution's time was limited from the day it was built, and even the refit could only do so much. Built before the Klingon war, wartime advancements led to the refit program to bring the Connies up to par and maintain the ship-of-the-line status for as long as they could. Once the fleet was back up to full operational strength (1/3 of the fleet probably took a good 15 years or more to rebuild, putting this timeline around the end of Kirk's 5-year mission), the Excelsior program was begun, and the Excelsior class isn't just massive for the sake of being massive. Learning from the limitations of the Constitution, t's got empty space enough for over 100 years worth of upgrades and refits and internal redesigns to keep up with technology in the same basic spaceframe.

The Miranda-class, meanwhile, had 2 major benefits that kept it in service and allowed it to be upgraded and refit many times. The first is its size; it's a heck of a lot faster and cheaper to build/refit these frigates than heavy cruisers with their enormous secondary hulls. And second, without the neck and secondary hull limiting what can be done to the existing hull without compromising structural integrity or inertial damping systems, you could slap additions or modules into, onto, basically anywhere on the ship you wanted to. You start out with a basic Knox-class frigate. The rollbar/pod and extended aft engineering section makes it a Miranda-class heavy frigate and solves a lot of those mission-specific alteration problems. The whole Miranda concept is just a modernized redesign of the decades-old Soyuz-class that was being retired from service right after the war.

As a bonus, when the Constitutions were eventually retired, the saucers could be easily refit into Knox- and Miranda-class frigates, and the warp nacelles switched over as well. So you might downgrade a ship in classification, but also extend its serviceable lifespan significantly for a bare minimum of manpower and materials cost. As the Excelsior replaced and eventually far exceeded the number of Constitutions, there was just no reason to keep the old beasts around.

I have a copy of "Strange New Worlds, Volume II" that I read quite often. It was a fanfic contest that produced some surprisingly good work. I recommend you check it out.

One of the stories contained in Vol. II is called "I Am Become Death". It's a tragedy told from Data's point of view that deals greatly with the emotions surrounding the loss of Lal, Tasha Yar, and eventually the rest of the Enterprise crew, while he endured. The plot centers around the "Children of Soong", androids Data created. I encourage you to read it if you get the chance.

Granted, it's only one fan's idea of what might happen had Data's attempt at creating life had been successful, but it ends well and raises some interesting questions along the way. It was also written in 1999, which explains why Data is still alive, but then again, the last page or two also offer another explanation, but I won't spoil that for you.

In case you want to read it (and I strongly encourage you to, because it's really cool), I won't give you any plot details. Basically, [](#s "Data's race of androids have resulted in the death of all humanity in the universe, because what need has an immortal being with human life? Think Revulsion, that episode from Voyager with the hologram who hated biological life.") (PS I suck at formatting)

Personally, I think that the death of Data and the existence of B4 will change that idea substantially. More importantly, I don't think B4 will ever create any more androids, or at least, not for a very long time. I'd be more interested in seeing a pre-existing race of androids coming into contact with the Federation. The interaction between biological and technological, with B4 as the meeting of the two, would make for some great television (or a movie, perhaps?).

Side note: I can't find the text of the story online (but then, I didn't really look very hard), and I'm a little hesitant about transcribing it here without the author's permission. I did find Strange New Worlds, Vol. II on Amazon, if you're interested. It's dirt cheap, and it's available on Kindle. At the very least, the stories it contains would make for some interesting discussion here.

Quotable Star Trek. Basically every relevant, significant, funny, profound statement ever uttered in Star Trek (excepting Enterprise) condensed into a single volume, helpfully organized into Chapters by subject-matter.

I've flipped through this book a number of times for inspiration and reminiscence.

Of the novels, I sadly haven't read many, so my choices are far and few between, but I like "Q Squared." I'm always a sucker for "What Ifs" and parallel universes and this feeds that sweet tooth nicely. (Though I'd have switch the personalities of the Romulan and Cardassian officers).

Lastly, any of the reference materials which I fall back on from time to time. This being the Encyclopedia, Chronology, Episode Guides, and Klingon Dictionary.

The only Tech Manual I have is the old TOS one from the 70's, which is an interesting anachronism (it has SF headquarters being a space station in space.)

If you liked that episode, check out the book Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Foreward. It's a great read, with a similar concept underneath it.

> Heard there is a novelization of the episode (and maybe a sequel novel?)

Novelization, "Relics" (Amazon Link)

Sequel Novel, "Dyson Sphere" (Amazon Link)

The novelization goes into more detail, and there's a nice extended version of the holodeck sequence, including interaction between Picard and the TOS crew.

The follow-up was a fun read, IMO. Goes into a lot more detail about the Dyson Sphere, its builders, the space around it, the life in it (the Enterprise was wrong in the episode; there's life there). It's been years and years since I've read it, so I can't go into more detail.

An aside: the novel Engines of Destiny (Amazon Link) goes into some more detail about Scotty's trip on the Jenolen (sp?) and a certain TNG character who helped him decide on that journey.

I love the early days of Trek, when canon didn't even exist, and they would license anything. I have a great (in a terrible way) book called Star Trek II Biographies that has zero connection to anything else in Trek lore, and is a tremendously fun read as long as you don't care that it has nothing to do with "real" Trek.

There was an non-canon book I had as a kid called "Worlds of the Federation" that devoted a page to this topic. According to that book, the Iotians reverse engineered pretty much all of Starfleet's technology and ended up building a Starbase in orbit around their planet, and had their own parallel Starfleet, complete with matching uniforms.

EDIT: I actually found a PDF of this book! The entry on the Iotians is on page 104.

http://engineering.thetafleet.net/Journals/Other/Johnson%20-%20Worlds%20of%20the%20Federation.pdf

It's amusing to leaf through this and see how much of it has been superseded by later stuff. This book came out in '89, which was when TNG's 3rd Season was on the air.

Read this:

Star Trek (2011-2016) Vol. 9: The Q Gambit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VGOH4J4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_rAnRCb0Q938A4

Is not cannon, but it will answer your question partially and it’s a great comic!

I'm pretty sure that the subject was covered in "Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise."

You might want to look at The Better Angles Of Our Nature by Steven Pinker;
http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/0143122010

I read this a long time ago, I really don't remember the plot, but here it is in case you are curious or haven't heard of it:

http://www.amazon.com/Section-31-Rogue-Star-Generation/dp/0671774778/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1375909158&sr=8-4&keywords=section+31+star+trek

Someone once wrote a whole novel explaining how Bones gets his hands on a few cases of Romulan Ale now and then: http://www.amazon.com/The-Romulan-Way-Star-Trek/dp/0671634984/ref=pd_sim_b_1

I remember enjoying the book, but it's probably been 20 years since I've read it.

>To your last point, indentured servitude is not slavery. The idea is that you have a debt which you pay off through work directly for a person. Slavery is the absence of wages and freedom but being required to work. An indentured servant is paid a wage and generally has freedom outside of their job.

In real history, that distinction is not as sharp as you seem to think. "Indentured Servitude" has very often been slavery in everything but name. This has been true globally, though the book I linked focuses on the US.

Is this what you're referring to? I didn't realize this existed until this moment.

Those other people aren't the focal point of the episode. Bell is.

The comments are from 2000's Deep Space Nine Companion. They're not recent.

I'll be the first to admit that Gene was a pot smoking, abusive, adulterous jerk who stole all the credit and alienated half the writers who worked on the show. But he was no where near as bad as Columbus was.

I can understand how you can see the fanbase whitewash a lot of what Gene did over the years as an analogy to Columbus, but I still think its unfair to make that comparison to a guy who literally enslaved people.

(If anyone doesn't believe me on the stuff I said about Gene go read Herbert F. Solow & Robert H. Justman's book).

One thing I will say in Gene's defense, to paraphrase Riker: I don't think you're a saint, but you did have a vision, and now were sitting in it.

It was this: https://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Classic-Episodes-Hardcover/dp/0385365241

I don't mean to make it sound like hard scifi literature, but it was far less campy and far more serious than the series. There were also some minor but significant changes made between these scripts and the show.

You could tell that some of the episodes were slightly dumbed down for TV. In Operation: Annihilate! for example, it wasn't intense light that killed the beasties, but rather the magnetic flux of the star. They also realized that there was no way a starship had the power to overwhelm the natural magnetic field of a planet, so they found an alternative you'd never expect of the Starfleet we know. They were also on the verge of sterilizing Deneva via orbital bombardment to contain the epidemic before finding this solution.

On a semi-relevant note, does anyone else here remember the Khan that the world did suffer in the end of the 20th century? One who has been implicated in contributing to the instability of current world affairs? And is still on the world stage in Pakistani politics?

Abdul Qadeer Khan, also respectfully known by some in Pakistan as Mohsin-e-Pakistan (Urdu: محسن پاکِستان‎, lit. "Benefactor of Pakistan"

• AQ Khan: Father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb who after "house arrest" has recently jumped into politics
  
• AQ Khan, the godfather of North Korea's bomb
  
• Initiated the illicit sale to and development of Pakistani nuclear technology for Iran and Libya, and possibly creating a black market available to various non-state entities.
  
• "The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World's Most Dangerous Secrets...And How We Could Have Stopped Him"