Shadows and Drakh (B5) in Deep Space Nine (ST)

The Original Sixth

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Remember, the Shadows and their allies aren't, say, the Borg or the Klingons. They aren't going to come charging at you. They work behind the scenes, in the shadows and work through others, use others for their own goals.

I saw Babylon 5 like 10 years ago dude.

Shadow Warship Capabilities:
It's important to bear in mind that Shadow ships fall into three categories.

There's the 'modern' vessels, which we saw 90-something-percent of the time in Babylon 5. These ships are piloted by surgically members of the Younger Races and are basically watered-down vessels. As the Shadows philosophy of evolution through chaos requires that the Younger Races have at least some chance of fighting back instead of being bulldozed. I see these as being a little bit above the roughly equivalent to the larger ships of the Federation, Klingons, Romulans and Dominion.

There is really nothing to suggest that is the case. ST ships tend to launch around matter-antimatter warheads. Most of the heavy hitters of the 2nd Age Younger Races were using fission and fusion weapons. Only one or two races were using antimatter and I don't think it was even the Minbari. It was one of the smaller council races.
  • Regarding how these ships stack up against Babylon 5 ships, according to a quick double check, the only time we see one of these ships are given pause is at the battle of Gorash, where several Narn ships are able to focus fire and blow off an 'arm' from one of the Shadow ships. According to JMS's comments on the episode, this basically caused the ship to freeze up from the shock and pain, but had the battle gone on a little longer, the ship would have been able to shake this off and rejoin the fight.
    • Outside of this, the only time we see Shadow ships go down in Babylon 5 is when there are telepaths involved, who basically cause the Shadow ship to sit still and do nothing while they pump it full of plasma or what have you. Or there's a convenient jumpgate to blow up or if the Shadow ships being fought against are smaller then the ships the heroes are in (see the Shadow fighters vs the White Star during War Without End) or if the the heroes get a drop on the ship and it's their rough equivalent (see the White Star vs the Shadow Scout in Shadow Dancing). And some of that comes down to the White Star's defenses being keyed against Shadow ships and said Shadow ship being more focused on getting away to sound the alarm. Furthermore, even then the White Star was badly damaged and out of the fight for a fair amount of time.
The point isn't that Shadow ships are useless or even that they're not competitive. My position was that the Shadow ships are not going to have the same effect upon races that are already in their Third Age versus those in their Second Age, partially because of technology and partially because they are more mature.
  • Regarding telepaths, while teeps aren't unknown in ST, the vast majority of them don't seem to be equal to the mid-to-somewhat high ones we see in Babylon 5 among the Younger Races. Plus, keep in mind that the St races wouldn't have the same historical lore to draw upon to even know to try using telepaths against Shadow ships. And furthermore, that they have to disrupt the connection between the living CPU and the Shadow ship-trying to directly stop the Shadow ship's own systems drives telepaths insane.
    [*]While I'm on the topic, there is no way in hell that I can imagine the Federation being willing to genetically modify, much less create, a race of servitors to fight their wars for them. And I'd argue that the Federation would be the ones most likely to do so, as science is the Federation's area of expertise, along with diplomacy. Everyone else, I can just see trying to make bigger ships or bigger guns. Or trying to break out some sort of germ or nano-warfare, which the Shadows are not only better at, but would retaliate with five times as hard with.

1) I think Star Trek gives that impression, because telepathy in Star Trek is less of a social and story impact than Telepaths in B5 were. As for whose is stronger, I don't think I can really say for certain who. I can point to individuals and roughly slap them onto a B5 telepath rating, but we don't know the full extent of any telepaths within Star Trek. Nor do many people seem to recall the actual strength that some telepaths actually have.

So we do have the common examples of Spock and Troi, who were in the show for roughly 10-11 seasons, so you have a rough idea of what they can do. Troi is actually an empath. Not a particularly powerful one, but it's worth noting that Troi had a range that most P5s don't have. She could sense the entire mood of the ship, even locate specifics on the ship. I don't think she could ever pinpoint their location, but she could tell you whether or not said person was on the ship. She could also parse out the feelings of individuals not just a few hundred meters, but she could lock onto someone while she was sitting on the bridge of the Enterprise, in the plant's exosphere (at lest 400 km above them) and tell the captain exactly what they were feeling.

When it comes to range, Troi is basically a match for any well trained P12.

Now, we have seen that with extreme focus, Troi can in fact locate someone. It takes a great deal of focus and we know that at least against a telepath, they have the choice of resisting her.

Looking over to Spock, we know that he has much of the traits of a P5. He's able to communicate via touch telepathy and we know at short distances, he can even put someone into a trance and implant simple commands, such as when he used said power to force a guard into opening the door for him. His brother seemed to have the ability to rid people of their emotional pain. And after the death of a ship carrying several hundred Vulcans, Spock was able to sense (and be pained) by their sudden death. When he was older, Spock was able to pass on his memories and personality to Bones, who was eventually able to cheat death when he discovered his regenerated (cloned?) body. It was also a Vulcan tradition of passing on knowledge and wisdom from one Vulcan to another, as we saw in Enterprise. Tuvok from Voyager was able to mind control people after mind-melding with them.

The next is to focus on characters who are known powerful telepaths. We'll first touch on Spock's father, Sarek. When Sarek had grown older, he was diagnosed with Bendii Syndrome, which caused a loss of emotional control within Vulcans. As a side-effect, they would begin projecting their emotional fits into others nearby. Vulcans could resist the intrusion, but humans could not. What's more, an attendant was able to curb Sarek's emotional projections with his own abilities, except when Sarek was under strong emotional stress. Troi's mother went through a similar experience when she caught the Zanthi fever, which caused her to project her passions onto other members of the station, specifically her lust.

For the most part, Vulcans and Betazoids don't seem to like to use these abilities as weapons, but it's clear that if they wanted to, they could project harmful thoughts onto subjects if they had the malicious will to do so, such as projecting thoughts of self harm or rage onto someone within range. And for a betazoid, that seems to be as close as 400 km, assuming they had a means of focusing on them (such as a face), but we know from ST 10, that focus can allow them to locate said people.

Shinzon's viceroy should just feel lucky that Troi's mother wasn't there, given that she might have just have poured uncontrollable rage into the viceroy and have him murder Shinzon. An ability like that is far beyond what a P12 can do. A P12, from what I understand, would generally need to be within short distance or have made contact.

2) As for telepaths as weapons...the UFP already has them. They created really powerful telepaths as part of a science experiment in government-approved cloning tests. Nor would it be all that difficult, given what we've seen them do with their own genetic tinkering. Such as turning people into spider-people via a few stray bits of DNA code. Anyway, it would be unnecessary. As there are billions of Vulcans and Betazoids to choose from.

Then you have 'Ancient' Shadow vessels. These are piloted by the Shadows themselves and are basically the bog-standard ships of the 'true' Shadow warfleet. These would operate against ships of the Federation, Klingon, Romulan and Dominion fleets like the 'modern' Shadow ships do against the Younger Races in Babylon 5. Basically, you need several larger ships focusing fire at once to hurt one of these ships, and that's difficult with the Shadow ship basically one/two shotting your ships and dancing around you.

There's a reason why the Shadows don't use those ships though. And there's no real reason for the Shadow to feel as if they need to use these ships.


Learning about the races of the Alpha and Beta quadrant:
While its true that the Shadows and their allies would have something of a learning curve when it comes to the various races the two quadrants, I'd argue that they'd have a much easier time of it then most would suspect. This is largely due to how comparatively open the various Star Trek races are with each other, thanks in large part to the Federation.

This seems like a projection of UFP worldview onto their neighbors. Of which their neighbors clearly don't share.

Heck, I can easily see, say, a Drakh ship coming up to some isolated Federation ship or outpost and playing the role of 'newbie aliens who've just started exploring space' and being able to get a fair amount of information for free from the Federation by play acting the clueless and harmless newcomers. Not to mention the sheer treasure trove of knowledge the Shadows and their allies would be able to get if they infiltrated a Federation or Romulan outpost or the like. Remember, Star Trek doesn't exactly have the best track record when it comes to electronic warfare and computer security.

It doesn't? Would you care to...elaborate? And then explain to me how the Drakh would use that to infiltrate their computer system.

Or they could just go the the Ferengi or those like them and buy information from them.

And knowing the Ferengi, the Drakh would have bought themselves a database of made-up bullshit of such magnitude, that Starfleet Intelligence would probably outsource misinformation to the Ferengi. Someone like Quark is an example of a trustworthy Ferengi and he's more than happy to just insert whatever sounds right for the sake of making a quick buck. The actually scummy Ferengi would probably repackage known information on the freaking Cardassians and pass it off as Federation information, just with some name swaps.

Regarding the Q and those like them:
Based on what we see on screen and ignoring any sort of fan-theories about higher beings manipulating things from behind the scenes, the Q would be unlikely to get involved, much less pressure the Shadows and their allies unless they started gunning for the Q for some reason. At most I can see the Prophets trying to give cryptic warnings and hints, as they do.

The first time we meet Q, it was literally the Continuum putting humanity on trial for having a bad past. I can't imagine how favorably they would look upon a much more powerful, much more malicious, much older, and much more sophisticated race appearing from another dimension and deciding to make that galaxy their plaything.
 

The Original Sixth

Well-known member
Founder
Wasn't Luxxana unusually strong for a betazoid though?

No. She was advanced in her skills as a telepath, but that doesn't mean that she was unusually strong. Someone like Sarek was considered, I believe, to be unusually advanced, but that was impart due to his great age.

Also, I seem to recall that the reason Troi could find the Scimitar was that she could connect to the Reman Viceroy due to a....previous incident? (because I have no idea what to call the fucked up quasi-rape thing Shinzon had the Viceroy do so he could have sex with her via the proxie of Riker).

...No? I don't know why it would.

EDIT: Also, are the betazoids rather isolationist?

Not to my knowledge. It's more like they just get on everyone's nerves. Since they can read each other's minds, they don't really bother with subterfuge. A betazoid will read your mind and act as if you had said it yourself.

United Federation of Planets

I think that the Shadows have decidedly mixed feelings about the Federation. On the one hand, I’ve never gotten the impression that the Shadows were against alliances and compacts, so long as they weren’t Vorlon engineered or manipulated. On the other hand, the Shadows are heavily into growth through conflict and bloodshed. As well as their unique form of Social Darwinism. Things the Federation are very much against, as it espouses diplomacy, tolerance and cooperation.

The Shadows wouldn't have any mixed feelings about breaking up the UFP. The UFP is a very liberal society. Shadows are maximum libertarians. To the winner goes the spoils. They wouldn't have second thoughts about trying to break up the Federation.

Also, there’s the Federation’s attitude during the DS9 and TNG era to consider. Frankly, they’re naive, stubborn and far too willing to stick their heads in the sand. For now, let’s just say that in the early parts of DS9 the Federation was slow to react and was even then still clinging to the ‘Golden Age of Peace’, which became an Era of Appeasement as can be seen with the Cardassian treaty. The Borg scared the Federation so much that they sort of drew in on themselves further just to avoid another Wolf 359

That is not at all what happened.

The Federation looks out for its own interests and sometimes, that means compromise. And if you think this is just naive Starfleet that does this, you'd be wrong. The United States, to give itself security, essentially made a deal with Europe (and later the rest of the Free Trade World) to sacrifice its own geo-economic interests by opening its markets and allowing rival nations to export their way back to affluence. That's how Europe was able to so quickly rebuild following the Cold War. And in return, the United States would determine the alliance's geo-strategic interests.

The Cold War ended almost 30 years ago. You know what has yet to end? US protecting World Trade. It's only in 2016 that the US began to take a serious stance on supplementing the economic interests of most of the entire world--up to and including China, which challenges the US's global position, for absolutely nothing in return.

DS9 was written with the point of taking liberal ideology and pitting it against a realist worldview. So in the example of the DMZ deal with Cardassia, the UFP had bigger fish to fry. They had a renewed strategic threat from the surging Romulan Empire, they had a somewhat unstable relationship within the Klingon Empire, and a far-off power whose invasion steamrolled an armada with one ship and only one because they managed to exploit a security bug. The Cardassians were a relatively third rate power, with poor resources, and were generally mistrusting of others. Because Cardassians had a realist mindset.

The Federation Council made the dumb decision to trade planets because they thought that the Cardassians cared more about the astro-economic interests than the astro-strategic interests. They were wrong. The Cardassians were planning on taking them regardless. That was the Federation's blindspot, but all nations have blindspots.
  • I personally think that Starfleet was a victim of its own successes. After the Klingons became allies and the Romulans became introverted there was no one who would or could seriously challenge the Federation. In essence they had 'won', and it went to their heads. Add the fact that Starfleet believed it held the moral high ground due to it being a democracy of many races as opposed to its more militant imperial neighbours and you can see why they decided they were less a military than an exploratory fleet of scientists and diplomats who let their skills at battle atrophy.
    [*]
The Klingon Empire was never suggested to be introverted. The Romulans became isolationists, but the Klingons were fully expanding in power and size. It was just that they kept out of each other's way.

To me, the Federation got into a mental place which was no longer interfacing with the real world. Kirk's Federation was not utopia, and didn't claim to be. They'd resolved some of the major problems of humanity, and other races, reducing xenophobia and fear of the other to the point where union with some alien species was a functional reality. They'd largely eliminated need, but want was still around. They were a nation, and they considered themselves an enlightened one, especially compared to their rivals, but they weren't perfect and still had a lot to learn and places to go.

By Picard's time, the Federation saw itself as the be-all and end-all of interstellar governance. Everyone else was wrong and would eventually realize that, and become good Fed citizens. Until then, it was just a time to pity the poor benighted fools and keep the phasers on stun, even in the middle of a war.

Well, you need to realize the ideology behind the writers. The Federation was written as a liberal utopia. Not a progressive one, but a liberal one. Deep Space Nine was written as the counterpoint to test those ideals. That's why there's such a massive tone shift in DS9 and why you see the challenges laid out as you did. Yes, the Federation is a bit too trusting. But that's because they follow a liberal ideology. Liberal as an international relations theory, suggests that nations benefit the most from working together and pooling resources. Realism is its counterpoint; that there is limited resources and nation stat competition is inevitable.
  • I’d also argue that the Federation in particular has a really bad over-reliance on their technology, which has arguably turned its people into little more then happy slaves. Which, when stripped of that same technology, become dependent on their conquerors. Which isn’t to say that other Star Trek faction don’t have this same problem.
What the fuck?

No, Starfleet is not over-reliant upon their technology. Not anymore so than any nation that exists today. The worst that can be said about Starfleet is that they sometimes shove too many features on their phaser rifles. Or that they occasionally forget to design a back-up system. Or it's a Voyager episode, where technical problems are just a cheap tool by the writer to fix story problems.

So all in all, I’d think that Shadows aren’t anti-Federation per say. They think the Federation needs a good kick to the seat of their pants and want to see how they react, how they adapt and what direction they go in.

No, the Shadows, if given the option, would incite a civil war to cull the herd of the weak. Because out of 150 members within the UFP, my guess is that the Shadows are going to think that at least some of them need to be removed from the gene-pool. Of course, the UFP is a Third Age race, so I don't see why the Shadows would mess with them. The Shadows actually held to the letter of the agreement with the Vorlons. It was the Vorlons that gleefully violated it when no one was looking.
 

The Original Sixth

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Founder
Klingon Empire
Out of all the major powers, the Klingons are the easiest for the Drakh/Shadows to manipulate and goad. As well as being internally divided by the various great Houses, the Klingons thrive and seek out conflict. And may the fates help the galaxy if the forces of Chaos managed to obtain the Sword of Kahless or create a convincing enough replica for their chosen pawns within the Empire. As the results would likely be some sort of civil war, follow by an actively militant Klingon Empire.

Oh Christ.

No. Just no. You need to realize the difference between a very, very violent society and a very unstable one. The Klingon Empire was founded in the 9th century. Its regime still survives in the 24th century. Empires that are horribly divided don't last for 1,500 years. That isn't to say that there were never internal divisions or problems within the Empire. They certainly had a shake-up with that Civil War in TNG.

What it does tell us is that the Klingon Empire is very much stable in the long term. More to the point, the Shadows have no reason to interfere with the Klingons, because the Klingons are the sort of people that they like; warriors who conquer. Both are very libertarian societies.
  • Of course, knowing the Klingons and the Drakh/Shadows I doubt the forces of Chaos would just give them the sword. I can’t help but imagine the Drakh/Shadows arranging some sort of ‘epic quest’ for the Klingon(s) in question to go on to retrieve it.
The Shadows would not lift a finger to help find or forge the Sword of Kahless. Because whoever were to wield it might would hold so much political power that the internal competition within the Empire might just grind to a halt. Or become so toxic as to tear it apart. The Shadow's idea of helping the Drakh in competing against the Klingon Empire would be to send a secret envoy to Gowron and showing them all these cool new technologies. Because the best way for the Drakh to get better is for the Drakh to be pushed to their limits by an even greater opponent.

The Shadows are basically the racial equivalent to Goku. Knocking off a rival before they become too great a threat is a bitch move. The Shadows would rather push the Klingons and the Drakh as far as they can go, so that in the end, the survivor can challenge the Shadows.


That said, I don’t think the Drakh/Shadows would particularly like or dislike the Klingons more then any other power. True, they are a combative warrior race and those almost always make things more interesting. On the other hand, the Klingons have largely stagnated technologically and culturally.

No they haven't?

Simply because the Klingons have religions and traditions, it doesn't make them stagnant. The Shadows themselves, if you recall, have their own traditions and religious beliefs. And while they are otherwise in flux, those forged the heart of Shadow identity. The Shadows are not chaos and innovation without purpose; their purpose is to compete and be the best, because the best deserves to win. That's why they were so enamored with the First Ones.

Nor are the Klingons technologically stagnant. They are certainly not as cutting edge as the Federation in many technologies, especially the sciences, but they are hardly a joke. Their ships were either always a match or somewhat more capable than the UFP's ships in combat capability.

For all the Klingon’s talk about be a culture of honor, pride, might and glory this hadn’t been true for over one hundred years.

What?

While there were exceptions, the Klingon Empire had fallen into toxic politics, internal squabbling and barbarism.

It's an interstellar empire spanning about a hundred light years. They are actually remarkably well put together. As for the barbarism...they're a warrior society. That tends to endure a certain level of brutality.

Their policies had become so corrupted that they were easily influenced by other powers, such as the Romulans in the TNG era.

Hey dude, have you looked at the US?

According to liberals, President Trump is a political puppet of the Russians, who helped him rig the election in 2014.

According to conservatives, President Obama and a corrupt elite tried to rig the system to falsely impeach a President, with Chinese and Saudi money.

What happened with the Klingon Empire and the Romulans is that the Romulans had an ally in one of the most powerful houses in the entire Empire. The previous Emperor knew this, but framed Worf's family so as to avoid a Civil War. Said Romulans pushed and pushed, not in the hopes of turning the Klingon Empire into their patsy, but so as to shift the Klingons against the UFP. And if you don't think that works in real life, please visit Turkey. A NATO ally whose leaders have made nice and now Turkey is buying a Russian S-400 air defense system and was promptly kicked out of the F-35 program.

One could also make an argument of the Federation doing the same thing and taking advantage of the Empire’s weakness in order to make better deals. While the Romulans would fail to capitalize on this, the Dominion in the OTL was much more successful in stirring the hornet’s nest and kicking off the Klingon-Cardassian War.

Let's be honest, the Founders were pushing against an open door in trying to persuade the Klingon leadership of conquering the galaxy to save it.
  • Thanks to how the Klingons had become, no one noticed for a long time when the Dominion replaced Martok with a Changeling, despite the clues being there for all to see. He kills an officer, despite the punishment not fitting the crime or the fact that said officer had probably just prevented war with the Federation. He openly breaks his word several times. He shows no interest in honor or glory except when fighting against weaken opponents.
You realize that the Federation hadn't noticed either until the Martok-Changeling made a few mistakes? The Changling getting caught was almost entirely a result of people not diving in soon enough to fighting each other.

Obviously, this state of affairs cannot go on for much longer. The Klingon Empire is like a tree infested with dry rot- time will see if it falls, weathers the storm or changes.

It literally is not.
  • Miscellaneous side note here; but it’s funny to see how, when the Klingons tried to mine the Bajoran system in the episode Sons of Mogh that it’s considered a bad and hostile action. Yet when Starfleet does the same thing later on, its somehow admirable and heroic, despite them doing it for largely the same sort of reasons.
...Because the Klingons mined the entire star system without the knowledge of either Starfleet or the Bajoran government. The Federation mined the wormhole with full permission and consent (although be it informally, officially Bajor was neutral and friendly with the Dominion, because it would save them from the Cardassians) of the locals to do so. It would be the equivalent of the Russians mining Japanese waters to prevent a Chinese invasion without the permission of either Japan or the United States.
 

DarthOne

☦️
I saw Babylon 5 like 10 years ago dude.

And 10 years is plenty of time to forget things.

There is really nothing to suggest that is the case. ST ships tend to launch around matter-antimatter warheads. Most of the heavy hitters of the 2nd Age Younger Races were using fission and fusion weapons. Only one or two races were using antimatter and I don't think it was even the Minbari. It was one of the smaller council races.

Oh lord here comes the firepower calculations... :eek:

Just because Star Trek uses Anti-matter over fusion or fission, doesn't mean that their weapon necessarily have greater firepower. It makes it easier in some ways, yes. But it's not a guarantee.

Plus, we run into the issue that plagues many television shows, especially long running ones like Star Trek. Writers have no sense of scale when it comes to these sort of things. And they don't go back an meticulously check previous episodes when it comes to how big of a boom various ships and weapons can make.

The point isn't that Shadow ships are useless or even that they're not competitive. My position was that the Shadow ships are not going to have the same effect upon races that are already in their Third Age versus those in their Second Age, partially because of technology and partially because they are more mature.
See below.

I'd disagree that the main Star Trek races fit the qualifications to be seen as a Third Age race.
In the Second Age of a race, it goes to the stars and falls under the inflence of other, older species. There is no way to escape this influence; the elder races exert a cultural and technological pull that is as vast as the gravitational pull of a black hole. Even isolated races cannot escape the influence of their elders – the values, beliefs and actions of an elder race reverberate through the galaxy. Elder races walk like giants; the Younger Races can only scurry and hide or try to ride out the hurricane of their elders’ passage.

A race that fails to leave its Second Age becomes a servitor race, dependant on and beholden to an older race. The Drakh, for
example, are an ancient race but never passed into their Third Age and were therefore thralls to the Shadows even until their end. The Minbari, too, were largely stuck in their Second Age and were bordering on servants to the Vorlons but were able to step beyond thanks to Human vigour.

In the Third Age of a race, it rejects the teachings and influence of the elders who manipulated it during its Second Age. It accepts its own destiny as a spacefaring race and learns to stand on its own. This decision is incredibly difficult – the galaxy is so vast and ancient that it is very seductive and easy for a race to defer to its elders, who are vastly more powerful and wise. To step out of the shadows of the elders and stand naked before the cold, pitiless stars requires great courage.

During the Third Age, the technological knowledge of the species grows and grows, now that it is freed of the shackles placed on it by the elders. The Vorlons said that Second Age Humanity was ‘not ready for immortality’ but there is no one to say ‘no’ to a Third Age species. They can do as they wish, create what they wish. Like the First Age, the race runs the risk of destroying itself with its new wonders. This can be a physical destruction – a race could wipe itself out in a war fought with organic spaceships and hyperspace detonators instead of nuclear bombs or sharp rocks – or a cultural one.

For a race to pass through the Third Age, it must redefine itself. It is now so removed from its primitive roots so as to be an entirely different species. A Third Age race like Humanity might start as organic creatures travelling between the stars in metal boxes, but might end the Age as immortal beings who exist as matrices of energy and thought, lattices in the intersection of hyperspace and realspace, who travel in living vessels that have the power to move the very stars.

This cultural change is wrenchingly difficult and most races retreat from it. The Tal-Kona’sha, for example, are a failed Third Age race. They rejected the Vorlons and Shadows but failed to pass into their Fourth Age. Instead, they now exist in an artificial, virtual paradise within their computer systems, every one of them a god of its own synthetic reality. The impending death of their sun may push the Tal-Kona’sha into a Fourth Age but this is increasingly unlikely.

Now, it is true that the various main Star Trek Races never really had to shake off the influence of an older, mentoring race. The closest example that really comes to mind would be humanity under the Vulcans back in the Enterprise era and even then, it doesn't really match up to the sort of thing say, the Vorlons.

To me, the issue really comes down to a combination of technology and wisdom. We don't see the main ST races being able to 'do as they wish'. We don't see them building dyson spheres or any other such massive technological wonders.

On the subject of maturity, that's a bit more difficult to pin down. Mostly because a lot of that comes down to personal opinion and interpretation of various scenes in the various shows. Meaning that we could probably sit here arguing about it until the end of time. However, I'd say that humanity at least, is not as mature or 'evolved' as they would like to think.

1) I think Star Trek gives that impression, because telepathy in Star Trek is less of a social and story impact than Telepaths in B5 were. As for whose is stronger, I don't think I can really say for certain who. I can point to individuals and roughly slap them onto a B5 telepath rating, but we don't know the full extent of any telepaths within Star Trek. Nor do many people seem to recall the actual strength that some telepaths actually have.

So we do have the common examples of Spock and Troi, who were in the show for roughly 10-11 seasons, so you have a rough idea of what they can do. Troi is actually an empath. Not a particularly powerful one, but it's worth noting that Troi had a range that most P5s don't have. She could sense the entire mood of the ship, even locate specifics on the ship. I don't think she could ever pinpoint their location, but she could tell you whether or not said person was on the ship. She could also parse out the feelings of individuals not just a few hundred meters, but she could lock onto someone while she was sitting on the bridge of the Enterprise, in the plant's exosphere (at lest 400 km above them) and tell the captain exactly what they were feeling.

When it comes to range, Troi is basically a match for any well trained P12.

Now, we have seen that with extreme focus, Troi can in fact locate someone. It takes a great deal of focus and we know that at least against a telepath, they have the choice of resisting her.

Looking over to Spock, we know that he has much of the traits of a P5. He's able to communicate via touch telepathy and we know at short distances, he can even put someone into a trance and implant simple commands, such as when he used said power to force a guard into opening the door for him. His brother seemed to have the ability to rid people of their emotional pain. And after the death of a ship carrying several hundred Vulcans, Spock was able to sense (and be pained) by their sudden death. When he was older, Spock was able to pass on his memories and personality to Bones, who was eventually able to cheat death when he discovered his regenerated (cloned?) body. It was also a Vulcan tradition of passing on knowledge and wisdom from one Vulcan to another, as we saw in Enterprise. Tuvok from Voyager was able to mind control people after mind-melding with them.

The next is to focus on characters who are known powerful telepaths. We'll first touch on Spock's father, Sarek. When Sarek had grown older, he was diagnosed with Bendii Syndrome, which caused a loss of emotional control within Vulcans. As a side-effect, they would begin projecting their emotional fits into others nearby. Vulcans could resist the intrusion, but humans could not. What's more, an attendant was able to curb Sarek's emotional projections with his own abilities, except when Sarek was under strong emotional stress. Troi's mother went through a similar experience when she caught the Zanthi fever, which caused her to project her passions onto other members of the station, specifically her lust.

For the most part, Vulcans and Betazoids don't seem to like to use these abilities as weapons, but it's clear that if they wanted to, they could project harmful thoughts onto subjects if they had the malicious will to do so, such as projecting thoughts of self harm or rage onto someone within range. And for a betazoid, that seems to be as close as 400 km, assuming they had a means of focusing on them (such as a face), but we know from ST 10, that focus can allow them to locate said people.

Shinzon's viceroy should just feel lucky that Troi's mother wasn't there, given that she might have just have poured uncontrollable rage into the viceroy and have him murder Shinzon. An ability like that is far beyond what a P12 can do. A P12, from what I understand, would generally need to be within short distance or have made contact.

From a quick scan of Memory Alpha, this does seem to be true. Though I stand by my assessment of how Troi manages to find Shinzon's Viceroy based upon the scene in the movie and the novelization.

Also, I'd argue that this just means that these telepaths can easily become a danger to themselves and those around then if, say the Shadows choose to come up with some sort of virus of the like that makes them loose control of their telepathic abilities. And I would not put it past them to do so; we've seen them wipe out telepaths in the past, most notably the Narn.

Furthermore, I'd argue that this still runs into the issue of Star Trek Telepaths stumbling upon the idea of using their telepathy against the Shadows in the first place- which, by your own admittance, doesn't seem to be something they would do or at least would not be their first instinct. Otherwise, why don't we have the Vulcans and Betazoids being used as weapons against the Borg? The Romulans? Or the Dominion? Heck, why aren't the Romulans trying to make uber-telepaths to use in their schemes?

The only logical answer, besides 'the writers didn't want to do that plot/didn't think of it', would be that such a usage doesn't fit their worldview or philosophy. It's the same reason that, yes, the Federation could build a superweapon that blows up planets or suns, but doesn't.

Whats more, even if they did do so, there's still the matter of using the right technique and knowing how Shadow technology works enough to know what to do. None of the main cast in B5 had even a clue about telepaths being used against Shadow ships until there was a series of rather specific events that prompted them to do further digging. Heck, Bester didn't even figure out that the Shadow ships use living CPUs until after he and the B5 cast captured that ship and its compliment of altered teep blips. (Ship of Tears)

2) As for telepaths as weapons...the UFP already has them. They created really powerful telepaths as part of a science experiment in government-approved cloning tests. Nor would it be all that difficult, given what we've seen them do with their own genetic tinkering. Such as turning people into spider-people via a few stray bits of DNA code. Anyway, it would be unnecessary. As there are billions of Vulcans and Betazoids to choose from.

...when the actual hell did that happen? Because I know for a fact that the spider people incident, if its the one I'm thinking of on TNG, was an accident. And I'm going to have to call BS again on the idea of the Federation willingly using genetically modification create supersoldiers.

Because A) the whole no-augments thing from the Eugenic Wars and B) again, it doesn't fit the Federation's mindset. Otherwise, they never would have had a whole episode where the question of if they should try to make a whole bunch of Datas back in TNG.

There's a reason why the Shadows don't use those ships though. And there's no real reason for the Shadow to feel as if they need to use these ships.

Yes, because they'd annihilate anything that was put up against them bar another First One in tech level over in Babylon 5. Were as in Star Trek, the bigger Fed/Romulan/Dominion/Klingon ships are closer to their tech level. Which would be why the Shadows feel the need to sue them and get more personally involved.

This seems like a projection of UFP worldview onto their neighbors. Of which their neighbors clearly don't share.
Yes and no. The thing is that outside of those like the Breen and Tholians, most of the Alpha and Beta quadrant races seem to have at least some general idea of how each other's government and society works to some degree or other. With the possible exception of the average Romulan or Cardassian citizen or soldier, given how their governments are authoritarian regimes that will gladly spew propaganda about their opposition.

Plus, you forget that knowledge is power. Even if the average citizen doesn't know everything about every race out there, it makes sense that the various governments and fleets would for any number of reasons.

Now contrast that with Babylon 5, were most of the other races have only a very general idea about each other unless they are close allies or the like. Heck, it's part of Stephan Franklin's backstory that he went hitchhiking on various freighters in an attempt to learn more about the various alien races because of how little knowledge humanity had on them.

It doesn't? Would you care to...elaborate? And then explain to me how the Drakh would use that to infiltrate their computer system.
...you realize that would require me to A) know how computer systems work in extreme detail and B) know how Star Trek Computer systems work.

As for the first part of your question, while I could be wrong here, I seem to recall various Star Trek computers getting hacked a lot in various episodes.

And knowing the Ferengi, the Drakh would have bought themselves a database of made-up bullshit of such magnitude, that Starfleet Intelligence would probably outsource misinformation to the Ferengi. Someone like Quark is an example of a trustworthy Ferengi and he's more than happy to just insert whatever sounds right for the sake of making a quick buck. The actually scummy Ferengi would probably repackage known information on the freaking Cardassians and pass it off as Federation information, just with some name swaps.

That is a possibility, which was why I put 'the Ferengi or those like them'. Also, I'd argue that if all the Ferengi were all that untrustworthy and scummy, then they wouldn't be nearly as successful or well known as traders and the like. As if that were the case, no one would want to do any sort of business with them.

The first time we meet Q, it was literally the Continuum putting humanity on trial for having a bad past. I can't imagine how favorably they would look upon a much more powerful, much more malicious, much older, and much more sophisticated race appearing from another dimension and deciding to make that galaxy their plaything.
While that's true, I'd ask why the Q never did the same sort of thing to say, the Dominion or the Romulan Star Empire, who've done much worse things then humanity. Heck, why are the Borg still a thing if the Q are as interventionist as people like you seem to think they are?

edited to expand upon/clarify some points
 
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The Original Sixth

Well-known member
Founder
Oh lord here comes the firepower calculations... :eek:

Just because Star Trek uses Anti-matter over fusion or fission, doesn't mean that their weapon necessarily have greater firepower. It makes it easier in some ways, yes. But it's not a guarantee.

Antimatter is two orders of magnitude greater than fusion and 3 orders greater than fission. If it becomes an arms race to who can produce the most powerful weapon, the Drakh are not going to be the winners. That's not even getting into the incident involving the Black Star being crippled by a couple of fusion bombs with a yield of 2 megatons. Not even contact detonations. And while I'm not suggesting ST ships can survive 50 megaton contact detonations either (in most space combat scenarios, your bomb or missile is NOT going to make a contact hit--it will get as close as it reasonably can before making a detonation or will be taken out by point defense), it's pretty obvious that even the strongest among the Young Races, the Minbari, would probably have their asses handed to them in any conflict with any of the regional powers in Star Trek. They are as behind the Federation as EA was behind them when they first fought.

Now, in all likely situations, you aren't going to see a massive yield build-up. So far, the advancement of technology has shown that weapons tend to become faster, more accurate, greater range, and lower in yield. The shift in WWII to the Modern era shows that naval guns get smaller, bombs turn into missiles, said missiles get smaller and more accurate, or obtain greater range. That's not to say that has to keep going in that direction, but it is more likely than not. In a battle arena as large as space, you want a more accurate weapon, not a less accurate one with greater yield.

Plus, we run into the issue that plagues many television shows, especially long running ones like Star Trek. Writers have no sense of scale when it comes to these sort of things. And they don't go back an meticulously check previous episodes when it comes to how big of a boom various ships and weapons can make.

Yes, fortunately I do. And the Drakh do not win on either firepower or weapon sophistication. The Shadows win hands down, if they put forth the effort, but we all know that they aren't going to do something like that.



I'd disagree that the main Star Trek races fit the qualifications to be seen as a Third Age race.


Now, it is true that the various main Star Trek Races never really had to shake off the influence of an older, mentoring race. The closest example that really comes to mind would be humanity under the Vulcans back in the Enterprise era and even then, it doesn't really match up to the sort of thing say, the Vorlons.

It doesn't have to. Look again at the descriptions for the classifications:

In the Second Age of a race, it goes to the stars and falls under the influence of other, older species. There is no way to escape this influence; the elder races exert a cultural and technological pull that is as vast as the gravitational pull of a black hole. Even isolated races cannot escape the influence of their elders – the values, beliefs and actions of an elder race reverberate through the galaxy. Elder races walk like giants; the Younger Races can only scurry and hide or try to ride out the hurricane of their elders’ passage.

Say what you want about the Federation, but the main races are not under the influence of another race. It's irrelevant that the Vulcans were barely into their Third Age by the scale of B5 classifications, the fact is that they were and they had influence over Earth. Albeit for maybe about a century. Humanity later rejected that influence over them and stood on their own two feet. Now, I'm certain there are races within the Federation that are still in their Second Age, but the leading races are obviously in their Third Age.

To me, the issue really comes down to a combination of technology and wisdom. We don't see the main ST races being able to 'do as they wish'. We don't see them building dyson spheres or any other such massive technological wonders.

That was never the requirement for the Third Age. If you recall, the EA had entered its Third Age when the Vorlons and the Shadows left. That didn't suddenly mean that they were building dyson spheres. What someone can and should do within a society is dictated by societal norms within that culture. Humans in ENT went from barely being able to get their new ships up to the Warp 5 barrier to using a device to re-ignite a star or being able to collapse a proto-star. From just having put transporter technology into the works to using the same technology to replicate food and finished goods.

The "Age" of a race is not dependent upon technology, but rather social and cultural status. The Vorlons, before they entered into their Third Age, were lightyears ahead of the EA or Minbari when they entered into their Third Age. In theory, a race could go from its Second Age to its Third Age hours after having come into contact with the interstellar community.

On the subject of maturity, that's a bit more difficult to pin down. Mostly because a lot of that comes down to personal opinion and interpretation of various scenes in the various shows. Meaning that we could probably sit here arguing about it until the end of time. However, I'd say that humanity at least, is not as mature or 'evolved' as they would like to think.

And you could say the same about the Shadows and the Vorlons, who committed massively invasive procedures against the Young Races and even going so far as to commit genocide over an ideological dispute on how to raise said races. My point here is that the major players in the region simply do not quantify as being in their 2nd Age. They are clearly within their 3rd Age.

From a quick scan of Memory Alpha, this does seem to be true. Though I stand by my assessment of how Troi manages to find Shinzon's Viceroy based upon the scene in the movie and the novelization.

I really don't see how. You seem to be asserting some sort of mystical connection based on a past wrong. Nor was Troi a particularly powerful telepath/empath. In fact, her mother regularly chided her for letting her skills rust and attributed it to being among so many non-betazoids. My conclusion, recalling that scene, is that the Viceroy had made it easy for her to single him out, because she remembered how his mind had felt. She could have repeated the process with someone she knew well, like say Riker or Picard. And as we saw, for someone like Troi, it required a great deal of effort. Not as much effort as it seemed for a B5 telepath to run interference on a Shadow ship, mind you.

Also, I'd argue that this just means that these telepaths can easily become a danger to themselves and those around then if, say the Shadows choose to come up with some sort of virus of the like that makes them loose control of their telepathic abilities. And I would not put it past them to do so; we've seen them wipe out telepaths in the past, most notably the Narn.

The Shadow had turned the Narn homeworld into a military outpost and had purged the telepaths, probably for the same reason someone would remove brambles, rocks, and other obstacles from a future air strip; having something around that can cause your really advanced spaceships to lose control and crash is not something you want. That's not the same as sneaking into an established race's world and trying to wipe out the entire race of natural telepaths.

In fact, I don't think the Shadows really did anything all that underhanded against the actual Young Races.

Furthermore, I'd argue that this still runs into the issue of Star Trek Telepaths stumbling upon the idea of using their telepathy against the Shadows in the first place- which, by your own admittance, doesn't seem to be something they would do or at least would not be their first instinct. Otherwise, why don't we have the Vulcans and Betazoids being used as weapons against the Borg? The Romulans? Or the Dominion? Heck, why aren't the Romulans trying to make uber-telepaths to use in their schemes?

Actually, the Romulans weaponized a telepath in the 22nd century, although that was admittedly for the use of a long-range combat drone. The Vulcans also in the ancient past, designed a psionic weapon that could kill, although it generally required the target to have malicious intent towards the wielder. As for Betazoids and Telepaths using them as weapons against each other--no, we don't generally see it. But we do know that ST ships can easily do brain scans and a full scan of that ship is going to reveal a strong telepathic bond between ship and CPU.

At some point, there is going to be a question on whether or not they can weaponize a telepath to interfere with the Shadow ships operations. It's basically a form of electronic warfare.

The only logical answer, besides 'the writers didn't want to do that plot/didn't think of it', would be that such a usage doesn't fit their worldview or philosophy. It's the same reason that, yes, the Federation could build a superweapon that blows up planets or suns, but doesn't.

Telepathic intrusions aren't unknown in the setting. There was one creep in TNG who went around mind-raping people.

Whats more, even if they did do so, there's still the matter of using the right technique and knowing how Shadow technology works enough to know what to do. None of the main cast in B5 had even a clue about telepaths being used against Shadow ships until there was a series of rather specific events that prompted them to do further digging. Heck, Bester didn't even figure out that the Shadow ships use living CPUs until after he and the B5 cast captured that ship and its compliment of altered teep blips. (Ship of Tears)

The red-head chick figured it out pretty quick. And she was a P5. I know her powers had begun to grow at that point, but she had not really tested them.

...when the actual hell did that happen? Because I know for a fact that the spider people incident, if its the one I'm thinking of on TNG, was an accident. And I'm going to have to call BS again on the idea of the Federation willingly using genetically modification create supersoldiers.

The animal genetics? Yeah, that happened in that episode. But the actual telepathic clones that I'm talking about were an early season 2 TNG episode. The one where that other doctor chick came in for a season. The flaw with the clones was that their immune system aged normal humans to death. They fixed it with a transporter fix.

Because A) the whole no-augments thing from the Eugenic Wars

Only applies to humans.

and B) again, it doesn't fit the Federation's mindset. Otherwise, they never would have had a whole episode where the question of if they should try to make a whole bunch of Datas back in TNG.

No one was opposed to making more Data androids. The issue was down to whether or not they could force Data to suffer a dangerous, invasive procedure for the chance that they could produce more androids.

Yes, because they'd annihilate anything that was put up against them bar another First One in tech level over in Babylon 5. Were as in Star Trek, the bigger Fed/Romulan/Dominion/Klingon ships are closer to their tech level. Which would be why the Shadows feel the need to sue them and get more personally involved.

Not really. The Shadows don't use brute force to get their way. Certainly they used sheer power to help win over certain races, but that's because it was something those races needed/wanted and it was child's play to accomplish it. Rather, the Shadows preferred to drop new technologies that caused societal disruptions to test a species or drive it forwards. There's no need or reason to draw up ancient Shadow ships to combat the Federation.

Yes and no. The thing is that outside of those like the Breen and Tholians, most of the Alpha and Beta quadrant races seem to have at least some general idea of how each other's government and society works to some degree or other. With the possible exception of the average Romulan or Cardassian citizen or soldier, given how their governments are authoritarian regimes that will gladly spew propaganda about their opposition.

No, not really. Look at what the average person now knows about Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Japan, or Turkey. Those are major players on the international stage right now. And yet most people know very little about their culture, military capability, or beliefs. You have databases, even some that can be easily accessed, but you need years of experience and study to really get the whole picture of what a country can do.

Plus, you forget that knowledge is power. Even if the average citizen doesn't know everything about every race out there, it makes sense that the various governments and fleets would for any number of reasons.

Yes, but they don't generally tend to share that sort of information with creepy strangers who like to hide in the dark.

Now contrast that with Babylon 5, were most of the other races have only a very general idea about each other unless they are close allies or the like. Heck, it's part of Stephan Franklin's backstory that he went hitchhiking on various freighters in an attempt to learn more about the various alien races because of how little knowledge humanity had on them.

Which is so obscure that we can't really quantify what he meant by that. How much information do we have on the cultural and historical information of Kazakhstan? Going there and actually seeing is far easier and far better than what you can expect to read in a data base.

...you realize that would require me to A) know how computer systems work in extreme detail and B) know how Star Trek Computer systems work.


A) It actually wouldn't, but you were the one who claimed they had weak computer security. It's only natural that I ask that you provide some examples and then explain how the Drakh could take advantage of those exploits for their own gain. Or did you really think that I would just nod and not even challenge the assertion? You can at least produce examples, can't you?

B) Actually, it's not all that hard to know how they work. While we don't know much about how they actually function mechanically, we know how they function in the show. Breaking into computers is generally about using only a handful of attack vectors, even if the programs change.

Going off my memory, the most common form of security exploit in Star Trek typically revolves around

  1. Masquerade -- wherein an attacker disguises themselves as someone else.
  2. Internal -- Where someone with knowledge of their computer architecture exploits the system.
  3. Privilege Escalation -- wherein someone, most often times someone on the inside, manages to escalate their access or authorization.
There have been worms and malware attacks. The most egregious was in TNG's first season I think, when an alien probe uploaded a malicious software that ran rampant. And while it suggests that the TNG crew should probably reset the settings on their firewall, the worst was that Geordie, their tech guy, didn't immediately just wipe the computer and reinstall the OS. It took an automated program that Data had installed to give Data and Geordie the idea to just reboot the damn thing. That said, it was made in the late 80s, early 90s. When computers were new. I tend to chalk it up to writers writing about things the don't really understand, in an era where computers were still new. The concept of a firewall was still new, I think having come around in 1983 or '85?

Following that, the only really bad security issues came from Voyager episodes, which was just bad writing all around by people who regularly ignored their own writer's bible.

As for the first part of your question, while I could be wrong here, I seem to recall various Star Trek computers getting hacked a lot in various episodes.

That doesn't mean poor security, that simply means that the computers can be hacked. The biggest issue Starfleet seems to have isn't with worm or malware or even spam, but with authentication and authorization. If someone can find a way to masquerade their way into the system or already seem to have access, then it seems that someone can easily escalate their privilege and deny it to others.

That appears to be the weak point in Starfleet security, but that doesn't mean they have weak security. It's just the best way of getting into their system. Even when Eddington placed that worm on the Defiant, he was the security chief. It was child's play for him to install it because he already had access. And with his knowledge of how the system worked, he could have avoided any sort of safeguards meant to prevent unauthorized tampering.

That is a possibility, which was why I put 'the Ferengi or those like them'. Also, I'd argue that if all the Ferengi were all that untrustworthy and scummy, then they wouldn't be nearly as successful or well known as traders and the like. As if that were the case, no one would want to do any sort of business with them.

Well, like I said. Quark was an honest Ferengi. And he generally sold you the legit stuff 80% of the time. He only did it when he was desperate to unload a good, had the wrong good and wanted to unload it, or because it was some part of a scheme. And Quark was just as likely to sell bad information to UFP rivals because he more or less liked his business arrangement with Starfleet. Impart because he paid no rent.

But let it sink in that someone with the personality of a shady cars salesman is the closest you'll get to an honest Ferengi. Or someone whose rather thick like Rom.

While that's true, I'd ask why the Q never did the same sort of thing to say, the Dominion or the Romulan Star Empire, who've done much worse things then humanity. Heck, why are the Borg still a thing if the Q are as interventionist as people like you seem to think they are?

We have no knowledge of what the Q have or haven't done to other races. We know that the Q are aware of those races. So asserting that they haven't tested them subvertly or overtly without evidence is going to be a hard sell.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
Unless the Shadows are slicing through puny younger race starships with impunity with their trademark Shadow slicer beams then it's not really the Shadows. :cry:
 

DarthOne

☦️
Unless the Shadows are slicing through puny younger race starships with impunity with their trademark Shadow slicer beams then it's not really the Shadows. :cry:
Well, for the story I was going to write, I was going to have the ST shields be at least somewhat useful, depending on the ship class and the sort of Shadow ship they’d be going up against.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
Well, for the story I was going to write, I was going to have the ST shields be at least somewhat useful, depending on the ship class and the sort of Shadow ship they’d be going up against.

Well visually it'd be cool to see the Slicer beam impact the shield and show off that lovely bubble flare burning away under a continuous beam before finally punching through like a thermal lance into the sweet succulent hull within. Then later you could have the Starships trying to compensate with more maneuvering so that the continuous beam will be compelled to strike other shielded areas as the starship maneuvers to present new angles and fronts to delay the inevitable DOOM.

Ultimately it may result in less actual slicing and more lancing style effects. But if the shield are down, I will demand slicing and it to be highly effective and cinematic. And not that pussy footing slicing like the Borg did in their first encounter with the Enterprise. It looked like they were drilling for core samples (because they were. :p ). Boring.
 

Brutus

Well-known member
Hetman
Well visually it'd be cool to see the Slicer beam impact the shield and show off that lovely bubble flare burning away under a continuous beam before finally punching through like a thermal lance into the sweet succulent hull within. Then later you could have the Starships trying to compensate with more maneuvering so that the continuous beam will be compelled to strike other shielded areas as the starship maneuvers to present new angles and fronts to delay the inevitable DOOM.

Ultimately it may result in less actual slicing and more lancing style effects. But if the shield are down, I will demand slicing and it to be highly effective and cinematic. And not that pussy footing slicing like the Borg did in their first encounter with the Enterprise. It looked like they were drilling for core samples (because they were. :p ). Boring.

Don't forget apply the dramatic fireworks on the bridge and engineering consoles.
 

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