Star Trek What if Berlinghoff Rasmussen's plan worked

[johnreiter]

What if Berlinghoff Rasmussen had succeeded in his plan? He successfully returns the the 22nd century (contemporary with the events of Enterprise) with detailed information on and some samples of 24th century technology. These include; phasers, a tricorder, a VISOR, isolinear chips, Data, quarantine fields, a neural stimulator, and Warp 10 engines. Rasmussen spends the next several years releasing this technology a little at a time as his "inventions."


I assume that, even if he manages to reverse-engineer most of it, he would never be able to reverse-engineer Data's brain. I assume he will just kill Data, and sell the technology from his body instead, which is still far ahead of the 22nd century. They may build more advanced robots, but without AI.

 

[johnreiter]

Here are some of my predictions

24th century phasers, and Warp 10 engines in the 22nd century would make the Federation the most powerful military in the alpha quadrant for decades. OTOH, shield technology would remain unchanged, unless the study of medical quarantine fields leads to improvements in shield technology. I think this is unlikely, however.

While the VISOR would be useful for giving sight to the blind, it would be much more valuable for the wide array of sensors inside it. Study of it would improve their sensors considerably, in accuracy if not in range. The tricorder would be valuable for the same reason.

Isolinear chips make possible isolinear computers, which would give their ships the fastest reaction-time of any ships in the quadrant.

The Earth Romulan War would definitely play out differently. Instead of managing a narrow draw with the Romulans, we would chase them all the way back to Romulus, and the Klingons would be too scared to declare war until they had closed the tech gap.

With Warp 10 engines, space exploration would proceed more quickly, with many planets and civilizations being discovered earlier.

 

[Bassoe]

You get Engines of Destiny by way of I Am Become Death with a ragtag alliance of all surviving alpha quadrant civilizations fighting a losing war against the children of soong, an exponential horde of killbots with a master race complex. Good news, you can mass-produce soong-type androids. Bad news, they're smarter and stronger than you and you can't control them.