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Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

O.K. I was thinking about the Prophets this morning for some reason and I sort fo wanted to start a little discussion about them in general. Let's see if I've got this straight:

We initially thought of them as existing outside of linear time btu eventually we see that they do have some connection to it (because TPTB decided it was too hard to make them do anything otherwise) because they have actually influenced history.

-There was a battle between the Pah Wraiths and the Prophets which ended with the expulsion of the P.W. to and their imprisonment in the fire caves.

-The Prophets, evidentally aware of a time when a P.W. who was locked in a statue would return and try to free the rest of the P.W., sent one of their own to give birth to a child that would eventually be their Emissary and would hopefully stop the P.W.

-A P.W. and a Prophet were also locked in a stone tablet and eventually had a battle on DS9

Am I missing any errant spirits, here? You see the problem? If they exist outside of linear time, they must have at least had access to linear time, because several of these creatures are inside physical object during specific points in time.

Also an interesting little thing: in "The Assignment", Keiko was possesed by a P.W. but didn't have the glowy eyes or the cancer voice that evey other person possesed by a P.W. or a Prophet has had, with the presumable exception of Sarah Sisko. Also in that ep, we saw the return of a P.W. and an attempt made on the Celstial Temple, but it didn't involve Sisko's interference at all, nor did it seem to be a part of a prophecy. Apparently, some of the P.W. are able to escape their prison.

Any thoughts on this subject?

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"The sons of the Prophet were valiant and bold,
And quite unacustomed to fear.
But, of all, the most reckless, or so I am told,
Was Abdul Abubul Amir."
Aban's Illustration www.alanfore.com

Posted by Gaseous Anomaly (Member # 114) on :

Oh goody, a DS9 debate that interests me!

M'opinion:

The Pagh Wraiths do not exist outside of linear time.

The Prophets do, but didn't always.

Both races/species probably lived, quite separately, as corporeal beings (in linear time, d'oh!) millions of years ago. They probably transcended into non-corporeal being as per your standard sci-fi scheme of evolution.
They met, and a confrontation erupted - the timescale here is irrelevant. It happened. Really.

ANYWAY, the Pagh Wraiths were soundly thrashed, and were banished from their realm. There, the Prophets reigned supreme, eventually moving out of linear time into a higher state encompassing non-linear time.

Now I know that Sisko had to explain to them what linear time was, but they're not infallible. On such a vast timescale, they'd have to forget some things.

Jaysus, this could be more complicated than I thought.

I still say that the Pagh Wraiths live out of linear time.

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At that point, McDonald fired his gun three times in the air to emphasize his point. The crowd, estimated at 350,000, loudly cheered the new candidate.

"Let me make this clear: I am the law! I am your ruler! And you will have fries with that, motherf*cker!"

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

Well they appear to now since they've been cast out of the Temple. Apparently, the Temple (the wormhole, as you call it) exists outside linear time. Exiting the Temple through the wormhole pops you into linear time. So once they were steel toed down to Bajor, yes, I'd say they began existing in linear time as did all the other beings like them who were inside the various relics.

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

This would make sense: the creatures that comprise the "Prophet/Wraith race" aren't inherently time-independent, but only appear so because of living in the Temple. Once banished, a member of the race is at a grave disadvantage because he cannot time-travel, whereas the Temple guardians can easily thwart his most cunning plans of returning, by performing time-travel, timeline-alteration tricks.

Perhaps The Sisko was created only after "The Assignment" showed the dangers the Wraiths could pose to the Temple even when confined to linear time? Perhaps up till then, the station had been commanded by Sisko and not The Sisko, but the Prophets quickly retconned that and tampered with the commander's birth? This wouldn't seem to be outside the capabilities of the Prophets, who did possess the ability to actually send people to the past through the Orb of Time.

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

The problem we have is this: There are two seemingly conflicting views of the Prophets' race. Although Timo's explanation is quite nice as per usual.

1) A race that is completely aware of time as a whole and able to know all, see all, effect all. They have no perception of time as a linear equation which seems to preclude the possibility of having exolved to that state or having existed outside the Temple sometime in the past (What is this?)

2) A race that currently exists outside linear time but is aware of Time as a linear equation and has inserted events at particular points in the time line.

The Orb of Time which allows people to go from point to point in linear time doesn't seem to fit "1", but seems to go fine with "2".

The problem comes from the fact that TPTB didn't decide form the get go whether or not Sisko was actually "divine" or whether or not the wormhole aliens were actually Prophets. They left it ambiguous for so long and even leaned towards a totally scientific view just enough, that when they decided they wanted to do something with it, they had to back peddle.

Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

1. If the Wormhole aliens were aware of TIME, maybe they didn't understand the consequences of LINEAR time, as explained to them by Sisko, they just kept popping things in and out of the Wormhole for Millenia - for all we know it could have been a school science experiment that went wrong for 2 seconds?

2. Maybe all the 'events' like the Orbs and all the Pagh-Wraiths etc. etc. etc. were a DIRECT result of Sisko introducing the Wormhole Aliens to Linear Time... i.e. the Wormhole Aliens began to dabble in the 'affairs of the linear-timers' but of course - as is their ability - doing it at different points throughout the history? Thus making a big headachey type temporal loop/causality/cause and effect thingy... where the events leading up to Sisko's entry into the Wormhole were infact caused by him...

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Homer: I'm gonna miss Springfield. This town's been awfully good to us.
Bart: No, it hasn't, Dad. That's why we're leaving.
Homer: Oh, yeah. [pokes his head out the window] So long, Stinktown!

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

Ooooh, AndrewR, I like that. In the wormhole, everything was going along fine and dandy. When Sisko introduced them to the concept of Linear time, the stuggles amongst the aliens started to occur. The Pah Wraiths started looking into past, seeing what had happened to Bajor and wanting to get involved (if we can believe Dukat). They were kicked out, but in our past.

Similarly, the Prophets wanted to explore corporeal existance, so they sent out the orbs but scattered throughout our timeline.

When the whole thing with the P.W. happened, they saw the need to engineer the past to have a corporeal Emissary that would settle things in our reality.

In this case, hindsight is not only 20/20 but also very useful.

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"The sons of the Prophet were valiant and bold,
And quite unacustomed to fear.
But, of all, the most reckless, or so I am told,
Was Abdulah Boul Boul Ameer."
Aban's Illustration www.alanfore.com

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

I was thinking the same thing. That it was only after Sisko introduced the Prophets to linear time that they went back and caused his birth and everything. It's not like Trek has never screwed up cause-and-effect when time travel is involved before... *L*

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"...I know this board in secret, intimate ways which are beyond your comprehension.... Let's just say that people should *not* be telling me what to do; it should always be the other way around."
-"Red Quacker", conspiracy theorist and contemporary lunatic

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

And the fact that linear time is basically happening all around them, all at once should make the screw ups even harder to nail down. They stick their arm out every once in a while and do something. To them it all happened at once, but to us, centuries have passed.

Posted by Gaseous Anomaly (Member # 114) on :

But what about when they were corporeal beings themselves?

All this means that they "forgot" about linear time, even though they had experienced it themselves (?)!

------------------
At that point, McDonald fired his gun three times in the air to emphasize his point. The crowd, estimated at 350,000, loudly cheered the new candidate.

"Let me make this clear: I am the law! I am your ruler! And you will have fries with that, motherf*cker!"

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

I don't think they ever were actually coporeal beings. Some of them have possessed corporeal beings on occasion, but I don't think they have ever existed as such. Even the possessions (of Sarah Sisko et al) could be said to have occured only "after" Sisko originally introduced them to the concept of linear time and the dissent began resulting in an altered time line where they were at least partially aware of linear time.

Posted by Gaseous Anomaly (Member # 114) on :

So you're saying that they were always non-corporeal?
Disagree.

We've always seen non-corporeal beings as having EVOLVED to that stage e.g. the Organians. I seriously doubt they just "were" non-corporeal.

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At that point, McDonald fired his gun three times in the air to emphasize his point. The crowd, estimated at 350,000, loudly cheered the new candidate.

"Let me make this clear: I am the law! I am your ruler! And you will have fries with that, motherf*cker!"

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

Like Q?

Besides, even if their ancestors were corporeal, that doesn't mean the ones who are around now ever were. Maybe they became non-corporeal when they were very young, so they didn't have any real knowledge of linear time to retain.

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Of course, considering that they're unstuck in time, it's quite possible that the Prophets are simply what the Bajorans will eventually become.

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Not even a god can deny that I have squared the circle of a static Earth and cubed the Earth sphere by rotating it once to a dynamic Time or Life Cube.
--
Gene Ray
****
Read three (three!) chapters of "Dirk Tungsten in...The Disappearing Planet" Or don't. You know, whatever.

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

Or vice versa, for that matter. Perhaps the Prophets created the material universe in their experiments, and then forgot about it for a while, until it came knocking on the doors of the Temple.

Or to scale it down a bit, perhaps the Prophets created our local galaxy, hence the Temple that spans this specific galaxy but apparently doesn't extend outside it. This galaxy had no humanoid life to begin with, but once one species appeared (naturally?), it became very successful and subsequently seeded the rest of the galaxy, mostly eliminating competition. And then part of their seed got to Bajor and created a random bunch of corporeals close to the spatial coordinates of the Temple front (back?) gate.

However, galaxy- or universe-spanning sagas don't really seem to fit the scale of the Prophets. They just aren't portrayed as all that important. A connection between them and Bajorans would indeed seem to be implied, if not otherwise, then because the Temple door is next to the planet, apparently by design since it hasn't drifted anywhere for the past millennia and is in fact *orbiting* the local star. Which raises the question: why is the other end where it is, far away from stars? Is it just the necessary yet embarrassing other end of a Prophet digestive system? Is there some crucial function to the Temple having two doors? Is somebody in Gamma important to the Prophets?

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

Very good questions, all. Unfortunately, the answer to the question is that, in the beginning of the series, TPTB were leaning towards the "they're just a bunch of aliens that the Bajorans worship and the Federation will have to be respectful" explanation. So none of those questions were probably even asked let alone alone answered.

Posted by Toadkiller (Member # 425) on :

Timo Saloniemi said:

"Which raises the question: why is the other end where it is, far away from stars? Is it just the necessary yet embarrassing other end of a Prophet digestive system? Is there some crucial function to the Temple having two doors? Is somebody in Gamma important to the Prophets?"

Could be a good lead in question to a follow up DS9 story (not that we'll likely ever see something official).

Why did the Prophet's allow the war to happen? Couldn't they have simply closed the other end, or moved it away from the Dominion? If Sisko were to come back he might have some explaining to do along those lines. Perhaps they thought it was important for Bajor to face the lessons of the war....

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TK

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Without the wormhole, how much attention would Bajor have attracted?

Also consider that, as a result of contact and war with the Dominion, Bajor is now one of the more important worlds in the quadrant, and her greatest enemy has been vanquished, perhaps forever.

Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :

Did the bajorans exist in Trek before the wormhole? Ensign Ro?

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Don't kill me, I'm charming!

Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

Yes, Ensign Ro, was the first Bajoran seen on Trek...

I wondered that too, a long time ago - especially in Season 2, with the Skreeans... why Bajor? Why Idran? Again, this could be explained by Sisko actually being the first to introduce linear time to them.

So as was mentioned above, everytime they stuck their hand out they didn't know when and where it would happen, to us it would look like centuries had passed...

So the two ends of the wormhole could have been anchored BECAUSE Sisko, introduced them to linear time... BECAUSE then they would need a connection between these two quadrants for Odo to pass through, for the ensuing war - but again here comes all the messy temporal stuff - these things... the wormhole actually being anchored in those two systems it being there AT ALL was a result of Sisko... and linear time.

My head hurts...

Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :

Of course, when Ro was introduced, they were the "Bajora", not the "Bajorans."

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Star Trek Gamma Quadrant
Average Rated 8.32 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux (with seven eps posted)
***
"Oh, yes, screw logic, let's go for a theory with no evidence!"
-Omega 11:48am, Jan. 19th, 2001

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

In that very first episode, perhaps. But the general Bajoran situation (along with the N) was laid out in TNG too.

Posted by Curry Monster (Member # 12) on :

Best damn explanation I have ever heard.

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Re: Russia in WWII

"Hey, we butchered Poles! Thats OK."
- DT.

Posted by Eclipse (Member # 472) on :

Has anyone read the DS9 "Millenium" mega-trilogy? IIRC it settles a few of these points (though I can't for the life of me remember how).

*scuttles off to the library*