I was posting in another thread and mentioned the garbage dump vessel from "Final Mission" (TNG). Just wondered if it was possible that this was a Malon ship? We know from "Night" that the Malon aren't above dumping their waste in any handy wormholes/spacial ruptures/natural phenomena that come their way, as long as they take their waste products a loooooong way away. Is it possible some Malon found a wormhole that led to the Alpha Quadrant?
Just seems odd that this ship pops out of nowhere and then later on in Trek we find this race that specialises in doing just that...just idle speculation on my part, they might well be unrelated but thought it might be fun to do a little plotholing.
Thoughts?
(oh, and sorry if this has been floated as an idea before now - had a look around but couldn't see any existing posts that covered the idea. If there is, sorry!)
Posted by Shakaar (Member # 1782) on :
The vessel in Final Mission was of a different design, and a different style. The radiation type was unmentioned in Final Mission, but was treated with hyronalyn, which I do not believe they tried to use in Voyager, so I assume it is a different type of radiation than what the Malon dumped. That and the Malon didn't appear to have technology that advanced to go so far away. Interesting ponderance though!
Posted by FawnDoo (Member # 1421) on :
The ones we saw in Voyager could always have been dumping a different type of waste - from what we saw of the Malon, I think they would be producing all sorts of nasty stuff that needed dumping.
I don't think the Malon would have sent the ship to the Alpha Quadrant, but they might have happened along a wormhole and thought "hello, can't detect the endpoint anywhere near, so in you go!" and just dumped the ship in. After all once it's out of the way, they're happy, right?
Glad it was interesting though - thanks! :-) I'm generally uneasy about tying all the individual threads of the Trek universe together (it seems to be a prevailing thread in Trek printed fiction) but this one seemed like fun.
Posted by Shakaar (Member # 1782) on :
In Voyager the Malon stated that the theta radiation was produced as a biproduct of their power systems (for cities) so I doubt they would have mass quantities of other radiations as well. I would have liked to have seen Malon society- They were warp-faring after all, perhaps they could have been given an equal, yet non-poluting means of generating energy.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
I had brought up this possibility years ago. If it actually is a Malon frieghter, I think the more likely explanation is that this is an ancient Malon vessel. Something happened, the crew died, and the ship continued on its way, possibily even at warp for a stretch, until finally falling into normal space and drifting to where the Ent D got involved. The time it took to reach Federation space might account for the different kind of radiation being hauled as well as the different design. Was there any mention in VOY as to how long the Malon had been transporting their waste?
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Not really. Just enough time to make societal changes and have a significant portion of their population be garbagemen.
I've no problem with OTHER races out there being such poor ecological practitioners. On this planet alone we have lots of national governments who really don't care where their garbage goes who who it screws up, as long as it's NIMBY.