posted
I've been doing a little writing on the Rigel system and it's three major inconsistencies (overpopulation, the "Enterprise" fuck-up and the distance/travel-time thing). Note that the article isn't finished yet: http://fleetyard.host.sk/articles/rigel.php (Oh, and that's my new webpage layout. I'm currently working on it. Official move to new location somewhere next week).
posted
Interesting analysis there. I knew that Rigel was densely populated, but I didn't realize that there were quite that many populate planets in the system. Never looked close enough, I guess.
I like that LCARS drawing, too. However, if you want to be technically correct, you may be interested in checking out THIS PAGE, which has some statistical facts about the Rigel System as we know it, including the probable "comfort zone" for inhabited planets and some other relevant data -- like the fact that any inhabited planet in that system would effectively see two suns given the luminosity of the neighboring B/C components of the system.
Still, that's a very good image there. Certainly a bit more detailed than I'm capable of at this time...
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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posted
Perhaps Rigel is the New York City of the galaxy? I really don't see the problem with Rigel's population. Yes, there are a lot of populated planets, but the fact that we hear the term "Rigel Colonies" makes me think that several of those worlds are simply colonized planets like Mars is to Earth. Now as to the distance from Earth, that does seem implausible, but Enterprise did get to the Klingon homeworld in four days. Distance and travel times have never been consistent in Trek.
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capped
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posted
hmm.. actually, i think there has only been few planets in the Rigel system confirmed to have a native population.. the Rigelian physiology mentioned in 'Journey to Babel'.. which may or may not be the seemingly native Rigelians fron 'The Cage', and of course there are the Rigelian turtle-people that could be the ones mentioned, or they could be a second species. Rigel X from Enterprise could be all colonized, or it could be home to one of those possible indiginous cultures, Rigelians like Hengist could be Earth colonists, or they could be the Rigelians referred to in 'Journey to Babel', or they could be a second (or third) species of Rigelians, depending on whether you account for the turtle Rigelians.. or they could have colonized their own system and be related to 'The Cage' Rigelians, and both of them could be the Rigelians referred to in 'Journey to Babel'
I have a headache.
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1 - The savage people Kaylar belonged to (some sources claim the people are actually called Ka(y)lar, but that's just fandom sillyness)
2 - The vulcanoid mentioned in "Journey to Babel" and "Inter Arma ...". I think none of the other Rigelians could be called vulcanoids (a vulcanoid without pointy ears makes a pretty poor vulcanoid).
3 - The teenage mutant politically active turtles. For some strange reason, "The Art of Star Trek" differentiates these Rigellians from the other Rigelians. The Magazine also calls them Rigellians.
4 - Human-looking. Caberet girls and Hengist.
5 - The Orion slave women. Orion probably is (and is usually placed) in the Rigel system.
posted
Rigel isn't unique in this. TOS was perhaps overly fond of reusing stars. Thus Rigel (a star rather unsuited for any native life at all), but also supposedly distant Deneb, which may have been on the edge of known space for the purposes of "Encounter at Farpoint," but which was more or less nearby for both Kirk and Mitchell (who had visited Deneb IV) and Harry Mudd (who got in trouble on Deneb V), and which was well known enough for Spock to be able to pull up police records from Deneb II.
I'd hesitate putting the Orions in the Rigel system, if only because the place seems pretty cosmopolitan, and thus would seem to make a poor base from which to launch an interstellar pirating venture.
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posted
A couple of points to add, nothing radically new:
-Both "Rigel" and "Deneb" are nouns ("leg" and "tail", respectively) that are present in a great number of star names. These include distant stars, like the "classic" ones about a thousand ly away, as well as nearby ones just a few dozen lightyears away. In fact, the very closest star to Earth is also called "The leg"... of the Centaur.
-Both "Rigel" and "Deneb" technically probably should be pronounced differently from the English pronunciation we hear our heroes use ("Rye-gel" and "Day-nebb"). More proper forms would probably be "Rig-ill" and "Den-ebb", with relatively long second vowels... So perhaps different pronunciations mean different stars?
-Pointed ears and stilted behavior are IMHO not required for a "Vulcanoid". Far more important taxonomically would be the copper-based blood. The girls from Rigel II seen in "Shore Leave" could thus well have been Vulcanoids.
-Finally, "Orions" need not come from anywhere near the constellation Orion or the putative star Orion. "Quark" doesn't come from a particle accelerator, either. In case of the Orions, the similarity between the name of the species and the constellation may be pure coincidence.
(And whether the green "Orion slave girls" are related to an Orion species in any way remains unclear. The name may merely address the ownership relation, not cultural or biological relation. Heck, perhaps they aren't even green naturally, but marked with that body color to indicate their status. They could be from a variety of species originally.)
posted
In the case of the poor slave girls, the context may be important. When Pike is thinking about where he might go after leaving...well, the service, he mentions a few places, one being the "Orion Colony." Now, I can't say for sure what colony means here, but it seems a safe bet that, as written, anything with the word colony appended to it was intended to be an Earth colony (Certainly this would be true when Roddenberry was writing "The Cage," pre-UFP and all.) It's hard, of course, to derive any "real" information from "The Cage" like this, the show being essentially embryonic at the time, but there's nothing to indicate that Orion the world, at the time of its first mention, was an independant planet run by Orions, whatever they may look like. The Orion pirates might even, using just this episode as a guide, be human.
"Journey To Babel" is on my list of things to watch in the near future, so I'll have to pay attention and see what exactly gets said about the Orions.
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posted
another theory is that the human looking Rigellians are vulcanoid without pointed ears, but with green blood and other vulcan stuff lik that. outside features are much less important than internal physiology when determining a species origin..
and, no, there is absolutely no reason to assume Orions come from Rigel. That smells of fanboy ass after being pulled out of it, as UM said
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posted
Since Orion is roughly the direction of Rigel, it may be a name made up by humans for a people in the same region, but different from the Rigellians. Well, still assuming that Rigel is Rigel.
Personally, I don't take "Orions" or "Orion Syndicate" as a geographical location at all. It is just a name someone chose because it sounded cool.
-------------------- Bernd Schneider
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posted
Were the Rigel(l)ians ever even called "Vulcanoid"? As far as I know, the only correlation made between them and the Vulcans was that there was a similarity in their bloods.
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posted
If someone else already suggested this, pardon my repeating, but I think it's also possible that the planets in question might not all be in the same solar system, but could be inhabited worlds in different solar systems in an area one might call the "Rigel sector". So the frist planet discovered/setrtled is Rigel I, the second II, etc.
It's beyond improbable that so many planets capable of sustaining humanoid life could develop in one solar system. It's even more improbable when you consider that the life-spans of hot blue-white stars are much shorter than a main sequence G type like our sun. Thus any planets with a chance of developing life sustaining environments would lose their primary before life could probably arise.
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posted
The odds that are stacked against multiple naturally occurring habitable planets are easily beaten - one can simply say that the majority of the planets were terraformed, either recently or in the distant past. That would jibe with the "colonies" nomer, too.
It could also be claimed that "Rigel" was the guy/gal/BEM/corporation/other entity responsible for founding the colonies. The colonies might have nothing at all to do with any stars named Rigel - any more than Dytallix B orbits a star named Dytallix, or Sherman's planet orbits a star named Sherman...
In this latter version, not only could the Rigel colonies be distributed across multiple star systems, they could also lie in multiple directions, none of which needs to be related to Beta Orionis or Rigil Kentaurus or any other such star.
quote:Originally posted by Timo: The odds that are stacked against multiple naturally occurring habitable planets are easily beaten - one can simply say that the majority of the planets were terraformed, either recently or in the distant past. That would jibe with the "colonies" nomer, too.
I think that's almost as unlikely...the prospect of finding more than two planets in any star's habitable zone would be rare...more than two unlikely in the extreme. So, unless you're postulating the ability to MOVE planets as well...
However, another possibility is that the various Rigel planets are habitable moons of one or two gas giants orbiting within a safe zone around a star. This would handily allow many planets to occupy essentially identical orbits around their primary.
-------------------- "Well, I mean, it's generally understood that, of all of the people in the world, Mike Nelson is the best." -- ULTRA MAGNUS, steadfast in curmudgeon
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