posted
I read that book years ago. Can't remember much about it now, but they managed to communicate with the probe, I think. Turns out it was attacked by the Borg in its past, etc.
-------------------- I haul cardboard and cardboard accessories
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Pretty terible book as I recall- I was trapped on a plane somewhere with only that to distract me from a very tiny coach seat for my 6'1 frame.
It must have sucked, as I can tell you almost nothing about the book either....
...and my ability to recall minute details of trivial, useless things is staggering.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Hey, wait a minute... that was the book which was renamed and rewritten despite author protests? Was it supposed to be called "Music of the spheres" or smth?
-------------------- "Do I remember about my amnesia?"
Registered: Jan 2003
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JupiterStation
Ex-Member
posted
quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim: I agree that it (like much [though not all] of Voyager) was shitty, but it's canon.
Kinda how I feel about it (dolphins on board starships) prolly not the way I would have went with it, but no one asked me, so, just kinda quietly work it into the background...
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
The TNG Tech Manual mentioned a crew of so-many dolphins (bottlenose and something else) headed by 2 supervisory orca-whales being navigators. I had thought at the time that it was just a joke...
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
And there's ANOTHER thing. Species discrimination! Are we saying that orcas are just naturally better at supervising as a species and thus are assigned to look over the dolphins? Or are we refering specifically to the Enterprise, which is proud to boast its complement of two lieutenant-ranked orcas assigned to a batch of wet behind the blowholes ensigns who all just happen to be of the dolphin persuasion?
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
Reminds me of a Trek novel in which instead of 'species' they said 'forms of humanity' to sound less discriminating. ...sounds far *more* discriminating to me. Trying to make everything like you.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Of course, one problem is that there really are differences in cognitive abilities and aptitudes between species. We tend to think of intelligence, however nebulously defined, as a more or less binary phenomenon. Something either has a human-like intelligence or it doesn't. But I'm not so sure that's the case. That is, that there is some boundary or border between the thinking that we do and the thinking that, say, chimpanzees do.
There is clearly a difference, but is it qualitative or quantitative?
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
We might not be debating that they are smart but more like what the hell would we put tanks in the Galaxy Class ship for then?
If I recall corretly, someone made original blueprints of the Enterprise-D that reflected its "cruise ship" interior that ended up being changed to what we saw the semicanon blueprints for. Go figure its mentioned in TNG perhaps more like how the gardens are... for research.
-------------------- "It speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow, it's not all going to be over with a big splash and a bomb, that the human race is improving, that we have things to be proud of as humans." -Gene Roddenberry about Star Trek
Registered: May 1999
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posted
Those tanks coulud easily be for aquatic Federation crewmembers- a couple of years back, I was reading an intresting article on the possibility of sentient lifeforms originating in a deep-sea environment.
They might communicate via chromataform color changes on their bodies (like some squids use during mating), so never even consider audio communication signals. No more than we search the night's sky for projected infra-red signals or something else so...alien our senses.
That whole "we did a planetary survey in a few days" bit from TNG was soooo much bullshit- each class M world would need decades to make even a half-assed survey (and that's with useing TNG level technology!).
So the tanks on a GCS might house anything from hundreds of colonial-inteligence inscets that need special stmosphere to something that would be instantly killed in one "G" of pressure
It's concievable that starfleet operates entire starships that have no humanoid crewmembers (or that the humanoids live in enclosed habitats while the majority have free-reign of the ship with it's hazardous pressure/atmosphere/radiation/tempature.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Hmmm I guess I was unclear- obviously we've been useing it as atelescope for years, but not as a potential source of ET transmissions. SETI is an near-impossibe dream looking for giant, obvious signals broadcast to maximum effect, much less looking for a infra-signal that wou;d be like a specialized searchlight aimed for a few days at our solar system and then moved by it's owners to the next star, hoping someone will see it....
It's a species perception thing, as to what would be an "obvious" signal.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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