Well, panspermia is an actual theory for how life arrived on Earth. I just assume the Preservers chucked some zygotes onto some rocks and sent them tumbling towards planets, and evolution happened from there.
Evolution doesn't work that way.
But yeah, I'm not super stoked on the religious/Godlike aspects of the Preservers.
I can accept that maybe the Preservers created the Iconians and several other species a few hundred thousand years ago, and since Preservers look kind of humanoid the reawakened ones were mostly confused or running off programming hopelessly out of date.
They're also completely wrong.
But seriously, the Preserver thing is the most anti-science drivel in Trek history. Might as well start breaking out the stuff about space aliens building the pyramids and Aztec cities.
Note: In the Memory Alpha recap, it specifically states humanoids; so the Xindi Aquatics, Tholian and Horta weren't seeded by these Preservers.
If humans can have an evolutionary ancestor with whales and dolphins there is nothing saying Xindi Primates cannot have an evolutionary ancestor with Aquatics.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Literally just finished this episode, and honestly, I'm shocked. I'm not shocked about the whole Herald business, but rather the smaller things. Spoilers Included, but lets recap;
Secondly, the Preservers truly were the seeding species of every other species; including the Iconian. I hated (with a passion) this reveal. The idea that they may have seeded some planets, specifically for primate life I accepted long ago, but the thought that they also seeded reptilian, insectoid, aquatic and whatever the Iconians and Tholian are, I'm sorry, but the hell?
Thirdly, I saw Tholian corpses on New Romulus, yet the Tholian Assembly never once aided the Alliance cause (we are essentially fighting for their freedom too they should know).
Fourthly, I don't know if it was just me, but them Herald ships have a resemblance (of sorts) to that Dyson Carrier. A connection maybe?
Fifthly, I honestly though the episode was meh. We've had some good episodes lately with Harry Kim, Tuvok and such, and then this? I'm just about to start Delta Flight, so wish me luck on that...
1. who knows what that cardassian was doing there, he could be an official who is the ears for the cardassian government, who just reports on the findings for all we know. need more info on that before any wild speculation is given.
2. it was not outside their realm of possibilities, and it was not unexpected. they mentioned they created life in the galaxy so its logicial to surmise that they also created the iconians as well. and you were surprised by this??
3. who knows what is going on with the tholians, i mentioned this in the past and i will keep mentioning it until the idea is out there; are these tholians you see officially apart of the assembly or a rogue operation? there is no details presented, even with the content on the tholians, it is hard to ascertain what is up there.
4. the solanae obelisk carrier and the iconian herald ships? the solonae are known to be the backbone of the iconian operations, they are the ones who do some of the most important stuff, probably ship building as well as it was stated they also built dyson spheres.
5. if you see miral, dont blame her that you got whiplash! :P.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Look at it this way: Humans are one of the newest space-faring races and we can already time travel. Why would we assume the Preservers, who seeded the whole Galaxy, could not also time travel? Maybe a Preserver met an Iconian via time travel. Maybe not. Maybe an Iconian got caught in a temporal vortex by accident and was thrown back in time and met a Preserver. There are a million stories in the Star Trek universe, and they are all strange.
Oh absolutely. I can come up with a bunch. I just want Charles gray to be sure to put one in game. Doesn't matter which one.
Heck, we do know that at least one preserver was active 80,000 years ago. Which is how the "ancient humanoids" and "preservers" became linked as one in canon.
Secondly, the Preservers truly were the seeding species of every other species; including the Iconian. I hated (with a passion) this reveal. The idea that they may have seeded some planets, specifically for primate life I accepted long ago, but the thought that they also seeded reptilian, insectoid, aquatic and whatever the Iconians and Tholian are, I'm sorry, but the hell?
They didn't seed every species. They just forced a lot of them to take humanoid form, even the ones where it doesn't really make sense (Caitians, Saurians, etc). Pretty sure the Tholians weren't seeded at all.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them." -Thomas Marrone
If humans can have an evolutionary ancestor with whales and dolphins there is nothing saying Xindi Primates cannot have an evolutionary ancestor with Aquatics.
Still doesn't explain the Tholian, Horta, Sheliak etc
2. it was not outside their realm of possibilities, and it was not unexpected. they mentioned they created life in the galaxy so its logicial to surmise that they also created the iconians as well. and you were surprised by this??
Yes, because I never once assumed that the Preservers created every other lifeform in the Galaxy.
If humans can have an evolutionary ancestor with whales and dolphins there is nothing saying Xindi Primates cannot have an evolutionary ancestor with Aquatics.
I need to rewatch the chase tonight. I made the same assumption as the person you are replying to, but have been cautioned that the show specifically says "like us" and the memory alpha editors jumped to them conclusion that meant "humanoid".
Just putting that out in a reinforcement of your position.
I need to rewatch the chase tonight. I made the same assumption as the person you are replying to, but have been cautioned that the show specifically says "like us" and the memory alpha editors jumped to them conclusion that meant "humanoid".
That's what I'm getting at though, if they meant all life when they said "like us" then what was the comparison? If there was a comparison, then they obviously didn't seed all life.
That or we accept what the evidence tells us: that the Preservers are the biggest self-deluded con men in history who like to play God.
That or we accept that the setting is run by war criminals who like genocide, as there is not a single planet in the entire galaxy who can claim to have been naturally evolved.
Also, Creationism is apparently true in the Star Trek universe. Just the form of the true master race is "bald white guys." Because we should all evolve to be bald and white.
I'm not a fan of the Preservers.
Then preservers were absolutely either wrong or lying in the chase. They claim that there was no other life like them, and after "thousands of lonely years" they seeded the galaxy so they would have someone to talk to. They also claimed to be "first".
But the guardian of forever is older than they are. So, presumably, at least one other race was there before them. Absolutely, they might have died out or whatnot. But the preservers don't appear to have been first.
It is also a leap to say no planet can make the claim. Even in the chase, it was specific worlds. One in particular questions the preservers relationship to the various inorganic sentient races.
Apparently it does in Star Trek, considering Tom Paris evolved into a newt.
But in all seriousness, the idea of evolution being a guided process that must end in "a form like ours" is hilariously anti-science.
Tell me about it. Heck, there are mentions of a LOT of non-humanoid species in being the Trekverse offscreen, just they don't appear because it's a show on a budget and animatronics and puppetry and CGI during the 1990s was expensive. That's all there is to it.
What bothers me is that the whole thing with the Preservers starts uncomfortably resembling some of the crazier theories that were popular in certain quarters during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, most of which really didn't like the idea that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and that ultimately all of our ancestors had dark brown skin about 200,000 - 20,000 years ago.
And Trek has a bad habit of casting darker skinned species - like the Klingons - as villains or at least really violent.
Apparently it does in Star Trek, considering Tom Paris evolved into a newt.
But in all seriousness, the idea of evolution being a guided process that must end in "a form like ours" is hilariously anti-science.
Artificial selection is a form of guided evolution, that's not anti-science, for all we know they just invented some form of genetic artificial selection.
Tell me about it. Heck, there are mentions of a LOT of non-humanoid species in being the Trekverse offscreen, just they don't appear because it's a show on a budget and animatronics and puppetry and CGI during the 1990s was expensive. That's all there is to it.
What bothers me is that the whole thing with the Preservers starts uncomfortably resembling some of the crazier theories that were popular in certain quarters during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, most of which really didn't like the idea that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and that ultimately all of our ancestors had dark brown skin about 200,000 - 20,000 years ago.
And Trek has a bad habit of casting darker skinned species - like the Klingons - as villains or at least really violent.
Yeah.
I just think of the Preservers as an elaborate prank that somehow managed to stick around to fool generations upon generations, including the Iconians. They're like the cargo cult of the future.
The artist formerly known as PlanetofHats.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
That's what I'm getting at though, if they meant all life when they said "like us" then what was the comparison? If there was a comparison, then they obviously didn't seed all life.
Again "all life" is not necessarily the accurate claim. Nor even "all humanoid life". That is opened as a possibility by the episode, but picard and the other scientists can only prove it in some specific cases.
Apparently it does in Star Trek, considering Tom Paris evolved into a newt.
But in all seriousness, the idea of evolution being a guided process that must end in "a form like ours" is hilariously anti-science.
No, that is a misunderstanding of the claim in show. The show makes no statement about evolution itself. The show posits a race with genetic engineering advanced enough to allow evolution to work, but to embed and protect for billions of years, a few key repeating patterns.
No more, no less. The preservers didn't say "this world will have reptiles and this one primates". All the chase posits is they put something like bacteria in lots of places. Many of those became sentient with four limbs and one head. At least two worlds visited by picard never got beyond plants.
Its no different than teleporting planets. Take something and extrolate to a ridiculous extreme. This one was genetic instead of physical.
Still doesn't explain the Tholian, Horta, Sheliak etc
Yes, because I never once assumed that the Preservers created every other lifeform in the Galaxy.
they couldnt create everything, their advancements only go so far as does their understanding and technology. they may have had the ability to create humanoid life but that doesnt exclude they also could of created crystal based life, or other types of based life. i mean to them it would of just been a means of programming a set of instructions to create this or that over a few billion years of evolution.
the iconians are roughly humanoid in appearance if you take away all of the metal armour pieces and decorative objects, the heralds are a similar being; genetic cousins if you like. Both of them are bipedal, have hands, feet and digits, a head a torso and such. but the iconians themselves may have radically altered themselves over a long amount of time both before and after iconia was sacked.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
No, that is a misunderstanding of the claim in show. The show makes no statement about evolution itself. The show posits a race with genetic engineering advanced enough to allow evolution to work, but to embed and protect for billions of years, a few key repeating patterns.
No more, no less. The preservers didn't say "this world will have reptiles and this one primates". All the chase posits is they put something like bacteria in lots of places. Many of those became sentient with four limbs and one head. At least two worlds visited by picard never got beyond plants.
Its no different than reporting planets. Take something and extrolate to a ridiculous extreme. This one was genetic instead of physical.
The thing is, that's still a fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution works. Even if they did evolve from the same bacteria thrown willy-nilly about, that would have no impact on if they became humanoid. More likely just that conditions on those planets wasn't that different, and that a certain form is easier to cast for.
Since we don't have non-humanoid actors.
I find the whole "need" for the Chase episode to be incredibly stupid. It's like drawing attention to the fact that Horta are a guy in a suit and wondering why they're a cloth-and-crouching-humanoid based lifeform. It's looking at the scenery dressing and limitations of the medium.
The thing is, that's still a fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution works. Even if they did evolve from the same bacteria thrown willy-nilly about, that would have no impact on if they became humanoid. More likely just that conditions on those planets wasn't that different, and that a certain form is easier to cast for.
Since we don't have non-humanoid actors.
I find the whole "need" for the Chase episode to be incredibly stupid. It's like drawing attention to the fact that Horta are a guy in a suit and wondering why they're a cloth-and-crouching-humanoid based lifeform. It's looking at the scenery dressing and limitations of the medium.
That's where the fiction comes in, this is science fiction. The fiction is their genetic engineering is so advanced as to appear !agic to those who don't understand it. They were good enough to ensure a given pattern would recurring often. As pointed out, they aren't perfect and they didn't control the outcome. But they did stack the odds.
Also, no one ever said it was the same bacteria. Or that it was bacteria. Panspermia posits bacteria based on some!that were tested and able to survive and reproduce post orbital entry conditions. So I said somethingn like bacteria. But I never said all were the same. Nor did I mean to imply it.
And it is for more than just the human actors. It was to allow cross fertility which is a recurring theme (miral and belana, Spock, sela, etc).
That's where the fiction comes in, this is science fiction. The fiction is their genetic engineering is so advanced as to appear !agic to those who don't understand it. They were good enough to ensure a given pattern would recurring often. As pointed out, they aren't perfect and they didn't control the outcome. But they did stack the odds.
Also, no one ever said it was the same bacteria.
And it is for more than just the human actors. It was to allow cross fertility which is a recurring theme (moral and belana, Spock, sela, etc).
The thing is the cross fertility still makes no sense. You've got more evolutionarily and genetically in common with chickens. I find the idea that there's a lot of genetic work by some doctors at a clinic on Denubia or Earth or whatever to make a Vulcan-Human hybrid possible more plausible.
Vulcan blood is based on copper. No amount of ancient wibbly wobbly would prevent blood poisoning from that, not without some assistance, and I imagine Human iron-based blood is just as toxic to them.
Drawing attention to it by trying to explain away with "Oh ancient aliens seeded the planets!" just makes it worse. I can more easily accept that evolution isn't very creative sometimes and a certain bodyform has a high tendency towards reaching sentience than Ancient Bald White Guys.
Or we can not draw attention to that and just roll with it.
I was a bit more miffed by the constant use of deus ex machina after deus ex machina to rob the player of any agency or achievement. You go romp on Heralds in space, then a deus ex machina happens in a cutscene and you lose the starbase. You romp on them on the ground and then another deus ex machina happens and you lose. You romp on them in the Archive and then another deus ex machina happens and you lose. You romp on them in space again and then another deus ex machina happens and you lose.
The mission was mechanically cool. Storyline-wise, it's up there with Divide Et Impera as a stunning display of railroaded Failure Is The Only Option.
Agreed fully my JHDC and even my Galor made short work of the herlad ships slapped them silly to be completley frank but as you said deus ex machina dn voila i failed.....DA FUQ??!!!
And ground combat was no different mopped the floor with the heralds made them feel the pain all other races feel if they arent smart enough to avoid me...deus ex machina and...i lose?
seriously this is not good writting as far as a game is concerned maybe a short movie maybe a trailer but not a game.
If i just mopped the floor with them how come they all of a sudden win the fight just because a deus ex machina?
Idk i may start calling this Iconian War : Divide at Impera edition.
There we go, now then thread is safe and we can get on with the important stuff.
Anyway your post gives me a reason to use one of my favorite Tolkien quotes from his essay "tree and leaf".
For me its the jump in age for the iconians, for you its what genetic engineering can and cannot do. For others its this or that. For Tolkien it was a really bad performance of "puss in boots". And he said that willing suspension of disbelief isn't enough. That some times you encounter "that for which disbelief has not so much to be surrendered; but rather hanged, drawn and quartered".
Instead, he says fiction only works when we perform a "secondary creation" and fill in the gaps ourselves. For him, that is why literature worked better than theater, he couldn't overcome the bad sets and acting, etc. But if it was all in his mind he could.
For different reasons, both of us have the choice to draw and quarter disbelief, or to find a way to create some headcanon that lets the story work, thereby filling in the gaps that bug each of us.
Just like earlier in the thread I expressed a desire for Charles gray to add anything to acknowledge how the iconians suddenly became 25,000 times older and vastly more stagnant than the voth. For you its either headcanoning in physical technology that hasn't been discovered yet, possibly quantum level or embedded in the worlds like they did their holograms that provided eugenic pressure rather than genetic programming. Whatever will work.
Or we can both just sigh in resignation over our respective issues and ignore them and play other parts of the game.
I think I'm going to pm Charles. I'm not sure what might be a solution for you. Sorry. I think at this point it's past the game's domain. Given the episode in question is so old.
The guardians exact words to kirk were that it had waited for a question "since before your sun burned hot in space". Per the trek timeline that's 5bn years (voyager episode death wish). Per best modern science its 4.567bn years.
So yes, per trek canon the guardian is at least 500 million years older than the preservers. Per modern science they would be 60 million years apart with the guardian still being older. After all, he didn't say how much before Sol formed. Might be one day, might be another billion years older.
Perhaps you are thinking of the ruined city built around the guardian. According to Spock's estimate the city was about 1 million years old.
Memory apha's timeline is not perfect. Check the episodes in question.
No, the preservers started seeding life 4.5 billion years ago.
They would have had to evolve and grow to the point their technology could do that to be able to do that in the first place, meaning they were alive before then.
Also, modern science doesn't mean **** in Star Trek. In Star Trek, the universe is 16 billion years old, as that was how old we thought it was when said comment was made. However, we know today it's more like 13 billion years old, but in Star Trek, it's still 16.
Same thing with the age of the sun.
Correct which is why I gave the age of the sun per trek canon, which is 5bn, per voyager. 500 million years is almost ten times longer than the voth have existed. It is over a hundred times longer than the time since the organians evolved past physical bodies.
There is no reason to assume the preservers are a hundred times more stagnant than the voth. They don't need such a vast amount of time to have developed. No other race has needed so long. While it is possible, it is not plausible.
Even if we use the shorter 67 million years of best current estimate, that's 2million more years than the voth have had since leaving earth.
Comments
Evolution doesn't work that way.
I can accept that maybe the Preservers created the Iconians and several other species a few hundred thousand years ago, and since Preservers look kind of humanoid the reawakened ones were mostly confused or running off programming hopelessly out of date.
They're also completely wrong.
But seriously, the Preserver thing is the most anti-science drivel in Trek history. Might as well start breaking out the stuff about space aliens building the pyramids and Aztec cities.
1. who knows what that cardassian was doing there, he could be an official who is the ears for the cardassian government, who just reports on the findings for all we know. need more info on that before any wild speculation is given.
2. it was not outside their realm of possibilities, and it was not unexpected. they mentioned they created life in the galaxy so its logicial to surmise that they also created the iconians as well. and you were surprised by this??
3. who knows what is going on with the tholians, i mentioned this in the past and i will keep mentioning it until the idea is out there; are these tholians you see officially apart of the assembly or a rogue operation? there is no details presented, even with the content on the tholians, it is hard to ascertain what is up there.
4. the solanae obelisk carrier and the iconian herald ships? the solonae are known to be the backbone of the iconian operations, they are the ones who do some of the most important stuff, probably ship building as well as it was stated they also built dyson spheres.
5. if you see miral, dont blame her that you got whiplash! :P.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Apparently it does in Star Trek, considering Tom Paris evolved into a newt.
But in all seriousness, the idea of evolution being a guided process that must end in "a form like ours" is hilariously anti-science.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
Oh absolutely. I can come up with a bunch. I just want Charles gray to be sure to put one in game. Doesn't matter which one.
Heck, we do know that at least one preserver was active 80,000 years ago. Which is how the "ancient humanoids" and "preservers" became linked as one in canon.
They didn't seed every species. They just forced a lot of them to take humanoid form, even the ones where it doesn't really make sense (Caitians, Saurians, etc). Pretty sure the Tholians weren't seeded at all.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
Yes, because I never once assumed that the Preservers created every other lifeform in the Galaxy.
Even fools are thought wise when they keep silent; with their mouths shut, they seem intelligent.
I need to rewatch the chase tonight. I made the same assumption as the person you are replying to, but have been cautioned that the show specifically says "like us" and the memory alpha editors jumped to them conclusion that meant "humanoid".
Just putting that out in a reinforcement of your position.
That's what I'm getting at though, if they meant all life when they said "like us" then what was the comparison? If there was a comparison, then they obviously didn't seed all life.
But the guardian of forever is older than they are. So, presumably, at least one other race was there before them. Absolutely, they might have died out or whatnot. But the preservers don't appear to have been first.
It is also a leap to say no planet can make the claim. Even in the chase, it was specific worlds. One in particular questions the preservers relationship to the various inorganic sentient races.
Tell me about it. Heck, there are mentions of a LOT of non-humanoid species in being the Trekverse offscreen, just they don't appear because it's a show on a budget and animatronics and puppetry and CGI during the 1990s was expensive. That's all there is to it.
What bothers me is that the whole thing with the Preservers starts uncomfortably resembling some of the crazier theories that were popular in certain quarters during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, most of which really didn't like the idea that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and that ultimately all of our ancestors had dark brown skin about 200,000 - 20,000 years ago.
And Trek has a bad habit of casting darker skinned species - like the Klingons - as villains or at least really violent.
Yeah.
Artificial selection is a form of guided evolution, that's not anti-science, for all we know they just invented some form of genetic artificial selection.
I just think of the Preservers as an elaborate prank that somehow managed to stick around to fool generations upon generations, including the Iconians. They're like the cargo cult of the future.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
Again "all life" is not necessarily the accurate claim. Nor even "all humanoid life". That is opened as a possibility by the episode, but picard and the other scientists can only prove it in some specific cases.
No, that is a misunderstanding of the claim in show. The show makes no statement about evolution itself. The show posits a race with genetic engineering advanced enough to allow evolution to work, but to embed and protect for billions of years, a few key repeating patterns.
No more, no less. The preservers didn't say "this world will have reptiles and this one primates". All the chase posits is they put something like bacteria in lots of places. Many of those became sentient with four limbs and one head. At least two worlds visited by picard never got beyond plants.
Its no different than teleporting planets. Take something and extrolate to a ridiculous extreme. This one was genetic instead of physical.
they couldnt create everything, their advancements only go so far as does their understanding and technology. they may have had the ability to create humanoid life but that doesnt exclude they also could of created crystal based life, or other types of based life. i mean to them it would of just been a means of programming a set of instructions to create this or that over a few billion years of evolution.
the iconians are roughly humanoid in appearance if you take away all of the metal armour pieces and decorative objects, the heralds are a similar being; genetic cousins if you like. Both of them are bipedal, have hands, feet and digits, a head a torso and such. but the iconians themselves may have radically altered themselves over a long amount of time both before and after iconia was sacked.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
The thing is, that's still a fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution works. Even if they did evolve from the same bacteria thrown willy-nilly about, that would have no impact on if they became humanoid. More likely just that conditions on those planets wasn't that different, and that a certain form is easier to cast for.
Since we don't have non-humanoid actors.
I find the whole "need" for the Chase episode to be incredibly stupid. It's like drawing attention to the fact that Horta are a guy in a suit and wondering why they're a cloth-and-crouching-humanoid based lifeform. It's looking at the scenery dressing and limitations of the medium.
That's where the fiction comes in, this is science fiction. The fiction is their genetic engineering is so advanced as to appear !agic to those who don't understand it. They were good enough to ensure a given pattern would recurring often. As pointed out, they aren't perfect and they didn't control the outcome. But they did stack the odds.
Also, no one ever said it was the same bacteria. Or that it was bacteria. Panspermia posits bacteria based on some!that were tested and able to survive and reproduce post orbital entry conditions. So I said somethingn like bacteria. But I never said all were the same. Nor did I mean to imply it.
And it is for more than just the human actors. It was to allow cross fertility which is a recurring theme (miral and belana, Spock, sela, etc).
Edit: gah, stupid autocorrect..>.< miral=\= moral... Panspermia =\= Pam's permit
The thing is the cross fertility still makes no sense. You've got more evolutionarily and genetically in common with chickens. I find the idea that there's a lot of genetic work by some doctors at a clinic on Denubia or Earth or whatever to make a Vulcan-Human hybrid possible more plausible.
Vulcan blood is based on copper. No amount of ancient wibbly wobbly would prevent blood poisoning from that, not without some assistance, and I imagine Human iron-based blood is just as toxic to them.
Drawing attention to it by trying to explain away with "Oh ancient aliens seeded the planets!" just makes it worse. I can more easily accept that evolution isn't very creative sometimes and a certain bodyform has a high tendency towards reaching sentience than Ancient Bald White Guys.
Or we can not draw attention to that and just roll with it.
Uh, uh, your preserver wears army boots!
Agreed fully my JHDC and even my Galor made short work of the herlad ships slapped them silly to be completley frank but as you said deus ex machina dn voila i failed.....DA FUQ??!!!
And ground combat was no different mopped the floor with the heralds made them feel the pain all other races feel if they arent smart enough to avoid me...deus ex machina and...i lose?
seriously this is not good writting as far as a game is concerned maybe a short movie maybe a trailer but not a game.
If i just mopped the floor with them how come they all of a sudden win the fight just because a deus ex machina?
Idk i may start calling this Iconian War : Divide at Impera edition.
There we go, now then thread is safe and we can get on with the important stuff.
Anyway your post gives me a reason to use one of my favorite Tolkien quotes from his essay "tree and leaf".
For me its the jump in age for the iconians, for you its what genetic engineering can and cannot do. For others its this or that. For Tolkien it was a really bad performance of "puss in boots". And he said that willing suspension of disbelief isn't enough. That some times you encounter "that for which disbelief has not so much to be surrendered; but rather hanged, drawn and quartered".
Instead, he says fiction only works when we perform a "secondary creation" and fill in the gaps ourselves. For him, that is why literature worked better than theater, he couldn't overcome the bad sets and acting, etc. But if it was all in his mind he could.
For different reasons, both of us have the choice to draw and quarter disbelief, or to find a way to create some headcanon that lets the story work, thereby filling in the gaps that bug each of us.
Just like earlier in the thread I expressed a desire for Charles gray to add anything to acknowledge how the iconians suddenly became 25,000 times older and vastly more stagnant than the voth. For you its either headcanoning in physical technology that hasn't been discovered yet, possibly quantum level or embedded in the worlds like they did their holograms that provided eugenic pressure rather than genetic programming. Whatever will work.
Or we can both just sigh in resignation over our respective issues and ignore them and play other parts of the game.
I think I'm going to pm Charles. I'm not sure what might be a solution for you. Sorry. I think at this point it's past the game's domain. Given the episode in question is so old.
gimme a horta BOFF............
i want a horta option in alien gen...........
The guardians exact words to kirk were that it had waited for a question "since before your sun burned hot in space". Per the trek timeline that's 5bn years (voyager episode death wish). Per best modern science its 4.567bn years.
So yes, per trek canon the guardian is at least 500 million years older than the preservers. Per modern science they would be 60 million years apart with the guardian still being older. After all, he didn't say how much before Sol formed. Might be one day, might be another billion years older.
Perhaps you are thinking of the ruined city built around the guardian. According to Spock's estimate the city was about 1 million years old.
Memory apha's timeline is not perfect. Check the episodes in question.
Correct which is why I gave the age of the sun per trek canon, which is 5bn, per voyager. 500 million years is almost ten times longer than the voth have existed. It is over a hundred times longer than the time since the organians evolved past physical bodies.
There is no reason to assume the preservers are a hundred times more stagnant than the voth. They don't need such a vast amount of time to have developed. No other race has needed so long. While it is possible, it is not plausible.
Even if we use the shorter 67 million years of best current estimate, that's 2million more years than the voth have had since leaving earth.