M'Tara said she didn't have a choice in destroying the Preservers. She didn't say she "Will not" she said she "Can not". Why is that? We still don't know.
As for the Preservers being innocent in all this -- these are the same Preservers that told Thot Trel that the Preserver archive had no weapon technology. That it was a place of learning.
Then later it turns out they had pretty powerful disruptor and transphasic torpedo technology. So they lied to their children.
M'Tara said she "could not." We don't have any evidence to confirm that anyone is forcing her to do so, and her campaign against us is proof enough of her intentions to me.
The weapons we gain in-game are referenced exactly nowhere in-story. To me, this is a case of gameplay-story segregation.
she also mentioned duty and right.. is this a duty they were created for? maybe the very purpose of their existence? whatever led to the original attack on iconia, be it jealousy, fear or hubris, the iconians were unprepared and totally unaware, only the direct intervention, from the one, saved them.
now who could possibly have known the iconians weaknesses, the means to defeat them, a way to break their unity? who could provide the means to creep up on the iconians, remaining hidden before causing such devastation? and how would the younger species (possibly their wards) even know were to start.?
the preservers know their weaknesses, they did create them after all, and were we not just about to receive some valuable information just as M'Tara arrived? awesome timing!
we have the krenim, with very likely the only technology that can effect things in a way that the iconians can't see, can't prepare for and likely can't counter. it kind of makes me wonder why the iconians haven't been hell bent on wiping them ou.. oh.
as a side note.. the krenim worry me greatly, a species that isn't just prepared to use that kind of technology, they are looking forward to it, and are willing risk everything to meet their own ends.... that's hubris right their. that krenim scientist is completely arrogant, has nothing but contempt for seven, and pretty much looks down his nose on everyone else there.. we are a means to an end for them.
200,000yrs ago they were different, brighter, isn't that what the preserver said? they have had such a long time to mourn, and lost pretty much everything, so any bitterness is pretty understandable, and we only really have rumours and stories as to why the original attack happened, what has happened since has been as a direct result of that. so why wait all this time? what have they been waiting for exactly? why have they used manipulation rather than main force? and why was M'Tara still talking calmly about duty and right as she killed the preserver? why not bitterness, hatred even anger?
have they just been studying us? has all the pretence of setting us against each other been simply about working out when we would be able to achieve the kind of thing they suffered 200,000yrs ago? they warned us off, but was it a warning or a starters flag? why go to all this trouble, rather than just wiping us out? i mean, you don't play with flies, you just swat them. There have been no demands for our subjugation, or surrender. T'Ket the warlord had been kept in check by her sisters.. until now.. so i'm thinking if vengeance was the end goal, we would be done and finished by now. all we really 'achieved' today, was setting T'Ket loose and angering the contemplative, possibly even peaceful iconian.. oh dear.
Don't care for this Us or Them line of thinking. I liked M'Tara, she seemed more reasonable than T'Ket. I was even willing to forgive that little issue with the Preservers.
That "little issue with the Preservers"? You mean genocide. Not just hypothetical should-we-or-shouldn't-we genocide, but an actual fait accompli. And not only genocide of a species of comparatively insect-like status (like us), but of the species that created her own species. The Iconians were the "first children", as the Preserver told us. The Iconians owed their very existence to the Preservers, and M'Tara goes and wipes them out. And we were there to actually WATCH her personally commit that genocide first-hand! Oh, yeah, that showed M'Tara in the best possible light.
Poor widdle M'Tara, we should all feel so sorry for her! NOT!
I don't remember any history of the Preservers showing up to save the Iconians from being wiped out, so it seemed like a family dispute.
The Preservers didn't have to show up to save the Iconians from being wiped out, because the Iconians weren't wiped out. Unfortunately. Hence the current situation.
I will agree that the Idiot Ball was passed around pretty freely during this episode to all parties in this episode, though. Both sides volleyed it repeatedly.
M'Tara said she didn't have a choice in destroying the Preservers. She didn't say she "Will not" she said she "Can not". Why is that? We still don't know.
As for the Preservers being innocent in all this -- these are the same Preservers that told Thot Trel that the Preserver archive had no weapon technology. That it was a place of learning.
Then later it turns out they had pretty powerful disruptor and transphasic torpedo technology. So they lied to their children.
No, the Preserver said their were no weapons STORED in the Archive. He never said he didn't know how to make weapons.
Don't care for this Us or Them line of thinking. I liked M'Tara, she seemed more reasonable than T'Ket. I was even willing to forgive that little issue with the Preservers.
That "little issue with the Preservers"? You mean genocide. Not just hypothetical should-we-or-shouldn't-we genocide, but an actual fait accompli. And not only genocide of a species of comparatively insect-like status (like us), but of the species that created her own species. The Iconians were the "first children", as the Preserver told us. The Iconians owed their very existence to the Preservers, and M'Tara goes and wipes them out. And we were there to actually WATCH her personally commit that genocide first-hand! Oh, yeah, that showed M'Tara in the best possible light.
Poor widdle M'Tara, we should all feel so sorry for her! NOT!
I don't remember any history of the Preservers showing up to save the Iconians from being wiped out, so it seemed like a family dispute.
The Preservers didn't have to show up to save the Iconians from being wiped out, because the Iconians weren't wiped out. Unfortunately. Hence the current situation.
I will agree that the Idiot Ball was passed around pretty freely during this episode to all parties in this episode, though. Both sides volleyed it repeatedly.
M'Tara said she didn't have a choice in destroying the Preservers. She didn't say she "Will not" she said she "Can not". Why is that? We still don't know.
As for the Preservers being innocent in all this -- these are the same Preservers that told Thot Trel that the Preserver archive had no weapon technology. That it was a place of learning.
Then later it turns out they had pretty powerful disruptor and transphasic torpedo technology. So they lied to their children.
No, the Preserver said their were no weapons STORED in the Archive. He never said he didn't know how to make weapons.
I get the disturbing feeling that the "alliance of races" that attacked Iconia 200,000 years ago will end up being the current-day alliance...
Yep I made the same guess after the last Feature Episode... that post is somewhere on these forums lol.
The Krenim and what we were told in Contagion in TNG just makes me think we go back in time and set this mess up in the first place.
Can we use the Krenim timeship to go back to the start of 2015 and change the Dev's writing staff... then we don't have the whole indigestion of swallowing this horrid storyline degradation rofl.
We should cut them some slack I guess. Like I said it pains me to say how bad this writing is progressing. I just hope the staff take this as constructive criticism and improve in the upcoming episodes (well we can hope).
Can we use the Krenim timeship to go back to the start of 2015 and change the Dev's writing staff... then we don't have the whole indigestion of swallowing this horrid storyline degradation rofl.
We should cut them some slack I guess. Like I said it pains me to say how bad this writing is progressing. I just hope the staff take this as constructive criticism and improve in the upcoming episodes (well we can hope).
For what it's worth... Star Trek has never been a shining bastion of consistency and reason in terms of storytelling. From series to series, you'll see some internal consistency, but littered throughout you'll see blatant contradictions and plots that revolve entirely around convenience and coincidence because they have nowhere else to go with the story and need a quick wrap-up before the credits roll.
Even when it's the same writer(s), where you would imagine it's already in their heads of how things should be interpreted, you'll see them contradicting themselves.
That being said, while this Iconian War storyline isn't Citizen Kane or The Godfather, I say with absolute sincerity that it's closer to the bad writing on Voyager and Enterprise to the point that Christine Thompson and Jesse Heinig really know how to portray Star Trek into a video game medium.
People like to say that STO isn't "Star Trek" enough, but I'm facepalming every bit of the way through the Iconian War as I was during Voyager and the few episodes of Enterprise I was willing to stomach.
I get the disturbing feeling that the "alliance of races" that attacked Iconia 200,000 years ago will end up being the current-day alliance...
Yep I made the same guess after the last Feature Episode... that post is somewhere on these forums lol.
The Krenim and what we were told in Contagion in TNG just makes me think we go back in time and set this mess up in the first place.
Can we use the Krenim timeship to go back to the start of 2015 and change the Dev's writing staff... then we don't have the whole indigestion of swallowing this horrid storyline degradation rofl.
We should cut them some slack I guess. Like I said it pains me to say how bad this writing is progressing. I just hope the staff take this as constructive criticism and improve in the upcoming episodes (well we can hope).
Well if the Andromeda galaxy is outside the Galactic Barrier meant to keep 0 out, then it is highly likely that he is behind this...and why the Iconians Must kill the preservers, and cause all sorts of havoc. I guess the only real hole in that line of thinking comes from the idea that 0 would want vengeance on the Q....who are suspiciously absent. 0 might have even goaded the other races into attacking the Iconians, before showing up to "Save them" and give them the tools to get back at their aggressors...for a small price. The question I guess really pivots on how much of the Q stuff is considered canon to this setting.
I strongly doubt 0 exists in STO's universe.
Much of the Q fiction is... entertaining but highly unlikely to be adhered to adopted. I think STO really did a decent job cherrypicking what kinds of things from the novels are likely to be adopted into the canon, which is... McKenzie Calhoun (who I doubt would have a relationship with Shelby in canon), Leonard James Akar, and bits of Klingon and Romulan lore to fill in gaps in what the shows told us, although, really, I think STO probably embraces a hint too much of those tidbits.
The novels will get NODS in movies. They'll be a source of ideas for things like Uhura's first name or Sulu's. Being a source of ideas doesn't make them canon, either. I think it's best to regard them as rejected pitches for episodes that are on file. The novels have a similar chance to being adapted as things like characters from Phase II or Planet of the Titans.
Mackenzie Calhoun should never have been acknowledged, IMO...his whole character is a Gary Stu and the New Frontier series is a comic book farce. Peter David really needed much tighter control from an editor than he received from that point forward.
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I don't see where this anti-Preserver sentiment is coming from.
Agreed 100%.
The Preservers created (or, at least, seeded) the humanoid races - like ours throughout the galaxy. As TNG's "The Chase" showed, the Humans, Vulcans, Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians, et al, are all related through this, and owe their existence (or at least, preponderance) to them. They have been nothing but benevolent to us. As such, it could be argued that we owe the Preservers our allegiance and gratitude for creating - or spreading - us.
The Iconians, on the other hand, have done nothing but kill us, threaten us, and turn us against each other. There is no valid argument for us owing the Iconians anything. Except their own annihilation. We owe them that.
There might have been a time when L'Miren could have been persuaded to change them. But not now. The die is cast, unless Krenim tech can reverse that.
Mackenzie Calhoun should never have been acknowledged, IMO...his whole character is a Gary Stu and the New Frontier series is a comic book farce. Peter David really needed much tighter control from an editor than he received from that point forward.
I agree the stories themselves are fanfic-y, with respect to Peter David who I think often writes what I would call artistically transcendent fanfic.
That is to say, if you checked off a list of what qualifies as fanfic, his work would check off every box. At the same time, much of his work would also check off boxes for fine art.
I think JMS and some other genre fans gone pro qualify similarly. Joe Straczynski = Jeffrey Sinclair = John Sheridan. J.S. J.S. J.S. Babylon 5 has such a heavy fanfic arc that it manages to make its two captains into two competing categories of Gary Stu and pass the Gary Stu hat off to whichever character is in the spotlight.
Heck, David Lynch's work has a heavy fanfic subtext element to it. Especially when Kyle Maclachlan is there. He always seems to be playing a fantasy version of David Lynch. Thing is, there's a lot of abstract and intriguing chaotic artwork also going on and I think Lynch's vision even of a world where an author surrogate is at the center is a world beyond his own understanding or ability to control.
I really like Ray Bradbury's stories with author surrogates (which were sometimes Ray Bradbury, sometimes Douglas Spaulding, and frequently were sci-fi authors or novelists) because he always seemed to paint himself as a likable idiot who learned or unearthed something he didn't know at the beginning. Also because the writing often proved to be one of the less important elements of their character aside from being a shorthand for the character being curious. One little story I love has an author who is shocked to discover from thrift store year books that people's faces are more common than you'd think and so he goes around looking for his doppelganger. His being an author in that story is largely there to justify why he has the time to engage in an idea like that and the curiosity to follow through by actually traveling in search of another person with his exact face.
I could see a Mackenzie Calhoun popping up in a game or a movie. But I imagine it as an adapted character. Seeing him doesn't necessarily involve all or most of his bio having happened, any more than seeing Sherlock Holmes implies that every Holmes story from every author happened. In fact, there have been some decent Holmes stories that are based on the premise that NONE of Doyle's stories count and I could make a case for something like a Mackenzie Calhoun/New Frontier TV show which treats all of the novels and comics as a rough draft.
Actually, if they wanted to skip ahead in the J.J.-verse, a fun way to do that MIGHT be to do J.J.-verse New Frontier. Because it gets us into the thick of a rebooted TNG era without having to do all the grunt work of rebooting the core TNG cast. And Peter David's best ideas can be used and his excesses can be toned down or replaced with different excesses.
People like to say that STO isn't "Star Trek" enough, but I'm facepalming every bit of the way through the Iconian War as I was during Voyager and the few episodes of Enterprise I was willing to stomach.
I get genuine joy from it being the same KIND of facepalm. I also have deliberate inaccuracies in my Foundry missions. My first one was deliberately drafted as a Brannon Braga episode. And I set out to make the same kind of mistakes he'd make. The last one I did, which is awhile back now, has a complete misrepresentation of legal process because I wanted to make it deliberately feel more like a sci-fi episode of Perry Mason or Matlock than a real trial. Like, I did research into real law and then what TV shows get wrong and set out to get the same kinds of things wrong.
Mackenzie Calhoun should never have been acknowledged, IMO...his whole character is a Gary Stu and the New Frontier series is a comic book farce. Peter David really needed much tighter control from an editor than he received from that point forward.
Enh, all I know is that Calhoun is literally a demi-god.
Mackenzie Calhoun should never have been acknowledged, IMO...his whole character is a Gary Stu and the New Frontier series is a comic book farce. Peter David really needed much tighter control from an editor than he received from that point forward.
In fairness, I don't think that this is unique to Mackenzie Calhoun. Ezri Dax and her damned uber-Vesta are being written as a Mary-Sue character and ship too.
Oh, rest assured, promoting her to captain without the appropriate experience and training (or any suggestion from the show she would ever even consider such a career path) is among the many reasons I almost completely stopped reading the licensed novels.
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My faves were the Corps of Engineers books. NO canon characters (except TNG Scotty, and he wasn't seen often) whatsoever, they used canon races for characters, but made up new characters. The core premise is to show the somewhat less-glorious side of Starfleet.
We're reaching this kind of territory now. Do the ends justify the means or do we let our wimpy, human morals and ethics cloud our resolve and judgement?
Personally, when it comes to war, you either strive to win at all costs or you lose. In this case, the Iconians are an extreme threat to us all and honestly, I wouldn't feel bad about bringing about their extinction, if it means restoring peace to our little corner of the universe.
Otherwise, "Evil always triumphs, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet, Spaceballs.
I thought it was interesting when one of the characters advocated going back and eliminating the borg while Seven was standing right there. We would never have known yee. She'da been a cocktail waitress on Rigel.
I think it's pretty clear we will try the weapon and mess things up just like Annorax did so we will have to find a way out of that.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Enormous difference between lying to/tricking the Romulans - which was Sisko's intent, not murdering Vreenak - and genocide of an entire species, isn't it?
Potato, po-tah-to. One could argue semantics til they're blue in the face.
Point is. There's a threat that exists with little to no chance of peaceful cohabitation. We have only one choice, even if it means going against our ideals.
Enormous difference between lying to/tricking the Romulans - which was Sisko's intent, not murdering Vreenak - and genocide of an entire species, isn't it?
Potato, po-tah-to. One could argue semantics til they're blue in the face.
Point is. There's a threat that exists with little to no chance of peaceful cohabitation. We have only one choice, even if it means going against our ideals.
Assuming that's all you can do with the time ship--and I'm not convinced it is the only thing. If we can use it to scramble some Iconian brains without killing them or erasing them from the timeline entirely, that might be doable (remember that Annorax could beam people through his temporal shielding), that might be one way to do it.
Also, a less disgusting option than genocide--though still not a great one (and one I would only consider if the option above fails)--would be to remove a certain troublemaking individual from the timeline: J'mpok. Eliminate him, and potentially the Undine infiltration matter is solved peacefully by Martok or an ideological successor of his (Worf?) without forcing the Federation into a war that helps destabilize the quadrant. Also, with the Federation an active part of the solution instead of responding with understandable anger at what would look to them like a BS excuse for a war just like 2372 (remember the Klingons' invasion of Cardassia on FALSE claims of Dominion infiltration--which directly led to giving the Dominion a beachhead in the Alpha Quadrant!), their full diplomatic faculties could be engaged, and we might well HAVE the chance to talk the Undine--and their firepower--onto our side.
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I can think of one really awful consequence of erasing the Iconians from time.
New Romulus is now capital of the Dewan Imperium, since they never had an Iconian gate to research and thus cause their cataclysm... The chaos can even get better when you consider the current day Krenim don't understand as much of the time incursion equations as Annorax did.
Honestly though, I expect the temporal tech used to be for travel to the past rather then an Annorax style incursion. Like Iconians, I believe the current day alliance and the one that attacked Iconia will end up being one and the same.
We're reaching this kind of territory now. Do the ends justify the means or do we let our wimpy, human morals and ethics cloud our resolve and judgement?
Enormous difference between lying to/tricking the Romulans - which was Sisko's intent, not murdering Vreenak - and genocide of an entire species, isn't it?
Enormous difference between lying to/tricking the Romulans - which was Sisko's intent, not murdering Vreenak - and genocide of an entire species, isn't it?
Potato, po-tah-to. One could argue semantics til they're blue in the face.
Point is. There's a threat that exists with little to no chance of peaceful cohabitation. We have only one choice, even if it means going against our ideals.
FYI valoreah is already blue in the face so he beat you to that someone needs to tell him to stop holding his breath about everyone getting the "Safety Dance" emote ...we didnt get it this time either .
Comments
now who could possibly have known the iconians weaknesses, the means to defeat them, a way to break their unity? who could provide the means to creep up on the iconians, remaining hidden before causing such devastation? and how would the younger species (possibly their wards) even know were to start.?
the preservers know their weaknesses, they did create them after all, and were we not just about to receive some valuable information just as M'Tara arrived? awesome timing!
we have the krenim, with very likely the only technology that can effect things in a way that the iconians can't see, can't prepare for and likely can't counter. it kind of makes me wonder why the iconians haven't been hell bent on wiping them ou.. oh.
200,000yrs ago they were different, brighter, isn't that what the preserver said? they have had such a long time to mourn, and lost pretty much everything, so any bitterness is pretty understandable, and we only really have rumours and stories as to why the original attack happened, what has happened since has been as a direct result of that. so why wait all this time? what have they been waiting for exactly? why have they used manipulation rather than main force? and why was M'Tara still talking calmly about duty and right as she killed the preserver? why not bitterness, hatred even anger?
have they just been studying us? has all the pretence of setting us against each other been simply about working out when we would be able to achieve the kind of thing they suffered 200,000yrs ago? they warned us off, but was it a warning or a starters flag? why go to all this trouble, rather than just wiping us out? i mean, you don't play with flies, you just swat them. There have been no demands for our subjugation, or surrender. T'Ket the warlord had been kept in check by her sisters.. until now.. so i'm thinking if vengeance was the end goal, we would be done and finished by now. all we really 'achieved' today, was setting T'Ket loose and angering the contemplative, possibly even peaceful iconian.. oh dear.
My character Tsin'xing
In my opinion, that's just semantics.
Yep I made the same guess after the last Feature Episode... that post is somewhere on these forums lol.
The Krenim and what we were told in Contagion in TNG just makes me think we go back in time and set this mess up in the first place.
Can we use the Krenim timeship to go back to the start of 2015 and change the Dev's writing staff... then we don't have the whole indigestion of swallowing this horrid storyline degradation rofl.
We should cut them some slack I guess. Like I said it pains me to say how bad this writing is progressing. I just hope the staff take this as constructive criticism and improve in the upcoming episodes (well we can hope).
For what it's worth... Star Trek has never been a shining bastion of consistency and reason in terms of storytelling. From series to series, you'll see some internal consistency, but littered throughout you'll see blatant contradictions and plots that revolve entirely around convenience and coincidence because they have nowhere else to go with the story and need a quick wrap-up before the credits roll.
Even when it's the same writer(s), where you would imagine it's already in their heads of how things should be interpreted, you'll see them contradicting themselves.
That being said, while this Iconian War storyline isn't Citizen Kane or The Godfather, I say with absolute sincerity that it's closer to the bad writing on Voyager and Enterprise to the point that Christine Thompson and Jesse Heinig really know how to portray Star Trek into a video game medium.
People like to say that STO isn't "Star Trek" enough, but I'm facepalming every bit of the way through the Iconian War as I was during Voyager and the few episodes of Enterprise I was willing to stomach.
Maybe it's Tacofangs.
Oh, no! Not Tacofangs! *gasp*
My character Tsin'xing
I strongly doubt 0 exists in STO's universe.
Much of the Q fiction is... entertaining but highly unlikely to be adhered to adopted. I think STO really did a decent job cherrypicking what kinds of things from the novels are likely to be adopted into the canon, which is... McKenzie Calhoun (who I doubt would have a relationship with Shelby in canon), Leonard James Akar, and bits of Klingon and Romulan lore to fill in gaps in what the shows told us, although, really, I think STO probably embraces a hint too much of those tidbits.
The novels will get NODS in movies. They'll be a source of ideas for things like Uhura's first name or Sulu's. Being a source of ideas doesn't make them canon, either. I think it's best to regard them as rejected pitches for episodes that are on file. The novels have a similar chance to being adapted as things like characters from Phase II or Planet of the Titans.
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Nope. The dancer was a Typhoon. Shame really, because I really rather liked that design.
Agreed 100%.
The Preservers created (or, at least, seeded) the humanoid races - like ours throughout the galaxy. As TNG's "The Chase" showed, the Humans, Vulcans, Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians, et al, are all related through this, and owe their existence (or at least, preponderance) to them. They have been nothing but benevolent to us. As such, it could be argued that we owe the Preservers our allegiance and gratitude for creating - or spreading - us.
The Iconians, on the other hand, have done nothing but kill us, threaten us, and turn us against each other. There is no valid argument for us owing the Iconians anything. Except their own annihilation. We owe them that.
There might have been a time when L'Miren could have been persuaded to change them. But not now. The die is cast, unless Krenim tech can reverse that.
I agree the stories themselves are fanfic-y, with respect to Peter David who I think often writes what I would call artistically transcendent fanfic.
That is to say, if you checked off a list of what qualifies as fanfic, his work would check off every box. At the same time, much of his work would also check off boxes for fine art.
I think JMS and some other genre fans gone pro qualify similarly. Joe Straczynski = Jeffrey Sinclair = John Sheridan. J.S. J.S. J.S. Babylon 5 has such a heavy fanfic arc that it manages to make its two captains into two competing categories of Gary Stu and pass the Gary Stu hat off to whichever character is in the spotlight.
Heck, David Lynch's work has a heavy fanfic subtext element to it. Especially when Kyle Maclachlan is there. He always seems to be playing a fantasy version of David Lynch. Thing is, there's a lot of abstract and intriguing chaotic artwork also going on and I think Lynch's vision even of a world where an author surrogate is at the center is a world beyond his own understanding or ability to control.
I really like Ray Bradbury's stories with author surrogates (which were sometimes Ray Bradbury, sometimes Douglas Spaulding, and frequently were sci-fi authors or novelists) because he always seemed to paint himself as a likable idiot who learned or unearthed something he didn't know at the beginning. Also because the writing often proved to be one of the less important elements of their character aside from being a shorthand for the character being curious. One little story I love has an author who is shocked to discover from thrift store year books that people's faces are more common than you'd think and so he goes around looking for his doppelganger. His being an author in that story is largely there to justify why he has the time to engage in an idea like that and the curiosity to follow through by actually traveling in search of another person with his exact face.
I could see a Mackenzie Calhoun popping up in a game or a movie. But I imagine it as an adapted character. Seeing him doesn't necessarily involve all or most of his bio having happened, any more than seeing Sherlock Holmes implies that every Holmes story from every author happened. In fact, there have been some decent Holmes stories that are based on the premise that NONE of Doyle's stories count and I could make a case for something like a Mackenzie Calhoun/New Frontier TV show which treats all of the novels and comics as a rough draft.
Actually, if they wanted to skip ahead in the J.J.-verse, a fun way to do that MIGHT be to do J.J.-verse New Frontier. Because it gets us into the thick of a rebooted TNG era without having to do all the grunt work of rebooting the core TNG cast. And Peter David's best ideas can be used and his excesses can be toned down or replaced with different excesses.
I get genuine joy from it being the same KIND of facepalm. I also have deliberate inaccuracies in my Foundry missions. My first one was deliberately drafted as a Brannon Braga episode. And I set out to make the same kind of mistakes he'd make. The last one I did, which is awhile back now, has a complete misrepresentation of legal process because I wanted to make it deliberately feel more like a sci-fi episode of Perry Mason or Matlock than a real trial. Like, I did research into real law and then what TV shows get wrong and set out to get the same kinds of things wrong.
My character Tsin'xing
Oh, rest assured, promoting her to captain without the appropriate experience and training (or any suggestion from the show she would ever even consider such a career path) is among the many reasons I almost completely stopped reading the licensed novels.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
My character Tsin'xing
--Red Annorax
We're reaching this kind of territory now. Do the ends justify the means or do we let our wimpy, human morals and ethics cloud our resolve and judgement?
Personally, when it comes to war, you either strive to win at all costs or you lose. In this case, the Iconians are an extreme threat to us all and honestly, I wouldn't feel bad about bringing about their extinction, if it means restoring peace to our little corner of the universe.
Otherwise, "Evil always triumphs, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet, Spaceballs.
I think it's pretty clear we will try the weapon and mess things up just like Annorax did so we will have to find a way out of that.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Potato, po-tah-to. One could argue semantics til they're blue in the face.
Point is. There's a threat that exists with little to no chance of peaceful cohabitation. We have only one choice, even if it means going against our ideals.
Assuming that's all you can do with the time ship--and I'm not convinced it is the only thing. If we can use it to scramble some Iconian brains without killing them or erasing them from the timeline entirely, that might be doable (remember that Annorax could beam people through his temporal shielding), that might be one way to do it.
Also, a less disgusting option than genocide--though still not a great one (and one I would only consider if the option above fails)--would be to remove a certain troublemaking individual from the timeline: J'mpok. Eliminate him, and potentially the Undine infiltration matter is solved peacefully by Martok or an ideological successor of his (Worf?) without forcing the Federation into a war that helps destabilize the quadrant. Also, with the Federation an active part of the solution instead of responding with understandable anger at what would look to them like a BS excuse for a war just like 2372 (remember the Klingons' invasion of Cardassia on FALSE claims of Dominion infiltration--which directly led to giving the Dominion a beachhead in the Alpha Quadrant!), their full diplomatic faculties could be engaged, and we might well HAVE the chance to talk the Undine--and their firepower--onto our side.
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New Romulus is now capital of the Dewan Imperium, since they never had an Iconian gate to research and thus cause their cataclysm... The chaos can even get better when you consider the current day Krenim don't understand as much of the time incursion equations as Annorax did.
Honestly though, I expect the temporal tech used to be for travel to the past rather then an Annorax style incursion. Like Iconians, I believe the current day alliance and the one that attacked Iconia will end up being one and the same.
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Liberate Donatra
FYI valoreah is already blue in the face so he beat you to that someone needs to tell him to stop holding his breath about everyone getting the "Safety Dance" emote ...we didnt get it this time either .