The death of Riker's child is so utterly unbelievable, it is just contrived. A silicon virus kills carbon life forms with only trace amounts of silicon in their bodies, and didn't affect the parents?
You left out step 1: how does a silicon based virus affect a humanoid at all? This isn't the first time in Star Trek the idea has been used but it was dumb the first time. How can a silicon based organism replicate in an environment devoid of silicon(IE the inside of a person)? Human biochemistry doesn't include silicon at all.
This was definitely a big plot hole, but at least it's not as bad as humans devolving into salamanders like in Threshold 🤣
A lot of the time people accuse Star Trek writers (particularly of new series) of not respecting canon or ignoring canon or not knowing their canon... But sometimes, it are the Star Trek writers that actually reference obscure things that some fans don't know about, or don't care about, suggesting that sometimes, Star Trek writers actually respect canon more than some fans.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
The death of Riker's child is so utterly unbelievable, it is just contrived. A silicon virus kills carbon life forms with only trace amounts of silicon in their bodies, and didn't affect the parents?
You left out step 1: how does a silicon based virus affect a humanoid at all? This isn't the first time in Star Trek the idea has been used but it was dumb the first time. How can a silicon based organism replicate in an environment devoid of silicon(IE the inside of a person)? Human biochemistry doesn't include silicon at all.
This was definitely a big plot hole, but at least it's not as bad as humans devolving into salamanders like in Threshold 🤣
A lot of the time people accuse Star Trek writers (particularly of new series) of not respecting canon or ignoring canon or not knowing their canon... But sometimes, it are the Star Trek writers that actually reference obscure things that some fans don't know about, or don't care about, suggesting that sometimes, Star Trek writers actually respect canon more than some fans.
Again, just because something has happened before does not negate it from still being bad now. This is a terrible defense "Haha you can't possibly criticize this show for this thing because look! I found the same thing in another show! That means this show is imuuuuune to criticism!"
It was kind of stupid back then too (Not to mention you picked a thing that happened in Enterprise, one of Two older shows that are also heavily criticized so you picked something people hated back then, to say that people can't hate it now too.)
There could be some handwaving due to the episode specifically mentioning its not actually a virus (Because even Enterprise recognized that an actual silicon based virus wouldn't affect carbon life) and it was created by god like beings the Organians.
The death of Riker's child is so utterly unbelievable, it is just contrived. A silicon virus kills carbon life forms with only trace amounts of silicon in their bodies, and didn't affect the parents?
You left out step 1: how does a silicon based virus affect a humanoid at all? This isn't the first time in Star Trek the idea has been used but it was dumb the first time. How can a silicon based organism replicate in an environment devoid of silicon(IE the inside of a person)? Human biochemistry doesn't include silicon at all.
This was definitely a big plot hole, but at least it's not as bad as humans devolving into salamanders like in Threshold 🤣
A lot of the time people accuse Star Trek writers (particularly of new series) of not respecting canon or ignoring canon or not knowing their canon... But sometimes, it are the Star Trek writers that actually reference obscure things that some fans don't know about, or don't care about, suggesting that sometimes, Star Trek writers actually respect canon more than some fans.
That virus is no less dumb than the Picard virus, for all the same reasons.
I'm not sure why they need to call it a Silicon virus in either case. What is the point of that versus a carbon based virus that would make sense to infect people?
The death of Riker's child is so utterly unbelievable, it is just contrived. A silicon virus kills carbon life forms with only trace amounts of silicon in their bodies, and didn't affect the parents?
You left out step 1: how does a silicon based virus affect a humanoid at all? This isn't the first time in Star Trek the idea has been used but it was dumb the first time. How can a silicon based organism replicate in an environment devoid of silicon(IE the inside of a person)? Human biochemistry doesn't include silicon at all.
This was definitely a big plot hole, but at least it's not as bad as humans devolving into salamanders like in Threshold 🤣
A lot of the time people accuse Star Trek writers (particularly of new series) of not respecting canon or ignoring canon or not knowing their canon... But sometimes, it are the Star Trek writers that actually reference obscure things that some fans don't know about, or don't care about, suggesting that sometimes, Star Trek writers actually respect canon more than some fans.
That virus is no less dumb than the Picard virus, for all the same reasons.
I'm not sure why they need to call it a Silicon virus in either case. What is the point of that versus a carbon based virus that would make sense to infect people?
I think the idea behind it is, that Silicon sounds very sciencey and they want to avoid having to come up with a reason for why their medicine can't affect the virus
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Yes. Silicon in the human body is an absolute tiny fraction of a percent. Unless the Riker kid was eating sand, there is no way his body could exist as a food source for a silicon based lifeform to reproduce, even a microscopic one. A silicon virus could easily enter our bodies at any time and do nothing at all, because it can't do anything besides starve to death. Even carbon based diseases may have no effect on different species.
Most carbon based diseases don't have an effect on different species due to how a species' biology reacts to the virus. Then there is the issue that a harmless bacteria in one species is deadly to another species. It is less likely for alien diseases to affect humans or humans to get alien diseases due to how different our biology is.
I don't even know why this conversation is still going on a STAR TREK forum, considering alien diseases able to infect the crew of each show of the then-decade, regardless of their species (that too is extremely unlikely at best and downright impossible at worst), is a thing.
And that's not including the fact hybrids between 2 different species (oh look, another downright impossible thing IRL) exist without any treatment required in most cases (and when issues happen, it usually wasn't about the compatibility per se (ask Janeway when Q, an energy being, tried and she was "what? No!"), but because the difference in morphology may hurt (ask Naomi's mom).
Also, apparently, Thaddeus's disease is called mendaxic neurosclerosis.
Mendaxic could be a variation of various latin words, either from "mendax" meaning "liar, deceiver" or "mens" which can mean "soul, mind, idea, memory". So that may refer to the fact it affects the brain or, why not, that it's making the victim's mind lie to them or, considering it's not treatable without a specific silicon-based treatment, that it can't die because its carbon-based environment keeps it alive somehow.
Or more likely, it sounded cool and goes well with "neurosclerosis" and the "TRIBBLE you, I'm a writer, I pick random cool-sounding latin words, hell yeah!" motto.
Since sclerosis is a pathology causing the stiffening of a tissue or any anatomical feature, that implies the disease was a sclerosis of his neural network which... is extremely horrifying to think about first of all (especially since, according to the show, the kid had it for at least 5 years, so it was likely agonizing in the last ones), but may also give some idea of how the disease works.
My guess is the virus is actually not a virus per se but something close enough to the human definition and that while it doesn't technically harm any part of a carbon-based lifeform keeps multiplying like a tumor in the nerves and the brain clogging and disrupting them until it's too much.
I don't even know why this conversation is still going on a STAR TREK forum, considering alien diseases able to infect the crew of each show of the then-decade, regardless of their species (that too is extremely unlikely at best and downright impossible at worst), is a thing.
And that's not including the fact hybrids between 2 different species (oh look, another downright impossible thing IRL) exist without any treatment required in most cases (and when issues happen, it usually wasn't about the compatibility per se (ask Janeway when Q, an energy being, tried and she was "what? No!"), but because the difference in morphology may hurt (ask Naomi's mom).
Its not downright impossible for there to be hybrids between two different species it only matters if their dna is compatible. (I.e, I am pretty sure Dogs and Cats can't interbreed because the species are two different, but there are many Cat breeds formed from interbreeding, like Ligers and there's a domestic cat made from Lynxs)
You're comparing apples to oranges. Though it would be more difficult for alien pathogens to infect humans theoretically carbon based ones would be compatible (THink of it as the equivalent of diseases that only affect birds and some only affects pigs. Its extremely hard for diseases to bridge the species gap, but not impossible), you're just kind of pulling stuff out of nowhere now to try and defend this stupid idea.
and star trek already fornicated the canine on the whole incompatible biology thing over 40 years ago with the ancient humanoid episode establishing that every humanoid species in the galaxy shares a core DNA structure
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
it is 100% incapable of doing anything in any way shape or form to a carbon lifeform.
It couldn't directly interact with carbon based cells, but what I was trying to say was that by just being there maybe it gets in the way of something. Or if the immune system detects the presence of the virus but is unable to remove it due to it's silicon nature maybe it starts attacking the surrounding tissue. My point is there are ways it can be elaborated on to make it at least sound plausible enough to work in a sci-fi story.
I don't even know why this conversation is still going on a STAR TREK forum, considering alien diseases able to infect the crew of each show of the then-decade, regardless of their species (that too is extremely unlikely at best and downright impossible at worst), is a thing.
And that's not including the fact hybrids between 2 different species (oh look, another downright impossible thing IRL) exist without any treatment required in most cases (and when issues happen, it usually wasn't about the compatibility per se (ask Janeway when Q, an energy being, tried and she was "what? No!"), but because the difference in morphology may hurt (ask Naomi's mom).
Its not downright impossible for there to be hybrids between two different species it only matters if their dna is compatible. (I.e, I am pretty sure Dogs and Cats can't interbreed because the species are two different, but there are many Cat breeds formed from interbreeding, like Ligers and there's a domestic cat made from Lynxs)
You're comparing apples to oranges. Though it would be more difficult for alien pathogens to infect humans theoretically carbon based ones would be compatible (THink of it as the equivalent of diseases that only affect birds and some only affects pigs. Its extremely hard for diseases to bridge the species gap, but not impossible), you're just kind of pulling stuff out of nowhere now to try and defend this stupid idea.
"A human would have a better chance of interbreeding with a Petunia then a extra terrestrial" - Carl Sagan
Look star trek is FILLED with "BS science" absolutely filled with it. suddenly deciding that BS science is bad, eaither you're looking for excuses to hate on Picard, or when you watched TNG etc you where a kid and thus a lot of the bad science slipped past you.
I repeat Star Trek is not scientificly accurarte never has been
"No hope"? We're seven episodes in, and while things started off on the dark side, the bad guys are getting their plans thwarted every week.
Did you think that DS9 "wasn't Star Trek" either? Because parts of the Dominion War arc made PIC look like Mister Rogers' Neighborhood!
when people say "no hope" what they mean is "So far the evidance is none of our old fan favs got a happy ending" and I understand that, thus far we've seen the following characters return: Data/B4 (we find out that there was no hope of B4 turning into Data, too primative brain) Seven of Nine who lost Icheb and is in a personal dark place (that said seven is returning in future episodes so with her we need to remember this is part of her personal journy.) and Will Riker and Deanna Troi, whom are married with a wonderful daughter, and who lost their son due to a rare illness, likely one picked up on some rare world the Titan visted (man maybe children shouldn't be put at risk exploring deep space. how many children likely died when the Borg cube ripped a cylinder sized slice out of the enterprise D?
so yeah I can get what their saying I just disagree with it. more accuratly would be for them to say "I want to see someone with a happy ending"
Most Federation ships do not carry families, that was an odd feature of the Galaxy class in peacetime as part of their possibly ultra-long range scientific mission. In wartime the dependents were offloaded, and 6000 fully equipped troops took their place as the ship switched to its alternate role as a tanky, very heavily armed troop carrier (as seen in DS9). The Titan probably did not carry any dependents at all, just like the Enterprise-E was implied to not carry dependents.
As for the grimdark stuff, DSC actually fits a watered down definition of it and from what I have been hearing it appears PIC does too. It is not about previous series people getting happy endings, (though that does have some bearing), it is the fact that the implied philosophy of the show fits several of the grimdark definitions (in this case mainly those of Shurin and Bourke). Think about it, in DSC (and possibly PIC) how many times has the light at the end of the tunnel not been an oncoming train?
ok first off I play warhammer 40k, so I know what Grimdark actually is. and Picard ain't Grimdark. if it was Grimdark Troi would be working as a hooker to make ends meet, and Will Riker would be slaving 18 hours a day in a factory producing Photon torpedo casings. ohh and Kestral would be in a military academy getting brainwashed into a soldier.
secondly Thad Riker was said to have been "born in deep space" I assumed from that he was born on the Titan and lvied on it.
> @captainbrian11 said: > (Quote) > > > "A human would have a better chance of interbreeding with a Petunia then a extra terrestrial" - Carl Sagan > > Look star trek is FILLED with "BS science" absolutely filled with it. suddenly deciding that BS science is bad, eaither you're looking for excuses to hate on Picard, or when you watched TNG etc you where a kid and thus a lot of the bad science slipped past you. > > I repeat Star Trek is not scientificly accurarte never has been
Except in this. As it kind of has. As stupid as it is, Shadow has pointed out the excuse for it, and although a stupid excuse it works. The idea that some divine aliens from millions of years ago seeded the galaxy with new species (potentially the universe) would explain why their DNA is compatible, and it's because the aliens made everyone using a baseline code, and that baseline dna that all the species share is what makes interbreeding possible.
It is still... stupid, but its atleast believable. And Star Trek has occasionally been scientifically accurate(such as transporters being possible in theory, warp drive being possible in theory, and many many futuristic pieces of tech they made up being things we have today or will have, i.e. there's an ongoing group of people trying to invent a tricorder. Now in the puuure science department, oh yeah they TRIBBLE up a lot, but they usually don't TRIBBLE up so badly you are taken out of things. Except in the new shows where they tend to not even care anymore.)
Picard might occasionally be scientificly inaccurate sure, but I can't name an entire EPISODE whose entire concept is based around taking the laws of science out behind the woodshed I can name an episode from just about every trek series off the top of my head that does that
Picard might occasionally be scientificly inaccurate sure, but I can't name an entire EPISODE whose entire concept is based around taking the laws of science out behind the woodshed I can name an episode from just about every trek series off the top of my head that does that
Actually, major threads of the whole serial are like that from what it sounds like so far. It is not a dealbreaker in itself depending on how exactly they handle it, but it would tend to annoy a lot of the core fans.
Picard might occasionally be scientificly inaccurate sure, but I can't name an entire EPISODE whose entire concept is based around taking the laws of science out behind the woodshed I can name an episode from just about every trek series off the top of my head that does that
Actually, major threads of the whole serial are like that from what it sounds like so far. It is not a dealbreaker in itself depending on how exactly they handle it, but it would tend to annoy a lot of the core fans.
to me, I'm more concerned with "are they internally consistant with how they break science"? every sci-fi show tends to have it's own "pshyics breaking super science" but are they consistant with it? or does one week their FTL drive open wormholes while the next week it makes them move faster then light etc?
"No hope"? We're seven episodes in, and while things started off on the dark side, the bad guys are getting their plans thwarted every week.
Did you think that DS9 "wasn't Star Trek" either? Because parts of the Dominion War arc made PIC look like Mister Rogers' Neighborhood!
when people say "no hope" what they mean is "So far the evidance is none of our old fan favs got a happy ending" and I understand that, thus far we've seen the following characters return: Data/B4 (we find out that there was no hope of B4 turning into Data, too primative brain) Seven of Nine who lost Icheb and is in a personal dark place (that said seven is returning in future episodes so with her we need to remember this is part of her personal journy.) and Will Riker and Deanna Troi, whom are married with a wonderful daughter, and who lost their son due to a rare illness, likely one picked up on some rare world the Titan visted (man maybe children shouldn't be put at risk exploring deep space. how many children likely died when the Borg cube ripped a cylinder sized slice out of the enterprise D?
so yeah I can get what their saying I just disagree with it. more accuratly would be for them to say "I want to see someone with a happy ending"
Most Federation ships do not carry families, that was an odd feature of the Galaxy class in peacetime as part of their possibly ultra-long range scientific mission. In wartime the dependents were offloaded, and 6000 fully equipped troops took their place as the ship switched to its alternate role as a tanky, very heavily armed troop carrier (as seen in DS9). The Titan probably did not carry any dependents at all, just like the Enterprise-E was implied to not carry dependents.
As for the grimdark stuff, DSC actually fits a watered down definition of it and from what I have been hearing it appears PIC does too. It is not about previous series people getting happy endings, (though that does have some bearing), it is the fact that the implied philosophy of the show fits several of the grimdark definitions (in this case mainly those of Shurin and Bourke). Think about it, in DSC (and possibly PIC) how many times has the light at the end of the tunnel not been an oncoming train?
ok first off I play warhammer 40k, so I know what Grimdark actually is. and Picard ain't Grimdark. if it was Grimdark Troi would be working as a hooker to make ends meet, and Will Riker would be slaving 18 hours a day in a factory producing Photon torpedo casings. ohh and Kestral would be in a military academy getting brainwashed into a soldier.
secondly Thad Riker was said to have been "born in deep space" I assumed from that he was born on the Titan and lvied on it.
Warhammer 40K is indeed grimdark, but it is an extreme case of it. It does not have to be quite that nasty to qualify. Wikipedia has a good page on the subject, (and it is much more concise than others I have read), here:
The parts that particularly apply to PIC (and DSC) are these:
In the view of Jared Shurin, grimdark fantasy has three key components: a grim and dark tone, a sense of realism (for example, monarchs are useless and heroes are flawed), and the agency of the protagonists: whereas in high fantasy everything is predestined and the tension revolves around how the heroes defeat the Dark Lord, grimdark is "fantasy protestantism": characters have to choose between good and evil, and are "just as lost as we are".
Liz Bourke considered grimdark's defining characteristic to be "a retreat into the valorisation of darkness for darkness's sake, into a kind of nihilism that portrays right action ... as either impossible or futile". This, according to her, has the effect of absolving the protagonists as well as the reader from moral responsibility.
Hollywood sci-fi has been trending toward that kind of thing for the last decade or so, and CBS Trek is fairly mild about it, but those elements are definitely present and significant to the series style.
You might be right about the dependents, apparently they did have a very small number of dependents onboard, though not the Rikers' son (only their daughter, Natasha) so he must have been born on another ship or a deepspace station. It seems weird that they would carry any dependents on an RSV since they are not large ships but the Federation does do some really weird things.
"You might be right about the dependents, apparently they did have a very small number of dependents onboard, though not the Rikers' son (only their daughter, Natasha) so he must have been born on another ship or a deepspace station. It seems weird that they would carry any dependents on an RSV since they are not large ships but the Federation does do some really weird things."
ok, say it with me, the novels are not canon Their daughter Natasha... doesn't exist. the Rikers have two children, Thad and Kestral.
Well here is another very good and very realistic possiblity, silicon could have a very differant meaning in the twenty fourth century. Like words can have many meanings or new words or old words change to mean something other then what it use to mean. So things can and will change terms might mean something else later down the road. Also there could be organic properties in it as well that allows it to interface with humaniod biology. Kinda like how the borg have mechanical and organic components in Star Trek there could be a virus that has both qualities and thus makes it realistic at least to Trek Canon don't expect it to work like real life. Star Trek is heavy based on Science however it is still syfi. Thus plays by Syfi rules not real life ones.
Well here is another very good and very realistic possiblity, silicon could have a very differant meaning in the twenty fourth century. Like words can have many meanings or new words or old words change to mean something other then what it use to mean. So things can and will change terms might mean something else later down the road. Also there could be organic properties in it as well that allows it to interface with humaniod biology. Kinda like how the borg have mechanical and organic components in Star Trek there could be a virus that has both qualities and thus makes it realistic at least to Trek Canon don't expect it to work like real life. Star Trek is heavy based on Science however it is still syfi. Thus plays by Syfi rules not real life ones.
Bacteria or the silicon equivalent maybe, but not a virus. Viruses are very specific things, they are completely incapable of doing things like reproduction on their own. That means they have to find host cells and splice their DNA into them in such a way that it turns the cell into a virus producing cell. A silicon virus trying that with a carbon based cell would be like trying to use a digital virus to corrupt a mechanical slide rule, the systems are too different for it to have any effect.
Well here is another very good and very realistic possiblity, silicon could have a very differant meaning in the twenty fourth century. Like words can have many meanings or new words or old words change to mean something other then what it use to mean. So things can and will change terms might mean something else later down the road. Also there could be organic properties in it as well that allows it to interface with humaniod biology. Kinda like how the borg have mechanical and organic components in Star Trek there could be a virus that has both qualities and thus makes it realistic at least to Trek Canon don't expect it to work like real life. Star Trek is heavy based on Science however it is still syfi. Thus plays by Syfi rules not real life ones.
Bacteria or the silicon equivalent maybe, but not a virus. Viruses are very specific things, they are completely incapable of doing things like reproduction on their own. That means they have to find host cells and splice their DNA into them in such a way that it turns the cell into a virus producing cell. A silicon virus trying that with a carbon based cell would be like trying to use a digital virus to corrupt a mechanical slide rule, the systems are too different for it to have any effect.
Maybe human viruses sure but maybe planets with different biological and compounds not found on the periodic table on earth could explain it as well. Just because it works one way on one world doesn't mean it works the same on another world. So alien worlds might have viruses that do reproduce on their own. While others do not, Star Trek allows such creativity to do all kinds of things not possible on Earth.
Well here is another very good and very realistic possiblity, silicon could have a very differant meaning in the twenty fourth century. Like words can have many meanings or new words or old words change to mean something other then what it use to mean. So things can and will change terms might mean something else later down the road. Also there could be organic properties in it as well that allows it to interface with humaniod biology. Kinda like how the borg have mechanical and organic components in Star Trek there could be a virus that has both qualities and thus makes it realistic at least to Trek Canon don't expect it to work like real life. Star Trek is heavy based on Science however it is still syfi. Thus plays by Syfi rules not real life ones.
Silicon having a different meaning would be ridiculous. It is an element with atomic number 14, which means silicon atoms have one more proton in the nucleus than aluminum, and one less than phosphorous. You can't redefine that without completely changing everything we know.
I don't even know why this conversation is still going on a STAR TREK forum, considering alien diseases able to infect the crew of each show of the then-decade, regardless of their species (that too is extremely unlikely at best and downright impossible at worst), is a thing.
And that's not including the fact hybrids between 2 different species (oh look, another downright impossible thing IRL) exist without any treatment required in most cases (and when issues happen, it usually wasn't about the compatibility per se (ask Janeway when Q, an energy being, tried and she was "what? No!"), but because the difference in morphology may hurt (ask Naomi's mom).
Its not downright impossible for there to be hybrids between two different species it only matters if their dna is compatible. (I.e, I am pretty sure Dogs and Cats can't interbreed because the species are two different, but there are many Cat breeds formed from interbreeding, like Ligers and there's a domestic cat made from Lynxs)
You're comparing apples to oranges. Though it would be more difficult for alien pathogens to infect humans theoretically carbon based ones would be compatible (THink of it as the equivalent of diseases that only affect birds and some only affects pigs. Its extremely hard for diseases to bridge the species gap, but not impossible), you're just kind of pulling stuff out of nowhere now to try and defend this stupid idea.
"A human would have a better chance of interbreeding with a Petunia then a extra terrestrial" - Carl Sagan
Look star trek is FILLED with "BS science" absolutely filled with it. suddenly deciding that BS science is bad, eaither you're looking for excuses to hate on Picard, or when you watched TNG etc you where a kid and thus a lot of the bad science slipped past you.
I repeat Star Trek is not scientificly accurarte never has been
You're missing something here. When Trek makes stuff up with particle physics and strange beams and so forth, that stuff is sufficiently theoretical or advanced that you can't reasonably expect people not in the field to really know much about it or get it right. Basic science should be as accurate as possible.
For example, I don't expect accuracy if a show wants to talk about differential calculus. If they want to say 2+2=5, though, they should be criticized for it as it is basic math. Exceptions can be made with good writing, "There are four lights!"
And we are currently questioning whether dark matter even exists because we still haven't found any, but baryonic matter is pretty well understood. So if a show goes wild with dark matter, I can give it a pass.
For the silicon virus, they needed to explain it if they want an audience to buy it, because it is just too basic to let slide. They didn't need to even say it was a silicon based virus, but since they did, that needs an explanation as it is very basic science to understand a silicon lifeform that eats carbon lifeforms will only starve.
And this could have been done very easily! It could have been synthesizing silicon from cold fusion of carbon and oxygen, the two most common elements in a human body, 6+8=14. Is that magic? Yes, but it is at least plausible in that it fits with basic scientific understanding of atomic elements. How it accomplishes cold fusion is the part that can be hand waved.
When you bring up something that conflicts with basic scientific understanding, you need to at least lampshade it, and make it clear that you know the audience will question it, so the characters should too.
About the families on Starfleet ships: Sisko's wife and son lived with him on the Saratoga. So it seems it wans't something limited to Galaxy Class ships. ANd Sisko's wife was not a Starfleet officer.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
The death of Riker's child is so utterly unbelievable, it is just contrived. A silicon virus kills carbon life forms with only trace amounts of silicon in their bodies, and didn't affect the parents?
You left out step 1: how does a silicon based virus affect a humanoid at all? This isn't the first time in Star Trek the idea has been used but it was dumb the first time. How can a silicon based organism replicate in an environment devoid of silicon(IE the inside of a person)? Human biochemistry doesn't include silicon at all.
This was definitely a big plot hole, but at least it's not as bad as humans devolving into salamanders like in Threshold 🤣
A lot of the time people accuse Star Trek writers (particularly of new series) of not respecting canon or ignoring canon or not knowing their canon... But sometimes, it are the Star Trek writers that actually reference obscure things that some fans don't know about, or don't care about, suggesting that sometimes, Star Trek writers actually respect canon more than some fans.
Again, just because something has happened before does not negate it from still being bad now. This is a terrible defense "Haha you can't possibly criticize this show for this thing because look! I found the same thing in another show! That means this show is imuuuuune to criticism!"
No, I have to disagree. This is made-up science. We're not talking about stuff like": This character's behavior is completely illogical," or whatever. We're just talking about made-up science. How can you say with your quite limited knowledge of 24th century interstellar biochemistry that there is absolutely no possible way whatsoever that a silicon based virus cannot possibly in any way affect the biology of a carbon-based life form, and then turn around and say something like "But nanites could do it!". Why could nanites do it? They are just as arbitrary made up? Did they ever claim that Nanites are carbon-based? IIRC, they were eating part of the Enterprise's circuitry once - are isolinear chips based on carbon, or silicon, or some metals? How could they do anything in your body if the are not carbon-based, because according to you that's impossible then. But of course that is nonsense, of course non-carbon based stuff can interact wtih carbon-based stuff in various ways - mechanically, chemically. It is just not traditional organic chemistry. But how can we know that in a universe where we have nadions and subspace and tachyons and tetryons and chronitons and Dilithium that there can't be stuff that enables interactions between silicon-based pseudo-viruses and carbon-based lifeforms? How could you really tell? Why do you insist that this is the one thing that cannot possibly be, but a self-replicating mine-field can exist?
They decided to pick up this silicon virus or pseudo-virus thing as some of the more exotic things that could afflict a space-faring kid that could be affected by a ban on positronics. They could have made up anything, like that he had a rare form of epilepsy that could only be fixed with positronic brain parts or that he needed some medicine whose compound could only be mined by positronic workers because other types of machines (or people) break down in the environment and you could have picked holes in such a scenarios as well.
But you could also decide to just accept that the technobabble said on screen is quite simply true in the show and move on. It doesn't actually matter. The problem with technobabble isn't when might be questionable or whatever, the only problem is when the whole plot revolves around technobabble things that we don't relate to anyway. But we certainly relate to a ban on certain research could stand in the way of finding cures for some exotic disease, and that your child dying from such a disease sucks. And we can perhaps also relate to the idea that there is still a possibility for a happy future, even when faced with tragedy.
And we are currently questioning whether dark matter even exists because we still haven't found any, but baryonic matter is pretty well understood. So if a show goes wild with dark matter, I can give it a pass.
Funny that you bring up baryonic matter - remember when they were sending the Enterprise through a baryonic cleaning process that was supposed to remove baryons from the ship? Oh wait, but that's one of those bad canonical science stuffs that don't count. But it lead to Die Hard with Captain Picard.
Kinda like the Voyager Episode where Janeway was playing Die Hard against macroviruses.
Sometimes it's not really important how TRIBBLE the science in Star Trek is, because the resulting story is entertaining.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
But here is my fantasy science fiction explanation how a silicon-based virus harms a carbon-based lifeform.
Fundamentally, it's not as if silicon-based and carbon-based molecules couldn't interact in some form. They certainly can. Moreover, there is also simply "mechanical" interaction to consider (like a knife doesn't need to be made out of carbon to cut you open). There are effects like Carbon Monoxide binding to your blood cells similar to oxygen - except the CO binding is far stronger than the oxygen binding and the CO sticks to the cells forever. There are catalytic processes that can be induced.
So, either way, this silicon virus acts like a "normal" virus to silicon-based cells. but it can't actually hijack a carbon-based cell. But it can damage it and some way, and this triggers an immune response. But he immune system cannot actually find the silicon-based virus, so it's moving through your cells and occasionally damaging them, the immune system trying to fix it, and on some cell types, it "believes" (not that it has actual agency, it's a biochemical automatic process, not an intelligent being making conscious choices) it has identified the nasty cells, and attacks them. But it's really just attacking a particular cell type, in the kid's case probably nerve cells.
The name of the disease is mendaxic neuroclerosis, and as someone else pointed out, mendaxic stands for fake, deceitful, lying, deceptive. So, what I wrote so far could fit, the virus deceives the immune system in attacking particular cells that are actually healthy. (It could be that the authors really meant that more towards that the virus isn't actually a virus).
The silicon virus wreaks havoc with the immune system, it starts attacking healthy cells, and your brain starts melting or something like that. Not a nice thing to happen to you.
So, now we need an active positronic matrix - an android brain, basically. Apparently, if you cultivate "infected" cells there, this helps - maybe this causes the immune system to "relearn" its immune response and stop targeting healthy cells and really only attack the cells that were damaged by the silicon virus.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
"A human would have a better chance of interbreeding with a Petunia then a extra terrestrial" - Carl Sagan
Look star trek is FILLED with "BS science" absolutely filled with it. suddenly deciding that BS science is bad, eaither you're looking for excuses to hate on Picard, or when you watched TNG etc you where a kid and thus a lot of the bad science slipped past you.
I repeat Star Trek is not scientificly accurarte never has been
You're missing something here. When Trek makes stuff up with particle physics and strange beams and so forth, that stuff is sufficiently theoretical or advanced that you can't reasonably expect people not in the field to really know much about it or get it right. Basic science should be as accurate as possible.
For example, I don't expect accuracy if a show wants to talk about differential calculus. If they want to say 2+2=5, though, they should be criticized for it as it is basic math. Exceptions can be made with good writing, "There are four lights!"
And we are currently questioning whether dark matter even exists because we still haven't found any, but baryonic matter is pretty well understood. So if a show goes wild with dark matter, I can give it a pass.
For the silicon virus, they needed to explain it if they want an audience to buy it, because it is just too basic to let slide. They didn't need to even say it was a silicon based virus, but since they did, that needs an explanation as it is very basic science to understand a silicon lifeform that eats carbon lifeforms will only starve.
And this could have been done very easily! It could have been synthesizing silicon from cold fusion of carbon and oxygen, the two most common elements in a human body, 6+8=14. Is that magic? Yes, but it is at least plausible in that it fits with basic scientific understanding of atomic elements. How it accomplishes cold fusion is the part that can be hand waved.
When you bring up something that conflicts with basic scientific understanding, you need to at least lampshade it, and make it clear that you know the audience will question it, so the characters should too.
or... you just accept clarks 3rd law and don't explain it.
About the families on Starfleet ships: Sisko's wife and son lived with him on the Saratoga. So it seems it wans't something limited to Galaxy Class ships. ANd Sisko's wife was not a Starfleet officer.
There is some background evidence that says that Jennifer Sisko may have been a scientist, which could explain why she was allowed aboard a Federation Starship.
According to the Star Trek Encyclopedia (4th ed., vol. 2, p. 289) and StarTrek.com, Jennifer Sisko was a Federation scientist.
In the novelization of "Emissary", Jennifer Sisko was a member of Starfleet with the rank of Lieutenant, a fact that was never established in the series.
Now... as nothing was actually established on screen to contradict this... it is POSSIBLE that Jennifer Sisko was infact a Starfleet Science Officer with the rank of Lieutenant, but was off duty when Saratoga was tapped for the fleet at Wolf 359, and didn't have time to get into uniform before the attack began, thus leaving her in civilian clothes when she was killed. In this case Starfleet may have allowed Ben and Jennifer to bring Jake aboard Saratoga because both parents were aboard as well.
I know its a bit of a stretch including some headcanon to fill in the blanks, but at least the theory is sound.
Which also leads to the question of why Sisko wanted to resign from Starfleet. If we add in Jennifer being a Starfleet Officer, his reasoning kinda makes more sense as he could see the uniform as a constant reminder of his wife, who also wore it.
Again... background information and a bit of headcanon to make it work, but still viable theory. On screen evidence of anything outside of they were married and had a son is non-existant. Although background information backed up by other sources such as the official Trek website does give it a bit more credability. As for novelizations of canon episodes... really don't know the canon status of any additional information provided by said novelizations.
Well here is another very good and very realistic possiblity, silicon could have a very differant meaning in the twenty fourth century. Like words can have many meanings or new words or old words change to mean something other then what it use to mean. So things can and will change terms might mean something else later down the road. Also there could be organic properties in it as well that allows it to interface with humaniod biology. Kinda like how the borg have mechanical and organic components in Star Trek there could be a virus that has both qualities and thus makes it realistic at least to Trek Canon don't expect it to work like real life. Star Trek is heavy based on Science however it is still syfi. Thus plays by Syfi rules not real life ones.
Bacteria or the silicon equivalent maybe, but not a virus. Viruses are very specific things, they are completely incapable of doing things like reproduction on their own. That means they have to find host cells and splice their DNA into them in such a way that it turns the cell into a virus producing cell. A silicon virus trying that with a carbon based cell would be like trying to use a digital virus to corrupt a mechanical slide rule, the systems are too different for it to have any effect.
Maybe human viruses sure but maybe planets with different biological and compounds not found on the periodic table on earth could explain it as well. Just because it works one way on one world doesn't mean it works the same on another world. So alien worlds might have viruses that do reproduce on their own. While others do not, Star Trek allows such creativity to do all kinds of things not possible on Earth.
Except that the main defining factor of a virus is that it is not a complete organism and cannot reproduce by itself. If it CAN reproduce without hijacking cells it is by definition something else, like a bacteria or fungus or whatever.
If they said it was a silicon carbide bacteria or something like that it would make some sense. It is still a bit of handwavum since the energy does not work out to anything reasonable, but there could be some exotic enzyme or whatever that sidesteps the problem (and the Rikers may not have realized that some alien organism was causing their kid to eat sand instead of it just being a kid thing).
"You might be right about the dependents, apparently they did have a very small number of dependents onboard, though not the Rikers' son (only their daughter, Natasha) so he must have been born on another ship or a deepspace station. It seems weird that they would carry any dependents on an RSV since they are not large ships but the Federation does do some really weird things."
ok, say it with me, the novels are not canon Their daughter Natasha... doesn't exist. the Rikers have two children, Thad and Kestral.
That is not exactly a given anymore with the way they are apparently using novels to explain the plot holes in the shows like Disney does, so mistakes like that happen. The references seemed to be to that novel series (or parts of it anyway), so it is hard to tell sometimes what they are canonizing and what they are just stealing and altering slightly.
If they are not canonizing parts of the novel series then the Titan may not even be a Luna-class at all (the idea that it was is from the novels and not the Nemesis movie, the movie only gives the name of the ship not its class), it might be a Galaxy which is a class known to carry dependents in peacetime and could be the source of the "born in space" thing.
Comments
One person's plot hole is just another person's Star Trek canon reference:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Silicon-based_virus
A lot of the time people accuse Star Trek writers (particularly of new series) of not respecting canon or ignoring canon or not knowing their canon... But sometimes, it are the Star Trek writers that actually reference obscure things that some fans don't know about, or don't care about, suggesting that sometimes, Star Trek writers actually respect canon more than some fans.
Again, just because something has happened before does not negate it from still being bad now. This is a terrible defense "Haha you can't possibly criticize this show for this thing because look! I found the same thing in another show! That means this show is imuuuuune to criticism!"
It was kind of stupid back then too (Not to mention you picked a thing that happened in Enterprise, one of Two older shows that are also heavily criticized so you picked something people hated back then, to say that people can't hate it now too.)
There could be some handwaving due to the episode specifically mentioning its not actually a virus (Because even Enterprise recognized that an actual silicon based virus wouldn't affect carbon life) and it was created by god like beings the Organians.
That virus is no less dumb than the Picard virus, for all the same reasons.
I'm not sure why they need to call it a Silicon virus in either case. What is the point of that versus a carbon based virus that would make sense to infect people?
I think the idea behind it is, that Silicon sounds very sciencey and they want to avoid having to come up with a reason for why their medicine can't affect the virus
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Most carbon based diseases don't have an effect on different species due to how a species' biology reacts to the virus. Then there is the issue that a harmless bacteria in one species is deadly to another species. It is less likely for alien diseases to affect humans or humans to get alien diseases due to how different our biology is.
And that's not including the fact hybrids between 2 different species (oh look, another downright impossible thing IRL) exist without any treatment required in most cases (and when issues happen, it usually wasn't about the compatibility per se (ask Janeway when Q, an energy being, tried and she was "what? No!"), but because the difference in morphology may hurt (ask Naomi's mom).
Also, apparently, Thaddeus's disease is called mendaxic neurosclerosis.
Mendaxic could be a variation of various latin words, either from "mendax" meaning "liar, deceiver" or "mens" which can mean "soul, mind, idea, memory". So that may refer to the fact it affects the brain or, why not, that it's making the victim's mind lie to them or, considering it's not treatable without a specific silicon-based treatment, that it can't die because its carbon-based environment keeps it alive somehow.
Or more likely, it sounded cool and goes well with "neurosclerosis" and the "TRIBBLE you, I'm a writer, I pick random cool-sounding latin words, hell yeah!" motto.
Since sclerosis is a pathology causing the stiffening of a tissue or any anatomical feature, that implies the disease was a sclerosis of his neural network which... is extremely horrifying to think about first of all (especially since, according to the show, the kid had it for at least 5 years, so it was likely agonizing in the last ones), but may also give some idea of how the disease works.
My guess is the virus is actually not a virus per se but something close enough to the human definition and that while it doesn't technically harm any part of a carbon-based lifeform keeps multiplying like a tumor in the nerves and the brain clogging and disrupting them until it's too much.
Its not downright impossible for there to be hybrids between two different species it only matters if their dna is compatible. (I.e, I am pretty sure Dogs and Cats can't interbreed because the species are two different, but there are many Cat breeds formed from interbreeding, like Ligers and there's a domestic cat made from Lynxs)
You're comparing apples to oranges. Though it would be more difficult for alien pathogens to infect humans theoretically carbon based ones would be compatible (THink of it as the equivalent of diseases that only affect birds and some only affects pigs. Its extremely hard for diseases to bridge the species gap, but not impossible), you're just kind of pulling stuff out of nowhere now to try and defend this stupid idea.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
It couldn't directly interact with carbon based cells, but what I was trying to say was that by just being there maybe it gets in the way of something. Or if the immune system detects the presence of the virus but is unable to remove it due to it's silicon nature maybe it starts attacking the surrounding tissue. My point is there are ways it can be elaborated on to make it at least sound plausible enough to work in a sci-fi story.
"A human would have a better chance of interbreeding with a Petunia then a extra terrestrial" - Carl Sagan
Look star trek is FILLED with "BS science" absolutely filled with it. suddenly deciding that BS science is bad, eaither you're looking for excuses to hate on Picard, or when you watched TNG etc you where a kid and thus a lot of the bad science slipped past you.
I repeat Star Trek is not scientificly accurarte never has been
ok first off I play warhammer 40k, so I know what Grimdark actually is. and Picard ain't Grimdark. if it was Grimdark Troi would be working as a hooker to make ends meet, and Will Riker would be slaving 18 hours a day in a factory producing Photon torpedo casings. ohh and Kestral would be in a military academy getting brainwashed into a soldier.
secondly Thad Riker was said to have been "born in deep space" I assumed from that he was born on the Titan and lvied on it.
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> "A human would have a better chance of interbreeding with a Petunia then a extra terrestrial" - Carl Sagan
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> Look star trek is FILLED with "BS science" absolutely filled with it. suddenly deciding that BS science is bad, eaither you're looking for excuses to hate on Picard, or when you watched TNG etc you where a kid and thus a lot of the bad science slipped past you.
>
> I repeat Star Trek is not scientificly accurarte never has been
Except in this. As it kind of has. As stupid as it is, Shadow has pointed out the excuse for it, and although a stupid excuse it works. The idea that some divine aliens from millions of years ago seeded the galaxy with new species (potentially the universe) would explain why their DNA is compatible, and it's because the aliens made everyone using a baseline code, and that baseline dna that all the species share is what makes interbreeding possible.
It is still... stupid, but its atleast believable. And Star Trek has occasionally been scientifically accurate(such as transporters being possible in theory, warp drive being possible in theory, and many many futuristic pieces of tech they made up being things we have today or will have, i.e. there's an ongoing group of people trying to invent a tricorder. Now in the puuure science department, oh yeah they TRIBBLE up a lot, but they usually don't TRIBBLE up so badly you are taken out of things. Except in the new shows where they tend to not even care anymore.)
Picard might occasionally be scientificly inaccurate sure, but I can't name an entire EPISODE whose entire concept is based around taking the laws of science out behind the woodshed I can name an episode from just about every trek series off the top of my head that does that
Actually, major threads of the whole serial are like that from what it sounds like so far. It is not a dealbreaker in itself depending on how exactly they handle it, but it would tend to annoy a lot of the core fans.
to me, I'm more concerned with "are they internally consistant with how they break science"? every sci-fi show tends to have it's own "pshyics breaking super science" but are they consistant with it? or does one week their FTL drive open wormholes while the next week it makes them move faster then light etc?
Warhammer 40K is indeed grimdark, but it is an extreme case of it. It does not have to be quite that nasty to qualify. Wikipedia has a good page on the subject, (and it is much more concise than others I have read), here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimdark
The parts that particularly apply to PIC (and DSC) are these:
Hollywood sci-fi has been trending toward that kind of thing for the last decade or so, and CBS Trek is fairly mild about it, but those elements are definitely present and significant to the series style.
You might be right about the dependents, apparently they did have a very small number of dependents onboard, though not the Rikers' son (only their daughter, Natasha) so he must have been born on another ship or a deepspace station. It seems weird that they would carry any dependents on an RSV since they are not large ships but the Federation does do some really weird things.
ok, say it with me, the novels are not canon Their daughter Natasha... doesn't exist. the Rikers have two children, Thad and Kestral.
Bacteria or the silicon equivalent maybe, but not a virus. Viruses are very specific things, they are completely incapable of doing things like reproduction on their own. That means they have to find host cells and splice their DNA into them in such a way that it turns the cell into a virus producing cell. A silicon virus trying that with a carbon based cell would be like trying to use a digital virus to corrupt a mechanical slide rule, the systems are too different for it to have any effect.
Maybe human viruses sure but maybe planets with different biological and compounds not found on the periodic table on earth could explain it as well. Just because it works one way on one world doesn't mean it works the same on another world. So alien worlds might have viruses that do reproduce on their own. While others do not, Star Trek allows such creativity to do all kinds of things not possible on Earth.
Silicon having a different meaning would be ridiculous. It is an element with atomic number 14, which means silicon atoms have one more proton in the nucleus than aluminum, and one less than phosphorous. You can't redefine that without completely changing everything we know.
You're missing something here. When Trek makes stuff up with particle physics and strange beams and so forth, that stuff is sufficiently theoretical or advanced that you can't reasonably expect people not in the field to really know much about it or get it right. Basic science should be as accurate as possible.
For example, I don't expect accuracy if a show wants to talk about differential calculus. If they want to say 2+2=5, though, they should be criticized for it as it is basic math. Exceptions can be made with good writing, "There are four lights!"
And we are currently questioning whether dark matter even exists because we still haven't found any, but baryonic matter is pretty well understood. So if a show goes wild with dark matter, I can give it a pass.
For the silicon virus, they needed to explain it if they want an audience to buy it, because it is just too basic to let slide. They didn't need to even say it was a silicon based virus, but since they did, that needs an explanation as it is very basic science to understand a silicon lifeform that eats carbon lifeforms will only starve.
And this could have been done very easily! It could have been synthesizing silicon from cold fusion of carbon and oxygen, the two most common elements in a human body, 6+8=14. Is that magic? Yes, but it is at least plausible in that it fits with basic scientific understanding of atomic elements. How it accomplishes cold fusion is the part that can be hand waved.
When you bring up something that conflicts with basic scientific understanding, you need to at least lampshade it, and make it clear that you know the audience will question it, so the characters should too.
They decided to pick up this silicon virus or pseudo-virus thing as some of the more exotic things that could afflict a space-faring kid that could be affected by a ban on positronics. They could have made up anything, like that he had a rare form of epilepsy that could only be fixed with positronic brain parts or that he needed some medicine whose compound could only be mined by positronic workers because other types of machines (or people) break down in the environment and you could have picked holes in such a scenarios as well.
But you could also decide to just accept that the technobabble said on screen is quite simply true in the show and move on. It doesn't actually matter. The problem with technobabble isn't when might be questionable or whatever, the only problem is when the whole plot revolves around technobabble things that we don't relate to anyway. But we certainly relate to a ban on certain research could stand in the way of finding cures for some exotic disease, and that your child dying from such a disease sucks. And we can perhaps also relate to the idea that there is still a possibility for a happy future, even when faced with tragedy.
Funny that you bring up baryonic matter - remember when they were sending the Enterprise through a baryonic cleaning process that was supposed to remove baryons from the ship? Oh wait, but that's one of those bad canonical science stuffs that don't count. But it lead to Die Hard with Captain Picard.
Kinda like the Voyager Episode where Janeway was playing Die Hard against macroviruses.
Sometimes it's not really important how TRIBBLE the science in Star Trek is, because the resulting story is entertaining.
Fundamentally, it's not as if silicon-based and carbon-based molecules couldn't interact in some form. They certainly can. Moreover, there is also simply "mechanical" interaction to consider (like a knife doesn't need to be made out of carbon to cut you open). There are effects like Carbon Monoxide binding to your blood cells similar to oxygen - except the CO binding is far stronger than the oxygen binding and the CO sticks to the cells forever. There are catalytic processes that can be induced.
So, either way, this silicon virus acts like a "normal" virus to silicon-based cells. but it can't actually hijack a carbon-based cell. But it can damage it and some way, and this triggers an immune response. But he immune system cannot actually find the silicon-based virus, so it's moving through your cells and occasionally damaging them, the immune system trying to fix it, and on some cell types, it "believes" (not that it has actual agency, it's a biochemical automatic process, not an intelligent being making conscious choices) it has identified the nasty cells, and attacks them. But it's really just attacking a particular cell type, in the kid's case probably nerve cells.
The name of the disease is mendaxic neuroclerosis, and as someone else pointed out, mendaxic stands for fake, deceitful, lying, deceptive. So, what I wrote so far could fit, the virus deceives the immune system in attacking particular cells that are actually healthy. (It could be that the authors really meant that more towards that the virus isn't actually a virus).
The silicon virus wreaks havoc with the immune system, it starts attacking healthy cells, and your brain starts melting or something like that. Not a nice thing to happen to you.
So, now we need an active positronic matrix - an android brain, basically. Apparently, if you cultivate "infected" cells there, this helps - maybe this causes the immune system to "relearn" its immune response and stop targeting healthy cells and really only attack the cells that were damaged by the silicon virus.
or... you just accept clarks 3rd law and don't explain it.
There is some background evidence that says that Jennifer Sisko may have been a scientist, which could explain why she was allowed aboard a Federation Starship.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Jennifer_Sisko
Now... as nothing was actually established on screen to contradict this... it is POSSIBLE that Jennifer Sisko was infact a Starfleet Science Officer with the rank of Lieutenant, but was off duty when Saratoga was tapped for the fleet at Wolf 359, and didn't have time to get into uniform before the attack began, thus leaving her in civilian clothes when she was killed. In this case Starfleet may have allowed Ben and Jennifer to bring Jake aboard Saratoga because both parents were aboard as well.
I know its a bit of a stretch including some headcanon to fill in the blanks, but at least the theory is sound.
Which also leads to the question of why Sisko wanted to resign from Starfleet. If we add in Jennifer being a Starfleet Officer, his reasoning kinda makes more sense as he could see the uniform as a constant reminder of his wife, who also wore it.
Again... background information and a bit of headcanon to make it work, but still viable theory. On screen evidence of anything outside of they were married and had a son is non-existant. Although background information backed up by other sources such as the official Trek website does give it a bit more credability. As for novelizations of canon episodes... really don't know the canon status of any additional information provided by said novelizations.
Except that the main defining factor of a virus is that it is not a complete organism and cannot reproduce by itself. If it CAN reproduce without hijacking cells it is by definition something else, like a bacteria or fungus or whatever.
If they said it was a silicon carbide bacteria or something like that it would make some sense. It is still a bit of handwavum since the energy does not work out to anything reasonable, but there could be some exotic enzyme or whatever that sidesteps the problem (and the Rikers may not have realized that some alien organism was causing their kid to eat sand instead of it just being a kid thing).
That is not exactly a given anymore with the way they are apparently using novels to explain the plot holes in the shows like Disney does, so mistakes like that happen. The references seemed to be to that novel series (or parts of it anyway), so it is hard to tell sometimes what they are canonizing and what they are just stealing and altering slightly.
If they are not canonizing parts of the novel series then the Titan may not even be a Luna-class at all (the idea that it was is from the novels and not the Nemesis movie, the movie only gives the name of the ship not its class), it might be a Galaxy which is a class known to carry dependents in peacetime and could be the source of the "born in space" thing.