Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

[TaimuRadiu]

Also note: Khan is referenced in TNG, but the Genesis Device is not. My headcanon has it that the Starfleet has just found so much weird shit over the centuries that not even the captain of the flagship of the Federation knows what it is.

I would have liked to have seen more TNG episodes involving "stuff that happened before Kirk's time," like the one episode where they found ghosts of a ship that crashed on a planet before Kirk. Yes, I like the 1st season a lot. Much more than the 2nd.

 

[ditto]

In the episode of "Chain of Command" where Picard, Beverly, and Worf go undercover to investigate some Cardassians, they were SUPPOSED to go to DS9 and meet a contact at Quark's Bar.

Beverly giving the Ferengi equivalent of a handjob felt completely out of character and very silly.

Unfortunately a mix up caused DS9 to not have aired by then so they had to replace the idea with a generic bar and ferengi.

That explains the weird two-parter "Birthright" later in the season, where they go to DS9 and Bashir becomes Data's best friend for one episode. Then in the second part it's completely ignored.

 

[Preferred Penne]

Also note: Khan is referenced in TNG, but the Genesis Device is not. My headcanon has it that the Starfleet has just found so much weird shit over the centuries that not even the captain of the flagship of the Federation knows what it is.

I would have liked to have seen more TNG episodes involving "stuff that happened before Kirk's time," like the one episode where they found ghosts of a ship that crashed on a planet before Kirk. Yes, I like the 1st season a lot. Much more than the 2nd.

The Genesis Project was highly classified and would probably have been lost to the passage of time when TNG came around.

 

[Flexo]

Also note: Khan is referenced in TNG, but the Genesis Device is not. My headcanon has it that the Starfleet has just found so much weird shit over the centuries that not even the captain of the flagship of the Federation knows what it is.

I would have liked to have seen more TNG episodes involving "stuff that happened before Kirk's time," like the one episode where they found ghosts of a ship that crashed on a planet before Kirk. Yes, I like the 1st season a lot. Much more than the 2nd.

Don't forget that for Star Trek, Kahn was a major figure of Earth History. I know it's over used, but it would be the equivalent of a navy captain finding Hitler and a bunch of nazis.

Beverly giving the Ferengi equivalent of a handjob felt completely out of character and very silly.

Well being "undercover" is kind of the definition of acting out of character.

Though you could imagine Bev had some medical gel on her hand that rendered Ferengi impotent if you wish.

That explains the weird two-parter "Birthright" later in the season, where they go to DS9 and Bashir becomes Data's best friend for one episode. Then in the second part it's completely ignored.

More trivia! Birthright was filmed around the same time as the awful DS9 episode "Move Along Home." Since in that episode Bashir is the cast member that got "eliminated" early in the episode, his schedule was freed up and that's why he appeared on TNG. Apparently Dax was always a bit sore that she wasn't the one who got the guest-star spot.

 

[UnKillFill]

The Genesis Project was highly classified and could have possibly been lost to the passage of time when TNG came around.

Not only was the Genesis device highly classified, it was also 'technically' a failure. (Even though it did many of the things it was supposed to do, and also "rebirthed" Spock) This was clearly a bug, not a feature.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Genesis_Device

Even at the time, and with little knowledge of the Federation, the Klingons saw the Genesis Device as a weapon... and they weren't even technically wrong. (It totally could have been used as one if it were deployed on say.. Q'onoS...) Even though The Federation *weren't* trying to make a weapon at the time, I'd bet that everyone involved would rather just forget about the Genesis Device entirely after Star Trek III. No wonder it wasn't mentioned by the time of TNG.

 

[TaimuRadiu]

That explains the weird two-parter "Birthright" later in the season, where they go to DS9 and Bashir becomes Data's best friend for one episode. Then in the second part it's completely ignored.

I thought the first part of Birthright was a lot better than the second.

The Genesis Project was highly classified and would probably have been lost to the passage of time when TNG came around.

Also, right after the Genesis incident, Earth, the capital world of the Federation, got assraped by a space whale.

 

[Kinotobie]

In the episode of "Chain of Command" where Picard, Beverly, and Worf go undercover to investigate some Cardassians, they were SUPPOSED to go to DS9 and meet a contact at Quark's Bar.

Unfortunately a mix up caused DS9 to not have aired by then so they had to replace the idea with a generic bar and ferengi.



??? Teraforming planets is at least in keeping with Star Trek. The idea that they found a way to miniaturize and then speed up the process is one of the more logical parts in all of Trek.

The Spore Drive is literally about using mushrooms to go fast.

It's not a comparison. The Genesis device may be an error, but it's an understandable, believable error. The spore drive is not even wrong.

A magic missile that can change any planentary body regardless of gravity and position within a star system and atmosphere into an Earth like planet within a few minutes is about as ridiculous as magic mushrooms. It also brings dead people back to live like the Spore Drive does. And the Spore Drive was originally a proto-Genesis device in the original scripts, its just a natural extension. It was never brought up again since it was too silly and too uber powerful.

The Genesis Device with Modern Special Effects + Reaction by Sisko

sci fi reviews channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrLsxBysUHnpSKRpXMbMVzg All parody Edits : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnnRzi7q1YTRFYvzSnjEzhQ

www.youtube.com

 

[Zemporer]

A magic missile that can change any planentary body regardless of gravity and position within a star system and atmosphere into an Earth like planet within a few minutes is about as ridiculous as magic mushrooms. It also brings dead people back to live like the Spore Drive does. And the Spore Drive was originally a proto-Genesis device in the original scripts, its just a natural extension. It was never brought up again since it was too silly and too uber powerful.

The Genesis Device with Modern Special Effects + Reaction by Sisko

sci fi reviews channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrLsxBysUHnpSKRpXMbMVzg All parody Edits : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnnRzi7q1YTRFYvzSnjEzhQ

www.youtube.com

I might be giving the writers of Search for Spock too much credit, but the fact that they reveal the Genesis device only worked at all was because David Marcus cheated by using a forbidden element ("proto-matter?") and that the Genesis creation is short lived might have been their way of short circuiting that plot device.

 

[Flexo]

I might be giving the writers of Search for Spock too much credit, but the fact that they reveal the Genesis device only worked at all was because David Marcus cheated by using a forbidden element ("proto-matter?") and that the Genesis creation is short lived might have been their way of short circuiting that plot device.

I mean in the actual movies, the whole thing essentially operated as a kind of temporal accelerate (just like the first episode of the Orville) - because it goes over in a nebula which ends up forming a planet and the microbes on the torpedo eventually becoming larger creatures.

A magic missile that can change any planentary body regardless of gravity and position within a star system and atmosphere into an Earth like planet within a few minutes is about as ridiculous as magic mushrooms.

Some of that is not detailed in the films. Conceptually there would be limits on it as you'd shoot it at a planet that would be suitable for in the first place and less something like... jupiter.

It also brings dead people back to live like the Spore Drive does.

Not exactly. It restarted the growth of Spock's body (see temporal point above) but he was a blank slate. If Spock's memory backup had been lost, then Spock would have never returned. He wasn't brought back to life as much as got a cloned body regrown. The spores brought back the body fully made and with intact memory all together.

And the Spore Drive was originally a proto-Genesis device in the original scripts, its just a natural extension.

There is NO natural extension between "changing a planet" and "teleporting from one side of the galaxy to another." That's the same kind of logic moviebob uses that if we can 3d print things today, we should be able to grow wheat on the moon. The two areas of science - even made up science - aren't in the same ballpark.

I'll also point out a lot of your complaints arise from the 3rd film, less Wrath of Khan.

 

[BScCollateral]

I might be giving the writers of Search for Spock too much credit, but the fact that they reveal the Genesis device only worked at all was because David Marcus cheated by using a forbidden element ("proto-matter?") and that the Genesis creation is short lived might have been their way of short circuiting that plot device.

To be fair, while Genesis might be a bust as an instant-terraforming system, it's still a biosphere-killing missile.

I'd suspect its utility might be limited because anti-missile defences are probably pretty good.

Since one episode of TOS had Kirk threaten to destroy a planet, presumably planet-killers are pretty well established in the universe, even though nobody seems to use them.

 

[UnKillFill]

I wonder if you can "terraform" a Borg cube.

 

[L50LasPak]

I might be giving the writers of Search for Spock too much credit, but the fact that they reveal the Genesis device only worked at all was because David Marcus cheated by using a forbidden element ("proto-matter?") and that the Genesis creation is short lived might have been their way of short circuiting that plot device.

In some of the interviews they pretty much admit to this directly.

There is NO natural extension between "changing a planet" and "teleporting from one side of the galaxy to another." That's the same kind of logic moviebob uses that if we can 3d print things today, we should be able to grow wheat on the moon. The two areas of science - even made up science - aren't in the same ballpark.

I'll also point out a lot of your complaints arise from the 3rd film, less Wrath of Khan.

The magic of the Genesis device is quite ridiculous either way. Its up there with the Spore Drive in terms of ridiculous bullshit we've seen in Star Trek. I'd be willing to even include the Transphasic Torpedos, the Chroniton Torpedoes and, oh yeah, an entire fucking Dyson Sphere in the list of incredibly OP shit that Starfleet seemingly just forgot about. Also the remains of the Planet Killer which somehow remained intact after they blew it up. And that shielding system that lets you fly into a sun. And also the fact that you can just timetravel by swinging around a random star so long as you break away at the right time.

Star Trek is no stranger to OP tech, the Spore Drive is just the most egregious one because they based a whole show off of it.

 

[Cyril Sneer]

I wonder if you can "terraform" a Borg cube.

It's just a guess, but I would assume that the energy output of the Genesis device vastly exceeds that of the combined torpedo/phaser-fire sustained by the Borg cube at the Battle of Sector 001.

I'd be willing to even include the Transphasic Torpedos, the Chroniton Torpedoes and, oh yeah, an entire fucking Dyson Sphere in the list of incredibly OP shit that Starfleet seemingly just forgot about.

It's all hidden away at Memory Alpha, like the Ark at the end of Raiders.

 

[ditto]

To be fair, while Genesis might be a bust as an instant-terraforming system, it's still a biosphere-killing missile.

Every starship have the capacity to be a planet killer, so yet another biosphere-killing missile might be pretty ho-hum in the Trek universe. In "The Chase" some random Klingon ship destroyed a biosphere in a matter of hours.

 

[Quintex96]

I was rewatching Voyager earlier when fucking Chuck McGill Showed up as a psychotic clown. I somehow never realized it was him until now.

Also Fallout 3 completely ripped the premise of this episode for the Tranquility Lane quest.

 

[Flexo]

The magic of the Genesis device is quite ridiculous either way. Its up there with the Spore Drive in terms of ridiculous bullshit we've seen in Star Trek. I'd be willing to even include the Transphasic Torpedos, the Chroniton Torpedoes and, oh yeah, an entire fucking Dyson Sphere in the list of incredibly OP shit that Starfleet seemingly just forgot about. Also the remains of the Planet Killer which somehow remained intact after they blew it up. And that shielding system that lets you fly into a sun. And also the fact that you can just timetravel by swinging around a random star so long as you break away at the right time.

Star Trek is no stranger to OP tech, the Spore Drive is just the most egregious one because they based a whole show off of it.

Oh quite right. I'm not saying the Genesis device is flawless and all. Like you said, Trek even has a bit of a history with silly, OP tech. Heck SFDebris has an extended rant on how insane the minefield in front of the wormhole is logically speaking, but I notice nobody's brought it up.

All I'm arguing is that the Genesis device at least follows STORY logic.

To steal an example from a friend: Think about fairy tales. A common trope in them is of the mysterious old man who (for an example) complains about always being hungry. The hero will need to complete a task (like eating all the bread of a vast storehouse) so he recruits the old man who then proceeds to do it. From a pure logic stand point, this is nonsense as the mass of the food, greatly exceeds the old man's total mass. But it fits in story because they establish certain rules - like the guy showing signs of not being normal, complaining about being hungry, etc.

The genesis device at least fits in story logic - like DS9's minefield. The spore drive? Can't even manage that much.

Or to put another way. If the pure logic is the equivalent of "2+2=4" the the genesis device is the equivalent of "2+2=9,001" while the spore drive is the equivalent of "2+2=green." Both are wrong, but one is at least a number and closer to the right answer than the other.

 

[L50LasPak]

The genesis device at least fits in story logic - like DS9's minefield. The spore drive? Can't even manage that much.

That much is true. The Spore Drive doesn't seem like a technology that was invented to be explored, rather it was just as "we thought this was cool" idea that got out of hand. Difference between them is when a Trek episode uses gimmick technology, its generally just for one episode. The spore drive lasts a whole series and at the end of the day kind of just fizzles out.

 

[ZMOT]

A magic missile that can change any planentary body regardless of gravity and position within a star system and atmosphere into an Earth like planet within a few minutes is about as ridiculous as magic mushrooms. It also brings dead people back to live like the Spore Drive does. And the Spore Drive was originally a proto-Genesis device in the original scripts, its just a natural extension. It was never brought up again since it was too silly and too uber powerful.

didn't it only work because of the nebula anyway, making it highly dependent on the circumstances?
been quite a while since I've seen the movies, but I think they explain it or heavily implied it.

or it's just me rationalizing it so my brain doesn't hurt too much...

 

[Miller]

A magic missile that can change any planentary body regardless of gravity and position within a star system and atmosphere into an Earth like planet within a few minutes is about as ridiculous as magic mushrooms.

I think that the Genesis Device can only be used on planets that have the right conditions. The spore drive and the space mushrooms are bullshit based on pseudo-science and new age crap. The guy behind that concept - who is also named Paul Stamets - is a hippie (he's been on the Joe Rogan Podcast a couple of times).

 

[Sweet and Savoury]

IMHO

The Genesis device turned out to be a failure didn't it? The targeted planet only went earth like for a few years before starting to break apart due to the stresses involved.

Hence the rush to save Spock

So that would make it just another planet killing device in a galaxy already full of ways to destroy planets. That's why it was pretty much forgotten by the time of TNG.

At least that's the way I figure.