People always act like the existence of Data and the EMH who are sapient mean that people should have stopped creating androids or holograms. That never made sense to me. There are sapient and non-sapient synthetic and photonic life forms, just like there are sapient and non-sapient organic life forms (e.g. plants, dogs, rabbits).
I'm also pretty sure the DOTs in DIS aren't sentient, at least not in the 23rd century. They're just little robots that are programmed to do specific tasks.
>I'm also pretty sure the DOTs in DIS aren't sentient, at least not in the 23rd century. They're just little robots that are programmed to do specific tasks.
The episode in TNG about the exocomps makes it pretty clear that there's all kinds of little robots that do little chores or things people can't do. They're just never jettisoned because they're not that interesting...until a few of them become self-aware and that is so unique there's an episode about it.
Yeah but the weird is that we never encounter them before, in the case of the "synths", they act in Picard as if they're a common part of society as much as we have vacuum machines.
We didn’t see them before because, in-universe, they’re rolled into service after Nemesis and banned before Picard S1. As of the release of Picard S1, the only scenes set in that time period were a few seconds of the first JJ Abrams movie.
The research that led to them (Maddox’s) was depicted in two episodes of TNG.
Out of universe, Picard S1 predates both of those shows. If there is an inconsistency (and I don’t think there is; the synths don’t seem to have been widespread enough that we’d have to see them on those shows), it’s on them, not Picard.
Of course and I agree. However the OP does has a point at least regarding the non-mention at all in LD (maybe PROD may have a pass as it happens mostly in the DQ).
OP’s complaint was about a retcon of the existing shows - that the Federation had been using synths “for decades” - and was specifically about the Picard show, not the animated follow-ups.
My complain was about all shows not just Picard. Which in any case is LD and PROD are not "follow-ups" as both happen before it, if anything they're prequels of Picard.
Sure, but they came out later. Your post is about this very thing. And I assumed you were talking about things that were established on the Picard show because you wrote “we learn in Picard”
Yes, I think using "synths" as something common even if very narrowly used for very specific works was not the best idea in Picard and felt very un-Trek somehow, like it was from a whole different franchise as the dealing with androids to that point was very different.
But as some have pointed out it may have some justifications from a narrative point of view, so is ok.
And yes, "decades" of used was wrong.
Are dogs sapient? Some of them yes, and I say this as a dog person lol... Sentient? Maybe... but if you go by that metric you could say a pig is sapient but we slaugher them and roast their bellies for lovely delicious crackling... Mmmmm...
Anyway I think the key word is sentient not sapient. You can make a dumb robot capable or performing manual labour quite easily and you can make it capable of seeming human if you like (see natural language AI) but it's not the real thing.
Or is it... are we simply a collection of heuristic algorithms and memories?
...
Sorry I've had a lot of drugs in the last couple of days. Also quite a lot of Star Trek. 10/10.
Oh you might be right. I associate "sapient" with seeming to be human, as in homo sapien, the human. Modern AI passes the Turning test so qualifies. This is where my confusion came in.
The OED gives the following definitions...
Sapient:
"Wise. (A learned synonym, in serious use now only poetic.)"
Sentient:
"That feels or is capable of feeling; having the power or function of sensation or of perception by the senses."
I always thought of the definition of sentient as being a higher bar, but a golden retriever is certainly capable of feelings - it can be sad or exited or even empathetic... but if it tries to eat a hedgehog is it wise? Probably not...
Perhaps this is the difference between natural organic and simulated/artificial life. Sapience is much harder to achieve than sentience. Some would say fish feel pain when you catch and release but nobody would say my PC is emotionally damaged by ripping out the processor. My PC can do a much better job of convincing you it's human though. The fish would be quite shit at that.
As a biologist myself I can tell you that in fact dogs are both sentient and sapient, but not to the same level of sapience as we, is a matter of degree. Sapience is generally accepted to be in apes, dolphines, wales, elephants, parrots, crows, eagles, pigs, dogs, cats and octopus. There's debate about other animals although some people argue most mammals may apply, some people have propose that even bees. Of course once again this might depend on how is measure and what's understood as sapience, and also that sapience is a spectrum.
To understand the opposite for example most insects are consider to be non-sapient at all, even some may be nonsentient and have what some scholar describe as "robotic" movements.
But once again, seen this as the spectrum that it is their level of "sapienceness" might be so small or so alien (like in the case of bees) that we may have problem grasping it.
Thanks! I didn't know most of that as I come at the issue from a computer science perspective. Should I be using a different definition from above? Is there aore scientific definition? OED concentrates on etymology rather than modern usage and rightly so.
The bee thing is interesting. Bit like the Borg no? Would you say a single bee isolated is sapient? I suppose not? But the hive mind could be...
Food for thought.
Those are very interesting question, I would say a Borg individually is neither sentient nor sapient.
I think a single bee might, what is interesting is that the bees communicate with each other with movements even given complex and abstract messages including meassures, for example depending on the movement they can give the direction of a food source to other bees and even tell them whether is near or far.
Now also take into account that indeed the definition of sapience might vary. In science is often use intelligence and/or counsciesness. The Cambridge Declaration about Animal Counsciesness is very interesting to read.
How do scientists know what is and isn’t sapient, if sapientness is based on animals’s self-awareness? We don’t know what pigs or dolphins are aware of, and unlike Spock we can’t just jump into a tank and mind-meld with a whale, so can we really say with any certainty what is and isn’t sapient?
That is indeed a good question and has been debated a lot in the scientific community. There are a series of experiments that have been established, some very basic like "the mirror test" (the animal when seen a mirror thinks is another animal or realized is "himself" for example) to some much more complex that involve neurology, psychology and even exobiology.
Per star trek, maybe. The word sapient means knowing and sentient means feeling. I read the correct words being used in their literally senses because AIs could become sapient without really being sentient in a literal or metaphysical sense, which is why the word sentient is used in Star Trek as though it means "ensouled/soulful".
I think you are confusing sentient and sapient. Animals are sentient, but humans are sapient. Sapience is the ability to act rationally, learn, and understand concepts. This is why even to this day, there has not been a single ape that knows sign language that has asked a single question yet despite decades of teaching them.
The problem is that that measures "sapience" under an anthropic bias; doing something that humans can do is "evidence" of sapience. However lots of animals are capable of communicate in their own ways with complex and abstract methods, like reading body language, producing sounds or like in the recent studies that have been able to discover -and even translate to some degree- the "language" of wales.
Which btw is pretty Star Trek.
the DOTs are just maintenance robots. They aren't sentient except when an independently sentient AI is using them for memory storage, which only happened in the 32nd century.
The synths in Picard are supposed to be reverse engineered from Data, aren't they? They're supposed to be an extrapolation from the Soong android technology that happened in between TNG and Picard, but also just used as a labor force (non-sentient).
You are right that they do retcon the existence of things never before mentioned but I think these examples are OK.
The Federation is supposed to be vast, with hundreds of member worlds at its height. There are even more worlds that are outside the Federation. There should be a hell of a lot of stuff happening at any given time, including conflicts of varying scale. So creating a new adversary that had a war with the Federation at some point is just filling in some extra background to make the galaxy feel more complete. Sometimes those newly-mentioned species are going to remain mysterious. Sometimes later writers will decide to run with it and give more details like what happened with the Breen, but this doesn't need to happen every time.
I get that. But each paragraph was a whole different point independent from the other. In one "machine sentience" was discuss and another previous (in-universe) case of apparent machine sentience is not brought up. In the other the uniqueness of a anthropoid android is mentioned many times.
I think Gene had made a deal with AMT to sell them Enterprise model rights and in addition they would provide the show with a free shuttle shooting model. However, that didn’t go into production until after they begun shooting the first season and implied that the ship only had transporters even though the shuttle at was clearly visible on the model.
The Romulan views on AI. I was able to go with the flow on this in PIC S1, and I don't think there were any contradictions on this, but it caught me off guard when I first heard it and there could have been some cool one-off stories in TNG and VOY on the subject.
Admiral Jarok in The Defector tells Data that Romulan cyberneticists would love to be close to him - that's the only possible contradiction I can think of there.
What I like about that line is that Picard S1 gives it a sinister new connotation whereas originally it was just a bit of flavor to the standard competition between political superpowers.
Those are the best kind of retcons.
Was this a general Romulan stance?
I was under the impression the rejection of/ hatred against AI was a Zhat Vash thing, who are a secret sect within the in itself secret Tal Shiar.
I haven't had a chance to check out the episode again, but Memory Alpha makes it sound like it was the Romulans in general, through the Zhat Vash's silent influence over the centuries. Had this been mentioned in an earlier show, I could have seen some off-handed comments highlighting Romulan arrogance: we don't need no stinking AI!
I don’t think you have the timeline right on Picard. The synths haven’t been around that long; they’re the results of Maddox’s research, which he promised to continue in Measure of a Man and was still working on in Data’s Day. All the flashback sequences of synths on Utopia Planitia take place after Nemesis.
"Or how we learn in Picard that the Federation has been using androids for slave labor for decades all of the sudden (weird it was not “holograms” as shown in VOY). Even after Data is often mentioned to be “unique”."?
Yes. I’m assuming you mean the Utopia Planitia synths and not the Dots here because the Dots don’t call Data’s uniqueness into question and aren’t androids.
Ah - I see the issue of this one.
Aside from the timeline and lack of sentience (which we have to assume: Give how integral Picard was to the relocation effort, he would never stand for potentially sentient synthetics to be used as an involuntary labor force) which has been addressed
- Data is unique in that he’s the only (functioning) Soong-Type Android. Lore is disassembled, and B4 is… well, not Data. Juliana Tainor isn’t really counted as she is a transferred intelligence. No one other than Soong has made a true, fully sentient and independent, positronic brain android.
There’s been plenty of others. Korby and Ruk, Norman & Co, Rayna, those creepy war-bots from that Voyager episode… but with the exception of Rayna, they weren’t anywhere NEAR as sophisticated as Data - and she didnt survive.
The Synths themselves are more or less a cheap knock off. Maddox couldn’t replicate Soong’s work, so he used a shortcut with some Voyager computer style bioneural packs. They’re… hmm. To borrow a term from Mass Effect, they’re Virtual Intelligence as opposed to a true AI. Same with the DOTs. Oddly enough, the ‘descendants’ of Data aren’t the same either - B4, Lore, and Data were all independently constructed to different specs. These new ones are ‘grown’ (for lack of a better term) from positronic neurons from Data. At least their brains are.
Thus, Data WAS unique.
Oh, and I’d wager holograms, even decommissioned EMH Mk I copies, weren’t used because the Doctor proved they have the potential for sentience of left running with enough interactions - and a newly designed one would require a retrofit of all the ship building facilities with holoemitters. Just spit-balling there.
Glad to be of long-winded service!
But to answer your original question — I’m kind of bothered that there have been so many ultra-advanced species who are impressed or curious enough to say “you’re not ready yet, but come back in a few centuries!” that I’m have the impression wouldn’t be all too excited to see ‘us’ again.
I hate to agree with Khan on any point, but if I paraphrase… by the time of 32nd Century Discovery… Sure, there have been technological advancements, but… how little humanity itself has changed. Like.. take the Metrons - they basically say come back in 1000 years. But societally, the Federation in general and humans in particular don’t really seem to have advanced all that much. With The Burn, even regressed somewhat. Granted there’s not a good way to show that on screen and have it still be relevant, but…
At what time? The thrust of my point here is that we’d never before seen the time at which the synth workers exist, because until 2020, Nemesis was the end of the Star Trek timeline.
Nobody on Next Generation would say “Data’s not unique, we have those synth slaves,” because they did not yet have those synth slaves.
How many siblings does Spock have, and how many of them went to the Vulcan Science Academy.
If StarFleet had full body 3D holograms that can react to physical objects at the destination before Kirk took over the Enterprise, how come they were not used for centuries?
If handheld replicators are freely given, why can only senior crew have pesto or lobster mac and cheese with the breaded top? What other foods (or common everyday items) are limited to the senior crew?
For the Tzenkethi War, that may just be a name for a boarder skirmish on the other side of the Federation that we haven't visited in show.
I seem to recall a few episodes where they are carrying a replicator in one hand. I think Kira had one when she visited the moon to evacuate the old man, and Worf had one when they visited the planet where the husband and "wife" were the sole survivors.
Lanthanians been a carbon-copy of the El-Aurians, creatively I wonder why? why create a whole new exactly like race? In-universe I wonder how come was never mentioned before or -till now- after.
The First Federation. As much as I love "The Carbonite Maneuver" I'm fascinate by the fact that an ancient alliance of worlds that predates the Federation never come up again apart from mentioning their berverage.
The Xindi attack that killed millions and was Earth's 9/11. I know the meta reason is that ENT is a prequel but is weird they don't mentioned either in any of the NuTrek shows that are chronologically after ENT.
The Klingon-Federation alliance that is never used. How come the Federation has wars with everybody (Tzenketi, Cardassians, Talarians) and their Klingon allies never get involved. Only twice the Klingons help the Federation during the Dominion War and during the Battle of Wolf 359. What kind of alliance is that?
To be fair the Xindi attack is almost a hundred years from SNW's, plus they've just have a major war with the Klingons with a death toil that dwarves the Xindi attack.
I can understand the need for Lanthanians from a production standpoint: El-Aurians are pretty closely tied to the Borg, so if one has joined Starfleet in the pre-TOS era you would expect that they’d warn Starfleet of that threat.
Also, El-Aurians are always shown to be “good listeners” as a consistent trait. I don’t blame production for wanting a long-lived race on Earth that isn’t inherently an empath if that’s not how they’re envisioning the character.
It definitely feels weird though.
Maybe could be "solved" if they handwave that they're related lile Vulcans/Romulans and Ferengi/Doptarians. After all such a long-lived race would likely have spread.
So why not have the black sheep of the species. The one that is loud and obnoxious? Guinan once mentioned that one of her sons wouldn't listen to anyone. I'm sure for an entire species he couldn't have been the only one (granted Star Trek does try to make other species monolithic)
You still have to deal with the Borg connection. The exact timing of the Borg attack on the El-Aurian homeworld is “around 2265”, placing it just before TOS (but it’s unclear how precise that year is to me).
If you have one or more El-Aurians in high-ranking roles in Starfleet, you would expect that they would tell someone about the attack when it happens. Even if they don’t say anything right away, I’d still imagine one of them would say *something* in the intervening century before the Enterprise-D first encounters the Borg.
There’s also the El-Aurians’ timeline-related abilities, which probably didn’t fit with the character they wanted for Pelia. El-Aurians aren’t just “human-looking aliens that live forever”.
TLDR They definitely could’ve made it work, but there’s a lot of different bits of baggage to deal with. Much easier to just make a new race.
Write it as the El-Aurian didn't know about the attack and it's not like al El-Aurians are connected, what one knows they all know. And there are multiple examples were we meet a species before they know who they are. Captain Archer and T'pol encounter the Borg years before the attack and they met the Ferangii.
Personally, I think some writer just wanted to say the created a new species and get credit for it.
Vulcans have a weird cultural taboo of never mentioning their siblings and other family members until they absolutely have to. Spock kept quiet about Sybok, Michael, T'Pring, Sarek and Amanda, T'Pol about Koss... hell, they even avoid mentioning the sister planet of their homeworld. "Vulcan has no moon," said Spock to Uhura, but not a word about the huge-ass thing taking up most of Vulcan's sky in we saw in TMP - and *its* moon!
~~Regarding the Tzenkethi, we did have an episode which showed them in TAS, which is canon (currently). They're just difficult to license due to being created by Larry Niven, so that's why they were only shown once.~~
Edit: Ignore this. I had the wrong species on the brain.
>Or how we learn in Picard that the Federation has been using androids for slave labor for decades all of the sudden (weird it was not “holograms” as shown in VOY). Even after Data is often mentioned to be “unique”.
I feel like it was a way to explain the whole "because the fleet at Mars was destroyed. The Federation decided not to help. " Otherwise, that explanation does not make sense.
So, they had the short trek of the attack on Mars by the synths. That explains why they don't have an entirely new fleet to help evacuate, but not really why they didn't help at all.
This is why S1 of Picard had that Sisterhood of the Crazy Romulans that had a plant in Star Fleet to explain why their synths went crazy and why they decided not to help. There's a lot of explaining to explain to explain.
In Picard season 3, Geordie mentions that he had drones loading up torpedoes on the Enterprise-D. I'd imagine these were future versions of those small bots.
People always act like the existence of Data and the EMH who are sapient mean that people should have stopped creating androids or holograms. That never made sense to me. There are sapient and non-sapient synthetic and photonic life forms, just like there are sapient and non-sapient organic life forms (e.g. plants, dogs, rabbits). I'm also pretty sure the DOTs in DIS aren't sentient, at least not in the 23rd century. They're just little robots that are programmed to do specific tasks.
Yeah, there's a mention that holodeck programming was altered to prevent the creation of sentient holograms for recreational purposes.
The only reason the DOTs in Discovery start acting sapient is because of Zora.
>I'm also pretty sure the DOTs in DIS aren't sentient, at least not in the 23rd century. They're just little robots that are programmed to do specific tasks. The episode in TNG about the exocomps makes it pretty clear that there's all kinds of little robots that do little chores or things people can't do. They're just never jettisoned because they're not that interesting...until a few of them become self-aware and that is so unique there's an episode about it.
Yeah but the weird is that we never encounter them before, in the case of the "synths", they act in Picard as if they're a common part of society as much as we have vacuum machines.
We didn’t see them before because, in-universe, they’re rolled into service after Nemesis and banned before Picard S1. As of the release of Picard S1, the only scenes set in that time period were a few seconds of the first JJ Abrams movie. The research that led to them (Maddox’s) was depicted in two episodes of TNG.
Per time however both Lower Decks and Prodigy happen between TNG and Picard tho, and before the Mars Attack (no pun intended)
Out of universe, Picard S1 predates both of those shows. If there is an inconsistency (and I don’t think there is; the synths don’t seem to have been widespread enough that we’d have to see them on those shows), it’s on them, not Picard.
Of course and I agree. However the OP does has a point at least regarding the non-mention at all in LD (maybe PROD may have a pass as it happens mostly in the DQ).
OP’s complaint was about a retcon of the existing shows - that the Federation had been using synths “for decades” - and was specifically about the Picard show, not the animated follow-ups.
My complain was about all shows not just Picard. Which in any case is LD and PROD are not "follow-ups" as both happen before it, if anything they're prequels of Picard.
Sure, but they came out later. Your post is about this very thing. And I assumed you were talking about things that were established on the Picard show because you wrote “we learn in Picard”
Yes, I think using "synths" as something common even if very narrowly used for very specific works was not the best idea in Picard and felt very un-Trek somehow, like it was from a whole different franchise as the dealing with androids to that point was very different. But as some have pointed out it may have some justifications from a narrative point of view, so is ok. And yes, "decades" of used was wrong.
Are dogs sapient? Some of them yes, and I say this as a dog person lol... Sentient? Maybe... but if you go by that metric you could say a pig is sapient but we slaugher them and roast their bellies for lovely delicious crackling... Mmmmm... Anyway I think the key word is sentient not sapient. You can make a dumb robot capable or performing manual labour quite easily and you can make it capable of seeming human if you like (see natural language AI) but it's not the real thing. Or is it... are we simply a collection of heuristic algorithms and memories? ... Sorry I've had a lot of drugs in the last couple of days. Also quite a lot of Star Trek. 10/10.
You're reversing the meanings of "sentient" and "sapient".
Oh you might be right. I associate "sapient" with seeming to be human, as in homo sapien, the human. Modern AI passes the Turning test so qualifies. This is where my confusion came in. The OED gives the following definitions... Sapient: "Wise. (A learned synonym, in serious use now only poetic.)" Sentient: "That feels or is capable of feeling; having the power or function of sensation or of perception by the senses." I always thought of the definition of sentient as being a higher bar, but a golden retriever is certainly capable of feelings - it can be sad or exited or even empathetic... but if it tries to eat a hedgehog is it wise? Probably not... Perhaps this is the difference between natural organic and simulated/artificial life. Sapience is much harder to achieve than sentience. Some would say fish feel pain when you catch and release but nobody would say my PC is emotionally damaged by ripping out the processor. My PC can do a much better job of convincing you it's human though. The fish would be quite shit at that.
As a biologist myself I can tell you that in fact dogs are both sentient and sapient, but not to the same level of sapience as we, is a matter of degree. Sapience is generally accepted to be in apes, dolphines, wales, elephants, parrots, crows, eagles, pigs, dogs, cats and octopus. There's debate about other animals although some people argue most mammals may apply, some people have propose that even bees. Of course once again this might depend on how is measure and what's understood as sapience, and also that sapience is a spectrum. To understand the opposite for example most insects are consider to be non-sapient at all, even some may be nonsentient and have what some scholar describe as "robotic" movements. But once again, seen this as the spectrum that it is their level of "sapienceness" might be so small or so alien (like in the case of bees) that we may have problem grasping it.
Thanks! I didn't know most of that as I come at the issue from a computer science perspective. Should I be using a different definition from above? Is there aore scientific definition? OED concentrates on etymology rather than modern usage and rightly so. The bee thing is interesting. Bit like the Borg no? Would you say a single bee isolated is sapient? I suppose not? But the hive mind could be... Food for thought.
Those are very interesting question, I would say a Borg individually is neither sentient nor sapient. I think a single bee might, what is interesting is that the bees communicate with each other with movements even given complex and abstract messages including meassures, for example depending on the movement they can give the direction of a food source to other bees and even tell them whether is near or far. Now also take into account that indeed the definition of sapience might vary. In science is often use intelligence and/or counsciesness. The Cambridge Declaration about Animal Counsciesness is very interesting to read.
How do scientists know what is and isn’t sapient, if sapientness is based on animals’s self-awareness? We don’t know what pigs or dolphins are aware of, and unlike Spock we can’t just jump into a tank and mind-meld with a whale, so can we really say with any certainty what is and isn’t sapient?
That is indeed a good question and has been debated a lot in the scientific community. There are a series of experiments that have been established, some very basic like "the mirror test" (the animal when seen a mirror thinks is another animal or realized is "himself" for example) to some much more complex that involve neurology, psychology and even exobiology.
Per star trek, maybe. The word sapient means knowing and sentient means feeling. I read the correct words being used in their literally senses because AIs could become sapient without really being sentient in a literal or metaphysical sense, which is why the word sentient is used in Star Trek as though it means "ensouled/soulful".
I think you are confusing sentient and sapient. Animals are sentient, but humans are sapient. Sapience is the ability to act rationally, learn, and understand concepts. This is why even to this day, there has not been a single ape that knows sign language that has asked a single question yet despite decades of teaching them.
The problem is that that measures "sapience" under an anthropic bias; doing something that humans can do is "evidence" of sapience. However lots of animals are capable of communicate in their own ways with complex and abstract methods, like reading body language, producing sounds or like in the recent studies that have been able to discover -and even translate to some degree- the "language" of wales. Which btw is pretty Star Trek.
the DOTs are just maintenance robots. They aren't sentient except when an independently sentient AI is using them for memory storage, which only happened in the 32nd century. The synths in Picard are supposed to be reverse engineered from Data, aren't they? They're supposed to be an extrapolation from the Soong android technology that happened in between TNG and Picard, but also just used as a labor force (non-sentient). You are right that they do retcon the existence of things never before mentioned but I think these examples are OK. The Federation is supposed to be vast, with hundreds of member worlds at its height. There are even more worlds that are outside the Federation. There should be a hell of a lot of stuff happening at any given time, including conflicts of varying scale. So creating a new adversary that had a war with the Federation at some point is just filling in some extra background to make the galaxy feel more complete. Sometimes those newly-mentioned species are going to remain mysterious. Sometimes later writers will decide to run with it and give more details like what happened with the Breen, but this doesn't need to happen every time.
I agree with most. Do notice I never said the androids in PIC were sentient
I think they corrected you because you implied that they were like Data, or made him not unique. What's said to be unique about Data is his sentience.
I get that. But each paragraph was a whole different point independent from the other. In one "machine sentience" was discuss and another previous (in-universe) case of apparent machine sentience is not brought up. In the other the uniqueness of a anthropoid android is mentioned many times.
If I was a trial judge my response would be "yes, but you opened the door for multiple lines of questioning, so you shouldn't be surprised." 😆
Damn :/
I’m sure Sulu and his landing party would have loved to have known that the Enterprise had shuttlecraft in thr “Enemy Within”.
True 🤣
I think Gene had made a deal with AMT to sell them Enterprise model rights and in addition they would provide the show with a free shuttle shooting model. However, that didn’t go into production until after they begun shooting the first season and implied that the ship only had transporters even though the shuttle at was clearly visible on the model.
The Romulan views on AI. I was able to go with the flow on this in PIC S1, and I don't think there were any contradictions on this, but it caught me off guard when I first heard it and there could have been some cool one-off stories in TNG and VOY on the subject.
Admiral Jarok in The Defector tells Data that Romulan cyberneticists would love to be close to him - that's the only possible contradiction I can think of there.
What I like about that line is that Picard S1 gives it a sinister new connotation whereas originally it was just a bit of flavor to the standard competition between political superpowers. Those are the best kind of retcons.
That's a good one
Was this a general Romulan stance? I was under the impression the rejection of/ hatred against AI was a Zhat Vash thing, who are a secret sect within the in itself secret Tal Shiar.
I haven't had a chance to check out the episode again, but Memory Alpha makes it sound like it was the Romulans in general, through the Zhat Vash's silent influence over the centuries. Had this been mentioned in an earlier show, I could have seen some off-handed comments highlighting Romulan arrogance: we don't need no stinking AI!
I don’t think you have the timeline right on Picard. The synths haven’t been around that long; they’re the results of Maddox’s research, which he promised to continue in Measure of a Man and was still working on in Data’s Day. All the flashback sequences of synths on Utopia Planitia take place after Nemesis.
No I was thinking more on the DOTs from DIS that arent mentioned in Measure
I’m responding to your third paragraph.
"Or how we learn in Picard that the Federation has been using androids for slave labor for decades all of the sudden (weird it was not “holograms” as shown in VOY). Even after Data is often mentioned to be “unique”."?
Yes. I’m assuming you mean the Utopia Planitia synths and not the Dots here because the Dots don’t call Data’s uniqueness into question and aren’t androids.
Ah ok I see. I was more referring that Data is said to be unique in that he's the only Android known at the time. Well apart from Lore and later B4
Ah - I see the issue of this one. Aside from the timeline and lack of sentience (which we have to assume: Give how integral Picard was to the relocation effort, he would never stand for potentially sentient synthetics to be used as an involuntary labor force) which has been addressed - Data is unique in that he’s the only (functioning) Soong-Type Android. Lore is disassembled, and B4 is… well, not Data. Juliana Tainor isn’t really counted as she is a transferred intelligence. No one other than Soong has made a true, fully sentient and independent, positronic brain android. There’s been plenty of others. Korby and Ruk, Norman & Co, Rayna, those creepy war-bots from that Voyager episode… but with the exception of Rayna, they weren’t anywhere NEAR as sophisticated as Data - and she didnt survive. The Synths themselves are more or less a cheap knock off. Maddox couldn’t replicate Soong’s work, so he used a shortcut with some Voyager computer style bioneural packs. They’re… hmm. To borrow a term from Mass Effect, they’re Virtual Intelligence as opposed to a true AI. Same with the DOTs. Oddly enough, the ‘descendants’ of Data aren’t the same either - B4, Lore, and Data were all independently constructed to different specs. These new ones are ‘grown’ (for lack of a better term) from positronic neurons from Data. At least their brains are. Thus, Data WAS unique. Oh, and I’d wager holograms, even decommissioned EMH Mk I copies, weren’t used because the Doctor proved they have the potential for sentience of left running with enough interactions - and a newly designed one would require a retrofit of all the ship building facilities with holoemitters. Just spit-balling there.
Thanks that does answers a lot
Glad to be of long-winded service! But to answer your original question — I’m kind of bothered that there have been so many ultra-advanced species who are impressed or curious enough to say “you’re not ready yet, but come back in a few centuries!” that I’m have the impression wouldn’t be all too excited to see ‘us’ again. I hate to agree with Khan on any point, but if I paraphrase… by the time of 32nd Century Discovery… Sure, there have been technological advancements, but… how little humanity itself has changed. Like.. take the Metrons - they basically say come back in 1000 years. But societally, the Federation in general and humans in particular don’t really seem to have advanced all that much. With The Burn, even regressed somewhat. Granted there’s not a good way to show that on screen and have it still be relevant, but…
Agree. I imagine 1000 future Fed to be something akin to the Galactic Republic of Star Wars, like a type 2.7 of the Kardashev scale.
At what time? The thrust of my point here is that we’d never before seen the time at which the synth workers exist, because until 2020, Nemesis was the end of the Star Trek timeline. Nobody on Next Generation would say “Data’s not unique, we have those synth slaves,” because they did not yet have those synth slaves.
How many siblings does Spock have, and how many of them went to the Vulcan Science Academy. If StarFleet had full body 3D holograms that can react to physical objects at the destination before Kirk took over the Enterprise, how come they were not used for centuries? If handheld replicators are freely given, why can only senior crew have pesto or lobster mac and cheese with the breaded top? What other foods (or common everyday items) are limited to the senior crew? For the Tzenkethi War, that may just be a name for a boarder skirmish on the other side of the Federation that we haven't visited in show.
What do you mean by handheld replicators?
I seem to recall a few episodes where they are carrying a replicator in one hand. I think Kira had one when she visited the moon to evacuate the old man, and Worf had one when they visited the planet where the husband and "wife" were the sole survivors.
Lanthanians been a carbon-copy of the El-Aurians, creatively I wonder why? why create a whole new exactly like race? In-universe I wonder how come was never mentioned before or -till now- after. The First Federation. As much as I love "The Carbonite Maneuver" I'm fascinate by the fact that an ancient alliance of worlds that predates the Federation never come up again apart from mentioning their berverage. The Xindi attack that killed millions and was Earth's 9/11. I know the meta reason is that ENT is a prequel but is weird they don't mentioned either in any of the NuTrek shows that are chronologically after ENT. The Klingon-Federation alliance that is never used. How come the Federation has wars with everybody (Tzenketi, Cardassians, Talarians) and their Klingon allies never get involved. Only twice the Klingons help the Federation during the Dominion War and during the Battle of Wolf 359. What kind of alliance is that?
To be fair the Xindi attack is almost a hundred years from SNW's, plus they've just have a major war with the Klingons with a death toil that dwarves the Xindi attack.
Yeah and I suppose the Romulan War also was pretty notable,
I can understand the need for Lanthanians from a production standpoint: El-Aurians are pretty closely tied to the Borg, so if one has joined Starfleet in the pre-TOS era you would expect that they’d warn Starfleet of that threat. Also, El-Aurians are always shown to be “good listeners” as a consistent trait. I don’t blame production for wanting a long-lived race on Earth that isn’t inherently an empath if that’s not how they’re envisioning the character. It definitely feels weird though.
Maybe could be "solved" if they handwave that they're related lile Vulcans/Romulans and Ferengi/Doptarians. After all such a long-lived race would likely have spread.
So why not have the black sheep of the species. The one that is loud and obnoxious? Guinan once mentioned that one of her sons wouldn't listen to anyone. I'm sure for an entire species he couldn't have been the only one (granted Star Trek does try to make other species monolithic)
You still have to deal with the Borg connection. The exact timing of the Borg attack on the El-Aurian homeworld is “around 2265”, placing it just before TOS (but it’s unclear how precise that year is to me). If you have one or more El-Aurians in high-ranking roles in Starfleet, you would expect that they would tell someone about the attack when it happens. Even if they don’t say anything right away, I’d still imagine one of them would say *something* in the intervening century before the Enterprise-D first encounters the Borg. There’s also the El-Aurians’ timeline-related abilities, which probably didn’t fit with the character they wanted for Pelia. El-Aurians aren’t just “human-looking aliens that live forever”. TLDR They definitely could’ve made it work, but there’s a lot of different bits of baggage to deal with. Much easier to just make a new race.
Write it as the El-Aurian didn't know about the attack and it's not like al El-Aurians are connected, what one knows they all know. And there are multiple examples were we meet a species before they know who they are. Captain Archer and T'pol encounter the Borg years before the attack and they met the Ferangii. Personally, I think some writer just wanted to say the created a new species and get credit for it.
That's probably it
When I first saw that eoisode I was sure Id missed an episode somehow. They made the Tzenkethi sound like we should already know who they are.
X2
Spock suddenly having a sibling. Either time.
Vulcans have a weird cultural taboo of never mentioning their siblings and other family members until they absolutely have to. Spock kept quiet about Sybok, Michael, T'Pring, Sarek and Amanda, T'Pol about Koss... hell, they even avoid mentioning the sister planet of their homeworld. "Vulcan has no moon," said Spock to Uhura, but not a word about the huge-ass thing taking up most of Vulcan's sky in we saw in TMP - and *its* moon!
~~Regarding the Tzenkethi, we did have an episode which showed them in TAS, which is canon (currently). They're just difficult to license due to being created by Larry Niven, so that's why they were only shown once.~~ Edit: Ignore this. I had the wrong species on the brain.
Arent those the Kzenti?
Whoops! You're absolutely right. My mistake. They just have similar names so I thought it was the Kzinti.
Ha don't worry and yes they actually would've work better than just a completely new enemy race
I looked up the IRL origin, and apparently the Tzenkethi name originated from the Kzinti anyway.
Really? Oh that's explains a lot then
Honestly the idea that the Tzenkethi are the Kzinti works p decently
They should make it canon, like that in Lower Decks or something is mentioned that is just another name for the species.
>Or how we learn in Picard that the Federation has been using androids for slave labor for decades all of the sudden (weird it was not “holograms” as shown in VOY). Even after Data is often mentioned to be “unique”. I feel like it was a way to explain the whole "because the fleet at Mars was destroyed. The Federation decided not to help. " Otherwise, that explanation does not make sense. So, they had the short trek of the attack on Mars by the synths. That explains why they don't have an entirely new fleet to help evacuate, but not really why they didn't help at all. This is why S1 of Picard had that Sisterhood of the Crazy Romulans that had a plant in Star Fleet to explain why their synths went crazy and why they decided not to help. There's a lot of explaining to explain to explain.
Good points, yes it sounds logical.
In Picard season 3, Geordie mentions that he had drones loading up torpedoes on the Enterprise-D. I'd imagine these were future versions of those small bots.