Genesis Device

[Collossus]

When I was reading Through Mike's Site the argument stood out about the Genesis Device making a planet out of the nebula and how much energy was required etc... but during the movie I had just assumed that the genesis wave had hit the moon that Regula 1 was orbiting. So I guess the question is it generally understood that the nebula was converted? or was it just dispersed and when the wave hit the moon that’s when the actual "planet creation" took place. Also I have no idea how this would matter for anything but I just thought it may have been discussed before.

[Stofsk]

To be perfectly honest I've *always* thought that the Genesis Planet was a converted Regula.

[SeaTrooper]

Yup, and then never seen again.

Still, I've always thought that the Genesis Device (Torpedo) would have been best used exactly as it was originally intended. Create livable worlds out of dead planetoids, that you can then build colonies, bases and infrastructure on. We have seen that the Fed use an awful lot of planetary bases, if only to support orbital facilities, yet habitable worlds are in limited supply and never exactly where you need them. Find a system that doesn't have any life in the liquid-water zone, and fire away. The GD could fix that, though the instability problems would still need to be addressed.

[MKSheppard]

I've always believed that it was the Mutara Nebula that was converted into the Genesis Planet.

[SeaTrooper]

I've always believed that it was the Mutara Nebula that was converted into the Genesis Planet.

What? Nooo! That's one of the more beautiful stellar phenomena out there!

[Metahive]

Don't fret, the Paulson Nebula is an exact copy as beautiful phenomenon. Are the specific mechanisms by which the Genesis Device works ever elaborated upon somewhere?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I always liked the idea that the Genesis Device was essentially a macroscale http://www.braungardt.com/Physics/Vacuu ... uation.htm; apart from anything else, it would mean that for once at least, the word "quantum" could be used in Star Trek with a perfectly straight face, as it would be authentically and entirely applicable.

Try this theory out for sense; the genesis torpedo contains essentially two parts, a vacuum fluctuation generator- protomatter- and a possibility matrix intended to try to steer and direct the outcome of the roll of the cosmic dice. The fluctuator fires through the possibility matrix, and is supposed to impress that shape, those possibilities, on the target. Grand scale transmutation.

(Whatever the hell a possibility matrix actually consists of, I have no idea, nor what one looks like or how it could be made to work, in fact I'm pretty certain it can't. Conceptually, it's a template. In this theory, despite being purest technobabble, this is the part of the genesis device that actually functioned more or less as advertised.)

The idea could be that once the thing exists, the young class M planet, it will be stabilised and prevented from disappearing in a puff of, well, vacuum, by being interacted with by the rest of the universe; this is the bit that sort of went wrong. The fluctuator didn't properly ram home the possibility matrix, probably (being essentially random) couldn't, and the planet became macroscopically uncertain before finally fluctuating back out of existence, with the only significant remains the improbably revived and continuing Spock.

This is, of course, complete speculation; I submit that it is consistent with the stated aims of the project, the Klingon reaction to it, and the subsequent total non-appearance of the Genesis Device thereafter.

[SeaTrooper]

Wow. So, not just a stellar roll of the dice, but a roll that needed to be made over and over again basically from one ur-second to the next! Roll less than a six just once, and the whole house of cards blows up in your face (I really enjoy dicing metaphors).

Also, it sounds like they really should have called Terry Pratchett in to help working out the Possibility Matrix. Or maybe Douglas Adams.

[TOSDOC]

The idea could be that once the thing exists, the young class M planet, it will be stabilised and prevented from disappearing in a puff of, well, vacuum, by being interacted with by the rest of the universe; this is the bit that sort of went wrong. The fluctuator didn't properly ram home the possibility matrix, probably (being essentially random) couldn't, and the planet became macroscopically uncertain before finally fluctuating back out of existence, with the only significant remains the improbably revived and continuing Spock.

Also, it sounds like they really should have called Terry Pratchett in to help working out the Possibility Matrix. Or maybe Douglas Adams.

I just had the same exact thought reading that post, especially where the planet became "macroscopically uncertain". It is interesting that Spock was able to continue to interact with the universe without consequence once removed from the influence of the matrix. I wonder if it would have really been just that simple to just take him off the planet given the parameters you stated above--it sounds like he should have puffed out here too.

I know it's not canon but it was fun to read at the time--the Star Trek II and III novelizations went quite a bit into how the Project Genesis scientists actually programmed the matrix, including each team member adding their own flairs (a mad hatter and march hare, the cook coming up with a "cornucopia tree", etc).

Couldn't the GD have used the nebula AND Regula as matter to create the new planet? It certainly had a fair range if Enterprise had to go to warp speed to escape its effects.

[Eternal_Freedom]

IIRC, the "Genesis Wave" series of books (which were shit books, but oh well) explained that the planet was unstable because the genesis effect burned itself out creating a planet from the nebula and didn't finish properly, which makes sense given that it was designed to convert existing planets

[Azron_Stoma]

the planet was unstable because the genesis effect burned itself out creating a planet from the nebula and didn't finish properly, which makes sense given that it was designed to convert existing planets

That's what I always figured was the cause.

[Baffalo]

It seems to me that with the creation of the Genesis planet, the Federation wanted nothing to do with the project and essentially classified it. My question is why? Starfleet is supposed to be a peacekeeping force, yet when the militaristic implications of the Genesis device are revealed, they can't touch it. I think politics had something to do with it, but there are a ton of things you could do with a device like Genesis that don't even involve full planetary conversion.

Mars is a world loaded with iron. The asteroids between Mars and Jupiter are full of nickel and iron. Find a few of the microplanetoids in the asteroid field or a planet like mars, fire off a device, and let it sift through the matter and create huge deposits of solid iron, solid nickel, solid titanium, etc and then just use tractor beams to haul these giant ingots away for processing. Completely revolutionize mining on dead worlds.

Also, if they could completely form new worlds, couldn't they also use the Genesis device to include basic infrastructure for a colony of say, 100,000 individuals? Load up the colonists and while in route, a starship drops the Genesis device and forms a world that's perfect for them when they arrive. It would cut back the costs of having to carry everything from their starting point, arriving and setting it up, etc. I know that in Star Trek II they were limited by the size of the memory banks, but that was a prototype. A working concept. If Starfleet wanted, they could give them a memory bank that would let them arrive with the infrastructure in place to establish a fortress world on the door step of every major threat to the Federation.

[Junghalli]

It seems to me that with the creation of the Genesis planet, the Federation wanted nothing to do with the project and essentially classified it. My question is why? Starfleet is supposed to be a peacekeeping force, yet when the militaristic implications of the Genesis device are revealed, they can't touch it.

Perhaps it ended up banned under some WMD non-proliferation treaty.

[Baffalo]

It seems to me that with the creation of the Genesis planet, the Federation wanted nothing to do with the project and essentially classified it. My question is why? Starfleet is supposed to be a peacekeeping force, yet when the militaristic implications of the Genesis device are revealed, they can't touch it.

Perhaps it ended up banned under some WMD non-proliferation treaty.

Perhaps, though I wonder how the Dominion War would have fared if the Federation had used Genesis a few times during the conflict? Fly a single ship to Cardassia, drop Genesis, boom. That's one major power knocked out.

[Uraniun235]

Let's remember the problems with Genesis:

- Genesis failed in its stated aims; its "success" hinged on the use of a substance which later blew up the whole thing, and also corrupted all of the data because the protomatter inclusion had been kept secret. It's possible that the whole thing might be fundamentally flawed - that no matter what they did, it either just wouldn't work initially or would ultimately prove unstable.
- One of the last of the Genesis team was killed; all the other scientists who actually worked on Genesis are dead except for Carol Marcus, and I'd bet she wouldn't want to try again or possibly even to give any notes on what they did beyond the executive summary she recorded previously. Similarly, all of the Genesis data on Space Station Regula was wiped in Star Trek II.
- Genesis was a huge diplomatic problem, so severely provoking the Klingons as to lead them to openly hail Kruge as a hero of the Empire in part for the destruction of Grissom and the death of David Marcus, and prompting the Federation council to clamp down hard on all information pertaining to Genesis. (Did they have an agent tailing McCoy, or did he just happen to be at the same bar? I'm not sure.) Part of the point of Star Trek II was that Genesis was, while intended to be the ultimate tool of creation, very easily perverted into the ultimate weapon, a weapon that eclipsed the antimatter arsenal of any Federation or Klingon starship. I bet the Klingons weren't the only ones to flip a bitch about it either.


Part of the whole point of Star Trek III, from the producers' point of view, was literally "this thing is too big an elephant to deal with if we want to keep making Star Trek." Whatever approach you want to take, Genesis is supposed to be failed and dead.

Perhaps, though I wonder how the Dominion War would have fared if the Federation had used Genesis a few times during the conflict? Fly a single ship to Cardassia, drop Genesis, boom. That's one major power knocked out.

There's no way the Federation would have consented to deliberately killing billions of civilians. DS9 liked to put a shadow behind the ever-gallant Federation but I think even the DS9 writers would have flinched at doing that (aside from the problem of "lol federation wins thanks to pulling technobabble solution out of ass, again").

[Stark]

It seems to me that with the creation of the Genesis planet, the Federation wanted nothing to do with the project and essentially classified it. My question is why? Starfleet is supposed to be a peacekeeping force, yet when the militaristic implications of the Genesis device are revealed, they can't touch it. I think politics had something to do with it, but there are a ton of things you could do with a device like Genesis that don't even involve full planetary conversion.

Mars is a world loaded with iron. The asteroids between Mars and Jupiter are full of nickel and iron. Find a few of the microplanetoids in the asteroid field or a planet like mars, fire off a device, and let it sift through the matter and create huge deposits of solid iron, solid nickel, solid titanium, etc and then just use tractor beams to haul these giant ingots away for processing. Completely revolutionize mining on dead worlds.

Also, if they could completely form new worlds, couldn't they also use the Genesis device to include basic infrastructure for a colony of say, 100,000 individuals? Load up the colonists and while in route, a starship drops the Genesis device and forms a world that's perfect for them when they arrive. It would cut back the costs of having to carry everything from their starting point, arriving and setting it up, etc. I know that in Star Trek II they were limited by the size of the memory banks, but that was a prototype. A working concept. If Starfleet wanted, they could give them a memory bank that would let them arrive with the infrastructure in place to establish a fortress world on the door step of every major threat to the Federation.

You're right, when the prototype fails, the first thing they should have done was try to make it massively more complex and ambitious.