Old Races of Star Trek

[Kitsune]

This topic may have been looked at before but I am curious how powerful people think the Star Trek old races were. I mean groups like the creators of the doomsday device, the creators of the dyson sphere, and other stuff that I may not remember. I am not talking about the Q or similar groups.

[Jeremy]

I would venture to say that something that could create the Dyson Sphere would be worthy of entance into the the Old Republic, and lets face it everything is worthy of being conquered for the Empire

[Wild Karrde]

This topic may have been looked at before but I am curious how powerful people think the Star Trek old races were. I mean groups like the creators of the doomsday device, the creators of the dyson sphere, and other stuff that I may not remember. I am not talking about the Q or similar groups.

We never learned who created either of those things. All we know is that the doomsday device was thought to be from another galaxy and the dyson sphere was theorized to have been built by beings with advanced technology.

[Lord Pounder]

The Preservers are quite powerful according to references on them, as are the First Federation whos Daedelius(sp) class ships could have taken then entire federation out with one ship.

[Admiral Johnason]

The race that buotl the probe in ST:4 was pretty powerful according to the book Probe, but that is debatable. The Borg are getting pussified, and there was the first race that was the ancestors of all the current humanoid races.

[BenRG]

...there was the first race that was the ancestors of all the current humanoid races.

Maybe they arrived on a lost starship from a galaxy far, far away?

Seriously, I would rank the ST elder races as follows:

1. The Preservers (possibly the same race as the proto-humanoids or the Q Continuum)
2. The First Federation
3. The Iconians
4. The builders of the Doomsday Machine
5. The various psi-powerful races encountered in TOS such as the Organians
6. The T'kon Empire
7. The Dino-descendants from STV - 'Distant Origin'

Any clue what happened to the First Federation? I think that after spending some time with that Lieutenant (was it Reilly?), the commander of the 'Fesarius' recommended that they lay low until these horrific self-righteous humanoids were extinct. On the other hand, it would have been lovely to see the FF respond to a Borg attack... Three cubes flying through a wreckage of hundreds of starships only to be blown up by one shot each from a FF sphere...

[EDIT - Added the Iconians to the list. Thanks NecronLord!]

[Peregrin Toker]

The Dino-descendants from STV - 'Distant Origin'

They're called the Voth.

[NecronLord]

Iconians.

[Jeremy]

Voth kick ass, I wonder if they've met the Borg yet.

[Admiral Johnason]

Who's the First Federation? I only know of the UPF.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Voth kick ass, I wonder if they've met the Borg yet.

I believe it was said that they'd met them and had been holding them off for centuries, though that might be something from Satan's website which is remembered because it's of better quality than the putrid trash actually in the canon on Voyager.

[Peregrin Toker]

Satan's website

DITL?

[Drooling Iguana]

I think that the reason why the old races were so much more powerful than the 24th century races is that there's a multi-phasic quantum gravometric anomaly causing the entire galaxy to get dumber and dumber as time goes on. This also explains why Kirk's crew was so much smarter than Picard's.

[Darth Wong]

The Dyson Sphere is indicative of astounding industrial capabilities and equally astounding stupidity (if you can't figure out why it's a ridiculously wasteful construct, you need to think harder).

As for the Doomsday Machine, I wouldn't necessarily chalk that up to a superior old race (and remember that ST novels have no standing). The thing was taken out by a 100-megaton bomb; hardly stupendous, really.

Of the two, I'd say that the people who made the Dyson Sphere are so vastly superior to the people who made the Doomsday machine that they should not be compared. However, they were also morons: such fantastic effort to create an oversized solar energy collector.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Of the two, I'd say that the people who made the Dyson Sphere are so vastly superior to the people who made the Doomsday machine that they should not be compared. However, they were also morons: such fantastic effort to create an oversized solar energy collector.

I suspect they were the same race that did the genetic seeding. They were probably in decline by that point in time, and for all we know it could have been some kind of amusement trinket - The equivlant of Nero's Golden Palace or some other frivolity for a wealthy ruler.

[Patrick Ogaard]

Of the two, I'd say that the people who made the Dyson Sphere are so vastly superior to the people who made the Doomsday machine that they should not be compared. However, they were also morons: such fantastic effort to create an oversized solar energy collector.

I suspect they were the same race that did the genetic seeding. They were probably in decline by that point in time, and for all we know it could have been some kind of amusement trinket - The equivlant of Nero's Golden Palace or some other frivolity for a wealthy ruler.

Actually, linking the Preservers (to use one of the conjectural terms for the folks who preserved all those pre-industrial human societies like Kirk's Native Americans) and the sphere builders might not be unreasonable. In that case, building a Dyson sphere would make perfect sense: with suitably sculpted mountains and oceans and sheer distance, it would have been possible to preserve every civilization of every sapient species in the galaxy within the enormous habitable surface area of such a sphere produced using (currently flat-out impossible) artificial gravity systems. There'd likely be room enough left over for some spacious zoos and a summer home for the caretaker.

It would have been much simpler to centralize the GBRF (Galactic Biosphere Rescue Fund) in one Dyson sphere rather than to spread the operations around on uncounted asteroids and planets that the galactic aborigines are going to inevitably stomp around on.

A further point would be that a well-made Dyson sphere with a really, really, really big warp drive and good shields might allow those inside to evade or block the Trek galaxy's omnipresent stupidity rays and mediocrity radiation. A solid-shelled, mobile Dyson sphere would also be one good way to move an entire galactic-scale civilization from a doomed galaxy to a fresh home in a different galaxy.

[BenRG]

Iconians.

Oops! That's right, the gate builders. Thanks for the heads-up, NL. I'll add them to the list now.

*Goes up and edits list*

[NecronLord]

It's also possible that the Iconians were the Sphere builders, based on the neutronium, and ueber tech (galactic scale portal). Prehaps the Preservers were the Iconians by another name?

besides, those portals would be useful for getting around the dyson sphere.

[BenRG]

It's also possible that the Iconians were the Sphere builders, based on the neutronium, and ueber tech (galactic scale portal). Prehaps the Preservers were the Iconians by another name?

The Perservers were active about 65 million years ago, which is the time they rescued the distant ancestors of the Voth from Earth. I am fairly sure that puts them way beyond the oldest estimations of the age of the Iconian Empire.

I'll stick with my theory of them being possibly the Sphere Builders (an artificial 'hub' for their empire?) and definately the proto-humanoids.

[Kitsune]

I don't know how to judge a Dyson sphere and I know they have been featured by other writers. I don't know the writers who already wrote about them explain.

One item I don't know understand about the writers of the Star Trek episode is would not the designers have studied the star for a while to make sure that there was no instability in the star and they should be well equipped for that. A yellow main sequence star should give them at least a billion years before it started doing anything funny and I don't think the race who created it was that old. It might even make sense to build the sphere around a red dwarf, build the sphere smaller and you have an incredibly long lifespan for the star.

[NecronLord]

Were the Voth "preserved?" I thought the preservers said they only preserved sentient speicies in TOS?

[BenRG]

Were the Voth "preserved?" I thought the preservers said they only preserved sentient speicies in TOS?

If I understood what was said in 'Distant Origin', the Voth were moved to the Delta Quadrant at about the time of the 'incident' that led to the mass-extinction at the end of the Cretateous Period.

They might have even have already evolved all the way to early sentience at the time the Preservers transplanted them. A cometry impact or a large-scale volcanic epoch wouldn't leave much trace of even an industrialised society, espeically if you are only looking after 65 million years have passed.

[Jeremy]

or a great flood some thousand years ago.... ::looks in the direction of the Bermuda Triangle::

[Hades]

Some history of the First Federation and Presevers is explored in one of Shatners books..... of course thats completly not conon but i like the ideas in it.