You want a mythic power behind it. The guy can incarnate a ship with apparently zero effort, and it's a match for the E-D. That's more than enough capability for anyone sane.
*I* am the one who wants "more capability"? You are the one who wants to give him the ability to wipe out fifty billion people of a BDZ-capable race through raw firepower. I object to this because it's *far* more then what we've seen Uxbridge do. He wasn't able to recreate more then a patch of grass around his house, he couldn't sustain his fake wife, his fake ship *at maximum power* only scorched the hull of the E-D - does that sound even remotely sufficient to kill of an entire spacefaring race in the span of a few weeks?
Are you high? Seriously, are you? What do you think happens when you have some time to bombard a civilization with antimatter? This 'entire spacefaring race' was so tiny and weak it wasn't noticed despite almost definately being within Federation space.
I do not wnat his power to be "mythic", either. Telepathy in Trek, even offensive telepathy, is a biological ability that's been understood to some extent and has quantifiable limits.
Yes. I've never seen evidence, however, it has multi-lightyear ranges, the ability to hit 50 billion targets, and kill them. At least not the Dowd's version of it. That is why I have rejected it. We see him incapacitate Troi. There's a big fucking leap from 'Made Troi's head throb' to 'Wipe out civilization'.
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Out Of Context theatre: Ron Paul has repeatedly said he's not a racist. - Destructinator XIII on why Ron Paul isn't racist.
Darth Wong wrote:True, I wouldn't necessarily rule out the "psionic attack" idea, although it does beg the question of why someone of such vast telepathic power couldn't simply create illusions and fool the crew into thinking they never saw a damned thing. That would seem to be a much less clumsy way of solving the problem than what he ended up doing.
I'd not even give a damn about the power if he had show anything like the range, ability to affect multiple targets, et cetera, when we saw him. Instead, we see him maintaining some constructs, and psionically raping Troi. Something that it seemed everyone who could bend spoons could do, some times.
Manic Progressive: A liberal who violently swings from anger at politicos to despondency over them.
Out Of Context theatre: Ron Paul has repeatedly said he's not a racist. - Destructinator XIII on why Ron Paul isn't racist.
I think the whole argument over how the Dowd killed the Husnock should wait until you establish with some certainty that the Dowd did kill the Husnock.
We have only Kevin Uxbridge's word that the Husnock ever existed, and according to his own description, he's a professional liar -- a being of "disguises and false surroundings". We never heard of the Husnock before, and we haven't heard of any relics of their civilization since. They could be entirely made up.
We know that the colony sent a distress signal saying they were under attack, but we have no substantial information about the attacker. For all we know, the Dowd was the attacker, and Kevin Uxbridge was just an ordinary colonist who died with his wife on Rana IV and had his identity stolen by the Dowd.
We know that the Dowd wanted the Enterprise to go away. He evidently had the power to destroy the Enterprise (based on the power of the Husnock ship illusion), but destroying the Enterprise would likely lead to further investigation by the Federation. To get them to really leave him alone, he needed to create a story that would satisfy Picard. Everything that the Dowd told Picard could be a lie. True or false, the Enterprise left with an explanation of events on Rana IV that satisfied them.
What happened for sure is that the Dowd got what he claimed he wanted: the Federation left him alone on Rana IV to do as he pleased.
As for his demonstrated abilities, he can create an "illusory" starship capable of easily defeating the Enterprise, and he can create a "song that never ends" in Troi's head. The ability to kill 50 billion sentient beings is just a claim with no evidence to back it up.
"This is supposed to be a happy occasion... Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who."
-- The King of Swamp Castle, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
"Nothing of consequence happened today. " -- Diary of King George III, July 4, 1776
"This is not bad; this is a conspiracy to remove happiness from existence. It seeks to wrap its hedgehog hand around the still beating heart of the personification of good and squeeze until it is stilled."
-- Chuck Sonnenburg on Voyager's "Elogium"
Of course, it also remains entirely possible that he was totally lying out of his ass: that he and his wife had a fight and he got pissed off and killed her along with the whole colony, and then he made up some bullshit story about "Husnock" to get Picard off his back.
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness
"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
Darth Wong wrote:Of course, it also remains entirely possible that he was totally lying out of his ass....
Didn't I just say that?
"This is supposed to be a happy occasion... Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who."
-- The King of Swamp Castle, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
"Nothing of consequence happened today. " -- Diary of King George III, July 4, 1776
"This is not bad; this is a conspiracy to remove happiness from existence. It seeks to wrap its hedgehog hand around the still beating heart of the personification of good and squeeze until it is stilled."
-- Chuck Sonnenburg on Voyager's "Elogium"
Darth Wong wrote:Yes, but I just thought I'd add the hypothesis that he killed his wife after some sort of domestic squabble.
Well, I suppose providing a possible motive does make sense.
"This is supposed to be a happy occasion... Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who."
-- The King of Swamp Castle, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
"Nothing of consequence happened today. " -- Diary of King George III, July 4, 1776
"This is not bad; this is a conspiracy to remove happiness from existence. It seeks to wrap its hedgehog hand around the still beating heart of the personification of good and squeeze until it is stilled."
-- Chuck Sonnenburg on Voyager's "Elogium"
Bounty wrote:*I* am the one who wants "more capability"? You are the one who wants to give him the ability to wipe out fifty billion people of a BDZ-capable race through raw firepower
I took a look at some screencaps of the survivors and I have to say that SN is definitely not wanking the Dowd. What is more wanking, killing fifty billion people with telepathy or using firepower, the former of which there is no possible defense unless you're a telepath, the latter you can actually beat if you have enough ships and firepower on your own side (the Borg have shields at least an order of magnitude more powerful than the AQ powers and their ships can be beaten if you have enough).
Also it is not a BDZ.
There's still standing trees and logs. It's still a lot more violent than anything the Federation has ever done--and given photon torpedoes seem to be high-tech cannonballs, if the Federation ever fought the Husnock it looks like the Federation would be in a clusterfuck. But it's not a BDZ.
As for the Federation never hearing of the Husnock, everybody can time travel in Star Trek so wiping out such a powerful race is no problem as long as you're willing to transition to a new timeline and the cosmic censor doesn't get you. Maybe that's what Uxbridge did. He'd have to time travel a whole new planet though. The alternative is there's an unknown race out there that can wipe the floor with the Federation.
Time-travel doesn't work as an explanation. If he could wipe out the Husnock's entire existence from the timeline, that would have also undone the events that led to his wife's death. Assuming he's telling the truth about what happened.
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness
"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
And also I would like to apologize for the author's intent. For all we know they wanted Kevin Uxbridge to shoot a lightning bolt of energy at the Husnock homeworld and annihilate it, or use a biogenic device, or anything. All that really matters is he's capable of doing it. In a versus, that would mean quantification, and it's obvious that the Husnock are capable of 1e9 megatons, or killing fifty billion people at undetermined range if you absolutely must wank the Douwd. But that doesn't mean if Picard shot a photon torpedo at Uxbridge he wouldn't have been vaporized.
The Douwd are also weaker than the Q. He can't teleport, or he would have teleported to his wife and teleported himself and his wife away from the colony to save her. Or he could have teleported Husnock away from the homeworld like how Q can teleport a ship thousands of light years. The Douwd also don't have the continuum to nurse their wounds in if they're in trouble. So it looks like the Douwd are really paper tigers.
Darth Wong wrote:Time-travel doesn't work as an explanation. If he could wipe out the Husnock's entire existence from the timeline, that would have also undone the events that led to his wife's death. Assuming he's telling the truth about what happened.
You don't remember that illogical time travel episode in Voyager where that guy with the chronton torpedoes kept trying to save his wife's life and wiped out the bad guys from the timeline entirely but could never get it right? Damn.
Anyway if it isn't time travel then it could be the kind of thing where the Husnock are just really powerful because they figured out a way of using streams of antimatter as a weapon, which there would be no conventional defense against. They could have just one homeworld.
brianeyci wrote:Anyway if it isn't time travel then it could be the kind of thing where the Husnock are just really powerful because they figured out a way of using streams of antimatter as a weapon, which there would be no conventional defense against. They could have just one homeworld.
Brian
Just a question; why are we assuming the Dowd ship/construct's weapons are identical to Husnock?
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Out Of Context theatre: Ron Paul has repeatedly said he's not a racist. - Destructinator XIII on why Ron Paul isn't racist.
SirNitram wrote:Just a question; why are we assuming the Dowd ship/construct's weapons are identical to Husnock?
You're right that's too much of an assumption.
But if not, and the Husnock did that to the planet with millions of photon torpedoes... they would have to hundreds of ships to do that to Rana (again assuming the guy's not bullshitting), and it gets harder to rationalize why the Federation hasn't heard of them the larger they are.
SirNitram wrote:Just a question; why are we assuming the Dowd ship/construct's weapons are identical to Husnock?
Some of us aren't even assuming there was ever really any such thing as a Husnock, which would mean that there is, in fact, no difference.
"This is supposed to be a happy occasion... Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who."
-- The King of Swamp Castle, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
"Nothing of consequence happened today. " -- Diary of King George III, July 4, 1776
"This is not bad; this is a conspiracy to remove happiness from existence. It seeks to wrap its hedgehog hand around the still beating heart of the personification of good and squeeze until it is stilled."
-- Chuck Sonnenburg on Voyager's "Elogium"
SirNitram wrote:Just a question; why are we assuming the Dowd ship/construct's weapons are identical to Husnock?
You're right that's too much of an assumption.
But if not, and the Husnock did that to the planet with millions of photon torpedoes... they would have to hundreds of ships to do that to Rana (again assuming the guy's not bullshitting), and it gets harder to rationalize why the Federation hasn't heard of them the larger they are.
Brian
And so it is we come to question what kind of weapons could do that. Now, IIRC, antimatter should do that, particularly if 'jacketed' means 'somehow prevented from annihilating until impact' and fired on a planet. These weapons wouldn't be especially powerful against shielded ships; the shields prevent the material from annihilating against the hull. So basically, you get alot of bang for your buck on planetary bombardment, not so much elsewhere.
Manic Progressive: A liberal who violently swings from anger at politicos to despondency over them.
Out Of Context theatre: Ron Paul has repeatedly said he's not a racist. - Destructinator XIII on why Ron Paul isn't racist.
SirNitram wrote:And so it is we come to question what kind of weapons could do that. Now, IIRC, antimatter should do that, particularly if 'jacketed' means 'somehow prevented from annihilating until impact' and fired on a planet. These weapons wouldn't be especially powerful against shielded ships; the shields prevent the material from annihilating against the hull. So basically, you get alot of bang for your buck on planetary bombardment, not so much elsewhere.
It was bad enough to make a Galaxy shit its pants. Anyway I see where you're going with this... the Husnock maybe only had a handful of these super ships and flew in orbit of Rana with a few over a long period of time. So actually if the Federation did fight them, they would win by sheer weight of numbers, and the Husnock are not that special explaining why the Federation hasn't heard of them.
SirNitram wrote:
And so it is we come to question what kind of weapons could do that. Now, IIRC, antimatter should do that, particularly if 'jacketed' means 'somehow prevented from annihilating until impact' and fired on a planet. These weapons wouldn't be especially powerful against shielded ships; the shields prevent the material from annihilating against the hull. So basically, you get alot of bang for your buck on planetary bombardment, not so much elsewhere.
They appeared to work fine against the Enterprise.
Actually, I think they would make very effective weapons in Star Trek. You're essentially firing a charged particle beam, which is effective against ST shields. The difference is that these charged particles annihilate themselves against the hull, which makes for a quite dangerous weapon. I'm assuming the "jacketed" part keeps the beam from dispersing.
We're talking about 400GW worth of thermal/kinetic effects alone. That's not exactly a 'super' ship. Remove the protection of the shields and it's a whole new ball game.
Besides, who says the Husnock (assuming they existed) weren't concentrated on a single planet with a few lunar/orbiting habitats? Given the amount of empty and uncartographed space within Federation boundaries a single system nation could easily go unnoticed.
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
Raven wrote:
They appeared to work fine against the Enterprise.
Actually, I think they would make very effective weapons in Star Trek. You're essentially firing a charged particle beam, which is effective against ST shields. The difference is that these charged particles annihilate themselves against the hull,
Urm-excuse me? Since we know that charged-particle beams are effective against AQ shields this means they get to ignore them how, exactly?
They have to go through shields just like any other weapon. They may have an easier time doing so but that's it.
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
Batman wrote:We're talking about 400GW worth of thermal/kinetic effects alone. That's not exactly a 'super' ship. Remove the protection of the shields and it's a whole new ball game.
I was taking the word super to mean it can kick a Galaxy's ass.
Besides, who says the Husnock (assuming they existed) weren't concentrated on a single planet with a few lunar/orbiting habitats? Given the amount of empty and uncartographed space within Federation boundaries a single system nation could easily go unnoticed.
I say if you read my post. One homeworld.
Urm-excuse me? Since we know that charged-particle beams are effective against AQ shields this means they get to ignore them how, exactly?
They have to go through shields just like any other weapon. They may have an easier time doing so but that's it.
I see nowhere where Raven says the particle beams ignore shields.
It looks like you're wanting to pick a fight when it's already over. Sorry, the Joker got away this time.
Batman wrote:We're talking about 400GW worth of thermal/kinetic effects alone. That's not exactly a 'super' ship. Remove the protection of the shields and it's a whole new ball game.
I was taking the word super to mean it can kick a Galaxy's ass.
Noted.
Besides, who says the Husnock (assuming they existed) weren't concentrated on a single planet with a few lunar/orbiting habitats? Given the amount of empty and uncartographed space within Federation boundaries a single system nation could easily go unnoticed.
I say if you read my post. One homeworld.
I must have missed that. Conceeded.
Urm-excuse me? Since we know that charged-particle beams are effective against AQ shields this means they get to ignore them how, exactly?
They have to go through shields just like any other weapon. They may have an easier time doing so but that's it.
I see nowhere where Raven says the particle beams ignore shields.[/quote]
If they have to through the shields first how, pray tell, are they going to react with the hull?
And if they DO get though the shields how pray tell does them being antimatter matter? They have plenty of firepower to kill the ship anyway.
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
Batman wrote:We're talking about 400GW worth of thermal/kinetic effects alone. That's not exactly a 'super' ship. Remove the protection of the shields and it's a whole new ball game.
I was taking the word super to mean it can kick a Galaxy's ass.
Noted.
Besides, who says the Husnock (assuming they existed) weren't concentrated on a single planet with a few lunar/orbiting habitats? Given the amount of empty and uncartographed space within Federation boundaries a single system nation could easily go unnoticed.
I say if you read my post. One homeworld.
I must have missed that. Conceeded.
Urm-excuse me? Since we know that charged-particle beams are effective against AQ shields this means they get to ignore them how, exactly?
They have to go through shields just like any other weapon. They may have an easier time doing so but that's it.
I see nowhere where Raven says the particle beams ignore shields.
If they have to through the shields first how, pray tell, are they going to react with the hull?
And if they DO get though the shields how pray tell does them being antimatter matter? They have plenty of firepower to kill the ship anyway.
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
Batman wrote:If they have to through the shields first how, pray tell, are they going to react with the hull?
And if they DO get though the shields how pray tell does them being antimatter matter? They have plenty of firepower to kill the ship anyway.
I am sure Raven can speak for himself. I was just pointing out that he never said the particle beams ignore shields.
A long time ago I asked questions about an antimatter armor piercer in PST and came to the same conclusion as you, that splashing antimatter was pointless. Anyway the point would be that all Star Trek shields are "leaky" in that a bit gets through every time (I assume it does, unless damaging the shield itself somehow damages the ship) and if a bit of the contained antimatter gets through it'd do more damage than the actual particle beam itself, particularly if the particle beam is an NDF and the target is armored (it wouldn't matter what kind of armor, if you splash antimatter). But I don't know if Raven thought it through like this, so I'll let him speak for himself.
