Non-Federation Diplomats

[Wing Commander MAD]

With regards to "Arena", how many times in TOS is the Enterprise essentially on their own and its up to Kirk to make a major decision? I can't even begin to guess how many times we've heard Kirk say to send a message to Starfleet appraising them of the situation, the implication being that they're letting SF now whats going on should the Enterprise be lost. It was always implied or outright stated that it would be hours or days before command received the signal, and thus the ship was on its own.

Granted these problems aren't as pronounced in DS9 as in TOS. Though in general, communications networks seem more ubiquitous and faster from TNG onward. Part of Metahive's problem is that he seems to be transposing modern day communications and thus by extension how international relations are handled onto an entirely different setting. Heck, it's not like we have signs on every inch of land stating who claims rights to it even today, as Destructionator XIII pointed out. That is also not to mention the fact that just because you don't know who owns something doesn't mean its not commonly known, it just means you don't know. Ignorance isn't an excusable defense for arrogantly assuming something is up for grabs.

[Metahive]

You've never actually been to the border, have you? If you're on the roads, there's signs and checkpoints, but if you're on the water, in the woods, or in the desert, it all looks the same for miles and miles.

When I was talking about "demarkations being available to civilized people", I meant having a look at this:



to get an idea where the US begin and where they end. Surely that concept hasn't been lost in the 24th century.

[Metahive]

Part of Metahive's problem is that he seems to be transposing modern day communications and thus by extension how international relations are handled onto an entirely different setting.

It's not like Star Trek never showed the possibility of putting beacons inside starsystems to continously transmit the same message that could be used that way...o wait.
Also, if you're so fiercly territorial that your first resort when happening upon unwitting intruders is lethal force then you do better put a proverbial flag on every planet you claim to be yours, otherwise you're guaranteed make a lot of unnecessary enemies.
This is not a communications or technological problem, that's a common sense problem. The Gorn were portrayed as massively irrational, aggressive and stupid and yet the episode had the gall to claim in the end that the egg's were on the Federation's face. Ham-handed plot railroading at its finest. As I said, rattlesnakes have more sense than the space-faring Gorn.

How the fuck can you tell a claimed planet from an unclaimed one in the vastness of space anyway if the claimant totally failed to make his presence known?

[Chris OFarrell]

Wait a moment, how can it be an intrusion by the Federation when the Dominion so utterly failed to actually demark its territory?

How do you know they 'utterly failed' to mark their territory? The Ferengi found out about the Dominion by actually talking to one of the client races of it, the Karemma.

And the Ferangi were never told about them in ANY offical capacity, it was a single throw away line to Quark about them. Specifically;

ZYREE
(conspiratorial)
The Karemma.

PEL
Who are the Karemma?

ZYREE
They're an important power in the
Dominion.

QUARK
The Dominion? What's that?

ZYREE
Let's just say that if you want to
do business in the Gamma Quadrant...
you have to do business with the
Dominion.

Thats it. Quark got information second hand from another person who was not exactly forthcoming about this. And the very fact that there were trade representitives from this planet on DS9 at that stage, who never let it slip that they were members of the Dominion or even KNEW about the Dominion, shows they were taking a great deal of care to HIDE this fact. Quark after the fact could only speculate on what exactly the Dominion was, even Zec who had been pushing hard to get trade into the Gamma Quadrent only had a name to go on. Heck, the fact that Sisko had to use him in 'The Search' to get to the Karemma shows that the Federation had no idea beyond that, which means in the two years of exploring the Gamma Quadrent and the various local systems, the Dominion stayed the hell away from the area. By definition, a MEMBER of the Dominion had acccess to the Alpha Quadrent and DS9, to the point of establishing a highly visible trade agreement with an Alpha Quadrent power.

Ergo, they had ample opportunity to say 'This is our space, stay the fuck out'.
They did not.

If the Dominion had transmited something to the effect of "Systems XYZ are claimed by the Dominion, intruders beware" first, you might have had a point.

The same thing happened in TOS in the episode 'Arena' and Kirk immediately backtracked on his position early in the show when he was mad as hell and wanted to show the Gorn you don't mess with humans, and it turned out that the outpost which was destroyed was in Gorn territory. Instead of acting butthurt about it, Kirk instead went '...Holy shit, I never considered that possibility.'

Yeah...you know, just because its Kirk, it does NOT automatically make him right anymore then Picard saying something automatically makes it right. Again, the Gorn are an advanced starfairing race who had every ability to MARK their space out, they had every ability to TALK to the people on the planet, they had every ability to TALK to the Federation itself and say 'this is our space guys' well before the Federation started setteling down, given the steady expansion of the Federation out into the Galaxy...but they didn't. Instead they show up with a warship, blast the colony a short time after its established, and then try to blast the Enterprise when it shows up for good measure.

Kirk at the end of the episode spares the Gorn because he works out what the Metrons are doing, and that he is not going to murder a crippled opponent when he doesn't need to. He then accepts that he doesn't HAVE to kill him, and they can try and talk, but he in no way accepts what THEY did was justified, just that they have to move past it and try to talk.

Well I'd say you're wrong, very much so.

Cute.

They didn't show ANY claim to the space around the wormhole for two YEARS. Not a ship, not a navigation marker, not a transmission, NOTHING.

I don't know why there should be. If you're reasonable, sure, it makes sense, we saw that in TOS. But we also saw people who preferred to be silent, who preferred to be in the shadows or keep their nature secret. But if someone blunders into your backyard, do you go 'well shit maybe he didn't see the fence around my backyard so I'll let him be'?
Maybe you would because you're mellow but other people are assholes when it comes to this kind of shit.

You just completly contradicted yourself there; THERE WAS NO FENCE in the Dominions 'backyard', no sign at all that they had stumbled into another species space. And they clearly became aware of the Federations presence long before the Federation became aware of theirs, and even when various Alpha Quadrent races started talking to them directly, they hid who they were. A more apt analogy would be seeing the guy inside your backyard, having your brother go up and chat with him for a while, shaking hands and smiling, then pulling out a glock and shooting him in the balls.

Even when the Federation and other powers were interacting with the local races (including at LEAST one MEMBER of the Dominion!) in that timeframe, even after they set up a colony on the far side, they said nothing and did nothing. They had EVERY opportunity to say 'hey fuck off, this is our space', let alone through their representatives let the Federation even know they EXISTED...but they didn't.

Yes, they did. That was what happened in 'The Jem'hadar'. They came in to DS9 and said 'Hey, this is our territory, you've settled a colony in there, you've sent unauthorised ships through the anomaly, these ships have been poking around our backyard, contacting our member races and doing all sorts of things, we consider this to be an act of hostility. You will cease your ventures through our territory, or face the consequences.' That starfleet chose to ignore this ultimatum isn't really the issue, the fact is they did give a warning. Making what happened to the Odyssey not unprovoked.

[/quote]

Except for the small fact that the Dominion had been directly in contact with the Alpha Quadrent well before this point, and they ample opportunity at that point to tell them to get lost...but they didn't, and in fact, they DELIBERATLY went out of their way to set up the destruction of everything in the Gamma Quadrent and the 'kidnapping' of SIsko to insert that Vorta.

THEN after all that, they drop in and tell DS9 to stay out.

The Dominion provoked the Alpha Quadrent, not vice versa.

Remember, the claim was that it was 'unprovoked' not that it was unjustified. I don't think the Dominion's actions showed them in a good light, nor that they were justified in doing it, I'm very much of the opinion that one should try diplomacy as a method of conflict resolution not the sword and spear, but claiming that it was unprovoked is nonsense when the Dominion representative to DS9 told them just how provoked they fucking were, and they proved it later in the episode how they felt about the matter.

Provocation is, by definition, a state where one party is provoked or incited by the conduct of the other party into taking action against them. The DOminion had full knoweldge of what the Alpha Quadrent/Federation was doing, AS WELL AS a direct line to the Alpha Quadrent well before the events of 'The Jem'Hadar' in which to let it be known that they should keep out.

If this had all taken place in a matter of days or without and direct contact, you might have a poitn that it wasn't provoked, but as the Dominion had every opportunity for the better part of two years to object, and DID NOT DO SO, they you simply can't say they were provoked, as their actions were clearly predetermined and premeditated.

Saying that then Starfleet provoked the Dominion by going back in is a Red Herring, as the Dominion had thrown the first punch, and made it a hell of a punch to the balls. That Starfleet got its ass kicked is also irrelevent to that fact.

You honestly can't say the Federation at any point in time above provoked the Dominion when they didn't even know the Dominion existed, let alone because the Dominion clearly went out of their way to stay in the shadows and observe before jumping out and opening fire. At the same time, their actions in 'The Jem'Hadar' prior to the Odyssey being sent in were far FAR more provoking to the Federation then vice versa. Hell, they more or less declared war.

It turns out sending heavily armed ships on supposed peaceful exploration can also be and was construed as an act of war by the Dominion. Settling a planet in their territory is even worse, and probably was the straw the broke the camel's back.

What 'heavily armed ships'? The Odyssey only went in in 'The Jem'Hadar', most of the time DS9 was sending little Runabouts in, as well as small science ships from other cultures, freighters and merchenat vessles, all of which makes the Dominions reaction even LESS justifiable as none of that was the slightest threat to them that would justify a massive miltiary response!

who knew *I'm a smarmy asshole*

The problem here is that the Dominion are clearly the bad guys, and the Federation (and those poor widdle Bajorans abloo bloo) are the good guys. But either this was a massively clever thing the writers did or they were just trolling, because as far as I'm concerned the Dominion were provoked. Hell Dax's attitude in that scene was really revealing - the Jem'hadar had just gotten through telling them what the score is, what the situation would be if they chose to ignore the Dominion's warning, and she pipes up and says 'You're mistaken if you think that detaining Commander Sisko will prevent Starfleet from exploring the Gamma Quadrant.' Like, what? What the fuck? Poke the tiger and don't be surprised if it fucking rears up and kills you.

And at that stage, the Jem'Hadar had jsut freely admitted to kidnapping Sisko and killing what tens of thousands, a hundred thousand people? What do you THINK she going to say? "Oh we undertand, would you like a cup of Earl Grey?" To say nothing of the fact that no-one here knows anything about this Dominion, the size of it, who runs it, that of course being the whole purpose of the next episode, where Siskos Mission Orders were to find the Founders and try to convince them the Federation isn't a threat.

Now in that sense, the Odyssey was a legitimate target, the Jem'Hadar had given warnings and the Federation ignored them, or more accurately, they accepted the risk of launching a recon and recovery mission into the Gamma Quadrent, and lost a Galaxy Class Starship to superior enemy forces. But its a HELL of a thing to say the Federation was provoking the Dominion in this situation, and not vice versa.

Why? What is this, some kind of 'Federation exceptionalism'? Like I said above, a virtually identical situation cropped up in TOS, and there Kirk recognised that if what the Gorn said was true, then what happened on Cestus 3 wasn't an unprovoked massacre, but the Gorn sincerely believing they were defending themselves.

Hardly the same situation as said above. The Cestus III situation was a First Contact situation between two powers, the Dominion on the other hand had been letting this situation develop, and manipulating it, for YEARS.

We're going around in circles here, so lets just leave it at we agree to disagree, because I think its clear neither of us are going to convince the other...

[Junghalli]

I assume you are referring to all the species of the week here, rather than the more established and settled powers. In which case, you are correct. More often than not, they were so extremely touchy over some petty cultural faux pas, some point of esoteric ettiquette as to be a joke. The question becomes, why did the writers make them so?

That's easy: drama!

Let's say you want to write a story about diplomacy with another culture. The other guys can be either:

A) Laid back pleasant dudes who are interested in peaceful coexistence and understanding of any inadvertent offense you may give them.
B) Violent ethnocentric xenophobes who'd just as soon bash your head in as talk to you and who will react poorly to any percieved slight against them, however minor and unintentional.

Now, all else being equal which group do you think would more easily serve as fodder for a tense dramatic episode that will grab viewers and keep them in their seats?

[Metahive]

Now, all else being equal which group do you think would more easily serve as fodder for a tense dramatic episode that will grab viewers and keep them in their seats?

I think a good number of ST viewers have noticed that ST writers tend to overuse the "first contact aliens are stubborn, xenophobic and hostile for no reason" ploy, especially on Voyager and Enterprise. It's about as cheap a method to generate conflict as it goes.

[Setzer]

Yesterday, I watched the TNG episode "First Contact" and it was fantastic. The alien in that one was a diplomat to me, just like Picard - he was actually happy to see Picard make mistakes, since it showed he's still just a man.

This would be an example of what I mean by Non-Federation diplomats. This guy was actually interested in talking, he was willing to make allowances for different cultures. That was what I was looking for. Now I just need to watch that episode.

[Ryushikaze]

I assume you are referring to all the species of the week here, rather than the more established and settled powers. In which case, you are correct. More often than not, they were so extremely touchy over some petty cultural faux pas, some point of esoteric ettiquette as to be a joke. The question becomes, why did the writers make them so?

That's easy: drama!

Let's say you want to write a story about diplomacy with another culture. The other guys can be either:

A) Laid back pleasant dudes who are interested in peaceful coexistence and understanding of any inadvertent offense you may give them.
B) Violent ethnocentric xenophobes who'd just as soon bash your head in as talk to you and who will react poorly to any percieved slight against them, however minor and unintentional.

Now, all else being equal which group do you think would more easily serve as fodder for a tense dramatic episode that will grab viewers and keep them in their seats?

Must it be A OR B? I could see A and B making for excellent drama together.

[Junghalli]

I think a good number of ST viewers have noticed that ST writers tend to overuse the "first contact aliens are stubborn, xenophobic and hostile for no reason" ploy, especially on Voyager and Enterprise. It's about as cheap a method to generate conflict as it goes.

Must it be A OR B? I could see A and B making for excellent drama together.

Yeah sure. Writers do that kind of stuff because it's easy, not necessarily because it's good.

If you read the original post I was responding to, it followed up by speculating on left wing cultural factors that would make the writers favor such stories. My point was sort of that this was overthinking things; there's a simpler and very plausible explanation, and that's that they did it because it's an obvious way to create tension.

[Metahive]

How does "Now, all else being equal which group do you think would more easily serve as fodder for a tense dramatic episode that will grab viewers and keep them in their seats?" constitute speculating about "left wing cultural factors"? I don't get it.

[Junghalli]

How does "Now, all else being equal which group do you think would more easily serve as fodder for a tense dramatic episode that will grab viewers and keep them in their seats?" constitute speculating about "left wing cultural factors"? I don't get it.

Here's the full text of the post I was replying to, hopefully that will make what I was trying to say clear:

I assume you are referring to all the species of the week here, rather than the more established and settled powers. In which case, you are correct. More often than not, they were so extremely touchy over some petty cultural faux pas, some point of esoteric ettiquette as to be a joke. The question becomes, why did the writers make them so?

All of the Trek writers inhabited an mildly-liberal, tolerant, inclusive sub-culture that dominates in a comparatively small area of California. A type I have never actually encountered outside of the LA/SF area. This tolerance extends to other cultures and societies to an often ludicrous degree; as demonstrated by feminists who refuse to defend muslim women's rights and pacifists who insist mass-murderers are simply part of another culture. It may even be a reaction to the cultural contamination of so many cultures by the dominant US commercial pop-culture; McWorld, anyone?

Yet I also feel that this comparatively extreme tolerance of the Other comes with a sub-conscious price. An over-valuing of other cultures and a celebration of difference that simply goes too far in declaring their members different. And hence, a degree of protection is afforded to anything someone else does, that cannot be argued or condemned, solely because they have always done it. The initially confused response when medical organisations in the UK and US suggested allowing a form of female genital mutilation to be conducted by their members, comes to mind as an example.

So, how does this attitude translate in Trek? By affording these utterly insignificant star nations some often ridiculous little cultural quirk, and then demanding that their diplomats follow these to the freaking letter. Learning another people's language prior to opening diplomatic exchanges is only respectful and certainly valuable towards learning their motivations, but covering yourself in shit and doing a little dance? I would strongly suspect that someone is having a joke at the dipolmats expense, if I were to encounter that.

Finally, my broadly similar experience has been meeting with the natives of various south Pacific Island nations; usually in a semi-military or constabulary capacity. We are certainly briefed before and during such operations, and treating the locals with respect and cultural sensitivity is strongly reinforced on a nearly daily basis... but when some local hunts, kills and cooks a wild pig in thanks for our doing something, we DON'T freaking eat it! In that case, it was turned into fishbait. Our own concerns regarding intestinal parasites over-rode any concerns over the appearance of the thing. Respect for cultural differences can thus be taken only so far.

[Metahive]

O yeah, I misread and thought you were talking about your own post. All clear now, sorry.

[Baffalo]

I'm going to chime in here with my own two cents. First of all, the Federation tends to encounter these aliens of the week from a position of power. Remember, these aliens have never encountered the Federation before, or have very few dealings with them. They're looking at the Federation as the big kids on the block rolling up and getting all up in their space. Of course anyone's going to be worried that the Federation might, on a whim, start dropping bombs on all their cities until they're all craters.

I'm not saying that the aliens need to be hostile, far from it. But if the aliens are at least willing to talk to you, then it might be a good idea to chill the hell out. Unless they're trying to start a war, that is. In which case, from the perspective of a citizen, you'd wonder... why did we just piss off aliens who could kill us all with one starship!?!

And don't necessarily think that even in modern times everyone is entirely civilized. When Russia and Japan went to war back in 1905, both sides asked the United States to arbitrate a treaty to end the war. Problem was, neither side would allow themselves to sit on the left hand side of the president, as they felt the person on the right would be more likely to receive favorable treatment. It was solved by making all the negotiations and dinners standing affairs, where everyone stood around and talked. The two sides clearly wanted to end the war, but wanted a special concession before they'd come to the table.

[SeaTrooper]

I assume you are referring to all the species of the week here, rather than the more established and settled powers. In which case, you are correct. More often than not, they were so extremely touchy over some petty cultural faux pas, some point of esoteric ettiquette as to be a joke. The question becomes, why did the writers make them so?

That's easy: drama!

Let's say you want to write a story about diplomacy with another culture. The other guys can be either:

A) Laid back pleasant dudes who are interested in peaceful coexistence and understanding of any inadvertent offense you may give them.
B) Violent ethnocentric xenophobes who'd just as soon bash your head in as talk to you and who will react poorly to any percieved slight against them, however minor and unintentional.

Now, all else being equal which group do you think would more easily serve as fodder for a tense dramatic episode that will grab viewers and keep them in their seats?

There is also a third option: professionals. The admittedly few working diplomats I've met have tended to be quiet, thoughtful and so pedantic as to be OCD-bait. Basically lawyers, rather than politicians or military-types. The MoUs, treaties, international agreements, etc., such people write lay things out to what seems an insanely, micro-managed fashion for anyone coming at it fresh. I believe the US State Dept used to have an unofficial motto that applies here: Jaw Jaw means less War War.
What may have led to this thread in the first place, is that we watch the news and at least hear of diplomats shuttling back and forth trying to solve some issue. We see that they put an awful lot of effort into any talks, and that these can take months, if not years. Yet in Trek, the passing Starship does not have that kind of time, so must find a solution or common ground real damned fast. Of course, you also have the writers in the background trying to produce a script for a 45 minute episode, which won't help either. How interesting would a series be if they spent an entire season hammering out a trade deal?

[Wing Commander MAD]

Part of Metahive's problem is that he seems to be transposing modern day communications and thus by extension how international relations are handled onto an entirely different setting.

It's not like Star Trek never showed the possibility of putting beacons inside starsystems to continously transmit the same message that could be used that way...o wait.
Also, if you're so fiercly territorial that your first resort when happening upon unwitting intruders is lethal force then you do better put a proverbial flag on every planet you claim to be yours, otherwise you're guaranteed make a lot of unnecessary enemies.
This is not a communications or technological problem, that's a common sense problem. The Gorn were portrayed as massively irrational, aggressive and stupid and yet the episode had the gall to claim in the end that the egg's were on the Federation's face. Ham-handed plot railroading at its finest. As I said, rattlesnakes have more sense than the space-faring Gorn.

How the fuck can you tell a claimed planet from an unclaimed one in the vastness of space anyway if the claimant totally failed to make his presence known?

I don't think you can which is part of the problem. That said I'll agree the Gorn response was rather irrational based on what information we know (at lest what I remember). Most humans fail to act rationally either, so having aliens being irrational isn't a great stretch in my mind. I still like the premise of the episode (and I admit like the Gorn), that being the good guys screwed up, even if it was kinda poorly executed. The protagonists making errors, let alone acknowledging it, is something that is largely absent in television programming. Maybe there's some historical angle they were trying to emulate, or some kind of cultural baggage from the mind set of the times that would help explain why the writers made the decisions they did? Someone with more historical knowledge may be able to answer the former, and some of our older members like Broomstick may be able to answer the latter part of that question.

[FTeik]

Concerning the Gorn, how do we know, that they didn't mark the planet as their territory and the Feds were just too dumb (or culturally/physiologically different) to notice it?

Maybe the message-beacon they had put there was transmitting on a different frequency or had stopped working and the original purpose of the Gorn-ship travelling there was for repairs and investigations. Maybe they also consider one ignored warning to be enough to bring out the heavy guns. Organic beings develop instincts and habits for reasons, that benefit them and they still have them even if the original reasons for developing them are long gone.

[Kythnos]

Concerning the Gorn, how do we know, that they didn't mark the planet as their territory and the Feds were just too dumb (or culturally/physiologically different) to notice it?

To add to this recent "evidence" shows that Gorn territory boarders Klingon Space. Given that Klingons attack first they might have felt that they had no choice to attack them before they could get a shot off. To phrase is differently if your first contact had been with the Klingons you would probably attack anything new also.

[Metahive]

Concerning the Gorn, how do we know, that they didn't mark the planet as their territory and the Feds were just too dumb (or culturally/physiologically different) to notice it?

For whom exactly do you think the Gorn would be marking their territory if not for eventual alien visitors? So if they designed their "demarkation" in a way that aliens were unlikely to decipher then that's another failing on their part. Again, just put a fucking artificial body in the planet's orbit, that way people no matter from where will know that someone's been here already.

Holy Christ on a Pickle, common sense people! It's not that fucking hard!

To add to this recent "evidence" shows that Gorn territory boarders Klingon Space. Given that Klingons attack first they might have felt that they had no choice to attack them before they could get a shot off. To phrase is differently if your first contact had been with the Klingons you would probably attack anything new also.

If it's not in the episode or anywhere in any Star Trek series or movie, it's not canon-evidence and therefore irrelevant. And no, if your first contact had been with warmongering shitheads like the Klingons, you'd be badly served to shoot upon any alien in sight, since that might mean you're losing a potential ally against the Klingons...as they nearly did in this episode.

It seems the only way people here can defend the Gorn is by making them dumber and more irrationally aggressive. Way to go folks.

[Metahive]

Maybe for other Gorn, like we do in real life

No, we don't mark territory for other Gorn in real life. They are a fictional species in a non-serious science-fiction series and it would therefore be most illogical to do so /Vulcan

Seriously now, what kind of demarkation would that be that only Gorn can pick up but nobody else, especially a means that should tell people off before making landfall? Occam's already looking over your shoulder, his razor's at the ready and that's already ignoring that the episode at no point ever even hinted at that possibility.

They might just drew a line on a map. Kirk probably should have stopped at a gas station and picked one up!

That bandwith could have been used for something intelligent, too bad you wasted it. I'll make up for it:

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

[Junghalli]

One possibility that's always come to my mind for an ambiguous claim marker is one that's just very old.

OK, there's a claim marker artifact, but it's been sitting there for 200 or 2000 or 2 million years, and as far as you can tell nobody has touched the place since. Maybe they just forgot about it, or died out, or something.

Also, would it necessarily be easy to create an unambiguous claim marker? You've got a message ("this is mine") and now you've got to figure out a way to convey it to aliens you know nothing about, who won't know your language, and won't necessarily be able to correctly interpret any "obvious" symbols like pictograms. You're not even sure how their sense organs are going to work. Your marker would have to basically be able to teach aliens to communicate with you or else it could easily be too ambiguous to perform its intended function.

[Metahive]

Destructionator, it surely hasn't been lost on you that I made the map argument in a different context, there it was that the Federation had already made contact with members of the Dominion and could have been handed starmaps containing its outlines. The Gorn planet however was heretofore unexplored frontier space with no first contacts until the Gorn attack. That's quite a difference right here. The only maps the Federation had available were their own.

Points off for an attempt to be clever but failing miserably and general dishonesty. F-, you flunk, sit down.

[Junghalli]

I figure probably what happened with the Gorn is they left what they thought would be some sort of reasonably obvious claim marker but they underestimated the alienness of the aliens (humans), who either misinterpreted it, couldn't figure out what it was supposed to mean, or just didn't share certain assumptions the people who designed the marker didn't examine too closely.

[Metahive]

You saying so won't make it so. In case A we have the Federation exploring the Gamma quadrant for two years, including making first contact with dominion members, but at no point does the Dominion bother to make its territorial claims known to the Federation in any way. They just sit there and procrastinate for two whole years and then decide to mass murder the intruders out of the blue instead of doing the reasonable thing and letting any of their members hand those newcomers a map. In case B we have the Federation happening upon a planet in what's presumed to be unclaimed space. No one else in the vicinity to give them any maps with Gorn territory on it or even hinting at their existence, no obvious sign of intelligent presence on or around the planet. Again, a fucking artificial satellite orbiting the planet would have sufficed but there's nothing!

If you still think that's just the same situation, then that's entirely a problem with your perception or your fetishism for Gorn penis and I won't try any further to convince you.

[Metahive]

I marked the important points in red in my previous post that you just deigned to completely gloss over and which explain why my argument can't be used out of context re: maps. Stop ignoring my arguments.
And please, no more of that "Gorn used totally culture specific markers that are impossible for others to decipher" nonsense. Let me cut it short, affirmative canon-evidence for that or concession. There, I'm tired of this.

[Junghalli]

Again, a fucking artificial satellite orbiting the planet would have sufficed but there's nothing!

It would have been a sign of intelligent presence, but that doesn't necessarily equal a claim marker. It might be a navigation beacon (if transmitting) or space junk left over from an earlier expedition (if not) or an artwork etc. The simple presence of something artificial is not an unambiguous "this is mine" message.

I suppose then you could say the Federation was stupid for colonizing a planet that aliens had left an artifact around, but what if it was 500 years old? Maybe the Gorn have been civilized way longer than humans so what to us looks like the place has been abandoned forever looks to them like it has a reasonably recent claim on it*. Considering how crowded the Star Trek universe is don't touch any system with alien artifacts in it may not be a practical policy.

* Obviously this arguably requires some stupidity from both sides, with neither one examining certain assumptions of theirs, but that's the sort of thing I find somewhat acceptable in fiction. People do stupid things in real life and drama is rather hard to write if you're held to the expectation that everyone be hypercompetent all the time.