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 Thargrim wrote:
I've been getting mass effect vibes from this stuff for some time. Not just in writing but in aesthetics. The actual look of the show to me is much more in line with an off shoot of mass effect, including the ship design they've been flying around in. That psycho romulan chick is kinda hot though.

Bubblegum Crisis, BSG and Bladerunner and loads of other sci-fif shows like Humans and Westworld have or are covering similar ground re machine people- however equally enjoying this - good episode.

I am still not sure what makes the sythnetics worse than the Borg or loads of other ultra powerful bad guys, plus there has been sentient artiical life loads of times on Trek?

And yeah she is a very hot mess.

So did the Borg let Seven go at the end? I am sure they will want the synthetics just like they wanted Data.

 Mr Morden wrote:


So did the Borg let Seven go at the end? I am sure they will want the synthetics just like they wanted Data.

The cube didn't connect with the greater hive mind of the Borg. She outlined that she could isolate it from the main collective; basically forming its own sub-collective that she could control. The whole "I won't want to leave" part isn't so much the Borg letting her go but the collective and her own desire to leave once rejoined. Don't forget she was assimilated when very young and was held for a very long time. So lurking beneath the surface there is a desire to return to the collective. That's the part where she'd not want to leave. That it would, in part, be her own choice not to leave the vast linked hive mind.

Much like how Changlings don't like to leave the Great Link on their homeworld.






As for the threat of the Destroyer the story is hazy, but it sounds like whoever built the 8 star system as a warning also left in place something else. They clearly had to "win" against their own synthetics on some level in order to leave behind such a bold warning. It sounds like "The Destroyer" is what they left behind. Something powerful and highly destructive that will come if it detects synthetic life beyond a certain threshold of development. That it has to detect it might mask over previous creations of synthetic life. We also don't even know if its still operational or what form it takes - remember much of what we've got so far is hints of this mysterious world and the madness that has infected a portion of the Romulan race from the warning beacon left behind.

Maybe they can go find the clues at that Temple on Kobol, and backtrack to the Thirteen Colonies.
At this point 'Surprise Crossover Fanfic' would be a relief.

So, the Planet Killer is the twist?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
So, the Planet Killer is the twist?

Exterminatus is pretty darn scary.

Plus my impression is that whatever threat it is destroys everything. Every colony, individual, member of the race(s) involved in the development of the synthetics and the synthetics themselves. Perhaps even destruction of a whole linked selection of races (which would basically mean the bulk of the alpha quadrant).Whatever force it is, it was fearsome enough and maddening enough to break an entire Borg cube and make the Borg separate it from the collective. That's a pretty major threat when you consider that, at the height of their power, the Borg are basically unmatched as a single race/force* - save perhaps for the Dominion at the height of its breeding and production capabilities.


*with the exception of stuff from other realities and super-entities like the Q

I'm trying to work out what the big "issue" with synthetics actually is.

Is it a case of synthetic life developing past a tipping point and become a full-blown, out of control Cylon menace, or once they reach a certain point of development, do they attract the attention of the "Reapers"?

Is the title "The Destroyer" specifically used for Soji as an individual or for any synthetic of her level of development? If there's really the risk of a Big Bad coming along and wiping every sentient race in this cycle (or whatever), wouldn't that make her the herald, rather than the Destroyer?

Ah I thought Seven was talking to the collective when she said Anika still has things to do but you are probably right that was her talking to herself to make herself sever the link and that it had remained just a local network.

Again may be wrong but I thought the Destroyer warning was that It would arise if you built them and destroy the fleshy ones. I assumed they defeated it before but it would come again if you built them.

Maybe they can go find the clues at that Temple on Kobol, and backtrack to the Thirteen Colonies.

I enjoy crossovers so I would enjoy this....

And this device is from only 200,000 years ago?

I thought the line was, "hundreds of centuries."

Though maybe it was discovered by Romulans only 200k years ago?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
And this device is from only 200,000 years ago?

I don't think she gave a number, I think she just said "hundreds of thousands of years ago" and Picard just mentioned a random number in response.

Also we don't really know what it is. A machine, a god engine, a single space ship, a dimensional rift.

 Chillreaper wrote:
I'm trying to work out what the big "issue" with synthetics actually is.

Is it a case of synthetic life developing past a tipping point and become a full-blown, out of control Cylon menace, or once they reach a certain point of development, do they attract the attention of the "Reapers"?

Is the title "The Destroyer" specifically used for Soji as an individual or for any synthetic of her level of development? If there's really the risk of a Big Bad coming along and wiping every sentient race in this cycle (or whatever), wouldn't that make her the herald, rather than the Destroyer?

Pretty much.

What we’re seeing are people who’ve gone mental having been essentially infected with memories not their own.

Memories that seem to be of AI gone all Skynet. And so those exposed to it are full on tonto against AI.

Trek has an extensive history of AI, even galactic scale AI threats like V’Ger and Nomad, but some Soongbots are going to be what sets off this response?

Also, how could such an apocalyptic threat against even the Borg still be a secret? It’s not like there aren’t scores of 200,000+ year old civilizations or civs that had access to their records. Either the threat is extremely local or Barclay should be able to make a few calls and get to the bottom of things.

Also quite amusing that Picard was saying the past is the past - as someone who has actually been back and changed it.

It also seems that the Romulans should have been trying to kill Data and co throughout Next gen.

Maybe these are the ones that fled Andromada Galaxy?

Data himself wasn't a threat, he wasn't advanced enough. It was the continued development of synthetics that was the threat. Destroying Data alone wouldn't have prevented continued synthetic advance. If anything it might have accelerated it.

Whilst Dr Soone was a single genius its rare for a single scientist to be the only person of an age to make a breakthrough within the same field. Chances are whilst he was years ahead; others were getting closer too.

From what I can tell the Romulans played the long game with a gamble. Basically aiming to not just remove one synthetic threat, but the whole concept from Starfleet itself. To get the technology itself banned to the point where development stops and eventually the knowledge required filters out of the scientific community at large. Basically resulting in a lack of synthetic development that could last generations.

V'Ger and Nomad had completely slipped my mind!

Maybe, even though they were potential planet killers, the unique nature of them disqualifies them from setting things off. No opportunity for exponential growth and their destructive tendencies did seem to just be directed towards a single planet.

 Chillreaper wrote:
V'Ger and Nomad had completely slipped my mind!

Maybe, even though they were potential planet killers, the unique nature of them disqualifies them from setting things off. No opportunity for exponential growth and their destructive tendencies did seem to just be directed towards a single planet.

Wasn't Veger sent back by a machine intelligence?

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Chillreaper wrote:
V'Ger and Nomad had completely slipped my mind!

Maybe, even though they were potential planet killers, the unique nature of them disqualifies them from setting things off. No opportunity for exponential growth and their destructive tendencies did seem to just be directed towards a single planet.

Wasn't Veger sent back by a machine intelligence?

V'Ger is something I wonder if we'll see appear in this series.

That said yes V'Ger basically encountered a random wormhole that threw it all the way to the other end of the Galaxy - further than any (even Voyager) ship has gone from the Federation. At the other end it encountered a race who refitted it with its prob-ship form and sent it on its way. It was a powerful force of destruction too, its huge memorybank cloud basically destroying anything in its path on its way home in its quest to catalogue everything. It also ascended to a new lifeform at the very end of the film, however I don't think we ever heard anything else about it. Like the Whale Probe its one of those mysteries of the lore that is still a mystery.

Pretty sure it was a machine planet - had a google

Voyager 6 emerged from the anomaly in what was believed to have been the far side of the galaxy, and fell into the gravitational field of a planet populated by living machines.

 Chillreaper wrote:
V'Ger and Nomad had completely slipped my mind!

Maybe, even though they were potential planet killers, the unique nature of them disqualifies them from setting things off. No opportunity for exponential growth and their destructive tendencies did seem to just be directed towards a single planet.

V’Ger digitized dozens of planets. We see them inside the virtual storage space after Spock’s mind meld.

Star Trek is full of species advancing into energy beings or godlings. The Dominion is practically a vonNeuMann device on a sociological scale, expanding using their cloning and industrial capacity. But they aren’t synthetic so they don’t count?

Nanites and exocomps exist. Gomtuu is a member of a fleet of artificial life forms with ftl and planetkilling abilities. The Enterprise gave birth to a cybernetic organism. We’ve seen whole societies of androids. Seems like someone should have heard about this anti-AI threat by now.

Except its never been anti-ai, its anti-synthetics. There seems to be an important difference and even in TNG (which we accept never had this plot backed into its script) Data was always held up as a huge exception to the normal even compared to other artificial life.

Plus we've no idea if the Romulans might have hunted some of those other life forms down in secret. TNG had a lot of aliens we only met once or twice.

In any case, there seems to be enough, well, wiggle room and space in the lore to allow this to happen.

Even in this episode, where the backstory is being revealed, even Picard is like, "this could very well just be a cult of lunatics who are wrong."

So it doesn't feel like an unreasonable stretch to treat them as not intergalactically powerful as they think they are...

The main thing is the Borg cube disconnection... But there could be more to it than that. Are the borg afraid of what might come to pass? Or was it some sort of psychic feedback mechanism from the Romulan mind affected by the beacon.



And also, yeah, ditto on the Mass Effect vibes.

Possibly the uploading of the Admonition into the Collective essentially had the same effect on the Collective as it did on single minds. Much like how returning Hugh to the Borg broke his cube.

 Overread wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
And this device is from only 200,000 years ago?

I don't think she gave a number, I think she just said "hundreds of thousands of years ago" and Picard just mentioned a random number in response.

Also we don't really know what it is. A machine, a god engine, a single space ship, a dimensional rift.

the 200,000 years ago tidbit could actually end up being a REAL important clue.

What ancient civilization in star trek dissappered 200,000 years ago. and just happens to have their homeworld, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NEUTRAL ZONE?

Those with those gate things?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Those with those gate things?

yeah the Iconians.

Interestingly, I had confused the Iconians with the episode in S1 of TNG that involved the Ferengi: the Tkon Empire outpost discovered by the Enterprise. Checking Memory Alpha, the Tkon were even older than the Iconians, but something very interesting was mentioned in the entry: they had the ability to move stars.

The iconians were also mentioned in a DS9 episode where Sisko and the Dominion teamed up on a mission to destroy a gate.

Wonder if Picard is going to ‘Measure of a Man’ his way to victory?

Worth watching that episode now if you haven’t. Off you pop!

Back? Good episode, eh?

Anyways. In terms of sentient AI, that was to me a first. An active (and successful) attempt to argue that Androids, and by extension Synthetics as they’re now coined, are not property, but a life form unto themselves.

Contrast and compare to most other AI Rebellions in SciFi, and their route causes.

Could it be the precedent set down in that episode is the first step to avoiding whatever it is that Admonition is showing?

I mean, a free species is a free species, no? If you don’t treat them as slaves or property, much of the motive for rebelling in the first place is just, gone.

Yeah, but this terrible federation obviously treats them like crap (per the first episode), so they do have a motive for rebelling.

Even if they _are_ covered by the ruling that protected Data (which isn't clear), they're still treated like garbage, because Sir Patrick Stewart must something something unto Evil Federation, because having a show based on idealism is heresy.

Voss wrote:
Yeah, but this terrible federation obviously treats them like crap (per the first episode), so they do have a motive for rebelling.

Even if they _are_ covered by the ruling that protected Data (which isn't clear), they're still treated like garbage, because Sir Patrick Stewart must something something unto Evil Federation, because having a show based on idealism is heresy.

Must be watching a very different show.......or just ignoring that actual content