What About God Like Energy Beings?

[Captain Seafort]

Of course, how that's squares with Weyoun's stated plan just a few episodes prior to destroy EArth's population in order to pre-empt such an uprising is unclear.

Insufficient data, I expect - they discounted Sabrina later in the same episode, and got the "inevitable" Dominion victory wrong, probably because they didn't know about S31's virus.

[biostem]

OP, you will of course provide proof that all these godlike beings have stepped in to save the Federation on the many many instances when planetary populations or the entire Federation was threatened. I don't recall Q popping in to prevent the Borg from wiping out the Federation's fleet at Wolf 359, or Kevin Uxbridge stopping the Borg from time traveling to the past, to kill Cochrane and prevent the Federation's formation in the first place.

Heck, Kevin Uxbridge failed to fool the Husnock, even with all his power, and only retaliated AFTER they wiped out the planet's population.

[The Romulan Republic]

DS9's "Statistical Probabilities" where Bashir and a few other genetically engineered folk come up with a way to accurately predict things. They get given Starfleet's latest intel and conclude that the Federation will be destroyed with 900 billion casualties...but that five generations later the salves on Earth would rise up, conquer the Dominion and reform the Federation.

Of course, how that's squares with Weyoun's stated plan just a few episodes prior to destroy EArth's population in order to pre-empt such an uprising is unclear.

Perhaps Weyoun's plan was unlikely to be approved by his superiors for some reason.

[Simon_Jester]

Given how many god beings the TOS Enterprise ran into, I'd expect the Dominion to have run into quite a few. Without provoking them enough to be a problem for the Dominion.

Well, among other things they certainly had a social structure that was well designed to ensure that any gods they met were treated with the proper respect. the Dominion is a theocracy committed to worship of the shapeshifting Founder race. And I'm sure they're capable of conveying to their minions that powerful energy beings or the like are "other gods," not the gods of the Dominion, but still worthy of awe and fear.

As for where the godlike beings are likely to be, well, that depends on their individual tastes. Some might prefer the quiet, out of the way planets, while others would be more cosmopolitan. You'd never know because the god like being is masquerading as a mere mortal until something pushes him or her over the edge. As long as his circle of friends remains relatively safe he'll do nothing, even if his planet is conquered. After all, it really doesn't matter to him which government or kingdom or whatever claims the planet so long as they leave him and his friends in peace.

If you piss him off by committing global genocide on his world, however, you're done.

The evidence suggests that nearly ALL such super-beings either reside in their own region of space and don't leave (the Metrons, the Organians, the Thasians, all from the original series, and perhaps others), or live as isolated hermits and have no fixed communities around them. Exceptions are so rare that in several hundred episodes of Star Trek totally roughly twenty seasons or more, there aren't any exceptions.

Q meddles in outside affairs. The Prophets do as well. You acknowledged this. Is this the norm? Maybe not. But it is still valid to suggest that the Empire may fall afoul of such beings.

Since the Federation, and presumably the Dominion, Klingons, Borg, and other Star Trek powers manage to deal with that problem... I expect the Empire will find a way to deal with it as well.

I think you said it yourself. "Every single one of them that I know of has lived in a place where the typical space faring Trek races rarely go, even ones who had previously visited Earth"

That you know of—that means there are godlike beings that you don't know about. And you won't know about them either because they aren't going to flaunt their power. They'll live quietly among us with no one ever suspecting their true natures.

Again, look at the Uxbridges. When we first see them they appear to be an elderly couple. It's only toward the end of "Survivors" that Kevin's true nature is revealed. So that means he lived among the humans of Delta Rana IV for years without anyone ever suspecting his true nature. I think even his own wife never suspected.

Oh, and Delta Rana IV must have had some strategic value, or else the Husnock never would have attacked it.

So again, it's impossible to say where these unknown godlike beings may be because whenever they live among mortals they tend to fade into the background and not call attention to themselves.

Except that this never happened anywhere else. There is no evidence of this happening more than once, in more than one instance. It MIGHT happen another time somewhere else, but there's certainly lots of reason NOT to think that there's a "minefield" consisting of thousands or millions of godlike beings living on random planets full of normal beings scattered all over the galaxy.

If there were, then it wouldn't just be the Husnock who got in trouble by attacking a planet one of them lived on. It'd be everyone.

I can see the Klingons going all fanatical and resorting to suicide attacks and terrorism...so yeah you could be right about some of them. But the Feds would probably just roll over once they lost a few fleets in a row.

There are also races like the Romulans (liable to prove... intransigent... plus they have cloaked ships that may well be able to seriously inconvenience Imperial battlefleets by sneaking right past them).

Basically, you can't conquer a large territory that doesn't want to be ruled without massacring locals as a warning. It never works. It didn't work for Cortez or Pizarro either.

[bilateralrope]

Q meddles in outside affairs. The Prophets do as well. You acknowledged this. Is this the norm? Maybe not. But it is still valid to suggest that the Empire may fall afoul of such beings.

I'll accept that the Prophets can destroy and Imperial fleet trying to use the wormhole. But, outside the wormhole, they have done less. What have they done outside the wormhole to suggest that they could fight the Empire ?

How would an Imperial occupation of Bajor compare to the Cardassians occupation ?
Because the Prophets didn't interfere with that.

As for Q, he showed up on DS9 once. For all his bluster after Sisko punched him, he never came back. Why did he do nothing to the Dominion ?

It looks like he simply didn't care. Or he was scared enough of the Dominion that he decided to spend a few years on the other side of the galaxy harassing Voyager. Either way, I can't see him getting involved in a way that would affect the invasion. Maybe harassing an Imperial ship, but that's about it.

Oh, and Delta Rana IV must have had some strategic value, or else the Husnock never would have attacked it.

Why did it have strategic value ?

If it's due to its location, the speed of Hyperdrive makes it unimportant to the Empire. It might not even have any strategic value to Trek factions due to improvements to their warp drive, or there being no-one around to make that location important with the Husnock extinct.

If it's due to mineral wealth, the Empire can just ship completed stuff from their galaxy. Leaving the mineral wealth alone until after the war.

If it was just a habitable planet near the Husnock homeworld, it's not going to be of value to anyone beyond the people living there.

Assuming that the Husnock existed in the first place.

Which brings us to the Empire, which is known for making examples of whole populations of civilians, like Alderaan and the Caamasi. If the Empire tries that kind of stunt on a world where a god like being is living incognito, that would be it. And there's no way of telling where a god like being may be, because he'll look and act just like any other mortal—until you piss him off by slaughtering his friends and loved ones. That is the very real danger that the Empire faces.

The Empire isn't going to make an example of a low tech backwater world. If they choose to make examples of any worlds, they will pick highly populated, heavily defended worlds. The capitals of the various factions. I'd put Qo'noS at the top of that list, simply because the Klingons are going to be harder to negotiate with than the other Alpha Quadrant powers.

Also let's not forget the Organians. They may not destroy the Empire, but if it gets too destructive and they have to intervene they can render all of the Empire's super-duper weapons useless. They did it before to stop a war between the Klingons and the Federation—and an Imperial invasion would be way more destructive. So it's likely that the Organians would intervene again to stop the massive carnage that would go with an Imperial invasion.

They intervened after the Klingons and Federation bought violence to their world. If it wasn't for the Klingons wanting to build a base on their world, and the Federation wanting to stop them, would they have done anything ?

As far as I'm aware, everybody left their system alone during the Dominion war and the Organians stayed out of it.

The most I can see god beings doing is that the Empire gets a list of them from whoever they are invading. Then the Empire decides to set up some monitoring of the god beings planets, but otherwise leaves them alone. Not because the god beings do anything, but because the Empire isn't stupid and the god beings planets aren't likely to be of interest during the invastion. Though that would make their conquest of Bajor very interesting as the Prophets are the only group of god beings to get involved with the Dominion War.

[Channel72]

God beings are mostly a Gene Roddenberry thing. He seemed to be fascinated with them. But later Trek mostly shifted away from that (with the exception of staples like Q, and to a lesser extent the Prophets which were part of the overall DS9 religious narrative). But it's always been a bit awkward that TOS and early TNG depicted this galaxy seemingly filled with quasi-omnipotent beings like Trelane, the Organians and Q - some of whom took a serious interest in the activities of humanity and/or the Federation. But then these super-beings are nowhere to be found in the more politically oriented episodes, to say nothing of the episodes where large-scale intra-galactic conflicts break out like the Borg invasion or the Dominion War. (I for one, want to know what happened on the Gangster Planet™ during the Dominion War... did those gangster dudes side with the Dominion, or did they all get "whacked" by the Jemhaddar?)

[The Romulan Republic]

Well Q did arrange for the Federation to meet the Borg. That's fairly major involvement. And there was the whole Q's trial issue in TNG.

Perhaps they stay out of a lot of the politics because they find it beneath them.

[Captain Seafort]

Well Q did arrange for the Federation to meet the Borg. That's fairly major involvement. And there was the whole Q's trial issue in TNG.

Plus the Organians stopping the Fed-Klingon War.

[Simon_Jester]

(I for one, want to know what happened on the Gangster Planet™ during the Dominion War... did those gangster dudes side with the Dominion, or did they all get "whacked" by the Jemhaddar?)

I suspect that the Federation saw this (and a few other incidents like the Nazi Planet™) as the reasons for enforcing the stupidly hardcore Prime Directive of the TNG era. If one random rogue sociologist, or a random stranded starship that's careless with its history books, can turn a whole planet into Nazis or gangsters... yeah. You start being really careful about what kind of cultural information you leave around, and about anything that might result in an impressionable culture being aware of your presence.

More generally, I imagine that the Nazi Planet and Gangster Planet and some of the other screwed-up one-note societies encountered by Kirk were probably brought into more regular contact with the Federation and turned into something a bit more normal in the subsequent century.

[Channel72]

Well, I hope the Gangster Planet, Nazi Planet, Rome Planet, and "Vacant Paramount Lot" Planet all applied for Federation Membership at some point.

But the more vital question is, if the Borg eventually assimilate the Gangster Planet, would they finally develop some defense against Tommy guns? Or would the entire collective get defeated in a St. Valentine's day style drive-by?

[Simon_Jester]

I always figured that the reason the Borg didn't have a defense against solid bullets is that the logical defense against bullets is armor, not force fields. But armor takes time to make and there are opportunity costs associated with wearing it, so drones normally don't wear armor. They can easily "adapt" a force field by tuning it to be effective against whatever beam weapon is being shot at them. But they can't tune their force field to stop bullets, that would require hardware modification... so they fail to adapt.

[Elheru Aran]

Well Q did arrange for the Federation to meet the Borg. That's fairly major involvement. And there was the whole Q's trial issue in TNG.

Plus the Organians stopping the Fed-Klingon War.

Which was TOS, and one gets the impression they only really got involved because the war started to encroach upon their own planet. They didn't do anything when the Klingons got aggressive again in DS9 as far as I know.