Comic Book Style Mutations

[Chris Parr]

You've all seen them, normal humans or humanoids suddenly endowed with superhuman powers in the Star Trek Galaxy. People like Gary Mitchell, Elizabeth Dehner, Charles Evans, Garth of Izar, the Scalosians, the Platonians, Captain Kirk (twice, temporarily), Spock (twice, temporarily), William Riker (temporarily), Reginald Barclay (temporarily), and Wesley Crusher.

Of course this list is by no means exhaustive, these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head, but I think you can see my point. This can happen to almost anyone at almost any time. Which means this may turn into a battle between super powered beings. Comic book style mutates on the Star Trek side and Force Wielders on the Star Wars side.

[Elheru Aran]

...I'm sorry, I'm sort of missing the point here. They're two very different things.

The 'comic book mutations' thing is very unpredictable, with varying occurrences and power levels. Gary Mitchell was extremely high level, but Kirk still managed to kill him with an avalanche. Riker only got Q powers because Q thought it'd be funny. Things like that.

Force wielding, on the other hand, is fairly consistent and predictable, with a rough scale of power that can be applied, from those who can barely light up a bulb all the way up to ridiculous wank like Yoda, Starkiller, and the Emperor Reborn. It's a very different situation.

Essentially in Star Trek you have a scattering of small populations of highly powerful super-beings (Q Continuum, Organians, Scalosians, etc) and the occasional (un)lucky being, while in Star Wars you have a semi-large and reasonably accountable population of moderately (by comparison) powered beings. This might be one of the only situations where Trek wins... if the sheer accumulated numbers of Jedi throughout history (hundreds of thousands at the bare minimum, possibly millions) don't overwhelm them by numbers.

And if you're talking about it suddenly happening to a bunch of people on the Trek side... again, extremely unpredictable. Their greatest superpower might be the ability to wipe their asses without using their hands, or it might be re-arranging star systems. Hell, in a way it might just be all in their heads (quite literally) and Q's fucking with them again. Force users in Star Wars, on the other hand, have no issue with the unpredictability, as Force ability seems to have *some* genetic component which can be tracked and sensed (see Jedi-sensor devices in SW). It's not like the Force just plonks down and randomly picks some mook to be a Jedi, it's a little more complete than that.

[Chris Parr]

Yeah, okay, but isn't it the random unpredictable nature of these mutations that makes them such a threat to the Empire's campaign of conquest? I mean, you never know what will happen, or who it will happen to, or what will trigger said mutations. I mean, you might strap some guy down, inject him with drugs and zap him with electricity to torture him, only to find the combination of drugs and electricity somehow transforms him into—Superguy! Or maybe something like the Incredible Hulk. Or the Flash. Hell, it's as likely as any other scenario seen in Star Trek, right? I mean, the Scalosians already have Flash like powers.

[Chris Parr]

And by the way, the only reason Kirk was able to "kill" Mitchell with that rockslide (yes, I have my doubts) was because Mitchell had been weakened in his fight with Elizabeth Dehner. You'll remember she had gained god like powers, too.

[Elheru Aran]

If the mutations happened that often, why wouldn't they have happened during, say, the Dominion War? Or the Earth-Romulan War? Or the various conflicts between all the other alien races? Fact is, they're actually very rare in the big picture. Rarer than the occurrence of Force users in Wars. In the large scheme of a galactic conflict, they would be insignificant.

And, the Empire is capable of countering superpowers. All it takes is the application of simple logic and problem-solving. You get a super-fast being? Fine, turn off the artificial gravity (if on a ship) and vent it to vacuum. Have fun being super-fast without air to breathe. Telekinesis? Shut him up behind blast doors. Mind-control? Another ship blows up the ship he's on. Super-strength? More vacuum, large quantities of blaster energy, and so forth.

Now, actual races of super-beings such as the Organians, Q Continuum, and so forth, could tip the balance... IF they decided to intervene. IF they care. The only reason the Organians sat down the Klingons and Federation to talk was because they happened to pick a fight on the wrong planet, and the only member of the Q Continuum who has actually shown much interest in the affairs of the galaxy was the single Q.

The reason individual 'comic book mutations' seem impressive in Trek is because we're seeing much smaller vignettes than we do in Wars, which has a larger, galactic scope. Trek tends to focus upon a bubble (for lack of a better term-- it's late here) where the action is contained to a small environment (ship, station, occasionally a planet or town). In a smaller environment like that, the people involved have less options, the powers being manifested have more impact because there are fewer people to affect, frequently the ship is by itself, and so forth. So we're not seeing these singular one-off events in the same context as they would be viewed in the Star Wars universe.

[Chris Parr]

Yeah, okay. So why didn't the Trade Federation just shut off the gravity and vent their ship to vacuum as soon as Darth Sidious ordered them to kill the Jedi? I mean, honestly, should have been no problem, right? Droids don't need air, and they can always use some kind of magnetic field to cling to the deck the way R2D2 clung to the outside of Queen Amidala's ship. But no, those Trade Federation stooges just wrung their hands saying "We're no match for the Jedi!" Honestly!

I'll admit the comic book mutations are rare, but then so are the Jedi. I mean, a million at the most out of a population of quintillions of beings? And it takes years and years and years and years to train to be a Jedi Knight. On the other hand, with those comic book mutations you can just use the powers right off. But like you said, it's rare, and likely that they wouldn't even care about some stupid war with the Empire anyway. Unless, of course, the Empire did something to piss one of them off.

[Elheru Aran]

The Trade Federation isn't the Empire. They aren't used to fighting Jedi because at this point in recent Republic history conflict has been small-scale fights here and there, and the Jedi have only rarely gotten involved, so there's no real precedent at this point for how to deal with them (in recent history, at least).

As for rarity: Per capita, there are still far more Jedi than individual people ever had the spontaneous superpower mutation in Trek. You listed yourself the great majority of them, and that's... 9 (not counting the twices). Out of an entire galaxy.

Regarding training: It does take at least the better part of a decade to train a Jedi. However, consider: Luke Skywalker only took a few months with Yoda, and by the time he was done he thought he was ready to fight Vader-- a Sith Lord! Actual ability to use the powers is apparently not particularly difficult (though granted Skywalker was already strong in the Force, just untrained). It's more time, experience, and wisdom that qualify Jedi to become Knights and Masters. There are plenty of non-Jedi Force users out there in the SW canon, many of whom began out as Padawans but for one reason or another washed out. Yes, the Trek special cases tend to use their powers much more quickly... but again, they are statistically insignificant, compared to the Jedi.

[Lord Revan]

About the Trade Federation we should also remember that they're business men not soldiers so they might not have much in terms of tactical know how even if we ignore the fact the last major war the jedi were involved in was 1000 years ago.

[Elheru Aran]

About the Trade Federation we should also remember that they're business men not soldiers so they might not have much in terms of tactical know how even if we ignore the fact the last major war the jedi were involved in was 1000 years ago.

Not quite true about the wars; the Stark Hyperspace War was ~10 years before Naboo, and the Yinchorri Uprising had just happened. Before that though, yeah, there hadn't been much since the 'New Sith War'. These two conflicts were quick flare-ups that were just as quickly put down from the sound of it, and the Jedi were not deeply involved, although they did lose a few.

[Lord Revan]

sure there was wars the jedi were involved in after the ruusan reformation (to use the legendaries name) but nothing that would serve to create a corps of effective anti-jedi forces or simply give enough info on how to fight jedi.

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah. Basically, the galaxy got into a situation where nobody remembered how to fight Jedi anymore, and no doubt the Jedi actively tried to suppress such information wherever they could find it. A thousand years is a long time even in the Star Wars galaxy, and the knowledge of anti-Jedi tactics (many of which would have been applicable to the Sith as well) would have died off as the Jedi tried to bolster their image as peacemakers.

[Lord Pounder]

The Trade Federation were smart enough to eventually employ Destroyer Droids which did cause the Jedi to run.

By the time of Episode 3 the CIS had enough experience against Jedi to employ Ray Shields and other anti-Jedi defences.

[Elheru Aran]

The Trade Federation were smart enough to eventually employ Destroyer Droids which did cause the Jedi to run.

By the time of Episode 3 the CIS had enough experience against Jedi to employ Ray Shields and other anti-Jedi defences.

Sure. I think the point is more that after Sidious tells them to kill the Jedi, they spend a fair amount of time hand-wringing before trying a dirty trick (gassing the room) and trying to mop up with some standard battle droids; they didn't know the Jedi could get around the gas, and when they started chopping up the battle droids and making their way to the bridge, they freaked out and pulled out the big guns. The Jedi didn't bother sticking around then because it would've been too much of a pain in the ass to actually try fighting the destroyer droids at the same time as fending off a torrent of fire. It was a case of 'let's see if this works... no... let's do this... OH SHIT WE'RE FUCKED'.

Note also in AotC, the CIS doesn't particularly do anything fancy with the Jedi-- they mostly just throw a lot of fire their way and hope the Jedi can't block them all. Of course, that was more of an open air, less controlled environment (battle of Geonosis). It's not until later in the Clone Wars and RotS that they manage to catch on to more reliable Jedi-countering methods such as actually using other Force-wielders against them, droids built to counter them (Magna-Guards, Grievous) and various environmental controls (ray shields).

[Simon_Jester]

You've all seen them, normal humans or humanoids suddenly endowed with superhuman powers in the Star Trek Galaxy. People like Gary Mitchell, Elizabeth Dehner, Charles Evans, Garth of Izar, the Scalosians, the Platonians, Captain Kirk (twice, temporarily), Spock (twice, temporarily), William Riker (temporarily), Reginald Barclay (temporarily), and Wesley Crusher.

Of course this list is by no means exhaustive, these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head, but I think you can see my point. This can happen to almost anyone at almost any time. Which means this may turn into a battle between super powered beings. Comic book style mutates on the Star Trek side and Force Wielders on the Star Wars side.

This is the third or so thread in which you've missed an important point:

Just because a thing can happen unpredictably ("at any time") does not mean it will happen at the exact moment when it would be most convenient. Every one of the beings you list gained his or her phenomenal powers from one of two sources.

One class of sources are accidental. Such accidents generally only occur when exploring strange new places or exotic, unknown chemicals, and there is NO instance in the Star Trek universe of anyone deliberately recreating an accident that once gave someone superpowers (e.g. eating food that gives you telekinesis, or duplicating a burst of radiation that sterilizes you but makes you super-fast, or wandering into a barrier of force around the galaxy that turns 'esper ratings' into demigods). This suggests that the accidents generally cannot be duplicated, or that there are very good reasons nobody tries.

The second class of sources involve some particular being getting "uplifted" by another who already has phenomenal powers (e.g. the Traveler recruiting Wesley to become another Traveler, or Q giving people Q-like powers for the hell of it, or a bunch of aliens teaching a badly injured man to shapeshift because it's the only way to save his life). In general, these beings don't seem to 'uplift' members of lesser species for any reason that the lesser beings would find convenient. The sole exceptions seem to be cases where the intervention saves that one person's life... and even then, it usually doesn't turn out to be advantageous for anyone else.

Q didn't show up and empower a 'deputy Q' to save the Federation from the Dominion. The Thasians probably never again tried raising a human with Thasian powers after the disastrous events of that one episode. Can you imagine how embarrassed the Thasians would feel after realizing the consequences of unleashing a teenage boy with no sense of restraint or social obligations and with supernatural powers upon the Federation? I bet their faces were red, insofar as they have faces made out of actual atoms.
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So the practical result of all this, I would argue, is that in Star Trek, while there are numerous examples (mostly from TOS) of beings with rare or supernatural abilities, and some of those abilities can be imparted to otherwise humanoid lifeforms... Star Trek is not a setting full of superheroes or supervillains. The individuals with unusual powers are just that, individuals, and in many cases the secret of their powers is poorly understood, or protected by some advanced race that seems to have little interest in the affairs of the galaxy at large.

By contrast, while the superhuman powers of the Force in Star Wars are somewhat less... extreme... than are sometimes seen in Star Trek, they are reliably there. Force users form organized bodies and train apprentices, so that their teachings last for centuries, and so that the dominant galactic civilization can always count on having at least a moderate number of Force users at its command.

Yeah, okay, but isn't it the random unpredictable nature of these mutations that makes them such a threat to the Empire's campaign of conquest? I mean, you never know what will happen, or who it will happen to, or what will trigger said mutations.

Except it doesn't normally happen. Years, even decades, can go by without the galactic scene changing in any significant way as a result of 'mutations.'*

Sure, we happen to see a whole bunch of these superhuman incidents popping up around the time of the Original Series. Like the enlightened superhuman energy being, it was a theme Gene Roddenbury liked to play with a lot in the 1960s. It kind of got old, though, so he did less with it in the '80s and it largely disappeared from Star Trek altogether in the '90s.

But ultimately, none of these incidents actually changed much of anything, and there's no reason to assume that suddenly they would start having major effects and altering the course of galactic history as soon as a bunch of well armed foreigners show up to attack the Federation. After all, it's not like the Dominion had trouble with random demigods cropping up all over the place and kicking their asses during their aggressive campaign of conquest against the Federation.

*I should note that the things you're calling 'mutations' in Star Trek are almost invariably not mutations in the sense of somebody's DNA randomly changing, which is what 'mutations' actually mean. Mutations are only a fast track to superpowers in comic books, and in the real English language they already mean something else, and are not a valid word to use for "a fast track to superpowers."
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I mean, you might strap some guy down, inject him with drugs and zap him with electricity to torture him, only to find the combination of drugs and electricity somehow transforms him into—Superguy! Or maybe something like the Incredible Hulk. Or the Flash. Hell, it's as likely as any other scenario seen in Star Trek, right?

No, it's not. The vast majority of the time, if you shoot someone with dangerous rays or inject them with chemicals, the rays or chemicals do exactly what they're expected to, and turn the subject into exactly what you'd predict: a corpse.

I mean, the Scalosians already have Flash like powers.

And the same incident which gave them those 'powers' also rendered them sterile, unable to interact meaningfully with normal humans, and greatly accelerated their metabolisms. They're almost certainly all extinct within a decade or two.

[Lord Revan]

If superpowers were easy to achivive then why don't we see romulans that are as strong as the hulk, immune to energy weapons and able to kill you without being in the same planet.

We don't see any of the major powers making soldiers with Super powers, because as Simon pointed out pretty every incident of Super powers involves either accidents that are practically impossible to replicate or beings that cannot be trusted to help the major powers when needed.

[biostem]

Let's imagine that Kirk or any other St captain just wanted one of the powerful characters you named, dead - was it ever demonstrated that these individual could post a threat to a ship in orbit and/or that they could withstand bombardment from such a vessel?

The example of Riker becoming a Q is really a non-starter as another Q gave him his powers, and it was never demonstrated that Riker would prevent Q from taking the powers away, if he wanted to keep them...

[biostem]

I see that my poor typing skills were really in effect w/ my last post. My point is that we never see these "special individuals" in ST as something that can or was mass-produced. If the Federation were to try and utilize such people in a war w/ the Empire, they'd only play a factor in the limited area where Federation ships could transport them, and where an Imperial commander couldn't just bombard the planet or destroy the ship they're on. My point about Riker having been made into a Q was that we don't actually know if he was truly made into a Q, or if Q just kind of gave him "power sufficient to do what he wanted", but not enough to actually rival other Q's.

[Chris Parr]

The reason we never see super powered beings mass produced can be summed up in five words: Eugenics Wars, Khan Noonien Singh.

[Lord Revan]

The reason we never see super powered beings mass produced can be summed up in five words: Eugenics Wars, Khan Noonien Singh.

United Earth exclusive limitation, doesn't do jackshit to the Romulan Star Empire, the Klingon Empire, the Tholian Assembly, the Cardassians Union, the Dominion, the Ferengi Alliance, the Orion Syndicate or any other semi-signifigant power within the Alpha or Beta Quadrant.

Hell technically even the Adorians, Vulcan or Tellerates didn't have to join on the ban for genetic manipulation, though they did since it's federation law.

but you can see that there's plenty of power who couldn't care less about federation laws if it prevented them from getting undefeatble super soldiers, also the Eugenics ban covers only genetic manipulation so all other ways of making super soldiers are possible for the United Federation of Planets as well.

So no that Eugenics ban is not the only reason we see no mass production of super powered beings as that ban is relevant to the federation and possibly Klingon Empire and covers only 1 way of producing powers that's rather limited to begin with.

[Chris Parr]

You're missing my point: super powered beings are dangerous. Let's say some team of scientists in the Federation had technobabbled some sort of "vita ray" to use on volunteers to fight the Jem Hadar—how would they keep control of these super soldiers? Drugs? Brain implants? What happens when the soldiers learn to synthesize the drug themselves? And what happens when the special broadcast needed to keep your brain implanted soldiers fighting is jammed by the enemy? Would they be rendered inert? Or would they assert themselves? You see that creating super beings would be like playing with fire, and that's why none of this Galaxy's super powers will do it.

[Lord Revan]

You're missing my point: super powered beings are dangerous. Let's say some team of scientists in the Federation had technobabbled some sort of "vita ray" to use on volunteers to fight the Jem Hadar—how would they keep control of these super soldiers? Drugs? Brain implants? What happens when the soldiers learn to synthesize the drug themselves? And what happens when the special broadcast needed to keep your brain implanted soldiers fighting is jammed by the enemy? Would they be rendered inert? Or would they assert themselves? You see that creating super beings would be like playing with fire, and that's why none of this Galaxy's super powers will do it.

you're missing the point actually, we got powers within the Star Trek canon who would be willing to do almost anything to tip the balance of power in their favor, in fact the Klingon Empire did try to mass produce augments (which are really low on the scale of supers), oh those experiments failed misserbly and nearly cause an empire wide plague that would killed all klingons.

Then you got the Thalaron weapons the Romulan Star Empire developed (or the telepatic slave soldiers they got). Oh and then there's the matter that the Ferengi wouldn't care about how well the super soldiers could controlled as long they could make profit out of it, after all if "warlord x" kills himself missusing a weapon it wouldn't be the fault of the Ferengi who sold him the weapon now.

My point is that there's plenty of powers who'd be willing to take the risk in trying to produce supers or give normal people super powers, yet we know of only 1 case in the whole trek canon and it's even debateble if augments really count as having superpowers. We never hear of a failed super soldier Projects

so maybe, just maybe it's because super powers in trek are something that are not easily reproduceble and not because everyone just desided "lets not do that!"

[Chris Parr]

Don't underestimate the Technobabble. Producing super powered beings wouldn't be too hard with a bit of genetic engineering and some bionic enhancements. I've already given the reason they don't. At least the intelligent ones don't.

Of course there are plenty of stupid people who are willing to take that risk, but they usually don't succeed anyway.

[Lord Revan]

Don't underestimate the Technobabble. Producing super powered beings wouldn't be too hard with a bit of genetic engineering and some bionic enhancements. I've already given the reason they don't. At least the intelligent ones don't.

Of course there are plenty of stupid people who are willing to take that risk, but they usually don't succeed anyway.

Technobabble isn't magic even if it's sometimes treated almost as such.

you cannot just assume "this is possible because of technobabble" without previous precident.

Oh btw black market genetic manipulation does exist in trek, in fact that was the source of Doctor Julian Bashir genetic modfications, so if black market gene-manipulation does exist then why hasn't the Orion Syndicate (which is a criminal organization) tried to make super-powered enforcers.

Also your reason needs a level of humility from the Klingon Empire and the Romulan Star Empire that's never shown or implied.

Remember that for a Klingon to imply that they're weak is to loose honor in the eyes of other Klingons and your reason you mean the a klingon would have to admit they're weak (after why else would the superpowered warriors turn on them), now to make super powered Warriors is not a sign of weakness as you can always be stronger. so your reasoning makes no sense from a klingon point of view.

Also the overriding cultural characteristic of Romulans is pride, to admit that a romulan would fail were humans would again makes no sense if you view from the correct cultural point of view.

as I stated before the Ferengi would sell their own mother if they thought they make a profit out of it.

The tholians and the founders would not care much about the rest of the galaxy.

quite I could go on and on about why your rationalization makes no bloody sense if you look at in any detail instead of using as justification for a "silver bullet".

In World of Warcraft, the Pandaren race has a joke that goes "to err is human, stupid humans" now it's a joke line and is not meant to taken seriously, however we know that this is kind of the mentality how Klingons and romulans view humans and by extension the federation.

[Borgholio]

There does appear to be a limit as to how much engineering you can do to a person in Star Trek. The Dominion has done extensive genetic engineering to both the Vorta and Jem Hadar. They got the Vorta who are intelligent and crafty, and highly resistant to poison...and the Jem Hadar who are physically strong and robust. That's all. Despite existing for hundreds of years (or thousands, if you believe their claims), the best the Dominion could do is intelligence, resistance to poison and Klingon-level strength.

In the same vein, the Feds only succeeded in enhanced intelligence and reflexes (Khan and Bashir) and strength (Khan). Nobody has been able to create artificial telepaths (despite having several telepathic species they could use as templates), creatures that can teleport, time travel, move at warp speed on their own...or anything like that. All "godlike" creatures evolved that way naturally.

[Chris Parr]

Or got their power from freak accidents.

So okay, maybe it's a bit of both. Maybe creating super powered beings is both difficult and dangerous.

On the other hand, who can say what those kooky mad scientists of the Federation and the Klingon Empire and the Romulans and so on are up to? I mean, we only ever see a tiny sliver of what is going on in the Federation's Galaxy, right?

Oh, and before anyone goes jumping down my throat for giving the Federation an unfair advantage here, I'd just like to point out that the Empire also has the ability to tweak genetics. They can't make a super duper Jedi on command, but they can create some super powerful creatures.