Comic Book Style Mutations

[Lord Revan]

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.

well the thing is that United Federation of Planets is only 150 major member systems even if we assume that there's 1000 colonies and outposts for each member, the Milky Way has around 200 billion stars in it so the Federation is but a tiny fraction of the galaxy.

However the fact that even during the height of the Dominion War when it seemed that all hope was lost it was not even considered to make superpowered soldiers to fight the Dominion, suggests that it something that's not common enough to be relevant.

[biostem]

Well, I mean, if we're talking "what's possible" - then shouldn't there people Rifts-style power-armor soldiers and legions of battle-droids? I mean, Trek certainly has the technology to do so... Heck, they don't even use things like grenades or even militarized shuttles for land battles. There is either some strong political impedance toward designing military equipment, or they have just culturally blinded themselves to what the potential uses of their tech are...

[Lord Pounder]

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.

Prove it dick face. The debating rules on this forum require you to provide evidence to any claim. I can very easily say a Star Destroyer has cheddar cheese as a power source, but I can't prove that that so its not so.

[Chris Parr]

Prove what exactly?

Prove that a freak accident can create a superhuman? What about Gary Mitchell and Elizabeth Dehner in "Where No Man Has Gone Before"? or Reginald Barclay in "The Nth Degree"? It's extremely rare (hence the term "freak accident) but it has happened.

And you'll notice I said the Federation might be doing something with genetic enhancements. might be, meaning it's not definite.

And about Star Wars genetic manipulation, there are the Kaminoans (I hope I spelled that right) and also the Sith can create monsters using Sith Alchemy, which uses the Force to tweak a living creature's genetic code into something truly horrifying.

[Simon_Jester]

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...

The point is that we should not assume that there are huge piles of strange, unknown, and mysterious things being developed all over the place just outside the "camera frame" of what we can see. There "might" be.

But then again, there might be someone standing right behind you, silently watching you. Right now. Oh, you turned around? Ha! He dodged around behind you again! There he is! He MIGHT be there! You can't rule it out! He might be a ninja!

See how silly and immature that sounds? How annoying would it be to have someone who's constantly going on about how there MIGHT be invisible ninjas hiding just outside your field of view all the time? How out of touch with reality would a person like that sound?

Because the reality is, the reason we don't see those ninjas isn't that they're super-stealthy. It's that they aren't there. There is no invisible ninja standing behind you right now. Sure, in some imaginable alternate universe there MIGHT be, but it's pointless to talk about things that are purely hypothetical when there's no evidence for their existence.

There's a concept in philosophy known as Occam's Razor, which can be simply stated as "if you have two possible explanations for a situation, AND they both fit the facts equally well, the simpler one is more likely to be correct."

In this case, Occam's Razor is telling us that the reason there aren't lots of supermen running around the Star Trek galaxy is that unlike in a comic book, there aren't lots of supermen randomly being created IN the Star Trek galaxy. If there were, then Star Trek would have weird things, things like this, going on ALL THE TIME instead of only happening in a crossover comic.

But if, based on Occam's Razor, we say that it is highly unlikely that superbeings are being spammed all over the Star Trek universe on a regular basis... then it is similarly highly unlikely that they would conveniently just happen to be spammed in time to present problems for a bunch of new alien invaders.

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.

And yet this is seldom if ever done, rather than being a commonplace... when people in Star Wars need fighting power on their side, they get human guards or battledroids, but do not invest in genetically engineered terrors with comic book level superpowers.

[Chris Parr]

All right.

[biostem]

You have to look at it like this: If the Federation or Empire didn't use all these cool and super-powerful beings, when the enemy is attacking their very center(s) of power, then said assets are either not available, or simply unwilling to aid their respective factions.

Case in point - Wolf 359 - the Borg are on their way to attack Earth, and all the Federation can muster is 39 ships. No fancy superweapons, no superbeings, no time travel or other funky tech. Thus, we can only conclude that *all* they have available in such dire circumstances are bog-standard (to their setting) ships.

[Lord Revan]

the main problem here is this Chris, you're looking for a "silver bullet" that would cause massive paragrim shift, instead of looking at the big picture.

In alot if not all of the threads you're made the result has been too rare to really matter in the grand scale of things. While he could worded more politely (though I can't blame him for being a bit cranky about it) Lord Pounder has a point. as Simon said we could assume alot of things but it's not productive or mature to do so.

to give a non-scifi example the fomula for kinetic energy is E=.5mv2, where E=energy, m=mass and v=velocity. Now we could add alot of terms to that fomula but if the signifigant variables remain the same all those added terms do is make it harder to calculate the result and that's not in anyone's best intrest.

biostem's point is a good one too and something I touched upon before, if even when the very fate of the Federation was at stake they didn't even consider using those assets, then which one would be in your honest opinion the simpler explanation?

1. that those assets are avaible not used even in mortal danger because of "reasons"
2. that those assets are simply not avaible

[Chris Parr]

All right, I'll concede the point. Creating super powered soldiers is impossible for the powers that be right now.

[Simon_Jester]

You have to look at it like this: If the Federation or Empire didn't use all these cool and super-powerful beings, when the enemy is attacking their very center(s) of power, then said assets are either not available, or simply unwilling to aid their respective factions.

Case in point - Wolf 359 - the Borg are on their way to attack Earth, and all the Federation can muster is 39 ships. No fancy superweapons, no superbeings, no time travel or other funky tech. Thus, we can only conclude that *all* they have available in such dire circumstances are bog-standard (to their setting) ships.

In fairness, there IS a precedent for the Federation using one 'superweapon' capability to save their core territory: time travel. Because they did that at least twice.

On the other hand, the first time this happened it was a bunch of renegade Starfleet officers doing it in a hijacked Klingon ship without sanction from high command (which in fact had warrants out for their arrest). And the second time this happened, it involved the Enterprise getting sucked into the same temporal vortex the Borg had used to go back in time in the first place.

So we can't count on the Federation using time travel against an enemy- plus, using weaponized time travel wouldn't even work against an enemy that invades from a distant galaxy, because even if you travel back in time to when they were vulnerable, you can't get there because Star Trek time travel generally doesn't involve travelling in space in the same journey.