Deep Space 9 Superior

[Starbase]

Mono-cultured aliens drive me up the wall- they all dress the same, they all look the same, they all act the same, they have the same religion (if the writers are feeling ambitious they'll have different factions of the same religion), they all talk the same.....

I couldn't agree more Trek_Girl, I think a lot of writers get lazy when it comes to filling out back-stories or trying to give an alien race some culture and distinction.

This is why I liked the DS9 model- new alien every week works for awhile, but it soon becomes ridiculously predictable. At least we got to see these alien cultures develop a bit- not all Ferengi held the same values, as we learned. Bajorans were conflicted. Even the Klingons weren't as cookie cutter.

Again, I couldn't agree more!. The writer's with DS9 did such a wonderful job of bringing all the various races and alien cultures to life in a way you just don't see on other scifi shows. You mention the Ferengi, Bajorans and Klingons, and they are all portrayed with a lot of depth. But DS9 also opened up the world of the Cardassians, the Breen, the Romulans, the Dominion and even the Federation in a way we never got on any other Trek series. By the end of DS9's run I had become very knowledgable and quite intimate with them all.

[Darkstar 2.0]

Indeed to all of the above, ad the further add to why War is good for the economy, in real terms (god i sound like a politician lol).

War seems to increase the expectation of society as a whole, war does damage the imediate economy or indeed weaken it in the short term with material aqcuisitions and war efforts, but it also does do good for the after economy, to generalise the fact, a method I rarely do in fact, WWII gave to the modern world advances in weapons, yes yes yes, it is weapons, dispicable bio-engineering and the death's of so many (so many needlessly but thats another topic entirely), but war has given the 21st century such things as the Jet engine, and idea that was advanced by WWII, the rocket, space exploration, the moon landings, and all the technology such as GPS, satilites, the weather channels people watch, TV's radio equipment, computers, and as ironic and morbid as it is, Nuclear power!

From war these advancements came about because there was a nessesity to build upon the ideas, they were then made, tried out, tested and improved upon, things we take for granted may never have come about, at least not at present anyhow without war, in a sick way our developed civilised world and UK in particular with it's age old Empire, we are the result of war, and war will do one more thing than war does best aside from killing people, usher in a new era of technology that will eventually filter down to the general public and better us as a whole, in technological terms, in essense, war allows us to invent better ways of beating each other over the head - B'lanna Torres "Blink of an eye" LOL!

I always liked that line from VOY "blin of an eye" having been able to witness the planet below wage war and advance, but the principle is basically, yeah, war is decrepid, intoralable, but don't people for one minute think that we as a quaint and simple race would suddenly just invent technology for the sake of it, they well may be ideas all the time on advanced technology, but without a need to build them, who in this world is gonna give a damn?

[nx01a]

Someone's been taking notes from The Shadows...

It's always some political tactic to use one's love of something, whether planet or family, to discredit an individual. Kira on Cardassia, and Bashir and that Section 31 guy on Romulus come to mind.

Compare the situation of Kira as a Cardassian to that of Deanna as a Romulan. That's all I have to say.

[gopher65]

but it also does do good for the after[war] economy<snip>

From war these advancements came about because there was a nessesity to build upon the ideas,
<snip>
from VOY "blin of an eye"

Snipped a few things from that quote to comment on.

War is good for forcing the process of industrialization upon a country over a very short period of time. There are numerous examples of how this has helped countries over the years. The US civil war, WWI for Canada, WWII for the Soviet Union. In all these cases war helped bring about industrialization, and that helped those economies in the long run.

But what about when an industrialized country like the modern US goes to war? Do new factories get built? Nope. Do new mines get dug? Only to replace ones that have been exhausted by the war effort. Does new technology get developed? Yes.

So there are really 2 ways to divide this up:

1) Unindustrialized countries become industrialized through war, thus helping their economies (assuming that they either win or stalemate. If they lose it is obviously bad for them.)

2) Industrialized countries gain little material benefit in the long term, and in the short term they either absorb large amounts of debt or they raise taxes in order to pay for the war, both of which harm their economy.

But what about the technology developed through war? Well, there is that. Except that war isn't an efficient way to develop technology. "Necessity is the mother of all invention!" This is quite true. If something isn't needed, it doesn't get invented. Need has to exist before people will put thought into a subject. War is good for that. But it isn't the best motivator out there. Space agencies bring a far greater economic return per dollar invested (something like a 10000% return on every dollar, IIRC (that's just my vague recollection, so don't put too much stock in that figure)) than militaries bring. The way I've heard it (again, vague recollection), for every dollar spent on the military by a government ~1 dollar is deposited into the economy. There is no substantial ripple effect from military spending due to the huge amounts of waste, short turnover of physical assets, and the necessary large amounts of redundancy that don't exist in other industries (eg you can't have only the exact number of missile silos that you need, otherwise a well planned strike by your enemy can cripple you. You need many multiple times the optimal amount of equipment just in case your enemy is crafty. Because such equipment quickly becomes obsolete, you need to constantly replace huge amounts of equipment, much of which will likely never get used. At the end of WWII the US dumped enormous amounts of military equipment into the ocean because it simply didn't need it anymore. That's waste on a scale that no other industry can afford).

Anyway, if you *really* want to push technological development, chuck a bunch of people into space in a tin can and tell them to live there. There aren't many greater challenges than that. The greater the challenge, the greater the creativity that is spurred.

This is what happened in Blink of an Eye (one of my favourite Voyager episodes). Voyager was the challenge, the need, the necessity, the obsession. It acted like a spur on their development. War can do this as well, but the costs of war negate much of the end benefit. It's one of those "3 steps forward 2 steps back" scenarios.

[gopher65]

Speaking of Blink of an Eye, there is a line in it that bugs me unto no end. Everytime I see that episode I twitch when that line comes up. Tuvok says, "The planet also resembles a Quasar in that it spins very quickly." *twitch* He means Pulsar. Quasars spin too (maybe), but they're a lot bigger and more massive. Something that big just can't easily spin as fast as something that is small.

[nx01a]

Forgive him. He's written by illogical humans.

[Trek_Girl42]

Forgive him. He's written by illogical humans.

"In the Blink of an Eye" is by far my favourite Voyager ep- such a good piece of science fiction, it could easily have worked as a non-Trek short story.

[Darkstar 2.0]

Snipped a few things from that quote to comment on.

War is good for forcing the process of industrialization upon a country over a very short period of time. There are numerous examples of how this has helped countries over the years. The US civil war, WWI for Canada, WWII for the Soviet Union. In all these cases war helped bring about industrialization, and that helped those economies in the long run.

But what about when an industrialized country like the modern US goes to war? Do new factories get built? Nope. Do new mines get dug? Only to replace ones that have been exhausted by the war effort. Does new technology get developed? Yes.

So there are really 2 ways to divide this up:

1) Unindustrialized countries become industrialized through war, thus helping their economies (assuming that they either win or stalemate. If they lose it is obviously bad for them.)

2) Industrialized countries gain little material benefit in the long term, and in the short term they either absorb large amounts of debt or they raise taxes in order to pay for the war, both of which harm their economy.

But what about the technology developed through war? Well, there is that. Except that war isn't an efficient way to develop technology. "Necessity is the mother of all invention!" This is quite true. If something isn't needed, it doesn't get invented. Need has to exist before people will put thought into a subject. War is good for that. But it isn't the best motivator out there. Space agencies bring a far greater economic return per dollar invested (something like a 10000% return on every dollar, IIRC (that's just my vague recollection, so don't put too much stock in that figure)) than militaries bring. The way I've heard it (again, vague recollection), for every dollar spent on the military by a government ~1 dollar is deposited into the economy. There is no substantial ripple effect from military spending due to the huge amounts of waste, short turnover of physical assets, and the necessary large amounts of redundancy that don't exist in other industries (eg you can't have only the exact number of missile silos that you need, otherwise a well planned strike by your enemy can cripple you. You need many multiple times the optimal amount of equipment just in case your enemy is crafty. Because such equipment quickly becomes obsolete, you need to constantly replace huge amounts of equipment, much of which will likely never get used. At the end of WWII the US dumped enormous amounts of military equipment into the ocean because it simply didn't need it anymore. That's waste on a scale that no other industry can afford).

Anyway, if you *really* want to push technological development, chuck a bunch of people into space in a tin can and tell them to live there. There aren't many greater challenges than that. The greater the challenge, the greater the creativity that is spurred.

This is what happened in Blink of an Eye (one of my favourite Voyager episodes). Voyager was the challenge, the need, the necessity, the obsession. It acted like a spur on their development. War can do this as well, but the costs of war negate much of the end benefit. It's one of those "3 steps forward 2 steps back" scenarios.

Yes war dosen't seem to benefit all, there are many factors invloved at to look at places like Iraq and Zimbabwe at the moment, war dosen't make a whole lot of good, but in the general term it can have it's benefits even if thousands of innocent people have died for it, not to mention millions.

Space travel and the need to create new ideas for say something like the MarsMissions or again back to the moon (1st second time whichever viewpoint you look from lol).

moving on however, "Blink Of An Eye" was one of my favourite episodes, indeed when Tuvok notes "It's resembles a quasar, in that it has a high rate of ratation" or something like that, when in fact, it more resembles what we know to be a Pulsar, a much smaller natural phenomena that is claimed and indeed noted in reality to appear to rotate extremely fast and give of a vast and steady stream of radiation that spins faster than the initial interior of the pulsar and can be seen from Earth when this beam or jet of radiation passes Earth.

oh and it pulses to, but you knew that lol hehe

ooohhh how this thread suddenly went from DS9 to VOY, I almost forgot where I was then? lol

[./freelancer]

Woah, creepy. I woke up and stayed in bed for a while (which I usually do), during which time I had some "flashbacks" to my dreams that night (also, usually happens). Then I had another one which was completely different. Like the complete opposite, much realer. Too real. Like, realer than this, as if I was still dreaming, and had a glimpse of the real world. I can't explain that feeling, it really creeped me out

[Darkstar 2.0]

hmm.....oh.....kayy......*runs for the door*

DON'T LOOK BACK!!! AHHH!!!

[Lieutenant Colonel Davis]

"In the Blink of an Eye" is by far my favourite Voyager ep- such a good piece of science fiction, it could easily have worked as a non-Trek short story.

Any episode with Reg is a winner. In fact, tonight on Spike is a Reg episode.

[jelgate]

Saw it this morning Now if only Spike would show DS9 at normal hours.

[Trek_Girl42]

Saw it this morning Now if only Spike would show DS9 at normal hours.

I hear you. Anyone know what season they're on right now?

[jelgate]

I hear you. Anyone know what season they're on right now?

VOY or DS9

[Trek_Girl42]

VOY or DS9

DS9