Star Trek Ruminations

I'm definitely not the first to say it, but watching Deep Space Nine now, it's amazing to see how stories about toppled regimes, provisional governments, terrorists and freedom fighters, political and religious corruption have become even more meaningful now than when they were first written. I thought something similar about the socio-economic issues dealt with in "Past Tense." Re-watching this story also raised some questions in my mind about the time travel involved. "Past Tense" - Future Imperfect Here we have an interesting glimpse into the near future. Of course, it was the near future back when the show first aired in 1995, but it's even closer now. One thing the show failed to predict is the prevalence of cell phones and other wireless devices. We see one wireless phone in the episode, but we don't see a single mobile phone. There's also not a flat screen to be seen - just a lot of bulky terminals. I'm sure it made sense at the tim...

100 Years Young: Part I: Musings About the Drayan Life-Cycle Part II: Is Aging an Inevitable Biological Fact? Part III: Can an Organism 'Grow' Smaller and Younger? Part IV: The Drayan Civilization Regarding this first point, let me begin with the assertion that what we know as the aging process is not the fundamental truth we presume it to be. I recently came across an intriguing short story called "Invariant" by John Pierce about a scientist who learns how to stop biological aging. As the story explains: "The regeneration of limbs in salamanders led to the idea of perfect regeneration of human parts. How, say, a cut heals, leavng not a scar, but a perfect replica of the damaged tissue. How in normal metabolism tissue can be replaced not imperfectly, as in an aging organism, but perfectly, indfinitely." (The story deals with some unexpected results of his research - you may want to find a copy of this story to see how it ends.) The idea of "perfect re...

The Deep Space Nine episode “Little Green Men” presents the comical notion that Quark, Nog , Rom, and Odo were actually responsible for the infamous Roswell incident. As it turns out, it wasn ’t a weather balloon at all. It was three big-lobed Ferengi and a stowaway changeling. When Quark realizes he has traveled back in time and is dealing with primitive hu - mons — hu - mons he can relate too on one level, but disdains on another—he rattles off his plan to take over the galaxy. Sell his ship’s technology to the highest bidder, make contact with Ferenginar , and give the Ferengi a decisive advantage in the history of the Alpha Quadrant. He muses that the Ferengi will have warp drive ‘even before the Vulcans .’ As you would expect, his grandiose plans come to nothing, but the truth is, they may never had a chance, at least not in the way he envisioned them. Even assuming Rom could use his engineering expertise to manufacture twenty-fourth century gadgets with twentieth century te...