Just who or what was Gomtuu, exactly? (Tin Man)

[at Quark's]

Couldn't sleep last night, so pulled out an old TNG episode, Tin Man.

I had never quite appreciated before what an intriguing concept this episode actually entertains.

So, we have an entity that Starfleet believes is a "an organic creature, born in space, living its life in the wastes between stars.". Yet, even before meeting it, Picard remarks that they'll have to race (with the Romulans) to reach "an alien intelligence, a new life form, representing a technology far beyond that of either the Romulans or ourselves".

So, the use of the term technology puzzles me at this point in the episode. Were this a naturally occurring lifeform, why would he speak about technology?

It is revealed, but only later in the episode that this creature has the layout of a vessel, could hold a crew, which makes Data remark that "Tin Man is a living being which has been bred or has adapted itself to serve a purpose. I find that interesting.", and yet later we learn it indeed had a crew in the past.

So, what (who) was Gomtuu, exactly, and what did Picard know or suspect? A naturally occurring lifeform? A bred lifeform? Or even an engineered lifeform by some incredibly sophisticated race? Something similar to a Vorlon ship? In that case, Picard's 'technology' would have been justified, even though I still don't know why he would have used that word with the lack of information he had at that point ...

And, I wonder what happened to Tam Elbrun and Gomtuu after their 'joining'. Questions, questions ...

 

[Timo]

In the briefing, the surprise factor appears to be that this is a living starship specifically. That it is "an organic creature born in space", yadda yadda, is just context to the issue that they're dealing with a special sort, an intelligent ship sort, rather than a boringly regular and dumb gormagander or vampire cloud or giant amoeba or whatnot.

How "transmissions" allow Starfleet to deduce this is unknown. But the power source observed was the specific thing that aroused their interest, and it's supposedly a technology worth studying, even if it is "naturally born" rather than manufactured. Picard from a vintner family might especially appreciate the industrial-technological capabilities of nature, even outside the context of humans exploiting those.

But the exploitation angle seems to be there from the get-go, with both intelligence and starship nature deduced before the actual encounter. Picard is expecting to find a mount of sorts, existing in order to carry other types of intelligence around. Would he think of horses as technology? As an equestrian, perhaps not. As an amateur anthropologist-archaeologist, very probably yes!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[at Quark's]

Right, I somehow completely missed the 'starship' line. In combination with that tidbit of information, Picard's remark starts to make more sense.

Still, the mystery of its history and future remains.

 

[Orphalesion]

It's been a while since I watched that episode, but yeah to me it seems most likely that it's a living ship created by organic technology/ bio engineering.
As to what happened afterwards. I read on here that the episode is based on a (non trek related) short story where in the end the human(oid?) character physically merged with the ship.

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

The episode is completely at-odds with "Encounter at Farpoint," where we had already seen a living organic starship that had technological abilities (2 of them, in fact). But in "Tin Man," there's the senior staff in the ready room, totally shocked by it as if Farpoint had never happened.

The general framework of the episode also borrows heavily from "Contagion" (the Iconian episode):
- a race is on between Starfleet and the Romulans
- the race is for control of an ancient technology
- the ancient technology puts both the Enterprise and the Romulans in peril
- in the end, it's put out of reach of both the Romulans and Starfleet

That said, I still like "Tin Man" as a better version of "Contagion," along with the unique aspects of the Tam storyline and his relationship with Gomtuu.

 

[at Quark's]

The episode is completely at-odds with "Encounter at Farpoint," where we had already seen a living organic starship that had technological abilities (2 of them, in fact). But in "Tin Man," there's the senior staff in the ready room, totally shocked by it as if Farpoint had never happened.

I would assume their natural form would be that squid-like shape, not the 'starship' or the 'ground station' disguise. We know the first alien was forced to act as a ground station, but I don't think we ever learn why the second one disguised itself as a starship, initially.

The general framework of the episode also borrows heavily from "Contagion" (the Iconian episode):
- a race is on between Starfleet and the Romulans
- the race is for control of an ancient technology
- the ancient technology puts both the Enterprise and the Romulans in peril
- in the end, it's put out of reach of both the Romulans and Starfleet

That said, I still like "Tin Man" as a better version of "Contagion," along with the unique aspects of the Tam storyline and his relationship with Gomtuu.

Now that you mention it, if I recall correctly, it's also pretty much the plotline of the computer game a Final Unity.

 

[Timo]

In general, TNG loves to be in contradiction with TOS on what is familiar and what is not: every duplication of a TOS phenomenon is considered radically new and unheard of ("Where Silence Has Lease" would be an excellent time for Data to shine and bring up the relevant trivia on holes-in-space, say).

Here I'd like to read the episode as not being in contradiction, though - not even with future Trek episodes that will treat space lifeforms as humdrum, regardless of whether those are sequel or prequel episodes. Tin Man is special in being a ship, something the TOS critters never where; something the Farpoint critter only became under duress, and even then only as part of much broader capabilities of becoming just about anything it wanted, or was told to be; and something the gormagander only became through direct insertion of Mudd's shuttle...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mudd]

Okay, on the off chance that this might be of interest to someone...

I'm in the process of moving, and I'm coming across and sorting through a lot of papers from...a previous life. So I found the original five-page premise I wrote to show Dave and Lisa how the original 6,000 word story "Tin Woodman" that Dave and I had written in the 1970s could be turned into a TNG episode.

This wasn't a premise or treatment to be submitted to the studio, just something for the three of us to work with.

It was a pretty easy thing to put together, since the milieu of the original story had relied heavily on space opera tropes as filtered through the original Star Trek:

 

[Mudd]

The general framework of the episode also borrows heavily from "Contagion" (the Iconian episode):
- a race is on between Starfleet and the Romulans
- the race is for control of an ancient technology
- the ancient technology puts both the Enterprise and the Romulans in peril
- in the end, it's put out of reach of both the Romulans and Starfleet

That said, I still like "Tin Man" as a better version of "Contagion," along with the unique aspects of the Tam storyline and his relationship with Gomtuu.

Thanks, but there's no influence there. Most of the basic story is derived from the aforementioned short story (mentioned in my previous post). Gomtuu's self-defense mechanism comes into play at the climax of that story as well; the Romulans stood in for the "Capellans," a species or government which is nothing more than a one-sentence reference early in that short story to justify the secrecy and urgency of the mission of the starship Pisces to get telepath "Div Harlthor" into contact with "Tin Woodman."

Juicing up the Romulans was actually a borrowing of mine from "Journey To Babel," the intent being to create a ticking clock - we actually piled it on, with the inclusion of the star also about to explode. In fact, I had a line in the script as submitted that too-directly paralleled Spock's "power-utilization curve" to explain how the Orion ship could be so fast, using it to explain how the first Romulan ship paced Enterprise-D to Beta Stromgren. One of TNG's technical advisors (actually one of the art department folk) who was a TOS fan said to me "I took your 'Journey To Babel' line out - I liked it, but it never made sense to me in that episode to begin with. I could tell you guys were fellow fans, though."

Now that you mention it, if I recall correctly, it's also pretty much the plotline of the computer game a Final Unity.

Now this - I have no real idea what this is, other than your identification of it as a video game.

My favorite instance of someone "identifying" the source of the plot for "Tin Man" - which, if you think about it,* is a pretty generic action/chase story used to underpin the story of Tam and Data and Troi and Gomtuu - was a letter in 1990 to Starlog magazine accusing us of "ripping off" an episode of Space: 1999 called "Voyager's Return." I'd never seen it, and when I tracked it down at Blockbuster Video and watched it...I still didn't get the similarities.

And then, of course, there are the multiple similarities to ST:TMP, but that's another story...

What there were, in the premise document and in the script as submitted, were a bunch of callbacks to the original Star Trek TV series. I'd forgotten some of them for years until I reread the five-page premise this morning.

 

[Mudd]

Now that you mention it, if I recall correctly, it's also pretty much the plotline of the computer game a Final Unity.

The episode is completely at-odds with "Encounter at Farpoint," where we had already seen a living organic starship that had technological abilities (2 of them, in fact). But in "Tin Man," there's the senior staff in the ready room, totally shocked by it as if Farpoint had never happened.

I missed this before. Yes, and a season later the crew of the Enterprise would be shocked again in "Galaxy's Child" at the existence of a huge life-form living naturally in interstellar space. TV plot amnesia.

So, our draft of the script emphasized that Gomtuu was a cybernetic organism - a combination of organic and technological united to make a "living starship." I thought that somewhat novel for Trek, but not a first or unique - In fact, we referenced the Borg as a precursor to it. Hence "Tin Man," a living being with mechanical "replacement parts." The cyborg angle was dropped at TNG in rewrites.

My copy of the submission draft - the one I have out right now, anyway, as I sift through the boxes of papers - is disorganized. But I found the original version of the description of Gomtuu:

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Do you suppose the Farscape creators saw this episode? Moya was so similar with the exception of a more "permanent" pilot.

 

[Mudd]

No. There's not much in Trek that's not based on very familiar, often-used skiffy tropes. The living spaceship is an old one.

 

[Mudd]

IIRC, TNG did a later story about a bunch of species racing to decipher a message from some ancient humanoids in order to gain some advantage. Again, these are old and very common plot tropes.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Tin Man is a Q egg.

 

[Mudd]

Nope.

 

[Qonundrum]

Tin Man is a Q egg.

Holy omelets!

 

[Kor]

It was early spying mission into our realm from Species 8-4-7-2, and this entity somehow didn't correctly remember the exact details of its own past. Because that would fit in with the "small universe syndrome" that Trek has become so good at.

Kor

 

[at Quark's]

Now this - I have no real idea what this is, other than your identification of it as a video game.

I should have given the full name of the game, which is 'Star Trek: The Next Generation - a Final Unity'. Not claiming that it was a source of Tin Man, as the game came out in 1995. It just struck me that its storyline also satisfied all the four conditions you mentioned for the Icarus Factor:

- a race is on between Starfleet and the Romulans
- the race is for control of an ancient technology
- the ancient technology puts both the Enterprise and the Romulans in peril
- in the end, it's put out of reach of both the Romulans and Starfleet

(Even though in this case a third faction is also involved, the Chodak, descendants of the original species that created the device).

But I'll agree that these are quite generic story elements, yes.

 

[Mudd]

Gomtuu was a cybernetically-enhanced, genetically engineered organism - a member of a species from another galaxy. Two intelligent species evolved in symbiosis on its home world. One was a more-or-less humanoid species something like us, the other was a much stronger, larger creature of equal or greater intelligence. Something like if, instead of humans domesticating dogs and cattle, we'd learned to communicate telepathically with and partnered up with elephants. And they began to explore space together, oh, probably about the time Earth's continents were forming.

 

[Mojochi]

The episode is completely at-odds with "Encounter at Farpoint," where we had already seen a living organic starship that had technological abilities (2 of them, in fact). But in "Tin Man," there's the senior staff in the ready room, totally shocked by it as if Farpoint had never happened.

I don't necessarily think they are at odds, any more than any other time Star Trek featured shape shifters, or beings of manipulative powers, because that's essentially what the Farpoint beings are, & by my own theory, perhaps Gomtuu as well. Just like whenever our crews come across beings like the Q, Douwd, Founders etc... it's always something they are rather surprised by, mainly because it is, & maybe always will be, about as alien to them as anything ever could be, that they might encounter.

It's been a while since I watched that episode, but yeah to me it seems most likely that it's a living ship created by organic technology/ bio engineering.

Gomtuu was a cybernetically-enhanced, genetically engineered organism - a member of a species from another galaxy. Two intelligent species evolved in symbiosis on its home world. One was a more-or-less humanoid species something like us, the other was a much stronger, larger creature of equal or greater intelligence. Something like if, instead of humans domesticating dogs and cattle, we'd learned to communicate telepathically with and partnered up with elephants. And they began to explore space together, oh, probably about the time Earth's continents were forming.

These are all very interesting possibilities. Ultimately it could be even more basic that all that though, in so much as all that really needed to happen was 2 intelligent beings of telepathic natures became symbiotic, one of which was capable of shape shifting into forms useful to the other, in exchange for having a living purpose & connection with them.

Is it really all that different than the situation Kevin Uxbridge had with Rishon? He was an ultimately very different being from her, but was able to manipulate an environment for specifically her, that fit to her needs, being that he was after all, somewhat telepathic, as evidenced by his musical torment of Troi. In a most basic sense, it could be as simple as Gomtuu is situationally the same as Kevin Uxbridge, & Tam Elbrun is its Rishon, but before that, it had that kind of relationship with many Rishons, as did others of its kind, albeit, it had less ability to be anything else by the time Tam Elbrun came along, as evolution had led its kind to a permanent state