The Bajorans and Warp Drive
- Thread starter GulBahana
- Start date
We never knew if Bajor had warp capability before the occupation.
They certainly didn’t have it AFTER, though. In fact, post-occupation Bajor had few working ships of any kind...their fleet, like the rest of the planet, was in shambles.
They certainly didn’t have it AFTER, though. In fact, post-occupation Bajor had few working ships of any kind...their fleet, like the rest of the planet, was in shambles.
^ Yep, it would have been a violation of the Prime Directive for the Federation to give the Bajorans warp technology.
Unless Bajor actually joined the Federation, of course.
Unless Bajor actually joined the Federation, of course.
In the TNG episode Ro Laren, it was established that Bajor was quite advanced during a time when humans were barely walking upright. With such a head start, I would think, in theory, that Bajor would have developed warp drive long before Earth did.
As an aside, Bajor did achieve warp flight with one of their ancient solar sailing ships as confirmed by Sisko when he recreated the journey from Bajor to Cardassia successfully.
As an aside, Bajor did achieve warp flight with one of their ancient solar sailing ships as confirmed by Sisko when he recreated the journey from Bajor to Cardassia successfully.
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Most likely, the Bajoran Militia utilizes its warp-capable warships outside the system leaving only impulse ships for the home guard. Besides, as of season 7 of DS9, there's any number of Starfleet, Klingon and Romulan ships passing through the system if shit hits the fan. Granted, in this case, the Bajorans were in conflict with the Romulans, but in the event it did come to shots fired, Starfleet would have sided with the Bajorans (Admiral Ross even says so) and I doubt you'd have to twist a Klingon's arm to fight the Romulans.
The only reason to not give them warp (in context of the PD) is to 'not interfere with a pre-warp society'. But 50 years of Cardassian occupation would have "interfered" with the Bajorans much more severely than the Federation giving them warp afterwards would.
Also, even if they were not warp-capable, they still had reached Cardassia before the Cardassians reached them. All in all, I would see no real reason not to give them warp drive.
Just because the Cardassians interfered with Bajor's development, doesn't give the Federation the right to do the same.
Remember, the very same Prime Directive which forbids the Federation from giving warp drive to the Bajorans, also prevented it from interfering in the occupation in the first place.
Indeed, the only reason that Starfleet is even allowed to maintain a presence on DS9 in the first place is because the Bajorans invited them to do so.
Conversely, I see no real reason TO give it to them. And they're not likely to ask, either (even though if they did, the Federation would not be allowed to indulge them).
With the planet being in such a sorry state after the occupation, the Bajoran government's highest priority would be to get their own local affairs in order. Warp drive would be nothing more than a distraction to them at this point. Why should the Bajorans care about exploring outside their system when they've got a shitload of problems to deal with at home?
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It's the series biggest missed opportunity; by the end of DS9 - Bajor should've joined the UFP.
Actually isn't it clear the Bajorans have warp-capable ships? After all, New Bajor was located far enough away from the wormhole's Gamma Quadrant terminus that Kira and Bashir were travelling at warp at the start of Crossover.
But on the other hand, DS9 episode "The Rapture" established that the legendary lost city of B'hala was "only" 20,000 years old. If the Bajorans had a super advanced space travelling society for hundreds of thousands of years everyone would know where B'hala was.
Therefore it is my belief that Bajor was civilized hundreds of thousands or even millions of years ago, and was civilized for some or all of the 20,000 years before DS9, but has not been civilized for all of the hundreds of thousands or millions of years since Bajor was first civilized.
It is possible that civilization rose on Bajor, and then fell, and then rose again at least once, and possibly many times over hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. Some of those early Bajoran civilizations may have left ruins on other worlds in their solar system and in neighboring solar systems, and it is those ruins which may have been found and proven that Bajor was civilized hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Since Cardassia Prime seems to be near Bajor, Cardassia Prime has probably been near Bajor for tens or hundreds of thousands of years in the past and will probably be near Bajor for tens or hundreds of thousands of years in the future, until the separate orbits of Bajor and Cardassia around the galactic center move them farther apart.
Thus for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, the Cardassian system is likely to have been one of the first systems visited by Bajoran interstellar explorers whenever civilization on Bajor rose to the level of interstellar travel, and the Bajoran system is likely to have been one of the first systems visited by Cardassian interstellar travelers whenever civilization on Cardassia rose to the level of interstellar travel.
And it is possible that hostile relationships between Bajorans and Cardassians caused the fall of civilizations on Bajor and Cardassia Prime.
That seems to be a logical explanation of why the Federation was not founded by Bajor hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Except that the Bajoran sail ship voyage to Cardassia was apparently accidental, caused by a Tachyon storm. The Bajorans didn't have warp drive. And it is still highly impressive for them to have interplanetary travel for hundreds of years before Earth did and makes one wonder why that wasn't enough to make them one of the most powerful societies in that region of space. .
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When governments set out to oppress and destroy populations under their control, they do everything they can to cut them off from the outside world. I would assume warp drive would be one of the first things the Cardassians sought to remove from the Bajorans.
It's clear from any history book that civilizations do rise, fall, and rise again, whether from war, disease, natural disasters, etc. Troy, for example, was built and destroyed several times. So it's not clear what Bajor's standing was before the Cardassians took over, but they're most likely the ones that reduced the Bajorans to impulse-driven ships.
It's clear from any history book that civilizations do rise, fall, and rise again, whether from war, disease, natural disasters, etc. Troy, for example, was built and destroyed several times. So it's not clear what Bajor's standing was before the Cardassians took over, but they're most likely the ones that reduced the Bajorans to impulse-driven ships.
To the contrary, right off the bat in "Past Prologue" we meet a Bajoran flying a warp-capable ship and fleeing the Cardassians in it.
It's quite possible that Bajor gained warp capability as the direct result of the occupation: all the prominent Bajoran warp assets (three more or less triangular ship designs, two of them built for the show albeit recycling parts from the one inherited from TNG) are also seen in Cardassian hands in, say, "Rules of Engagement" and we could thus argue that the Bajoran vessels are stuff abandoned by the Cardassians at the very sudden end of the occupation.
It's also possible Bajor had native warp and had had this for centuries. And it's possible for both of these models to hold simultaneously: Bajor could have lost warp several times in its extremely long history, one of these times perhaps being the Cardassian occupation.
This whole impulse fleet thing seems to be a bit of a collective writer/VFX people misunderstanding. In "The Siege", we see a Bajoran "sub-impulse" raider pitted against two menacingly large winged interceptors, and those bad guy ships are said to enjoy an advantage due to their impulse engines, an advantage Kira negates by taking the fight to the atmosphere of Bajor. Nothing about "The Siege" suggests the interceptors would lack warp drive, though - and the design is seen in interstellar space in "Preemptive Strike" and also in the Mirror Universe. But "impulse" being mentioned in the dialogue may have confused the people making the later "Shadows and Symbols"...
We could still argue the majority of the ships seen in the "S&S" blockade lacked warp drive, perhaps because Kira had access only to ships under repair. Or that all the significant ships in the blockade (that is, the proper warships, i.e. the winged interceptors) were of a sub-type that left the warp engines ashore, either because Bajor couldn't afford warp engines for all its interceptors, or because this sub-type used the room for housing some other important gear.
In the end, the twelve impulse ships the Council of Ministers released for use in Kira's blockade were a political move: the Council didn't want to give Kira what she wanted, and Kira in turn only wanted to make a gesture, not a fight. Bajor might have had a whole lot of warp capacity waiting in the wings, only Kira was denied access to it.
Likewise, there's the Janitza Mountains...
That is, despite its alleged hundreds of millennia of civilization, Bajor has failed to survey this geographical feature. This would not be humanly possible - so our three alternatives here are:
1) Bajorans are not humans - after all, they never bothered to settle their paradisaical fifth moon as per "Progress", either, another utterly inhuman failure. Perhaps Bajorans fear discovery of all sort?
2) Bajorans have suffered a collapse or two, in which geographical records have been lost, among other things. Between those, they have roamed the stars, though.
3) Bajorans have suffered constant collapses, meaning their civilization has never managed to technologically ascend beyond basic irrigation and nice pottery.
...Now there's a cool idea. The underlying/resulting mutual hatred would also explain why two planetfuls of civilization failed to keep proper records of their glorious past when even one could be expected to have managed that: the two undid each other's history out of spite, actively destroying records and perverting whatever was written.
But witness what they used the drive for - meditative cruises within their star system. Bajorans just don't appear to believe in exploration much. Perhaps because on a single planet, long since civilized, there's no need for an explorer caste and therefore no room for it, either?
As regards Sisko's lightsail specifically, we know he was building a replica of a specific design dating back 800 years. This does not mean this would have been the first-ever Bajoran lightsail, or the last-ever, and tells us nothing about the possible other types of spacecraft in existence back then. Instead, Sisko was working from the one set of blueprints he had access to. Perhaps the blueprints survived offworld because the original builder's other five spacecraft all had warp drive?
Timo Saloniemi
I got the impression that most of the most advanced Bajoran ships were off on missions providing support, so they only had the home guard fleet around. Like the "Mars Defense Fleet" which the Borg Cube just destroyed. It is just a line to show how desperate the Bajorans were.
It is clear that Bajorans have warp drive throughout the series, they certainly own freighters and colony ships don't they? I don't see how they wouldn't have at least reverse engineered warp drive during the cardie occupation. Who knows when they achieved it though. They have a civilization dating back tens of thousands of years and a solar system rich with habitable planets and moons. The solar sail ships were probably enough. We also have to factor in how advanced the prophets were, even though they were supposed to be from Bajor. There is a lot unexplored about Bajor.
It is clear that Bajorans have warp drive throughout the series, they certainly own freighters and colony ships don't they? I don't see how they wouldn't have at least reverse engineered warp drive during the cardie occupation. Who knows when they achieved it though. They have a civilization dating back tens of thousands of years and a solar system rich with habitable planets and moons. The solar sail ships were probably enough. We also have to factor in how advanced the prophets were, even though they were supposed to be from Bajor. There is a lot unexplored about Bajor.
Perhaps not - after all, they hire folks like Kasidy Yates (who for her part works for the Petarians).
But the ship from "Past Prologue" definitely has warp, as it's coming from outsystem and being chased by a Cardassian ship of warp-capable type and explicit outsystem origin. At least the ships of the "Past Prologue" type serving Bajoran interests could then be assumed to be Bajoran...
Sounds like a bit much to ask. If WWII here on Earth involved Space Nazis arriving in warpships and occupying Earth, would we have any hope of reverse engineering that tech? What if the 30 Year War was like that? If the Punic Wars were? A civilization really might need to be on the verge of inventing native warp in order to make heads or tails of a malevolent force's warp drive.
...Such as said planets and moons, curiously enough! Did ancient Bajorans go there and then suffer a disaster that left modern Bajorans unaware that their ancestors had already once settled on the fifth moon?
Indeed, their failure to comprehend linear time might be directly related to how Bajoran history seems to be far from linear. Although exactly how?
Timo Saloniemi
Depends. It can be argued that because of the Cardassian occupation the Bajorans are aware of the universe around them, and there's no risk of cultural contamination. There was a similar situation in the novels, the Romulans conquered a pre-warp planet, and when they pulled out the Federation offered support on the ground that they can't contaminate their culture any worse than Romulan occupation already has.
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