WHy there are no Denobulans/Xindi in TOS and TNG?
- Thread starter xvicente
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Same reason there were no Tellarites or Gorn in TNG.
The Xindi are very far away from Federation space; Enterprise made that very clear from the start. Many of the worlds NX-01 visited in its second and third seasons were way out in deep space, far enough beyond Earth and Vulcan that it's understandable that the Federation's growth didn't encompass them within one or two centuries.
Also, the Xindi lost their homeworld and had to rebuild their entire civilization. That could easily have been the work of a century or two, leaving them little time for expanding into space.
As for the Denobulans, not every civilization is motivated to travel widely. According to Phlox, Denobulans' natural instinct is to cluster together, with 12 billion of them sharing a single continent out of choice. Is it really that surprising, then, that relatively few of them would be interested in travel abroad?
Also, the Xindi lost their homeworld and had to rebuild their entire civilization. That could easily have been the work of a century or two, leaving them little time for expanding into space.
As for the Denobulans, not every civilization is motivated to travel widely. According to Phlox, Denobulans' natural instinct is to cluster together, with 12 billion of them sharing a single continent out of choice. Is it really that surprising, then, that relatively few of them would be interested in travel abroad?
Leaving aside distance and speed has never been one of ST strong point's. I have to disagreee we know by FC that the Federation spans 8000ly, and in ENT we were only talking distances in what a few of hundred ly from Earth?
However we don't know where the expansion of the Federation happened, it could have been in a different direction. Or as you said those worlds simply elected not to join the Federation.
^You can't trust numbers in Trek. They're too inconsistent. By the assumptions that prevailed in TNG, DS9, and especially VGR, a distance of 8000 light years would've taken a starship around 8 years to traverse, rather than the few days it was generally shown to take, so that one isolated reference should not outweigh the preponderance of other evidence. (Heck, FC itself seems to show the Enterprise getting from the Romulan border to Earth in mere minutes!)
But there's a simple matter of common sense we can apply. We're not sure just how many stars are within 100 light years (since a lot of the dim ones haven't been discovered yet), but at a rough estimate, it's at least around 15,000. Even if you had enough starships to visit and explore one star system per week (a reasonable standard to apply when talking about a TV-series universe), it would take over 288 years just to visit every one of those star systems even once each. Thoroughly exploring, colonizing, or establishing diplomatic relations with them would naturally take far longer.
So for purely functional, logistical reasons, it's unlikely that the Federation has spread too far by the 24th century; it just wouldn't have had enough time to settle and incorporate that many worlds. Heck, Picard said the UFP had only 150 or so members, just one percent of the number of stars within a mere 100 light-years. If those member worlds were spread out over a sphere 8000 ly in diameter, they'd be spread out incredibly diffusely, and there would be millions of star systems within that volume that the Federation hadn't even managed to visit yet.
So regardless of the Federation's physical extent, there are bound to be many, many civilizations in near space that it just hasn't had the time to interact with more than briefly if at all, and many that it's encountered once or twice but otherwise hasn't had many dealings with. Three centuries just isn't long enough to cover any large volume of space all that thoroughly.
But there's a simple matter of common sense we can apply. We're not sure just how many stars are within 100 light years (since a lot of the dim ones haven't been discovered yet), but at a rough estimate, it's at least around 15,000. Even if you had enough starships to visit and explore one star system per week (a reasonable standard to apply when talking about a TV-series universe), it would take over 288 years just to visit every one of those star systems even once each. Thoroughly exploring, colonizing, or establishing diplomatic relations with them would naturally take far longer.
So for purely functional, logistical reasons, it's unlikely that the Federation has spread too far by the 24th century; it just wouldn't have had enough time to settle and incorporate that many worlds. Heck, Picard said the UFP had only 150 or so members, just one percent of the number of stars within a mere 100 light-years. If those member worlds were spread out over a sphere 8000 ly in diameter, they'd be spread out incredibly diffusely, and there would be millions of star systems within that volume that the Federation hadn't even managed to visit yet.
So regardless of the Federation's physical extent, there are bound to be many, many civilizations in near space that it just hasn't had the time to interact with more than briefly if at all, and many that it's encountered once or twice but otherwise hasn't had many dealings with. Three centuries just isn't long enough to cover any large volume of space all that thoroughly.
Or every other species mentioned in TOS. Some were even members of the Federation.
HHmmm, no one has mentioned Montana to me in while. Is it still a state?
All the line in FC said is that the Federation spans 8000ly, and perhaps it does at it's widest point there could be points wheren it's only a few hundred light years across.
And at TMP it would have taken 5.5 years to traverse 8000ly. An example of how inconsistant speeds and distance have been applied in ST.
I like to think that The Voyage Home had the Xindi Aquatics in if that counts for anything.
Or most of the action was farther out in TOS and TNG times, with them coming back to Vulcan and Earth every once in a while, but not heading out towards Andoria or Denobula as that is in some other direction to where most things are happening. The Romulan and Klingon border being one way. Cardassian, Bajor, and Ferengi space being in another, and the wide exploration zone beyond were Farpoint station was going to be is either in yet another direction, or beyond Andorian and Denobulan space.
Even attempting to have the hero ships from TOS, TNG, and DS9 cover all the sphere around Earth would be impossible. Especially if they are mostly suppose to be beyond the old exploration range of the old NX-class ships of the ENT era. They might pass Denobula all the time when they go to Vulcan, but no one really cares since it isn't even a navigation feature.
There was a starbase Xendi in TNG era, so maybe that is near what use to be the Expanse 200 years before. Assuming everything in there wasn't temporally displaced to begin with.
Even attempting to have the hero ships from TOS, TNG, and DS9 cover all the sphere around Earth would be impossible. Especially if they are mostly suppose to be beyond the old exploration range of the old NX-class ships of the ENT era. They might pass Denobula all the time when they go to Vulcan, but no one really cares since it isn't even a navigation feature.
There was a starbase Xendi in TNG era, so maybe that is near what use to be the Expanse 200 years before. Assuming everything in there wasn't temporally displaced to begin with.
Wasn't the expanse only fifty light years from Earth?
Starfleet had a full blown research program on a world over 2,000 light years from Earth.
I don't buy the idea of those worlds the NX-01 visited being deep space even in Kirk's time let alone Picard's time.
"The Xindi" claimed that Earth was 50 ly from the planet the Xindi Council was based on, but that's impossible, since that planet was deep inside the Expanse, which was over 2000 ly across. Also, we know that NX-01 was 150 ly from Earth in "The Crossing" and "Horizon," so presumably they were farther out by "The Expanse." Given the log dates of March 21st in "Bounty" and April 24 when they reached home in "The Expanse," it took them no more than a month at warp 5 to cover those 150-plus light years. But it took them seven weeks at warp 5 to reach the Expanse, which puts it probably around 250-300 ly away. The 50-ly figure in "The Xindi" is a mistake, pure and simple. Or else Xindus years were really long and their light-years are much bigger than Earth light-years.
Why not? Exploration does not expand outward in a perfect spherical wavefront. Magellan's expedition circumnavigated the entire Earth 85 years before the English settled Jamestown and over 330 years before Europeans "discovered" the source of the Nile.
NX-01's mission was to take advantage of its breakthrough engines to travel farther than humans had ever gone before. Their goal was to keep going outward, not to fill in the entire map closer to home. Remember what I said earlier -- with at least 15,000 stars within 100 light-years of Earth, it would take three centuries to visit one per week. NX-01 reached 100 light-years by the end of the first season (Risa was 90 ly from Earth), and visited only about 1/1000th of those 15,000 star systems in that time. There were still plenty of unexplored systems in their wake, and the wave of Federation expansion and settlement would've proceeded far, far more slowly.
Besides, we're not talking about a straight line here. The further you get from Earth, the huger a volume of space you're dealing with, and the larger the number of star systems. Double the radius and you multiply the number of stars by eight. If it'd take 300 years to visit every star within 100 light years, it'd take over two thousand years to visit every star within 200 ly. Granted, the bigger the UFP gets, the more ships you have to visit those stars, so it would go faster, but that's just for the initial visit; actually doing full surveys or colonizing or establishing diplomatic relations would take far longer. So even relatively near space is still going to have a lot of unexplored or barely-explored territory well into Picard's time.
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How about...
some of the races encountered in ENT were later conquered by species such as the Cardassians or Klingons before the Federation was able to expand out to reach them? hence we never see them again.
some of the races encountered in ENT were later conquered by species such as the Cardassians or Klingons before the Federation was able to expand out to reach them? hence we never see them again.
Or maybe they're just not interested in participating in Starfleet. Or maybe the Potemkin had a Denobulan science officer and a Vissian chief engineer, but we never saw them because we were over here watching what the Enterprise was doing instead.
The Denobulan fell victim to a horrible medical condition, they asked others for help, but it was discovered that there was a second intelligent species on the Denobulan homeworld who would become dominate if all the Denobulans died. So everyone refused to assist the Denobulans with their medical condition ... even though a cure was discovered.
And so all the Denobulans perished.
So sad.
And so all the Denobulans perished.
So sad.
I would not want to see Denobulans, Xindi or any other aliens that were not in The Next Generation dropped in via CGI, just to make sure that all the shows have all the aliens. What fun is that? Just enjoy the shows for what they are and keep them seperated where they've been seperated for so very long. TOS was probably the one series that would most bring up alien species that we've never met and likely never will, in a throw-away line. Like an Aldebrian Shell Mouth, or whatever it was. A Donebian Slime Devil. Things like that. So I wouldn't ever expect every alien mentioned in STAR TREK to appear across the board - or at all, for that matter.
I figure that since Denobulans are genetically engineered, they'd be barred admittance to the Federation.
That's a rather ghastly notion. Outlawing the practice of genetic engineering is one thing, but discriminating against people who've had it done to them is just bigotry. After all, the "criminals" in that case are the doctors who did the engineering. Nobody can be held legally accountable for something done to them before their birth.
Anyway, in the novel continuity, Denobula is a Federation member by the 24th century, and there are a number of Denobulans in Starfleet, notably the Enterprise-E's assistant CMO Dr. Tropp. And my Rise of the Federation novels show that the Federation wants Denobula as a member, and it's the Denobulans who hesitate to join because of the laws against genetic engineering. Maybe some kind of compromise is worked out, or maybe the Denobulans decided they'd already engineered themselves enough and didn't need to change any more, so they accepted the ban in exchange for membership.
This made my day.
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