Love the image, but it was in a blog comment elsewhere un-labeled... anyone know what it's from?Update: Thanks to google's image search, I was able to find that this is from Star Trek: TMP

Before I even started this blog, I would occasionally pose a SyFy Question of the Day to my facebook friends. Sometimes, it was directly related to what I was writing, and I really did want some input to help me decide what direction to take with the story. Other times, it was purely fun. Here’s one of my favorites, from March 2011:

◊

SyFy question of the day, specific to Trek TOS: Is it plausible to detect a warp signature someplace unexpected, and upon checking it out, discovering a civilization that had just gained warp technology? Or would Starfleet have noticed the civilization was “almost there”?

Rick                        Certainly there could be and are many civilizations, in all states of technological advancement, that the federation had never come into contact with. Both the original series and star trek: enterprises mission was to do exactly that. They had never heard of The Borg before they met them, as an example.

Joseph                  Science Fiction is abreviated “SciFi” NOT “SyFy” 😉

In “First Contact” the only reason the Vulcans detected the Phoenix’s warp signature was that they were nearby. Starfleet would have to be in the area or already known that a civilization was experimenting with Warp tech to know they had succeded. More likely a first contact with a civilization that was unknown to have warp would be in space.

AB                          Thanks!

And I know that lots of people detest the abbreviation “SyFy”, as did I at first. I liked the SciFi channel when they played on the “IF” in the middle. But they changed to “SyFy” because it was a new, trendy term, using one fewer letter. If I’m copying this to Twitter, I’ll need that ONE letter 🙂

Al                            I would guess that Starfleet has automated probes looking for signs of civilization like radio signals and the like so they can send a First Contact team to observe the society, as in Insurrection. But, it’s plausible that they can miss the signs and only detect a new warp capable civilization when they detect a warp signature for the first time.

Like anything, the event has to be in range of something to detect it.

The Federation was totally ignorant to the presence of any warp faring races in the Delta Quadrant due to the distances involved.

And also ignorant to Quantum Slipstream drive cultures as well as those that have Transwarp technology.

It would be like someone in Paris knowing when the first car started up in the U.S. — It might not happen unless the person in Paris were looking specifically for that, and had someone standing by on a telegraph to tell him.

Joseph                  A Definition: ‘SyFy’ (n) Collection of crappy, mostly non SciFi programing on a increasingly harder to watch cable channel.

🙂

Nessie                  ‎@Joe…. lol!

@AB… are you writing this one or am I?

Joseph                  ‎:D

AB                          ‎@Nessie: If I can figure out a way for you to chase the kids around and do laundry while I write, I’m all for it! Otherwise, I suppose it’s yours.

Dan                        Actually, the channel became SyFy because they couldn’t get a trademark on “SciFi”. It was an already established term, whereas “SyFy” was something they could claim ownership of.

I would love to hear what you think! Even if you are reading this post a year or more after publishing, I hope you will leave a comment with your own ideas on this topic.

The previous SyFy Q of the Day is at http://wp.me/p1qnT4-dh

The shortlink for this post is http://wp.me/p1qnT4-e7

The next SyFy Q of the Day is at http://wp.me/p1qnT4-f0