Species 8472


I'm sure like everything else this has been discussed but..

The whole notion of the Species is ludicrous. Why would a species that lives alone in its universe develop such lethal weaponry? The don't seem to have internecine conflicts.

Even more ridiculous is the notion of them having warp drive or any FTL. In a fluidic space you could never achieve FTL speeds as the medium would never allow one to get anywhere near that speed.

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But it was the first "true" non-bipedal alien and use of CGI on a trek show.

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Tholians? Not CGI but very distinctively non-bipedal.

Species 8472 never made much sense. The events of "in the flesh" completely ruined them anyway.

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Yes they did ruin it.

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Most super advanced hostile species like the Borg were ruined when they kept using them in later eps. The Borg would have been awesome as a one off in the Q episode.

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Come on... they gave us THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS and Seven of Nine... we would never have those things if they were a one off.

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Not to me to mention 'First Contact' the one GOOD Next Gen movie.

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While but CGI, the Horta were non bipedal.

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It's never stated they were ALWAYS the only thing in Fluidic Space. Possibly they killed everything else there.

And we don't know what type of FTL they use, they come from a different universe where our laws of physics don't apply.

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The implication from Kes was certainly that they were alone and had never encountered others before, but I suppose it's possible.

No FTL should work in a fluidic space. Even sub light speeds should be snails pace.

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We can't apply our Laws of Physics to Cthulu wannabes from another Universe.

After all, The Original Trek and other sci-fi like Star Wars get away with "Look, aliens just do their alien thing and tech just does whatever the plot says it does. Don't question it and just watch." without any complaints.

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"No FTL should work in a fluidic space. Even sub light speeds should be snails pace."

It might not be cannon but in the second Star Trek Armada game you go into Fluidic space and they can't use their warpdrive while in that space.

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Not nearly as fast as airplanes travel through air, or rockets travel through nothing.

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[deleted]

You should probably vacate the conversation, seeing as you've nothing to add but petty jabs.

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[deleted]

You're a *beep*

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No FTL should work in a fluidic space.
Why not? You're just making assumptions based on what you know of traditional physics, with traditional vehicles travelling through a traditional medium. Warp Drive is not based on speed through the vacuum of space. Although it is often expressed like that just to make it easier to understand. Warp drive is based on warping space through a subspace medium.

Subspace as shown in Star Trek (or hyperspace in Star Wars) does not exist in present-day physics. They are concepts of storytelling based on different laws of physics than in normal space. Think of hyperspace as another dimension where distances in normal space are much closer together. So that if you leave normal space and enter hyperspace from New York, you can exit hyperspace back into normal space in London in only a few minutes. Subspace on Star Trek is necessary because FTL travel is impossible within the boundaries of special relativity. The warp engines on a starship worked by generating warp fields to form a "subspace bubble" that enveloped the starship, distorting the local spacetime continuum and moving the starship at velocities that could greatly exceed the speed of light. So as long as a subspace field can be formed, it doesn't matter if the ship is in a vacuum, or in a bowl of pudding, the space around the ship will be distorted allowing it to move through subspace.

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Warp Drive is not based on speed through the vacuum of space. Although it is often expressed like that just to make it easier to understand. Warp drive is based on


I was always of the opinion that warp travel was about warping space (and not actually the ship travelling at high speeds) so I see no reason why you couldn't warp fluidic space. That being said, Trek did screw around with their own rules quite a lot and insinuated that ships were going at high speeds. Depends which writer was working that day.

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True writers were often inconsistent in their depiction of warp speed not to mention other fictional devices. The stars streaking past the ship was always a stupid idea.

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Why would a species that lives alone in its universe develop such lethal weaponry?
As we learn, that species is super resistant even against Borg Assimilation. That doesnt hint at a peaceful environment.

The don't seem to have internecine conflicts.
Err ... so what we dont see never happends ? Very unlikely.

Even more ridiculous is the notion of them having warp drive or any FTL. In a fluidic space you could never achieve FTL speeds as the medium would never allow one to get anywhere near that speed.
Meh. Neither does ordinary space allow FTL ... as far as we know.

---
You shall have no other Kates before Kate Winslet.

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"Even more ridiculous is the notion of them having warp drive or any FTL. In a fluidic space you could never achieve FTL speeds as the medium would never allow one to get anywhere near that speed."

I don't think that is necessarily true. Skipping the issue of FTL/warp capabilities (can't do it in normal space, so who know's how it would work in fluidic space?) , even if fluidic space operated (mostly) on the same physics as our own universe travel into outerspace at sublight speeds would probably be much easier (rather than more difficult) than doing so in the void of space. It would all depend upon the qualities of the "fluid". I think the word "fluidic" misleads people into visualizing 6472 swimming about in a deep ocean. But an atmosphere is also a fluid too. Perhaps fluidic space merely has an atmosphere everywhere -- even in their deepest parts of space. Given the fact that they are a legged and presumably "breathing" creature (rather than a finned and gilled one) this might indicate fluidic space to be more "atmospheric" than "oceanic".

Moreover, if fluidic space is supercooled (as it likely would be in the deeper parts of "space") it could also become a "superfluid" (which is a frictionless fluid), which would eliminate all the limitations aircraft have here on Earth due to friction with air at high speeds. This would likely mean a regular aircraft would work much like space-faring vessel traversing a void does. If our atmosphere were a superfluid, for example, a jet plane would turn off its engines once cruising altitude were achieved, much like a satellite in orbit does, because there would be no atmospheric friction to slow it down (only gravity). Moreover, planes and jets would easily achieve the speeds of space craft -- 10,000's mph.

Also, regular space travel needs both a propellant and a fuel (modern rockets combine these two things into the fuel-propellant they use). An airplane, however, only needs fuel to run its jet, using the atmosphere outside as the propellant. This means conventional spacecraft have to carry an inordinate amount of "stuff" with it into the near-void of space to throw out the back of it to make it move forward. In a super-fluidic space (even one as thin as the atmosphere on Earth), one would only need a fuel to run the engine. Which means a simple propeller or jet engine would suffice for any kind of space travel. This means "space-faring" ships in a super-fluidic space could be fairly tiny in size and thus be that much easier to accelerate to near-light speeds.

...anyway, enough of me babbling. It's actually a pretty interesting discussion point you raised here. Anyone else?

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You may think species 8472 ruined voyager, but all these years (15) since it ended I can still remember 8472 and even brought it up in conversation a few years ago with someone who watched voyager sporadically but couldn't remember the numbers.

I have all 7 seasons on DVD, in the loft and have recently DVR'd them and am feeling quite nostalgic / sentimental watching them over again & am seriously considering searching the loft for the DVD's & starting all over again.

"Life forms, You tiny little life forms, You precious little life forms, Where are you?"

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Species 8472
image for user bbnj62
by bbnj62
ยป Sun Jun 21 2015 11:58:01
IMDb member since July 2005
I'm sure like everything else this has been discussed but..

The whole notion of the Species is ludicrous. Why would a species that lives alone in its universe develop such lethal weaponry? The don't seem to have internecine conflicts.

Even more ridiculous is the notion of them having warp drive or any FTL. In a fluidic space you could never achieve FTL speeds as the medium would never allow one to get anywhere near that speed.


I suppose you know this for a fact? Despite that it is a fictional show where they can do whatever they want, nobody actually knows for sure! At present there isn't even a way to travel at the speed of light (or even close), nevermind exceed it. So for all intents and purposes it isn't possible in our real life universe to go FTL.

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I thought the show implied the borg invaded fluidic space first, 8472 later war was a reaction to that initial conflict.

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I thought species 8472 were cool looking.

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