A series around a Rogue planet

As a second part to my spy campaign I wanted to create something completely different for my PC's to deal with.

The date is 2343, and I was thinking of placing my whole series on a rogue planet. I didn't really flesh out where the planet is from or the speed it moves at.

This rogue planet has a trajectory which will take it into Klingon or Romulan space (I haven't decided yet). The FIS decides that it would be a worthwile attempt to place a listening post and a small base with say a runabout or two.

The crew is charged with spying on the enemy while making sure they keep it all secret. I also wanted to include a native species on the planet which could awaken as the crew is in mid-mission, leading to the Klingons or Romulans boarding the planet and searching.

I wanted to have this species maybe have some ships and do some pirate attacks on shipping lanes leagind to direct confrontations which could result in the FIS being found.

This is really a rough idea and I still need to figure out a reasonable explanation why the planet is moving at a high speed (in order to make it logical to mount a mission on the planet).

Any ideas?:)

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Originally posted by Lt.Khrys Antos

I wanted to have this species maybe have some ships and do some pirate attacks on shipping lanes leagind to direct confrontations which could result in the FIS being found.

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Hmm. Good Idea, remember to make all the alien ships atmosphere capable, then, at least in theory, they don't need a spackdock.

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This is really a rough idea and I still need to figure out a reasonable explanation why the planet is moving at a high speed (in order to make it logical to mount a mission on the planet).

Any ideas?:)

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Well, Warp Drives and Wormhole tech aren't going to be any help, what about a planetary, hidden artificial gravity generator, that in essence pulls the planet where it goes, also gives some steering control to the aliens, and one hell of a scorched earth policy, "Ram the Planet!"

Anyhow, best I can do on short notice. :)

Personally I'd make it an asteroid, that'll give it the speed you want.

As to the pirates, they happened to have an underground hideout so well hidden Starfleet built without ever noticing it. The pirates decided adapt themselves and arranged their raiding schedule to take the Starfleet presence into account, after all what better hide out than right under the authorities nose?

If you do decide to have a rogue planet with life look at deep ocean life forms that get warmth and nutrition from thermal vents for inspiration.

Well, there are few lrather large problems with the aspect of rogue planet... now since I subscribe to realism and entertainment at the same time I tend to research some ideas for my episodes, here are few pointers which you are more than welcomed to discard...

1) Extreame tectonic instability, well since the planet is moving and is being effected by a various gravity fields of astronomical bodies it would basicly be effected by enormous earthquakes and geological disturbences.

2) High possibility of collosion, well the planet has a large mass, it will attract things, such as asteroids. It may be attracted by stars, or other elements such as black holes. There is no telling the havoc that would be cause on the surface if the planet went through a nebula or even some sort of cosmic storm...

3) Since that planet would have to be rather fast moving (otherwise it would never escape the gravity of other elements it passed near by) and as it suggests it would need to have originated from a star system destroyed by a cataclism it would be extreamly hazardous.

4) Most of the planets in our solar system are either gas giants or death worlds (with no active core)

5) Extreame difficult of trajectory prediction...

6) No permanent star, most certainy death core leaves a very little chance for complicated life... simple microbes or bacterias at the most.

The list just goes on I suppose, but then again, this is science fiction outlook on things ... some Star Trek episodes can be hardly called scientific now can they :)

Kind Regards
Daniel

Posted by Moriarti:

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Well, Warp Drives and Wormhole tech aren't going to be any help, what about a planetary, hidden artificial gravity generator, that in essence pulls the planet where it goes, also gives some steering control to the aliens, and one hell of a scorched earth policy, "Ram the Planet!"

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I like that idea, instead of being something natural it'll be alien controlled. The aliens long ago mistankenly ripped their planet out of its orbit by activating their McGuffin generator and they went into hibernation to escape death.

Posted by Pesterfiled:

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If you do decide to have a rogue planet with life look at deep ocean life forms that get warmth and nutrition from thermal vents for inspiration.

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I thought about the asteroid idea and thought it to be too small to have missions only on the surface exploring. But I like the idea of a giant water planet like in that VOY episode that I can't remember the name of. And a species like the Antedeans to go along with it.

Posted by Polanski:

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1) Extreame tectonic instability, well since the planet is moving and is being effected by a various gravity fields of astronomical bodies it would basicly be effected by enormous earthquakes and geological disturbences.

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Aye there would be, so their will be no surface, only a giant ocean.

Posted by Polanski:

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2) High possibility of collosion, well the planet has a large mass, it will attract things, such as asteroids. It may be attracted by stars, or other elements such as black holes. There is no telling the havoc that would be cause on the surface if the planet went through a nebula or even some sort of cosmic storm...

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That could spark a whole host of episode ideas, thanks for suggesting it.:D

Posted by Polanski:

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3) Since that planet would have to be rather fast moving (otherwise it would never escape the gravity of other elements it passed near by) and as it suggests it would need to have originated from a star system destroyed by a cataclism it would be extreamly hazardous.

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That gives me an idea, the species which inhabited the clam ocean planet deliberately ripper their planet out of their home system to escape a supernova or other phenomenon.

Posted by Polanski:

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No permanent star, most certainy death core leaves a very little chance for complicated life... simple microbes or bacterias at the most.

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And so the species brought upon the extinction of most of the other lifeforms on their planet in order to save their civilization or something along those lines.

Posted by Polanski:

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4) Most of the planets in our solar system are either gas giants or death worlds (with no active core)

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I'd like to have something like a dying core or one which is slowly losing power, they do have to somehow power the Mcguffin that ripped them out of their orbit.


I like all of these ideas, keep 'em coming.;)

What about a planet with a larger orbit that instead carries it through two systems, but they enoucter it when it is between them?

Posted by Aslan:

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What about a planet with a larger orbit that instead carries it through two systems, but they encounter it when it is between them?

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You mean say, two systems very close to the klingon/fed border and a planet which has a very large orbit? I thought about something along those lines, but I actually wanted the characters to unable to "ask" for NPC ST help. Since they don't have ranks (their FIS) they'll have to work together with no one being able to pull rank or anything like that.

I also wanted to be able to do the species of the week that all Trek series seem to be fond of.
:)

Polanski -

A rogue planet is almost certainly going to be a solid rock with no molten core and therefore tectonically dead. Further, a free-trajectory planet is not within significant gravitational influence of other celestial bodies, at least not enough to cause any tectonic activity should it somehow still be geologically active.

Further, the chances of impact with a significant interstellar mass is far less for a rogue than for, say, Earth. Without a star, it's far less likely to attract other planetoids. Starship type deflector shields over the base would take care of almost all such problems.

On other tentacle, such planets move very very slowly by starship standards - a very low sublight velocity. The Romulan Neutral Zone averages a light year deep, according to Spock in TOS. A fast moving body moving at, say, 10% lightspeed is going to take a decade just to cross the Zone! Better to find a rogue planet already inside the subject Empire.

Also, take into account that the Rommies, or Klingons, or whoever aren't any dumber than the Federation would be. If a rogue planet passed within sensor range of a major Federation world or base, rest assured Starfleet would have it checked out and sensors put in place.

A better idea than the Rogue planet would be to take a small (100m or less) planetoid, hollow it out and turn it into a spy ship. Check out the Traveller adventure Expidition to Zhodane for a version of a small planetoid ship.

If your group is anything like mine you will have a few people saying, "What a second! Free orbit bodies will have no life on them. They are too far away from any star to have heat or light. They are frozen dark bodies not capable of supporting life."

So either the water world with life at the bottom around the thermal vents where the water is warm enough to stay in liquid or make the planet interior vacant [what was that planet called in TOS where it turned out to be a ship. . .something about touching the sky in the title].

Owen:

With all due respect as NASA nor any other space agency have managed to observe and identify your "average' rogue planet, we can only make guesses and assumptions and yours would be as good as mine.

It reminds me of the movie (black and white) titled "The day that Earth stood still". Where two nuclear explosions performed by nuclear superpowers of the cold war on the poles of the Earth force it out of the orbit... and the Earth begins to fall into the Sun.
The collision with Sun will of course destroy the planet, the life will be long gone due to the catastrophical effects of the orbit shift.

I have made a mistake by stating tectonical instability, what I mean was geological instability (as mentioned in earlier post). Tectonics deal with the forces of the active core (so you were right on that one Owen) but I must point out that even today we are aware of the planets in other solar systems not because we can see them, but because we can measure their gravity interacting with the stars within the systems they are ...

The planet would need to be artificially "propelled" otherwise it would simply gbe caught by the gravity of something else...
And I would like to point out that the faster the planet would travel the more dangerous it and it sourface would be... let us all remember the e=mc^2 rules written by everyone's favourite uncle.

On top of that object of such kind would be a stelear phenomena of such magnitute that any scientist in the quadrant would like to learn more about it.

I think a planetoid (such as Eros) or a comet would be a much more realistic idea ... and as for alien race, they could have made an emergency landing on it and are now an unwilling passangers of the object, waiting in cryogenics until the time and the location of their "starship" is more favourable, but since their sensors have been damaged by an asteroid impact they are simply asleep forever... until someone wakes them up.

Kind Regards
Daniel

Well I guess a rogue planet could still have a molten core like Earth's, so there would still be geothermal power, wich could allow for a submarine life in the case of an all-water planet.

On the subject of speed, hey, this is Star Trek we're talking about. You can imagine whatever technobabble explanation à la Space:1999 to accelerate the planet. For instance, the sun of the planet could have gone nova because of a failed (or successful ?) experiment, and, instead of just exploding, collapsed into a subspace rift, sending out warp ripples wich would have lifted the planet out of orbit and sent surfing on a warp tidal wave (have the magnetism of the planet be really strong and thus acting as a deflector shields, or have the inhabitants having installed one if this wasn't an accident).

For a plot twist, you could even have the inhabitants being quite advanced, and propelling themselves by destroying stars and surfing on the waves with their planet afterwards (some spaceship!).

redwood973 : The episode was For the world is hollow and I've touched the sky
Polanski : Weren't you referring to The day the Earth took fire instead? I think The day the Earth stood still was the one with Gort the robot and Klaatu the alien.

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Originally posted by C5

Polanski : Weren't you referring to The day the Earth took fire instead? I think The day the Earth stood still was the one with Gort the robot and Klaatu the alien. [/B]

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You might be right ... I am not sure since the movie is ... so old :)
But it was one of those movies :)

Kind Regards
Daniel

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Originally posted by Polanski
Owen:

With all due respect as NASA nor any other space agency have managed to observe and identify your "average' rogue planet, we can only make guesses and assumptions and yours would be as good as mine.

l

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Well - except Owen's "guesses" follow the basic physical laws of the situation.

If you want to go ahead with something truly beyond the ken as it were - try reading Ringworld, aside from the title object there is some discussion of "mobile starsystems" that you might find interesting.

People did not believe Copernic either ...

What I am saying is that we are making a very theoretical guesses. So let us keep our minds open and please I came in here to give an advise and suggestions and not argue about who's theories are closer to the unknown reality. After all if that was the case then Gene would go out of the window on the first turn in favour of Babylon 5 or other TV shows and yet we all love Star Trek.

I have aknowleged that a tectonical argument was a mistake, and frankly until I see you contribute something to the discussion I find it difficult to understand why are you actually getting involved? To put my theories and ideas down? Or to help in developing the story of the Rogue planet for the fellow narrator.

Please take a look through my posts and notice that I have simply added, ammended or expressed my opinions without telling anyone in here why I think theirs do not make sense. Even if it happens to be my opinion that a rogue planet scenario is out there with another techno bubbles that Star Trek is so famous of...

Anyway, it is 5.00am and I should switch off my rant mode and go to sleep. :)

Kind Regards
Daniel

Maybe the best course of action is for those of us with some scientific background/knowledge/interest to suggest some possibilities as to how a rogue planet might be constructed (artificially or in the natural sense of the word as you wish) in such a way that it will work for his purposes.

I do not claim to have any special knowledge of science. In fact, I am rather clueless in this field, but let me throw out a possibility. Elements of it might not be scientifically plausible, so any suggestions to make it more so would be appreciated.

What if the planet is not a planet per-se but a planet-sized vessel? Not that the whole thing is used for this purpose (a la Deathstar), but the mysterious builders found it just as easy to construct the planet this way as making a large ship and originally used the surface for a place to live. Rather than having a molten core, solid core, ice core, whatever, the "core" is where the power source for the planet is located. It could be a tiny 'sun' made up of something other than Hydrogen/Helium/Metallic which has much lower density (and therefore gravity) but produces a good deal of power as radiant light and heat. The heat not redirected upwards (see next paragraph) keeps the mantle layer of the planet active for the Power from the core then runs up to the surface, out of huge "vents" which might look like volcanoes or pits or whatever you find more plausible. These might cycle on and off, providing day/night cycles in combination with the next paragraph ideas or they might be constantly on.

The core's power is then reflected or otherwise used by a network of satellites in close orbit to provide visible light back to the surface. Alternatively, the surface light could be provided by the high concentration of neon in the upper atmosphere and the system lights the sky this way. This visible light (through whichever method you like) in turn allows the plants on the surface to collect their energy through photosynthesis, provides light and heat for the creatures living there etc. The layout of the world, its deserts and such, might then be in relation to the orbit of these satellites or where they are in relation to the vents or what have you. This "geosystem" might also be breaking down bit by bit, section by section might be transforming into a cold desert, affecting the weather patterns in lit sections. Whatever works for you and your stories can be added in layer by layer to the concept.

What would this planet look like from the outside? Perhaps it would look like a dark spherical body with slowly moving lights across the surface in some bizarre pattern (the satellite option). Perhaps it would look like a world which is criss-crossed with lines of fire from the radiant light out of the "vents" or with splotches of swirling colors over the vents when they are sending out the light from the core to be ignited in the atmosphere.

Again, scientifically the idea might be rot, but does it prompt any thought from the more scientifically minded among us?

Maybe the idea of a large planet is too far fetched for what I have in mind. I'll tone it down to a small moon, either artificial like Publius suggested or one which was ripped out of its orbit as C5 mentioned.

I like the idea of an artificial planet, one which could resemble the death star. I've toyed with the idea of making maybe a world which is artificial but with a holographic surface.

Now I've got lots of good competing ideas; a world ripped out of its orbit and dying slowly in space, one artificial planet which "flies" through space, and one which is a ocean based which was purposefully torn out of its orbit. All great ideas, I'm trying to figure a way to merge them all together.

Some help would be appreciated in trying to put them together.

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Originally posted by Lt.Khrys Antos
Maybe the idea of a large planet is too far fetched for what I have in mind.

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Well, it's not. :) If you'd like, you can have Jupiter made out of Cream Cheese and populated by Oompa-Loompas, as long as you and your players are entertained, Science be damned. :D

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Now I've got lots of good competing ideas;
a world ripped out of its orbit and dying slowly in space,

one artificial planet which "flies" through space,

and one which is a ocean based which was purposefully torn out of its orbit.

All great ideas, I'm trying to figure a way to merge them all together. Some help would be appreciated in trying to put them together.

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I've got it! Two Words:





"Rogue System"

:D

I'm not sure how important it is, but it sounds to me like it would be helpful if you could come up with some semi-plausible way for a planet or moon to travel at speeds faster than light. Otherwise, as far as story goes, the FIS is either intruding on hostile territory to set up the base (which would mean crossing a border) or setting out on a project which will take years, even decades at best, to prove fruitful.

How about if the "rogue" planet was actually in orbit around a singularity that's moving at faster than light? After all, a black hole is all about warping space, so it's not too far to stretch and say that this is a singularity which generates a "natural" warp distortion. (I put that in quotes because it's also as much a possibility that your dormant alien race manufactured the singularity for this purpose, somehow).

Or, how about a planet which shifts in and out of transwarp corridors? This would seem to be a really good solution since the it never physically crosses the border, it just sort of *pops* up on the other side. :) Could also give you some other interesting plot lines... The players may have a time limit by which to complete their mission, otherwise the planet will jump too far into enemy territory for them to escape. Or maybe the Borg take notice of it. I can just imagine the look on Player's faces when their planet runs down a hapless Borg cube that was travelling in the opposite direction. ;)

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Originally posted by Lt.Khrys Antos
Now I've got lots of good competing ideas; a world ripped out of its orbit and dying slowly in space, one artificial planet which "flies" through space, and one which is a ocean based which was purposefully torn out of its orbit. All great ideas, I'm trying to figure a way to merge them all together.

Some help would be appreciated in trying to put them together.

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Well... here's one attempt.

On an ocean based planet, sentient beings (hey, could they be related to the senders of the whale probe in STIV ?) have created a way to move planets faster than light by destroying their sun in such a way that a subspace ripple is created, sending the planet surfing on a warp wave (hey, the sun needn't even be destroyed - maybe it contracts and expand rapidly, or something like that). When the wave subsides, the inhabitants find another star to push them onwards.

Usually, they try to avoid inhabited star systems, but sometimes they can't know it before it's too late (if they're related to the whale probe, they may not even bother with terrestrial life forms). And so, an inhabited planet was ripped out of its orbit and sent sprawling on a warp wave on its own (or maybe this could be one of their first experiments ?). Of course, being unprepared, this world is now slowly dying (and maybe on a collision course with something important).

I must admit I have difficulties to put the artificial planet here.

Some possibilities :
- A completely different race created it (man it's getting crowded with moving planets around here...), maybe as a weapon against the oceanic beings who destroyed one of their colonies.

- It's another project, launched by the oceanics when they left their system, that has now reached its conclusion, and its inhabitants are looking for their pioneers. Alternatively, it could be allies to the oceanics, only terrestriel, and, unable to send their own planet the same way they did (due to some technobabble configuration) decided to create a moving replica of their own.

- The Oceanics may have built it in order to save a civilisation they had doomed after destroying their sun (by hollowing an existing planet and putting the energizing core inside) and these guys are now travelling on their own - maybe even unaware of their real location (apart from a small caste of "Helms").

Hope some ideas here are interesting.

Actually C5 that sounds really good.:)

I'll just built and elaborate on what you wrote previously.

So the oceanites knew that their system was doomed and decided to do something about it. Lets say they are related to the space probe in St:IV, and in reality many were sent out to scan for potential systems to escape to. Terrestrial life is meaningless to them.

Now instead of ripping their homeworld out of its orbit, they built a smaller moon (SW has the deathstar so this could work) as their Noah's Ark. They reproduced as much as possible from the original world unto this "fake" world. So the surface is oceanic with some islands with holographic stuff on top (their sticklers for detail).

They used their dying sun's supernova to somehow throw their planet into a transwarp gate in order to travel faster than the speed of light and somehow save thei civilization, as per Chaos' idea.

Now they didn't take into account everything and this world is still slowly dying without them being able to find a new home. The colonists on the Ark decide to go into cryo and wait for when the planet finds a suitable location, through deep space probes.

That's when the crew finds this planet during one of its outside transwarp "pops". FIS decides to investigate and has a whole slew of information on the planet's past locations that they've been suppressing. This is in 2343, so no Borg yet. But I could see how the Borg would get interested, just in time for Wolf 359.

And my long term plan is to have the PC's on a long-term mission, when the FIS directors change and the Klingons become friendly.
The crew's mission suddenly becomes unsavory since their deep within Klingon space, and no FIS director would want to admit that they've spied on the fuzzy-wuzzy Klingons to a Fed council committee (especially for a potential political career). So the PC's will be forgotten about.

Now I'm going to have to create the oceanite people, maybe somewhat Antedean in nature. I like C5's Helm idea of a caste which is still active that overlooks its people. Definitely feeling superior to terrestrials, and sticklers to protocol and detail.

Its coming together nicely.;)

FTL rogue planet? No problem. The Feds (or someone else) were testing soliton wave propulsion (as in TNG "New Ground") again. Once again, the wave fails to dissipate and hits the planet where the reception station is located. Instead of shattering the planet as expected in "New Ground", it actually accelerates the entire planet to warp...

How 'bout this?

A large moon orbiting a pre-warp planet is used to store nuclear waste. The waste goes critical and blows the moon out of planetary orbit. Much of the waste is an exotic radioactive heavy metal which builds up a subspace field which pulls the moon into warp. After a period of time in warp, the field decays and drops the moon into normal space orbiting the nearest star at the same gravitational gradient as its original orbit. 24-72 hours later, the subspace field reaches critical levels again and the moon whips back into warp...

Of course, any base established on this moon will have to crash at least one shuttlecraft per adventure.

I can't help having this feeling of déjà vu, Owen... although this is the best technobabble explanation I've seen so far :p

Posted by Owen E Oulton:

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A large moon orbiting a pre-warp planet is used to store nuclear waste. The waste goes critical and blows the moon out of planetary orbit. Much of the waste is an exotic radioactive heavy metal which builds up a subspace field which pulls the moon into warp. After a period of time in warp, the field decays and drops the moon into normal space orbiting the nearest star at the same gravitational gradient as its original orbit. 24-72 hours later, the subspace field reaches critical levels again and the moon whips back into warp...

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I absolutely love this idea.:)

A great technobabble idea which will calm by science endowed players.

So now I'm thinking that the Oceanite World government knew that their world was doomed but couldn't do anything about it because they were prewarp. So they decided to use their moon as a means to save their civilization from death and they "caused" an accident. So C5's idea of a Helm caste in charge of the Ark (the moon's name) is great; that makes them government agents keeping the people in cryo safe while they send out probes ala ST:IV.

So the Oceanites engineered the movement of their moon, and the government had previously prepared the moon for this purpose. It didn't go perfectly according to plan so now they travel the stars on this moon.

The surface of the moon is toxic, with a large water deposits beneath the surface, and holographic vegetation at the top on small islands. The radiation does not affect the people instantly but prolonged exposure can kill. And obviously it makes using shuttlecraft or runabout dangerous.

Posted by Capt.Hunter:

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FTL rogue planet? No problem. The Feds (or someone else) were testing soliton wave propulsion (as in TNG "New Ground") again. Once again, the wave fails to dissipate and hits the planet where the reception station is located. Instead of shattering the planet as expected in "New Ground", it actually accelerates the entire planet to warp...

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I'm thinking maybe the oceanites used rudimentary solanite technology do force the accident on the planet. I'll have to go back and watch that episode. Anyone know on what TNG DVD disc its on?

Whichever series Alexander became a regular recurring cast member, that's the best I can do...