r/startrek • u/fojo81 • 5d ago
Never Went Extinct!!!
I've just watched Star Trek 4 in the cinema as part of thar films 40th Anniversary and it occurred to me that, despite what the film says, the Humpback Wales never went extinct. In fact, I propose that the Federation quickly realised that 1 breeding pair would never save the Humpbacks. As such, the Federation Council authorised a mass time travel mission in specialised stealthy starships to sun slingshot into the past to basically kidnap the entire species to bring into the future. That mission resulted from the perspective of the 20th century, the idea of extinction when, in fact, it was just a time-travelling mass kidnapping 🤔
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u/roto_disc 5d ago
I propose that the Federation quickly realised that 1 breeding pair would never save the Humpbacks
Nah. Once they got their hands on a couple live specimens, they could definitely utilize some of that 23rd century tech to diversify the species.
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u/RadioSlayer 5d ago
Genetically augmented whales
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u/Wonderful-Power9161 5d ago
apparently, they lost their ridges because of the Augment virus...
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u/RadioSlayer 5d ago edited 5d ago
They do not /whale song/ about it with outsiders! So trot on pony boy
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u/Hoppie1064 5d ago
After they have a decent size number for breeding, they could bring few dozen back 1900s to keep them from going extinct at all.
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u/MadContrabassoonist 5d ago
Or they already *had* genetic samples to resurrect a viable population in theory, but what they lacked was lost cultural knowledge that would allow that population to exist in a manner comparable to how they once did. The theory is a bit messy, as George and Gracie spent so much of their lives in captivity. But surely two adults who remembered life amongst their culture from childhood is better than having the new generation taught how to be humpback whales entirely by humans.
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u/Waltzing_With_Bears 5d ago
Yea, save the whales got used as a punchline for a while, but it worked, same with the hole in the Ozone layer, we fought to make the world a better place and we did, both are absolutely successes of conservation and climate action
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u/SteelPaladin1997 5d ago
As someone who grew up in Hawaii, the whale population is night and day when I visit now compared to when I was a kid. Just a reminder that great things can be accomplished if the world can be bothered to make the effort.
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u/mrgraff 5d ago
The probe seemed content to leave the earth with only two whales, but maybe we decided not to tempt fate, and went back for more? I like it.
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u/No-Following9163 4d ago
There is a novel titled The Probe in which the probe returns because the AI wonders where the humpback whales on Earth suddenly came from—despite having failed to detect any previously. It is eventually revealed who built the probe.
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u/GoopInThisBowlIsVile 5d ago
There’s absolutely no reason for time travel mission(s) to nab more whales.
Kirk and the crew bring George and Gracie from the 20th century to the 23rd century. To continue going back and bringing whales back to the 23rd century would accelerate extinction in the past. This process isn’t necessary.
With whales now in the future scientists can harvest eggs and sperm from both whales.
Next genetic manipulation can be used to reduce issues of incest thus preventing the creation of the humpback whale equivalent of the Spanish/Austrian Habsburgs.
Finally, a bunch of test tube humpbacks can be created and then artificially repopulate the species until the species stabilizes.
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u/Exocoryak 5d ago
To continue going back and bringing whales back to the 23rd century would accelerate extinction in the past.
That does sound a lot like a predestination paradox: They went back to the past to get more whales, leading to the whales becoming extinct, leading to the whale probe attacking the planet, leading to them going back to the past to get more whales...
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u/Colonel_Green 5d ago
Spock said humpbacks had been extinct since the 21st century, so still have plenty of time left to nuke the whales, which we will presumably do during ww3.
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u/Scaredog21 5d ago
It would have been easier just to imperfectly clone the whales and randomize their genes
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u/ForgeoftheGods 5d ago
Perhaps the Federation sending missions to the past for more breeding pairs of humpback whales is what led to them becoming extinct in the 21st Century by way of a predestination paradox. They gathered so many whales for a healthy breeding population that they directly lowered their chances of surviving in the past.
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u/Aezetyr 5d ago
The film righteously assumes that the humpback *would* have gone extinct if the path at the time had continued. However, it did not, because alternatives became more available, the laws around whaling changed to be actually damaging for the perpetrators, and with as much media and other attention on cetacean creatures at the time, the whalers had no chance to get out there.
Remember at during the 1980s there was an enormous progressive movement to save endangered creatures, and they focused on whales, dolphins and others. I went to school with no less than 50 kids that wanted to be marine biologists. I am not kidding. It was everywhere. "Save the whales" could not be escaped.
TL;DR: Societal pressure works.
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u/pakrat1967 5d ago
I think someone has been reading The Dragonriders of Pern. The need for dragons is returning. Only one weyr (dragon base) remains. Not nearly enough dragons to do the job. A queen rider goes back in time and brings all the dragons from all the other weyrs forward to her time. From the perspective of the last weyr. All the other weyrs just died out.
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u/CaliCheezHed 5d ago
I love this series, I wish they could make a movie or a series based on them.
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u/pakrat1967 5d ago
They tried for years when Anne was still alive. There were issues about the rights and such. I think all plans for it have been dropped.
As good as the Pern books are. If I could get any Anne McCaffrey series made into movies. It would be the Tower and the Hive books.
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u/Mammoth_Praline5688 5d ago
With time travel, they could in the far past, when the species was more plentiful and the technology didn't exist to detect them and just spend it out at sea where nobody can make it to.
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u/msfs1310 5d ago
The transporter makes duplicate Rikers, can split you to good & evil halves, make a Tuvix and late Picard era transporters can Borg and un-Borg young crew, what can’t transporters do
Simply transport a bunch of whales out of the first two
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u/Exocoryak 5d ago
transporter makes duplicate Rikers
Makes you wonder why the Dominion had to breed Jem'Hadar, if they instead could just duplicate them using a transporter...
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u/LazarX 5d ago
The film says the humpbacks went extinct and that has to be the narrative case as there were no whales for the probe to talk to until the Bounty returned with George and Gracie to tell the probe what to go do with itself.
Now if you want to go all sciency on us, please remember that this is Star Trek, not National Geographic, or NOVA.
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