Which, in rank order (as many as you wish to comment on), is the most powerful race in the Star Trek Universe?
Also who (what) do you think is the most powerful entity in the Star Trek Universe?
[My Opinion]
I’d take a guess that The Dominion is the most powerful group of races.
And I guess again that (Can’t remember his name, But he was an entity that was able to create illusions of things such as a house and another woman and a hostile ship… In an episode in TNG they discover that this being wouldn’t kill anyone and after an alien race came to take over their planet he wouldn’t do anything until after his mortal wife died. Then he destroyed the entire alien civilisation everywhere with a single thought in a fit of anger.)
[/My Opinion]
Five years ago, I would have instantly said “The Borg”, except Voyager REALLY nerfed them down. Nowadays, it seems like any shmoe with funky technobabble can elude what used to be an unstoppable, malevolent, and mysterious force.
I’d say that the Dominion is pretty powerful, but their power against the Alpha quadrant has been silenced. So they’re out.
I’d say that the Vulcans are the most powerful, much in the same way that Gandhi was a powerful person. Remember, power needn’t necessarily rely on ship or troop strength.
I assume you’re also ignoring the Q, who, thanks (again) to Voyager, have been reduced to a petty group of beings who would rather give someone an ass’s head than do anything REALLY cool, like put Janeway on trial (ten bucks says that she’d fail the trial in ten minutes).
With that said, my money rests on The Traveler. I’ve always been intrigued at the concept behind that character, even if he did have a seemingly-homosexual attraction to ::shudder:: Westley Crusher.
OK, I’ll allow myself to “geek-out” a little for this topic.
PerfectDark, the being you are talking about was called a Douwd. Some kind of immortal force that took human form.
As for the most powerful, it has to be the Humans. Who had to fix every time flux and slay every nasty space-beastie that came around. I know that it was the Federation and not just the Humans alone, but who do you think was the most important piece of the puzzle.
Well, ignoring the God-like aliens that screw around with us (trelane, the aliens from “Arena,” Q, etc.), the most powerful of the standard races would probably be Species 8472. But since they exist in their own universe, the borg would be next on the list, unless they are on Voyager (as SPOOFE mentioned, where they become impotent babies beaten with a rock on a stick. The Dominion is the coolest race, i think they could give the borg a run for their money, and it took the combined alpha quadrent races to beat them (with help from some wormhole aliens). Of course, thanks to Admiral Janeway in the voyager finale
SPOILERS
I expect our next borg encounter will involve Batmobile armored cubes with super torpedoes, which will spell the end of the Federation. But at least she got home a few years earlier…
The weakest race is a Wesley Crusher/Harry Kim Hybrid race, known as the Crapians. They have the power to suck.
Seemingly the Q are well on the way to omnipotence. (ignoring the fact that if you fly into a supernova and pick up one of their toys you can take them easily - thanks Voyager)
Otherwise it’s one of the species-of-the-weeks, say whoever built a Dyson sphere in TOS, or maybe the Voth in Voyager.
Coming down to vaguely normal species, it’d be the Borg if they were even vaguely intelligent, species 8472 if they weren’t wusses, and the Dominion if they weren’t plagued by deus ex machinas (coming down in order).
In actuality, like BooBoo316 said, it’s humans, mostly because of the fact that the UFP has horrendous character shields.
My first thought was, The Q, but then I remembered back in the beginning of STNG, they were fascinated by humans because they had the potential to exceed the Q. Also, to knock them down another step, in one of the last Voyager episodes the John deLancie Q told his son, “How many times have I had to tell you? DON’T PROVOKE THE BORG!” I doubt he said that to keep his son from messing with an inferior race. What if the Borg could assimilate the Q? Ish. Plus, any Federation caption can obviously outthink a Q.
Now you are getting down to the real question which is how you define “most powerful”? I’d define it as the race that has the best features for surviving and thriving, and at the same time, is able to most effectively use those features.
Based on this criteria, I’d have to agree with BooBoo316 and say Humans… but they don’t know it. They seem to have a good balance between using the technology they have with the skills and talents of the race, including their brains.
Not my favorite race, but during the run of the series, they were the only race we actually saw that were successful in conquering another planet (that I can recall), namely the Cardassians. Yes, the Cardassians had invaded Bajor, but that was before we actually interacted with them on DS9, and by the time we got there, they’d wimped out and left of their own accord. The Klingons invaded and stayed. (Did they leave by the end of the series? Jeez, I can’t even remember.)
And speaking of, the Bajorans are a pretty tough race, too - occupied, but never lost their faith and doing better than ever since the Occupation.
The problem with the uber-superior races is that they’re all the same - the Q and the Douwd could both destroy an entire race with a thought. The Traveller isn’t the only being of energy that can traverse the universe in a moment. They all kind of blend together. At least with species 8472 or the Borg they’re powerful, but they’re still mortal and have weaknesses.
Personally, I think the funniest scene of all was when Sisko went back to Starfleet HQ and saw Earth slowly becoming a police state because of the Dominion War and the fear that the Founders could be anywhere. When he finally meets one, disguised as Miles O’Brien, it tells him, “Do you know how many Changelings there are on Earth? Four. That’s it. All this paranoia for four of us!” Great scene.
Voyager seriously screwed up a lot of cool races. They messed up the seeming omnipotence of the Q and the Borg are just a big joke now. However, there was a fair share of powerful races introduced in Voyager:
Hirogen: damn, these guys are just dope. I mean, they are way bigger than Klingons, they can hunt their prey in most types of environments (briefly if they don’t have their environmental suits on), and they have dope weaponary. Too bad the writers had to mention that their hunter-like ways caused the Hirogen race to be too weak and scattered.
Krenim (sp?): from one of my favorite two-part episodes of Voyager “Year of Hell”, this race was able to develop chronoton torpedoes that can penetrate shields by phasing in and out of time. Although this kind of reminds me of the “skipper” missiles used in Wing Commander 3, it’s still some cool technology.
Species 8472: first off, I wonder if they even call themselves anything other than ‘8472’. Anyway, these guys are just damn tough. I mean their single bioships can tear up Borg cubes and combining a dozen or so bioships can blow up planets. They are just bad-ass.
You know who you never see anymore? The Gorn. Remember them? They were the lizard race, and Kirk had to fight one on TOS in an episode that was a ripoff of that old short story “Arena.” My understanding of the ST universe is that the Federation and the Gorn turned out to see eye-to-eye on a lot of things and eventually became allies, so I guess there’s no REASON to have any stories along the UFP/Gorn border. But they were pretty awesome.
Most powerful? It’s obviously the Federation, which is mostly human. Consider this: our TEENAGED ENSIGNS kicked other empires’ asses on innumerable occasions.
There was one episode I saw, in which some engineering ensign (I think) that was not very intelligent got hit by a ray of some sort and suddenly started getting super-intellectual, and eventually took the Enterprise on some wierd warp-trip across to a different galaxy(?) where there were met by some Odin looking giant floating head in space. It’s pretty vague I know, but whatever race that made that beam has to be a good contender to Q. (pre-voyager wuss continum)
I think a lot of people attempt to deny the Q their omnipotent power merely for the challenge of finding a discrepancy in how the writers present them. Remember, it’s not up to use to define the qualities that make a Q omnipotent, and any discrepancies assumed are generally a factor of a plot.
Some of the script to present the context of Q’s statement:
Q: “you are an unusual creature in your own limited ways… ways which in time may not be so limited…”
Riker: “We’re growing. Something about us compels us to learn, explore…”
Q: “The human compulsion. And, unfortunately, for us, a force that will grow stronger century after century, eon after eon…”
Riker: “Have you any idea how far we’ll advance?”
Q: “Perhaps in a future you cannot yet conceive… even beyond us.”
First, the ‘limited ways’ which Q refers to in stating will, after so many ‘eons’, PERHAPS advance beyond Q are not specified.
As for Q telling his son, “Don’t provoke the Borg”, there is not even a HINT of implication at what will happen, which would undoubtedly be that they Q jr would simply have altered the natural course of events for a species capable of assimilating another species. There’s no evidence that he’s implying they could harm Q, Jr, or any Q being in any way.
No, the Borg could not assimilate a Q unless Q assumed the form of something they could assimilate, such as a human, with all the limitations of humans intact. Q’s many eons worth of knowledge and thought would overwhelm any species mental capacity that was unable to fathom a timeless existence, just as humans don’t truly have the capacity to grasp the vast distances of our universe.
Human’s cannot out-think a Q, except when presented a challenge simple enough for a human to understand in the first place. In ‘Tapestry’, Picard failed, even with having grasped the nature of time travel and altering history, he STILL failed. He also failed in All Good Things. The challenges Q presents humanity with are generally limited to that which humanity CAN figure a way out of - a test they’re capable of passing. And even THEN, Q sometimes needs to help by showing the failed outcome and allowing a different course of action. Trial & Error.
Naaa, the Q are omnipotent, but in presenting a being like this, there has to be moment of contemplation of just what it would be like to encounter such a being, and attempts at awareness of any possible limitations. We have to remember that such a being’s interaction with humanity in the continuum has to be ‘dumbed down’ for them to even follow wth is going on. The weapons they used on each other - we can only conceive with our limited capacity. They never specify HOW they harm a being that is supposed to be immortal. We typically think they’re just ‘powerful enough’.
However, consider if you will - the continuum is ruled or governed, most logically by a means of many Q outnumbering, and thus - overpowering a single Q. 2 beings of equal power exerting opposing will would stalemate each other, but not if it’s 2 against one. I submit that a weapon of ‘will’ could be devised that would deliver the intent of multiple Q to harm their target, thus over-riding a single Q’s immunity to damage. It’s a logical concept - 2 Q can inflict intent on a single Q and his own power would be useless defend against it. It’s been my reasoning the whole time for the Continuum to take powers from a being of unlimited power.
Lets not forget Doctrine episode - the Voth city ship was pretty bad-ass. This is from memory alpha:
“Interestingly, Doctrine also proclaimed breaking the transwarp threshold would be dangerous to the Voth and its society… However, someone took a chance, and managed to take the race into a new era.”
The Q, easily. When a whole species has to combine and balance their powers just so one of them doesn’t single-handedly destroy the Universe, I’m pretty sure that qualifies as the most powerful. Q thought Picard was smart the way Einstein would think his Golden Retriever is smart. Riker was a fool to turn that down.
