AboutDeran McKean Expertise I am a 38 year fan of all the incarnations of Star Trek from the original show to the newer incarnations, to the books, comics and toys. I can answer most questions regarding the storylines and characters including their non-screen histories.
Experience Thirty-Eight years of collecting Star Trek merchandise, pouring over the books, comics and attending a number of conventions
Education/Credentials I have a Bachelor's Degree in Sociology and an MBA
Question QUESTION: Could Nagilum alter the following or their ship/temple so that they would age and eventually die of old age?
A) Data
B) Hologram Doc
C) Companion
D) Krenim
E) Apollo
F) Douwd
Would Nomad die of old age? In the episode he claims to have a 'perpetual energy source,' so I assume he would never die of old age.
Do you think a changeling, Borg, El-Aurian, or Trill could possibly live as long as a Calamarain, Crystalline Entity, or Paxan? (Crystalline Entity's normal lifespan if it lived without distraction from others.)
Who lives longer, on average?
A) Changeling
B) El-Aurian
A) El-Aurian
B) Trill
ANSWER: Hi John -
I think Nagilum probably could do that to all the entities on the list you mention, even the Krenim.
Any being strong enough to bend space/time, and control everything in a given sector (i.e. Dark Matter, planetary debris, gravimeteric anomalies, stars, point singularities, super strings etc.) has an immense ability to control matter, energy and physics so I doubt anything even the Douwd could dish up would give Nagilum too much trouble.
If Nomad indeed does have a perpetual energy source, he shouldn't die of old age. Unless his cells somehow suffer when (or if) he replicates his biological tissues (like we do), and they somehow become less able to absorb energy from this perpetual source, there is no reason he should die.
Hmmm, the Borg and the Trill probably not, eventually even the ability of the symbionts and the cybernetics to sustain the biological tissues wears out. We know that Trill die from the fact that Dax has 'lived' eight lives and my guess is that even the 'borgified' living tissue within a drone must eventually suffer cellular damage and grow old.
The El Aurians are tough since next to nothing has been revealed about them. Even if they live thousands of years however, I find it hard to believe they could live as long as the Calamarain, Entity or Paxan. We know (since El Aurians aren't all perpetual children) that they must age, albeit probably much more slowly than humans do, and, if they do age, they must eventually reach a point where their physical shells can't sustain them any longer.
That Changeling/El-Aurian question is a tough one since not much has been revealed about either species. My guess would be the Changelings since it seemed unheard of for one of them to die and a big shock to the Great Link when one or more of their number did.
Guinan and Tolian Soran seemed to accept that death was an inescapable part of life and not be too shocked by it so I would assume that, despite their long lifespans, they had seen members of their kind die by some means other than the Borg at some point.
My guess is that the El Aurian can outlive a Trill symbiont. Guinan has made vague references to her age and we know she's been around for at least six hundred years (looking much the same as she does now) from the episode "Time's Arrow".
We also know from Rascals that an El Aurian (Guinan) could be reduced to a child like state of development, indicating to me that, at one point she was a child.
So, if Guinan looks the same in Time's Arrow as she does in the 24th Century, she must age very slowly. So, let's assume for the sake of argument that she only shows signs of aging after 600 years so the equivalent of one year for us would be like 600 for her.
If that checks out then, assuming she lived the El Aurian equivalent of a human lifespan (which in the 24th Century is close to 100 years), she could (in theory) live for 6,000 years!
I think that would put her people at a much longer life span than the Trill.
Does that make sense?
Thanks!
Deran
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: You said many months ago that only Q could turn Data into a human. So, could Nagilum still make Data (and the Doc) age, without making them human? Or could Nagilum make them human?
Also, you said that Dax 'has lived' 8 lives. What you meant is that the symbiont had 8 different hosts, correct? Each individual symbiont lives for hundreds of years, right?
Answer Hi John -
Yes, aging involves the replication of cellular material and the magnified errors that occur when a copy of a copy is made. If Nagilum could control entire sectors of space, I think he could alter the matter in Data's cells easily and cause cellular replication (similar to what happens in humans), without necessarily making Data truly 'human' the way Q did.
In this case Data's body might be biological but he still wouldn't have a human soul, chi, pranic energy (whatever you want to call it.)
In a sense (in my scenario) Data would be like a caterpillar that transformed into a butterfly, only his synthetic tissues would have been altered to mimic biological tissues.
I think he might be able to perform a similar accomplishment with the Doc but, whether or not he could actually grant a mechanical construct a soul, chi, pranic energy etc. (whatever you prefer) would be up for debate and the subject of either a pair of televised shows or novels!
Yes, the Dax symbiont has lived inside eight different hosts and each succeeding host gains all the memories, feelings and experiences of the previous hosts. So, Jadzia herself did not 'live eight lives' in that she spent those years living them, but she has all those experiences and memories so its like she lived them in a way.
The symbionts live for hundreds of years and can be inserted into something like 13 or 14 different hosts, (the literature is a little vague) before the symbiont itself dies.
