What is D’ger to Me? I guess you have to go way back to the first Star Trek movie to get it, but replace V with D and it’s kind of me. And parallels in many ways my autobiography, except the resolution. Not sure I ever made it to that. But that’s okay I evolved into a different life form. I’m okay with that. Ok here’s the gist of it:
Star Trek Wiki: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/V’Ger
First Star Trek Movie:
The V’Ger vessel
This Of course is not the Vger vessel of course below, but rather aspects of the “D’ger vessel” in the abstract:
Nature: Vessel enclosed in energy cloud
Power: Twelfth power
Origin: Earth and Unknown
Diameter: Surrounding energy cloud diameter of two astronomical units, equal to that of the Earth’s orbit
Armaments: Plasma weapons
The massive entity that called itself V’Ger (also called Vejur or The Intruder) was one of the most extraordinary lifeforms ever encountered by the United Federation of Planets. It generated enormous levels of power and threatened Earth with destruction until it found a way to evolve.
The machine planet
V’Ger had an extraordinary ability to evolve. It was discovered that the evolution of this once simple probe into a complex, powerful entity began after it was pulled into a black hole shortly after leaving Earth’s solar system.
Voyager 6 emerged from the black hole in what was believed to have been the far side of the galaxy, and fell into the gravitational field of a planet populated by living machines. These beings found Voyager 6 damaged by its travels, and the identifying plaque attached to the probe’s exterior had been burned leaving only the letters V, G, E, and R legible; the inhabitants of the machine planet renamed the probe V’Ger.
These entities found V’Ger to be primitive, but of a kindred spirit. They discovered the probe’s simple, 20th century programming, “learn all that is learnable and return that knowledge to the creator”, and interpreted these instructions literally.
Reprogramming
Reconstructed through highly advanced technologies as a vast space-faring artificial organism, V’Ger was augmented with a three-dimensional data collection and storing apparatus magnitudes beyond anything previously known to Federation science. Likewise providing it with effectively immeasurable defensive and sensory capabilities, the inhabitants of the machine planet gave V’Ger the ability to fulfill its programming in a far more complete fashion than the scientists who originally built and launched the vessel at its core ever imagined.
Sentience
At the heart of V’Ger, the crew of the Enterprise found the ancient Voyager VI probe
While traversing the vast distance back to Earth, V’Ger collected data via its 3D imaging system, but it destroyed the objects that it encountered along the way. However, it accumulated so much knowledge that it eventually achieved consciousness and became, like its benefactors, a living machine. As a machine it was only capable of pure, cold logic with no emotion, but with its new-found sentience V’Ger began to question its own existence. It asked the philosophical questions faced by so many lifeforms: “Is this all that I am? Is there nothing more?” The answers, V’Ger decided, could only be found with its creator on Earth.
Threatening Earth
With the cloud just 54 hours away from Earth, Starfleet dispatched the only starship within interception range, the newly refitted USS Enterprise, to determine both what it was and how to stop it if possible. When the Enterprise arrived at the cloud’s coordinates, it determined that the entity had an energy output surpassing that of thousands of starships.
By assuming a non-threatening posture, the Enterprise was able to deeply penetrate the cloud surrounding V’Ger and begin to gather information. During this critical time, however, the starship was cut off from all communication with Starfleet. As V’Ger entered the Sol system, spherical energy “bolts” similar to those that had destroyed the Klingons and the Epsilon IX station, only vastly more powerful, were launched by the entity. The energy spheres proceeded into courses that would place them into equidistant orbits around the planet, at which point it was predicted Earth’s entire surface would be devastated.
Realizing it lacked the intuitive, irrational elements which allow Humans to deal with some complex, non-scientific concepts, it came to believe that only its Creator could help it to leap beyond logic. In order to obtain the answers it needed, V’Ger wished to meet and become one with its Creator. To this end, it sought not only to receive the acknowledged signal from the Creator, but to merge with the Creator.
But V’Ger had been reprogrammed to such an extent that it had come to think of biological lifeforms as an “infestation”, and destroyed any that it encountered. When V’Ger encountered the crew of the Enterprise, its confusion over its true nature was so great that it could not comprehend what it was told – that it had been created by the very organic lifeforms it saw only as imperfections that must be cleansed.
In an effort to meet its Creator, V’Ger refused to accept the pre-programmed transmission that would signal it to transmit its accumulated data. The probe burned out a relay connection, hoping to force the Creator to come to its heart so that they could merge. Realizing that the only way V’Ger would understand was to add Humanity to its experiences, Captain Willard Decker, who was deeply affected by the loss of Ilia, his former lover, sacrificed himself to become one with the machine lifeform. Decker rewired the relay connection and keyed in the final sequence of the transmission manually. This prompted V’Ger to begin transmitting its data, effectively merging with Decker and the Ilia probe, thus taking V’Ger to a new level of existence. At last satisfied with its answers, V’Ger disappeared in a blinding flash of white light, leaving Admiral James T. Kirk, Commander Spock and Dr. Leonard McCoy of the Enterprise to discuss the possibility that they had just created a new lifeform made of V’Ger’s logic and of Humanity’s ability to feel and to believe. What V’Ger evolved into remains unknown to this day. (Star Trek: The Motion Picture)
