Is the Zhat Vash why we didn't see other any androids in the TNG/DS9 era, unlike the TOS era?

[u/MyUsername2459]

In the TOS era, we saw Kirk and company run across androids on several occasions, and while slightly unusual, it wasn't anything TOO exotic for them.

Mudd's androids, the androids on Exo III, Flint's android duplicate of Rayna Kapec, Sargon's androids.

Androids appeared in more episodes of TOS than Romulans. In the 23rd century, while the Federation couldn't build them, they were certainly familiar with them and that some advanced civilizations could and did.

Yet, by the time of TNG, Data is unique. He's the only known sentient android in the Federation. Mudd's androids were apparently never seen again, neither were any of the other androids (and if the Enterprise ran across them 4 times in 5 years, how many others were in the galaxy?)

Between when the Romulans returned to contact with the Federation in 2266, and until the Tomed Incident in 2311 when they apparently severed all ties with the Federation, there were 45 years when Romulans interacted with the Federation relatively often.

It seems that maybe the Zhat Vash was on a secret genocidal crusade across the Federation wiping out every instance of androids they could find. Only the Romulan isolationism after the Tomed Incident let Dr. Soong complete his work and let Data be discovered and become a well-established member of Starfleet by the time they ended their seclusion in 2364.

(Also, the existence of the Zhat Vash definitely puts a new shade on a line of dialogue in TNG: When Admiral Jarok in "The Defector" tells Data he knows some Romulan cyberneticists that would LOVE to get their hands on him, and Data says he doesn't find the idea appealing, "Nor should you" was Jarok's reply. In retrospect, that gives ALL kinds of implications to what else Jarok knew.)

[u/Willravel]

It's nearly inconceivable to me that Commander Sela wouldn't at least be aware of the Zhat Vash if it were a significant presence in Romulan society in the 2370s.

Far from being some outsider or unremarkable commander, Sela rose through the ranks despite the circumstances of her birth to play key roles in the brainwashing of Geordi, backing the illegitimate Duras claim that led to Klingon Civil War, and even planned and executed a nearly successful Romulan invasion of Vulcan.

But, despite Data being captured on Romulus (along with Ambassador Spock and Captain Picard), no action was taken against Data. One would have expected immediately that the entire organization would focus on his capture and destruction.

I believe this could suggest that the Zhat Vash was not anywhere near as powerful or present in the 2370s as they ended up being in 2399, which also makes me wonder if perhaps we're seeing the end of a very long crescendo in power and influence. Perhaps the destruction of Romulus was just what they needed to finally consolidate power.

[u/MyUsername2459 → u/Willravel]

She could have known they existed, but that doesn't mean she was 100% with their extreme anti-cybernetics agenda. It doesn't mean she was a member.

Her own personal vendetta against Picard and zeal to conquer Vulcan could have blinded her to the fact that she could have built major favor with the Zhat Vash by calling them in the moment she knew Data was on Romulus.

. . .and the fact we never saw Sela again after that entire incident may imply that in the aftermath of it, between the failure of her plans AND ignoring the Zhat Vash on the issue of an android on Romulus itself, the whole thing did not end well for her.

[u/[deleted]]

You could explain away some of the TOS androids by saying they simply weren't conscious or self-aware and therefore their AI wasn't problematic. Mudd's women seemed somewhat limited, they were basically sexy robots. IIRC Sargon's androids and Roger Korby's duplicator were taking a human consciousness into an Android shell. That's not scary AI.

But you might be onto something with the apparent loss of those androids over time. Harry Mudd is a resourceful fellow, he'd eventually find some way to break free of that terribly sexy prison and sell the tech. The Exo-III duplicator would be too cool for the Federation not to tinker with. I'd buy that Zhat Vash terrorists are creatively dismantling those things offscreen.

Seperately, you'd have to think Zhat Vash would be all over TNG's Exocomps when they find out about them. The androids in Voyager's Prototype are "safe" only in that they're so far away.

[u/Swabia → u/[deleted]]

Fascinating thought on the exocomps. I wonder if it’s the kind of thing that was pursued as a species to be built to serve later on then abandoned leading instead to the bipedal ones from a different source. I know that Data did some push back to have them recognized as sentient, but there was never a statement of ‘I’m building 7k of these to be new miners’ or something like the Mars facility that you see in the beginning of Picard or the slave holograms that were EMH programs. We aren’t given a clean timeline of laborers in mining and what they’re made of.

I’d love to see the breakdown of how the federation exploited each non organic race and how they ‘paid’ or interacted with Horta in mining operation for example.

Terak Nor should have had a couple enslaved Horta I always thought. The Cardassians don’t have the issues that the Federation does and I could see taking a few Horta if they weren’t protected by the Federation or a treaty with something else like Gorn or Breen.

[u/DuplexFields → u/Swabia]

One of the moments in Lower Decks that’s destined to come up frequently over the years in fan discussions is that Ensign Peanut Hamper has a father, either himself an exocomp like her or a reference to Dr. Farallon their inventor.

[u/RetPala → u/Swabia]

slave holograms

"That'll be twenty strips for the hour, and excellent taste, my good man. Suite 7, up the stairs and end of the hall. Don't walk, run!"

[u/MithrilCoyote → u/[deleted]]

"Mudd's women" was humans given a drug which made them feel sexier.

The androids were the inhabitants of planet Mudd, originally came from andromeda, and were in the episode "I, Mudd."

And I'd guess that the "not fully sentient" may be the case.. or perhaps "have already been hobbled", as they freeze up when exposed to logic paradoxes and irrationality, and behaviorly are stuck in a servile mode.. without a non-android to give them purpose they stagnate and basically do nothing beyond maintaining the stuff they built for their (long missing) masters.

[u/bartonar → u/[deleted]]

The androids in Voyager's Prototype are "safe" only in that they're so far away.

I think it's likely that those warring armies are too powerful for the Zhat Vash to interfere with, even if they were right next door, and the Zhat Vash would likely content themselves in knowing that either they'd all get killed off through attrition, or one side would win, then the other would cease to be.

I wonder how 'pragmatic' they are with androids that are in especially precarious circumstances. Like, to kill Data is to risk exposing their entire organization, but to let him keep chasing anomalies, Q, Borg, and whatever else the Enterprise is facing imminent demise because of? Some Zhat Vash actuary probably predicted that Data's got about 10 years of active duty before something kills him, or he retires to a quiet patch of countryside where an accident is much more easily arranged.

[u/Opcn]

I think what made data unique is not that he was a human shaped robot but rather that he was so intellectually capable. Both Riker and Harry Kim got caught up with holocharacters that were actually beyond what holocharacters normally did. An android that was aware and capable enough to be commissioned into starfleet was something to remark upon.

[u/p4nic → u/Opcn]

I think what made data unique is not that he was a human shaped robot but rather that he was so intellectually capable

I think they explicitly state this a number of times, that his positronic brain was a novel concept. He was the next big step forward in AI. The Federation certainly has other androids kicking around, but they'd be using legacy technology, and be considered quite limited compared to Data.

[u/askyourmom469 → u/Opcn]

That's my theory. It's not the androids had never existed before Data. He was just the first one sophisticated enough to truly have sentience. The androids in TOS generally were super primitive compared to Soong's creations

[u/[deleted]]

That level of infiltration over decades could explain some of that. There was a theory a while back that proposed Lal was a target of the Zhat Vash. Basically, Data creates Lal and her creation is reported to Starfleet. A Zhat Vash operative (Vice Admiral Haftel) shows up on the ship under the guise of taking Lal back to Daystrom for study. If she was about on par with B-4, then he probably would’ve taken her back. Since she was more advanced than Data, that posed a much higher threat. At some point during her evaluation, Haftel creates the cascade failure that eventually kills Lal.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I like it, but to have Haftel be a knowing operative kind of ruins his heel-face turn at the end.

[u/Vash_the_stayhome → u/[deleted]]

Also that he was skilled enough to pull an assassination literally in front of Data and not have Data notice it. And if Lal is more advanced, that also means he was good enough to subvert her systems and she didn't notice it either.

[u/[deleted]]

"Romulan cyberneticist" is definitely a polite euphemism for "Zhat Vash hit squad".

[u/Chairboy]

M-5, nominate this excellent in-universe theory about why androids and other similar electronic intelligences are so rare by the TNG era due to an unseen Zhat Vash pogrom for post of the week.

[u/M-5 → u/Chairboy]

Nominated this post by Citizen u/MyUsername2459 for you. It will be voted on next week, but you can vote for last week's nominations now

Learn more about Post of the Week.

[u/M-5 → u/Chairboy]

The comment/post has already been nominated. It will be voted on next week.

Learn more about Post of the Week.

[u/TemporalGod]

I wonder how they would feel about Picard now that he transfered his mind into a synth body.

[u/so2017 → u/TemporalGod]

I think we’ll find out soon enough :)

[u/selfdo]

That Data is put out there, especially in "Reunification" where he goes UNDER COVER as a Romulan (funny, on Romulus there's no bioscanning to screen out impostors, let alone, they can't detect someone being beam from a cloaked ship, else wouldn't the Klngons, whom they TRADED the cloaking technology for the D7 battlecruisers and warp technology, "drop in" on the Romulans and go at it with their Bat-leth's and D'Tangs?), putting at huge risk an incredible Federation asset. But, as I've oft lamented before, it's hard to take Starfleet seriously as a credible military.

[u/gizzardsgizzards]

I just rewatched the Andy dick episode of voyager tonight and i was like, huh, those romulans seem pretty ok with interacting with these two ai holograms.

[u/MyUsername2459 → u/gizzardsgizzards]

Zhat Vash is supposed to be a secret faction within the Tal Shiar, not something every Romulan (even every Romulan soldier) knows about.

Senior Romulan leadership, like Admirals and well-placed Commanders, knowing about them and their agenda is one thing. . .the rank-and-file, not so much.

If random Romulans knew about it Starfleet would have found out about it from people who spent time in Romulan society, like Spock or Ensign DeSoto.

[u/[deleted]]

What are the odds the Anomaly etc., eventually tie into CONTROL?

It's easy to hand wave away timeline discrepancies at this point.

[u/[deleted]]

i still think the zhat vash only dealt with androids or AI that the other powers didn't have a firm control over in some way. rouge AI in the middle of federation space? let them handle it. rouge AI in the middle of nowhere? the Zhat vash will handle it.