Hello all! Ric here with poart two of an ongoing series looking into the entire timeline and
history of Star Trek. As with the prior part, I am touching on only the canon events of the
shows and folding in some extra lore from official sources where applicable to flesh
out some blind spots but I’ll let you know when and where I do this. We looked into the early
history of the universe and blew through billions of years, now reaching into the
era of millions of years before the shows and the life and civilizations that existed in this time.
At 300 million years ago, an insectoid Pod vessel from an unknown and long
extinct species was caught in the gravity well of a Dead Star near Questar M17,
at the edge of the Milky Way. From here a sentient creature of pure magnetic energy managed to make
its way onto this unfortunate vessel. The crew made the choice to maroon their ship
to prevent its escape from the Dead Star. Here they would drift until discovered in 2269 when
the USS Enterprise had an encounter with the same entity and also stranded it before warping away.
The D’Arsay built a series of archives to document their entire culture at 87 million years ago. They
loaded these archives into unmanned probes and fired them off into space. The exact level of
technology the D’Arsay had was a little unclear as they managed great feats of engineering and
computer literacy, yet were apparently unable to escape the extinction of their homeworld
and people. The archives seem to be all that remain and some became the cores of comets,
drifting through space. Several were later encountered by the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D
and the USS Cerritos NCC-75567. These archives were capable of interfacing wirelessly into the
systems of vessels with ease, and repurposed them to recount events from mythology and history as
well as the personalities of those recorded in the tales. Although it’s likely these Archives were
simply to preserve the D’Arsay history, this would prove to be a hurdle for Starfleet to overcome
when dealing with these invasive technologies. Over 65 million years ago, an asteroid,
the “Chicxulub Asteroid”, around six miles across slammed into the Earth and triggered a global
extinction event. This impact devastated the ecosystem of Earth and wiped out many species of
dominant life, including most species of Dinosaur. Around the time of this apocalyptic event,
a secluded species of Hadrosaur had evolved into an intelligent lifeform capable of innovation
and development. This species would come to call itself the Voth and managed to reach a
technological level sophisticated enough to embark upon space flight. It’s not known what level of
technology they achieved, warp drive or sub light, but they departed Earth for a new life. The fact
they never returned to Earth suggests that the asteroid impact was the factor for their flight,
either to avoid it, or because conditions on Earth were harsh for the next centuries
with even approximately a quarter of surviving species dying out. Either way, the Voth departed
Earth, never to return and migrated as far as the Delta Quadrant over the next 45 million years,
continuing to evolve and develop as they went. Which is not as impressive as it sounds,
considering the technological level we see them at when we encounter them in 2373.
It is worth pointing out however, that no archaeological evidence has been found concerning
the Voth in Star Trek from Earth, only markers in their D.N.A. So it’s possible that this is
all theory and certainly the Voth Ministry and Circle of Sciences would wish it to be untrue,
considering their doctrine is that they are one of the oldest native species to the Delta Quadrant.
Their recorded history begins at around 20 million years ago, and man… the Voth
ministry is dumb. At 20 million years in the Delta Quadrant, I’m pretty sure they qualify as natives
to that region so what’s the point in arguing their very, very distant past? Silly lizards.
10 million years ago sees the evolution of the Humpback whale on Earth, one of
many sentient aquatic mammalian lifeforms over its history. While they are not able
to leave the planet, they are contacted by a passing probe but I’ll get to that.
Organians evolved into non-corporeal beings, discarding their flesh to explore the
universe easily. Among their abilities were powerful psychic projections, telekinesis,
telepathy and the alteration of biology as well as possessing other beings. Their exact
date of achieving this state is unknown but recorded as being several million years ago.
About a million years ago, humanoid life on Earth was beginning to develop from primate
life and form rudimentary societies. But we’ll leave them to it for now,
I’m sure they will not get up to much and let’s look at more science fiction stuff in space.
The Guardian of Forever, mentioned in the last part, has been dormant still, but that has not
stopped other civilizations from discovering it. An unknown species locate it, and learn
of its purpose, building a colony around it, that evolves into a large metropolitan city stretching
from horizon to horizon, with the Guardian in the centre, the key to time remaining dormant but
clearly respected and perhaps even worshipped. By the time of the Guardian’s reactivation,
the Forgotten City had fallen to ruin. Meanwhile, the Tkon Empire existed around
this time, a multiworld, quadrant spanning power that evolved to incredible technological levels.
They were star shapers, system builders, not only content with terraforming planets,
but remaking entire solar systems by moving planets, stars and creating stellar phenomena
of intricate celestial balance. The created advanced artificial intelligences, including
the “Portals”, artificial planetoids that would guard over their systems from interlopers,
even after the fall of their empire. At 600,000 years ago, the Tkon Empire
collapsed when the Throne World’s system’s sun went supernova. Their calendar referred
to this epoch as the Age of Makto. Records from this time were limited and much of their
technology was lost or destroyed but clues have been putting together a larger picture,
but I’ll touch on that later on too. The Arretans, a humanoid species began
exploring the galaxy and established colonies around the Alpha Quadrant. Over the next 100,000
years, they evolved powerful psychic abilities and one of their colony worlds was Vulcan. The
Vulcans descended either from these Arretans or had their evolution manipulated by them, but it’s
suspected the Arretan species are ancestors of Vulcans. However the Arretans eventually
destroyed their planet’s atmosphere and the only survivors of this conflict were Sargon, Thalassa
and Henoch, preserved in a non-corporeal state. At 500,000 years ago, a species of aquatic life
created a probe to survey space where they could not go, and to seek out similar life
and civilizations. This probe eventually made its way to Earth and established a dialogue
with Humpback whales, this probe would later return in 2286 to make contact and
check in only to find them extinct since the 21st century. The probe is still at large,
however apocrypha adds a kind of a sad twist to it, considering its makers are also wiped out,
potentially by the Borg and that the probe itself was damaged by them, leading it to malfunction.
This is why it was knocking out systems and unable to ascertain other life as sentient, such
as humanoids. The probe has since been repaired and allowed to continue on its survey missions,
but now with no one to report its findings too. Exo 3’s sun nears the end of its life and begins
to darken, rendering the orbiting planets uninhabitable. The natives of Exo 3,
referred to only as the “Old Ones” , retreat underground and construct androids to maintain
their civilization. These androids were marvels of development, and the technology behind them
evolved to a point where a duplication machine could simply read an organic person’s form and
duplicate an artificial version of it, complete with memories and emotions. However as these
machines began to surpass their creators, the Old Ones attempted to shut them down, which resulted
in the androids overthrowing their creators and wiping out the natives of Exo 3’s frozen depths.
This is an event we will see mirrored many times in Star Trek’s timeline,
artificial life destroying its creators when the creators grow fearful of their creations.
300,000 to 200,000 years ago, an unknown artificial species on
Aia created the Admonition before retreating into another dimension. They surrounded the
system with the Eightfold Stars, creating the only known Octonary System to draw attention to it.
This admonition on Aia, was intended for artificial intelligences to understand, and did
not convey into an organic mind without damaging results. The Admonition was a message left,
that said that should an artificial lifeform ever need defending, to call out to the Aia natives,
and they would save them. It included plans to create an interdimensional portal to reach the
plane of existence that had them, and they would come through to save their “cousins” by destroy
any organic threats as they had done before. This is speculated to be the reason for the
loss of the Tkon Empire in its entirety, with these artificial intelligences being the ones
that wiped out their creators before taking that Empire’s technology for their own. This would help
explain the systematic purging of many records of the Tkon from history from minus 600,000 to minus
300,000 they were undoing the Tkon’s works, leaving only secreted systems like Portal 63.
Now this part is not confirmed on screen, but was alluded to be so from behind the scenes sources.
Around 200,000 years ago, the Iconian Empire achieved its height of power, but also was wiped
from the face of the galaxy. The exact details around this event are not known and mostly lost
to mythology and a biassed recounting of history, however it is canonical that not all the Iconians
were lost, as by the 32nd century, the United Federation of Planets was in contact with
the Iconian Remnants. There is a lot to talk in apocryphal sources about the Iconians so that will
be its own video, but suffice to say, the species was reaching a point in its evolution where
technology and biology were seamlessly integrated and the lines of matter-energy conversion were
being blurred. They were also slowing down in reproduction rates with their lifespan ever
increasing to offset this evolution and their technological breakthroughs were astounding.
Iconia had floating cities and many portals connecting to other places in the galaxy,
the trademark of their development, far reaching corridors to any point
in space and a servitor species known as “heralds” of their own curated uplifting.
Medicine, science, travel and even weaponry were all the peak of design in this era,
perhaps at a level not seen since the Tkon Empire and in time, the other species grew resentful or
fearful of the Iconians. This led to an alliance to fight against the Iconians in an attempt
to steal their technologies and the species was forced to flee to vassal worlds such as Dewa III,
before being hunted down. It’s not clear if this alliance successfully managed to claim
the technology of the Iconians, but considering that these species are also lost to history,
its probable that the Iconians were correct in withholding their prowess. The destruction that
was wrought upon the “Demons of Air and Darkness” as they were later termed, was less thorough than
the removal of the Tkon Empire and many more relics remain of their Iconian legacy. These
include the probes that act as defences of their homeworld, Iconia and portal installations to
other locations across the galaxy or even beyond. And finally, around this era, a large bioplasmic
organism, later termed the Telepathic Pitcher Plant was born. Whether it had parents,
or was spawned, no one knows for sure as we only know its age,
but it still persists to this day, in universe, reaching out to snare victims to consume.
So I’ll end this part here, with the fall of Iconia before moving into the next epoch of
the Milky Way galaxy in Star Trek. This time is witness to several galaxy spanning superpowers,
with technology far beyond the current Federation and most other races of Trek. The most notable
being the Tkon and Iconians, who had reached a level of design enabling them to harness entire
solar systems to their whim and were on the cusp of mastering the galaxy. Sufficient time
has passed for these cultures to fade into legend and newer civilizations will emerge from their
fall as we draw closer to the recognizable galaxy, one with less mysticism and more
scientific development, but still not comparable to the feats achieved by these ancient aliens.
I’ve been Ric and I’ll see you for the next part, until then, thanks again and goodbye!