While doing my normal thing and procrastinating between classwork, I had something of a thought, more a passing curiosity.

In the Next Generation episode "Tin Man" we see a bioship of unknown origin, also called the Gomtuu. The origin for this creature was never established and it ended up mind-linking with Tam Elbrun before making a jump to warp.

Comparing this creature to what we know about the 8472 gives us interesting similarities. The crew communicated with the vessel telepathically, something that was conjectured the Undine do with their ships. Tinman was also, I guess you could call it "outfitted" with incredibly powerful weapons. We've seen bioships one-shot Borg cubes and work in tandem to destroy a planet.

Lets assume that it was, in fact, an Undine vessel that was stranded in our dimension long enough that its crew died, as Tam said it had told him. Now we have a Betazoid that's affiliated with the UFoP in possession of it. Let's assume he took it back to Fluidic Space all those years before STO's time frame. How would they have greeted him?

I see potential for a story arc here involving the return of both Tinman and Tam. Anyone else agree?
This could be used to help get the Undine to help in a VERY awkward truce to fight the mutual enemy which is the Iconians.

I know trying to have an intellectual discussion on Ten Forward is laughable, but this woulda been eaten alive on the main boards.

They used the creature from the Space Baby episode. I don't think that Gomtuu would be an Undine ship. It is possible that it was a creature from fluidic space though. That would be a welcome expansion on the fluidic space sector that hardly gets used.

I suppose it could be possible as some sort of scout ship or something. We already know Junior was actually a baby Gekli from fluidic space...

Tin man was bio mechanical and from a distant galaxy.

Not undine. given the writers hadn't thought of the undine then.

Its not a question of if the writers thought of it, its a question of can cryptic make it work with lore. There are a bunch of things that had no relation to each other in the show, but cryptic has managed to make them mesh in a decent way.

I don't recall any reference of Undine bioships having a consciousness or anything like that. (Not to mention them being old, lonely and suicidal.)

I suppose, however, that I could see Cryptic making an arc that has Gomtuu as an ancestor of the Undine or some other creature from fluidic space.

They can travel between all space, it is the same bio ships and they are not undine just in STO we see them in undine space.

I see bioships as being an inevitable stage in a species technological progression. Once a race masters nanotechnology and the biological sciences to the point where they can create New Life at will is is a small step to using biological components in technological applications.

The Federation with it's fear of genetic manipulation will not enter it's biological-ship phase for a long time to come. Once that taboo is discarded living ships will become possible for them.

i say let the two be different, we need more deversity in the Universe a creature thats not trying to kill me, or be a ship for those that are trying to kill would be a plesent change, maybe if every now and then we could see a Cosmonian thats NOT the CE would be a blast. add some colour ro sector space with some critters