Re: alpha, beta quatrant and El-Auria

From: Timo S Saloniemi <tsalonie_at_alpha.hut.fi>
Date: 19 Oct 2001 07:33:58 GMT

In article <20011018195050.17345.00000201_at_mb-fo.aol.com> kevinphill_at_aol.com (KevinPhill) writes:
>I was writting a response to someone questing the quotes I quoted and got
>knocked off. So I'm requoting. I got them off startrek.com:
>
>"Alpha Quadrant
>That quarter of the Milky Way Galaxy appearing to be located between 6 and 9
>o'clock if the great plane of the galaxy is viewed as a clockface and the 6
>o'clock position bisects the Sol system. The quadrant is home to the bulk of
>the Federation and the Cardassian Union, along with Bajor and its adjacent
>wormhole which bridges a 70,000-lightyear shortcut to the Gamma Quadrant"

Seems to be in accordance with what's told on-screen. Except of course that Voyager sometimes showed quadrant maps with the position of Alpha all screwed up.

>"Beta Quadrant
>That quarter of the Milky Way Galaxy appearing to be located between 3 and 6
>o'clock if the great plane of the galaxy is viewed as a clockface and the 6
>o'clock position bisects the Sol system. The bulk of the Klingon and Romulan
>empires, the Ferengi and Tholians are among the major cultures located there
>along the joint Alpha Quadrant boundary with the Federation, which also
>extends into it slightly."

As I said earlier, the Ferengi seem to be in Alpha quadrant in the aired episodes - not only per some wall maps, but also per the fact that they were close to Cardassia yet unknown to the Federation in the immediate pre-TNG days, as DS9 backstory states. As for the Tholians, this is speculation on the site's part, not proven or disproven by the episodes.

>"El-Auria Star well beyond Federation space, nearer the Borg, whose
>system was home to a namesake race of long-lived, empathetic humanoids
>until the Borg scattered them in 2265."

Nothing objectionable to this, except perhaps the dating - it need not be exactly 2265, since the aired reference wasn't necessarily all that exact.

Timo Saloniemi Received on Fri Oct 19 2001 - 00:36:01 PDT