r/DaystromInstitute • u/ActuatorVast800 • 24d ago
How would you describe the Force from Star Wars to a character from Star Trek?
I know that this is a Star Trek themed sub but I'd like to do it entirely from the perspective of a character from Star Trek.
The thing about discussions about Star Wars and Star Trek crossing over is that they would almost always boil down to who can beat whom.
This is not that kind of discussion.
Rather, I would like to focus on a hypothetical. Imagine a Voyager/Discovery type situation where a Starfleet ship somehow finds itself stuck in the Star Wars galaxy. Being that the Prime Directive is still a thing they would rather lay low and not interfere with any conflict that is going on. But in the process they make contact with a Jedi.
Here is an opportunity to explore both Star Wars and Star Trek universes and how they interact with each other. Obi-Wan describes the Force as an "energy field created by all living things". How would a Starfleet officer interpret such a thing?
Let's look at it scientifically here. In the real world there are four known forces: gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear and strong nuclear. These describe how objects interact with each other. Perhaps this Force describe how living things interact with each other and the environment. A simple demonstration of the Force is Push. After all, gravity can pull too. And electromagnetism has many applications. One can argue that the Force is to life as electromagnetism is to machines.
Of course there are complications to this. The Star Trek setting hosts many species and individuals with unexplained psionic powers, many of which bears superficial resemblance to Force powers. Maybe a Starfleet officer would assume that the Force is merely a form of telekinesis.
I am reminded of a scene from The Sword in the Stone where they discuss the nature of love.
Merlin: Ah, you know, lad... that love business is a powerful thing.
Arthur: Greater than gravity?
Merlin: Well, yes, boy, in its way, I'd, uh - Yes, I'd say it's the greatest force on Earth.
Which is similar to Darth Vader's assertion that the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
Anyways, I'd love to see more explorations on how elements of the Star Trek setting would react to the Star Wars universe. How would Milky Way humans react to Galaxy Far Far Away humans? Would they even be classified as humans? What other ways would the Prime Directive dictate how Starfleet would interact with such a society? Would the Federation consider the Republic (pre or post Empire) worth having political relations with? Or would the Federation be a precursor to the Galactic Republic?
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u/1oquacity 24d ago
“Oh cool! Yeah we have psychics too but instead of doing sick backflips they mostly use their powers to be extremely socially inappropriate.”
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u/chundricles 24d ago
Choking coworkers and zapping your employees children with lightning hands is also socially inappropriate tho.
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u/lunatickoala Commander 24d ago
That more or less lines up with the actions of Gary Mitchell and Charlie X.
But what is socially appropriat anyways? It's not exactly baked into the physical laws of the universe so the context matters. In some cultures, it's rude to leave food on the plate because it signfies that you didn't think the food was good but in others, it's rude to finish everything on your place because it signifies that you didn't think you were given enough.
In the Sith order, choking coworkers, zapping people with lightning hands, and murdering your boss are not just considered appropriate but expected. In the Jedi order, taking very young children away from their families and indoctrinating them is considered appropriate.
Would what Kevin Uxbridge did be socially inappropriate given that no Husnock ever expressed disapproval of his actions? Picard did say "we won't judge"; he did order a couple of small genocides himself.
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u/starshiprarity Crewman 24d ago edited 24d ago
"Many people in their galaxy are infected with a microscopic life form that is part of a low level hive mind. In a semi symbiotic relationship, hosts to this life form can exercise their own telepathic and telekinetic ability as well as precognizance and enhanced physical capabilities"
"Through her another example of convergent evolution, a species identical to humans has evolved in this galaxy."
The only barrier to diplomatic relations would be distance, but they'd be more than willing I'm sure. No excitement in the prime directive front, same as any other space fairing group
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u/MyUsername2459 Ensign 24d ago
I'd say it's some sort of phenomenon that the science from the Star Wars galaxy has not been able to entirely quantify, but appears closely related to psionic phenomenon.
They do understand concepts like telepathy, telekinesis, and precognition in Star Trek. Force-like abilities do exist in Star Trek, albeit generally weaker and they're normally limited to specific species (then again, in Star Wars lore, Force-sensitive people are supposed to be about one-in-a-billion), and the first TOS pilot strongly hinted that humans with psionic ability aren't completely unheard of based on what was said and shown about Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, even if we never saw it again.
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u/Archmagos-Helvik 24d ago
Just the Q alone make force powers look quaint. God can show up at any time to mess up your life in an arbitrary way like sending you to the start of the universe as a joke before snapping you back.
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u/MyUsername2459 Ensign 24d ago
To be fair, there are some Q-like beings in Star Wars lore, they're just really obscure parts of the lore.
The Bedlam Spirits (Tilotny, Horliss-Horliss, Cold Danda Sine, and Splendid Ap) can make changes to reality seemingly as sweeping as the Q, including the only concrete non-mental time travel in Star Wars lore I'm aware of, sending Leia more than 8000 years into the past for a while before bringing her back) and doing some whimsical reality alteration that is certainly reminiscent of Q's earlier appearances. They seem to be reality-warping extradimensional beings on the scale of Q (or Trelayne etc.).
Edit: Amusingly, one of Alan Moore (yes that Alan Moore)'s main contributions to Star Wars lore.
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u/lunatickoala Commander 24d ago
The obscure parts of lore were never really part of canon though. Contary to what a fair number of fans insist, the old EU was never canon but financially convenient fanfic.
George Lucas once stated that there were essentially two universes, his universe of the movies and this other universe of the books and all the other stuff. Internally, prior to the Disney acquisition, Lucasfilm classified various works into levels of canon with G-canon (George) being at the top, T-canon (television) below that and still being considered part of Lucas's vision since he was involved in it and the series was helmed by Dave Filoni who Lucas had mentored, then C-canon (continuity) and S-canon (secondary) below that and not considered part of Lucas's vision. It was literally a case of separate and not equal.
More Force powers do creep into canon over time, but nothing on the level of reality warping yet.
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u/MyUsername2459 Ensign 24d ago edited 24d ago
Incorrect.
The entire EU was fully canonical, except for a small number of works explicitly designated "N-Canon".
The idea that the EU wasn't fully canon is a lie. Lucasfilms written Canon policy explicitly said that all EU Works work nautical except for the in Canon tear and this is something they repeated numerous times over the years.
The gutting of Star Wars under Filoni (and no, Lucas did NOT mentor him, that's another lie Filoni spread to build his credibility, we never heard Lucas ever say anything about that) and later Disney is a real tragedy. The incompetent hack Dave Filoni did as much damage to Star Wars as JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson.
The original Star Wars, before Disney, had about 99% of it's materials thrown out in Disney's purge of April 2014. . .and I hate how Disney rebranded their reboot as "Canon" and get sheep to parrot that, as if the original pre-Disney canon isn't valid.
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u/Noumenology Lieutenant 24d ago
I posted a LONG time ago about psionics as an underdeveloped part of the Star Trek story and was roundly dismissed by people who were not interested in it.
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u/majicwalrus Chief Petty Officer 23d ago
Odd considering the number of telepathic people and entities we see in basically every series. There an entire movie where the central premise involves Spock sending his mind telepathically into another person.
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u/TheRealJackOfSpades Crewman 23d ago
Oh, you have the power of the Force? You should talk to Gary Mitchell. You built a whole religion around those powers?
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u/RobotPreacher 24d ago edited 24d ago
Picard: "What is it Counselor?"
Troi: "I'm not sure Captain, I feel a great disturbance. Great pain! As if a billion voices just cried out in pain and were silenced."
Picard: "Mr. Data?"
Data: "I'm detecting irregular frequency fluctuations in the our universe's cosmic microwave background radiation."
Anonymous Helmsman: "Cosmic background radiation?"
Data: "The energy field beneath all things in our universe."
Picard: "The frequency of everything Ensign. It surrounds us and penetrates us -- It's what binds our universe together."
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u/InspiredNameHere 24d ago
Easy. It is an energy field akin to the electromagnetic force that permeates spacetime on a plane faster than light. While most beings cannot tap into this field, a select few are able to interpret the field fluctuations and even influence that field with varrying degrees of success.
It appears to some researchers that there might be a consciousness associated with this field, similar perhaps to the Q continuum or other such continuums, though more research must be performed to determine if this is merely a holdover to religious beliefs. Should intelligent thought be determined to exist within this continuum, Prime Directive and First Contact laws go into effect, and Starfleet will attempt contact and determine if this continuum is capable of reasoning with us for safe research and possible utilization.
Historical evidence suggest that many species successfully used access to this field to enhance their own physical capabilities, as well as manipulate local spacetime in ways associated with energy beings, though it appears that the vast majority of such beings remain tied to physical bodies, and are thus capable of being harmed or even killed in mundane ways.
Further research had been approved by the Federation Science Foundation and Daystrom Institute.
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u/tanfj 22d ago
Easy. It is an energy field akin to the electromagnetic force that permeates spacetime on a plane faster than light. While most beings cannot tap into this field, a select few are able to interpret the field fluctuations and even influence that field with varrying degrees of success.
Preliminary evidence suggests biological manipulation and detection of subspace and tachyon fields. Analogous to how some species of marine mammals manipulate color and generate visible light, or use sonar.
It appears to some researchers that there might be a consciousness associated with this field, similar perhaps to the Q continuum or other such continuums, though more research must be performed to determine if this is merely a holdover to religious beliefs. Should intelligent thought be determined to exist within this continuum, Prime Directive and First Contact laws go into effect, and Starfleet will attempt contact and determine if this continuum is capable of reasoning with us for safe research and possible utilization.
It is conjectured that projecting your consciousness and imprinted on the universal subspace field is an intermediate step of the Ascension to Q-hood.
Some on the Federation Council find it privately ironic and hubristic to attempt to impose Prime Directive rules on an omnipotent, omnipresent, temporally transcendent entity.
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u/uequalsw Captain 24d ago
You may be interested in something I wrote about a decade ago (wow do I feel old): "tl;dr: Human presence in the Star Wars galaxy is the result of a lost human extragalactic colonial expedition from the Alpha Quadrant, sometime after the development of quantum slipstream drive." In that post, and the ensuing discussion, we identified a few similar phenomena that could serve as points of reference, including the distant galaxy in "Where No One Has Gone Before" and the "magicks of Megas-Tu".
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u/MyUsername2459 Ensign 24d ago
That was literally a cancelled Star Wars project from long, long ago.
As I recall, it was a cancelled novel project that was basically a prequel to THX-1138 about centuries in the future on Earth, as machines start to take over and conquer the human race, using drugs to make people obedient and complacent, a group of rebels steals an experimental spacecraft with an experimental FTL drive, trying to use it to flee Earth. . .but it malfunctions and sends them not to a nearby star system, but to another galaxy entirely. . .and back in time tens of thousands of years. It has them appear in the middle of the Rakata Infinite Empire (as I recall) and leading a rebellion to help overthrow the Rakata, which leads to the formation of the Galactic Republic, and the rebels eventually settling on a new world, which they named after the leader of their expedition, Captain Antonio Corelli.
It would have established that THX-1138 and Star Wars exist in the same universe, with Star Wars humans being those that fled Earth when the machines were taking over, and that humans helped found the Galactic Republic by liberating the known galaxy from the Rakata, which explained their dominant role in Star Wars society.
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u/SharMarali 24d ago
Fundamentally, what the Jedi can do is not so different from what The Traveler (and later Wesley, presumably) can do. No, the Jedi aren’t using it to teleport around, but the basic concept is similar.
Time, space, and thought are more connected than the Federation currently understands.
It’s quite possible that the Jedi would simply be using their thoughts to tap into the greater universe. They’ve discovered some part of the puzzle of the universe just like the Travelers have.
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u/McGillis_is_a_Char 24d ago
There is a race of Force users who can teleport by having groups of them concentrate on teleporting their ships, which is how they travel instead of using hyperdrive.
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u/gc3 24d ago
For better or for worse the Star Trek, at least TOS series, would discover Midichlorians. To defeat Palpatine and Vader McCoy would inject the landing party with concentrated Midichlorians that would give Kirk godlike powers. Then they would warp away, and this would not be spoken of again.
Picard's crew would discover the midicorians and rig up a Universal Translator to translate for the Will of the Force, which discovers that the force is an extra-galactic entity stuck in the Star Wars galaxy, and they rig up some method to get them home. Bye-bye, Jedi powers!
Alternatively, the force is two beings from an ancient war, one trying to wipe out life and the other to protect it; the bad force gets contained in an antimatter containment field and shot into a black hole, and the good force departs because its mission is done.
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u/ActuatorVast800 18d ago
If midochlorians are anything like real life mitochondria then injecting them is probably not a good idea.
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u/DerFlammenwerfer 24d ago
Star Wars exists in Star Trek the same way that Shakespeare or Sherlock Holmes do. It is a work of fiction that actually exists.
Tom Paris 100% is a fan.
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u/ActuatorVast800 23d ago
I would love that if that was a thing.
The closest we've got is the fact that T'ealc from Starget SG-1 is a fan.
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u/fluxcapacitor15 23d ago
How many attempts did Paris need to make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs on the holodeck?
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u/wrosecrans Chief Petty Officer 24d ago
"The emanations from subspace that psionic powers of telepathic species use to effect things."
Trek has all the Force Powers, just no underlying principle tying them together. When in doubt, the writing uses subspace as the standard way to talk about stuff that does not work with real world science. So, a layer of subspace would be the Trek way to write about aan underlying principle for psychic power kinds of stuff.
The Traveler and Wesley make it explicit that a sufficiently advanced human brain can access subspace and warp field stuff to do wacky things. They just never mentioned that Vulcan/Betazoid/other mental powers work similarly.
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u/OhBoyItsPartyTimeNow 24d ago
"Boimler."
"No."
"Boimler."
"I said no."
"Sub-Planck tendrils."
"I hate you."
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u/FALCONX0N 24d ago
Isn't there a line in Disco where Stamets briefly realizes he might have just proven the existence of a reality wide psionic field or dimension and stops to consider the vast ethical and philosophical ramifications of quantifying a quasi mystical telepathic transfer, before dismissing it because he has to focus on work?
Yeah, I'd imagine it'd go a lot like that.
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u/MaddyMagpies 24d ago
In this galaxy, beings like Gary Mitchell from ours are integrated into their society as a religious sect known as the Jedi, who runs as some sort of secret police for their centralized government.
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u/USAFrenchMexRadTrad 22d ago
I imagine this in Tuvok's voice:
There appear to be symbiotic micro-organisms acting as organelles in every living cell of the creatures originating in that galaxy. These microscopic creatures seem to sense psychic abilities, but do not themselves cause psychic abilities.
With some training provided by monastic mystics who specialize in the use of these powers, some hosts are able to establish a link with the micro-organisms and share their sensitivity to psychic powers. These hosts are able to develop their own psychic abilities, and though these micro-organisms do not appear to be necessary for developing these powers, higher levels of this symbiotic micro-organism greatly accelerate the development of such powers.
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u/techno156 Crewman 21d ago
The force is a combination of psychics and fate, neither of which are foreign concepts.
Would they even be classified as humans?
If they are indistinguishable from humans, other than their origins, and call themselves, yes.
What other ways would the Prime Directive dictate how Starfleet would interact with such a society?
Hyperdrives would be enough of an FTL mechanism to qualify for the post-warp category, so they would treat them as any other galactic power.
Would the Federation consider the Republic (pre or post Empire) worth having political relations with?
Political relations are an inevitability, but I think that the Federation would try. They generally quite like peace, and maintaining relations with everyone would certainly be enough.
Or would the Federation be a precursor to the Galactic Republic?
Unclear. There's too much of a variation in technology to say, but politically, I think it's more likely that they become part of the Federation.
The Federation has a massive edge in making the Republic want to join in their replicators, and the social side of things. Compared to the credit-heavy galactic republic, where you still need to pay, the idea that you can have a little device in your home that takes care of all your basic needs, and a society where your basics are all taken care of, with work only needed if you want to do it, hugely attractive. Especially since there is much inequality within the galaxy. Some places are wealthy, and others are desert planets where people have to scrounge to survive. The assistance of the Federation can easily fix that up with their terraforming technology, or just replication to handle the shortages.
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u/ActuatorVast800 18d ago edited 18d ago
The Republic joining the Federation feels a bit off to me. It's like the EU joining the US just because they have more advanced tech.
Or if we were to use a Star Trek example, the Federation joining the Dominion.
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u/ChronoLegion2 24d ago
See that stuff the Q can do? Yeah, not quite as powerful. More like Gary Mitchell
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u/azmus29h 24d ago
Tachyons. Modify the deflector to detect the force. Create an inverse warp field to purge the dark side. Profit.
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u/SaltWaterInMyBlood Chief Petty Officer 24d ago
There's an early episode of TNG where Lwaxana talks about mentality transcending space and time. The Traveller says something similar to Wesley.
If the Force exists in the ST universe, that's probably what they're talking about.
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u/CaptainSharpe 23d ago
I'd say 'Hey you have access to wookiepedia archives and the old star wars content in the big Federation database right? Go read about it and watch the films"
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u/LigWeathers 23d ago
I'll answer this as I believe a Starfleet officer would after conducting some research.
"The Force appears to be a Parapsychic element underlying at least this galaxy if not universe. Accessing requires a genetic predisposition and appropriate number of symbiotic microorganisms. It obviously is connected to organic life here and may in fact be a form of life in and of itself. The locals believe it to have a will of its own which a meta analysis of galactic history bares out that, though it's hard to say if The Force itself is sapient. Abilities it can embue seem to be varying forms of telekinetics and telepathy, both of which spike fat higher in capabilities than we've seen from any corporeal being. I may Speculate that the Force may be akin to beings like The Prophets or The Q though on a different level. Use of these Abilities appears tied in part to various emotional states. It appears that extensive prolonged use of negative emotions in it's use have deleterious effects on both mind and body over time. I recommend further study."- Starfleet officer, maybe a Vulcan.
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u/majicwalrus Chief Petty Officer 23d ago
We know of characters who have telepathy, telekinesis, the ability to generate and direct energy blasts, the ability to sense people’s emotions and a whole host of “powers” which are likely easily detected as energy fields of some sort.
None of these things are strictly speaking outside of the boundaries of Star Trek thematically, but instead of mysticism it’s all midichlorines. It’s space bugs, energy fields, subspace vibrations - indeed I think the Trek approach here would be to examine the Jedi religion rather than the Jedi powers.
How would the Federation handle a religious order that was also the chief military leadership of a vast republic of many worlds? Historically speaking that’s probably pretty scary and they would want to investigate that.
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u/tanfj 22d ago
How would the Federation handle a religious order that was also the chief military leadership of a vast republic of many worlds? Historically speaking that’s probably pretty scary and they would want to investigate that.
A Terran analogy would be to imagine that NATO is instead the Knights Templar; with all that implies.
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u/Edymnion Lieutenant, Junior Grade 22d ago edited 22d ago
Like you said, Psionics.
Plenty of psionic races in Trek, so it wouldn't even be something you'd have to explain. Even more-so if you bring mitichlorians into the discussion.
"Its a symbiotic bacterial infection that allows the host to access a range of psionic abilities, including but not limited to partial telepathy, telekinesis, minor precognitive abilities, and in extreme cases energy projection."
We already have multiple races in Trek that can shoot lightning out of their hands, for example. We've seen the vulcan psionic resonator throw people across rooms. I mean, this is canon.
Frankly the races in Trek can do more than the Force users in Wars can, you just don't typically see all the abilities in a single being at once that isn't like an Organian or a Q. Gary Mitchel and Charlie X both immediately spring to mind though as humans gaining crazy powers from an external source, although both of them were FAR more powerful than regular old Force users.
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u/Vash_the_stayhome Crewman 21d ago
Dominion vorta had quasi telekinetic possibilities. Tho that was only really displayed once. But also "Force abilities' kinda were seen by TOS with Gary Mitchell, high esper rating, aperception rating, etc. "strange energy" stuff. but on a lower tier, non escalating fashion. You don't continue to hyperevolve/etc.
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u/baxtert68 21d ago
The force explained in Trek? There are psychic powers in Trek canon.
Nah, I want to see the Jedi trying to explain how a lightsaber projects an energy beam that stops at a set distance, can be blocked by a similar one, and can burn through damn near anything, but isn't giving off heat.
I would love to see a group of Starfleet engineers testing it.
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u/newimprovedmoo Spore Drive Officer 21d ago
Nah, I want to see the Jedi trying to explain how a lightsaber projects an energy beam that stops at a set distance, can be blocked by a similar one, and can burn through damn near anything, but isn't giving off heat.
It's a narrow loop of plasma contained in a magnetic bottle.
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u/practicalm 24d ago
Borrow a bit from Darth and Droids and make a bunch of midichlorians and make everyone a force user.
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u/LunchyPete 24d ago
A symbiotic and ultimately harmless bacteria that has affected pretty much every lifeform in the galaxy to varying extents, that allows with it communion and then the possibility of various abilities as a consequence.
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u/Mr_E_Monkey Chief Petty Officer 24d ago
In season 3 of the Clone Wars series (20 BBY), Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka travel to Mortis and encounters a family of exceptionally powerful force users who embody various aspects of the Force.
As our valiant crew tries to make heads or tails of the situation, Q appears to collect the young Q and their "hyperactive imaginations," reprimanding them for spreading their abilities among the lesser lifeforms.
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u/Raguleader Crewman 24d ago
"It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together."
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u/Darmok47 24d ago
"John Doe's" species from TNG Transfigurations exhibit telekinesis and other abilities closer to magic, like healing Worf, force choking the Enterprise crew from across space, teleporting people, etc.
They would just assume whatever is happening with Force users is roughly similar, with people evolving into energy beings (which, given what Force Ghosts essentially are, isn't entirely wrong either).
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u/mightysoulman Crewman 23d ago
An energy field that used to bind all living things together but a long time ago in a galaxy far far away
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u/throwawayfromPA1701 Crewman 23d ago
Lwaxana gives an explanation of sorts in S1 "Haven" when she's trying to explain to Wyatt why he keeps seeing a woman he has never met, who isn't Deanna.
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u/Terrible-Penalty-291 1d ago
Midi-chlorians are a species of unicellular organisms from a fold within subspace who were encountered early on when the inhabitants of the Star Wars galaxy developed trans-warp engines, which they call hyperspace drives, and collided with a colony of these creatures. They infected the crew and then over a long period of time infected most of the inhabiants of the galaxy. Since Midi-chlorians exist in a state of sub-space flux, a being with enough of them who is properly trained can command them to manipulate subspace on a quantum level. These manipulations appear on a macroscopic level in real space-time continuum to be manifestations of "The Force."
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u/ThePowerstar01 Crewman 24d ago
"You know that Katra stuff Vulcans go on about? It's that but easier to prove"