I have always had an appreciation for Star Trek and the idea of humanity expanding into the stars and of course the ever changing environment of science as they plumb the depths of space.
Relic (SE6,E04) starts off with the Enterprise finding a Dyson Sphere with a crashed ship (The Jenolen) still on it and remarkably Captain Scott is found alive in a continuous cycle in the transporter. And right here...at the beginning is where it jumps the shark...so to speak..erm write.
The episode becomes more about a man out of time than this fantastic...life changing find of an actual Dyson Sphere that as it is stated...can still support life with a class M environment on the inner hull area. Captain Scott's drama while compelling is more of a B-story than an A-story.
Writers today may indeed have the enterprise encounter the race who built the damned thing...rather than no explanation of why they are not present. Have they built other Dyson Spheres? There is so much more environmentally that could have been done...in-fact the Federation should have made an effort to colonize the sphere. Understanding and exploring this place would have advanced them hundreds of years in only a decade.
One of the initial shots as they enter the sphere shows a massive city on a peninsula. Hello Mega City One. This sphere is ready to colonize considering the amount of greenery and water present. The state of the environment inside at least superficially appears to be decent despite the supposed radiation bursts from the star.
Presumably solar flare activity is anticipated as part of a natural process of a main sequence class G star. Picard's observation that these flares must have driven the inhabitants away ignores many things. They BUILT A PHYSICAL STRUCTURE AROUND A STAR (or they built the structure and then ignited a star once it was built...). The sphere's structure is composed of neutronium. This sci-fi material is some sort of ultra-dense metal likely formed by the pressures equivalent to a collapsed white-dwarf star. It would be nearly impervious to destruction short of a truly massive matter-antimatter reaction or a singularity/singularity weapon. Even large mass driver type weapons would likely only leave superficial marks.
Though two science vessels are dispatched to study the sphere we never in all of the lore since ever hear about this place again. If I were Picard I would have wanted to stick around and help study it. The importance of this find in xeno-archaeology would be beyond comprehension.
The idea that solar flares would present any kind of danger to a society that can build something like this is laughable. The fact that they can ignite a star inside a structure means they must have advanced radiation and force shielding counter measures. And the fact that they can engineer a star means that likely they could exert control over the star beyond simply turning it on. Given the level of control over gravity they would need...it is likely they could snuff out a star using the systems in the Sphere.
bah!
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