complex political plot, according to Ron Moore, who wrote
the story for Part II. "The changelings come to Earth, infiltrate the
populace, and cause near civil war within the Federation," he relates.
"We were going to have Vulcan start to break away from the Federation
as a result of what was going on on Earth, and a confrontation in
Earth's orbit where a Federation starship is about to fire on a Vulcan
transport." Moore notes, "We realized that the whole thing with the
Vulcans wasn't quite selling it. So we started talking about a
military coup of the Federation by Starfleet, a la Seven Days in May,"
he says, referring to the 1964 film about a military scheme to
overthrow the U.S. government. "We thought that was actually more
interesting, and more unexpected in the Star Trek universe—that
Starfleet wouldoil acted as a bridging agent to wet the coal, and when the mixture was subjected to agitation, the oil and coal tended to agglomerate and to reject the water. Inasmuch as the water/coal/oil mixture had been sonified, it was determined that when the water was separated out from the agglomerated mass, it contained a great deal of ash.
The separating out of the ash from the mixture is of course desirable and with the experience just discussed, it was decided to modify the process to beneficiate the coal particulate and to include coarse grinding followed by froth flotation or other separation method, followed by wet grinding to a small uniform size, followed by sonification followed by an agglomeration step to rid the mixture of ash and water before