Is it ever explained or written about? What is the story of the Vessel?

Crap. I can't remember the name of the book. It had the probe leaving Earth and then causing trouble in Romulan space. I tried to read it but didn't find it very engaging.


"Live long and suck it, Zachary Quinto!"

Most Trek installments are plot driven, and the message comes from a real aspect of society. But this film, and perhaps the film before it, were more character driven. It's why in this film there's no real story regarding the wales themselves. Who they are, what they are, why they're needed and so forth. To be honest, in spite of all the character development, which a lot of people liked, it was not that good of a Trek installment, but still an entertaining film.

If you look at the TV series there was always a salient aspect to the story that either drove the plot, or was plot driven. This had only the bare bones of that, and therefore all you get is "we need wales to talk to aliens in the future" kind of thing.

Again, to me, this falls flat, and even though I enjoyed the film, I don't have it in my collection.

Its backstory is provided in the novelization by Vonda N. McIntyre. Thee, it's called the Traveler and has visited Earth before because it likes the songs whales sing, which it is advanced enough to hear across the gulf of space. For centuries, it and the whales traded songs. Then one day it heard their cries of agony as they were hunted and killed, and the songs stopped. It headed to Earth to investigate, and it took it hundreds of years to arrive, and the rest you know.

It's portrayed as a sentient life form with a mind of its own as opposed to simply a device sent by someone/something, with suggestions dropped here and there that it's very old and very powerful, nearly godlike as far as human beings would be concerned. Its concern for the whales is based primarily on a strange empathy it has for them due to their singing.

This explanation for it was jettisoned though, apparently, and rendered non-canon by the novel Probe. A shame, as McIntyre's explanation for it makes it suitably very alien in nature, and tells us just enough about it for us to understand its motivations, while keeping its actual nature and origins entirely mysterious. I prefer this over Probe's revelation that it was sent a cetacean (i.e. alien whale) race.

"I mean, really, how many times will you look under Jabba's manboobs?"