If the doctor that fixed my broken leg hadn't been on call that day he wouldn't have been responsible for my broken leg, but if he was and refused to set my broken leg because clearly if I was meant to not have a broken leg I would've evolved with stronger bones, he'd be a shit doctor.
Dear Doctor Revisited
- Thread starter Mutai Sho-Rin
- Start date
Phlox cried when T'pol and Trip's daughter died, but he didn't shed a tear when he let millions of Valakians die. What a putz!
there are these examples over and over again of species that knowingly or not, had been helped along in their development by outside intervention. Humans being a major one. Plus in Star Trek, it appears all humanoid species have some kind of progenitor species to thank, anyway. Phlox and Archer had a duty of care to an advanced species that knew they were dying out and needed help, help that could have been given. It's one reason I don't like to consider this episode in the context of the rest of Trek. Archer committed genocide. It's probably the the low point for ST.
Picard is really infuriating in this episode. When the guy who escaped the holodeck kills himself. Picard says something about it (I don't remember what) but then I think Troi, tells him that if they had done nothing he would have been dead anyway and Picard says the stupidest thing that I've ever heard. "At least he wouldn't have died alone." So basically he says that it would have been a good thing if all the others had died along with him, just to keep him company. What an asshole!
I count that as bad writing. Practically in the same breath, Picard added that he was glad they had saved the Boralians and that their plan had worked out well.
The thing with Trek is that while bad science is never ideal, there are certain stories it works a bit better for. An episode of Voyager where they need to find a crack in the event horizon doesn't make any sense with even the most cursory knowledge about it, but it's something we accept because in the grand scheme there's no real moral element associated with it, and it's just the story trap they have to escape from.
When you start having an ethical debate tied to it though, that's when you have to make sure whatever scientific element you have there stands up to some scrutiny, because when applied incorrectly it makes potential choices of the characters look far worse.
Dear Doctor and (to a lesser extent) Homeward feel like the worst case scenario of that, where the righteousness of the characters falls flat on its face because the concepts they're basing their decisions on have so little scientific merit to them. It would be like if Picard in Transfigurations decided to make the antagonistic captain transform into pure energy against his will on the basis that because such a process was the Zalkonian's next step in evolution, the latter himself would die if he didn't. It wouldn't make any scientific sense and Picard would seem outright immoral for doing so.
When you start having an ethical debate tied to it though, that's when you have to make sure whatever scientific element you have there stands up to some scrutiny, because when applied incorrectly it makes potential choices of the characters look far worse.
Dear Doctor and (to a lesser extent) Homeward feel like the worst case scenario of that, where the righteousness of the characters falls flat on its face because the concepts they're basing their decisions on have so little scientific merit to them. It would be like if Picard in Transfigurations decided to make the antagonistic captain transform into pure energy against his will on the basis that because such a process was the Zalkonian's next step in evolution, the latter himself would die if he didn't. It wouldn't make any scientific sense and Picard would seem outright immoral for doing so.
Dear Doctor. It’s a gift that never stops giving isn’t it?
Oddly, forget the genocide thing [weird statement of the decade], but note that the crew really is extra comfortable with the fact that this planet is sharply divided between the haves and have'nots. Phlox kind of rattles off, "See how enlightened the Valakians are? They didn't exterminate the Menks."
I'm like, "Whoever wrote this has a very weird idea about race relations."
I'm like, "Whoever wrote this has a very weird idea about race relations."
The Valakians and the Menks are not two races, they are two species.
This episode contains so many things that don't make any sense. Like why would Hoshi of all people be surprised that the people on the planet speak two languages? I mean seriously, it's estimated that we currently speak (here on Earth) between five and ten thousand distinct languages! But hey the Valakian are only supposed to have one, right?
Even then, the effect doesn't matter because it's still two people who should be treated equally and happily.
Mind you, I bet that they added the "they can't interbreed" because they didn't want to make an obvious solution to the plague being intermarriage like "Up the Long Ladder."
That was a horrible episode, with Pulaski using terms like "breeding stock"... Not to mention the murdering of clones...
Well, if he wasn't killed during the last attack before the Cardassians surrendered. It wouldn't have been that hard to get the Cardassians to free him. A little diplomacy would likely do the trick.
To be fair, they weren't fully grown yet so it wasn't yet murder by many legal standards.
of course he probably faces a new court-martial once he ever gets back to the UFP.
An Abortion is only legal because the fetus is growing inside the person's body. Which wasn't the case here. And even abortion is only legal if certain conditions are fulfilled. I'd say by today's standards Riker committed murder.
Ehhh, my issue would be whether the clones were self-aware autonomous beings yet. Which seems to be a more relevant issue rather than their birth state. At least in the case of their artificial gestation cases.
I think a good lawyer would get him a light sentence, given the eight years, he spent alone on that planet. He could get the deciding people to see that Tom had already been punished enough by circumstances and they could let him off the hook with a stern warning and a short detention.