Mutants (and other strange folks) in STAR TREK?

[dswynne1]

One of the things I immediately noticed, early on in TNG, was the absence of so-called "extraordinary people", such as Gary Mitchell, Charlie X, the kids from "And the Children Shall Lead", the kids from "Miri's World" and so on. It became apparent to me that from TNG on, humans were to be depicted as "normal", but advanced in social consciousness, whereas the "extraordinary people" would be in the form of non-humans, with either some sort of mental powers, or some enhanced physical capability.

My question is this: would the 'flavor" of humans, as depicted on the various shows, be different if there were "mutants" of some sort, particularly the Marvel Comics' X-Men variety? What about Cyborgs and other cybernetics-enhanced in people? Could the Augments be a thing? Certainly, Dr. Julian Bashier (DS9) could be seen as a "mainstreamed" Augment that didn't matter unless the story dictated the episode. And, going to the extreme, what about so-called "super-natural" elements, like werewolves (alternate species), vampires (viral-based augmentation), ghost (like the plasma entity from the episode "Sub Rosa" (TNG) and sorcerers (descendants from Q or some other omnipotent being)?

I wouldn't say that you would see such people all the time, maybe 1-in-a-million, but would any one of these people be able to serve in Starfleet as a member of the crew?

 

[Timo]

I'm not sure I'm seeing the phenomenon - but rather the reverse. The mutants of TOS were characters external and often adversarial to the hero cast. On the other hand, the existence of this category of people was presented as unexceptional, either through the basic TOS deadpan that was used on all the absurdity the heroes encountered, or then more subtly, as with Miranda Jones and the exact nature of her telepathy (there being a "stock response" of schooling on Vulcan etc.).

In contrast, TNG gave us a mutant character or three in the very midst of the hero cast. There was Wesley, a superbeing who didn't get sent off to some weird secret academy when his latent superpowers were unveiled (to the contrary, he struggled in getting to the regular Starfleet Academy). There was LaForge, with technological mutant powers. And there was Troi, an alien halfbreed who, unlike Spock, looked like her human half.

TNG was shown "squandering" the superpowers of these people, not through being afraid of them and going for the torches and pitchforks, but simply through indifference. So the kid can outsmart the entire Starfleet R&D? Ho-hum, let's see if he can temp at the helm. So the lady is a walking lie detector who can do varying degrees of telepathy? Let her relieve the space anxiety of the crew. So the blind guy sees through walls, tells androids apart from people at a glance, and has lie detection "down pat"? Well, we're short one mechanic.

Against all this, it would have been jarring to treat a superman as a special thing in TNG. If they met and tamed Khan, he might have made for a good bartender. If they managed to enlist Gary Seven, there's always an opening at astrophysics. If Amanda Rogers had kids with Charlie Evans, the big issue with them would be whether to let them listen to Klingon music or not.

Also, explicit supermen like Spock or Data strove to be more human. Exciting?

The one light in the darkness was Worf, who aimed at being as nonhuman as he possibly could. Every time he murdered, abandoned, ridiculed and alienated, the crowds cheered. Would this have worked on a character like Wesley, one "rising from the mediocrity of human existence" to become "more" (by leaving behind the limiting human moral views)? Well, "Journey's End" came a bit too late to tell.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

"Unnatural Selection" had some genetically engineered telekinetic superpowers. But yes, on a whole the universe of TNG was a lot less colourful than that of TOS.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Humanity of Trek are somewhat mutated, evolved past the point of killing each other over petty differences. Geordi is technically a cyborg and lived a normal life. Augments and other genetic engineering are banned by Federation law, those that have slipped through either do all they can to fit in or are so distorted by the process so as to be kept separate. As for 'super-naturals' there are species out there that have such traits (M-113 creature for example), whilst just as Caitians are felinoid there are likely species that are caninoid in origin, and we've seen a large number of non-corporeal entities that are ghost-like. As for descendants of omnipotent beings, there might well be some out there we've just never seen before--besides any advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (which Trek already has a lot of).

Looking at humanity in Trek, its a somewhat stale and lacklustre species, unfortunately they are the blight of the galaxy, taking away valuable roles that would be far more interesting with an alien in their place.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Humanity of Trek are somewhat mutated, evolved past the point of killing each other over petty differences.

Now they kill aliens over petty differences.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Mutant superpowers are kind of in a different scifi realm than Star Trek exists in, so I wouldn't expect to see that in Trek. Or rather, I'd expect that superpowers are something man gradually evolves toward rather than one human with normal parents developing telekinesis on a random gene mutation.

The Star Trek we see did contend that 'You deserve what you earned through your work, not the advantages you happened to be born with'. Troi feels guilty using her advantage in The Price and then in DS9 the systematic oppression of augments. And the way in Deja Q, Q is told that no matter how brilliant he is, if he wants authority he needs to earn it like everyone else.

This kind of view isn't practical, but it's an expected extension of collectivism extended into the future. It's preferable to the cushy job just going to the boss's nephew, but in reality should probably lead to Starfleet falling behind their rivals in technology. Ideally they'd have a system that rewards those with talent and who put in the time and hard work.

 

[Christopher]

Humanity of Trek are somewhat mutated, evolved past the point of killing each other over petty differences.

That's not biological mutation, that's societal and cultural progress. When they say humanity has "evolved," they don't mean it in the genetic sense, but in the broader sense of any progressive change, in this case, an advancement of cultural values and enlightenment -- a rejection of old ideas like prejudice, greed, and militarism.

Geordi is technically a cyborg and lived a normal life.

I think the intention of TNG's original producers was that people like Geordi and Picard (with his bionic heart) were typical, that bionic prosthetics and enhancements were made commonplace by future technology. There were even episodes that indicated there were others with VISORs like Geordi's or similar implants, like when Pulaski talked to Geordi about alternative options in her first episode. But the producers who followed didn't maintain that idea.

Mutant superpowers are kind of in a different scifi realm than Star Trek exists in, so I wouldn't expect to see that in Trek.

Not at all. Marvel gets a lot of use out of the word "mutant," but it's hardly unique to them. Mutation is a real biological phenomenon and a key ingredient of evolution. Mutation is how organisms acquire new traits, and beneficial traits that imbue new advantages or abilities give mutants an evolutionary edge. That's a very grounded scientific concept, even if some stories give mutant characters more fanciful abilities than others do. And the term has been used routinely in science fiction since the 1930s. The reason Stan Lee used it was because he'd read a lot of earlier science fiction that used it -- probably including a lot of the same pulp SF that inspired Roddenberry and Star Trek's other writers.

Besides, however much I might like it to be otherwise, Trek has never shied away from giving characters the same kind of wild superpowers that many comic-book characters have. TOS was full of telepaths, telekinetics, shapeshifters, teleporters, energy projectors, and so forth. Human characters like Charlie Evans and Garth of Izar were even somehow "taught" these abilities without needing to be genetically altered, which is even more fanciful than having them born with them as a result of mutation.

Or rather, I'd expect that superpowers are something man gradually evolves toward rather than one human with normal parents developing telekinesis on a random gene mutation.

Realistically, evolution isn't "toward" anything except greater reproductive success within a given environment. The idea that it's some cosmic force pushing species "higher" is a myth that should've died out long ago. But Trek does tend to suggest that sentient corporeal species eventually evolve into powerful energy beings like the Organians or Thasians. We saw it happen to "John Doe" in "Transfigurations." Implicitly, Wesley Crusher is a harbinger of humanity's evolution in that direction, or at least that's how it seems to me.

 

[Greg Cox]

Yeah, I remember my dad explaining to me back in the sixties that the idea that human beings inevitably evolve into big-brained, telepathic future people was nonsense; that evolution doesn't have a target or goal or endgame. It's an ongoing process of adaptation, not a predetermined ascent.

This discussion was occasioned by a viewing of the original OUTER LIMITS episode, "The Sixth Finger," so, yeah, that was a stock idea in SF long before TOS.

 

[GNDN18]

"The Sixth Finger,"

Which, has been noted by others, seems an unlikely mutation, much less one suggesting advancement of the species.
#JeanLucDerailleur

 

[Greg Cox]

Which, has been noted by others, seems an unlikely mutation, much less one suggesting advancement of the species.
#JeanLucDerailleur

Still a cool episode, though.

 

[GNDN18]

Still a cool episode, though.

Oh, one of the best. David McCallum rocked, rocks now, and will rock forever, world without end. Amen.

 

[MAGolding]

The plausibility of superpowers varies with the particular superpower. And the idea of mutants is a double edged one.

On one hand, technically speaking everyone is a mutant. All the genes in your genome have mutated over and over again over billions of years of your ancestry to make you what you are. All of your powers, abilities, and limitations, whether super or sub par, are thus technically mutant powers, abilities, and limitations.

And on the other hand, if mutant status is universal, if every living being has genes that have mutated and thus is a mutant, then being a mutant isn't anything special. The vast majority of humans - and thus of human mutants since all humans are mutants - are fairly typical, so being a mutant almost always means being fairly typical.

Of course most mutants are imagined to be people who have some further mutation that makes them different from fairly typical humans with all their fairly typical past mutations.

Scientifically speaking, most new mutations involve minor changes to the biochemistry of the organism. Most of those biochemical changes are harmful, most slightly harmful, but many very harmful leading to death. A minority of biochemical mutations are more or less neutral, and another minority of them are beneficial, usually slightly beneficial.

And only a tiny minority of mutations produce effects that other people can notice, and those are usually medical conditions. Many doctors have patients with genetic disorders traceable in some cases to mutated genes, genes that sometimes mutated in the patient and sometimes in one of the patient's ancestors.

And that is basically about as much as it is scientifically likely to result from random accidental genetic mutations. Expecting that accidental mutants, instead of designed and genetically engineered ones, will have any type of superpowers is rather silly. And nobody can be genetically engineered to have a superpower that is impossible, or a superpower that it is impossible for biological organisms to possess.

So depicting lots of mutants with superpowers would add another implausible detail to Star Trek and make it even less plausible than it already was.

 

[Christopher]

Given that Star Trek has interspecies breeding and the episodes "The Chase" and "Genesis" (and "Threshold," but we do not speak of that one), I think it's safe to say that its approach to genetics is pretty fanciful. So if it had done stories about human mutants with extraordinary abilities, that would've fit in perfectly with its typical level of credibility.

Kirk actually called Gary Mitchell a mutant in "Where No Man Has Gone Before": "In the sickbay, you said if you were in my place, you'd kill a mutant like yourself." Of course, that's not the usual sense of the word, since Gary got his abilities from the barrier instead of by birth. His original low-level esper abilities may have been a mutation, but that wasn't what they were talking about.

The "Jack Pack" in DS9: "Statistical Probabilities" and "Chrysalis" also refer to themselves as mutants on several occasions, although they're really what we'd now call Augments, the result of germline genetic engineering rather than natural mutation. And in The Episode That Will Not Be Named, Tom Paris's transwarp-altered genes were referred to as "mutant DNA." The term was also used for Kamala in "The Perfect Mate" and the Suliban in "Broken Bow," though Phlox disagreed with Archer's use of the term in the latter case because the Suliban's abilities were genetically engineered.

http://scriptsearch.dxdy.name/?page=results&query=({line|mutant,})

And here are the uses of the word "mutation" in Trek:

http://scriptsearch.dxdy.name/?page=results&query=({line|mutation,})