Religion aside, I'm still not seeing why it's their place to do anything about it. Just because they can do something doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.
Why not? Pragmatically, people tend to like you more when they know you'll help out. On the other hand, the neighbor who watches your house burn to the ground without lifting a finger and then acts how smugly moral they were probably isn't going on the Christmas card list.
And because it's the human thing to do. Someone asks for help, you help.
Except in this instance, Kirk's actions showed the exact reason why there is a Prime Directive. His interference caused cultural contamination within the Nibiru who now see the Enterprise as some sort of god figure.
Your analogy doesn't quite work either. When it comes to less developed civilizations, they aren't supposed to know they have a neighbor who is watching their house burn down.
Saving the Nibiru didn't cause the contamination...being really sloppy about it did.
And on the fire analogy, I think a better comparison would be stopping a wildfire at a long distance away before the uncontacted peoples ever realized that it wasn't mere fortune that kept the smoke they saw at a great distance from approaching and bringing with it a fire. That would have been what Kirk and company were doing had they not been sloppy and allowed the ship to be seen.
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Except in this instance, Kirk's actions showed the exact reason why there is a Prime Directive. His interference caused cultural contamination within the Nibiru who now see the Enterprise as some sort of god figure.
Your analogy doesn't quite work either. When it comes to less developed civilizations, they aren't supposed to know they have a neighbor who is watching their house burn down.
But as Kirk put it in TOS, at least they'll still be alive. Better contaminated and a living culture versus extinct but pure.
And again, Humans have no clue what a pure culture looks like, since they don't come from one. They were uplifted by aliens who did play god, and apparently okay with that since they keep naming ships after them.
Actually no, the Vulcans didn't play God. We know from canon they had been observing Earth for a long time, yet never made contact. Did they interfere to prevent millions of deaths in the World Wars? Ended plagues? Prevented the Eugenics Wars? Or stopped World War III? Clearly they had the means to do so. Yet, they didn't. When humans had reached a level of technological advancement, then the Vulcans made contact.
(The original) Kirk, despite being awesome, didn't know everything. He had no idea what the future implications were for his actions. Just look at Khan as an example. Remember the old adage.... "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
Wasn't talking about the Vulcans. Was talking about this guy and his buddies.
And not knowing the future ramifications shouldn't lead to paralysis or inaction. Yes, he lead to Khan. He also lead to peace, several worlds sorting themselves out, and so on.
Which is why the episode is so offensive, because Phlox is using a policy that doesn't exist yet as an excuse to just let a species die so he doesn't have to learn freshman Bio.
Unless you're prepared to give a dissertation on Denobulan law and social mores right now, however, you have no ground to stand on. As I outlined in another thread, Phlox is not human, not a member of Starfleet, and not bound to follow Starfleet regulations, which were at the time silent on the issue anyway. Phlox had only his own ethical guidelines and that of his species, and evidently to a Denobulan, helping the Valakians would be ethically wrong.
I am reminded of a story told about the Jedi Code. One famous story amongst the Jedi tells how a Jedi learned that a companion had been devoured by the carnivorous Colicoids. When asked why the Jedi later bargained with the very same beings for starship components, she responded: "Because eating the flesh of sentient beings is not forbidden by the Jedi Code - but to the Colicoids, not eating the flesh of sentient beings is considered a sign of insanity." The Jedi realized that punishing the Colicoids for following their nature and their morality would be acting out of emotion and ignorance. Similarly, not procuring a badly needed engine part would have been punishing herself out of guilt.
The episode is only offensive if you look at it from an anthropocentric view and believe that Phlox must abide by human morality - and keep in mind that the Federation would later adopt the exact policy that Phlox was espousing here. Call Phlox offensive and you are calling the Federation offensive. Which is your choice, but I just want you to fully understand and accept the choice you are making: whatever choices individual starship captains may have made with regards to specific situations, the Federation as an institution is on Phlox's side.
That one. Staying away from the natural development of civilizations is fine (how would we like it if aliens showed up and said we were doing everything wrong?) but letting them die off for reasons completely out of their control is just wrong. I was rooting for Nikolai Rozhenko in "Homeward" the whole time.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them." -Thomas Marrone
That one. Staying away from the natural development of civilizations is fine (how would we like it if aliens showed up and said we were doing everything wrong?) but letting them die off for reasons completely out of their control is just wrong. I was rooting for Nikolai Rozhenko in "Homeward" the whole time.
So was I, but if the Prime Directive is going to be consequence-free-save-for-a-chewing-out-that-doesn't-actually-result-in-anything-by-next-episode anyway, then I don't see the point.
Like...okay, remember that episode of Deep Space 9, where Kang, Kor, and Koloth show up and get Jadzia Dax to go on a big revenge quest against an albino something or other? She was honor-bound by the blood dies that Curzon made? But then at the end of the episode she hesitates before killing the albino, and in the end it's Kor who kills him?
That pissed me off. If Jadzia wants to act like a Klingon and follow blood oaths then she should be allowed to do it, and everything that entails. Jadzia should have been the one to kill the albino and the fact that she didn't doesn't really do anything for her character. She got all the benefits of running around and swinging a bat'leth and none of the drawbacks, and her character just ceased being interesting to me for a long time thereafter.
Ugh.
(On the other hand, when Worf's brother showed up looking to be killed, and Worf actually stabbed Kurn, that was great. What followed thereafter...less so)
The Prime Directive is the same. If the rule is gonna exist at all then there has to be situations where it is followed even if that results in things we as an audience find repulsive. And we're allowed to find it repulsive. But otherwise, if it's never gonna be followed, and the consequences for following it are never gonna be shown, then just ditch the damn thing, because otherwise it's just useless.
Unless you're prepared to give a dissertation on Denobulan law and social mores right now, however, you have no ground to stand on. As I outlined in another thread, Phlox is not human, not a member of Starfleet, and not bound to follow Starfleet regulations, which were at the time silent on the issue anyway. Phlox had only his own ethical guidelines and that of his species, and evidently to a Denobulan, helping the Valakians would be ethically wrong.
I am reminded of a story told about the Jedi Code. One famous story amongst the Jedi tells how a Jedi learned that a companion had been devoured by the carnivorous Colicoids. When asked why the Jedi later bargained with the very same beings for starship components, she responded: "Because eating the flesh of sentient beings is not forbidden by the Jedi Code - but to the Colicoids, not eating the flesh of sentient beings is considered a sign of insanity." The Jedi realized that punishing the Colicoids for following their nature and their morality would be acting out of emotion and ignorance. Similarly, not procuring a badly needed engine part would have been punishing herself out of guilt.
The episode is only offensive if you look at it from an anthropocentric view and believe that Phlox must abide by human morality - and keep in mind that the Federation would later adopt the exact policy that Phlox was espousing here. Call Phlox offensive and you are calling the Federation offensive. Which is your choice, but I just want you to fully understand and accept the choice you are making: whatever choices individual starship captains may have made with regards to specific situations, the Federation as an institution is on Phlox's side.
Phlox is an exchange officer in the UEF Starfleet. He MUST abide by their laws and ethics. No questions. No debate. No applying his twisted misinterpretation of reality to an extinction-level event.
Your last paragraph is wrong on every level. It'd be funny if you hadn't trivialized 99% of sexual assaults in another thread yesterday; however, knowing that, I also know that you're a morally bankrupt person, so I can't laugh at your twisted view of the universe.
Actually, rainbowdoubledash, ENT was the one time in Starfleet when it was fully acceptable for Starfleet to have humanocentric policies and mores. Unlike "modern" Starfleet, the only government Archer answered to was United Earth, in spite of Vulcan attempts to spy, manipulate, and interfere. Further, as an exchange officer, Phlox became a representative of Starfleet and was in fact subject to human medical ethics, rules, and all other codes of conduct according to United Earth law. Archer was remiss in either not holding Phlox to those standards, giving him proper supervision if there was any question (i.e. making him answer to a human CMO instead of allowing him the department head position), or not accepting him onto the crew at all if he was going to be defiant of Starfleet/human regulations no matter what.
Now, in "modern" Starfleet, the policies and procedures are written supposedly with a multispecies approach in mind, so humanocentrism in that scenario is a problem. So IMO what someone like. Archer is allowed to do and enforce (and should have done and enforced) cannot be compared at all to what someone like Picard can do and enforce.
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So was I, but if the Prime Directive is going to be consequence-free-save-for-a-chewing-out-that-doesn't-actually-result-in-anything-by-next-episode anyway, then I don't see the point.
Like...okay, remember that episode of Deep Space 9, where Kang, Kor, and Koloth show up and get Jadzia Dax to go on a big revenge quest against an albino something or other? She was honor-bound by the blood dies that Curzon made? But then at the end of the episode she hesitates before killing the albino, and in the end it's Kor who kills him?
That pissed me off. If Jadzia wants to act like a Klingon and follow blood oaths then she should be allowed to do it, and everything that entails. Jadzia should have been the one to kill the albino and the fact that she didn't doesn't really do anything for her character. She got all the benefits of running around and swinging a bat'leth and none of the drawbacks, and her character just ceased being interesting to me for a long time thereafter.
Ugh.
...
No.
Just...no.
She's a Starfleet officer, not a Klingon. She's bound legally and morally to follow Starfleet regulations. And that was very much Kor's kill, not hers, anyway.
Sisko should've done like Picard did when Worf killed Duras and chewed Dax out BIG-TIME for following a Klingon blood oath instead of her duties as a Starfleet officer. A Starfleet officer should've called in a few ships and taken the Albino prisoner. If she'd gotten EXPRESS PERMISSION to act outside of her capacity as an officer, then it could be framed as keeping the peace with the Klingons while nominally following regulations. As-is, she's in need of a long lecture and a mark on her record.
Actually, rainbowdoubledash, ENT was the one time in Starfleet when it was fully acceptable for Starfleet to have humanocentric policies and mores.
Truth, but I'm criticising worffan101's anthropocentric viewpoint, not Starfleet's. He is judging Phlox based on his morality. Worffan101 is not a member of Starfleet.
Phlox is an exchange officer in the UEF Starfleet. He MUST abide by their laws and ethics.
I do not recall that scene coming up - the scene wherein Phlox takes an oath of loyalty to Starfleet.
The later Enterprise episode with the Antaran in it would seem to, in fact, suggest just the opposite - Archer tries to force Phlox to treat the Antaran due to the words of the Hippocratic oath ("first, do no harm"), and Phlox points out that the Hippocratic Oath does not apply to him since he never took it, he is a Denobulan doctor and the fundamental principal in Denobulan ethics is the will of the patient: a patient that does not wish to be treated must not be treated.
So, no, you're on-screen evidenced wrong: Phlox is not bound by Starfleet regulations.
She's a Starfleet officer, not a Klingon. She's bound legally and morally to follow Starfleet regulations.
I completely agree, but that being the case she shouldn't have gone on the blood quest in the first place. As it stands she gained, like I said, nothing as a character. She got all the benefits of following the Klingon blood oath and none of the drawbacks, and got to keep her Starfleet career squeaky clean with no consequences.
If I were writing the episode then I would have had her ultimately decide not to follow the blood oath because it was Curzon who made the oath, not Jadzia, and because of Jadzia's oaths to Starfleet. Then at the very least this would have cost her her friendship with Kor, Kang, and Koloth - perhas Kor at the end contacting her via subspace to let her know that the albino is dead but so are Kang and Koloth, very tersely and clearly implying that if she had been there they might still be alive.
But more likely what I would have done is just killed off all three of them and the Albino living (if injured) - and leave Jadzia wondering if, by being there, could she have saved them or at least killed the albino.
Because that would have actually done something for her character.
She's a Starfleet officer, not a Klingon. She's bound legally and morally to follow Starfleet regulations. And that was very much Kor's kill, not hers, anyway.
Sisko should've done like Picard did when Worf killed Duras and chewed Dax out BIG-TIME for following a Klingon blood oath instead of her duties as a Starfleet officer. A Starfleet officer should've called in a few ships and taken the Albino prisoner. If she'd gotten EXPRESS PERMISSION to act outside of her capacity as an officer, then it could be framed as keeping the peace with the Klingons while nominally following regulations. As-is, she's in need of a long lecture and a mark on her record.
I agree there was a problem there.
Though I ALSO suspect Jadzia had a medical problem that was never addressed for the rest of her life: that this was the moment the Curzon personality permanently overwhelmed Jadzia's...which is SUPPOSED to be the sign of an unhealthy symbiosis.
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I agree with SFDebris' interpretation of the Prime Directive: That it was a vital law that turned into a fig leaf for moral cowardice when people began taking it for granted and not thinking about where and when it should apply.
Interference can give a younger race something to aspire to, but it will also stunt a younger race's imagination and diminish the number of possibilities in the universe. Space would be a smaller place if everyone was just copying the same few original travelers.
But a natural disaster that would destroy them outright would be even worse - cutting the flower before it can blossom. So you should interfere in that case, secretly if you can manage it.
You want to know what nature's plan for the Star Trek universe is? By definition, Nature cannot have a plan. The closest thing to "God's will" was the Preserver's desire for a future of diversity and life.
(As for the Collicoids? The correct answer from a storytelling and utilitarian perspective is to let my other friend follow his morality by taking revenge (since the Collicoid perspective is not less or more valuable), and salvage the hyperdrive part from the corpses later. Killing a sentient being means one less innovator which is always a loss, but letting an anthrophagous sentient entity die means 100 more innovators, on the balance.)
I do not recall that scene coming up - the scene wherein Phlox takes an oath of loyalty to Starfleet.
The later Enterprise episode with the Antaran in it would seem to, in fact, suggest just the opposite - Archer tries to force Phlox to treat the Antaran due to the words of the Hippocratic oath ("first, do no harm"), and Phlox points out that the Hippocratic Oath does not apply to him since he never took it, he is a Denobulan doctor and the fundamental principal in Denobulan ethics is the will of the patient: a patient that does not wish to be treated must not be treated.
So, no, you're on-screen evidenced wrong: Phlox is not bound by Starfleet regulations.
That is massive writer error, unfortunately. In the real military, an exchange officer may have sworn the oath to their own country, but are subject to all of the rules of the service they are serving in an exchange capacity under.
It's a similar reason to why, in my fanfic, Berat cannot use Cardassian Defense Force disciplinary methods on Starfleet officers. If he executed a Starfleet officer for disobeying an order, in the majority of circumstances, he would be rightly punished for it, excepting the minority of situations where no alternative would have existed but deadly force even for a Starfleet officer. But the decision would be made according entirely to Starfleet jurisprudence. (Hell, there's even a scene where I have Admiral Quinn warning Berat not to get his Starfleet and CDF duties mixed up.)
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I do not recall that scene coming up - the scene wherein Phlox takes an oath of loyalty to Starfleet.
The later Enterprise episode with the Antaran in it would seem to, in fact, suggest just the opposite - Archer tries to force Phlox to treat the Antaran due to the words of the Hippocratic oath ("first, do no harm"), and Phlox points out that the Hippocratic Oath does not apply to him since he never took it, he is a Denobulan doctor and the fundamental principal in Denobulan ethics is the will of the patient: a patient that does not wish to be treated must not be treated.
So, no, you're on-screen evidenced wrong: Phlox is not bound by Starfleet regulations.
Doesn't matter. Phlox may be a Denobulan doctor, but he's an exchange officer in the UESF so he abides by UESF regs.
Though I ALSO suspect Jadzia had a medical problem that was never addressed for the rest of her life: that this was the moment the Curzon personality permanently overwhelmed Jadzia's...which is SUPPOSED to be the sign of an unhealthy symbiosis.
Ooh...this reminds me, a bit off-topic, of a SG-1 story I read about the origins of the Goa'uld.
Basically, the way it's SUPPOSED to be is that a Goa'uld and an Unas, when blended, are one being, with no separation of personality...and this leaves the Goa'uld altered as it goes from host to host.
But then some Ancients who were high on space drugs decided to TRIBBLE with the entire Goa'uld species on a lark. Which is why we have hammy space tyrants with poor fashion sense and worse tactical ability.
That is massive writer error, unfortunately. In the real military, an exchange officer may have sworn the oath to their own country, but are subject to all of the rules of the service they are serving in an exchange capacity under.
We do not know Earth Starfleet's code of regulations. Personally I'm of the opinion that it probably grew out of civilian organizations rather than military ones - United Earth Space Probe Agency doesn't sound very military to me. So it might be different.
Regardless, it (that Phlox is not bound by human regulations) is canon, and that's what matters more than anything else for the purposes of this discussion. You can call it stupid, but you cannot call it factually wrong.
Well, you can, if you like, but if you do then I get to insert my own head-canon and have it be treated as factually canon, too: fair's fair.
We do not know Earth Starfleet's code of regulations. Personally I'm of the opinion that it probably grew out of civilian organizations rather than military ones - United Earth Space Probe Agency doesn't sound very military to me. So it might be different.
Regardless, it (that Phlox is not bound by human regulations) is canon, and that's what matters more than anything else for the purposes of this discussion. You can call it stupid, but you cannot call it factually wrong.
Actually, we can.
Knowing that Archer was repeatedly shown to be an incompetent moron ("Fight or Flight", "A Night In Sickbay", "The Andorian Incident", "Shadows of P'Jem", et cetera ad nauseam), it fits his character to allow his mind-blowingly incompetent so-called doctor, who keeps open cans of biohazardous waste and multiple live animals in his supposedly sterile sickbay, to blatantly flout regs like that.
And civilian organization? Bull. No civilian organization has military uniforms, USAF-inspired dress outfits, and freaking MACO ground troops.
UESPA may not sound military...but then again so does the National Guard.
If that was what was on screen, that Phlox explicitly has no expectation of being held to Starfleet regs, I am not disputing you that it aired thus, don't worry.
I am only saying it was IMO a poor decision by the writers. And while Starfleet does show some signs of being laxer than a normal military, I seem to recall it being said elsewhere that the captain is responsible for all that goes down under his command, which seems like it comes into contradiction with anything that would make it impossible to give orders to one or more crew members. That IMO is a writerly logic gap that I would have recommended they think more carefully about.
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who keeps open cans of biohazardous waste and multiple live animals in his supposedly sterile sickbay, to blatantly flout regs like that.
Y'know McCoy performed open-heard surgery on Sarek without gloves, a mask, or a cap, in "Journey to Babel", right? There was a "sanitation field" or something, but I refuse to believe that such a field could be 100% effective, nor that simply things like McCoy's skin, sweat, fingernails, or whatever, couldn't themselves have a detrimental effect on Vulcan physiology (they have a detrimental effect on human physiology, after all). I could swim naked through pure alcohol having shaved off all my body hair prior to that, and any good doctor would still require me to wear gloves, a hat, and a mask during open-heart surgery.
(Not to mention that later Trek series do show these basic implements of medical safety - which suggests to me that the "sanitation field" might not be as effective as we'd like to believe)
I also note you have nothing to say on my proposed change to the albino situation...
I completely agree, but that being the case she shouldn't have gone on the blood quest in the first place. As it stands she gained, like I said, nothing as a character. She got all the benefits of following the Klingon blood oath and none of the drawbacks, and got to keep her Starfleet career squeaky clean with no consequences.
If I were writing the episode then I would have had her ultimately decide not to follow the blood oath because it was Curzon who made the oath, not Jadzia, and because of Jadzia's oaths to Starfleet. Then at the very least this would have cost her her friendship with Kor, Kang, and Koloth - perhas Kor at the end contacting her via subspace to let her know that the albino is dead but so are Kang and Koloth, very tersely and clearly implying that if she had been there they might still be alive.
But more likely what I would have done is just killed off all three of them and the Albino living (if injured) - and leave Jadzia wondering if, by being there, could she have saved them or at least killed the albino.
Because that would have actually done something for her character.
Oh, and incidentally, I don't appreciate being called morally bankrupt simply because I found the situation in "Unexpected" to actually be funny (And I didn't "trivialize" any real-life sexual assaults - I didn't even mention real life situations, thank you very much). And let's not forget that you're the guy who rails on and on about Talaxians being useless wastes of space every chance he gets and has all but called for their extermination.
Oh, and incidentally, I don't appreciate being called morally bankrupt simply because I found the situation in "Unexpected" to actually be funny (And I didn't "trivialize" any real-life sexual assaults, thank you very much).
You're morally bankrupt because it wasn't funny. At all.
Also, my friend who was drugged on a date and woke up with bruises around her groin and no memory of the previous twelve hours would not like being told that she wasn't violated because nobody held her down in an alley and r*ped her while she screamed.
You repel me, and I will no longer respond to anything that you say.
And let's not forget that you're the guy who rails on and on about Talaxians being useless wastes of space every chance he gets and has all but called for their extermination.
I've been reading old threads, worffan101.
They demonstrably and repeatedly are without exception useless wastes of space that are actively lethal to those around them.
I'm of the opinion that if the Prime Directive is Starfleet's most fundamental principle, then that is that. Sometimes the application of that rule may seem harsh or unfair, but, that's the reality of the verse which it is employed in. In many cases, life is harsh and unfair, and rather than expecting rules to be bent to make accomodations, perhaps people need to realize sometimes rules simply do need to be enforced regardless. To quote Holden in Stickmen: "Rules're rules, Caller..." If someone doesn't want to play by the rules, maybe they simply shouldn't play, rather than trying to re-write rhe rules to fit their own morality...
Recent research has really shifted my appreciation of the requirements of certain millitary branches, and just what kind of moral and emotional stability which such a position requires, and quite frankly, most people (myself included) simply would not make the grade. Taking that into consideration, I do wonder if Starfleet does make allowances for Prime Directive breaches under exceptional circumstances (or why would someone with nine violations be given command of the flagship of the fleet...) so I guess there is 'wiggle room', but that doesn't simply mean that the rule becomes ignored any time it needs to be applied, but suggests a truly case by case review process.
On the topic of Phlox, I agree with his stance. As above, sometimes reality is a bitter pill, but it still has to be swallowed... Equally, I would point out that he is not a Starfleet physician, as he wears civilian clothes (and this is an issue of nepotism for plot requirements) but even if he is not a 'sworn officer', he would still be subject to UESF regulations, just as in contemporary times, civilian contractors are still subject to the UCMJ due to their presence in a military installation...
You're morally bankrupt because it wasn't funny. At all.
You did not find it funny. I don't find the movie Gradma's Boy to be funny despite everyone at my job swearing by it. De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum.
Also, my friend who was drugged on a date and woke up with bruises around her groin and no memory of the previous twelve hours would not like being told that she wasn't violated because nobody held her down in an alley and r*ped her while she screamed.
Ah, we're gonna play the suffering game. Very well. Two stories.
As I have mentioned as can be discerned from my username, I'm a fan on My Little Pony: Friendship is magic. The series had a Season 3 episode entitled "Keep Calm and Flutter On." I am certain you could not care less about the specifics of the episode, so I'll be brief: one of the characters is attempting to reform a former villain by being nice to him. He continuously takes advantage of this kindness, manipulates her, uses her, and so on. By the end of the episode our heroine, however, manages to succeed at getting through to him and making him give up his evil ways.
THIS PISSED ME OFF. This pissed me off because the implied lesson is "if you're in an abusive relationship, just tough it out! Your love will win through in the end." This pissed me off because both me and, even worse, my mother have been in abusive relationships, and in the case of the latter the man has gone to jail for what he did. This reaction is, in fact, the general reaction of the Brony fandom to the episode.
Having said that - I understand that the episode was not intended to relay that message. I understand that the series creators simply did not think through what they were showing. And, ultimately, the episode is actually quite enjoyable save for its final two minutes (throughout most of the episode I had rather been hoping for a lesson of "Kindness has its limits" and "you are not bound to a promise that is neither made nor kept in good faith"). It made me laugh at several instances, and the villain - Discord, voiced by John de Lancie - is deliciously wicked throughout it (which he's supposed to be, he's a villain, after all).
Second story. In my life, I've had a childhood friend who committed suicide, an uncle who committed suicide, and a third who attempted it and ended up essentially paralyzing his right arm and carved a huge hole in his skull as a result - he tried to commit suicide by basically diving headfirst into a lawnmower. I still hang out with this last one most every Sunday, we play D&D. I also have a friend living in California right now, we talk only via forums, who is dealing with intense depression and frequently has suicidal thoughts, and I basically live in perpetual fear that any conversation I have with him might be the last, that one day his depression will just get the better of him and he will off himself, and I'll know only because he's never there to talk anymore.
I will laugh at suicide jokes...and so will my survivor friend, and so does my depressive friend, when he's in the mood for them, anyway. This is not out of insensitivity - quite the opposite, we are each intensely aware of how painful suicide attempts can be, both to those who have survived them and those whom those who did not survive them leave behind. What we will not allow, however, is for the bleakness of the reality of suicide to get us down.
Thus, when Dragonball Z Abridged made a joke about Yamcha killing himself on learning that Bulma had a kid with Vegeta, we all laughed. When we relate stories from the Darwin Awards that have people killing themselves in the most stupid of ways, we laugh. Because the alternative is to have the reality grip us, paralyze us, and dominate our every waking moment,.
Now, **** is often regarded as a special kind of evil, and I can understand why. It is a horrible thing to do to a person. It scars them physically, mentally, and emotionally. It is an utter violation, a total corruption of an act that is supposed to be one of the best things two (or more) people can engage in.
But it can be portrayed humorously. Indeed I contend that it must be portrayed as such at times, just as numerous other things - racism, sexism, the Holocaust, Communism, Fascist Italy, and so on - must be made fun of, laughed at joked about.
I would never crack a Holocaust joke around Holocaust survivors; I'd never make **** jokes around **** victims. I understand that there is a time and a place for these things. But I am not morally bankrupt, and nor, necessarily, is anyone else who finds humor in the situation. The humor isn't a corruption of my soul. It's a shield meant to protect it, a filter through which I can deal with the awfulness of the world.
That's why I can laugh at, say, this video of a TRIBBLE march set to the Azumanga Daioh theme. That's why I can laugh at suicide jokes. That's why I can laugh at bigoted Irish jokes despite being Irish by descent and bigoted American jokes despite being American by birth and raising. And that's why I can laugh at "Unexpected."
Because the alternative is to become paralyzed by the sheer horror of real life and never laugh again. And that's not a life worth living.
Neelix seemed to do quite a bit if you ask me. I don't see Talaxians as useless.
I'm less troubled by whether or not the Talaxians we have seen are useless, so much as the assertion that not only is the entire race useless, but that the race can never produce a useful member.
Comments
Why not? Pragmatically, people tend to like you more when they know you'll help out. On the other hand, the neighbor who watches your house burn to the ground without lifting a finger and then acts how smugly moral they were probably isn't going on the Christmas card list.
And because it's the human thing to do. Someone asks for help, you help.
Saving the Nibiru didn't cause the contamination...being really sloppy about it did.
And on the fire analogy, I think a better comparison would be stopping a wildfire at a long distance away before the uncontacted peoples ever realized that it wasn't mere fortune that kept the smoke they saw at a great distance from approaching and bringing with it a fire. That would have been what Kirk and company were doing had they not been sloppy and allowed the ship to be seen.
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But as Kirk put it in TOS, at least they'll still be alive. Better contaminated and a living culture versus extinct but pure.
And again, Humans have no clue what a pure culture looks like, since they don't come from one. They were uplifted by aliens who did play god, and apparently okay with that since they keep naming ships after them.
Wasn't talking about the Vulcans. Was talking about this guy and his buddies.
And not knowing the future ramifications shouldn't lead to paralysis or inaction. Yes, he lead to Khan. He also lead to peace, several worlds sorting themselves out, and so on.
Unless you're prepared to give a dissertation on Denobulan law and social mores right now, however, you have no ground to stand on. As I outlined in another thread, Phlox is not human, not a member of Starfleet, and not bound to follow Starfleet regulations, which were at the time silent on the issue anyway. Phlox had only his own ethical guidelines and that of his species, and evidently to a Denobulan, helping the Valakians would be ethically wrong.
I am reminded of a story told about the Jedi Code. One famous story amongst the Jedi tells how a Jedi learned that a companion had been devoured by the carnivorous Colicoids. When asked why the Jedi later bargained with the very same beings for starship components, she responded: "Because eating the flesh of sentient beings is not forbidden by the Jedi Code - but to the Colicoids, not eating the flesh of sentient beings is considered a sign of insanity." The Jedi realized that punishing the Colicoids for following their nature and their morality would be acting out of emotion and ignorance. Similarly, not procuring a badly needed engine part would have been punishing herself out of guilt.
The episode is only offensive if you look at it from an anthropocentric view and believe that Phlox must abide by human morality - and keep in mind that the Federation would later adopt the exact policy that Phlox was espousing here. Call Phlox offensive and you are calling the Federation offensive. Which is your choice, but I just want you to fully understand and accept the choice you are making: whatever choices individual starship captains may have made with regards to specific situations, the Federation as an institution is on Phlox's side.
That one. Staying away from the natural development of civilizations is fine (how would we like it if aliens showed up and said we were doing everything wrong?) but letting them die off for reasons completely out of their control is just wrong. I was rooting for Nikolai Rozhenko in "Homeward" the whole time.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
So was I, but if the Prime Directive is going to be consequence-free-save-for-a-chewing-out-that-doesn't-actually-result-in-anything-by-next-episode anyway, then I don't see the point.
Like...okay, remember that episode of Deep Space 9, where Kang, Kor, and Koloth show up and get Jadzia Dax to go on a big revenge quest against an albino something or other? She was honor-bound by the blood dies that Curzon made? But then at the end of the episode she hesitates before killing the albino, and in the end it's Kor who kills him?
That pissed me off. If Jadzia wants to act like a Klingon and follow blood oaths then she should be allowed to do it, and everything that entails. Jadzia should have been the one to kill the albino and the fact that she didn't doesn't really do anything for her character. She got all the benefits of running around and swinging a bat'leth and none of the drawbacks, and her character just ceased being interesting to me for a long time thereafter.
Ugh.
(On the other hand, when Worf's brother showed up looking to be killed, and Worf actually stabbed Kurn, that was great. What followed thereafter...less so)
The Prime Directive is the same. If the rule is gonna exist at all then there has to be situations where it is followed even if that results in things we as an audience find repulsive. And we're allowed to find it repulsive. But otherwise, if it's never gonna be followed, and the consequences for following it are never gonna be shown, then just ditch the damn thing, because otherwise it's just useless.
Phlox is an exchange officer in the UEF Starfleet. He MUST abide by their laws and ethics. No questions. No debate. No applying his twisted misinterpretation of reality to an extinction-level event.
Your last paragraph is wrong on every level. It'd be funny if you hadn't trivialized 99% of sexual assaults in another thread yesterday; however, knowing that, I also know that you're a morally bankrupt person, so I can't laugh at your twisted view of the universe.
Now, in "modern" Starfleet, the policies and procedures are written supposedly with a multispecies approach in mind, so humanocentrism in that scenario is a problem. So IMO what someone like. Archer is allowed to do and enforce (and should have done and enforced) cannot be compared at all to what someone like Picard can do and enforce.
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No.
Just...no.
She's a Starfleet officer, not a Klingon. She's bound legally and morally to follow Starfleet regulations. And that was very much Kor's kill, not hers, anyway.
Sisko should've done like Picard did when Worf killed Duras and chewed Dax out BIG-TIME for following a Klingon blood oath instead of her duties as a Starfleet officer. A Starfleet officer should've called in a few ships and taken the Albino prisoner. If she'd gotten EXPRESS PERMISSION to act outside of her capacity as an officer, then it could be framed as keeping the peace with the Klingons while nominally following regulations. As-is, she's in need of a long lecture and a mark on her record.
Truth, but I'm criticising worffan101's anthropocentric viewpoint, not Starfleet's. He is judging Phlox based on his morality. Worffan101 is not a member of Starfleet.
I do not recall that scene coming up - the scene wherein Phlox takes an oath of loyalty to Starfleet.
The later Enterprise episode with the Antaran in it would seem to, in fact, suggest just the opposite - Archer tries to force Phlox to treat the Antaran due to the words of the Hippocratic oath ("first, do no harm"), and Phlox points out that the Hippocratic Oath does not apply to him since he never took it, he is a Denobulan doctor and the fundamental principal in Denobulan ethics is the will of the patient: a patient that does not wish to be treated must not be treated.
So, no, you're on-screen evidenced wrong: Phlox is not bound by Starfleet regulations.
I completely agree, but that being the case she shouldn't have gone on the blood quest in the first place. As it stands she gained, like I said, nothing as a character. She got all the benefits of following the Klingon blood oath and none of the drawbacks, and got to keep her Starfleet career squeaky clean with no consequences.
If I were writing the episode then I would have had her ultimately decide not to follow the blood oath because it was Curzon who made the oath, not Jadzia, and because of Jadzia's oaths to Starfleet. Then at the very least this would have cost her her friendship with Kor, Kang, and Koloth - perhas Kor at the end contacting her via subspace to let her know that the albino is dead but so are Kang and Koloth, very tersely and clearly implying that if she had been there they might still be alive.
But more likely what I would have done is just killed off all three of them and the Albino living (if injured) - and leave Jadzia wondering if, by being there, could she have saved them or at least killed the albino.
Because that would have actually done something for her character.
I agree there was a problem there.
Though I ALSO suspect Jadzia had a medical problem that was never addressed for the rest of her life: that this was the moment the Curzon personality permanently overwhelmed Jadzia's...which is SUPPOSED to be the sign of an unhealthy symbiosis.
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Interference can give a younger race something to aspire to, but it will also stunt a younger race's imagination and diminish the number of possibilities in the universe. Space would be a smaller place if everyone was just copying the same few original travelers.
But a natural disaster that would destroy them outright would be even worse - cutting the flower before it can blossom. So you should interfere in that case, secretly if you can manage it.
You want to know what nature's plan for the Star Trek universe is? By definition, Nature cannot have a plan. The closest thing to "God's will" was the Preserver's desire for a future of diversity and life.
(As for the Collicoids? The correct answer from a storytelling and utilitarian perspective is to let my other friend follow his morality by taking revenge (since the Collicoid perspective is not less or more valuable), and salvage the hyperdrive part from the corpses later. Killing a sentient being means one less innovator which is always a loss, but letting an anthrophagous sentient entity die means 100 more innovators, on the balance.)
That is massive writer error, unfortunately. In the real military, an exchange officer may have sworn the oath to their own country, but are subject to all of the rules of the service they are serving in an exchange capacity under.
It's a similar reason to why, in my fanfic, Berat cannot use Cardassian Defense Force disciplinary methods on Starfleet officers. If he executed a Starfleet officer for disobeying an order, in the majority of circumstances, he would be rightly punished for it, excepting the minority of situations where no alternative would have existed but deadly force even for a Starfleet officer. But the decision would be made according entirely to Starfleet jurisprudence. (Hell, there's even a scene where I have Admiral Quinn warning Berat not to get his Starfleet and CDF duties mixed up.)
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Archer's incompetence as a CO is on him.
Ooh...this reminds me, a bit off-topic, of a SG-1 story I read about the origins of the Goa'uld.
Basically, the way it's SUPPOSED to be is that a Goa'uld and an Unas, when blended, are one being, with no separation of personality...and this leaves the Goa'uld altered as it goes from host to host.
But then some Ancients who were high on space drugs decided to TRIBBLE with the entire Goa'uld species on a lark. Which is why we have hammy space tyrants with poor fashion sense and worse tactical ability.
We do not know Earth Starfleet's code of regulations. Personally I'm of the opinion that it probably grew out of civilian organizations rather than military ones - United Earth Space Probe Agency doesn't sound very military to me. So it might be different.
Regardless, it (that Phlox is not bound by human regulations) is canon, and that's what matters more than anything else for the purposes of this discussion. You can call it stupid, but you cannot call it factually wrong.
Well, you can, if you like, but if you do then I get to insert my own head-canon and have it be treated as factually canon, too: fair's fair.
Actually, we can.
Knowing that Archer was repeatedly shown to be an incompetent moron ("Fight or Flight", "A Night In Sickbay", "The Andorian Incident", "Shadows of P'Jem", et cetera ad nauseam), it fits his character to allow his mind-blowingly incompetent so-called doctor, who keeps open cans of biohazardous waste and multiple live animals in his supposedly sterile sickbay, to blatantly flout regs like that.
And civilian organization? Bull. No civilian organization has military uniforms, USAF-inspired dress outfits, and freaking MACO ground troops.
UESPA may not sound military...but then again so does the National Guard.
I am only saying it was IMO a poor decision by the writers. And while Starfleet does show some signs of being laxer than a normal military, I seem to recall it being said elsewhere that the captain is responsible for all that goes down under his command, which seems like it comes into contradiction with anything that would make it impossible to give orders to one or more crew members. That IMO is a writerly logic gap that I would have recommended they think more carefully about.
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Y'know McCoy performed open-heard surgery on Sarek without gloves, a mask, or a cap, in "Journey to Babel", right? There was a "sanitation field" or something, but I refuse to believe that such a field could be 100% effective, nor that simply things like McCoy's skin, sweat, fingernails, or whatever, couldn't themselves have a detrimental effect on Vulcan physiology (they have a detrimental effect on human physiology, after all). I could swim naked through pure alcohol having shaved off all my body hair prior to that, and any good doctor would still require me to wear gloves, a hat, and a mask during open-heart surgery.
(Not to mention that later Trek series do show these basic implements of medical safety - which suggests to me that the "sanitation field" might not be as effective as we'd like to believe)
I also note you have nothing to say on my proposed change to the albino situation...
I've been reading old threads, worffan101.
Also, my friend who was drugged on a date and woke up with bruises around her groin and no memory of the previous twelve hours would not like being told that she wasn't violated because nobody held her down in an alley and r*ped her while she screamed.
You repel me, and I will no longer respond to anything that you say.
They demonstrably and repeatedly are without exception useless wastes of space that are actively lethal to those around them.
I actually watched the shows, rambowdoubledash.
Recent research has really shifted my appreciation of the requirements of certain millitary branches, and just what kind of moral and emotional stability which such a position requires, and quite frankly, most people (myself included) simply would not make the grade. Taking that into consideration, I do wonder if Starfleet does make allowances for Prime Directive breaches under exceptional circumstances (or why would someone with nine violations be given command of the flagship of the fleet...) so I guess there is 'wiggle room', but that doesn't simply mean that the rule becomes ignored any time it needs to be applied, but suggests a truly case by case review process.
On the topic of Phlox, I agree with his stance. As above, sometimes reality is a bitter pill, but it still has to be swallowed... Equally, I would point out that he is not a Starfleet physician, as he wears civilian clothes (and this is an issue of nepotism for plot requirements) but even if he is not a 'sworn officer', he would still be subject to UESF regulations, just as in contemporary times, civilian contractors are still subject to the UCMJ due to their presence in a military installation...
You did not find it funny. I don't find the movie Gradma's Boy to be funny despite everyone at my job swearing by it. De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum.
Ah, we're gonna play the suffering game. Very well. Two stories.
As I have mentioned as can be discerned from my username, I'm a fan on My Little Pony: Friendship is magic. The series had a Season 3 episode entitled "Keep Calm and Flutter On." I am certain you could not care less about the specifics of the episode, so I'll be brief: one of the characters is attempting to reform a former villain by being nice to him. He continuously takes advantage of this kindness, manipulates her, uses her, and so on. By the end of the episode our heroine, however, manages to succeed at getting through to him and making him give up his evil ways.
THIS PISSED ME OFF. This pissed me off because the implied lesson is "if you're in an abusive relationship, just tough it out! Your love will win through in the end." This pissed me off because both me and, even worse, my mother have been in abusive relationships, and in the case of the latter the man has gone to jail for what he did. This reaction is, in fact, the general reaction of the Brony fandom to the episode.
Having said that - I understand that the episode was not intended to relay that message. I understand that the series creators simply did not think through what they were showing. And, ultimately, the episode is actually quite enjoyable save for its final two minutes (throughout most of the episode I had rather been hoping for a lesson of "Kindness has its limits" and "you are not bound to a promise that is neither made nor kept in good faith"). It made me laugh at several instances, and the villain - Discord, voiced by John de Lancie - is deliciously wicked throughout it (which he's supposed to be, he's a villain, after all).
Second story. In my life, I've had a childhood friend who committed suicide, an uncle who committed suicide, and a third who attempted it and ended up essentially paralyzing his right arm and carved a huge hole in his skull as a result - he tried to commit suicide by basically diving headfirst into a lawnmower. I still hang out with this last one most every Sunday, we play D&D. I also have a friend living in California right now, we talk only via forums, who is dealing with intense depression and frequently has suicidal thoughts, and I basically live in perpetual fear that any conversation I have with him might be the last, that one day his depression will just get the better of him and he will off himself, and I'll know only because he's never there to talk anymore.
I will laugh at suicide jokes...and so will my survivor friend, and so does my depressive friend, when he's in the mood for them, anyway. This is not out of insensitivity - quite the opposite, we are each intensely aware of how painful suicide attempts can be, both to those who have survived them and those whom those who did not survive them leave behind. What we will not allow, however, is for the bleakness of the reality of suicide to get us down.
Thus, when Dragonball Z Abridged made a joke about Yamcha killing himself on learning that Bulma had a kid with Vegeta, we all laughed. When we relate stories from the Darwin Awards that have people killing themselves in the most stupid of ways, we laugh. Because the alternative is to have the reality grip us, paralyze us, and dominate our every waking moment,.
Now, **** is often regarded as a special kind of evil, and I can understand why. It is a horrible thing to do to a person. It scars them physically, mentally, and emotionally. It is an utter violation, a total corruption of an act that is supposed to be one of the best things two (or more) people can engage in.
But it can be portrayed humorously. Indeed I contend that it must be portrayed as such at times, just as numerous other things - racism, sexism, the Holocaust, Communism, Fascist Italy, and so on - must be made fun of, laughed at joked about.
I would never crack a Holocaust joke around Holocaust survivors; I'd never make **** jokes around **** victims. I understand that there is a time and a place for these things. But I am not morally bankrupt, and nor, necessarily, is anyone else who finds humor in the situation. The humor isn't a corruption of my soul. It's a shield meant to protect it, a filter through which I can deal with the awfulness of the world.
That's why I can laugh at, say, this video of a TRIBBLE march set to the Azumanga Daioh theme. That's why I can laugh at suicide jokes. That's why I can laugh at bigoted Irish jokes despite being Irish by descent and bigoted American jokes despite being American by birth and raising. And that's why I can laugh at "Unexpected."
Because the alternative is to become paralyzed by the sheer horror of real life and never laugh again. And that's not a life worth living.
I'm less troubled by whether or not the Talaxians we have seen are useless, so much as the assertion that not only is the entire race useless, but that the race can never produce a useful member.