My primary issue with the Kobali was, while what they did was distasteful to many cultures sensibilities, they proceeded to lie and do everything could to obscure what was going on, and did not seem to consider the effects of their actions on those cultures, but as @mustrumridcully0 noted, there finally seems to be some reform (and there are several Alpha Quadrant species who do not attach value to the bodies they could certainly work with).
It wasn't that they were ghouls, it's they were lying
Fate - protects fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise Will Riker
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
The real problem with the Kobali is one that isn't talked about much in the game or TV show.... Why can't they reproduce naturally? If that could be fixed then we can have baby Kobali instead of new zombie Kobali.
The real problem with the Kobali is one that isn't talked about much in the game or TV show.... Why can't they reproduce naturally? If that could be fixed then we can have baby Kobali instead of new zombie Kobali.
Keep in mind they developed the whole resurrection of the dead and transofrming alien species into their own DNA within a few generations, possibly even a single one. Assuming something made them instantly infertile they mastered the marvel of resurrecting and transforming dead people in a single generation. Assuming the infertility slowly progressed they never were able to save and maybe clone gametes ex situ and develop artificial procreation or even rewrite their own DNA when they can do that to aliens.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Yes, let's let our own personal feelings about dead bodies decide whether an entire race lives or dies. As someone else said, the Klingons couldn't care less about what happens to dead bodies, and as far as the mission(s) in question, after reading all the messages on various consoles it actually appears as though the Vaads don't really care about the dead bodies either. They only want the still "living" ones, and only want to stop the Kobali from using the dead bodies just..... because....
Except it's not "dead bodies," because there is resurrection technology involved. They are living people, who are then forcibly transformed and brainwashed into Kobali.
They are nothing of the sort. It's made clear in the storyline that the transformation and gradual loss of memory are the consequences of the infection of the dead corpse with the Kobali virus. Memories are lost as the brain is physically reformatted to fit into its new skull. Some skills are retained, as are a few memories, but the change in personality is a result of the overall process, not something "done to them".
(And if they could infect living beings, don't you think they'd have already turned all the Vaadwaur assaulting their planet into Kobali?)
As for reproduction - at this point, the Kobali are not a "normal" race the way everyone seems to think of such things, they are a viral species. Reproduction involves infecting and resurrecting a dead body of another humanoid species, as there are no more "Kobali" remaining. My working hypothesis here is that ancient Kobali biotechnicians engineered a benevolent version of the "zombie virus", probably during a war so that when they killed an enemy that enemy would then be brought back as a friend (in a manner not all that different from Decrypting croaked units in the webcomic Erfworld), and at some point the virus got out of hand and infected the Kobali as well. It's basically a "race" of zombies who don't decay and don't eat brains.
Yes, let's let our own personal feelings about dead bodies decide whether an entire race lives or dies. As someone else said, the Klingons couldn't care less about what happens to dead bodies, and as far as the mission(s) in question, after reading all the messages on various consoles it actually appears as though the Vaads don't really care about the dead bodies either. They only want the still "living" ones, and only want to stop the Kobali from using the dead bodies just..... because....
Except it's not "dead bodies," because there is resurrection technology involved. They are living people, who are then forcibly transformed and brainwashed into Kobali.
They are nothing of the sort. It's made clear in the storyline that the transformation and gradual loss of memory are the consequences of the infection of the dead corpse with the Kobali virus. Memories are lost as the brain is physically reformatted to fit into its new skull. Some skills are retained, as are a few memories, but the change in personality is a result of the overall process, not something "done to them".
It is absolutely done to them. They are resurrected as the original person, then assimilated. Excuses are just that.
I've also often wondered why the Kobali can't just rewrite their reproductive process since they're able to rewrite DNA so effectively to turn dead humanoids into them.
It's jut not logical to me, and I'm not even a Vulcan.
Now a LTS and loving it.
Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything.
The Kobali story is, to my mind, about the ugly realities of war - especially the unfortunate alliances it can produce.
I find the Kobali, individually, to be fairly sympathetic. They're decent folks trying to make a future for their culture in the only way they have available. But that culture sickens me a little. They rob the graves of others to do it - they have to. I think the quadrant would be better off without them.
But the Vaadwaur are actively attacking everyone in the quadrant, and are doing so as agents of the demons of air and darkness who threaten the galaxy with extinction. When fighting an enemy like that, an enemy against whom defeat is unthinkable, you take the allies you can get and sort out the mess after. That's been the way of things throughout history.
I find the Kobali less offensive to my sensibilities than I find the Soviet Union.
The Kobali "life" cycle seems deeply creepy to me... but that might just be my cultural prejudices showing, so I have to put those to one side. Certainly, individual Kobali can be decent enough people, so I guess they have a right to... whatever sort of life they've got. I could even get behind the idea of the Kobali using donated corpses - from people who've left their bodies to the Kobali in their wills, say - for reproductive purposes.
What I don't like about the Kobali is that they don't ask permission, and - crucially - they don't tell the truth. The species may have a right to exist, and individual Kobali may be good guys, but the Kobali government is essentially not trustworthy. It's all very well saying that the Kobali regard their resurrection process as a great gift and a blessing, but the storyline quite clearly points out 1) they know not everyone feels the same way about this, and 2) they don't care.
They get a pass on this for purely pragmatic reasons - they are enemies of the Vaadwaur (having taken some pains to make themselves enemies of the Vaadwaur), so they are potential allies against the Vaadwaur, and in the Delta Rising story arc, we need all the potential allies we can get. It's made very clear that exterminating the Kobali is only one aspect of the Vaadwaur's imperialistic ambitions.
Should they get a pass on their actions? I don't think so, personally. It seems to me that the Kobali - or, at least, the dominant faction in the current Kobali government - believe very firmly that their rights trump other people's; that they are entitled to reproduce as they see fit, and that it's OK for them to lie and cheat in the process. I don't think that's OK, and I don't think Starfleet or the Federation should be allying with them until they've given some credible assurances that they'll mend their ways. Same goes for the KDF and the Empire - lies and deceit are not honourable, and the Empire should not have allies without honour. (The Romulan Republic? The Republic seems to take its lead from D'Tan, and D'Tan clearly has principles, and I don't see him approving of lies and deceit.)
Logic has never truly had a place in Star Trek if you think about it. Transporters can store the "pattern" of pretty much anything and everything so why do so many people die ? Why not just take the last pattern stored from when they were still alive and "poof" them right back into existence ?
We see numerous episodes where some miracle drug must be physically carried from one place to another to stop some epidemic, and yet that drug is taken through the transporter to get it to and from ship/planet, which means both the transporters and the replicators are capable of producing endless quantities of it, and the "pattern" could have been transmitted through subspace and replicated on the spot......
And why was the drug needed at all ? In one episode of TNG Dr. Crusher and the rest of the people on the station were "cured" of a condition causing extremely rapid aging through the expedient of using a sample of DNA from before they got the condition and running them through the transporter to "fix" them, not to mention other episodes where some kind of disease/condition was corrected through using the transporter to filter out the problem. So, all that would be needed to stop any disease/epidemic anywhere would be to find a DNA sample for everyone from before they caught the disease, run em through the transporter and voila, problem solved. And for the nay-sayers, we all leave DNA everywhere and technology that can scan and duplicate individual atoms is definitely sophisticated enough to scna and find something as relatively large and complex as the skin cells, skin oils, hair strands etc that everyone leaves on every surface they touch.
Many, many more examples of logic not existing in the Star Trek universe. Computers that can be fooled into locking out all ship functions just because someone (ok, thing since Data is an android) can mimic someone else s voice ? Are you kidding me ? We have personal computers in the present day that are harder to fool than that.
Not a single seat restraint to be found anywhere on any seat on the bridge of any star ship, even though we constantly see people getting thrown out of their seats and injured/killed ?
I'll end with the most painfully obvious one of the bunch, that has been pointed out numerous times over the decades. Every time there is a dangerous situation, most, or even all, of the command structure of the ship are the ones beaming/shuttling into the thick of things, except for the times when they need a few anonymous red shirts to die that is......and it extends to almost all the alien races too. They never send anyone other than their top high mucky mucks, no matter how dangerous the situation, other than when they need a few nobodies to provide some dead bodies......
The only place that logic exists in the Star Trek universe is in the description and dialogue of the Vulcans.
The Kobali "life" cycle seems deeply creepy to me... but that might just be my cultural prejudices showing, so I have to put those to one side. Certainly, individual Kobali can be decent enough people, so I guess they have a right to... whatever sort of life they've got. I could even get behind the idea of the Kobali using donated corpses - from people who've left their bodies to the Kobali in their wills, say - for reproductive purposes.
What I don't like about the Kobali is that they don't ask permission, and - crucially - they don't tell the truth. The species may have a right to exist, and individual Kobali may be good guys, but the Kobali government is essentially not trustworthy. It's all very well saying that the Kobali regard their resurrection process as a great gift and a blessing, but the storyline quite clearly points out 1) they know not everyone feels the same way about this, and 2) they don't care.
They get a pass on this for purely pragmatic reasons - they are enemies of the Vaadwaur (having taken some pains to make themselves enemies of the Vaadwaur), so they are potential allies against the Vaadwaur, and in the Delta Rising story arc, we need all the potential allies we can get. It's made very clear that exterminating the Kobali is only one aspect of the Vaadwaur's imperialistic ambitions.
Should they get a pass on their actions? I don't think so, personally. It seems to me that the Kobali - or, at least, the dominant faction in the current Kobali government - believe very firmly that their rights trump other people's; that they are entitled to reproduce as they see fit, and that it's OK for them to lie and cheat in the process. I don't think that's OK, and I don't think Starfleet or the Federation should be allying with them until they've given some credible assurances that they'll mend their ways. Same goes for the KDF and the Empire - lies and deceit are not honourable, and the Empire should not have allies without honour. (The Romulan Republic? The Republic seems to take its lead from D'Tan, and D'Tan clearly has principles, and I don't see him approving of lies and deceit.)
I think that was kinda the point. They were written to be a race that has practices that others have good reason to be uncomfortable with. Thus the ep with them was really a way of illustrating what tolerance of others really means. Tolerance means living with people you DON'T like and treating them fairly and honestly even though you dislike them. And also not trying to force them to change just because you dislike their ways.
The Kobali "life" cycle seems deeply creepy to me... but that might just be my cultural prejudices showing, so I have to put those to one side. Certainly, individual Kobali can be decent enough people, so I guess they have a right to... whatever sort of life they've got. I could even get behind the idea of the Kobali using donated corpses - from people who've left their bodies to the Kobali in their wills, say - for reproductive purposes.
What I don't like about the Kobali is that they don't ask permission, and - crucially - they don't tell the truth. The species may have a right to exist, and individual Kobali may be good guys, but the Kobali government is essentially not trustworthy. It's all very well saying that the Kobali regard their resurrection process as a great gift and a blessing, but the storyline quite clearly points out 1) they know not everyone feels the same way about this, and 2) they don't care.
They get a pass on this for purely pragmatic reasons - they are enemies of the Vaadwaur (having taken some pains to make themselves enemies of the Vaadwaur), so they are potential allies against the Vaadwaur, and in the Delta Rising story arc, we need all the potential allies we can get. It's made very clear that exterminating the Kobali is only one aspect of the Vaadwaur's imperialistic ambitions.
Should they get a pass on their actions? I don't think so, personally. It seems to me that the Kobali - or, at least, the dominant faction in the current Kobali government - believe very firmly that their rights trump other people's; that they are entitled to reproduce as they see fit, and that it's OK for them to lie and cheat in the process. I don't think that's OK, and I don't think Starfleet or the Federation should be allying with them until they've given some credible assurances that they'll mend their ways. Same goes for the KDF and the Empire - lies and deceit are not honourable, and the Empire should not have allies without honour. (The Romulan Republic? The Republic seems to take its lead from D'Tan, and D'Tan clearly has principles, and I don't see him approving of lies and deceit.)
I think that was kinda the point. They were written to be a race that has practices that others have good reason to be uncomfortable with. Thus the ep with them was really a way of illustrating what tolerance of others really means. Tolerance means living with people you DON'T like and treating them fairly and honestly even though you dislike them. And also not trying to force them to change just because you dislike their ways.
The problem is that the Kobali themselves do not tolerate others. Even the mere idea that some might not like what they're doing to the loved ones of others has not come up with them. Instead they keep rambling how 'grateful' we should be for their 'gifts'.
It was an interesting concept indeed, but it failed exactly because the Kobali themselves, in their disrespect of others, give those others (or the player / viewer) literally zero reason to empathise with them.
Tolerance does not mean 'setting aside everything you belief in, your own customs because some space zombie wants to use the corpses of your people for their own benefit'. It's the same thing you're seeing in several Western countries right now: problems with people from other cultures who do not tolerate some of the most fundamental rules of the country they reside in (or who even start fighting their conflicts and openly demonstrate for a foreign president like we've seen in Germany and the Netherlands).
Tolerance certainly is important, but one also has to be tolerant towards one's own culture. Allowing others to undermine your own culture, for example by allowing them to take your dead, ultimately means you're not being tolerant. You simply cannot be tolerant towards a people if you cannot expect the same treatment and if you do not get some respect for your own customs and culture. It just doesn't work, it'll have to come from both sides and the Kobali failed miserably, in all respects.
Edit: and besides taking the dead of other people, one can also argue that, in order to defend the Federation's 'culture', we need to oppose intervention in this conflict as it goes against the Prime Directive.
The Kobali are the most repulsive creatures i've ever seen in Sci-Fi.
Its not that they rob graves and reanimate the dead that disturbs me, but that in many cases their "victims" seem to still retain a significant portion of their memories, the very thing that makes a person who he/she is. It is then what they do to their victims, forcibly supressin their personalities and what not that I find absolutely abhorrent.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
The Kobali do not "forcibly suppress" the former memories and personalities of those resurrected. It's stated outright in "Dust to Dust" that this is the inevitable result of the modification of the raised corpse into a Kobali - the physical structure of the brain is changed, resulting in the new Kobali person. They're restrained at the beginning of this process because the resurrectee, not understanding the changes about to take place, may try to go back and resume their old life - only to find their former loved ones recoiling in horror from this "zombie", and then to find many memories and emotional associations fading as the physical storage locations in the brain are altered.
And if this is horrific to you, I can only imagine your reaction to the process of physical maturation in Humans, which also has the effect of altering the personality and reducing the emotional impact of distant memories (at least, I'm sure not the same man I was twenty or thirty years ago, and I'm very happy that the thought of my ex-wife now leaves me feeling pity for her, rather than sorrow and rage for what she did).
The Kobali do not "forcibly suppress" the former memories and personalities of those resurrected. It's stated outright in "Dust to Dust" that this is the inevitable result of the modification of the raised corpse into a Kobali - the physical structure of the brain is changed, resulting in the new Kobali person.
Which they do forcibly without the subject's permission.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Borg assimilation is a violation of mind and body, after attacking your civilization and abducting you. I don't understand how anyone could put the Kobali anywhere near the same league.
Borg assimilation is a violation of mind and body, after attacking your civilization and abducting you. I don't understand how anyone could put the Kobali anywhere near the same league.
Kobali assimilation is just as much a violation, if not more. Borg assimilation is known reversable. Your mind can survive and you can be saved. Kobali more or less destroy the host personality permanently.
The Kobali do not "forcibly suppress" the former memories and personalities of those resurrected. It's stated outright in "Dust to Dust" that this is the inevitable result of the modification of the raised corpse into a Kobali - the physical structure of the brain is changed, resulting in the new Kobali person.
Which they do forcibly without the subject's permission.
What subjects permission ? Do you ask permission of a chunk or rock before carving it into a statue or using it to help build a wall ? Do you get permission from a block of wood before using it to help build a table ?
Let's go one better. Did Dr. Suung (or however it is spelled) need to ask permission from all the various chemicals, metals, etc before assembling them all and making Data ?
It is a dead body. All sentimentality aside it is actually nothing more than a bunch of varied chemical compounds all gathered together in one place in a humanoid shaped pile. Your body is approximately:
The gases would of course dissipate so we will ignore those for now. If you were to find all of those remaining elements of the body on your kitchen floor, you would promptly grab a broom and a mop, clean them all up and toss them in the nearest trash receptacle.
Without either deliberate or very rare natural preservation methods being used, if you were to leave that body alone for a long enough period of time, there would be nothing there but a pile of dust that you wouldn't think twice of kicking out of your way if you had no knowledge of it having once been a body. That is assuming that it hadn't become food for various microbes and bacteria.
It is a neatly packaged moral/ethical/philisophical dilemma, with very large number of controversial topics all wrapped up in one.
Leave out one tiny element of the entire thing and it all unravels though. The fact that the newly "born" Kobali wakes up with the memories of the person the body belonged to. Without that element it is nothing more than giving life to a dead body, with that element in there we are left to ponder whether the actual person was brought back to life, only to be slowly subsumed and turned into someone else. We have the added dimension of the question of what is life itself. The person is dead, d, e, a, d, dead, and yet the newly "born" Kobali looks like them, acts like them, thinks like them and even thinks they are them. Are we truly a "soul" who inhabits a physical form for a time and then moves on ? Or are we actually nothing more than a certain specific pattern of various chemical elements ?
The Kobali do not "forcibly suppress" the former memories and personalities of those resurrected. It's stated outright in "Dust to Dust" that this is the inevitable result of the modification of the raised corpse into a Kobali - the physical structure of the brain is changed, resulting in the new Kobali person.
Which they do forcibly without the subject's permission.
What subjects permission ? Do you ask permission of a chunk or rock before carving it into a statue or using it to help build a wall ? Do you get permission from a block of wood before using it to help build a table ?
Let's go one better. Did Dr. Suung (or however it is spelled) need to ask permission from all the various chemicals, metals, etc before assembling them all and making Data ?
It is a dead body. All sentimentality aside it is actually nothing more than a bunch of varied chemical compounds all gathered together in one place in a humanoid shaped pile. Your body is approximately:
Why do you persist in this fallacy? Play the mission, we see exactly how it happens to clone!Harry. It is NOT a dead body. It is a resurrected person. A person that they destroy to turn into their loyal zombie minion.
Selective quotes. Read all the way to the bottom of my post. Is it a resurrected person ? Is a person truly nothing more than the specific pattern of chemicals that make up the physical body ?
For the sake of discussion, let us say that the body is the person. The soul does not exist, we are nothing more than the specific chemical pattern that makes up our physical body.
At this point this is no actual life or death, it is just a matter of whether or not a specific batch of chemicals retains it's animation or not ..... okay, let's not go that deeply into it.
Clone Harry (CH) was "clinically" dead. The Kobali just happen to be the only ones with the technology to save his life. The only problem is, the only way to save his life involves procedures that will also drastically alter his brain in ways that will slowly make him forget all but vague memories of who/what he once was, eventually basically becoming an entirely different person.
So, should the Kobali save his life, or just stand idly by until he deteriorates to the point where he can't be saved ?
(Hypothetical)
You discover a body. upon examining that body you discover although it appears dead, a certain surgical technique that you happen to know will save that persons life. the only problem is that side effects of that operation will cause that person to lose all or most of their memories, eventually basically becoming totally different person.
Do you save their life, or do you walk away and let them die ?
Edited because I forgot to address the "play the mission"..
I have played the mission, many, many times. I have even made it a point to visit all areas I could find rather than just follow arrows to the next objective, which is why it is quite obvious the Vaads did not care about the dead bodies at all, and only cared about the live ones as more cannon fodder for their armies.
My initial knee-jerk reaction was to refuse to help the Kobali once I learned the truth, which isn't an option if you want to continue the story arc..
More actual thought about the subject presented meant that the next time around I had no problems helping them. There's no dilemma. For me a dead body is a dead body and the person who was using that body has moved on to their next phase of existence, whether it's called Heaven, Hell, Sto'ko'vor or some other name. So, the Kobali are bringing life to a collection of inanimate chemicals. Due to the imprinted neural pathways left from when that batch of chemicals was inhabited by it's former occupant, the new person thinks and acts like the former occupant for a time, but that soon passes as the new inhabitant forms their own, unique consciousness.
And to think, someone in another forum thread was complaining that this game was nothing but pew, pew, kill, kill lol
it would be impossible for duplicate (because he's not a clone, he's a duplicate) harry's body to have deteriorated past the point of restoration because there's nothing in a vacuum that can degrade a body
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
If the person's memories etc fade to nothingness anyway, are you truly saving the person? Doesn't the person die regardless? Then you have the debate of giving birth to a new person but staying on this particular topic, are you not simply saving the body? Which you are then in turn modifying beyond recognition...
it would be impossible for duplicate (because he's not a clone, he's a duplicate) harry's body to have deteriorated past the point of restoration because there's nothing in a vacuum that can degrade a body
In vacuum, all liquids will sublimate out of the tissues, dessicating the mummy that was once a person. Yes, the corpse can, and will, deteriorate past the point of restoration. (All this, of course, is assuming that explosive decompression hasn't already ruined all available tissues, but we must make that assumption else he wouldn't be a viable Kobali.)
Further, it has been demonstrated that Federation medical science, at least, cannot restore someone to life once the brain has died. And that is the point at which the Kobali resurrection virus comes into play - they do not, and apparently cannot, infect those who are "temporarily incapacitated" (hence all those frozen Vaadwaur which have not become Kobali), but only those who have become irretrievably dead.
Comments
It wasn't that they were ghouls, it's they were lying
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
My character Tsin'xing
Keep in mind they developed the whole resurrection of the dead and transofrming alien species into their own DNA within a few generations, possibly even a single one. Assuming something made them instantly infertile they mastered the marvel of resurrecting and transforming dead people in a single generation. Assuming the infertility slowly progressed they never were able to save and maybe clone gametes ex situ and develop artificial procreation or even rewrite their own DNA when they can do that to aliens.
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(And if they could infect living beings, don't you think they'd have already turned all the Vaadwaur assaulting their planet into Kobali?)
As for reproduction - at this point, the Kobali are not a "normal" race the way everyone seems to think of such things, they are a viral species. Reproduction involves infecting and resurrecting a dead body of another humanoid species, as there are no more "Kobali" remaining. My working hypothesis here is that ancient Kobali biotechnicians engineered a benevolent version of the "zombie virus", probably during a war so that when they killed an enemy that enemy would then be brought back as a friend (in a manner not all that different from Decrypting croaked units in the webcomic Erfworld), and at some point the virus got out of hand and infected the Kobali as well. It's basically a "race" of zombies who don't decay and don't eat brains.
My character Tsin'xing
It's jut not logical to me, and I'm not even a Vulcan.
I find the Kobali, individually, to be fairly sympathetic. They're decent folks trying to make a future for their culture in the only way they have available. But that culture sickens me a little. They rob the graves of others to do it - they have to. I think the quadrant would be better off without them.
But the Vaadwaur are actively attacking everyone in the quadrant, and are doing so as agents of the demons of air and darkness who threaten the galaxy with extinction. When fighting an enemy like that, an enemy against whom defeat is unthinkable, you take the allies you can get and sort out the mess after. That's been the way of things throughout history.
I find the Kobali less offensive to my sensibilities than I find the Soviet Union.
What I don't like about the Kobali is that they don't ask permission, and - crucially - they don't tell the truth. The species may have a right to exist, and individual Kobali may be good guys, but the Kobali government is essentially not trustworthy. It's all very well saying that the Kobali regard their resurrection process as a great gift and a blessing, but the storyline quite clearly points out 1) they know not everyone feels the same way about this, and 2) they don't care.
They get a pass on this for purely pragmatic reasons - they are enemies of the Vaadwaur (having taken some pains to make themselves enemies of the Vaadwaur), so they are potential allies against the Vaadwaur, and in the Delta Rising story arc, we need all the potential allies we can get. It's made very clear that exterminating the Kobali is only one aspect of the Vaadwaur's imperialistic ambitions.
Should they get a pass on their actions? I don't think so, personally. It seems to me that the Kobali - or, at least, the dominant faction in the current Kobali government - believe very firmly that their rights trump other people's; that they are entitled to reproduce as they see fit, and that it's OK for them to lie and cheat in the process. I don't think that's OK, and I don't think Starfleet or the Federation should be allying with them until they've given some credible assurances that they'll mend their ways. Same goes for the KDF and the Empire - lies and deceit are not honourable, and the Empire should not have allies without honour. (The Romulan Republic? The Republic seems to take its lead from D'Tan, and D'Tan clearly has principles, and I don't see him approving of lies and deceit.)
We see numerous episodes where some miracle drug must be physically carried from one place to another to stop some epidemic, and yet that drug is taken through the transporter to get it to and from ship/planet, which means both the transporters and the replicators are capable of producing endless quantities of it, and the "pattern" could have been transmitted through subspace and replicated on the spot......
And why was the drug needed at all ? In one episode of TNG Dr. Crusher and the rest of the people on the station were "cured" of a condition causing extremely rapid aging through the expedient of using a sample of DNA from before they got the condition and running them through the transporter to "fix" them, not to mention other episodes where some kind of disease/condition was corrected through using the transporter to filter out the problem. So, all that would be needed to stop any disease/epidemic anywhere would be to find a DNA sample for everyone from before they caught the disease, run em through the transporter and voila, problem solved. And for the nay-sayers, we all leave DNA everywhere and technology that can scan and duplicate individual atoms is definitely sophisticated enough to scna and find something as relatively large and complex as the skin cells, skin oils, hair strands etc that everyone leaves on every surface they touch.
Many, many more examples of logic not existing in the Star Trek universe. Computers that can be fooled into locking out all ship functions just because someone (ok, thing since Data is an android) can mimic someone else s voice ? Are you kidding me ? We have personal computers in the present day that are harder to fool than that.
Not a single seat restraint to be found anywhere on any seat on the bridge of any star ship, even though we constantly see people getting thrown out of their seats and injured/killed ?
I'll end with the most painfully obvious one of the bunch, that has been pointed out numerous times over the decades. Every time there is a dangerous situation, most, or even all, of the command structure of the ship are the ones beaming/shuttling into the thick of things, except for the times when they need a few anonymous red shirts to die that is......and it extends to almost all the alien races too. They never send anyone other than their top high mucky mucks, no matter how dangerous the situation, other than when they need a few nobodies to provide some dead bodies......
The only place that logic exists in the Star Trek universe is in the description and dialogue of the Vulcans.
My character Tsin'xing
The problem is that the Kobali themselves do not tolerate others. Even the mere idea that some might not like what they're doing to the loved ones of others has not come up with them. Instead they keep rambling how 'grateful' we should be for their 'gifts'.
It was an interesting concept indeed, but it failed exactly because the Kobali themselves, in their disrespect of others, give those others (or the player / viewer) literally zero reason to empathise with them.
Tolerance does not mean 'setting aside everything you belief in, your own customs because some space zombie wants to use the corpses of your people for their own benefit'. It's the same thing you're seeing in several Western countries right now: problems with people from other cultures who do not tolerate some of the most fundamental rules of the country they reside in (or who even start fighting their conflicts and openly demonstrate for a foreign president like we've seen in Germany and the Netherlands).
Tolerance certainly is important, but one also has to be tolerant towards one's own culture. Allowing others to undermine your own culture, for example by allowing them to take your dead, ultimately means you're not being tolerant. You simply cannot be tolerant towards a people if you cannot expect the same treatment and if you do not get some respect for your own customs and culture. It just doesn't work, it'll have to come from both sides and the Kobali failed miserably, in all respects.
Edit: and besides taking the dead of other people, one can also argue that, in order to defend the Federation's 'culture', we need to oppose intervention in this conflict as it goes against the Prime Directive.
Its not that they rob graves and reanimate the dead that disturbs me, but that in many cases their "victims" seem to still retain a significant portion of their memories, the very thing that makes a person who he/she is. It is then what they do to their victims, forcibly supressin their personalities and what not that I find absolutely abhorrent.
And if this is horrific to you, I can only imagine your reaction to the process of physical maturation in Humans, which also has the effect of altering the personality and reducing the emotional impact of distant memories (at least, I'm sure not the same man I was twenty or thirty years ago, and I'm very happy that the thought of my ex-wife now leaves me feeling pity for her, rather than sorrow and rage for what she did).
Which they do forcibly without the subject's permission.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Yeah, because being temporarily incapacitated means they can do whatever they want to you...not.
Kobali assimilation is just as much a violation, if not more. Borg assimilation is known reversable. Your mind can survive and you can be saved. Kobali more or less destroy the host personality permanently.
What subjects permission ? Do you ask permission of a chunk or rock before carving it into a statue or using it to help build a wall ? Do you get permission from a block of wood before using it to help build a table ?
Let's go one better. Did Dr. Suung (or however it is spelled) need to ask permission from all the various chemicals, metals, etc before assembling them all and making Data ?
It is a dead body. All sentimentality aside it is actually nothing more than a bunch of varied chemical compounds all gathered together in one place in a humanoid shaped pile. Your body is approximately:
65% Oxygen
18% Carbon
10% Hydrogen
3% Nitrogen
1.5% Calcium
1% Phosphorous
0.35% Potassium
0.25% Sulfur
0.15% Sodium
0.15% Chlorine
0.05% Magnesium
0.0004% Iron
0.00004% Iodine
The gases would of course dissipate so we will ignore those for now. If you were to find all of those remaining elements of the body on your kitchen floor, you would promptly grab a broom and a mop, clean them all up and toss them in the nearest trash receptacle.
Without either deliberate or very rare natural preservation methods being used, if you were to leave that body alone for a long enough period of time, there would be nothing there but a pile of dust that you wouldn't think twice of kicking out of your way if you had no knowledge of it having once been a body. That is assuming that it hadn't become food for various microbes and bacteria.
It is a neatly packaged moral/ethical/philisophical dilemma, with very large number of controversial topics all wrapped up in one.
Leave out one tiny element of the entire thing and it all unravels though. The fact that the newly "born" Kobali wakes up with the memories of the person the body belonged to. Without that element it is nothing more than giving life to a dead body, with that element in there we are left to ponder whether the actual person was brought back to life, only to be slowly subsumed and turned into someone else. We have the added dimension of the question of what is life itself. The person is dead, d, e, a, d, dead, and yet the newly "born" Kobali looks like them, acts like them, thinks like them and even thinks they are them. Are we truly a "soul" who inhabits a physical form for a time and then moves on ? Or are we actually nothing more than a certain specific pattern of various chemical elements ?
Why do you persist in this fallacy? Play the mission, we see exactly how it happens to clone!Harry. It is NOT a dead body. It is a resurrected person. A person that they destroy to turn into their loyal zombie minion.
For the sake of discussion, let us say that the body is the person. The soul does not exist, we are nothing more than the specific chemical pattern that makes up our physical body.
At this point this is no actual life or death, it is just a matter of whether or not a specific batch of chemicals retains it's animation or not ..... okay, let's not go that deeply into it.
Clone Harry (CH) was "clinically" dead. The Kobali just happen to be the only ones with the technology to save his life. The only problem is, the only way to save his life involves procedures that will also drastically alter his brain in ways that will slowly make him forget all but vague memories of who/what he once was, eventually basically becoming an entirely different person.
So, should the Kobali save his life, or just stand idly by until he deteriorates to the point where he can't be saved ?
(Hypothetical)
You discover a body. upon examining that body you discover although it appears dead, a certain surgical technique that you happen to know will save that persons life. the only problem is that side effects of that operation will cause that person to lose all or most of their memories, eventually basically becoming totally different person.
Do you save their life, or do you walk away and let them die ?
Edited because I forgot to address the "play the mission"..
I have played the mission, many, many times. I have even made it a point to visit all areas I could find rather than just follow arrows to the next objective, which is why it is quite obvious the Vaads did not care about the dead bodies at all, and only cared about the live ones as more cannon fodder for their armies.
My initial knee-jerk reaction was to refuse to help the Kobali once I learned the truth, which isn't an option if you want to continue the story arc..
More actual thought about the subject presented meant that the next time around I had no problems helping them. There's no dilemma. For me a dead body is a dead body and the person who was using that body has moved on to their next phase of existence, whether it's called Heaven, Hell, Sto'ko'vor or some other name. So, the Kobali are bringing life to a collection of inanimate chemicals. Due to the imprinted neural pathways left from when that batch of chemicals was inhabited by it's former occupant, the new person thinks and acts like the former occupant for a time, but that soon passes as the new inhabitant forms their own, unique consciousness.
And to think, someone in another forum thread was complaining that this game was nothing but pew, pew, kill, kill lol
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Further, it has been demonstrated that Federation medical science, at least, cannot restore someone to life once the brain has died. And that is the point at which the Kobali resurrection virus comes into play - they do not, and apparently cannot, infect those who are "temporarily incapacitated" (hence all those frozen Vaadwaur which have not become Kobali), but only those who have become irretrievably dead.
Who wants to volunteer?