ST Enterprise: Rate "Similitude"

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Originally posted by Fesarius
I agree that the operation wasn't certain to work.

This is Phlox' professional judgement, which Archer has to trust -- Phlox is a trained physician. I think you need to keep the relative probabilities in mind.

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Probabilities which Phlox stated wrong before. Its not that he was slightly wrong, but he was dead wrong. Out of sure living became sure dying. That is a difference, which would have made me think. Additionally as the Captain needs to do the decision he has to retrieve all information on that matter and its not on Phlox to decide what that information might be. I simply found it illogical that he suddenly had that enzyme available - that storyarc seemed to be too constructed for me. It could have been dramatic enough without making Phlox and Archer look that bad. And as I pointed out, Archer took far greater risks in the past.

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So, it is your opinion that taking a single life is wrong, even if the other choice is the destruction of all human life? ...
I understand your concern with the slippery slope, and how immoral acts (but please see below) can destroy what you're fighting to save, sometimes before you even realize it.

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Yes, that's right. As said before, the value of human life is invaluable, thus one human being has the same worth as all others ( even if summed up ). Although I might add, I think that part of that worth should be the willingness to sacrifice yourself should the need arise. Which would be regarding Kant, the morally correct decision.
And I believe that a society which throws away its ethical rules, just to be save and sound has lost its worth. Because at the moment when they could have shown how true they are to these rules, they failed and therefore the rules become superfluous.
Although I agree in that case its somewhat extreme, because only because Archer decided to murder Sim, that does not mean all of humanity would have agreed to do so.

Additonally the difficulty is the following. Who decides who may live to save the species and who has to die? NAZI-Germany made all the genocide to save the "German race". It was exactly that argumentation which made the KZs possible. The German people had to be protected from the jewish and communist conspiracy in the mind of Hitler and his staff, and thus it was acceptable to kill all these millions of persons. The fact that they were regarded as inferior was augmenting that argumentation.
The question is, to quote Cpt. Picard: "When does it become injustice?" When it is right to kill an innocent person? Is it ok to kill one, to kill 10, to kill 100000?

Therefore I think Archer comes terribly close to a point where he looses objectiveness for what he is actually fighting for and by Kant's definition immorale.
There are three quotes from signatures here at the boards which perfectly summarize my point. One is I believe of Abe Lincoln. Something like: "Those who give up freedom to gain security will loose both." the other one is "I'd rather die standing than living on my knees." ( the content is the same even if its not the exact words ). The third one is in my own signature: "...the first freedom denied, changes us all irreverently. The first time any man’s freedom is trodden on, we are all damaged". The point is that the Xindi already won when Archer would have killed Sim by force. That would have destroyed all the efforts of the Vulcans, that would have destroyed all the principles human society is built upon, the very basic human rights. Therefore human society would have lost its value and humans would have reduced themselves to animals.

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Are you, perhaps, sidestepping the fact that Sim isn't really a man? He's a highly specialized animal that looks and acts like a man. That doesn't mean he is a man..

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Wrong IMHO. He has human DNA and is sentinet, which is enough to describe him as man. Even if he is not human, he is a sentinent being. If human rights do not apply to other sentinent beings than it would be no crime to kill a Vulcan, or a Denobulan at all, it would be the same as making a scratch on a car or something. However the human rights were derived from the fact that humans are sentinent. Therefore one should assume that they count for all sentinent beings, especially if they have human DNA.

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It might have been an interesting story if the enzyme treatment had worked, and they'd decided to replace Trip with Sim -- but I don't think it was the story they wanted to tell.

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Like in Voyager, where Harry is replaced by a Harry of an alternate timeline and the original one is killed. The funny thing was that the topic even came up in other episodes. That Harry was actually not the real Harry.

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It's reasonable to assume that there are other talented engineers, but it's also reasonable for Archer to assume that his crew is indispensible. It's also reasonable to assume Trip got the top spot because he's the most knowledgeable. He can't get reinforced from Earth. So each death matters more .

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After all its Earth only Warp 5 ship, on a sensitive mission. One should assume there is at least one engineer onboard who has the qualification to replace Trip. After all I actually had the impression that Trip became Archers Engineer because of their friendship. And Trip would have been the first dead on Enterprise. not one single crewmember died in the previous episodes. Additionally Trip knew what he was up to and especially a Captain should be used to the fact that people, especially on such a dangerous mission may die. I do not think that this is enough a reason to actually throw all reason overboard.

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The ending was a bit hurried. I was left with the impression that he'd decided to sacrifice himself, but youi could be right..

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I at least would have wished it would have been more convincing, that Sim actually decided to save Trip and by that maybe even mankind.

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Originally posted by Sea Tyger
First, Vulcan idiotism? I certainly never heard Kirk call Spock an idiot; in fact, Kirk admitted he couldn't argue with his friend's wisdom...
And why are you debating the mathematics of an axiom that has nothing to do with mathematics??? It's a statement about the willingness to sacrifice your needs for the needs of the greater good, which is part of the core of Gene's vision

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Actually he did, figurely. I think its in ST 3, maybe even at end of ST 2. Kirk says that this logical conclusion is nonsense and untrue. He actually points out that the needs of one are equal to the needs of the many.
And I do not get your point in the second part. So I may not use logic to counter a logical statement of a Vulcan? I do not get that. I simply pointed out where the mistake of that logic is. It is actually self-contradicting. After all even Spock said that logic is the beginning of wisdom not the end of it. And remember that Vulcans regard life so high that they do not even eat meat.
And the major difference is that Spock did so by his own choice, while Archer planned to actually murder Sim, who was even civilian and thus never swore to protect Earth, assuming that such an Oath is part of being a Starfleet Officer.
And its certainly not part iof Gene's vision that difference species' life have different values. And additionally Kirk would have found another option, as he does not believe in "No-Win scenarios", which this certainly was.



There is an illness, I think its a genetic defect, which lets children age very fast. msot die within their first few years, already aged like they were ninety ( of course they are still children, but their skin, bones, organs, e.g. are "damaged" as if they were of old age ). So it is a similiar situation to Sim. Do you really think its would be ok, or only less cruel to kill such a person than any other?


Concluding I think its simply to different point of views again. Its Practicalism and Idealism. It may be practical to save Trip and kill Sim but its immorale. And I think Star Trek is about idealism. Its about peace, its about having a black woman on your bridge, in a time, when segregation was still present. Its about having a russian officer on your bridge while the Cold War was still running. Its not about murdering peolple and then putting the blame on that very people.
I simply did not like the outcome of the episode. Nobody critisized Archer for his threat against Sim. No comments by "Dr. Ethics" Phlox and none by "Superior ideology" T'Pol. The least they could have done would have been a critical comment by Trip at the end.
At the end of the episode you are left with the impression that it is ok to murder people if you need something from them. That is not Star Trek for me.

Please remind me not to call you when I need help in saving Earth, Evan.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk


Yes, that's right. As said before, the value of human life is invaluable, thus one human being has the same worth as all others ( even if summed up ). Although I might add, I think that part of that worth should be the willingness to sacrifice yourself should the need arise. Which would be regarding Kant, the morally correct decision.

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The invaluability of human life is an assumption made by Kant or whoever that cannot be proven. So every argumentation based on that point is questionable. Maybe you could enlighten us how you came to this conlusion, which I belief is that basis for all your problems with the episode. Since humans cannot imagine infinity we can only attribute a finite value to life.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk

And I believe that a society which throws away its ethical rules, just to be save and sound has lost its worth. Because at the moment when they could have shown how true they are to these rules, they failed and therefore the rules become superfluous.
Although I agree in that case its somewhat extreme, because only because Archer decided to murder Sim, that does not mean all of humanity would have agreed to do so.

Additonally the difficulty is the following. Who decides who may live to save the species and who has to die? NAZI-Germany made all the genocide to save the "German race". It was exactly that argumentation which made the KZs possible. The German people had to be protected from the jewish and communist conspiracy in the mind of Hitler and his staff, and thus it was acceptable to kill all these millions of persons. The fact that they were regarded as inferior was augmenting that argumentation.
The question is, to quote Cpt. Picard: "When does it become injustice?" When it is right to kill an innocent person? Is it ok to kill one, to kill 10, to kill 100000?

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The situation faced by the crew cannot be compared to Nazi-Germany, since Sim's survival/no operation would have really meant the death of Trip, whereas the Jews didn't pose a real threat to humanity.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk



Therefore I think Archer comes terribly close to a point where he looses objectiveness for what he is actually fighting for and by Kant's definition immorale.

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Archer has always fought for the survival of mankind. It just became clearer in season three that this doesn't mean the preservation of moral ethics. Unless you belief in original sin humanity should be able to reestablish the moral ideal after any act, no matter how immoral. Since, as far as we know, there is no moral in the abscence of human life, the preservation of humanity is necessary to defend any ideal.

I have taken the liberty of deleting the quotes.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk


Wrong IMHO. He has human DNA and is sentinet, which is enough to describe him as man. Even if he is not human, he is a sentinent being. If human rights do not apply to other sentinent beings than it would be no crime to kill a Vulcan, or a Denobulan at all, it would be the same as making a scratch on a car or something. However the human rights were derived from the fact that humans are sentinent. Therefore one should assume that they count for all sentinent beings, especially if they have human DNA.

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I agree with that.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk


After all its Earth only Warp 5 ship, on a sensitive mission. One should assume there is at least one engineer onboard who has the qualification to replace Trip. After all I actually had the impression that Trip became Archers Engineer because of their friendship. And Trip would have been the first dead on Enterprise. not one single crewmember died in the previous episodes. Additionally Trip knew what he was up to and especially a Captain should be used to the fact that people, especially on such a dangerous mission may die. I do not think that this is enough a reason to actually throw all reason overboard.

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Since Enterprise was drifting through that nebula until Sim came up with a solution it seems that he is the only one skilled enough to do the job of chief engineer.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk

There is an illness, I think its a genetic defect, which lets children age very fast. msot die within their first few years, already aged like they were ninety ( of course they are still children, but their skin, bones, organs, e.g. are "damaged" as if they were of old age ). So it is a similiar situation to Sim. Do you really think its would be ok, or only less cruel to kill such a person than any other?

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I'm afraid my answer is yes. It certainly wouldn't be okay, but if the only one of two identical persons can be safed, and there aren't any additional factors to consider than in this hypothetical scenario, I will save the one with the longer life-expectancy.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk


Concluding I think its simply to different point of views again. Its Practicalism and Idealism. It may be practical to save Trip and kill Sim but its immorale. And I think Star Trek is about idealism. Its about peace, its about having a black woman on your bridge, in a time, when segregation was still present. Its about having a russian officer on your bridge while the Cold War was still running. Its not about murdering peolple and then putting the blame on that very people.
I simply did not like the outcome of the episode. Nobody critisized Archer for his threat against Sim. No comments by "Dr. Ethics" Phlox and none by "Superior ideology" T'Pol. The least they could have done would have been a critical comment by Trip at the end.
At the end of the episode you are left with the impression that it is ok to murder people if you need something from them. That is not Star Trek for me.

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It isn't that for me either. The show was an obvious attempt by the writers to make the audience think about stem cell research. Nothing more and nothing less. The show dealed with a current problem of humanity, just like TOS series did in the 60s. The major difference seems to be that, today, we have to choose from various shades of grey.

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Originally posted by Ergi
Please remind me not to call you when I need help in saving Earth, Evan.

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Well, what's left to save if ethics are thrown overboard? However as long as you need somebody to stand between injustice and the innocent, you can count me in. As soon as you plan to leave ethics behind and begin to kill innocent people, don't bother me you would find me between you and those people anyway.

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The invaluability of human life is an assumption made by Kant or whoever that cannot be proven.

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What???? First Kant said nothing about an invaluable life and I did not state that. My first reference of Kant referred to somebody not willing no sacrifice yourself for rest of mankind. But as I quoted Kant, times over times, I assumed his "categoric imperative" is already well known.
There are three formulations of Kant's imperativ ( as far as I know named Golden Rule in English translations ).
The first one, which applies here, is: "Act in a way that you can want to become a universal natural law." In the present case, i.e. when one person sacrifices itself to save mankind. You cannot want it to become a natural law that the unwillingnes of sacrifice of one person kills the rest of the species. Therefore if the person is not willing to commit that sacrifice, it would act immoral.
Archer acted immorale because of exactly that first version of the imperative and because of the second one. "Act always in a way that another person is not only means but also purpose."
He reduced Sim to being simply means and took his right to live away. He even realized that would be murder. And last time I checked, murder is a crime - at least punished with love-long imprisonment.
And what would show that to the crew or even the Xindi, whom he has to make contact with to negotiate peace? "Ok, he is a murderer, but hey his dog is cute!" ??? How do you want to convince a people that you are no threat to them if you murder your own people? What has the crew to think, especially the pacifist Vulcan if the Captain is a murderer?

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Maybe you could enlighten us how you came to this conlusion, Since humans cannot imagine infinity we can only attribute a finite value to life.

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You can only enlighten yourself, but first I think you have to drop sarcasm.

If human life has a finite value, please tell it to me. Is it 10 dollars, 200, 1000.000? If so, why are you imprisoned when killing sombody and not simply paying off the "value" of life. Something like. "OK, you killed a homeless man tonight, so it makes 200 dollars." Additionally all democracies, including Germany and the US and especially the UN, have declared the right to live as unalienable, unable to be sold, because its invaluable.

Only because humans cannot imagine infinity it does not mean we cannot attribute an infinite value to something. Especially in mathematics, infinity is needed and btw proven. And e.g. the universe is infinite ( actually by definition, because its the universe. Its everything, the reality and therefore cannot have borders, because what is behind these borders, if everything that exists is within these borders? ). So although humanity cannot imagine infinity, it first of all does not mean it does not exist, and second of all does not say that we cannot adress this value to certain things.

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The situation faced by the crew cannot be compared to Nazi-Germany, since Sim's survival/no operation would have really meant the death of Trip, whereas the Jews didn't pose a real threat to humanity.

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I did not say so, I just asked who decides who may live and tried to point out the arbitrary behind that. And I referred not to Trip but to mankind. Archer more or less pointed out that Sim's life means the death of all humanity, thus he has to kill him - because he needs Trip. Archer comes close to an area where his argumentation becomes arbitrary.

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Archer has always fought for the survival of mankind. It just became clearer in season three that this doesn't mean the preservation of moral ethics.

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Here we agree. I do not have a problem with that actually. If B&B decide to depict a darker Archer, I am fine with that. After all it was a catastrophy what happened to Earth. However I do not like - again - the arbitrary in it. If its a sexy slave girl he is willing to be the noble man and risk his crew, if its just a 15 day-lifespan person, he is not.
In Marauders Archer decided to fight the Klingons because they killed people for Deuterium - but now he is willing to kill Sim to get his spareparts.
That is not how a Captain should react and especially not how Star Trek should be.

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Unless you belief in original sin humanity should be able to reestablish the moral ideal after any act, no matter how immoral.

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Yes, but to what end? Why reestablish ethics, if you drop it once it becomes difficult? Where is the justification for such morale rules if you do not follow them in times of crisis? If everything is at peace you do not need those rules, they become neccessary in times of conflict ( compare Thomas Hobbes ).

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Since, as far as we know, there is no moral in the abscence of human life, the preservation of humanity is necessary to defend any ideal.

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An ideal is an ideal because you keep it up at any time. You cannot defend an ideal by dropping it.

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It isn't that for me either. The show was an obvious attempt by the writers to make the audience think about stem cell research. Nothing more and nothing less.

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Yes and I honour the attempt but not the actual course of action the episode took. I do not like "blank cheques" for murder.

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Originally posted by Ergi
It isn't that for me either. The show was an obvious attempt by the writers to make the audience think about stem cell research.

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BINGO!

This is exactly the case. And, just as in the debate over stem cell research, you have an argument (and the accompanying thought processes) that runs along the same lines on this very message board.

Not bad when a show can ellicit such thought and debate.

Chris

Excellent, intelligent episode. Gets a 9 from me.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk
Well, what's left to save if ethics are thrown overboard?

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Life, and, like I have said before, the possibility to restore lost or violated ethics. I consider the simple fact that life can exist without ethics but ethics not without sentient life as evidence for my conviction that survival is more important than moral.
Of course, if you argue on the basis of moral, which I don't, my point is probably wrong.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk

What???? First Kant said nothing about an invaluable life and I did not state that.

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No and I didn't claim that you had said so. I was referring to this sentence:

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk

Yes, that's right. As said before, the value of human life is invaluable, thus one human being has the same worth as all others ( even if summed up).

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What I wanted to know was how you justify that assumption without any objective means. And please forgive the sarcasm in my previous post.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk

My first reference of Kant referred to somebody not willing no sacrifice yourself for rest of mankind. But as I quoted Kant, times over times, I assumed his "categoric imperative" is already well known.
There are three formulations of Kant's imperativ ( as far as I know named Golden Rule in English translations ).
The first one, which applies here, is: "Act in a way that you can want to become a universal natural law." In the present case, i.e. when one person sacrifices itself to save mankind. You cannot want it to become a natural law that the unwillingnes of sacrifice of one person kills the rest of the species. Therefore if the person is not willing to commit that sacrifice, it would act immoral.
Archer acted immorale because of exactly that first version of the imperative ...

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Probably true, if you are arguing from a moral point of view.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk

... and because of the second one. "Act always in a way that another person is not only means but also purpose."

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Purpose can have many forms. Sim said near the end of the episode that he agreed to the operation because he didn't want anyone else to lose someone close to them. Therefore the operation was in Sim's own interest and therefore didn't violate the second rule.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk

He reduced Sim to being simply means and took his right to live away. He even realized that would be murder. And last time I checked, murder is a crime - at least punished with love-long imprisonment.
And what would show that to the crew or even the Xindi, whom he has to make contact with to negotiate peace? "Ok, he is a murderer, but hey his dog is cute!" ??? How do you want to convince a people that you are no threat to them if you murder your own people? What has the crew to think, especially the pacifist Vulcan if the Captain is a murderer?

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Yes, that's right, it would have been murder to perform the operation without Sim's consent. But that didn't happen. Therefore Archer is no killer and his "Don't make me one." clearly shows that he was thinking about the moral implications.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk

If human life has a finite value, please tell it to me. Is it 10 dollars, 200, 1000.000? If so, why are you imprisoned when killing sombody and not simply paying off the "value" of life. Something like. "OK, you killed a homeless man tonight, so it makes 200 dollars." Additionally all democracies, including Germany and the US and especially the UN, have declared the right to live as unalienable, unable to be sold, because its invaluable.

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Somehow I knew you would argue that way. :) At least for me finite doesn't mean tangible. How else could you explain that some people give or risk their life for others. If the value of each human life was infinite as you said then there would be no justification for these actions, besides one based on evolutionary genetics. I belive that this assupmtion is also in conflict with Kant's golden rules.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk

Only because humans cannot imagine infinity it does not mean we cannot attribute an infinite value to something. Especially in mathematics, infinity is needed and btw proven. And e.g. the universe is infinite ( actually by definition, because its the universe. Its everything, the reality and therefore cannot have borders, because what is behind these borders, if everything that exists is within these borders? ). So although humanity cannot imagine infinity, it first of all does not mean it does not exist, and second of all does not say that we cannot adress this value to certain things.

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Due to our finite mind we cannot completely grasp any infinite concept like God or the universe. All we can do is applying labels, and for our purposes this will always be enough.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk

I did not say so, I just asked who decides who may live and tried to point out the arbitrary behind that. And I referred not to Trip but to mankind. Archer more or less pointed out that Sim's life means the death of all humanity, thus he has to kill him - because he needs Trip. Archer comes close to an area where his argumentation becomes arbitrary.

Here we agree. I do not have a problem with that actually. If B&B decide to depict a darker Archer, I am fine with that. After all it was a catastrophy what happened to Earth. However I do not like - again - the arbitrary in it. If its a sexy slave girl he is willing to be the noble man and risk his crew, if its just a 15 day-lifespan person, he is not.
In Marauders Archer decided to fight the Klingons because they killed people for Deuterium - but now he is willing to kill Sim to get his spareparts.
That is not how a Captain should react and especially not how Star Trek should be.

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Yes, he begins acting arbitrary to some point, but humans aren't always logical. However his behavior might be explained by different benefit to risk ratios in those situations. You didn't comment on my reply to your "sick child" point. Therefore I take it you can understand my opinion on that. Sim was in a comparable situation. Let him life for another 7 days or save mankind? A not so though choice.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk

Yes, but to what end? Why reestablish ethics, if you drop it once it becomes difficult? Where is the justification for such morale rules if you do not follow them in times of crisis? If everything is at peace you do not need those rules, they become neccessary in times of conflict ( compare Thomas Hobbes ).

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True, since moral defines itself.

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Originally posted by Evan van Eyk

An ideal is an ideal because you keep it up at any time. You cannot defend an ideal by dropping it.

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Unless you can prove that I am not convinced. :)

I was going to give it a 9. After all, the episode really got me to think, and the acting was definitely good. So, not 10 for a few reasons I'll explain later, but a solid 9.

Then I started reading the comments you all posted. You know, it does feel good to actually have a real debate about a ST episode. Can't remember the last time it happened ;) . The only problem I see there, is that it is on the verge of becoming a political debate (for the sake of curiosity, just have a look at the protagonists of the debate ... rings a bell? ;) ), and I would really hate to see this thread locked.

Anyhow ... about the episode. Overall I think I kind of agree with Evan there. I may not consider it as strongly as Evan, but still. As some said, the part where Archer had to say "Don't make me a murderer" or something was quite poorly written, for three main reasons IMO:
- I for one wouldn't mind a captain with a reliable and stable decision process. Kirk had that. He decided with his groi... err guts each and every time. Picard was reliable. Prime directive. It took an awful lot of reasons to make him disregard the prime directive. Hell, even Sisko was reliable, although he evolved more than the other captains over the course of the serie. But you knew where you were with him. Then came Janeway, who would act and decide something completely different in exactly the same situations only 2 weeks apart. We thought it would be over with Archer ... damn, I wish they could be consistent in the writing. Either make him a diehard idealist/optimist (like in Rajiin), or make him more shadesofgrayish a la Sisko, slowly losing his ethics as he fights to preserve Earth, I can go with both. But can't you stay at least a wee bit consistent?
- As someone wrote it quite nicely, Archer could have handled the little speach that cultimated in "don't make me a murderer" much better. The dialogue proposed in this thread is quite nice, and while the poster says he'd have put it at the beginning, I think it'd have worked equally well as a replacement of the "don't make me a murderer" speech.
- The episode would have been just as good, if not better, if Archer hadn't coerced Sim, and if Sim had managed to come to this decision all alone (and not because of some lame "there's no toilets in this shuttle"). Hell, why not use the strange behaviour T'Pol displayed to convince him. I'm not sure how, I'm not the writer, but he might have thought that if T'Pol showed some kind of reciprocity to his feelings, he had no right to steal this from Trip ... of course, this is not much in comparison to the fate of humanity, but human minds' calibration tend to fly out of the window when it comes to weighting two things and one of them has a love interest in it. Anyhow, I think Sim should have reached the decision all by himself, rather than having Archer try to coerce him. Or he could have refused, and Archer could have knocked him out with a sedative. No words, just acts. Dark acts, things that he'd never be able to forget, nor forgive to himself. Then it wouldn't have been a Federation (or whathever it's called at that point) matter, it'd have been his, and his alone.

Now if we don't focus on the episode. I can understand the motivations of the crew (that is, mainly Archer, Phlox, and T'Pol a bit). I do understand why Archer decided to produce the clone. I do understand why he feels Trip's life has more value than Sim's. But I'd have prefered if he hadn't compromised his ethics. I mean, of course we do know that there are shades of grey. We see that every day on TV, when our leaders decide the fate of countries and people far (and not sor far) away. Wouldn't hurt to show on TV what idealism really is, that "the end justifies the means" motto is not always the one to go by. I don't know, let's try to put this back in the 60s. People knew from TV that the Russians had a bad, treacherous governement, that some Russians were in fact evil spies, whatever. Was Chekov an evil spy? Star Trek then showed what could be, not what was. Was that good? Well, I think so. This does not per se make the episode bad, I enjoy dark and gritty episodes too. But like Evan said, it is a pity for Trek.

Anyhow, back to more frivolous things. Things that got the mark from 10 to 9:
- The science. All right, I can deal with the threshold shuttle thing. After all, a magnet stuck on a boards needs a tug to be pulled away, then it becomes much easier. Board = particle field, magnet = magnetic dust covered Enterprise. So, this was OK for me. What wasn't was the genetic memory. The larvae could have had some kind of empathic powers that'd have enabled them to get an imprint of the cloned people's mind, that'd have worked better, while not flying in the face of most accepted genetic theories (granted, there may be some dispute, but still).
- T'Pol. What's wrong with her? The kiss scene was well acted, but what the hell was the point?!? :confused: I'm not a Vulcan integrist, but how logical can it be to kiss and obviously allow oneself to have feelings for someone who is going to die a mere 6 days from now? Unless you have urgent needs for sex or romance, I mean.

So from 9, to 8 for the way the Archer part was written. Still, fascinating dilemma.

By the way, on a pure mathematical standpoint, there are ways to compare infinites. This is going to be hard to explain in English ... If you consider a life as a function rather than a value, two functions can often be compared, even if both tend toward infinity. Let's try to make it clearer with a very basic example:

f(x) = x
f(x) -> infinity when x -> infinity

g(x) = x^2
g(x) -> infinity when x -> infinity

So, basically, f(infinity) and g(infinity) both are infinity. Can you compare them? Well, yes, and that's written:

f = o(g) towards infinity.

In effect, f smaller than g in infinity. Bear in mind that this would be much clearer if I had studied maths in English rather han French ... and that it's been approximately 10 years since I did this ;) .

Anyhow ... sorry for the rambling.

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Originally posted by Calcoran

- T'Pol. What's wrong with her? The kiss scene was well acted, but what the hell was the point?!? :confused: I'm not a Vulcan integrist, but how logical can it be to kiss and obviously allow oneself to have feelings for someone who is going to die a mere 6 days from now? Unless you have urgent needs for sex or romance, I mean.

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After reading this, my mind wanders over to ST III. Vulcans believe that the katra (spirit/essence) of a being lives on after death. Now there are rituals involved to preserve that essence and place it in a place of honor, but nothing has been said that the katra dissolves without said rituals (only that it is "lost," which could simply mean that it is no longer retrievable).

Also, there is nothing to say that they believe that the katra only applies to Vulcans....IDIC most likely dictates that Vulcans don't impress their rituals on members of other cultures (especially when said cultures have their own rituals for the passage of a soul).

That said, it's feasible that T'Pol gave the kiss to express her feelings for Sim/Trip, so that when he dies, his katra will retain that knoweldge/memory.

Just a thought.

But ...

T'pol !

Vulcan.

Feelings !

:confused: :eek: :confused:

Quote:

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Originally posted by Calcoran
I don't know, let's try to put this back in the 60s. People knew from TV that the Russians had a bad, treacherous governement, that some Russians were in fact evil spies, whatever. Was Chekov an evil spy? Star Trek then showed what could be, not what was. Was that good? Well, I think so.

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I can't really say that this is the best argument, especially considering the hindsight of why Walter Koenig was added to the cast. Let's face it, Walter was brought in to appeal to the younger generation, who was hooked on the Beatles and the rest of the mop-haired pop set.

If someone knows if Gene's thought process was chronicled, please chime in here, but it appears to me that they made Koenig's character Russian because the Canadian Keonig would have a hard time passing himself off as a Central or South American ;) (thus requiring someone of European/Western Asian descent, since that was the only other region not covered by the rest of the main human characters...). For his origins, I'm sure they looked at Germany, Poland, and other East Bloc satellite nations (to show that Communism failed in these nations, and they returned to democracy and freedom), and probably came to the conclusion that it would be most "ironic" to have the character be Russian.

Now, did it have the extra effect of "look, even the Russians are part of the equation in the future...we can work together"? Sure, but I think that was only a secondary motivation, if it was even considered at all at the time they were developing the character.

And do we know if people actually paid attention to that fact when the show aired, or were the kids just looking at the cool-looking young officer with a foreign accent?

Quote:

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Originally posted by Calcoran
But ...

T'pol !

Vulcan.

Feelings !

:confused: :eek: :confused:

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All Vulcans have feelings. Many Vulcans admit they have feelings. They simply choose to suppress them.

Sarek showed affection for Amanda...publicly ("Journey to Babel"). Is that not expressing feelings?

Bring back this thread because the episode aired last night as Fan Favorite #3.
Did you like it as much the second time?

Unfortunately, I fell asleep before it aired. At least I know which one aired, now. :)

Yes, I liked it as much the second time around. I thought it was a good choice, and was glad it made the top 3.