Why I dont consider Enterprise as part of trek.........

posted on January 3rd, 2011, 9:30 pm

I can see your reasoning on that issue Myles, but I'm curious whether you view it the same for a situation such as in the TNG episode 'Homeward'?

[Anonymous]

posted on January 3rd, 2011, 9:46 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on January 3rd, 2011, 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

They didn't have to choose a race

i know, im not saying they should choose a race, im saying they should stay out of it and do nothing.

Phlox's argument that they evolved to death was flawed. Just like the argument that the others reached the next stage and couldn't continue evolving with them around when the Valakians were the reason they were improving.

indeed, that page you linked to did quite accurately point out that a lot of the science in that episode was flawed. it doesnt change the fact that they should stay out of such decisions. its not archers place to save a race. even if that race was alone on the planet, take away the menk, have just 1 race dying out. its not archers place to save them. the repercussions are mind boggling. archer is too small to make such a decision.

Promising to help and creating a cure, only to hold back and lie about it made them partly (and willingly) responsible for the extinction. They were willingly involved. Genocide doesn't require pointing weapons at the planet.

they shouldnt have got involved at all. promising to save them makes it even more hard to say no. ideally enterprise would have never helped the race at all. and just stayed away.

they werent willingly involved. they were willingly disinvolved. they (eventually) stayed out of it. where they belong. and they are definitely not responsible. inaction doesnt make you culpable.

what if phlox couldnt fix it in 1 episode? lets say phlox has the medical ability to fix it in 1 year worth of research. nobody knows this during the first few days obviously. so enterprise would work for 2 weeks, maybe a month, then leave, saying they couldnt fix it. are they responsible? they didnt stay forever and work until death, so by their inaction they allowed an extinction.

lets say they choose to fix it, lets ignore any repercussions such as this race becoming war like and destroying earth in 500 years, or creating a disease that accidentally wipes out all vulancs etc etc etc.

so they fixed it, and left on their merry way. people on the planet still die every day from cancer (their alien equivalent) or get run over by hover cars or something. earth didnt stay there and help them cure everything, nor did they help them upgrade their infrastructure and save all these people that die from normal things. are they responsible?

or a war breaks out and earth doesnt stay around, are they responsible for the deaths in the war?

genocide doesnt require pointing weapons at a people, no. but it does require action. you cant commit genocide with inaction. so what archer did cannot be called genocide.

I can see your reasoning on that issue Myles, but I'm curious whether you view it the same for a situation such as in the TNG episode 'Homeward'?

i only remember that episode 90% but iirc worf's brother forced them into action by single handedly violating the prime directive. and all the crew's actions after his were damage control. doing the best they could to minimise impact. if everyone (including worf's bro) followed the prime directive they would have all done nothing.

rewatch TNG: Pen Pals and pay special attention to picard's speech which makes everyone challenge their desire to violate the prime directive in order to do something they feel is good. good intentions are free, and too easy to hide behind.

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EDIT: clarified a point.

[Tyler]

posted on January 3rd, 2011, 9:59 pm

Last edited by Tyler on January 3rd, 2011, 10:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

so they fixed it, and left on their merry way. people on the planet still die every day from cancer (their alien equivalent) or get run over by hover cars or something. earth didnt stay there and help them cure everything, nor did they help them upgrade their infrastructure and save all these people that die from normal things. are they responsible?

or a war breaks out and earth doesnt stay around, are they responsible for the deaths in the war?

None of that is relevent to the cure, they have no part in any of it nor did they agree to help with anything after this one crisis. This is no different from refusing to help because one of them could someday be the next Adolf Hitler.

genocide doesnt require pointing weapons at a people, no. but it does require action. you cant commit genocide with inaction. so what archer did cannot be called genocide.

There was no inaction until after the cure was found and they willingly put themselves in the position to decide their fate. After finding it there was 2 choices; give them the cure and help them or withhold it and allow them to disappear. Choosing the latter when in the place to choose the path is what made them responsible for something they shouldn't have had a say in, justifying it as letting nature take it's course when they were the ones who chose is the problem.

Not being involved or failing would make them just another race to vanish or who Starfleet couldn't save. Far better, I agree.

posted on January 3rd, 2011, 10:01 pm

Why do you care if one or 1,000,000 die? I meen really? its all what happened did not happen in the end.

thats a slippery slope falacy. their objective was to destroy the building. that minimum had to be achieved. and they did there was no need to go further.

about the enterprise dogfighting scene, 2 things:

1) enterprise was badly damaged and had been shot at in that very episode. you cant expect them to perform well.
2) as you say they are DOGFIGHTING, we saw how the defiant confused a neggie by getting in close, thats a canon precedent from DS9 (try take that out of canon and you'll die ) the stukas are tiny compared to the enterprise, and the engagement is happening in an atmosphere rather than in space, and at a range that is far closer than the design was intended for. they could easily miss.

posted on January 3rd, 2011, 10:09 pm

None of that is relevent to the cure, they have no part in any of it nor did they agree to help with anything after this one crisis. This is no different from refusing to help because one of them could someday be the next Adolf Hitler.

indeed, they didnt agree to help with anything after this, but they arent responsible if these people nuke themselves out of existence in 100 years you cant hold people accountable for inaction in this case.

they definitely should NOT have agreed to try save these people. but 1 mistake doesnt justify another. if we both agreed i should total your motor, i definitely couldnt justify it just because we both agreed to it.

There was no inaction until after the cure was found and they willingly put themselves in the position to decide their fate. After finding it there was 2 choices; give them the cure and help them or withhold it and allow them to disappear. Choosing the latter when in the place to choose the path is what made them responsible for something they shouldn't have had a say in, justifying it as letting nature take it's course when they were the ones who chose is the problem.

you cant hold starfleet responsible for these deaths. its not their choice to make. no one organisation can make these decisions for another race. to pretend they can would be arrogance on starfleet's part.

Not being involved or failing would make them just another race to vanish or who Starfleet couldn't save. Far better, I agree.

so why doesnt starfleet go around looking for planets with issues? if starfleet doesnt happen to chance upon these people they arent responsible? so how can they justify not going in search of people to save. the answer is they arent responsible for other races.

its not starfleet's job to run around the galaxy saving everyone. its not starfleet's job to decide which races deserve to be saved and which deserve to die.

Why do you care if one or 1,000,000 die? I meen really? its all what happened did not happen in the end.

nobody knew at the time that daniels would hit the big reset button. for all they knew daniels was really dead and that any changes they made would be permanent.

if someone gave me a gun and said that anybody i killed would be brought back to life, i still wouldnt wanna go shoot people. 1 because i wouldnt enjoy it, 2 because i have no guarantee this person is capable of restoring my kills.

posted on January 3rd, 2011, 10:18 pm

you cant hold starfleet responsible for these deaths. its not their choice to make. no one organisation can make these decisions for another race. to pretend they can would be arrogance on starfleet's part.

I don't hold Starfleet responsible, just Phlox and Archer. Archer was the one who agreed to help and Phlox was the one to get them to the point of choosing life or death and convincing Archer to choose death. He had the cure and their species future was decided by that choice, there was no reason for them to choose death. They spent the whole episode dedicated to saving them, just to do a complete 180 at the end.

Did they ever actually consult Starfleet about it?

posted on January 3rd, 2011, 10:20 pm

I don't hold Starfleet responsible, just Phlox and Archer. Archer was the one who agreed to help and Phlox was the one to get them to the point of choosing life or death and convincing Archer to choose death. He had the cure and their species future was decided by that choice, there was no reason for them to choose death.

regardless of whether archer promised to help them or not, it all comes down to the decision of whether to interfere or not. promising to interefere, in itself, isnt interfering (much ). so archer's decision was the same as if they already had the cure before the episode began. do we decide whether a race lives or dies.

the only correct thing to do is to do nothing. since its not starfleet's or archer's business.

[Tyler]

posted on January 3rd, 2011, 10:32 pm

Last edited by Tyler on January 3rd, 2011, 10:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It's the choice at the end makes them as culpable as the 'evolutionary flaw'. Especially their logic about not being out there to 'play god', which is the entire point of a doctor in the first place.

I agree with not interferring, the Valakians are a prime example of why not by Archer making himself part of the problem. There's plenty Archer could learn from Picard.

posted on January 3rd, 2011, 11:14 pm

the first sign of them going loopy was destroying the Enterprise NCC 1701-D     

posted on January 3rd, 2011, 11:25 pm

the first sign of them going loopy was destroying the Enterprise NCC 1701-D      

Naaaaaaaah. This just happened because Ríck Berman and so on didn't think about WHAT they wrote while they were just forcing the plot to make room for a new Enterprise just for having a few movies with it. Bad movies. TNG-movies = A Picard who's not Picard and rushing TNG into a coffin. They died hard.

posted on January 3rd, 2011, 11:28 pm

Picard was probably sabotaging the movies and getting revenge on the writers for killing his ship... losing the Stargazer he could live with, but both Stargazer and Enterprise? He probably snapped.

posted on January 4th, 2011, 12:00 am

the first sign of them going loopy was destroying the Enterprise NCC 1701-D       

No, it was the way they did it.

hey the TOS guys are getting old, some are dead, lets do a tie-in movie before they croak, lets worry about the plot later'

thats how they did it.

To be honest, Generations could have been great.

However, they had a 70yr old BoP use a cheap technobable shot to kill the ship off for no reason other than they wanted to kill the D to get a new ship.

If they'd had a plot of substance to kill it off, I wouldnt have cared, but as it was .........

posted on January 4th, 2011, 2:49 am

Hey back to that thing about Dear Doctor, they didn't commit genocide by not giving them the cure because it was a natural course of life on that planet  and while sitting back and not helping them might make them a real bad person it doesn't qualify and genocide. Take Sudan for example, every day genocide is taking place, but the U.S. or any other countries are not committing genocide by not intervening

posted on January 4th, 2011, 3:44 am

However, they had a 70yr old BoP use a cheap technobable shot to kill the ship off for no reason other than they wanted to kill the D to get a new ship.

If they'd had a plot of substance to kill it off, I wouldnt have cared, but as it was .........

Or at least a Vor'cha instead of a BoP.

[Tyler]

posted on January 4th, 2011, 2:17 pm

Last edited by Tyler on January 4th, 2011, 2:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hey back to that thing about Dear Doctor, they didn't commit genocide by not giving them the cure because it was a natural course of life on that planet  and while sitting back and not helping them might make them a real bad person it doesn't qualify and genocide. Take Sudan for example, every day genocide is taking place, but the U.S. or any other countries are not committing genocide by not intervening

Actually, it does because they willing chose to let them die. If they stayed out they wouldn't be guilty, but they didn't; they specifically forced themselves into the position of choosing life or death and playing god, putting them into the position of choosing how life develops there. Willingly choosing death makes them as responsible as the original cause and 'life's choice' is as bogus as their 'evolving to death' justification.

Agreeing to help and developing the cure put them into the exact position the later Prime Directive is supposed to help prevent.