Season ONE OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

[davejames]

Jeyl wrote:

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How exactly was that touching? Riker deliberately chose not to save the girl and the crew gave him a pat on the back for it. For a series that depicts humanity that's still trying to develop new ways to heal people, the moment when one has the power to bring a dead child back to life is shunned upon. Why is letting this girl die a good thing? Should we go to every hospital and tell doctors to stop trying to revive patients the moment they flat line?

You know what I call characters who willingly let children die and feel good about it at the end? The bad guys.

No one "let" anybody die. As others have already said, the girl was already dead and Riker simply refused to bring her back to life. I agree he probably should have made an exception in this case and revived her anyway (seeing as she had seemingly just died), but you're still crossing a very delicate line when you start bringing back the dead.

Riker also had the power to bring back people who died days or years or even centuries ago, but I don't think anybody would argue THAT would be a good idea.

[BillJ]

davejames wrote:

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Riker also had the power to bring back people who died days or years or even centuries ago, but I don't think anybody would argue THAT would be a good idea.

Are you insinuating that Riker shouldn't bring back every single person who died a tragic death through the course of history?

[Doug Otte]

Jeyl wrote:

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Because as we all know from history, using powers imposed on us to reverse the natural course of events leads to 50,000 deaths every year. Even today's scientists are still dumbfounded by this phenomenon even to this day....

Wait, what am I talking about? That's never happened. And in the field of medicine, we always try to reverse the natural course of events. That's what medicine is about. Oh, you're dying of cancer? That's natural. Aids? Natural. Blood loss? Natural. Death? Natural. If we had the technology to bring someone back to life shortly after they died, you think we'd use it or just go "Nope! We are not wise enough to use such technology!". And if you're going to go the "We didn't create it" card, don't. We are using technology to do incredible things that we as individuals didn't think of ourselves. Like me on my computer. I didn't create it, build it, or invent it, yet I still use it because it's a great tool. And this is a tool that was given to me as a gift. Riker himself was given a gift, but decided not to keep it for no discernible reason.

Picard: Power corrupts.
Riker: And absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Ok, so what do you call this Galaxy Class Starship that has the power to beam people in and out of existence, re-create any object, setting or life form from any planet, ship or station from any time, create it's own life form, and pulverize an entire solar system with it's heavy armaments? Having that power is ok, but having the power to bring a dead girl back to life? You're worse than Satan.

Honestly, put yourself in Riker's position. What is the downside? What could possible go wrong that it is better to leave a dead girl behind rather than bringing her back? Is it that this girl might cause an event that will wipe out all life in the galaxy? Well, if you're going to go by that frame of logic, you can pretty much use that philosophy on EVERYTHING. If I wear socks, will I get fired? If I get a pet, will the space station explode?

But here's the big one. And this is a really, really, REALLY big one.

Neelix died in a Voyager episode. Seriously. He was pronounced DEAD. However, 7 of 9 used her borg technology to bring him back. You know Borg technology, right? Those powers had to be imposed on her, and the crew didn't have anything to match it. but instead of getting into an episode long debate on the moral of using this power to reverse the natural course of events, they just decide to do it. And guess what happened? Everyone ended up fine in the end. Whatever troubles that this event caused, the characters worked it out with each other.

Yep. We cannot use powers beyond our understanding unless it involves saving Neelix.

You seem to have stopped reading after my first paragraph (quoted above). Here's what I wrote after:

"I admit, it is a fine line compared to your example of today's patients who have flatlined.

It would be different if Riker was a physician and had the medical/technological tools at hand to try to revive the girl."

[Doug Otte]

22 Stars wrote:

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The story may have been better served if he saved the girl, and that escalated his powers, corrupting him even more. Or, if you prefer he doesn't save the girl, at least have to confront her family and show the drama and despair inherent in that.

Those things would have been interesting, but there was so much going on in the script already that they wouldn't have had time.

The point was made succinctly. Riker was tempted to use the Q's powers by a very agonizing situation, but he managed to resist the impulse and sought the high ground.

[bullethead]

Doug Otte wrote:

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The point was made succinctly. Riker was tempted to use the Q's powers by a very agonizing situation, but he managed to resist the impulse and sought the high ground.

Didn't he already use them to give "gifts" to the rest of the bridge crew? Saving the little girl would have been a thousand times more useful than any of those things aside from giving Geordi his sight back.

[BillJ]

bullethead wrote:

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Didn't he already use them to give "gifts" to the rest of the bridge crew? Saving the little girl would have been a thousand times more useful than any of those things aside from giving Geordi his sight back.

The gifts came after the colony rescue was complete.

[bullethead]

BillJ wrote:

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The gifts came after the colony rescue was complete.

So he was corrupted by the power anyway and wound up doing nothing positive as a result of not saving the little girl.

[davejames]

I think people are probably taking this episode MUCH more seriously that it really deserves to be.

[Ghostface1701]

Weren't there hundreds of people that died on that colony? I'm more concerned that no-one on the Enterprise or this forum gives a rat's ass about their deaths.

[bullethead]

Ghostface1701 wrote:

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Weren't there hundreds of people that died on that colony? I'm more concerned that no-one on the Enterprise or this forum gives a rat's ass about their deaths.

Were there? I haven't seen the episode in years and since I'm holding off for the fixed TNG-R sets, I don't have it available. But yeah, if there were a lot of fatalities, they should've let Riker bring them back, healed (including the girl).

[mswood]

Jeyl wrote:

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Honestly, put yourself in Riker's position. What is the downside? What could possible go wrong that it is better to leave a dead girl behind rather than bringing her back?

It's quite simply, one child no real big deal, what about death across the span of the 13 billions of years of the universe creation. Whats the difference between the one child and any other being who has ever died.

Just on Earth how many tens of billions would that bring back? And whats the harm, well its very well, even the Federation couldn't house the entirety of all of creation, let alone just all the beings who had died on their own worlds.

Its exceedingly simple.

[Maxwell Everett]

Mutai Sho-Rin asked that I post this in the official thread.

I plan on doing one for each season as they're released. Proper size for printing should be 4.75 inches by 5.75 inches.



Full res: http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/91/tngs1insert.png

You can check out my thread here for subsequent seasons and any updates: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=185696

[Warped9]

Maxwell Everett wrote:

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Mutai Sho-Rin asked that I post this in the official thread.

I plan on doing one for each season as they're released. Proper size for printing should be 4.75 inches by 5.75 inches.

Full res: http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/91/tngs1insert.png

You can check out my thread here for subsequent seasons and any updates: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=185696

Very cool. Thanks.

[Ghostface1701]

bullethead wrote:

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Were there? I haven't seen the episode in years and since I'm holding off for the fixed TNG-R sets, I don't have it available. But yeah, if there were a lot of fatalities, they should've let Riker bring them back, healed (including the girl).

There were only nine survivors out of 504 colonists, but all anyone cares about is the death of the white girl.

[Start Wreck]

Jeyl wrote:

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Picard: Power corrupts.
Riker: And absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Ok, so what do you call this Galaxy Class Starship that has the power to beam people in and out of existence, re-create any object, setting or life form from any planet, ship or station from any time, create it's own life form, and pulverize an entire solar system with it's heavy armaments? Having that power is ok, but having the power to bring a dead girl back to life? You're worse than Satan.

Q's power is significantly more than any of that, any of anything, ever. What's the worst that could happen? Riker could end up like Q. The horror!