"A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrived?

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies I-X' started by WesleysDisciple, Mar 14, 2013.

  1. Peach Wookiee

    Peach Wookiee Cuddly Mod of Doom Moderator

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    ^The speed of a cure wouldn't be constrained by our 21st century standard of how things are done.
     
  2. Tiberius

    Tiberius Commodore Commodore

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    No, but I find it very hard to believe that they had a disease that was incurable and then in the space of three months they had a medicine that they were distributing to patients across the Federation.

    They still need to run tests, y'know. Then analyze the data they get from the trials.
     
  3. Elder Knight

    Elder Knight Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    I suppose that when any cure becomes available, it's just weeks too late for some victim.
     
  4. Lance

    Lance Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    Bones was just talking literally. "A cure... they found the God-damn cure... they'd lost it years ago, it had fallen down the back of a sofa at Starfleet Medical."
     
  5. jayrath

    jayrath Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    For all we know, young McCoy was offically a "doctor" but still a resident. How many med students do you know who do hospital rounds and also conduct research on a life-threatening disease -- let alone lead such efforts? Good lord, they get little enough sleep as it is.
     
  6. Tiberius

    Tiberius Commodore Commodore

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    It's still likely that he would have heard something in the grapevine, especially considering that he had a close family member suffering the disease.

    And anyway, if he was that young, he wouldn't have been his father's doctor. So I think it likely that whatever doctor was treating McCoy Sr would have been aware of what was going on.
     
  7. Amaris

    Amaris Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    Some of you guys are trying to find a technological answer to an emotional problem. The scene isn't specifically about the cure they found later ('weeks' is never mentioned). That they found the cure not too much later (again, 'weeks' is never mentioned) is only meant to be the final nail in the coffin to McCoy's burning guilt about his father.

    He could have said months, he could have said years, but he didn't, because the length of time is only secondary to the actual emotional cost that they did find a cure, and McCoy's survivor's guilt, doubly compounded by the fact that he was not only a doctor, but his son.

    So you have a bright, young doctor, and his ailing parent. Doing everything he can to keep his father alive, desperately, and his father is so tired, so exhausted from all of the pain, from all of the life extending treatments that aren't working, he reaches out to his son, who is his doctor, the only one who can release him from the pain, the one he trusts to do this, and his son is conflicted, yet because he loves his father, because he doesn't want to see him in pain, and because there has been no word of a cure, he agrees.

    Then, some time later, a cure is found.

    That is the crux of the whole scene. How long it takes doesn't matter so much beyond the fact that it wasn't "too long after", which is nicely vague enough to make the impact of what happened, while not tying down too many details.

    In short, you're asking the wrong question.
     
  8. Solariabsg25

    Solariabsg25 Commodore Commodore

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    It's not really contrived, as sudden medical breakthroughs can happen. In Trek it could be even more common, as some flora on that newly explored world of Omicron IV just happens to have medical properties unfound elsewhere.

    Even if it was, contrivance is common in movies. What, in Star Wars, over the entire surface of Tatooine, the lifepod happened to land within spitting distance of Luke's farm?
     
  9. Trek Survivor

    Trek Survivor Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    Well, you're essentially saying "no one has to die, we just keep 'em on ice".

    Didn't they do that in the TNG episode "The Neutral Zone"? I think most people would accept when their time has come, even if the "fad"/possibility of cryogenic freezing was available.
     
  10. golddragon71

    golddragon71 Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    I was thinking about this...
    What if the cure wasn't developed but actually, just "Found"?
    Assuming Leonard's Father died of Xeno-Poly-Xythemia (the disease McCoy himself had i "For the World is hollow and I have Touched the Sky") it might have been a short while prior to his discovering he had the same thing on the Enterprise. In McCoy's mind, it wouldn't have been too long after (in hindsight) and up until that point, it would have had no known cure.
    Therefore, at the time he did it! it would have been to preserve his father's dignity and spare him the pain but later McCoy would have realized that he could have been saved had they kept his father on life support.
     
  11. Gaith

    Gaith Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    And don't forget reality's epic bout of naming laziness, Brown vs. Board of Education! :p
     
  12. Tiberius

    Tiberius Commodore Commodore

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    I agree. I think that scene would have had even more impact if McCoy had been despairing that he should have been the one to find the cure, that he hadn't been looking hard enough.
     
  13. Tiberius

    Tiberius Commodore Commodore

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    It depends what you mean by "sudden". If you mean a few years, then yes. But it could never happen in a few months. Even if they find some plant that cures everything, there's still going to be tests to isolate the active ingredient, trials to determine exactly what it does, seeking approval from the FDA and what have you. It's just not a fast process.
     
  14. Admiral Buzzkill

    Admiral Buzzkill Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    That's exactly what it is, yes.

    Y-e-a-h... Medical research doesn't work that way. Sorry.
     
  15. STR

    STR Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    Uhh...it wasn't about him being a baby.
     
  16. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive


    true, and the point of the scene was a good one, as was Spock's response to Sybok.

    but it is ridiculous that Sybok could be pulling that scene out of Spock's memories, unless it's just supposed to be something he constructed out of his imagination.
     
  17. dub

    dub Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    I wasn't referring to what the scene was about...

    That was my point.
     
  18. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive


    it's that Vulcan mental discipline! They have fully formed and coherent memories from the moment of their birth!;)
     
  19. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    Since Sybok is the older sibling, perhaps he sent Spock a telepathic memory of Sybok actually witnessing his little half-brother's birth?
     
  20. Tiberius

    Tiberius Commodore Commodore

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    Re: "A Few weeks latter they found a cure, a god damned cure!"Contrive

    Maybe a mind meld with someone who was there? (But not his father. They never melded, after all...)