Was Beyond a commentary on how poorly the US govt. treats armed forces veterans?

[Timo]

Oh, and I missed a bit of dialogue, or monologue. Edison himself states in his final log that he already knows about the Ancients. So the only question remaining is whether he has already tasted the life-prolonging cannibalistic technologies, or whether that part still lies ahead of him. Odds would appear to be that he has tasted it, since he only has two other humans to eat beyond that point, and neither gets eaten.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nyotarules]

I thought his crew died in the crash?
I think Edison was pissed he did not make the Admiralty after all those years of service, especially after reading Kirk's application with his 5 years experience for doing what? Either that or his Facebook page had stopped working.

 

[Timo]

We don't know how many crew Edison had (beyond the ones seen in the old video) and when they died. But Edison's log gives us an impression:

" Captain's log. I don't remember the stardate. Our distress calls are unnoticed. Of the crew, only three remain. I'll die here. The indigenous species abandoned this planet long ago. They left behind sophisticated mining equipment and a drone workforce. They have some sort of technology that prolongs life. I'll do whatever it takes for me and my crew... The Federation does not care about us. Probably you will never see me again. But if you do, be ready."

This is not immediately after the crash, or Edison would not have forgotten the stardate. He has also spent some time sending out those calls and waiting in vain for a response. In light of that, "only" three of his crew "remaining" could well be taken to indicate a large number of original survivors, now down to three.

Add to that the fact that the starship isn't visibly damaged internally or externally, and all but three dying in the crash ceases to be the preferred interpretation. IMHO.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nyotarules]

So he ate his crew and for some reason left only three?? All three had to be insane! Jaylah managed to survive on that planet, so she must have been eating something. Ships land on your deserted planet and rather than ask for help you eat the crew!??? Who wrote this script?!

"They left behind sophisticated mining equipment and a drone workforce."
'And rather than fix my ship I eat people's souls instead'...

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

He may have had lucid moments that gradually decreased in frequency until he became full-blown mad.

As for needing people to feed off of, the Enterprise is only the latest ship to arrive there. Jaylah and her bullies all landed on Altamid over the years, and they've managed to give Krall the slip for as long as they've been there. Maybe the planet does something to you.

Maybe prolonged exposure to whatever the drones were mining poisoned an already insane brain. That would explain why Jaylah's still sane - she doesn't hang out in the mines.

 

[Timo]

So he ate his crew and for some reason left only three?? All three had to be insane!

Indeed, we have no reason to think they were any more or less insane than Krall.

Although I doubt the guilt over sucking fellow human(oid)s dry would result in insanity as such. It's just a fight for survival, and we accept whatever we need to accept to keep the fight going (say, killing and eating of animals, or taxation of fellow humans, or nuking of Hiroshima or blowing up the Beslan kids, or whatever).

Jaylah managed to survive on that planet, so she must have been eating something.

Sorry, I didn't mean to cause confusion. Edison wasn't hungry in the physical sense. He "ate" other human(oid)s in order to live forever, by sucking them dry with the help of the Ancient arts. For physical sustenance, he probably ate resequenced hamburgers and tofudebeest like anybody else. And I very much doubt he ever had to resort to gnawing on the thighs of his Astrogator's Mate 2nd Class. (Although rationally thinking, it might make sense not to let those dead carcasses go to complete waste.)

Jaylah didn't go hungry, but she also didn't live forever. She ate, she didn't "eat".

"They left behind sophisticated mining equipment and a drone workforce."
'And rather than fix my ship I eat people's souls instead'...

This tells us more about the timeline. Why would Edison suddenly want to live forever when just plain living should suffice? This would only make sense if he was already hell-bent on revenge upon the UFP, and realized that as a mere human, his chances of achieving revenge or even living long enough to properly plan for it were slim.

We know that by the time of his last log, Edison was both aware of the Ancient tech and already irrationally blaming the UFP for his woes. So whatever made Edison go crazy happened before that, but quite possibly shortly before. And the two possibilities are "natural" insanity from isolation where nobody challenges the xenophobic views of the crazy old soldier, and "unnatural" insanity from innocently trying out the Ancient tech. I guess a mix of the two is possible, but if Edison hated aliens all along, why did he choose to become one himself? It would be neat to assume that the tech screwed up Edison's mind, this also explaining why only those exploiting the tech became baddies.

Was it evil tech? Or was it intended for good, and the very fact that it forced ultimate tolerance of alienness upon the arch-conservative Edison may have been key to him going mad where the original users would not have?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nyotarules]

This tells us more about the timeline. Why would Edison suddenly want to live forever when just plain living should suffice? This would only make sense if he was already hell-bent on revenge upon the UFP, and realized that as a mere human, his chances of achieving revenge or even living long enough to properly plan for it were slim.

We know that by the time of his last log, Edison was both aware of the Ancient tech and already irrationally blaming the UFP for his woes. So whatever made Edison go crazy happened before that, but quite possibly shortly before. And the two possibilities are "natural" insanity from isolation where nobody challenges the xenophobic views of the crazy old soldier, and "unnatural" insanity from innocently trying out the Ancient tech. I guess a mix of the two is possible, but if Edison hated aliens all along, why did he choose to become one himself? It would be neat to assume that the tech screwed up Edison's mind, this also explaining why only those exploiting the tech became baddies.

Was it evil tech? Or was it intended for good, and the very fact that it forced ultimate tolerance of alienness upon the arch-conservative Edison may have been key to him going mad where the original users would not have?

Timo Saloniemi

I can go for that, xenophobic racist people are not rational minded anyway, if they were such views would never enter their heads. John Paxton of Terra Prime hated aliens yet used alien medicine to treat his medical condition, did he or his followers see the hypocrisy..not at all!
Perhaps the Ancients abandoned the tech once they realised it made you live long but turned you into a crazy person to do it. Either that or it was corrupted Borg technology.

 

[Timo]

Perhaps it's the ultimate argument for xenophobia: eating your own kind is fine and well and keeps your mind nicely balanced, but once you diversify your diet with alien scum, you go crazy, blind or both.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

...The interesting thing here is why Edison went mad, as opposed to just flying home.

Because the Franklin crash left the ship's engines smashed beyond reasonable hope of repair. I say "reasonable" in this context because it would have taken several years and an amazing series of coincidences to scrounge up enough parts and equipment from other wrecked ships to get it flying again. Edison didn't have access to those wrecks and no way to fabricate spare parts; he's basically in the same position Archer was in after the Xindi kicked his ass, except no convenient passers-by to raid for a warp coil.

Jaylah, on the other hand, had parts from her own ship and the wrecks of other ships scattered all over the planet. Scotty helped quite a bit too (being, you know, Scotty) and also in a much better position to make repairs to the old ship than Edison, whose engineers may or may not have even survived the crash (at a guess I'd say probably not).

Edison's final log entry is grim and bitter. He's already pissed and halfway to crazy town, but if a rescue ship had arrived just six months later he probably would have needed some grief counseling and a long rest to get back to something resembling sanity. Within a year or two, he's adapted to his new life and his bitterness towards the Fderation has become a pillar of his identity. After a hundred years, he's been Krall much longer than he's been Edison; it's who he IS now, it's not just a symptom of his psychosis.

So at the end of this tirade, where do we stand? At the edge of the conclusion that the alien mind-sucking technology may well have been the one crucial item dictating that Edison go insane.

It's a given that the energy-draining tech was part of what happened to him, but it's nothing to do with the technology itself so much as the nature of its use. Having to hunt and kill other living beings for decade after decade to survive would leave just about anyone a little warped. The fact that every time you do this is PHYSICALLY CHANGES YOU would be traumatic at best.

But in the end, it's true that it doesn't have anything much to do with his military career or the traumas sustained in that. Edison is crazy because a lot of crazy shit happened to him over the course of a century and he, like most Starfleet captains, cracked under the pressure.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

What about incompatible biologies warring for dominance, pre-existing mental and physical illnesses of those he "harvested" combining and affecting him, etc?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

What about incompatible biologies warring for dominance, pre-existing mental and physical illnesses of those he "harvested" combining and affecting him, etc?

That would depend on the extent to which any of those things were actually transferred to him; the changes could easily have just been cosmetic without even affecting his DNA all that much.

In fact, if it had affected him biologically it would have given him all kinds of weird autoimmune issues that would have killed him sooner rather than later. I think the point of the technology is that it transfers biological energy and nutrients from one being to another in an attempt to rebuild and restore the stealer; the technology is hard wired to also try to rebuild the stealer in the image of whoever he's stealing it from, so the new tissues take on the shape of that person.

 

[Timo]

Because the Franklin crash left the ship's engines smashed beyond reasonable hope of repair.

This is a possibility. However, it's not really established in the movie, and the ship appears to have landed more or less smoothly, resting perfectly level and externally intact on a mountaintop. To associate that with serious damage takes a bit of doing, and we might be better off assuming e.g. that the wormhole wrecked the warp drive (or the warp drive blowing created the wormhole) already, after which Edison made a controlled landing on the nearby planet. The avalanche that covered the warp nacelles in rubble would then come later. (Or then the ship wormholed its way straight into bedrock, but in that case the "perfectly level" thing becomes a big coincidence.)

The thing is, though, Jaylah wouldn't have been capable of moving entire warp coils or whatnot. She could only tinker with the powerplant. We don't get confirmation that her tinkering would really have made a difference, although we don't learn that she would be cargo-culting it, either. Multiple possibilities simply exist, and the ship remaining capable of takeoff, impulse and warp immediately after the wormhole ride are among those.

...Edison, whose engineers may or may not have even survived the crash (at a guess I'd say probably not).

The intact ship had seatbelts. Why should anybody have been hurt?

Full agreement with all the rest.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The thing is, though, Jaylah wouldn't have been capable of moving entire warp coils or whatnot...

I would have thought so too, until "Azati Prime" and "Damage" showed us that warp coils are basically portable.

Yes, that was indeed a TERRIBLE episode, but the basic premise is applicable at elast.

Multiple possibilities simply exist, and the ship remaining capable of takeoff, impulse and warp immediately after the wormhole ride are among those.

There is no room AT ALL for the supposition that the ship would have been flight ready without Jaylah's repairs, and even less for Jaylah being able to repair it without Scotty's help. That was the whole reason she befriended him in the first place, because she needed an engineer with the knowledge to finish the repairs.

 

[gerbil]

I think there's a much simpler explanation. Edison's racist. He's a Terra Primer. He lived to see Starfleet win the wars and, as he said, make peace with the former enemies. He already hates the very idea of the Federation. Now they leave him alone and stranded here? His crew has died, which perhaps he blames on the "lack of struggle" in their lives. Then he intercepts the Magellan probe and ties into Yorktown: An interspecies utopia.

You don't have to do much reaching. Without putting too fine a point on it, log into Facebook. I get called a "snowflake" on a daily basis. People shake their fists at my generation for growing up "without a struggle." Many of the veterans I know lecture me about how I "don't really understand the threats" in the world and talk about the United Nations as an anti-America clubhouse. Many of them also believe in "America First" and deporting immigrants because they could be terrorists in disguise.

To wit:

I'm not passing judgement on people (much) but I'm stating that you guys are all reaching for extensive answers in psychology. One of the most competent, dedicated, and diligent employees I ever had was a retired marine. One day he confided in me that he believed President Obama was probably a Muslim making allies with "hajjis" who hate America. He was a great guy but it was a little startling to hear that he still retained this sort of thinking.

 

[Nyotarules]

He probably thought Kennedy was a Catholic stooge. Some folks believe the only humans belong to the W.A.S.P society. The 'Great generation' fought for a country that had segregated armed forces and a segregated society, they were not exactly the bulwark of the civil rights movement.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The 'Great generation' fought for a country that had segregated armed forces and a segregated society, they were not exactly the bulwark of the civil rights movement.

Yes they were. That's exactly why those very same veterans came home and immediately started organizing the civil rights movement. Apparently, fighting and winning the mother of all wars against not one but TWO enormous foreign militaries is one hell of a confidence booster: "We bit Hitler and Hirohito, we can beat Jim Crow too!"

I think that Edison's justification is more post-hoc rationalization than any coherent ideology. For one thing, it's kind of doubtful he actually saw any real action against the Xindi, and he knows good and damn well it was Starfleet that did all the important leg work in that conflict, including the final defense against the Xindi probe. It could be that he became a member of Starfleet because he knew they were better prepared to defend Earth, but in order for him to understand that he would also have to understand that Starfleet did it by getting half the Xindi fleet to change sides at the last minute.

It's possible and even likely that he fought in the Romulan Wars, but the Federation didn't actually make peace with the Romulans (especially in light of the Kelvin incident and the destruction of Vulcan) so that can't possibly be part of his beef.

Really, he's projecting. He is, as Jaylah calls it, "Death wishing" and is angry at the Federation for not doing the same; he figures that NOT conquering and pillaging is a sign of weakness, because his willingness to embrace the pirate's life is what's allowed him to survive as long as he has.

 

[Timo]

I would have thought so too, until "Azati Prime" and "Damage" showed us that warp coils are basically portable. Yes, that was indeed a TERRIBLE episode, but the basic premise is applicable at elast.

Very true! But the logistics of getting a coil into a nacelle high up in the air or buried in rock or both would still be formidable; Jaylah would need antigravs, and while she could well have access to those, we didn't actually see anything of the sort.

There is no room AT ALL for the supposition that the ship would have been flight ready without Jaylah's repairs, and even less for Jaylah being able to repair it without Scotty's help. That was the whole reason she befriended him in the first place, because she needed an engineer with the knowledge to finish the repairs.

Let's not forget that Jaylah shouldn't know anything much about starships. Her "house" is supposed to fly, but she was a kid when she last saw a flying house, and her skills might extend all the way to repairing the stereos but not beyond.

Scotty potentially restored to working order something that wasn't working. Or then he just checked it out and found it to be in working order. The ship was missing "a few drive coils and EPS components" if an online transcript is to be trusted. The latter might have been lost to scavenging rather than crashing for all we know. The former... Beats me how they could have gone "missing" literally, what with the high up in the air / inside rock argument all again. But even if they are broken, that's not an obstacle to flying the ship to Yorktown, as we soon see.

(True, Scotty also gives Jaylah credit for a "marvelous job", but for all we know that's just Scotty being polite with a lass again.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Very true! But the logistics of getting a coil into a nacelle high up in the air or buried in rock or both would still be formidable

What makes you think warp coils go in the nacelles? Franklin is 22nd century tech; the similar engine in "Damage" was installed in a random access panel in the engine room..

Let's not forget that...

There's nothing to forget. Jaylah knows about starships; Jaylah knows about ALOT of things, including weapon systems and holographics. The story cannot progress the way it does unless she is already a damn good engineer who has already done most of the grunt work and Scotty is just helping her finish it finally.

This is one of those cases where there isn't actually any room your devils advocate shenanigans. Jaylah repairing the Franklin is a major plotpoint; it's part of what the story is ABOUT.

 

[Timo]

What makes you think warp coils go in the nacelles? Franklin is 22nd century tech; the similar engine in "Damage" was installed in a random access panel in the engine room..

Then substitute whatever it is that goes into the inaccessible nacelles for the part that Jaylah possibly couldn't replace or repair. Supposedly the nacelles are hugely important for interstellar flight in any era; if the ship suffers problems in that area, scavenging won't make a difference.

What we see of the ship is that she works fine, and has no holes or other bruises of note. Oh, and the Captain's Log is stuck, which is rather significant. But neither Jaylah nor Scotty fixed that one.

Jaylah knows about starships

So do you and me. Neither of us could make 'em fly.

Jaylah knows about ALOT of things, including weapon systems and holographics.

She has found the on switches for them, yes.

The story cannot progress the way it does unless she is already a damn good engineer who has already done most of the grunt work and Scotty is just helping her finish it finally.

Which is nonsense - Jaylah could be eliminated from the story and everything would still happen the way it did. Only Scotty (or other hero of preference) would take a bit longer to stumble onto the old starship.

The other alternative, of the ship being perfectly fine but Edison failing to fly home because there's that impenetrable nebula stopping him, cannot be discounted merely by saying that Jaylah's pretty presence proves the ship was broken. As per dialogue, Jaylah needn't have fixed anything but the stereos. (Which are crucial to the story as told, but if they needed fixing, Scotty could do that with his left foot while minding more important business.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Then substitute whatever it is that goes into the inaccessible nacelles for the part that Jaylah possibly couldn't replace or repair.

The nacelles were damaged? How do you know THAT?

So do you and me. Neither of us could make 'em fly.

Jaylah could, with Scotty's help. That, too, is more than could be said for you and me.

Which is nonsense - Jaylah could be eliminated from the story and everything would still happen the way it did...

I don't know why I bother to read your posts anymore, honestly.