Last, Tracey was attacked first by the Yangs, then he used his phaser in self-defense. Siding with the Khoms is also self-defense.
Actually, siding with the Khoms is suicide: they are the designated losers, a single village of leftovers from a global massacre.
If Tracey wanted to survive for selfish reasons, he'd go to the Yangs. He's one of 'em himself, ethnically, and no doubt perfectly qualified to quote Holy Words just like Kirk. Also, if his motivation is to get hold of the secret of longevity, the Yangs are the go-to people there, too: Tracey is in the firm belief that the secret resides in all the inhabitants of the planet, not in the Khoms exclusively.
Which just goes to show that Tracey is the hero of the piece and Kirk the villain. Tracey is just too cool a guy to spray "I
prevented genocide!" on Kirk's face...
Glossing over an initial confrontation between Tracey and the Yangs ought to be trivial: the savages might in fact appreciate that show of force. And Tracey seems to go for the god gambit anyway, not hiding his superiority much even in the Khom context.
The one reason to prefer the Khom village over going native, or over just going to skulk in the infinite forests until help arrives months or years later, would be odds of pickup. If Tracey's communicator dies, the next starship won't find him from the forests; a fixed Khom urban center would be a better bet for where he meets a landing party than a random Yang teepee somewhere out in the plains. Just as proven by the events.
This presumes the Yangs are only out there to burn, rape and slash: their "retaking" of the planet might in fact involve setting up urban centers, with Cloud William a lowbrow savage in charge of the reconquista while more level-headed parties erect cities of note. It's just that Kirk's ship sees no sign of Yang urbanism, and presumably Tracey's didn't either...
Tracey knows he probably will never be given another ship after the death of his entire crew. Tracey's motive of discovering immortality for the Federation (and profiting from it) could be just a fortunate case of making lemonade when you are given lemons. The immortality discovery will prove that "risk is our business" especially if huge rewards occur for the Federation. The financial reward will compensate him for the mental stress/damage he acquired on the mission, lost of his job and damage to his reputation.
Agreed save for the motivation. Losing a ship or a crew might not be a big deal, in the TOS context. But failing to commit suicide when confronted with the need to kill locals for self-defense is a capital offense in the terms outlaid in this very episode, and Tracey thus eventually will need to buy his way out of an asylum with the youth serum.
Also the whole ep (Pen Pals) is just confusing. There's some talk about asking for help, and of course eventually they do help them. Which of course they should do!! FFS.
And in the in-universe sense, the whole Observation Lounge conversation is about Data's insubordination, not about the planet that is about to die. Picard summons his top officers to pass judgement on the rebellious android, and invites debate on the specific issue over which Data rebelled; the heroes eagerly comply, playing devil's advocate and all. None of the "Perhaps we should let them die" proposals is supposed to be taken seriously - they are only made in order to explicate why the PD exists in the first place, and thus why Data here has committed an offense.
The debate does not conclude with "Okay, so we let them die", but with "So there we have it; stop your antics now, Data, and you might yet have a career - and we can finally get down to the business of dealing with this planet". And deal they do, of course.
In the out-universe sense, the episode is read differently by those who then go on to write "Homeward"...
Also that ep with Worf's brother makes things confusing too. I would hope someone would have saved the planet if there was enough time.
Umm, I seriously doubt that. The point was that the planet
was going to die, and only gods like Q could alter that (and Picard, despite appearances, isn't in a position to ask Q for favors). So the choice would be between doing what Rodzhenko did, saving a handful of people, and not doing that.
But i think 'let them all die' is ultimately cowardice.
That the heroes would think otherwise is weird scifi, certainly.
OTOH, in practice, we saw what would really happen: one of the "survivors" committed suicide right off the bat, and odds are that all the rest would quickly follow. There's no saving their culture, except as an artificial diorama in some museum of lost civilizations: odds are heavily against a single village successfully re-expanding into a civilization, unless receiving constant aid from the museum staff.
(In theory, we humans here on Earth did take over the planet after starting with a single village, us being so fragile that our species was constantly undergoing "bottleneck" phases. But the flip side of that is that 99.999999% of the villages that previously attempted that perished, leaving no trace of their existence. The folks from this episode have no backup pool of individuals for a second try after they fail.)
Obviously the Vians had no qualms in The Empath.
It would be interesting to learn what their limitation on saving everybody and his goldfish really was. If there was a hard limit on numbers, why not save 50/50 of the species involved, say? That this was not presented as an option just tells us that we don't fully understand what is going on. Is the inevitability of a single surviving culture a practical choice or an ideological one?
Also, we only saw Gem tested. What was the competition? The Vians' own species? Rather altruist of them to not just accept but in fact dictate their own demise!
Timo Saloniemi
