Andorian secession and Brexit

[valkyrie013]

Bacco was already assasinated by that time, the Ihssan guy was in charge during the andor affair, and instuted a blockade and sent ships to prevent Bashir to get them the cure.
Even then, I doubt the President knew of the Meta-Genome, I think not even the Commander starfleet knew, I beilve I read that bashir accessing it tripped an alarm, and Akkaar read up on it then.

 

[Dayton Ward]

Bacco was not assassinated until well after the events of the original Typhon Pact mini-series. She gets briefed on the meta-genome by Akaar in Paths of Disharmony.

 

[Charles Phipps]

So the topic of the secession never gets brought up in any further books?

Shame.

If those nuclear secrets could cure a life-threatening disease, then sure.

Assuming the Meta-Genome can. The thing is that they don't understand it and think it can help but the Tholians have been feeding the Doctor information on it and the doctor still hasn't cured anything. It's promising but as we see with Project; Genesis, not necessarily the miracle they think about it.

No, because the Federation and Starfleet did know about the Meta-Genome in the 2260s, at the time of the Vanguard series, and the government classified it. So there must have been people in the UFP government who had known about it all along, and nobody was willing to declassify it to help save the Andorians.

Given the manner of Paths of Disharmony, I think the author (Dayton Ward) is writing that this was a mistake. However, given the devastating damage of Star Trek genetic engineering and the whole fact that fiddling with technology you don't understand invariably results in horrific consequences, I'm not sure that was the wrong decision.

 

[DonIago]

I'm not sure what you're talking about here. If you read The Fall then what you're discussing here seems incompatible with what occurs in those novels.

 

[Christopher]

However, given the devastating damage of Star Trek genetic engineering and the whole fact that fiddling with technology you don't understand invariably results in horrific consequences, I'm not sure that was the wrong decision.

That's nonsense. That kind of fear of technology is anathema to Star Trek's usual worldview, which is why I think DS9's whole "engineering ban" retcon was a bad idea. No technology is invariably harmful, and claiming that is just an excuse to avoid taking the responsibility to figure out how to use it the right way. We didn't give up fire or electricity or airplanes the first time someone died from them. We found ways to make them safer.

Also, if you actually look at the Trek stories about the genetic engineering ban, they're usually not wholeheartedly endorsing the ban, but rather are exposing its unfairness. (I'm leaving out "Unnatural Selection," which was written before the ban was retconned into existence by DS9.) "Doctor Bashir, I Presume" makes it clear that Bashir's genetic engineering had a positive result, that he didn't turn out evil or dangerous. The later "Jack Pack" episodes do portray some people whose engineering turned out badly, but that's largely because they were engineered illegally without proper oversight or safeguards; and they were still presented as worthwhile people who were just misunderstood and given a raw deal, rather than horrifying mutant monsters or something. And ENT's Augment arc had Arik Soong state explicitly that the reason Khan's Augments were so dangerous was because their engineering was flawed and gave them too much aggression and too little empathy. It wasn't an inevitable consequence of any genetic engineering, but a mistake in humanity's earliest, crudest efforts, one that could be overcome by continued research and practice. The same arc established that Denobulans used genetic engineering without any "devastating damage" or "horrific consequences."

So if anything, the episodes about the genetic engineering ban have done more to argue against it than in its favor.

 

[valkyrie013]

During the augment episoded, Soong mentioned that Archers' dad passed from a genetic disease, and that he could have been cured by genetic engineering, but there was a "Total" Ban it then, even for genetic diseases.. which honestly doesn't seem right.. and which at the end Archer said he'd push for "Limited" engineering to cure disease etc. not improve.

Even if we go back to Tng, we have Barclay and the crew getting turned into spiders, etc. from some sinthetic T Cell treatment, and reversed it with some... Genetic Engineeering! So at the very least by then, it was okay to use it to cure diseases and stuff, just not "Improve" Bashir doing the Andorian Cure should have been just fine.. maybe.. he was technically "Improving" them but the denobulans practiced GE and there federation memebers..

Thinking back to Enterprise, Phlox had a cure to the Genitic disease but didn't give it to the people, because the other species was thriving. But given that they were space capable.. they could have fixed there disease, and the other speices could have grown as well..

 

[Charles Phipps]

That's nonsense. That kind of fear of technology is anathema to Star Trek's usual worldview, which is why I think DS9's whole "engineering ban" retcon was a bad idea. No technology is invariably harmful, and claiming that is just an excuse to avoid taking the responsibility to figure out how to use it the right way. We didn't give up fire or electricity or airplanes the first time someone died from them. We found ways to make them safer.

The thing about Star Trek is the fact that it is also very much about responsible use of technology as well as the idea that cultures have to demonstrate a right to expanded knowledge. To have "earned it" to a degree. In the case of Star Trek, it's the basis of the Prime Directive and why you don't give anti-matter reactors to cave men. In the case of the Meta-Genome, it's not technology that Starfleet has earned. It is technology they stole from the Shedai and are trying to reverse engineer. Whether you believe this is nonsense or not is up to you but I do think Star Trek takes this stance that cultural maturity is required to properly use knowledge.

Also, if you actually look at the Trek stories about the genetic engineering ban, they're usually not wholeheartedly endorsing the ban, but rather are exposing its unfairness. (I'm leaving out "Unnatural Selection," which was written before the ban was retconned into existence by DS9.) "Doctor Bashir, I Presume" makes it clear that Bashir's genetic engineering had a positive result, that he didn't turn out evil or dangerous. The later "Jack Pack" episodes do portray some people whose engineering turned out badly, but that's largely because they were engineered illegally without proper oversight or safeguards; and they were still presented as worthwhile people who were just misunderstood and given a raw deal, rather than horrifying mutant monsters or something. And ENT's Augment arc had Arik Soong state explicitly that the reason Khan's Augments were so dangerous was because their engineering was flawed and gave them too much aggression and too little empathy. It wasn't an inevitable consequence of any genetic engineering, but a mistake in humanity's earliest, crudest efforts, one that could be overcome by continued research and practice. The same arc established that Denobulans used genetic engineering without any "devastating damage" or "horrific consequences."

I feel Star Trek's portrayal on screen has been a bit schizophrenic as Julian shows that he's a perfectly normal guy that doesn't have any kind of innate drive to evil. While Soong's Augments seem to immediately jump into the desire for world domination. In real life, as someone who has any number of ailments, I see no difference between it and preventative medicine. However, at the time of "Space Seed" it was all too easy to associate it with the eugenics movement of previous years and it seems the kind of people who create Augments are not too far from such forebearers.

Also one of the most common Star Trek plots is "malfunctioning bleeding edge technology." Because the Federation struggles to properly integrate their own advances. How much more is that the case with the Shedai who are as far above the Federation as the Federation are above the Pakleds or us.

Thinking back to Enterprise, Phlox had a cure to the Genitic disease but didn't give it to the people, because the other species was thriving. But given that they were space capable.. they could have fixed there disease, and the other speices could have grown as well..

Yes, the motives of Phlox is to play God and nurture one race at the expense of another. So, ironically, he's violating the spirit of the Prime Directive while keeping to the letter. So, "Dear Doctor" just feels so off even if you ignore the moral element.

 

[Charles Phipps]

I'm not sure what you're talking about here. If you read The Fall then what you're discussing here seems incompatible with what occurs in those novels.

Nope, just finished Paths of Disharmony and have been asking for any information on what's being followed up on.

 

[David Mack]

Nope, just finished Paths of Disharmony and have been asking for any information on what's being followed up on.

The answers you seek are in the five-book miniseries known as The Fall.

 

[Christopher]

The thing about Star Trek is the fact that it is also very much about responsible use of technology as well as the idea that cultures have to demonstrate a right to expanded knowledge. To have "earned it" to a degree. In the case of Star Trek, it's the basis of the Prime Directive and why you don't give anti-matter reactors to cave men. In the case of the Meta-Genome, it's not technology that Starfleet has earned. It is technology they stole from the Shedai and are trying to reverse engineer. Whether you believe this is nonsense or not is up to you but I do think Star Trek takes this stance that cultural maturity is required to properly use knowledge.

Maturity doesn't just happen. You develop it through learning. So refusing to let yourself learn something new works against developing maturity.

I feel Star Trek's portrayal on screen has been a bit schizophrenic as Julian shows that he's a perfectly normal guy that doesn't have any kind of innate drive to evil. While Soong's Augments seem to immediately jump into the desire for world domination.

And as I said, the Augment arc explained that as the result of errors in the creation of the original Augments. Soong didn't create his own Augments, he stole Augment embryos left over in cold storage from the original 20th-century experiments, the same ones that created Khan. He tried to improve them and correct their defects, but failed on his first try.

In real life, as someone who has any number of ailments, I see no difference between it and preventative medicine. However, at the time of "Space Seed" it was all too easy to associate it with the eugenics movement of previous years and it seems the kind of people who create Augments are not too far from such forebearers.

"Space Seed" didn't even mention genetic engineering, since the concept wasn't very well-known at the time. The closest it came was "engineered through selective breeding," meaning the same old-school technique used to breed new plant and animal strains since antiquity. No doubt Carey Wilber meant Khan's people to be the result of one of the eugenics projects that were attempted in real life the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In real life, those all failed because they were based on incompetent, racist theories, but Wilber basically went with the science fiction postulate "What if they had succeeded?"

Also one of the most common Star Trek plots is "malfunctioning bleeding edge technology." Because the Federation struggles to properly integrate their own advances.

But it has shown advances. Kirk destroyed or shut down pretty much every android or supercomputer he ever met (though he didn't mean to in Rayna's case). But Picard and Janeway embraced AIs as trusted members of their crews. A technology that looks frightening at first becomes more accepted over time. Which was why it was such a bad bit of worldbuilding for DS9 to claim that a fear of genetic engineering with its roots in the 20th century was still in effect 400 years later.

Yes, the motives of Phlox is to play God and nurture one race at the expense of another. So, ironically, he's violating the spirit of the Prime Directive while keeping to the letter. So, "Dear Doctor" just feels so off even if you ignore the moral element.

That's wrong. Phlox's whole argument was that they shouldn't take sides, that they should do nothing and let nature take its course. In his mind, the outcome was already decided by evolution. He just accepted the inevitable, like a doctor dealing with a terminal patient. And he wasn't taking the Menk's side, just raising the question of whether saving the Valakians would hurt the Menk. Acknowledging one side of a question doesn't mean endorsing it, it just means trying to make sure every side of the question is heard and considered. Phlox merely added the side of the question that Archer wasn't considering, to show that there were valid considerations on both sides of the question and that it wasn't a simple decision.

 

[Charles Phipps]

That's wrong. Phlox's whole argument was that they shouldn't take sides, that they should do nothing and let nature take its course. In his mind, the outcome was already decided by evolution. He just accepted the inevitable, like a doctor dealing with a terminal patient. And he wasn't taking the Menk's side, just raising the question of whether saving the Valakians would hurt the Menk. Acknowledging one side of a question doesn't mean endorsing it, it just means trying to make sure every side of the question is heard and considered. Phlox merely added the side of the question that Archer wasn't considering, to show that there were valid considerations on both sides of the question and that it wasn't a simple decision.

Phlox's motivation in the episode is his belief that "nature taking its course" would result in the extinction of Valakians and the ascension of the Menk that he was impressed by the growth of. The road of doing nothing is, by itself, intervening because it's a choice to do nothing when someone is dying on the roadside. Given that we have seen the Enterprise(s) deliver medicine to plague victims and intervene in stopping species extinction events before (like that time they stopped the guys illegally manufacturing stuff in a 19th century world), it means that Phlox felt the circumstances here were different and that was essentially the liberation of the Menk to inherit the world. Its an action that requires more motivation because, again, the Enterprise delivers medical relief all the time.

 

[Christopher]

Phlox's motivation in the episode is his belief that "nature taking its course" would result in the extinction of Valakians and the ascension of the Menk that he was impressed by the growth of.

I think you're mixing up the cause and effect there. He's not saying he wants that outcome and that his personal opinion should dictate the fate of a species. He's saying that his assessment is that evolution on that planet is designed to bring a species to a preprogrammed end so as to clear the board for a successor species.

The road of doing nothing is, by itself, intervening because it's a choice to do nothing when someone is dying on the roadside.

It's clearly stated that they have as much as two centuries left and that they could still find a path to survival on their own. (Weirdly, this is the second place where I've had this debate just this week.)

Given that we have seen the Enterprise(s) deliver medicine to plague victims and intervene in stopping species extinction events before (like that time they stopped the guys illegally manufacturing stuff in a 19th century world), it means that Phlox felt the circumstances here were different and that was essentially the liberation of the Menk to inherit the world. Its an action that requires more motivation because, again, the Enterprise delivers medical relief all the time.

What's different is that those are cases where the species' extinction is due to an outside factor, while in "Dear Doctor" it was posited to be the natural end of their life cycle. The problem is that the episode used a clumsy science fiction premise that muddied the message. It was trying to be a metaphor for end-of-life issues, the principle in medicine that there comes a time when a patient's death is inevitable and a doctor's focus should be on helping guide them to acceptance and ease their final days, rather than fighting against it. Unfortunately, trying to apply that principle on a species level is scientifically absurd (though it's hardly the dumbest idea in Trek biology) and clumsy as an analogy because of the difference between individuals and species. So what it was trying to do didn't really come across clearly, and is widely misunderstood.

 

[Charles Phipps]

I stand corrected.

 

[valkyrie013]

Well, To me, the Valakians and the ascension of the Menk is very comparable to the Andorian situation.
As discribed, some type of mutation in the andorian genome caused the fertility period to be shortened to i belive 5 years, and it being hard to make 1 baby during that time.
They didn't ascribe that mutation to any outside influence, so it was a "natural selection" type of thing that was happening, Same as the Valakians, The andorians were dying, ( and the Aenar were already extinct) and it was a gentic problem.

The Valakian situation would be different if it was a Zero sum game, that there was only so much room, so many supplies etc. to go around, and the Menk rising to accendency would be hampered if the Valakians were to stay. But its not a Zero sum game, there suffecintly technically evolved that they have the abiltiy to colonize other planets, get other materials. So them being cured would not hurt the Menk evolution.
Now if the Valakian situation wasn't able to be cured, that Phlox didn't find anything, would have made the episode better because there wouldn't have been a "Grey Area" that Phlox and Archer would have to do anything, maybe Phlox just finding a way to mitigate the symtoms, or make it less suffurable. and have the Menk accendecny as a bright spot and maybe give a moral lesson to the Valakians to not take there frustration out on the Menk.

 

[Christopher]

Well, "Dear Doctor"'s ending was supposed to be ambiguous, to leave it open to question whether they'd made the right choice -- much like "A Private Little War" for TOS or "Tuvix" for VGR. There's certainly room for debate. Unfortunately, a lot of people misunderstand what the episode was positing or what Phlox was actually arguing for in the first place, because the flawed science of the premise confuses the issue. So they end up arguing against things that the episode didn't actually say. It's too bad, because it was trying to do something pretty interesting and thought-provoking, but didn't quite get it right.

 

[Charles Phipps]

Well, "Dear Doctor"'s ending was supposed to be ambiguous, to leave it open to question whether they'd made the right choice -- much like "A Private Little War" for TOS or "Tuvix" for VGR. There's certainly room for debate. Unfortunately, a lot of people misunderstand what the episode was positing or what Phlox was actually arguing for in the first place, because the flawed science of the premise confuses the issue. So they end up arguing against things that the episode didn't actually say. It's too bad, because it was trying to do something pretty interesting and thought-provoking, but didn't quite get it right.

Weirdly, I think the idea of Archer encountering a culture that's dying because of reasons that he can't necessarily fix is a very rich premise. It's just something that, again, is not really done well by the premise. I occasionally played with the idea in my head and wondered if the story would have been differently received if, say, the problem wasn't the Valakians dying because of pollution or something else they'd done to themselves.

For the kind of, "Doctors should just accept death" you probably need something more like Gulliver's Travels of all things. The Valakians harvesting the organs of the other race to keep themselves alive (ala the Vidiians who are probably a much better argument for just accepting death as a race) or slowly turning themselves into machines ala Vedek Bareil since it was a serious quality of life issue.

But that's just fanfic speculation. Thank you for sharing those details, Christopher, it changes my opinion of the episode.

 

[Charles Phipps]

My Review on Amazon and Goodreads:

PATHS OF DISHARMONY by Dayton Ward is a book that has become more relevant with age. When it was written in 2011, the Brexit referendum was not years to come and most people thought Britain leaving Europe wasn't going to happen. Coincidentally, Paths of Disharmony is the story about how reactionary forces are attempting to make one of the founding planets of the United Federation of Planets (Andoria) leave.

This include demographics (racism), isolationism (racism), refugees (racism), and a few other other issues that might genuinely have merit by comparison. An explosive scandal engineered by foreign powers (The Tholians in this case) results in their political process being interfered with as well. What passes is a binding document that only goes through by a hair and potentially dooms Andoria to a dark future.

Actually, I think Dayton Ward is a lot brighter about Andoria's future than will happen even if it's portrayed as a mistake. As we have seen with the real life events that mirror this book, removing oneself from a much larger institution even voluntarily is a lot harder than it seems and can be devastating if both parties aren't cordial.

I really enjoyed this book because of its accidental political relevance and the fact I can read it as Star Trek commenting (however inadvertently) on events that are affecting friends of mine is a big boon. No matter how the RL Brexit affects things, the one in the book is handled quite well. Plus there's the usual Star Trek action and some ties to the events of Star Trek: Vanguard.

9/10