That's exactly how I interpreted it. So, throw me in the "Not Normal" camp.
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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The lengths some people go to, to justify the unjustifiable...
Let's hope your convictions are never put to the test.
It's not justification on my part. It was my reading of the scene and a super common trope in a lot of fiction. Star Trek isn't my personal belief system.
But my point is that no real person would do that. it's not about reading the scene.
Might be more fair to say you wouldn’t reason like that.
I would think a lot of people, myself included, would not want to be in debt to a malevolent being, nor would they want to benefit from his manipulations. “I don’t like who I’d have to thank.”
Who knows what “the other shoe” is going to be?
No, I think that’s a pretty reasonable response.
I don't know. Some people might if they believe the cost is too high. I would not want to deal with Q at all. But, even if this was my conviction and it was was "put to the test" why do you care? It's my choice and my eyes or whatever, not yours.
A lot of real people do some pretty strange stuff. Would most? Maybe. Maybe not. But NO real person?
That's just hyperbole for the sake of disagreeing with Geordi's action.
That's just hyperbole for the sake of disagreeing with Geordi's action.
One last thing then. Geordi wasn't in debt to anyone. Riker's gift had no strings attached (unless some people think otherwise). So if Geordi had someone to thank it would have been Riker at most. Geordi didn't make any deal to receive that gift.
People (that I know) are not so flippant with their handicaps. As a matter of fact, I broke my arm many years ago and it took me months to get my arm back (there was no magic bone reconstructer back then..
) the way it was before the accident (and many decades after it still hurts sometimes). If someone had healed my arm instantly as a gift, I am certain that I wouldn't have refused because I didn't like that person, much less if I didn't like the person who gave them that power. Let's not forget that nothing was asked of Geordi in exchange for that gift.
With Q there are always strings attached. Picard was aware of that and so was the crew. So, it wasn't as simple as being painted here. Geordi may have wanted Riker's gift but he knew what was being asked of Riker.
Yes, I know what was asked of Riker...nothing. If later Riker had decided to stop being a Q. It would have nothing to do with Geordi.
But Geordi keeps making these strange remarks. Remember in Insurrection "How can I keep my eyes knowing what it cost these people?" Yeah, I cost them... nothing!!!
Well, that's the way it is, I guess...
Then he perceived a cost and that is his choice. This isn't some pragmatic decision making. Picard and Riker perceived a cost to Q's gift to. So, as you say, that's the way it is.
The Enterprise crew were fully prepared to destroy it if it posed an imminent threat to the ship or to a nearby colony, but where they were, the shields were holding up and they had some time before a colony was threatened, so they wanted to take a chance to communicate with it to show that they were intelligent beings like it was and that intelligent life was being harmed by its feeding. Like Picard said, feeding animals aren't evil, they're just feeding.
She unilaterally took away any option to find a peaceful solution first and destroyed as far as they knew a unique lifeform. It's the antithesis of the entire point of Starfleet and the franchise Star Trek itself. Seek out new life, not destroy it when you have time to try and change its feeding patterns through communication.
Geordi wasn't interested in staying on the planet to maintain his eyesight, so the implication was that if he left the Baku planet the same problem that caused his blindness before would return. So the only way to maintain his eyesight would be to let the Son'a extract the particle doohickeys from the rings and destroy the Baku's home, thereby making the particles available to the Federation under contract with the Son'a. So that is a cost Geordi was not willing to take.
Also, going back to Q giving Geordi his eyesight, as much as he reveres the opportunity to see the sunset with his own eyes, he also does not want to give up the multiple spectrums of light and other sensors his VISOR affords him, which give him better than human sight. Plus he realizes that Q rarely gives a gift without expecting something in return, so if not Riker, he might torment Geordi someday too. It's like taking a gift from the mob. You know there's probably strings attached.
The same thing could be said about AIDS, it doesn't want us any harm, it's just reproducing. I mean with that kind of excuse you never get rid of any danger.
That thing had killed millions of people and it would have gone on killing people until it was stopped. Picard et al. were willing selfishly to risk it escaping and destroying another settlement because they were protected against it. That's cowardly. You don't put the lives of PEOPLE in anger just because you keep telling yourself how great you are for "seeking new life". Even if it's a life that kills and kills again. That life has also conspired with an android to kill people and it spared the android proving that it was capable of plotting and allying itself with beings. At this point, the only decent thing to do was to kill that thing. Like Ripley said in Alien II, "it's the only way to be sure."
If you wish to maintain the pretense that you are highly evolved civilized people the first thing you don't do is put innocent human/humanoid lives at risk just keep a thing that's killed millions of them alive.
Leave aside the absurdity of depriving billions of people of a cure for their illnesses because it would inconvenience a few hundred.
Note that the few hundred could still benefit from the particle thing the difference is that they would have to share it with millions of other people!
Geordi didn't know that he would lose his eyesight as soon as he left the planet. Why would he assume that btw? It makes no sense.
I mean we're used to reversible old age since TOS' "The Deadly Years" but reversible youth is even more ridiculous. So why would someone assume that something so idiotic would happen without any proof of it?
It's as if Geordi had said "Well, we're in an ST movie so anything especially the most absurd could happen!"
But well, that's definitely on a par with warp 10 turning you into a lizard...
Back to the subject at hand, it's as if Geordi has a martyr complex. The more he passes on possibilities to improve his eyesight for some bogus reason, the better he feels about himself.
How can anybody relate to someone like that is beyond me.
Yeah, it's another bogus reason. Riker could very well have given Geordi his eyesight back and then decided not to be a Q anymore. In which case Geordi's sight would have been completely free of charge but hey, far be it from to deprive a would-be martyr of an occasion to become one.
Again, I can't for the life of me, relate to someone like that.
But as always YMMV.
I completely relate to that. So, maybe it is that way for some people. Just because it isn't relatable to you doesn't make completely unrelatable or outside of the human experience..
We have a say in my (first) country of election (I've since migrated to another country.
): "Tous les gouts sont dans la nature."This means that "all tastes are to be found in nature" I don't know if you have an idiom that says that exactly... If you know of one please tell me.
Anyway, what I mean is, there you go.
My personal favorite is "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."We have a say in my (first) country of election (I've since migrated to another country.
This means that "all tastes are to be found in nature" I don't know if you have an idiom that says that exactly... If you know of one please tell me.
Anyway, what I mean is, there you go.
Not bad but we already have that one it's: "La beauté est dans les yeux de celui qui regarde"
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