Obsession - Did Kirk Do the Right Thing?

[Commishsleer]

Was watching Obsession today and I'm thinking even with the wisdom of hindsight whether Kirk did the
'right thing' to pursue the creature. I mean this creature killed 11 years ago and hadn't been seen since. So its obviously not a profilic killer. Or maybe the 200 or so people it killed were enough to sustain it for over a decade. Shouldn't they have just made the rendesvous after Kirk knew its was going 'home'and then meet it there? later
Also was the 'creature' in the right? Starfleet people invading its home. Perhaps it was just defending its own turf.
Now the creature's home was 1000 kliight years from where they found it so they travelled at least 2000 light years in that episode and possibly longer for the rendevous. Doesn't that seem a bit far? Isn't the width of the galaxy near us about 1 000 light years?

 

[Maurice]

Isn't the width of the galaxy near us about 1 000 light years?

Try 100,000. Unless you mean thickness of the disc, which out here in the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm is about 1,000.

 

[BillJ]

Was watching Obsession today and I'm thinking even with the wisdom of hindsight whether Kirk did the
'right thing' to pursue the creature. I mean this creature killed 11 years ago and hadn't been seen since. So its obviously not a profilic killer. Or maybe the 200 or so people it killed were enough to sustain it for over a decade. Shouldn't they have just made the rendesvous after Kirk knew its was going 'home'and then meet it there? later
Also was the 'creature' in the right? Starfleet people invading its home. Perhaps it was just defending its own turf.
Now the creature's home was 1000 kliight years from where they found it so they travelled at least 2000 light years in that episode and possibly longer for the rendevous. Doesn't that seem a bit far? Isn't the width of the galaxy near us about 1 000 light years?

We don’t know what it was up to in unexplored space. Plus it was getting ready to divide into more creatures according to Spock, IIRC.

So, yeah, I think Kirk made the right call.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

The story is such that this thing is a monster, and it's about to reproduce in the millions. Its young would race through the galaxy at warp speed looking for blood.

What I love about it is that Kirk's solution is to essentially wipe out all life on an exoplanet. There is no concern whatsoever for the natural biosphere being destroyed, because there are no intelligent life forms there that we know of. And people matter more. That's very '60s.

By the '90s, the spinoff shows would never do that without a thought. Even in 1982, the ethos was "There can't be so much as a microbe..." on the planet we blow up with the Genesis device.

 

[Redfern]

The microbe issue in TWoK was not about "concern" for indigenous cellular lifeforms. Rather, Dr. Marcus was worried the presence of existing life would corrupt the results of the Genesis experiment. I mean, possible detractors would claim, "Your device didn't REALLY create life from nothing! Bacteria, viruses and other one celled lifeforms were already present. You merely accelerated their evolution!"

 

[Phaser Two]

Yes.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

The microbe issue in TWoK was not about "concern" for indigenous cellular lifeforms. Rather, Dr. Marcus was worried the presence of existing life would corrupt the results of the Genesis experiment. I mean, possible detractors would claim, "Your device didn't REALLY create life from nothing! Bacteria, viruses and other one celled lifeforms were already present. You merely accelerated their evolution!"

I disagree. Spock clearly states that the device "would destroy such life, in favor of its new matrix." A bomb that can dismantle a cloud's molecules and build a planet out of them isn't going to preserve DNA strands, or anything else. Clean slate.

It was always plain to me that Carol Marcus was afraid wiping out life in its early stages could theoretically prevent a civilization from arising in the distant future.

 

[fireproof78]

I never read it that way. Interesting.

 

[BillJ]

The microbe issue in TWoK was not about "concern" for indigenous cellular lifeforms. Rather, Dr. Marcus was worried the presence of existing life would corrupt the results of the Genesis experiment. I mean, possible detractors would claim, "Your device didn't REALLY create life from nothing! Bacteria, viruses and other one celled lifeforms were already present. You merely accelerated their evolution!"

I disagree. Spock clearly states that the device "would destroy such life, in favor of its new matrix." A bomb that can dismantle a cloud's molecules and build a planet out of them isn't going to preserve DNA strands, or anything else. Clean slate.

It was always plain to me that Carol Marcus was afraid wiping out life in its early stages could theoretically prevent a civilization from arising in the distant future.

Both trains of thought could have been at play, which is why she was so adamant about it.

 

[Metryq]

A bomb that can dismantle a cloud's molecules and build a planet out of them isn't going to preserve DNA strands, or anything else. Clean slate.

And yet Spock's own torpedo-coffin soft-landed with microbes on its surface that rapidly developed. Contamination from anywhere "nearby" would be a problem.

However, Zap is right about the cultural-political change between TOS and TWOK, or maybe TNG with the pilot episode "Encounter at Farpoint." In James P. Hogan's The Cradle of Saturn a private aerospace company upstages the Space Navy with a new engine that leaves the Navy's multi-billion dollar "new" spacecraft in the dust. One of the private company test pilots quips, "Now we've done it. They'll find some rare bug in our parking lot that must be protected."

But green activists or time travelers who expect to leave absolutely zero footprint are barking up the wrong tree. Everything is connected, and there will always be consequences. Some will always feel "guilty" about it, even if they had nothing to do with it, like the astrophysicist priest in Arthur C. Clarke's short story "The Star." (He discovers the remnants of an advanced civilization around the nova that was the star of Bethlehem.)

 

[Commishsleer]

I read an article once saying that if NASA was to land on some planet or moon or alien spaceship with life on it they wouldn't just land there or beam there like in Science Fiction stories. Like in Nomad everything would have to be sterilised so they didn't infect the planet with some Earth disease. Not that anything like that is likely to happen. Still.

 

[Metryq]

I read an article once saying that if NASA was to land on some planet or moon or alien spaceship with life on it they wouldn't just land there or beam there like in Science Fiction stories. Like in Nomad everything would have to be sterilised so they didn't infect the planet with some Earth disease. Not that anything like that is likely to happen. Still.

Outer Space Treaty
"States Parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter and, where necessary, shall adopt appropriate measures for this purpose."
https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/isn/5181.htm

 

[publiusr]

That should be adjusted to allow for pulse-Orions

 

[Delta Vega]

I wish the gaseous cloud had taken Garovick out
I mean, talk about wooden
The title was "Obsession"
Says it all really, Kirk did what he had to do, because his state of mind dictated it so

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I always understood Dr. Marcus's demand for a totally lifeless planet to be a matter of her personal ethics, not a matter of Federation law or Starfleet regulations. And even if the vampire cloud only eats iron-based blood, it is a danger for a huge segment of the Federation population, and moreover is still either (1) nonsentient or (2) self-aware, but acting with complete contempt for all other life forms.

We're not talking about a Horta here.

 

[MAGolding]

I wish the gaseous cloud had taken Garovick out
I mean, talk about wooden
The title was "Obsession"
Says it all really, Kirk did what he had to do, because his state of mind dictated it so

A captain does what he has to do when he does what is best of his ship and for his society and for all life in the universe. The captain's state of mind is irrelevant to his duty. The Captain's state of mind does not dictate what he has to do.

I believe that in "Meeting with Medusa" by Arthur C. Clarke a character encounters strange and very large alien lifeforms. And he remembers a tv program he once watched wihere an astronaut and an expert in space law talked. The space lawyer mentioned that all astronauts were forbiddin to harm alien liferoms under any circumstances. The astrounaut asked if that ment that if an alien lifeform was eating him he had to let it and the lawyer said yes, that 's it.

 

[Vger23]

KIrk did the right thing. The cloud creature was a dick and was a ruthless killer about to split into 1,000s of others. The creature had proven itself to be virtually indestructible. He had one chance to take it out, and he did. As for "killing the life on the planet..." he had to be concerned with billions of sentient lives across the quadrant, not the weeds and microbes on this one planet.

And yes, I think Picard should have put the computer virus into Hugh as well.

If it's "kill or be killed," you better be ready to fight dirty, or your days are numbered. It's that simple.

 

[Warped9]

Space is vast, and we have no idea what the creature had been up to prior to the Farragut incident 11 years earlier and in the intervening time until the Enterprise encountered it again. Given its abilities and tendencies it’s reasonable to assume it wasn’t feeding solely on just grass only on the planet it was last seen 1000 light years away.

If Spock is right and the creature was about to spawn hundreds if not thousands of others then it was a lethal menace. And not just to intelligent life on inhabited worlds.

I have also long wondered if this cloud creature had something in common with the robot planet killer from “The Doomsday Machine.” The planet killer was something purposely built to terrorize and destroy (or maybe it’s just an automated space going bulldozer run amok). Could the cloud creature not also be something aliens cooked up in a lab somewhere and it got away from them?

 

[Vger23]

Let’s be clear:

Kirk does the right thing every time.

 

[dupersuper]

If it's "kill or be killed," you better be ready to fight dirty, or your days are numbered. It's that simple.

That's hardly a very Trek sentiment...