Needs of the many being explored in an uncomfortable way.
Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x06 - "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
You must have seen a different version of TNT than did because if this were a TNG episode, you can be sure they would have gotten a 10 minute and usually somewhat hypocritical sermon speech by Picard before he beamed off.
^^^
That's one thing I never cared for in TNG.
Yep. I would much rather see Pike's rage and buried desire to beam all the children up and G.O.24 the whole fucking planet, as opposed to Picard haughtily looking down his nose and sniffing his disdain at a morally corrupt society.
You guys never noticed how TNG would give multiple viewpoints on different topics and issues in contrast to DS9(Picard and Disco) where they give one viewpoint and the other viewpoint is just cartoonish villainy.
Nope.
Hahaha...nope, not really. Picard usually just gets up and leaves in a huff if they don't listen.
"Fine, destroy yourselves." How very much accepting of different points of view.
This was not a "let the viewer decide" story. I think you fundamentally misunderstand both this and a lot of TNG. It's very rare for them not to telegraph the point of view with which they sympathize, and that has always been true.
Last edited:
TNG usually presented two sides of a situation:
The wrong side, and then the Federation side; which Picard would then give a very self-serving Splash hypocritical speech about how right/correct the Federation side was.
(And to be fair, there was the occasional variation on that theme, where it was the Federation side that was wrong, but Picard's side/view was correct; and then whatever Federation representatives were present would get a self-serving/hypocritical speech by Jean-Luc Picard.)
Last edited:
That's true. It's never an equal decision. There's almost always a right side. However there's a gulf of difference between the DS9's union forming episode where Rom is a hero in every way while Quark's anti-union efforts are simple greed and villainy. You can't give one valid reason why a union is bad? How about compare it to police unions that protect bad cops? You can still be bias towards a certain solution while attempting to be fair.
Then you contrast that with this episode where the alien has a very reasonable defense of their societal structure. I think the moral choice here is absolutely open to discussion.
Regardless of the episode's speechafying the moral of a story should always generate discussion not black and white polemics.
I have to concur with eschaton and Seveaux. I said "many" have complicating issues like addiction and mental illness that makes them less likely or able to access available services. I never said that they are the majority nor that those were the root causes of their homelessness. There are many homeless that do regularly use the services available, but because of long-term, structural, and/or societal problems they remain homeless (even if they do have access to temporary shelters or help). Furthermore, while HUD says 25% have mental illness, do they report the percentage with addiction problems? On top of that, two of the main "causes" of homelessness you link to from the National Homelessness Law Center - unemployment and poverty - might in turn be a result of or exacerbated by mental illness and/or addiction but which in turn are not listed as "causes" of homelessness.
But getting back to main point of this discussion - Raffi clearly has issues that she leans on to prevent herself from living a more fulfilling life (and if we get a Raffi/Seven series, i hope we get to explore this more). I don't think anyone (outside of the Starfleet bureaucracy portrayed only in "Maps and Legends" and "The End Is the Beginning") would refuse or be unable to help Raffi or any Federation citizen who needed help (or even any non-citizen who needed help). Can anyone outside of the writers of those two episodes envision Starfleet medical or Federation HUD personnel turning away anyone? McCoy, Crusher, Bashir, the Doctor - any would do all in their power to help someone. But those people need to ask for help or at least be noticed to get it.
After reading some discussion from Picard, apparently the Federation should force help.
I am not sure what you mean.
In the Picard subforum there was a topic of conversation around this idea that in the utopian Federation if one us presenting as mentally ill then treatment should be given, by force if necessary.
Of course the implication in TWOK is that individuals who ascribe to that philosophy voluntary sacrifice for the good of others, it's not forced on them. And that's how it works on paper in this episode, with the first servant explicitly giving their consent. There's a level of coercion at the end, of course, so they don't back out.
Which is why Spock says, "It was logical."? To quote someone else it is better for one to due than a whole nation to perish.
Well, it's an alien culture, so any comparison to our age of majority laws is pointless. But I was apparently a bit too subtle with my "on paper" comment. They've designed this whole system to get the victim to say they are ok with it, and basically groom them from birth. And even with all that they still need to "peer pressure" them into the chair. It's not really a true choice. So it's not actually a good example of needs of the many.
So, I rewatched the episode and i liked it slightly more the second time. Might be worthy up bumping up my rating of it to an 8.
Still annoyed that Pike doesn't push back at all on the idea of poverty and suffering for children in the Federation. But by his expression he does seem, as other posters indicated, to be rather resigned to just not arguing with Alora about it.
Ways the episode could have been improved:
- Give some follow-up on the dropped plot thread where Number One is annoyed that there is no way to communicate with Pike, before he suddenly flips open his communicator and says "now, number one". It seems like there must have been a deleted scene where they reestablish comms and Pike sets up a "beam me out immediately, when I signal it" plan.
- They shouldn't have made the whole thing a mystery box. Without it we could have better explored the whole "sacrifice as a central part of their society" thing. Made it a little more integral to the storytelling and would have enhanced Pike's own consideration of his future sacrifice. Upon the rewatch, the episode plays better anyway when you are not trying to figure out the rather pedestrian mystery. And the second attack ship: what, was it on remote when they faked the death of the prospective first servant? or did that whole crew sacrifice themselves for the fake out?
- It's a nitpick, but La'an saying that accessing the data tapes from the downed attack frigate would have "taken weeks" through normal channels is rather silly. When has anything like that ever been the case especially when investigating and attacker? There was no larger story point about it (for instance, neither Uhura nor La'an got in trouble; it was never even mentioned again). La'an should have just said, "I took these to analyze. But they were erased by the data wipe and further damaged in the crash, but i figured with your linguistics expertise you might be able to salvage something the computer hasn't been able to."
But like I said, it played better the second time when I was more able to concentrate on the themes being covered than the kind of boring "mystery" elements.
Still annoyed that Pike doesn't push back at all on the idea of poverty and suffering for children in the Federation. But by his expression he does seem, as other posters indicated, to be rather resigned to just not arguing with Alora about it.
Ways the episode could have been improved:
- Give some follow-up on the dropped plot thread where Number One is annoyed that there is no way to communicate with Pike, before he suddenly flips open his communicator and says "now, number one". It seems like there must have been a deleted scene where they reestablish comms and Pike sets up a "beam me out immediately, when I signal it" plan.
- They shouldn't have made the whole thing a mystery box. Without it we could have better explored the whole "sacrifice as a central part of their society" thing. Made it a little more integral to the storytelling and would have enhanced Pike's own consideration of his future sacrifice. Upon the rewatch, the episode plays better anyway when you are not trying to figure out the rather pedestrian mystery. And the second attack ship: what, was it on remote when they faked the death of the prospective first servant? or did that whole crew sacrifice themselves for the fake out?
- It's a nitpick, but La'an saying that accessing the data tapes from the downed attack frigate would have "taken weeks" through normal channels is rather silly. When has anything like that ever been the case especially when investigating and attacker? There was no larger story point about it (for instance, neither Uhura nor La'an got in trouble; it was never even mentioned again). La'an should have just said, "I took these to analyze. But they were erased by the data wipe and further damaged in the crash, but i figured with your linguistics expertise you might be able to salvage something the computer hasn't been able to."
But like I said, it played better the second time when I was more able to concentrate on the themes being covered than the kind of boring "mystery" elements.
Very young. By the looks of it, under 10.
In exchange for the suffering and life of one child every few years, there's no pain or suffering in the entirety of the society. There's no illness, no poverty, no want. For the life and suffering of one child there are no children who go hungry, or are abused, or fall ill and die.
This seems like a reimagining of the trolley problem. If you do nothing you run over 100 people, but if you switch tracks you run over one person. Most people find the idea of running over one person to obviously be the moral choice and because of that I've never found it very compelling.
However, I always found the doctor problem more interesting. You have a doctor with 6 patients. 5 patients will definitely die without organ transplants, and the remaining one person will live with minor intervention. With certainty you could take the organs from the mostly person and save 5 other people, what's the most moral thing to do?
I have a much harder time answering this question.