Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x10 - "A Quality of Mercy"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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I'd almost hazard a guess that the showrunners went so far as to rip off "The ones who walk away from omelas" and risk angering Le Guin fans precisely so they could troll the audience and see how many people condemning Alora for her Warhammer 40k golden throne torture setup for the "greater good" would then be cheering on the exact same concept with Pike just a few episodes later.(Especially as Alora's people have had centuries to search for an alternative while Future Pike can't have had nearly that long)
You mean like some people see the difference between an adult man choosing to sacrificing himself versus a brainwashed kid?
First Servant's not human. We don't know their maturity rate equivalency. Furthermore, First Servant's intelligence level exceeded that of many adults.
Furthermore, the brainwashing in both cases is the same. In both cases the brainwashing is "true". They suffer for the greater good.
Sounds real-world-y enough.
You know, at this point, I don't think it counts as Pike "choosing" anything anymore. Whatever valor his character was intended to demonstrate by not shoving a bunch of kids out of the way to be first out the door when the alarms went off has been eaten away by all this Final Destination time-travel nonsense.
Yes, if you change the premise of the episode then the premise is changed.
Hmmm...Spock's sacrifice suddenly means a whole lot less now.
"The needs of the many outweigh..."
"Shut the fuck up, Spock! We're beaming you out and nobody is sacrificing themselves for some great good nonsense. That shit went out in the 21st century!"
Oh, I see. I'm not a "real" fan because I'm not obsessed with reconciling things that just don't fit together.
Face it, long-running franchises all include retcons and continuity issues. It's actually people who can't let go and just enjoy the show for what it is that are the poorer for it.
Getting off Pike and Time Travel for a bit, I think the episode is much more interesting in its aversion of typical Star Trek politics.
The moral lesson of, "Sometimes you need to shoot some people."
Its a tough argument that "appeasement of fascists leads to war." Its not necessarily a wrong one, though. The biggest lesson of this episode is that Pike is a Picard-esque man willing to overlook mass murder because he believes in preventing more mass murder and that people are inherently good. Yes, overlooking ALL the time travel stuff. However, as we see with the "Those Who Walk Away from Omelas" episode and underscored here, there are a decent chunk of people who are fully aware of the consequences of their actions and choose to kill and terrify anyway.
Evil is not just a word. It is a state of mistaking virtue for weakness and cruelty for strength. Kirk is a savage by his own words in TOS and sadly was the savage they needed. A very un-Roddenberry idea but perhaps a Fontana or Schneider one they would have approved of.
What DOES one do with enemies who simply do not negotiate in good faith or value the lives of their people over power and wealth?
Its something the writers of the TOS era had familiarity with and sadly we have familiarity with now.
The moral lesson of, "Sometimes you need to shoot some people."
Its a tough argument that "appeasement of fascists leads to war." Its not necessarily a wrong one, though. The biggest lesson of this episode is that Pike is a Picard-esque man willing to overlook mass murder because he believes in preventing more mass murder and that people are inherently good. Yes, overlooking ALL the time travel stuff. However, as we see with the "Those Who Walk Away from Omelas" episode and underscored here, there are a decent chunk of people who are fully aware of the consequences of their actions and choose to kill and terrify anyway.
Evil is not just a word. It is a state of mistaking virtue for weakness and cruelty for strength. Kirk is a savage by his own words in TOS and sadly was the savage they needed. A very un-Roddenberry idea but perhaps a Fontana or Schneider one they would have approved of.
What DOES one do with enemies who simply do not negotiate in good faith or value the lives of their people over power and wealth?
Its something the writers of the TOS era had familiarity with and sadly we have familiarity with now.
Una and La'an were ultimately responsible for curing the crew, so the big clue would be in the medical logs. Those can't be really be explained away without outright falsification, which we now know didn't happen. M'Benga, technically speaking, should be on thin ice himself unless the 'kid in the transporter buffer' things was totally kept under wraps.
Hi my name is Dr. Mark Piper and I'm here to tell you Joseph M'Benga to turn yourself into the slammer with Una while I replace you. Maybe if I'm feeling nice I'll let you spend probation as a junior doctor on my team.
On that note, the Jedi have no problem doing the same to kids in their care, brainwashing thenm to forsake attachments and go into combat. It is off topic but I do remember you being fine with that (which I suppose is ok since it's a different franchise but I like to point out double standards
)
On that note, the Jedi have no problem doing the same to kids in their care, brainwashing thenm to forsake attachments and go into combat. It is off topic but I do remember you being fine with that (which I suppose is ok since it's a different franchise but I like to point out double standards
In fact, I have a problem with taking children into combat and think that is a pretty awful thing for Jedi to do. I don't consider Buddhism to be brainwashing, though.
But yes, crazily I do see a difference between "raised by monks and joining a monastic order" to "being a human sacrifice." Yes, I do in fact actually see a problem with human sacrifice and objectively believe there's no moral ambiguity in the episode.
They're stand ins for the rich who kill lots of children in foreign countries to sustain their wealth.
Kirk: "Tell me I'm wrong."
Pike should have. Kirk's maneuver was a terrible tactical choice. Starship aren't subject to gravity or atmosphere. An Immelmann style roll makes the ship a bigger target to an enemy to its rear. The better choice would have been a rotation around the z axis.
Thank goodness this is an alternative reality.
Pike should have. Kirk's maneuver was a terrible tactical choice. Starship aren't subject to gravity or atmosphere. An Immelmann style roll makes the ship a bigger target to an enemy to its rear. The better choice would have been a rotation around the z axis.
Thank goodness this is an alternative reality.
Maybe M'Benga's falsification of medical logs & hiding his child in the transporter buffer catches up with him and StarFleet eventually pulls him from his spot in the future.
That's why we get to see Bones take over.
We have a whole thread for this.On that note, the Jedi have no problem doing the same to kids in their care, brainwashing thenm to forsake attachments and go into combat. It is off topic but I do remember you being fine with that (which I suppose is ok since it's a different franchise but I like to point out double standards
And fans are nothing if not double standards.
I don't know about savage so much as controlled warrior. Kirk embraced being a soldier, knowing that his decision could alter whole planets in terms of the course of their history. If force was necessary he would use it in a controlled way to move towards a positive outcome. He was no less the diplomat but more willing to employ the big stick. Pike is too, but in a different way.
Both of them are wrong! Where's Edward Jellico when you need him? He should be the captain of every starship in every time period.
Strictly speaking it's Piper first, then McCoy.
Fuck that.Both of them are wrong! Where's Edward Jellico when you need him? He should be the captain of every starship in every time period.
It should be Robau.
I concur, Kirk was doing fine when when he doved down, but when he rose back up for the Immelman, I was like WTF?
That kind of stuff works better in atmosphere and with smaller fighter craft, not with big ships like the Farragut.
The manuevers you choose with a big ship and a fighter in 3D space should be drastically different.
I don't think Edward Jellico was born by this period in time.
It's a very interesting thing because Pike in DISCO was described as one of the few Federation Captains with serious combat experience and "the fighting-est captain in the fleet" here but here attempts to make peace so poorly by his humanitarian requests that he utterly bumbles the thing.
I'm wondering if the time travel was affecting him or he really did screw the targ here because of his personality.
For what it's worth I do consider my religious upbringing to be brainwashing, being forced to church by my mother even when I was crying not to go. The negative repercussions into my adult life well into the present day are too numerous and severe for me to go into here...
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