• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x06 - "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach"

Hit it!

  • Total voters
    199
Thank you. A story doesn't need a clear ending.

"Time Enough At Last" in the original The Twilight Zone is a good example. We don't need to find out what happened to Henry Bemis in the postnuclear rubble of his city after his reading glasses break. We know they break, we know what that means to the character on top of surviving a nuclear war and we don't have to have his ultimate fate revealed to us.

The story is a message about futility. And war. And the smallest of losses having the greatest of emotional impacts. Whether Bemis lived for a while after breaking his glasses or died right after the episode faded to black is inconsequential to the fact we had a story that fulfilled its purpose. Sometimes leaving the audience hanging on an unresolved shock moment or questioning of right and wrong or if what they just watched was fair or unjust IS a complete story.
 
The story that the episode was based upon didn't have a resolution. Indeed, it did not even admit that one was possible.

"Lift us up...", at least, presents the issue as a technological one, and any technological problem invites a technological solution.
 
cooleddie74 said:
And it should leave us uncomfortable. Trek at its best leaves us a little shaken and concerned. Pike didn't get a silver platter end to that story and it enriches that universe because it wasn't so cut and dry.
Click to expand...

I agree, Trek and SF in general often holds a mirror up to the real world. The point of the story, in my view, it to compare the fictional world, in which one child is deliberately made to suffer, to ours, where millions do as a result of circumstances within our control which we ignore. Poverty, disease, hunger are all within our ability to end, but we choose not to. Even within wealthy nations it still happens. Here in the UK there are volunteers running food banks for people who can't afford the essentials and families without secure homes, next week we're putting a golden crown on someone's head because he was born into a particular family. You may believe that this is the right thing to do and I'm not saying it isn't, but if we can afford to do the latter perhaps we should try to do more about the former. And I'm just as complicit in this as everyone else. Sometimes a fictional story can help us to see the world in a different light and shake up our complacencies.

Well. That got more serious than I'd intended. I'll get back to discussing fictional starships now.
 
My only problem with "Lift Us Up..." is that it implied that the Federation also deliberately deprives some members of its society so that others might live in wealth (because the writers wanted the viewers to think about whether or not their present-day societies do that), when instead the writers should have been very clear that no, the Federation does not impose misery on some so that others might live in comfort, we grew out of that when we abandoned capitalism after World War III thankyouverymuch...

But other than that it was an excellent episode, if a touch derivative of LeGuinn.
 
I would welcome a sequel to this episode where the First Servant is rescued or avenged, if they did it right. A "Best of Both Worlds" to follow "Q Who". I would be equally fine with them never mentioning that floating abomination again.

As long as they don't bring it back for a "Descent" type mess.
 
Oddish said:
I would welcome a sequel to this episode where the First Servant is rescued or avenged, if they did it right. A "Best of Both Worlds" to follow "Q Who".
Click to expand...

I mean, the problem is the Federation can't do anything about that because it would violate the Prime Directive. And also it would be a blatant act of imperialism that violates the sovereignty of Majalis. The Federation has every right to condemn their system and restrict contact or trade with them, but to act to force the Majalans to change their system would morally be no different from, say, the U.S. overthrowing the Iranian government in Operation Ajax to install the Shah.
 
Sci said:
I mean, the problem is the Federation can't do anything about that because it would violate the Prime Directive. And also it would be a blatant act of imperialism that violates the sovereignty of Majalis.
Click to expand...
I never said the Federation had to do it. There's a whole planet full of exiles who were determined to blast that place out of the sky. Without the Federation's interference, they would have succeeded. The Federation will not be there to oppose them next time...

What happens when the ones who walk away from Omelas come back with satchels full of dynamite? We may find out...
 
Oddish said:
I never said the Federation had to do it. There's a whole planet full of exiles who were determined to blast that place out of the sky. Without the Federation's interference, they would have succeeded. The Federation will not be there to oppose them next time...
Click to expand...

I mean, okay, but if you're producing a television show then the question is what do you do with your regular characters if they're not allowed to do the big thing that the episode's plot is about.
 
Sci said:
I mean, okay, but if you're producing a television show then the question is what do you do with your regular characters if they're not allowed to do the big thing that the episode's plot is about.
Click to expand...
I never said that HAD to make a sequel to this episode. Just that they if they found a way to do it right, I would welcome it. If they don't return to Majelis, that will be perfectly potty too: I can fall back on head canon.
 
Oddish said:
I never said that HAD to make a sequel to this episode. Just that they if they found a way to do it right, I would welcome it. If they don't return to Majelis, that will be perfectly potty too: I can fall back on head canon.
Click to expand...

Gotcha.

I wonder if maybe this could be an SNW novel...
 
If the writers let the Federation off the hook - claim that Alora was wrong when she suggested that they were not guiltless, insisted that Earth and the Federation are better than allowing such trade-offs or neglect - then they're letting us off the hook, too. And then the story is a waste of time.

For its first twenty years, Star Trek was about people like us, living in a better world - not evolved saints living in a perfect one.

Who hasn't had enough of Trek "commenting on humanity and the world around us" by passing off all of our shortcomings onto guest stars and supernumeraries buried under foam rubber and alien blackface, while telling the story from the perspective of Starfleet officers whose hands (like ours?) are clean?
 
Last edited:
Sci said:
I mean, the problem is the Federation can't do anything about that because it would violate the Prime Directive. And also it would be a blatant act of imperialism that violates the sovereignty of Majalis. The Federation has every right to condemn their system and restrict contact or trade with them, but to act to force the Majalans to change their system would morally be no different from, say, the U.S. overthrowing the Iranian government in Operation Ajax to install the Shah.
Click to expand...
It wouldn't violate the 23c PD as the race involved is spacefaring and knows of alien life on other worlds, so the PD doesn't apply.

The Federation can't do anything because the planet in question is not a member. So unless the Federation wants to start a war and dictate its values on another culture...
 
Noname Given said:
It wouldn't violate the 23c PD as the race involved is spacefaring and knows of alien life on other worlds, so the PD doesn't apply.
Click to expand...

TNG "Redemption, Parts I & II" established that the Prime Directive also applies to warp-capable cultures -- that was why the Federation couldn't openly support Gowron's faction, because it would violate the Prime Directive to interfere in a Klingon internal conflict.
 
Sci said:
TNG "Redemption, Parts I & II" established that the Prime Directive also applies to warp-capable cultures -- that was why the Federation couldn't openly support Gowron's faction, because it would violate the Prime Directive to interfere in a Klingon internal conflict.
Click to expand...
TNG is 100 tears later. That's WHY I referenced 23c (for 23rd century) Prime Directive.
^^^
That's another reason I prefer the 23rd century (TOS) era vs. the TOS feature film era, or the TNG 24th. Century era of Star Trek.
 
Noname Given said:
TNG is 100 tears later. That's WHY I referenced 23c (for 23rd century) Prime Directive.
^^^
That's another reason I prefer the 23rd century (TOS) era vs. the TOS feature film era, or the TNG 24th. Century era of Star Trek.
Click to expand...

I dunno, "don't get involved in someone else's civil war" seems like the sort of thing that would be part of the 23rd Century PD as well.
 
Sci said:
I dunno, "don't get involved in someone else's civil war" seems like the sort of thing that would be part of the 23rd Century PD as well.
Click to expand...
There are some clear differences between the Prime Directive in TOS and TNG, so it’s not too hard to believe—moreover, the directive is portrayed as far more rigid in the TNG era.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top