"Spot" is to Data as "Snowball" is to the Simpsons...
Poll Is Star Trek: Khan khanon?
- Thread starter dahj
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"Spot" is to Data as "Snowball" is to the Simpsons...
IIRC, there was a story in the TNG Sky's the Limit anthology that explained Spot's gender. Basically, Data didn't know how to determine gender of cats, asked Geordi, who just presumed Spot was male and said so. It wasn't until Worf had to look after Spot in Phantasms. Worf did know how to determine a cat's gender and realized Spot was actually female.
That seems unlikely, given that Geordi can see inside living things with his VISOR.
Besides, any responsible pet owner would get regular veterinary care for their pet, so if Data had never gotten Spot examined by a professional, that would be sheer negligence. Surely Data would've read everything there was to learn about pet ownership before he undertook it, and would not have been so careless.
Does the Enterprise-D have a veterinarian? Or an animal biologist who moonlights? Or would the regular sickbay staff, who already have to be competent in health care for multiple species, handle Spot's care?
They've got a thousand people aboard and a fair number of civilians with pets. Surely they'd make sure to have someone qualified in veterinary medicine. The original intent in TNG was that this was less a military vessel than a university village in space with a military presence aboard to protect all the scientists and their families. Quality of life on the long tour of duty was a priority, which is why they have holodecks and a bar and concerts and a theater troupe and all that. And pets are an important part of quality of life. It surely wouldn't be neglected.
According to Kathleen Sky, the TOS-era Enterprise had a ship's vet, who figures prominently in Death's Angel.
A xeno-veterinarian?
Pretty much.A xeno-veterinarian?
One of the reasons why I consider Death's Angel to be a "guilty pleasure" is the level of silliness from the shipload of ambassadors from "barnyard" sentient species, and the other reason is that the book is arguably a "double-Mary-Sue," with strong Mary-Sue elements in both the vet, Dr. Ruth Rigel, and the Special Security Division (think "kinder, gentler, Section 31") agent, Elizabeth Schaeffer.
Wasn't Rigel based on a friend of the author? I recall something in the acknowledgments referring to a real person by that name who was presumably the inspiration for the character. So more a Tuckerization than a Mary Sue.
But yeah, Schaeffer is one of the two most textbook Mary Sues in professional Trek Lit, the other being Sola Thane in Triangle.
...and Dracula, and a living pyramid...
I read that back in December and I have no memory of that.
I'm with @Christopher that it seems odd that Data wouldn't know such a basic element of pet care, and if he really couldn't figure out how the check himself I'm sure a quick 5 second scan with a tricorder would have probably been enough to tell him.
I'm not trying to sound racist or anything here, but with so many different types of life forms out there, I'm curious how exactly they were determine whether a species would be treated by a doctor or a vet. What exactly would be the cut off point where a species goes from being treated by a vet to a doctor, and if an species is originally on one side of the cut off, but then it's determined to belong on the other, would they switch? What about Matt and Kimolu on the Cerritos, would they be taken care of by T'Ana or a vet?
I guess the divide would be between doctors for sapient species and vets for animals. After all, there's more to medical care than a patient's physical characteristics. Practicing medicine with patients who can communicate, comprehend their treatment, and give informed consent is quite different from practicing medicine with patients who can't do those things, so the nature of the training, the methods, and the ethical standards would be different.
I was thinking along those lines, but it seems to me things like that would be harder to determine as we start getting into some of the less humanoid aliens. Even today there's some debate about that kind of thing, and I'm thinking it would get even more complicated when we start dealing with forms of life that are totally different from anything we have on Earth.
Although I guess by the time we get to the TNG we've been dealing enough different kinds of aliens that they probably have much clearer criteria for sapience than we do today.
Although I guess by the time we get to the TNG we've been dealing enough different kinds of aliens that they probably have much clearer criteria for sapience than we do today.
You've actually made me rethink what I said a little, because what modern science seems to show is that there's no sharp dividing line between sapience and non-sapience, that many species of animal are probably conscious and aware and have some degree of the cognitive abilities we use to define intelligence. So it's more a continuous spectrum than a borderline.
Still, as I said, there would be a fundamental difference in the nature of medical practice depending on whether or not you could have mutual communication with your patients, and whether overt consent for medical procedures would come from the patients themselves rather than their caretakers. It seems logical to me that the delineation between the professions of doctor and veterenarian would come down to that functional difference in how they're trained and how they practice, rather than any more abstract or philosophical consideration.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And trust me when I say that you really start to accept the sentience of animals when your dog purposely tricks you into giving up your spot on the couch, and then when you get pissed just smiles at you and wags your tail. I don't care what anyone else thinks, the little brat knew exactly what she was doing and planned it out perfectly.
And trust me when I say that you really start to accept the sentience of animals when your dog purposely tricks you into giving up your spot on the couch, and then when you get pissed just smiles at you and wags your tail. I don't care what anyone else thinks, the little brat knew exactly what she was doing and planned it out perfectly.
Cats are notoriously good at figuring out how to open doors.
I had a polydactyl, and she worked her extra front claws like thumbs. I would find her in the lower kitchen cabinets because she could grip the handle and pull it open, and then it would slam shut behind her.
The polydactyl gene is actually the dominant gene. In time, all cats will have thumbs. And then humanity is doomed. Doomed!
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