True or False: Dear Dr. is most morally bankrupt trek episode evar

[Edit_XYZ]

For someone claiming other people are trolls you are using the smiley a bit too much. Not really helpful to the discussion.

I'm using the smiley when it's appropriate.

And horatio83 claiming he's not supporting a 'moral relativism' position when he is blatantly supporting such a 'moral relativism' position (which is: morals don't apply to this group - ANY group - because 'it's not their way') IS a WTF claim, deserving of smileys.

 

[Mach5]

I recommend looking up SFdebris' review of this awful episode on his site or youtube. He actually has a fair background in science, and he points out how awful the episode was better than a lot of posters here could.

It's here:
http://blip.tv/sf-debris-opinionated-reviews/ent-dear-doctor-review-5896615

And it's pure gold. The guy pretty much buries it.

I especially liked one of the user comments:

As a trained biologist, this episode enrages me every time I think of it, because it's so stuffed full of pseudo-science nonsense. Please, don't... don't make me elaborate, because I could write a whole treatise about this episode's misrepresentation of evolution (and I have done so before on occasions), and how the writers are idiots trying to peddle a 1940s scifi view of it, and it owuld end up with me foaming at the mouth in rage. So yes, there's not even room for debate there: Archer and Phlox did commit genocide for ideological reasons.

 

[horatio83]

If you follow moral values, you ask this alien being - do you want to die or do you want to live? Do you want to live as a slave or as a free being?
And every conscious being has the power/right to make these decisions for herself.

Trip asked this question (it is obviously more complicated, the cogenitor would not have been able to answer your simple question as it was not even aware of being a slave; Trip had to show to it what it hasn't known yet to make it realize that it is a slave) but was unable to realize it materially for the cogenitor which made it, having realized that these new-found possibilities can never be realized, commit suicide.

Just going around and asking abstract questions that create empty dreams and cause suicides is not ethical behaviour. If you really wanted to help the cogenitors you'd have to help them in their emancipatory struggle. You'd need agents that can penetrate the security measures just to be able to reach the cogenitors and talk with them, not to mention providing them with the material means they need in their struggle. You have to fight (obviously peacefully) against a whole planet.

These are the radical implications of ethics I wrote about in my last post. Abstract ethics and half-assed efforts do not suffice.

 

[Miss Lemon]

And horatio83 claiming he's not supporting a 'moral relativism' position when he is blatantly supporting such a 'moral relativism' position (which is: morals don't apply to this group - ANY group - because 'it's not their way') IS a WTF claim, deserving of smileys.

I really wouldn't know, I stopped following this dicussion 3 pages ago when you chimed in and had your little buddy moment with BillJ.

 

[Miss Lemon]

It's here:
http://blip.tv/sf-debris-opinionated-reviews/ent-dear-doctor-review-5896615

And it's pure gold. The guy pretty much buries it.

Talk about another self-righteous guy.

 

[bluedana]

Interesting perspective, but that is one person's opinion. Other people, obviously, disagree with that assessment. Each person here gets to have an opinion, whether it is that Archer/Phlox was right, that they were wrong, or something in between. There is no correct answer here, no matter how invested you are in your own opinion.

HopefulRomantic has asked everyone very nicely to tone it down. I am not feeling so nice, so listen up. Enough with the personal attacks, the grudges dragged in from other discussions, and the general disrespect. If you have something new to add, feel free to do so -- civilly. If you've made your point once or several times already, then move on. Any more ad hominem shots will get infractions for trolling. Clear? Good.

Carry on.

 

[horatio83]

It's here:
http://blip.tv/sf-debris-opinionated-reviews/ent-dear-doctor-review-5896615

And it's pure gold. The guy pretty much buries it.

Talk about another self-righteous guy.

I always thought that the great thing about the Prime Directive is that it is complicated and messy, that it makes you feel uneasy and think again and again and again about it.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

If you follow moral values, you ask this alien being - do you want to die or do you want to live? Do you want to live as a slave or as a free being?
And every conscious being has the power/right to make these decisions for herself.

Trip asked this question but was unable to realize it materially for the cogenitor which made it, having realized that these new-found possibilities can never be realized, commit suicide.

As said, Trip made a morally defensible choice, but hugely uninspired one.

The Congenitor was a sex slave; but a VERY important sex slave for her masters.
If she would have known how to 'play her cards', she - and all others like her - could have been free within mere years.

And she WANTED to be free. She made a choice - to die rather than live as a slave.
You know what, horatio83? It was HER CHOICE to make; when she knew a little more, she considered her life as cattle worse than death. And before, just because she didn't knew enough to realize just how miserable her existence was, does NOT mean she was not utterly miserable.

I have little sympathy for her masters' unrealised benefits; I have little sympathy for slavers in general.


Why was Trip's behavior uninspired? He naively thought the Congenitor would be free immediately and gave her far too naive hopes. He should have prepared her for a lenghtier struggle, not give her such foolish expectations.
Trip needed to read more history.
And because he was naive, it ended with a tragic suicide rather than the liberation of a third of a species from slavery.

 

[Sindatur]

I keep seeing you repeat that view, and I must say that I find it an odd one. Ethics is based on sentience and self-awareness, and a concept of rights, not whether one is an alien or not.

Are you saying that if an alien species of intelligent advanced beings were discovered, ethics wouldn't apply to them?

I am not saying that we should fly out there and deny who we are. We should certainly stand behind our values and apply them.
Most of the times this is probably not a problem, when you meet a ship in distress you help those folks.

But when you meet e.g. folks like the Klingons you encounter a species that is in many ways the literal opposite of yourself. You are life-loving and democratic, they are death-loving and aristocratic. If we were on Earth I would not hesitate to say that they have to be crushed (ideologically) as they violate our universal principles. But in space this is not possible unless you wanna wage war against them.
What actually happened, a fragile alliance after centuries of conflict with somebody who is so very unlike yourself, is the better way.


Obviously I am not caring about pragmatic solutions but about the radical implications of ethics. Down here slavery is something which has to be crushed as it violates an absolute human value. But not up there as we have no right to postulate our human absolutes as universally, galaxy-wide absolutes. If everybody did that this would lead to total war.

So in my opinion the very absoluteness of our values paradoxically forbids us from applying them to other species. Naturally a more pragmatic view upon ethics would come to different conclusions.

So, you're saying the Federation should tolerate the enslavement of the Menk, but, should be found guilty of Genocide for providing the Genetic cure for the Valakians? Actively supporting the enslavement of one race by saving another? You honeslt don't see the hypocrasy of that position? If you're going to interfere, you have to interfere in both situations, if you're going to ignore one, you need to ignore both. Taking the Valakians side is no less immoral than taking the Menk's side, IMHO.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

And horatio83 claiming he's not supporting a 'moral relativism' position when he is blatantly supporting such a 'moral relativism' position (which is: morals don't apply to this group - ANY group - because 'it's not their way') IS a WTF claim, deserving of smileys.

I really wouldn't know, I stopped following this dicussion 3 pages ago when you chimed in and had your little buddy moment with BillJ.

So - you responded to me while having no idea about what I was discussing?
Yeah...

 

[horatio83]

So, you're saying the Federation should tolerate the enslavement of the Menk, but, should be found guilty of Genocide for providing the Genetic cure for the Valakians? Actively supporting the enslavement of one race by saving another? You honeslt don't see the hypocrasy of that position? If you're going to interfere, you have to interfere in both situations, if you're going to ignore one, you need to ignore both. Taking the Valakians side is no less immoral than taking the Menk's side, IMHO.

Yep, you'd have to help both or none. If you apply human ethics galaxy-wide you cannot play pick and choose, you'd have to cure the Valakans and liberate the Menk. Folks who argue against the PD ignore the latter.
Or you stay out and help neither (at the cost of the other) which is obviously what I am arguing for

Not that I have to, Phlox showed neatly that we we perceive as enslavement is a symbiotic relationship. On other worlds (like our own) one sentient species might have killed the other, here they found a stable and peaceful relationship. Precisely because we lack Phlox' view, precisely because we only know our own history and cannot perceive this as anything else but slavery we have no right to interfere on either side.

 

[Mach5]

Talk about another self-righteous guy.

Yep, plenty of self-righteousness, simplifications and neat little catchphrases on one side of the debate.

Instead of going at him ad hominem, you could have at least tried to offer some kind of valid counter argument.

He pretty much destroyed the pseudo-scientific foundations on which the whole (so-called) "dilemma" was based. And once that is out of the picture, the rest crumbles by itself.

 

[BillJ]

Yep, you'd have to help both or none. If you apply human ethics galaxy-wide you cannot play pick and choose, you'd have to cure the Valakans and liberate the Menk. Folks who argue against the PD ignore the latter.
Or you stay out and help neither (at the cost of the other) which is obviously what I am arguing for.

Free them of what exactly? By Phlox's account they're currently nothing more than intelligent chimps who, may, make an evolutionary leap in a thousand years. You going to make sure that the Valakians put them in zoos' and in forests?

I just re-watched this episode and they don't offer a single reason to save the Valakians other than human stupidity. That, my friend, is the writer leading you to their preferred moral conclusion.

I think the SFdebris (Maximum Strength-Fuck Off! is comic gold) review really says it all, you don't evolve to die. Evolution is about adapting to your environment to survive.

 

[Sindatur]

So, you're saying the Federation should tolerate the enslavement of the Menk, but, should be found guilty of Genocide for providing the Genetic cure for the Valakians? Actively supporting the enslavement of one race by saving another? You honeslt don't see the hypocrasy of that position? If you're going to interfere, you have to interfere in both situations, if you're going to ignore one, you need to ignore both. Taking the Valakians side is no less immoral than taking the Menk's side, IMHO.

Yep, you'd have to help both or none. If you apply human ethics galaxy-wide you cannot play pick and choose, you'd have to cure the Valakans and liberate the Menk. Folks who argue against the PD ignore the latter.
Or you stay out and help neither (at the cost of the other) which is obviously what I am arguing for

Not that I have to, Phlox showed neatly that we we perceive as enslavement is a symbiotic relationship. On other worlds (like our own) one sentient species might have killed the other, here they found a stable and peaceful relationship. Precisely because we lack Phlox' view, precisely because we only know our own history and cannot perceive this as anything else but slavery we have no right to interfere on either side.

Ah, OK, I got lost, I guess. I thought you were one of the ones calling inaction with the cure Genocide, and then to see you advocating we can't impose our values against slavery on other cultures, it was confusing.

 

[BillJ]

I wonder if there are any episodes or books that actually look at both sides of the Prime Directive?

 

[horatio83]

I think that all good Prime Directive episodes offer both perspectives. In Dear Doctor it is the human vs. the Denobulan perspective (and despite personally totally siding with Phlox I really would have loved to see the original ending where Archer did not adopt Phlox' suggestion and helped the Valakans), in Cogenitor you sympathize the entire time with Trip and in Pen Pals they decide to help the little girl. I am sure there are more such PD episodes but these are the only ones which come to mind.

 

[BillJ]

I think that all good Prime Directive episodes offer both perspectives.

Then there hasn't been a truly good Prime Directive episode yet.

 

[horatio83]

Why don't you say then immediately that you want to see an anti-PD story?

I might be a hardcore PD advocate but gee, I rather take one of these controversial stories that shows both perspectives than something one-sided which just reinforces my opinion. Being challenged via the dialectics of a story is more fun.

 

[BillJ]

Why don't you say then immediately that you want to see an anti-PD story?

I want a balanced Prime Directive story.

 

[Mach5]

I think that all good Prime Directive episodes offer both perspectives.

Then there hasn't been a truly good Prime Directive episode yet.

I loved the shit out of "Who watches the watchers".