COUNTDOWN TO DARKNESS 5-page preview

[Christopher]

I think the intent in the original series was that Starfleet couldn't go into primitive cultures and mess with them.

Except that by using the judgmental word "primitive," you're playing into the very ethnocentric and colonialist assumptions that the PD is supposed to caution us against. The PD is about recognizing that it's wrong to define other cultures as "primitive" or inferior just because they have less technology -- that they are still just as capable of thinking for themselves and are better-qualified than you are to understand their own societies and find the right solutions to their problems.

This is why the 24th-century take on it in "Pen Pals" and especially "Homeward" is so ugly -- because it's forgotten that the PD is about respect for other cultures' equality and independence and has fallen back into the colonialist mentality of "They're too primitive and childish to think for themselves and so we have to make the decisions about their fate without giving them a say in the matter."

So I don't know how Picard works that out, given his absolute interpretation of the Prime Directive in Pen Pals, and the mis-interpretation of it in I Borg. When Picard had the chance to wipe out the Borg, he should taken the shot and infected them with the virus that Data and Geordi created.

Huh? That had nothing to do with the Prime Directive. That was about basic decency, about recognizing that Borg drones were victims rather than monsters and that it would be immoral to exterminate them.

Moreover, people keep forgetting that he did infect them with a disruptive meme: Hugh's individuality. The effect was the same: an entire population of drones was neutralized, taken away from the Collective. (Presumably whatever failsafes intervened to protect the rest of the Collective from the individuality meme would've been equally effective against the destructive program, and neither would've spread any farther.) It's just that they were liberated to think for themselves rather than mass-murdered.

 

[The Wormhole]

Well, after reading issue 4 I got mixed feelings on the series. It's better written than Countdown, but Countdown was better set-up for XI than this was for STID. What exactly did this set up for the movie? Spock is still dealing with trauma relating to Vulcan's destruction, and we likely know where the ship from the trailers came from ("This ship will not fit" "It will"). But otherwise, nothing. Hell, at the end we have Pike telling Kirk to forget everything that just happened which seems to me a fancy way of saying "nothing that happened here has any real relevance to the movie." The closest thing you can get to a reset button without resetting anything. Reminds me of Family Guy's joke about reset buttons "isn't this basically a middle finger to the audience?"

 

[Christopher]

Well, after reading issue 4 I got mixed feelings on the series. It's better written than Countdown, but Countdown was better set-up for XI than this was for STID. What exactly did this set up for the movie?

There's some plausible speculation about that in the review thread in the Trek Literature forum. See particularly post #236. I haven't read the comic, just excerpts and spoiler discussions, but I think some things are being fairly clearly set up. Though naturally it'll be easier to see the connections after we've seen the film.

I don't think we should expect this comic to be a prelude in the exact same way that Countdown was, because it's not a lead-in to the exact same kind of story. The '09 movie's plot was driven by events that had happened in the 24th century "before" the events of the film. Therefore, it was simple enough for the preview comic to depict those events. Presumably the filmmakers aren't just copying the same formula -- there's no time travel this time, for one thing -- so naturally the nature of the prefacing work is going to be different, the lead-ins more subtle, perhaps.

 

[cbspock]

I think the intent in the original series was that Starfleet couldn't go into primitive cultures and mess with them.

Except that by using the judgmental word "primitive," you're playing into the very ethnocentric and colonialist assumptions that the PD is supposed to caution us against. The PD is about recognizing that it's wrong to define other cultures as "primitive" or inferior just because they have less technology -- that they are still just as capable of thinking for themselves and are better-qualified than you are to understand their own societies and find the right solutions to their problems.

This is why the 24th-century take on it in "Pen Pals" and especially "Homeward" is so ugly -- because it's forgotten that the PD is about respect for other cultures' equality and independence and has fallen back into the colonialist mentality of "They're too primitive and childish to think for themselves and so we have to make the decisions about their fate without giving them a say in the matter."

So I don't know how Picard works that out, given his absolute interpretation of the Prime Directive in Pen Pals, and the mis-interpretation of it in I Borg. When Picard had the chance to wipe out the Borg, he should taken the shot and infected them with the virus that Data and Geordi created.

Huh? That had nothing to do with the Prime Directive. That was about basic decency, about recognizing that Borg drones were victims rather than monsters and that it would be immoral to exterminate them.

Moreover, people keep forgetting that he did infect them with a disruptive meme: Hugh's individuality. The effect was the same: an entire population of drones was neutralized, taken away from the Collective. (Presumably whatever failsafes intervened to protect the rest of the Collective from the individuality meme would've been equally effective against the destructive program, and neither would've spread any farther.) It's just that they were liberated to think for themselves rather than mass-murdered.

The example Gene used, was the Spanish Missionaries and how they would go into an area and try to turn the local population into citizens of Spain, teach them a new religion, etc. It is judgmental. They do use the word primitive in their definition.

And what did Picard get for his bad decision...a bunch of rogue borg that still murdered colonists because they fell in with Lore. They also had the collective to deal with. If you are going to fight a war, you fight to win you don't drag it out. Like Kirk's definition of War in a Taste of Armageddon. Picard was looking for a clean solution, and war is never clean.

-Chris

 

[Christopher]

And what did Picard get for his bad decision...a bunch of rogue borg that still murdered colonists because they fell in with Lore.

It's nonsense to blame Picard for Lore's actions. If you save someone from getting hit by a car, and that person you saved later gets talked into joining a militant cult by its fanatical leader and used as a suicide bomber, you're not the one responsible for the deaths, because you couldn't have predicted the consequences of your act of kindness. I mean, you might just as well blame all the people who grew the food and made the medicines that kept the cult leader and the eventual bomber alive long enough to reach that point. It's nonsense. The only person responsible for Lore's crimes is Lore. He's the one who knew what he was doing and who made a deliberate choice to inflict harm.

They also had the collective to deal with. If you are going to fight a war, you fight to win you don't drag it out.

As I already said, whatever failsafes insulated the rest of the Collective from Hugh's individuality would've presumably also insulated it from the more destructive program. So it's erroneous to claim that using the destructive program would've successfully wiped out the Borg. It would've just killed the drones aboard Hugh's cube, or whatever linked cohort of cubes Hugh ultimately managed to infect, and made no more difference to the Collective as a whole than Hugh's individuality did. It wouldn't have accomplished more; it would've just dealt more death for no real gain.

 

[Franklin]

Came across this very interesting and well argued article by Edward Clint from "Critical Thinking" that does a pretty good job trashing the Prime Directive (or at least the PD when it is absolute). It argues the PD is morally indifferent and blindly dogmatic, a rule upheld "by force and not reason." The consequences of not violating it are irrelevant. A person can let millions or billions die, and feel principled and self-satisfied for having done it.

http://www.skepticink.com/incredulo...ective-star-treks-doctrine-of-moral-laziness/

More on topic, it won't ruin the movie for me, but it's distressing to see the TNG version of the PD (the strictest of all) in STID. What Kirk did on Nibiru was correct. There should be no punishment. What's he supposd to say, "I'm sorry I saved hundreds of millions of people from extinction. It won't happen again." I'd be more wary of the character of a Starfleet officer who could coldly turn his back on potentially millions of people only because they are too "primitive" to be saved. Too bad that volcano couldn't have held off until those folks invented warp drive.

It would've been neat (and make it even more morally ambiguous) if Nibiru was a 21st century Earth type of industrial culture with billions of people. Someone captures the Enterprise over the volcano on a video camera. It'd be all over their version of Youtube in hours. There are thousands of videos of UFOs out there, and while they may have created a cottage industry on the subject, they've hardly changed our cultures in any dramatic macro manner.