Tonight on "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach"...
Are there any good reasons to not want to be in the Federation?
- Thread starter suarezguy
- Start date
Tonight on "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach"...
Absolutely. Not just billions presently, but everybody from every conceivable generation and species going forwards. Hundreds of trillions.
The whole reason Insurrection failed for me was its failure to balance the stakes. The benefit was just too good, the price too low.
Either make it 600 million people to move, or drastically curtail the benefits of the prize.
Is that how many people it takes before it becomes wrong?
It’s impossible to put a number on… which is the point that Picard is making I suppose.
But 600 versus everyone who is living and everyone who ever will live… What would Spock do? He’d clear them out. The needs of the many and all that. Hell, McCoy who normally acts as the counterpoint to Spock in these kinds of arguments would most likely say ‘I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I agree with Spock’.
I get that it’s not right to uproot people from their homes or whatever, I get what Picard is saying… but the prize is just too great, and that’s on the writing. It doesn’t make sense for someone to walk away from what basically amounts to a cure for every disease, plus the key to immortality. So make the stakes lower.
Make it a cure for a plague or something that could fix a problem immediately, compared to the more long term of doing the research for a year or so and letting thousands die in the process.
Welll… if Insurrection had been a TOS movie rather than a TNG movie, no he wouldn’t — because it was going to be a movie about Our Guys seeing an injustice and being willing to fight for it. In other words, the scriptwriters wouldn’t have let him approve or help enact evacuating the Ba’ku, because that just wasn’t going to happen in the film!
Hence the flaw in the movie really... I mean, Star Trek stories hinge on these kinds of moral quandaries... it's where the drama comes from after all.
So really, not to be glib, but the solution seems to be 'have a different idea for your movie'.
I still think INS needed a conference room scene between the three parties.
I also still think the best thing the Son'a could have done would have been to reveal that they were descended from the Bak'u and, as such, this was an internal matter and the Federation should respect their own Prime Directive.
I also still think the best thing the Son'a could have done would have been to reveal that they were descended from the Bak'u and, as such, this was an internal matter and the Federation should respect their own Prime Directive.
Indeed, DS9s Progress told the opposite side of that story, with poor Mullibuk being forcibly removed from his home so Bajor could turn Durna into a power source. I'm a lot more torn on the "right and the wrong" of that situation than I am on the "right and the wrong" of Insurrection.
And while Spock would consider that "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one" to be an axiom, the whole point of Star Trek III was that the needs of the one were of equal import. Something that Amanda reminded Spock of in STIV.
Acting on the assumption that there truly was no other source of energy for Bajor than to destroy that moon, I understand that the provisional government was in the right to forcibly resettle Mullibok. The fact that I see no possible happy ending for him does not change that. One man enduring a lifetime of feeling isolated, miserable, and useless is a tragic event. But it's less tragic than thousands of people suffering through a freezing winter with no heat.
The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one in this case.
Mullibok was a Bajoran citizen living in Bajoran territory. The government had the legal authority to move him and destroy the moon. We might debate the ethics, but the ethics are a separate issue.
In contrast the Federation was not the legal authority of Ba'ku. Neither were the Sona. In this case the legal and moral restrictions are interconnected. Nobody had authority to remove the inhabitants.
In contrast the Federation was not the legal authority of Ba'ku. Neither were the Sona. In this case the legal and moral restrictions are interconnected. Nobody had authority to remove the inhabitants.
Not really, unless there was an alternative way to provide the energy that was needed.
I can empathize with Mullibok, certainly. I know Kira could not have shot him dead the way he asked her to, but I believe that leaving him alive and forcing him to exist within the society that destroyed his home was a far crueler fate. But despite all that, there were thousands of people whose continued survival needed that energy. Mullibok was as much a casualty of the Cardassian occupation as the Bajorans who perished in the mines.
Classic conflict of idealism vs. pragmatism, and Star Trek usually sides with idealism. Unless it involves a teary-eyed Ocampa, a hologram of Geordi LaForge, or a Romulan senator's shuttle.
The nebula, and the planet, was in Federation space. And they dudn't originate on that world. So there is some legal possibilities, at least.
She wanted him to LIVE. I truly hope that he did.
What if you are a species that wants peace instead of war? And the Federation has just entered into a war with the Klingons / the Cardasians / the Borg / the Dominion...
Sisko would, Kirk probably would, I think Spock would have still at least disapproved of Kirk doing so.
That level cure/benefit is indeed a strong temptation but in context of society where people can already live past 100, 130, already have greatly improved health/minimal health problems I would hope we would not be that much grasping, at the expense of others, to get even more.
If that was the case, or especially if it was an original series episode, then the Ba'ku would have fired upon the Enterprise and Kirk would be so sad and shocked and/but outraged and decided to go through with it because they attacked rather than just accepting going along with it in the first place.
If I remember right, and I admit it’s been a good decade or more since I saw it, whatever it is actually makes them younger. Ie: potential immortality.
No one would pass that up, surely?
I was also thinking last night, even if the Federation did pass it up, you can be damn sure one of the other powers would move in and take it. First thing was the Ferengi who would surely see monetization opportunities.
It’s just too powerful a thing to have as a prize, with too short a sacrifice to attain it.
A better way might have been that to use it would actually have negative health effects on the inhabitants. Using it would mean killing them, rather than relocating them say.
It’s just a very silly premise for a movie.
As a general principle.
