LadyNRA said…
I know you won't agree with me but this happened the way it should have (at least as far as Archer's involvement).
Anything is possible.
But you’re only agreeing with the show, which was excellent because of its flaws and mistakes. My ability to yell at the tv calling Archer a moron, and before that Trip a moron is what makes this slippery slope so fun, because it’s a painful and unavoidable slow motion car crash.
LadyNRA said…
Archer was also an ambassador so he did not want to interfere with another culture's way of doing things
Hmmm. Since the day Archer was born, he’d seen a Vulcan foot crushing his father’s neck. Jonathan must’ve been itching to meddle as soon as he got into space, pulling all the aliens up by their bootstraps until they were as cool as he was… Whatever that might mean?
Broken Bow: ignored Klingon customs and forced Klaang to live, possibly dishonoring his family name for the next 10 generations, and telling the Vulcans to shut up when they tried to educate him about this protocol…
Fight or Flight there was this race of organ harvesters which had an economy that relied on gutting people wandering in neutral space foolishly unprotected and milking them of there vital juices. Archer morally decided that this was wrong and almost got milked himself for his hubris.
Terra Nova The Novans were human, so do they count?
The Andorian Incident Archer decided that the Vulcans were not allowed to “spy” on their aggressive and warlike nieghbours inside Vulcan controlled space which changed the balance of power completely in that region forcing the Andorians to attack the Vulcans for being outted as pricks. Archers sence of right and wrong started a war and a whole lot more.
Fortunate Son Archer cites manifest destiny, that fleets of NX star ships will be operating as a frontier police force and that the Norsican piracy migration patterns ought’a (*&^ off. If the Norsicans can’t steal from humans and eat humans then their culture is pretty much (*&^ed. But they got *&^%ed by a bluff. Too stupid to survive.
Rogue Planet these creatures were being hunted for quasireligious reasons and ecologically speaking their numbers were being maintained so that licensed hunts could continue in perpetuity. This was different from when Chenney went to that ranch to shoot a caged Turkey and missed… If the Turkey could talk, and if it was given a 5 minute head start. It’s more accurate to compare this to what the worst of Germans Soldiers were allowed to do to the French during WWII “for fun” since it was an occupying army handling a quelled and subservient civilization that wasn’t in a position to complain about mass executions of the joy division, because the hunter race that those hunter people belonged to, owned that moon and chose to let those metamorphs(Cattle can be sentient.) run “free range” for entertaining hunts, rather than strip mine the place and then force mating the metamorphs to be grown in kennels for meat and clothing (Isn’t it disgusting when you have to allow others the right to practice slavery?). Archer removing the “tell” from the metamorph is no different from time traveling to an 18th century US plantation and giving Colonel Sander’s faithless salves a dozen or so machine guns.
Mauraders Archer did not teach these idiots how to fish. He gave them fish. He even did it as difficultly as possible, since we know Reed is a crack shot who must have been under orders not to kill those 6 klingons in 2 seconds with his first 5 shots. Archer ripped off the plot to Blazing Saddles and then T’Pol kunfu-ed people and Reed missed his targets dozens of more times. These miner people are weak and if they’re not preyed up by the devils they know, then someone else, possibly worse, is going to come along who will kill them for standing up for themselves.
Precious cargo Archer really thinks he is a police man when most of the time he’s backpacker trader from a fledgling startup civilization.
Judgement Wow. Archer stole some slaves. And got thrown into jail because the slave owners(conquered territory, whatever, the Klingons owned them.) got super pissed about the interference. And that’s like 2 episodes before Cogenitor? Christ on a bike! Maybe it was Klingon jail, which taught Archer that stealing slaves, is not emancipating slaves, which will result, for him, in a world of pain?
Archer did what Trip did over and over again. The only difference is that the Nissians were nice and didn’t understand that they were bastards. That, and I
so think the Nissian Captain rooted Archer. It was straight out of Happy Days when G’Kar was teaching Archer how to drive, and they were on their way to Inspiration Point…. I’m not joking.
LadyNRA said…
(because of the cogenitor) if it was going to ruin their chances of remaining friends with these people.
South Africa from 1950 to 1993? Germany 1939 to 1945? Cuba 1957 – Now? Iraq 1967 –2003?
In all relationships there is a deal breaker. Moral or otherwise. Say, what if a famous football player invites you and his friends around to his place to bet on dog fights in his back yard, but there’s nothing immoral about this at all because (I (*& you not, that they actually used this next bit on Fox News as a credible defense because he’s form the south) “it’s part of his culture”? Sure, this footballer forces animals to kill each other for entertainment and profit, but how cool is it to hang out with real live Football players form TV?
Slavery is obviously not a deal breaker for Archer since in season 4 he openly went into business with the Orion’s, but you see how well that worked out going into business with the morally bankrupt if only from a human perspective.
LadyNRA said…
Let's face it, no person is perfect. No race is perfect and without doubt no species is perfect. If the major flaw with this species is that they treat their cogenitors like tools rather than people (or like pets)
Turkey basters and dildos. Basic economics says these congenitors should be alpowerful if supply and demand counts for anything but… Do you think that there is a Cogenitor black market? From how the couple of Nissians described it, they got their Cogenitor from some sort of national health service? Unless they did have to pay someone else for it’s services, which turns it all into literal prostitution as well as slavery, that rather than being evenly distributed by the government that you can’t go to some place that looks like a used car lot or a chop shop to buy your own? And then they start putting Cogenitors on the commodities market, and entering them in “Dogshow” like events?
LadyNRA said…,
it wasn't up to Archer to try to change it then and there. Good relations with that world would have been vastly preferable to start off with and PERHAPS, eventually, that species might rethink their position. And if they didn't, would it be worth it to humanity, new to space, to go around trying to force our culture on those people. So while I was sympathetic to the cogenitor's plight,
What I was saying abut a “deal breaker”. He just had to withdraw. I mean what if the Cogenitor wasn’t a marital aide but a food source? She was used as readily as a snickers bar already if you ask me, but one of the many points is that, no matter what Trip did wrong, and he never should have gotten into that situation in the first place, he practically took someone’s million dollar sports car for a joyride into a brick wall, so I find it astounding that Archer still considered that a relationship with these people was possible and that the only thing in the way of a Nissian human alliance was this Cogenitor was asking for asylum. The existence of Congenitors as a “slave race” should have been enough to keep these people at arms length, not that one of them getting uppity stops Archer from getting his hands on their warp technology. Its like saying Hitler was grand except for that business with the Jews? It wasn’t Archers job or business to fix these people but still he desperately wanted to hop into bed with them, when their culture was fundamentally and dangerously flawed.
Did you consider where the Congenitors come from? Well, from a regular pregnancy of course, but you have this couple who wanted a baby and got a “thing” instead. Not a baby at all. But some soulless thing sex toy. Are they honor bound to hand it into the state? Should they try and see if it can pass and raise it as one of the acceptable genders? Or do they ru7n away and sell it to the black market? Because fiscally there has to be an incentive to hand the Congenitors into the government, otherwise it’s a waste of a pregnancy isn’t it? And if you are the golden goose who is producing Congenitor after Congenitor, if the government isd polite enough to replace your unsatisfactory pregnancy with a pregnancy for a “real” child, then surely that “threesome” would run the risk of becoming property themselves too wouldn’t they?
LadyNRA said…I would have, as a captain, been aware that that good initial relations were more important than the removal of that one person from the vissians ship. There was no way to know for certain that she/he was going to kill herself. It was one possible outcome. Her making changes once she got back was another. We couldn't tell.
The suicide was gravy. If the suicide was supposed to convince Trip that he was wrong, then that’s just whack, because that Congenitor was going to be forced to have sex with hundreds a couples a year for the rest of its life on pain of persuasion and locked in a closet when she wasn’t being used to make other peoples babies… Has any one really discussed that this Congenitor has been divorced of any parental rights for the thousand and thousands of babies her dna has brought to life? Mother of a fricking nation? I’d imagine that in the beginning that the Congenitors were like ant queens with everyone else running around to please them. This current status quo is a funny reverse of my hypothesis that it would have taken a couple generations for the Congenitors to forget they were ever the undisputed rulers of Nissia.
LadyNRA said…
Personally, the only wrong choice made here (aside from Trip's interference in the first place...as altruistic as it may have been) was that Archer shouldn't have taken out his anger so harshly on Trip for it.
I loved it how the Nissians were so nice about it. No threats. They probably would have allowed the Asylum and everything. But Archer was right that every other time he thought he had the moral authority to change a culture (se above list) he had been wrong, not that he remembered any of that as he ripped Tucker a new one for being just like him.
LadyNRA said…
I sorta got the feeling that I was missing something, like I'd missed a scene or an episode where Trip had made similar mistakes, but I couldn't recall anything. So I thought Archer's anger a bit much.
Alliance. Technology. Protection. Everything the Vulcans held back on. Imagine (Not that it was possible since the Brits had their racist moments as well. Churchill on India is just so awful.) if in WWII that the English (And the rest) wouldn’t let the Americans help because of segregation? That they wouldn’t let America kill Germans until they let the black folks sit at the front of the bus and eat where the white people ate, oh, and legalized interracial marriage if they hadn’t already, I think that happened in the mid thirties?
LadyNRA said…
Phlox's approach would have worked fine. He was consistent in this as he was with the species in Dear Doctor. He looked at their problem but accepted that this was how they lived at THAT time, and that perhaps, interference, wasn't the best course of action.
Archer wanted to integrate with the Nissians. How’s that for noninterference? But then he was just as hunger for a powerful ally with the Orions too, but I already talked about that. Just imagine the size of the Nissian fleet which would have followed Archer into he Delphic Expanse to tack against the Xindi at an even keel?
LadyNRA said…
He (and Archer) ultimately provided medicines to alleviate pain and suffering but left it up to them to either find the cure on their own, wait for another warp tech species to help them or to let genetics follow it's course. I don't think Phlox was insensitive to the plight of those people or the Menk. He just had the wisdom to step back after a while and not play God. We see later on in Similitude that playing God (in terms of creation) had such painful consequences, even if it ultimately helped Trip suruvive. Phlox trusted Archer by that point, enough that he was willing to provide ALL options and let the captain make the best choice he knew how.
Which brings us straight back to organ harvesting like in Fight or Flight. Phlox said the technology was outlawed. So they were criminals before they were gods.
You think they just touch fingers like Q or something?
