Cyrano Jones

[Tim Thomason]

It is against this background that the concept of "punishment" appears utterly inconsistent, and the idea of imprisonment for twenty years particularly outdated. If a crime is considered that severe, then surely the criminal is considered deserving of psychiatric treatment, and if that doesn't work, it's not twenty years but life on Elba II.

I agree that it makes absolutely no sense, based on what we've seen and what we'd imagine a futuristic, optimistic penal system would be. The only thing I can gather, is that Spock is joking around or, perhaps more logically, making Cyrano sweat a little with some half-truths. Perhaps the old penalty, yet-to-be officially stricken from the books, for transporting dangerous animals is twenty years imprisonment. But its understood that he'd be charged with a different crime or the judge would give him a lesser, more humane sentence.

Perhaps this would explain the ridiculousness of "sentencing" Jones to cleanup K-7 for 17.9 years. As stated above, there are undoubtedly better ways to clean that place up than one exasperated trader. And I have to believe that DSK-7 would rather have neither Mr. Jones nor the tribbles to contend with on a daily basis. Technically, it might take him exactly 17.9 years to humanely extract and remove all tribbles by himself, with allowance for weekends and break periods and vacations and whatnot, and assuming he doesn't develop some sort of quick system. But that is 99.83% unlikely to occur.

Especially since he just ends up using a Klingon hybrid creature to viciously slaughter and devour all the tribbles.

 

[Drone]

If he wasn't concerned with the possible exposure of his work, why was it so important for him to recover Van Gelder?

Let's not confuse two things. Dr. Adams was a scientist and therapist of good reputation who had achieved verifiable results and apparently kept getting lots of government resources as the result. It's just that he used those resources for evil in his futile quest to cure the incurables. During those twenty years of a brilliant career, there was some point at which he stepped over the line and apparently never stepped back. And anything done beyond that point would require murder or worse to cover.

However, most of what he did at Tantalus still passed muster, as we saw the muster passing, in many a pleasant derriere shot...

Timo Saloniemi

I wonder if by this time, Adams was really concerned about making a genuine therapeutic breakthrough at all, curing the incurable as you put it, as opposed to being a Torquemada in his own private fiefdom. To control, experiment, and essentially just make merry with the unfortunate souls consigned to his largely impenetrable little outpost of Hell. I don't recall exactly if he typified his work on the neutralizer as being relatively recently completed, but he definitely had a committed cadre of fellow travelers that had to have taken some time to establish. At some point, he was going to be unable to conceal the existence of his funhouse from Starfleet, but I think his intention was to be lord and master, not healer, for as long as he could play it out.

As a trivial addendum, there was a scene near the end of the episode that I always found noteworthy. One of Enterprise's Red Shirts was securing a member of Adams' staff. I guess it's the rough no nonsense manner that he handled the goon, with a forceful shove and his phaser in the guy's face that impressed me as being different somehow from other instances we viewed of Security doing their job. As I said, kind of trivial.

Oh your last comment above by the way, well put sir, well put!!!!

 

[Timo]

Interesting issues all. I'm getting a definite classic mad scientist vibe from the Doctor, of him doing what he thinks is great good while muttering under his breath "They don't understand, these doubters, but I will show them, oh, I will..." and twisting the controls one step beyond redline. There's necessarily some pleasure-of-being-in-control involved...

...But there's also the fact that Adams initially thought he would get away with the van Gelder thing by simply giving Kirk a guided tour. That failed, if only because of the timely mind meld that put the seed of doubt in Kirk's mind (and made him wonder why Adams had been so evasive about the neutralizer initially). And Adams then had no Plan B, being forced to improvise something that was certain not to work when Kirk and Noel broke into the neutralizer room. Surely an evil overlord would have backup plans to backup plans, all of them full of cruelty cleverly engineered during the quiet nights when only the screams of the patients interrupt the Doctor's scheming and mustache-twirling...

he definitely had a committed cadre of fellow travelers that had to have taken some time to establish

...Including the innocent Dr. Noel. It doesn't take much to gather a "cadre" if you are working over the counter and doing good work! And the supposedly not thoroughly evil van Gelder went along with Adams until very late in the game, all through this cadre-building stage at least.

Apart from that, Adams' one or two goons looked like they had gotten the neutralizer treatment already, so that'd be a push-button solution, too.

One of Enterprise's Red Shirts was securing a member of Adams' staff. I guess it's the rough no nonsense manner that he handled the goon, with a forceful shove and his phaser in the guy's face that impressed me as being different somehow from other instances we viewed of Security doing their job.

That's an interesting nuance - especially regarding whether the goons were neutralized victims of the Doctor. Not worthy of polite humane treatment because they no longer were human (and never could recover)? Or manhandled because of the great evil they had knowingly done? Somewhat opposite takes on the issue.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JonnyQuest037]

He escaped custody.

Ah, no - the dialogue doesn't state that. The dialogue states that Mudd was left in custody, and then proceeded with the further crimes he describes. So the step of how he departed custody is left open, and the briefness of that suggests he just got further therapy (the effectiveness of which on this twisted mind was "disputed" in his criminal record, but at least he never repeated a specific crime!).

Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is most likely the correct one. Mudd escaped custody, and then committed more crimes.

 

[Timo]

Bullshit. Escape would have been mentioned (especially because such a big deal was made of the second escape).

Besides, the simplest explanation must bow to the most interesting one in drama anyway.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Bullshit. Escape would have been mentioned (especially because such a big deal was made of the second escape).

Besides, the simplest explanation must bow to the most interesting one in drama anyway.

You constantly interpreting TOS episodes in the exact opposite way from which they were written used to be amusing, if somewhat perplexing. Now it's largely annoying.

 

[Timo]

How do you divine how they "were written" if you can't even stay true to the semantic content of the text? Conjuring up a second escape is doing the work of the writer for him, but that work can be done in many different ways. And yours goes against the very spirit of the exchange: escapes are supposed to be a dastardly thing that the heroes expose from behind Mudd's verbal acrobatics, but there's no exposing attempted regarding this putative "first escape".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Scotchy]

I thought he got his nuts ripped off by a Glommer and bled out.