Dr. Gillian Taylor?

[doubleohfive]

While I get the point Christopher is making in that Gillian is the only expert on humpback whales, I find it extremely difficult to believe she's the only one on earth.

So I'd concede that Gillian is the only expert with practical experience regarding the whales. There have to be scientists on earth who have studied whales and know about them, regardless of having any experience with them.

After all, we have experts on dinosaurs today, do we not?

And if you want to really push the agenda here, it could just as easily been the case that regardless of Gillian's expertise, she was likely not very high on the totem pole in 23rd century earth, at least politically. She might have been the foremost expert on whales, but there could just as easily have been some 23rd century scientist who wanted to be the ones to handle George and Gracie and had the clout and status to make it happen.

I don't know. I've never given this minuscule ant hill of an issue based on one minor line of dialogue much thought, so who knows?

 

[Christopher]

While I get the point Christopher is making in that Gillian is the only expert on humpback whales, I find it extremely difficult to believe she's the only one on earth.

So I'd concede that Gillian is the only expert with practical experience regarding the whales. There have to be scientists on earth who have studied whales and know about them, regardless of having any experience with them.

After all, we have experts on dinosaurs today, do we not?

But her job isn't just to deliver lectures about them -- it's to keep them and their baby alive, and to make sure that they can repopulate the species. For a job like that, obviously someone with firsthand experience at taking care of live humpbacks is a far better choice than someone who's only read about them in journals.

And if you want to really push the agenda here, it could just as easily been the case that regardless of Gillian's expertise, she was likely not very high on the totem pole in 23rd century earth, at least politically. She might have been the foremost expert on whales, but there could just as easily have been some 23rd century scientist who wanted to be the ones to handle George and Gracie and had the clout and status to make it happen.

Maybe, but then there's no way Gillian would've looked so happy in that final scene. She would've been spitting mad and trying to get Kirk and the Federation Council to help her correct that gross injustice. Like I said, the overriding factor here is character, as it always should be in storytelling. The film made it crystal-clear that Gillian is passionately devoted to the well-being of George and Gracie, enough that she was willing to quit her job and break the law and trust a bunch of weirdos in the park and abandon her entire life just to make sure she was in a position to care for them. The only way she's going to be that contented in the final scene is if she knows she's achieved that goal.

 

[doubleohfive]

Well, then I guess my next question would be -- what would she need to be there for? Mammals have been giving birth to their offspring for years upon years... what would Gillian really be needed for? The last we see of George and Gracie, they're swimming off in to the Pacific. Starfleet doesn't seem all too concerned about tracking them or monitoring them at that point. Would they even be able to find the two whales after that?

Here's the another interesting idea:

How much time passes between the Bird-of-Prey crashing in the bay and the tribunal at the Federation Council? Is it at all possible that a period of months has passed, as Earth recovers from the Probe "attack," while evidentiary hearings are held reviewing the actions of Kirk and his crew? Is it further possible then that the Gracie gave birth to her calf and that the sudden urgency of having Gillian be the only one to look after them was no longer as urgent, hence her signing up for a science vessel?

About the only thing that would seem to throw a wrench in to the conjecture would be that for all the time that would have theoretically passed, Kirk and Gillian don't seem like they've seen much of each other at the end of the film, but could that just be due to their respective responsibilities? Could Kirk and his crew have been under house arrest while their trial proceeded, even though in the end they were exonerated?

 

[doubleohfive]

I found it as a .pdb (palm) file. Downloaded a reader from eReader.com.

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15001

You can read her notes here: (.doc file)

www.margaretwanderbonanno.com/files/Probed.doc

I tried opening the file on my Mac but can't, and online conversion to PDF doesn't seem to work either. Oh well.

Thanks though.

 

[Christopher]

Well, then I guess my next question would be -- what would she need to be there for? Mammals have been giving birth to their offspring for years upon years... what would Gillian really be needed for?

The ocean's a dangerous enough environment even for species that have a well-established niche there. Reintroducing an extinct species into an environment it's been absent from for over two centuries is going to be an extremely risky undertaking, especially with only a single breeding pair to work with. There's no telling how the ocean has changed in the interim -- the currents, the temperature, the population of various species, the availability of nutrients, etc. It's going to be an alien environment for them, and their learned and instinctive survival behaviors may not be adequate to sustain them. Not to mention the diseases. The ocean is a breeding ground for new strains of virus and bacteria, and G&G would have no immunity to whatever pathogens might have evolved in two centuries (which is hundreds of thousands of generations for microbes). On top of which, their primary predators, orcas, are still alive in the 24th century according to the TNG Technical Manual, so in the 23rd century G&G would still be vulnerable to their old familiar enemies as well as the new threats of a changed, alien environment. They'll need constant safeguarding and guidance if they're to survive.

Not to mention technological intervention. As someone mentioned above, a single breeding pair is not even remotely near enough to ensure a viable population down the road, because it simply doesn't have enough genetic diversity. Ensuring the long-term survival of Megaptera novaeangliae as a species would require considerable genetic manipulation to increase the diversity of George & Gracie's future offspring and descendants, perhaps even some hybridization with other surviving cetacean species.

The last we see of George and Gracie, they're swimming off in to the Pacific. Starfleet doesn't seem all too concerned about tracking them or monitoring them at that point. Would they even be able to find the two whales after that?

Why would it be Starfleet's business? We're talking about something that's happening down on Earth. That's not in Starfleet's jurisdiction. Would you expect the US Navy to be responsible for the care of endangered bison in the Great Plains? No, that's for the Department of the Interior, for civilian scientists and conservationists, etc. No doubt there are equivalent Federation, Earth, and regional government institutions, civilian research establishments, and the like who could be responsible for the management of the recovered humpbacks.

How much time passes between the Bird-of-Prey crashing in the bay and the tribunal at the Federation Council? Is it at all possible that a period of months has passed, as Earth recovers from the Probe "attack," while evidentiary hearings are held reviewing the actions of Kirk and his crew? Is it further possible then that the Gracie gave birth to her calf and that the sudden urgency of having Gillian be the only one to look after them was no longer as urgent, hence her signing up for a science vessel?

It could certainly have been months, but as I explained, the situation is going to remain "urgent" for much, much longer than that, because the ocean is full of hazards and the species will remain critically endangered until a sizeable number of whales has been born and reached maturity.

And that could take a long time. Humpback whales give birth to only one offspring at a time, and usually breed only once every 2-3 years. And it takes 5-7 years for a baby whale to reach sexual maturity. So their population is going to grow very slowly even if they don't lose any members to predators or disease or accidents. It would take decades at least to breed a large enough number of adult humpbacks to make it safe to take them off the endangered list.

So this isn't a "fire and forget" situation. Letting G&G out of their tank into the ocean may have seemed like a happy ending in the movie, but realistically it's just the first step of a difficult, dangerous process that will take a long time to see to fruition -- if it succeeds at all. It's not something Gillian could brush off after a few months, it's a lifetime commitment for her and probably for whoever she trains as her successors.

(By the way, TVH's predictions about humpback whale extinction seem, fortunately, to have been overly pessimistic. When commercial humpback whaling was banned in 1966, their numbers were down to 5000 worldwide, but now they're back to 80,000 and are no longer considered seriously threatened. So this is one case where it's a good thing that ST's predictions were wrong.)

 

[doubleohfive]

Well, then I guess my next question would be -- what would she need to be there for? Mammals have been giving birth to their offspring for years upon years... what would Gillian really be needed for?

Seriously?

As ever, I can't tell if you're trying to be sarcastic or just genuinely asking if I'm serious with my questions.

The ocean's a dangerous enough environment even for species that have a well-established niche there. Reintroducing an extinct species into an environment it's been absent from for over two centuries is going to be an extremely risky undertaking, especially with only a single breeding pair to work with. There's no telling how the ocean has changed in the interim -- the currents, the temperature, the population of various species, the availability of nutrients, etc. It's going to be an alien environment for them, and their learned and instinctive survival behaviors may not be adequate to sustain them. Not to mention the diseases. The ocean is a breeding ground for new strains of virus and bacteria, and G&G would have no immunity to whatever pathogens might have evolved in two centuries (which is hundreds of thousands of generations for microbes). On top of which, their primary predators, orcas, are still alive in the 24th century according to the TNG Technical Manual, so in the 23rd century G&G would still be vulnerable to their old familiar enemies as well as the new threats of a changed, alien environment. They'll need constant safeguarding and guidance if they're to survive.

Not to mention technological intervention. As someone mentioned above, a single breeding pair is not even remotely near enough to ensure a viable population down the road, because it simply doesn't have enough genetic diversity. Ensuring the long-term survival of Megaptera novaeangliae as a species would require considerable genetic manipulation to increase the diversity of George & Gracie's future offspring and descendants, perhaps even some hybridization with other surviving cetacean species.

I must admit - I hadn't thought of any of this.

The last we see of George and Gracie, they're swimming off in to the Pacific. Starfleet doesn't seem all too concerned about tracking them or monitoring them at that point. Would they even be able to find the two whales after that?

Why in the world would you think that was Starfleet's responsibility in any way?

Probably because Starfleet has been the main organization that we've been presented with in nearly every human-related event or circumstance. Its been shown to have all kinds of departments and divisions for just about any scenario. And even if it wasn't involved/running the project, do you think Starfleet wouldn't be involved in some capacity?

We're talking about something that's happening down on Earth. That's not in Starfleet's jurisdiction.

Oh come on. We've seen Starfleet used as the shadow institution for all kinds of things over the years. And even if we hadn't, its charter is to "Seek out new life" -- I think, if any of the claims you've been persisting about here regarding how important it is for Gillian to stay with the whales, George and Gracie would certainly qualify as "new life" to the people of the 23rd century.

Would you expect the US Navy to be responsible for the care of endangered bison in the Great Plains?

Of course not. But Starfleet is more than just a stand-in for the US Navy.

No, that's for the Department of the Interior, for civilian scientists and conservationists, etc. No doubt there are equivalent Federation, Earth, and regional government institutions, civilian research establishments, and the like who could be responsible for the management of the recovered humpbacks.

...and likely Starfleet scientists who would report back to Starfleet with their research and results. The whole reason those whales were brought back to begin with was due to a matter of planetary security. You think Starfleet is naive enough to NOT have people on the project after the fact?

How much time passes between the Bird-of-Prey crashing in the bay and the tribunal at the Federation Council? Is it at all possible that a period of months has passed, as Earth recovers from the Probe "attack," while evidentiary hearings are held reviewing the actions of Kirk and his crew? Is it further possible then that the Gracie gave birth to her calf and that the sudden urgency of having Gillian be the only one to look after them was no longer as urgent, hence her signing up for a science vessel?

It could certainly have been months, but as I explained, the situation is going to remain "urgent" for much, much longer than that, because the ocean is full of hazards and the species will remain critically endangered until a sizeable number of whales has been born and reached maturity.

And that could take a long time. Humpback whales give birth to only one offspring at a time, and usually breed only once every 2-3 years. And it takes 5-7 years for a baby whale to reach sexual maturity. So their population is going to grow very slowly even if they don't lose any members to predators or disease or accidents. It would take decades at least to breed a large enough number of adult humpbacks to make it safe to take them off the endangered list.

So this isn't a "fire and forget" situation. Letting G&G out of their tank into the ocean may have seemed like a happy ending in the movie, but realistically it's just the first step of a difficult, dangerous process that will take a long time to see to fruition -- if it succeeds at all.

And I suppose it's impossible that in the interim, Gillian trained her new contemporaries as well? Hot damn Christopher, you make it sound like she became the most important person in Earth history.

 

[Christopher]

Probably because Starfleet has been the main organization that we've been presented with in nearly every human-related event or circumstance. Its been shown to have all kinds of departments and divisions for just about any scenario. And even if it wasn't involved/running the project, do you think Starfleet wouldn't be involved in some capacity?

We see Starfleet that much because the shows are set on Starfleet ships and bases. So there's a selection bias. If all you saw of the United States was from M*A*S*H and Hogan's Heroes and JAG, you might think the US military did everything, but that wouldn't be right. Just because ST doesn't show us civilian life in the Federation, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Oh come on. We've seen Starfleet used as the shadow institution for all kinds of things over the years. And even if we hadn't, its charter is to "Seek out new life" -- I think, if any of the claims you've been persisting about here regarding how important it is for Gillian to stay with the whales, George and Gracie would certainly qualify as "new life" to the people of the 23rd century.

Starfleet is one branch of the Federation government. It's surely not the only institution in the Federation that's capable of scientific work.

...and likely Starfleet scientists who would report back to Starfleet with their research and results. The whole reason those whales were brought back to begin with was due to a matter of planetary security. You think Starfleet is naive enough to NOT have people on the project after the fact?

Planetary security is the government's responsibility, and Starfleet is one of the organizations responsible for it -- specifically, for addressing offworld threats. By analogy, the US military is not exclusively responsible for national security; that's also the purview of civilian organs like the CIA, the Secret Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, FEMA, the TSA, etc. The military and the CIA handle problems taking place elsewhere in the world, while the other agencies deal with problems within the country itself. Presumably the same is true in the Federation: Starfleet deals with threats from without, and the government agencies of the Federation and Earth deal with internal matters.

I'll grant, though, that the Probe counts as an offworld threat, so you have a point that Starfleet would have some interest in the well-being of George & Gracie and their offspring. It wouldn't be the lead agency behind the effort, but I concede that it would have some involvement. I should've recognized that much myself. I just resist the tendency to assume that Starfleet runs the entire Federation all by itself.

And I suppose it's impossible that in the interim, Gillian trained her new contemporaries as well? Hot damn Christopher, you make it sound like she became the most important person in Earth history.

First off, such training would take years, not months. Second, you keep forgetting the most essential point in all of this: Gillian Taylor's character. She was defined throughout the film by her overriding passion to take care of the whales. It drove everything she did in the entire movie. Why would she suddenly give that up in the last scene? That's like expecting Richard Kimble to finally confront the one-armed man who murdered his wife and just go "Meh, I didn't really care about finding you after all. Just go on about your business."

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I tried opening the file on my Mac but can't, and online conversion to PDF doesn't seem to work either. Oh well.

Thanks though.

Let me check on my hard drive at home tonight; I used to have a pretty clean HTML version of "Music of the Spheres." At one time I planned on making a Microsoft Reader eBook of it for my own personal use, and the ReaderWorks program needed HTML files to use.

 

[GalaxyClass1701]

Who would have thought Gillian Taylor would cause such commotion?

 

[Sci]

While I get the point Christopher is making in that Gillian is the only expert on humpback whales, I find it extremely difficult to believe she's the only one on earth.

So I'd concede that Gillian is the only expert with practical experience regarding the whales. There have to be scientists on earth who have studied whales and know about them, regardless of having any experience with them.

After all, we have experts on dinosaurs today, do we not?

Well, except insofar as birds are a form of dinosaur and we have experts on birds... no.

We have expert paleontologists. We have, in other words, experts on dinosaur fossils. We do not have experts on dinosaurs.

Anyway, folks, the entire idea of trying to find a reason to justify Gillian leaving aboard a spaceship is silly. There's no reason for her to board a spaceship, and there's every reason for her to board a sea ship, and that's just all there is to it.

 

[Defcon]

I found it as a .pdb (palm) file. Downloaded a reader from eReader.com.

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15001

You can read her notes here: (.doc file)

www.margaretwanderbonanno.com/files/Probed.doc

I tried opening the file on my Mac but can't, and online conversion to PDF doesn't seem to work either. Oh well.

Thanks though.

Use Calibre for the conversion:

http://calibre-ebook.com/download_osx

 

[Christopher]

Anyway, folks, the entire idea of trying to find a reason to justify Gillian leaving aboard a spaceship is silly. There's no reason for her to board a spaceship, and there's every reason for her to board a sea ship, and that's just all there is to it.

Exactly. And since the word "vessel" in her dialogue can equally well mean either of those things, the simplest and most likely intepretation is that it's the latter.

And really, let's think about it. As of now, April 2012, the number of human beings who have landed on the surface of the Moon is 12, while the number of human beings who have descended to the bottom of Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the ocean floor, is 3, including James Cameron just last month. Our own oceans are still largely an uncharted mystery, even more so than the Moon or Mars. It's quite possible that in the 23rd century, there are still unknown mysteries in the Earth's own oceans, and still research vessels devoted to exploring them.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

{Emilia} has it exactly right, of course.

 

[doubleohfive]

"Right" or "wrong" aside, it's all mountains out of mole-hills, really.

{Emilia} has it exactly right, of course.

 

[Trekker4747]

Here's the thing.... Earth's scientists have centuries of experience in dealing with new, never-before-seen life. It's a bit hard to believe it'd be beyond the grasp of Earth's ocean scientists to deal with George and Gracie and that Gillian was the only one who could possibly help. Isn't dealing with and figuring out new forms of life pretty much the ONLY thing Earth's scientists do now? They might pick Gillian's brain for some tips and tricks and what to expect but they're going to also see has being 300 years behind on her knowledge of, well, everything and as being a product of a system that caused the extinction in the first place.

I don't think Earth's scientists are going to have a whole heck of a lot of use for her.

 

[Therin of Andor]

That may be although MWB does talk about some strange reasons for Arnold cancelling things. From her notes on the Probe debacle

This may be news to you, but some of us lived through the "Probe" debacle as it was happening - the cover slicks sat in a warehouse for twelve months, awaiting the numerous rewrites the novel went through - although garamet (MWB herself) lived through the mess in ways we can perhaps only imagine. Her online essay is the tip of the iceberg.

Richard Arnold would say his reasons were not "strange". He felt he was preserving "Gene's vision" and had seemingly taken umbrage at the liberties taken by previous authors, in particular Diane Duane's background for the Romulans/Rihannsu, and Jean Lorrah's and AC Crispin's non-canonical postulations about Andorian religion (TNG's "Metamorphosis" and "The Eyes of the Beholder").

A novel by Michael Jan Friedman was almost canceled because a stardate was wrong

Doubtful, since an error with a stardate (quite a frequent thing in Treklit - and even the episodes themselves) can be quickly rectified. More likely, Richard had a quibble about MJF saying that something else happened at the same time as a canonical stardate. Whole manuscripts aren't cancelled over a typo. I recall that "Home is the Hunter" and "Enemy Unseen" were jumped forward to the movies era as a result of Richard's insistence on where particular stories might better occur in the timeline.

MJF did have a novel project cancelled outright: his take on completing Gene Roddenberry's "The God Thing", which RA and Majel Barrett felt departed too much from GR's original premise and uncompleted manuscript.

If they were that nitpicky I'd hardly give their reasons much weight.

Most of the time, RA could articulate very clear reasons; he often explained them at annual Australian conventions I attended. (I was usually the one throwing in the questions in the Q&A.) Sometimes the ST Office did seem nitpicky, but RA took his job very seriously. He did have a bizarre, ongoing battle with writer Peter David, which became very petty. The incidents are hilariously documented in PAD's "But I Digress..." (Volume 1), a collection of PAD's witty columns from a comics newsletter.

Nonetheless, it shows that it wasn't only fans who read the line that way.

I expect garamet chose the direction that gave her the best storytelling opportunities. The novel "Probe" was set mainly in space, not just Earth's orbit. If she needed Gillian to be in space for her story, the ship becomes a starship. If the whales were more important to her story, you can bet Gillian would have been at sea.

 

[Christopher]

Here's the thing.... Earth's scientists have centuries of experience in dealing with new, never-before-seen life. It's a bit hard to believe it'd be beyond the grasp of Earth's ocean scientists to deal with George and Gracie and that Gillian was the only one who could possibly help.

Sure, they might have the skills to learn about a new species, but isn't it self-evident that someone who's already learned how to take care of them, someone who's been working with them for years already, is at a major advantage? Given how urgent and difficult it would be to keep a single breeding pair of whales alive in an alien and hostile environment, there may not be time for a learning curve. They'd need to be taken care of and carefully monitored and protected from day one. So someone who already knows about them is of obvious and immense value, and it would be insanely irresponsible not to take advantage of her expertise.

And seriously, what spaceship or alien planet could possibly have a greater claim on Gillian Taylor's very limited expertise than George and Gracie had? She may be a greater expert on Megaptera novaeangliae than anyone else in 2286, but she's centuries out of date when it comes to absolutely every other field of knowledge. So really, what other job could she possibly be needed for, or even qualified for?

They might pick Gillian's brain for some tips and tricks and what to expect...

"Tips and tricks?" That's trivializing what's at stake here. Repopulating an extinct species isn't like playing Mass Effect or whatever. It's literally a matter of life and death for two, soon to be three, sentient beings and their entire species. For something that urgent, they're going to embrace every possible resource at their disposal, and Gillian's firsthand knowledge is an invaluable resource.

but they're going to also see has being 300 years behind on her knowledge of, well, everything

Everything except the biology, behavior, and survival needs of whales, a topic on which she's far more knowledgeable than anyone else in the Federation. It's not like the laws of biology are going to change in 300 years, and George & Gracie themselves only experienced the briefest passing of subjective time between leaving 1986 and arriving in 2286, so they're still exactly the same animals that Gillian spent years studying and working with on a daily basis.

and as being a product of a system that caused the extinction in the first place.

That doesn't make any sense. Gillian was a PhD in cetacean biology and a passionate advocate for conservation. How could she possibly be part of the system of commercial whale hunting? Especially since humpback whale hunting was outlawed when she was fifteen years old (assuming she was the same age as her portrayer).

I don't think Earth's scientists are going to have a whole heck of a lot of use for her.

I think you're falsely treating all fields of knowledge as equivalent or progressing at an equal pace. Think about it. Humpback whales have been extinct for nearly three centuries, so the Federation's level of expertise on their biology, behavior, survival needs, etc. is likely to have regressed a great deal, since nobody's needed to deal with it except as a matter of abstract curiosity. But it's Gillian's primary field of research and was part of her everyday life for years.

Don't you think that, say, historians who studied Zefram Cochrane would relish the opportunity to talk to someone like Lily Sloane who actually knew him personally and worked alongside him for years? Do you really think they'd consider firsthand experience with the subject of their research to be worthless, or that they'd look down on her firsthand knowledge as somehow inferior to their purely academic, indirect knowledge? I can't imagine that. A primary source, someone with firsthand, direct knowledge of a subject, is the most valuable and desirable resource of all to a historian. Direct experience always trumps hearsay. And I see no reason why the same wouldn't be true of natural history.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

A novel by Michael Jan Friedman was almost canceled because a stardate was wrong

Doubtful, since an error with a stardate (quite a frequent thing in Treklit - and even the episodes themselves) can be quickly rectified. More likely, Richard had a quibble about MJF saying that something else happened at the same time as a canonical stardate. Whole manuscripts aren't cancelled over a typo. I recall that "Home is the Hunter" and "Enemy Unseen" were jumped forward to the movies era as a result of Richard's insistence on where particular stories might better occur in the timeline.

The novel that RPJOB is talking about is Double, Double. Arnold wanted to can the book because the stardate in the manuscript was a first season stardate and the book had Chekov in it. When Pocket said, "Wait, instead of scrapping an entire book, why don't we just change the stardate?" and the change was made, then everything was fine.

 

[Christopher]

^That's odd. First off, the first season had stardates as high as 3417 and the second season had stardates as low as 2534. So it's hard to draw a clear dividing line between "first-season" and "second-season" stardates. Second, fixing the stardate in Double, Double does nothing to fix its chronology problems, because it's still explicitly set mere weeks after "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and yet IIRC is also supposed to be a significant time after "The Enterprise Incident."

 

[Therin of Andor]

Double, Double. Arnold wanted to can the book because the stardate in the manuscript was a first season stardate and the book had Chekov in it. When Pocket said, "Wait, instead of scrapping an entire book, why don't we just change the stardate?" and the change was made, then everything was fine.

Ah, ok. Yeah, that one had another stupid glitch. For several chapters in a row, the USS Hood suddenly becomes a different vessel. I speculated once, on Psi Phi, that it seemed like an early "search and replace" command went wacky and MJF responded that he wasn't sure his manuscript was even compatible with "search and replace" functions at the time.

Was he also trying to avoid a clash with the Hood appearing in "The Ultimate Computer"?

As I said earlier, RA probably bristled over "Double, Double" revealing things about the canonical episode it was a sequel to, not just the weird stardate.

I also recall RA making a revelation at a convention that, because TOS had stardates stretching from 1xxx all the way to 5xxx, it was evidence that we saw TOS episodes representing all five years of the five-year mission, not just the first three years, as speculated by many media articles.