Episode of the Week : The Paradise Syndrome

[Timo]

Picard in "Homeward" had no means of saving the planet, so the story dilemma was about saving a select handful of locals. Here the situation is only slightly different: Kirk has every means of rescuing all the locals, because they only amount to a handful, but rescuing the planet is a long shot and in fact proves impossible in the end. Why does Kirk take such a different approach, then? He usually has no qualms about forcible deportation, so shouldn't that be his Plan A?

It certainly makes sense for Kirk to first survey the planet. Kirk's officers assert that the planet is an enigma, so Kirk is doing the right thing in checking out whether he's trying to rescue mere illusions, or folks who are perfectly capable of protecting themselves (Kirk probably still remembers Organia).

What makes less sense is Spock agreeing to spend time searching for Kirk, thus voiding the mission. Why not just strand McCoy there with a tricorder and perhaps a couple of redshirts, so that the Doctor can search to his heart's content? Abandoning of landing parties is SOP for the heroes. If need be, provide McCoy with a shuttlecraft so that he can dodge the incoming asteroid even in the worst of cases!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TOSalltheway]

Beautiful looking episode. The obelisk is one of the few sets / props that does not look made out of papier mache or left over junk.

The "Preservers" being added to canon is a nice touch.

However.....The paternalistic and overly simpistic view of First Nations peoples is cringe worthy. It is straight out of mid twentieth century Hollywood.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

The paternalistic and overly simpistic view of First Nations peoples is cringe worthy. It is straight out of mid twentieth century Hollywood.

Back in those days, every kid loved to play Cowboys and Indians. Counting "Spectre of the Gun," Kirk got to play both.

 

[erastus25]

Picard in "Homeward" had no means of saving the planet, so the story dilemma was about saving a select handful of locals. Here the situation is only slightly different: Kirk has every means of rescuing all the locals, because they only amount to a handful, but rescuing the planet is a long shot and in fact proves impossible in the end. Why does Kirk take such a different approach, then? He usually has no qualms about forcible deportation, so shouldn't that be his Plan A?

Wasn't talking about Homeward...but it's a great example! It's pretty shitty that when faced with the 'dilemma' of "we can save some of them, or none of them" Picard chooses, quite literally, "LET THEM ALL DIE!"

 

[erastus25]

Picard in "Homeward" had no means of saving the planet, so the story dilemma was about saving a select handful of locals. Here the situation is only slightly different: Kirk has every means of rescuing all the locals, because they only amount to a handful, but rescuing the planet is a long shot and in fact proves impossible in the end. Why does Kirk take such a different approach, then? He usually has no qualms about forcible deportation, so shouldn't that be his Plan A?

Wasn't talking about Homeward...but it's a great example! It's pretty shitty that when faced with the 'dilemma' of "we can save some of them, or none of them" Picard chooses, quite literally, "LET THEM ALL DIE!"

 

[Forbin]

"Pen Pals" is was when Picard decided to let an entire planet die rather than help them. Until he heard Nikki Cox call for help, and knew she'd be hot some day.

 

[A beaker full of death]

... bizarre TNG-era "Do we have a right to interfere? Maybe these people are meant to DIE!" perspective.

Right, the Paul Sorvino episode. That more than any other drove home the message that TPTW had absolutely no clue about the prime directive, Star Trek, anthropology, or life in general.
It actually pissed me off.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

"The Paradise Syndrome" is a mixed bag.

I agree with most of the criticisms stated in-thread, such as the shallow handling of the Native Americans and the travel-time problems surrounding the asteroid and warping to the deflection point, not to mention that it's pretty far-fetched in the first place that the ship must make an all-or-nothing effort at deflection while the asteroid is near a particular point that far out.

But location episodes are always fun. With some tweaks it could have been much better. Even if it is a cliche that Miramanee must die, her death scene is pretty sad, and the music there is some of the best of the series.

Slightly above average: 6.

 

[johnnybear]

And with a woman like Miramanee as your wife who wouldn't want to jump ship?
JB

 

[erastus25]

Right, the Paul Sorvino episode. That more than any other drove home the message that TPTW had absolutely no clue about the prime directive, Star Trek, anthropology, or life in general.
It actually pissed me off.

It's baffling to me that they somehow thought this was a legit morality discussion to be having. I would write it off as "lol 2nd season tng is dumb", but then it popped up several other times over the course of the franchise.

 

[A beaker full of death]

I would write it off as "lol 2nd season tng is dumb", but then it popped up several other times over the course of the franchise.

Yeah, I believe the Sorvino one was season 7.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Coming from a guy who likes to give measurements in decimals, Spock's little demonstration to McCoy with the rocks is WAY off-scale. If the asteroid were really moving that fast, it'd be crashing into the planet by the time they beamed up!

 

[Drone]

"I am Kirok! I have come!" Yes, we know, Miramanee's pregnant.

AGreed that the Kirok stuff is just way too soap opera.

I do like that the Enterprise has no qualms about stopping the asteroid and saving the planet. Way better than the bizarre TNG-era "Do we have a right to interfere? Maybe these people are meant to DIE!" perspective.

Janeway had exactly the same cast of mind in Time and Again, presumably allowing herself and Paris to die along with everyone else in case they were unable to contact Voyager, until she realized the extenuating circumstances that rendered the PD moot in that instance. Well, at least what she thought created the exception, which didn't really come until the final reveal.

 

[Timo]

"Pen Pals" is was when Picard decided to let an entire planet die rather than help them.

Well, no. Picard never says words to the effect of "let them die" - he calls for a debate. And then there's a debate, where Picard listens to abstract musings. And then there's a rescue operation. It's just a tad confusing that in parallel, Picard tries to gently break it to Data that he should be keel-hauled for his mutinous actions.

Only in "Homeward" do the heroes quote the PD as the reason why people should die when the practical possibility of "partial rescue" exists. But there are plenty of other episodes where our heroes accept in more general terms that they can't save everybody and shouldn't worry about that much, as dying is only natural. And this is also mentioned in "Homeward", although secondary to the PD concern.

What Kirk does here is really quite exceptional. Not only is he trying to save people who don't need any saving, he's doing that when apparently operating unusually far from home base. Does he abandon the idea of taking the locals aboard the ship because accommodations would be too difficult to arrange for such a long trip "back to civilization"? But "Space Seed" already set up the Trek trope that there are habitable yet uninhabited planets around every corner, so Kirk needn't really return to the UFP.

Is Kirk less concerned with the fate of the natives, and more with testing a technique that might one day help Federation citizens...?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ZapBrannigan]

What Kirk does here is really quite exceptional. Not only is he trying to save people who don't need any saving, he's doing that when apparently operating unusually far from home base.

In the dialogue, they do need saving, because Salish didn't know how to work the asteroid deflector.

Granted, it isn't necessarily plausible that the natives had to work the deflector manually or die, because their astronomy isn't up to it. They would have to be making a lot of observations with telescopes, and comparing photographs to see what moves, and then be able to figure out which moving specks were inbound. None of that was dramatized.

So you could argue that the deflector was on autopilot. But the native medicine chief was in charge of working the thing! What the...?

New theory: the natives had a long history of seeing the blue flame come out, and little did they know, it really was automated. But the hereditary line of medicine men had worked up a con, making the others believe that the deflector required secret expertise to work. It makes the medicine chief a pretty big man and quite a hit with the ladies.

The punchline is that Spock comes along and really does discover the necessary expertise to activate the deflector-- something no native ever knew-- shortly before it was going to work on its own.

Now, having unlocked the obelisk, do Kirk and Spock gum up a perfectly good system by teaching primitives to go inside and push buttons? No way. They'd instantly grasp the limitations of native astronomy and realize that the machine works by itself.

 

[Timo]

In the dialogue, they do need saving, because Salish didn't know how to work the asteroid deflector.

Yet the skies had darkened thrice since the last harvest. Was Salish's father still alive on those occasions? Let's ponder a few factoids:

The skies darkening is not supposed to be normal for this planet in the asteroid alley. Legend says that if skies darken, a God is sent - and this appears to be different from a Medicine Man being initiated. And would it be called "legend" if it were a more or less annual occurrence?

What is the legend based on, really? Was a God previously sent? Who was he? What happened to him afterwards?

Does a darkening sky always mean a near-impact that gets deflected? The blue flame is seen frequently enough that Miramanee has witnessed it at least once - or is that a "legend", too? Is the darkening something the obelisk does, in order to summon an operator, rather than something the asteroid does?

This time around, Kirk deflected the asteroid before there was darkening or tremors. Why wouldn't all Medicine Men do it that way?

The punchline is that Spock comes along and really does discover the necessary expertise to activate the deflector-- something no native ever knew-- shortly before it was going to work on its own.

If what happens this time around is "shortly before", I'm all for this idea. But supposedly standard ops didn't involve the darkening and the tremors - apparently, only the legend stuff where only God could help did. Why is everybody convinced they need a God rather than a Medicine Man this time around, if automation is working as usual?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ZapBrannigan]

The skies darkening is not supposed to be normal for this planet in the asteroid alley. Legend says that if skies darken, a God is sent - and this appears to be different from a Medicine Man being initiated. And would it be called "legend" if it were a more or less annual occurrence?

What is the legend based on, really? Was a God previously sent? Who was he? What happened to him afterwards?

I think religions get embroidered with add-on stories because that's what people do. Or the Preservers might really have promised to come back and take care of things personally if a situation got too apocalyptic, but were unable to follow through. It was like a "lifetime guarantee" which, in the fine print, was not for the lifetime of the customer, but for the lifetime of this customer service program.

Is the darkening something the obelisk does, in order to summon an operator, rather than something the asteroid does?

I never thought of that! That's good. It seems like Timo puts more than his share of insights through the goal posts.

 

[Timo]

The bit about dark skies being Preserverese for "The time has come to reaffirm your user privileges by pressing the Reaffirm button - please also consider our upgrade options" isn't original with me, and I got the impression it was old news when I first saw it here in 2009 or so... Or did I see it at rec.arts.startrek already?

But there is quite a discord between these two extremes of the deflector taking care of everything and the natives being in mortal danger and utter panic, from all the angles I can think of. I mean, the episode insists that both be true at the same time, so our explanations have to accommodate at least the illusion of danger, the misconception of danger, or the rare one-off danger against the background of the planet doing fine.

There seems to be a lot of confidence in the Medicine Man in general, but little remains when God arrives to take over the management. It doesn't seem as if Salish's inability to do his job would have meant loss of reputation before Kirok came - did Salish keep it secret, then? And how, if those past three darkenings happened on his watch and automation doesn't handle the job?

I guess we could interpret the legend as referring to the machine education of a Medicine Man if the chain of verbal tradition is broken: "God" is not a person, but rather the memory beam that "descends" upon the wannabe, and darkening skies are a direct indication (caused by a misaligned deflector beam or tracking sensor, perhaps) that the deflector is performing below specs and needs trained operators for repair or reboot.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[erastus25]

Well, no. Picard never says words to the effect of "let them die" - he calls for a debate. And then there's a debate, where Picard listens to abstract musings. And then there's a rescue operation. It's just a tad confusing that in parallel, Picard tries to gently break it to Data that he should be keel-hauled for his mutinous actions.

You're twisting the plot to make our "heroes" look less like jackasses.

In the debate Riker literally says "It (letting them die) is something that needs to be considered." And then Picard goes off on some bizarre tangent about whether or not they would 'interfere' in a war, before relenting b/c of the flimsy excuse that the Dremans were asking for help.

To reiterate: Riker literally says they should consider *letting them die.* And Picard makes it clear that he would be *unwilling to help*, b/c of the PD, if the Enterprise had not spoken with people on the surface. It's a hamfisted and, quite frankly, fucking stupid discussion.

 

[A beaker full of death]

^ and now we have a Superman whose daddy tells him he should let people die.