Even then it's still ugly
The widely used promo shot looking up from below the saucer was probably the ship's worst angle.
I was mesmerized by it the first time I saw it, in black and white, in People Magazine. Though I'm a huge fan of the Galaxy class.
they should have gone so much further. Have Phlox have a plan for how to develop the cure but they can't stay for the months it would take. They give the data and the necessary tech to the scientists and wish them luck. Phlox may have some trepidation about how much more advanced the new med tech is above their current level.
A year later they get word that the scientists messed up and unleashed a virus that wiped out both races. Now there's a incident that could prompt the prime directive.
Not a terrible idea.
"Non-interference is the only way."
As Captain Freeman put it Starfleet has a policy of some intervention.Star Trek has never actually believed this.
More offensive than FTL and near lightspeed Impuse drives that both ignore general relativity and relativistic effects?
Or a matter Transporter that ignores the Heisenberg Principle and runs on impossibility fast computers that can perfectly disassemble and reassemble multiple people and items in a matter of seconds?
Yes, Star Trek gets those two for free. Plus the universal translator and artificial gravity. They figured out how to make them work and they're not telling us how.More offensive than FTL and near lightspeed Impuse drives that both ignore general relativity and relativistic effects?
Or a matter Transporter that ignores the Heisenberg Principle and runs on impossibility fast computers that can perfectly disassemble and reassemble multiple people and items in a matter of seconds?
They've got to be careful with everything else though, as if it's blatantly wrong then someone's going to be taken out of the story. Like Spock can't run off the edge of a cliff, hang in mid-air for 10 seconds, hold up a sign saying "I'm dead Jim", and then fall, because that contradicts the viewer's understanding of gravity. Doesn't matter if he beamed to the cliff with a transporter after warping in from another star system.
As I understand it, warp speed kinda makes sense and doesn't break special relativity. The ship travels faster than light by contracting space in front of the vessel and expanding it behind. It travels in a warp bubble.
The transporter is more believable and they are least acknowledged issues by having the Heisenberg compensator.
Dear Dr presents evolution as a series of changes that constantly move a species 'forward'. Which is flat out wrong.
In the end, "Dear Doctor" uses bad science to justify leaving hundreds of millions of people to suffer and die of a disease that can be readily cured
The science being wrong makes the episode's message very offensive, because variations of this same misunderstanding of evolution have been at the core of racist and eugenicist ideologies in the real world. The episode is saying that fundamentally, those ideologies might be right, that one group of people can at least in principle be viewed as "more evolved" than others. And no. No they can't, not based on an accurate understanding of evolution.
Note that I summarised from this excellent post, which is wonderful, but verbose.
