I suspect this will be a thing. This is meant to be a dark and idealogically taxed Star Trek and people will continually say, "but this makes it dark!" as a complaint.
I don't think we're getting away from that any time soon.
"Logic extremists"
- Thread starter AntonyF
- Start date
I suspect this will be a thing. This is meant to be a dark and idealogically taxed Star Trek and people will continually say, "but this makes it dark!" as a complaint.
I don't think we're getting away from that any time soon.
I have read opinions that Vulcans practicing C'Thia well would be considered boring to human audiences. The less controlled one are more easy to write for.
Where No Man Has Gone Before and City on the Edge of Forever come to mind.
I was hoping we would see a greater variety of Vulcan hairstyles as we did in other 23rd-century Trek productions. Alas, it was not meant to be.
Kor
V'Latak fell into the trap of announcing his intentions as he injected himself in order to elicit an emotional response from Ambassador Sarek, one that would be seen by no one and had no logical function (a so-called "villain monologue"). This was a sign that even he, the most extreme logician in his mind, had blind spots and lapses in judgment. The logical way to achieve his goal (murdering Sarek to prevent a conference with the Klingons so that the Federation would lose badly in the War and Vulcan would somehow manage to secede peacefully... simple, I know), would've been to anesthetize or at least immobilize Sarek prior to exploding himself.
He didn't foresee Sarek having access to the internal forcefields, a major problem with V'Latak's plan. I understand he was under a time crunch, but like any good Vulcan, he should've been able to judge the statistical probability of his murder plan gaining success. I mean, he couldn't possibly realize Sarek's katra connection to Michael Burnham, who happens to be on Starfleet's only near-instantaneous warp ship, but other possibilities for survival persist (Sarek being quicker, Starfleet mounting a fast rescue mission, or even the Klingons or elders of Cancri IV arriving to assist).
The Logic Extremists make sense to me (although it would've been better to call them Vulcan Isolationists, thus referencing the TNG episode). 100 years prior, a Vulcan military administrator had gained control of the planet and used his position to attack Syrannites (followers of the true teachings of Surak), and plunge Vulcan into military conflict and espionage. Remember that Surak himself was painted as a pacifist (even if that doesn't always make logical sense). It took the Syrannites, guided by the katra of Surak, to overthrow V'Las and reform society. In the coming Babel Crisis, if not the Romulan War, the Vulcans withdrew many of their troops and did not participate at full capacity.
Flash forward 100 years, and you have a Federation, of which Vulcan is a nominal member (they have their own expeditionary force and way of doing things), which gets embroiled in an interstellar war with the Klingons over what seems to be an illogical misunderstanding. Thousands of Vulcans are dying defending this Federation led mostly by races that ignore the purity of logic. Surak was a pacifist, but his people have yet again found themselves embroiled in military conflict.
Enter a group of so-called "extremists", whose simple goal is to get the Vulcans out of the Federation by any means necessary. This isn't an IDIC issue - all races are free to live as they see fit - this is a life or death issue. As long as Ambassador Sarek lives, and is using his political connections to promote war with the Klingons, and even worse, the degradation of Surak's society (by literally and figuratively creating Vulcanized Humans and Humanized Vulcans, disregarding his procreational acts with at least one human female), then Vulcans will die in a war they had no part of making.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. V'Latak, and many like him, will willingly sacrifice themselves to remove these subversive elements preventing their homeworld from achieving pure logic on its own merit. Just like Surak 2000 years prior.
But, you know, it's probably just Romulans messing around, and I'm just overthinking it.
You know, Syran was a pretty cool dude. A Vulcan's Vulcan if there ever was, but man was he ever selfish...
He could've at least deposited an ounce or two of Surak's katra into all his friends, so that they too could all ride on the galactic highways of consciousness.
I feel bad for that old Vulcan priest at the end of Kir'Shara who presumably spent years and years talking with Archer in his dreams every time he faced an ethical dilemma or was beaten up. So pretty much everyday.
It becomes Fridge Brilliance when Archer goes from racist space hobo to the most respected statesmen in galactic history.
Now now! Nothing involving Jonathan Archer can be described as brilliant.
Doesn't count.The whole injection/suicide bomber thing has been done before in Voyager "Basics" and ENT "Chosen Realm"
Did they Kazon prisoner give us a sinister monologue? Did the...guys in Enterprise do a cool Vulcan hand salute right as they exploded?
Uh huh...yea....didn't think so!
It's worse than that, actually. I had the very chilling thought the other day that a certain number of Vulcan thinkers have, dispassionately and objectively, determined that the Vulcan species doesn't actually benefit from Federation membership NEARLY as much as the Federation benefits from Vulcan membership. There are, on the other hand, alternate arrangements that would be strongly advantageous to Vulcan politically and military that it cannot pursue due to its Federation membership.
But aside from that, it is logical to conclude that Vulcans are, on average, more intelligent and more durable than most other Federation members and live considerably longer. That, combined with the nature volatility of Vulcan emotions that are rigidly suppressed by adherence to logic, means that close relationships between Vulcans and non-Vulcans will almost always be a liability to the former and an asset to the latter.
Taken as a whole: GIVEN that the wellbeing of the Vulcan people is the goal, then the logical course of action is actually isolationism. That is to say, continuing to participate in the Federation is illogical, and continuing to tolerate alien influence on Vulcan, doubly so.
The Logic Extremists are slightly misnamed: they're actually EXTREMELY LOGICAL. The Vulcans who are open to Federation membership and peaceful coexistence are actually succumbing to a certain emotional bias towards compassion and cooperation and their not actually wanting to be assholes to the rest of the galaxy. LOGICALLY, there is no reason to be compassionate to anyone who isn't actually a Vulcan, and all things being equal, the pro-Federation agenda is an illogical one that weakens rather than strengthen's Vulcan's position. In fact, in light of current hostilities with the Klingons, the Logic Extremists could make a compelling case that association with the Federation is an even bigger liability than they thought, considering this entire conflict started because a HUMAN captain refused to do the logical thing and blast T'Kuvma's flying hearse into a giant cloud of beef jerky.
Which is basically the Syrannite religious "heresy" in a nutshell:
* The High Command/Vulcan Religion of the Time is that it is logical to pursue the benefit of the Vulcan race above all other things.
* The Syrannites believes logic is just the tool for the pursuit of peace as well as enlightenment.
Two very different things done with logic.
^ Could even be a descendant. Their names are similar, after all. 
Whatever the case, he seemed to really hate the Federation and consider it a failed experiment.
Which is an interesting take as it seems to be greatly succeeding at the time.
In a way that makes the extremism imitate life to an extent.
If an opposing political viewpoint is losing or controversial, it is easier to simply point out its' flaws or otherwise try to marginalize it.
But frequently, when it appears that the opposing view is winning, that causes people who hate it to become more extreme in their reactions.
Similar threads
