New Short Trek: The Trouble With Edward
- Thread starter eschaton
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Murdering Tribbles is bad.
(With the rifles, was that killing or stunning?)
Genociding Tribbles is much worse.
Because of the genetic modding, these Tribbles are a new and unique life form, and the totality of their species.
I'm assuming that's why we had the "give them brain damage" conversation.
(With the rifles, was that killing or stunning?)
Genociding Tribbles is much worse.
Because of the genetic modding, these Tribbles are a new and unique life form, and the totality of their species.
I'm assuming that's why we had the "give them brain damage" conversation.
Eh, the ship probably had an autopilot to prevent, you know mass-extinction.
I highly doubt that an expert in proteins would be cross trained in climatology. Molecular biology is quite a bit different from planetary climates. Trek is typical sci-fi that has ridiculous scientists that are experts at everything and complete engineering projects that would take years and dozens of people overnight, so in universe maybe, it still is not believable to someone who was once a physicist. What you are proposing would be having an expert act as a technician and even if they did do it, they would not be happy. Computers can do the data analysis so what would these cross trained people do? She basically stripped this guy of his discipline and made him into a technician. Having had that done to me by terrible management, only in the same field, I sympathize. What's worse is that she did it in the open, in front of all of his peers. This type of behavior is not acceptable at most workplaces.
Edward IS the 23rd century version of Reginald Barclay. Barclay was just able to cope better/longer because he could belittle all the people he felt were unfair or wronged him by making Super-Deformed versions of them on a Holodeck.
While it'd be nice to apply logic here, that has never been the case in Star Trek. It's why there's one Science Officer who does all the Sciency things. It's why Starfleet Academy only accepts like four candidates from a Sector at a time, which contain billions. Everyone is a SUPPPPPPER genius.
Mind you, either way, he seems to have bitterly resented having his long-term project shut down.
I see Edward as Barclay in about 20 years with no Ship's Counselor to lust after....err, help him. The bitterness, entitlement, and arrogance has settled in. Mind you, I also think whoever said he had a resentement towards his Captain for:
1. Being younger
2. Higher ranked
3. Female
Is probably right on the money too.
Their solution was to make it someone else's problem.
Neither is suggesting intentionally brain damaging an entire species in order to make them a better food source. She was concerned about the moral implications of killing the tribbles en masse and he made an even more horrific suggestion to make them easier to kill instead. It's understandable that she wanted to shut down his unethical genetic research at that point, and since he was a department of one, that meant moving him over somewhere else. Then when he was insubordinate and went over her head to complain to Starfleet, she tried to have him transferred.
It was obvious from his behavior with the PADD device and the woman assisting him that he was unwilling to accept help from others to the detriment of his work performance. He would likely have a file full of complaints from his fellow crew and negative performance reviews that the Captain would be familiar with. She didn't insult him, she just reassigned him to assist with another department to prevent him from continuing his unethical experiments.
They did state they were stunning the Tribbles. Though what I don't get is why they were shooting each one individually instead of using wide beams to hit multiple simultaneously. But then, the wide beam setting is forgotten more often than it's used in all Star Trek, so I just sweep that aside and roll with it.
Wide beams would’ve been inconvenient to the story.
Wide beam transporters weren't due till Tuesday. Jason
Does it not make more sense to have the entire crew contribute to the mission at hand, regardless of their background? I'm sure those like Edward were doing more generalized lower-rung stuff that anyone with a basic science education could handle to clear room for the climatology specialists to do the heavy-lifting. It's a small crew, everyone contributes, even if it means someone who is a master in one field doing menial work in another field. That's basic teamwork.
What's the alternative, everyone works their asses off on the climatology mission except Edward because it's outside his speciality?
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I have the feeling a lot more people sympathize with Edward than the writers intended. Then again, I suspect quite a few fans imagine they'd end up more like him than Kirk or Spock.
Mind you, I don't think her switching him from biology to a wholly unrelated field was accidental. I think she was genuinely horrified at everything he was talking about and wanted him completely shut down.
Last Captain was the one who pulled strings to get Edward into Starfleet?
If he's like the way we treat the Edwards at my university, the best way to handle them is leave them in their own little world and ignore them.
He responded to the question "are they intelligent" not with a "no" but "I can make them brain damaged" and an apparently lack of understanding of why he should have known the answer already. Immediately telling him that he's working on something that doesn't involve living things is an extremely reasonable response until she had time to figure out whether this guy skipped all his bioethics courses. He could help crunch statistics and things like that, or at the very least offer some other way he could provide input closer to his field.
They even reproduce like the Mogwai in the movie after it's splashed with water
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