"Nothing Human" & Crell Moset

[Damian]

I am currently in the midst of rewatching Voyager and "Nothing Human" presents some good bioethical arguments about using medical procedures developed in unethical ways and is it ever ok. Things that we love Star Trek for when they bring them up.

However, as I was watching it last night I couldn't help thinking are there no other exobiologist the Doctor could have turned to for help. Even if we grant that Crell Moset was the 'leading' exobiologist of his time, even if, as the episode suggests he is the best exobiologist for this emergency, were there no others that at least were in the top 5 the Doctor could have used?

Of course I understand from a narrative standpoint and the debate they wanted to have in the episode required Moset to be featured. If the Doctor did turn to other, non controversial, experts then a major plot point in the episode would have been moot.

But I wonder did anyone else thing about that? Like why not pick the 2nd or 3rd best exobiologist. That'd still be an excellent resource. They acted like without Moset the Doctor would be left all alone to treat Torres.

I did look at some old posts about this episode but most of the arguments settled around whether it was ethical to save Torres using Moset's knowledge (they were more than 2 years old so under the rules I couldn't really resurrect them, and since they didn't really address what I'm asking it probably was pointless to resurrect them anyway).

Otherwise I thought it was one of the better episodes of Voyager. And it was great to see a truly alien, non-humanoid alien. The alien was actually a bit unnerving TBH.

 

[Oddish]

Also interesting was the ethical issue. If a patient prefers death to benefitting from knowledge developed through evil means, do you honor their wishes? It's interesting that Janeway rejected both Tuvix's pleas and B'Elanna's wishes in the name of the greater good, but was willing to risk the welfare of the entire crew fir the sake of the one in "Latent Image".

 

[Tosk]

Imagine your captain going against your very strongly stated wishes "for the good of the ship" and then ordering you to just get over it. If I was B'Elanna I'd have been furious.

And to top it all off, on the subject of whether they should delete Crell, Janeway says "You're the Chief Medical Officer on this ship. As far as I'm concerned, there's no one more qualified than you to make that decision."

Eminently qualified to decide to delete a program, but not to decide how to treat a patient.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

Honestly, I've always been bothered by the way that the Moset hologram is treated like he's the ACTUAL Moset.

First of all, if Voyager can create a hologram based on Moset, to a degree that the Doctor treats him like a peer above all else, then that means it HAS the information he created, so... why bother with the Moset program at all? Why can't the Doctor just access the information himself? (Granted, I can chalk some of that up to the Voyager writers misunderstanding how technology works, given that this WAS roughly turn-of-the-millennium, but it's still a fundamental problem with the story.) Even if he requires an assistant familiar with the technique for the procedure, why does it have to be Moset himself and not, say, a holo-assistant (which also goes back to the general issue of Voyager's failure to build up a medical staff after arriving the in the Delta Quadrant, but that's a problem deeper than any one episode)?

Secondly, though... The hologram of Moset is, after his activation, treated entirely like the real Moset. The episode's handling seems to forget that this Moset is just a recreation of the man, not the man himself. A decent chunk is wrapped up in the man who isn't actually there. It's like the Voyager writers picked up a script that DS9 couldn't fit in anymore, what with the Dominion War in progress, where the ACTUAL Moset appeared on the station to help save the life of someone, but, with Voyager being across the galaxy, they had to connive a way to involve Moset in the plot.

The questions the episode is trying to ask are good - what is the value of medical knowledge, of ANY knowledge, obtained through unethical means? Is it a betrayal of those who suffered to use it, or a greater betrayal in not making their suffering carry meaning in giving that knowledge use in practice? Even the question of Janeway demanding that B'Elanna's wish of not having this knowledge used at the expense of her life, when Voyager's circumstances mean that they need B'Elanna more than they can respect her right to autonomy and choice for herself. But the mechanics of getting Moset involved in things just make things too messy to actually dig in to them, while the last of those questions is failed by how Voyager shied away from ongoing storylines and followup between the episodes - how B'Elanna feels having her autonomy disregarded "for the greater good" is a question that could easily have been revisited.

Good ideas, but hurt by some of the overarching flaws of Voyager itself.

 

[NCC-73515]

I also don't like the decision to trash all the knowledge instead of putting it to positive use so that the victims' sacrifice was not in vain

 

[DonIago]

I also don't like the decision to trash all the knowledge instead of putting it to positive use so that the victims' sacrifice was not in vain

This has been my view on it for a long time.

 

[Tosk]

I also don't like the decision to trash all the knowledge instead of putting it to positive use so that the victims' sacrifice was not in vain

"Okay Doctor, now that I have forced this procedure on to an officer against their wishes you can delete the program if you want."

 

[DonIago]

...Janeway does seem to have a habit of forcing her crew to undergo medical procedures when she feels it's in their best interests, regardless of whether they consent...

 

[Oddish]

Janeway does seem to have a habit of forcing her crew to undergo medical procedures when she feels it's in their best interests, regardless of whether they consent...

Unless they're holograms.

 

[Ragitsu]

I also don't like the decision to trash all the knowledge instead of putting it to positive use so that the victims' sacrifice was not in vain

Do you mean on Voyager or in general? I assume that information is stored on other computer systems back in the Alpha Quadrant.

 

[Oddish]

The EMH is programmed with the Hippocratic Oath: primum non nocere. It's presumed that after some soul-searching, if he has a soul, he decided that retaining data that came from acts of egregious harm would violate this.

 

[WarpTenLizard]

...Janeway does seem to have a habit of forcing her crew to undergo medical procedures when she feels it's in their best interests, regardless of whether they consent...

To be fair though, some of these may have been with the lives of the rest of the crew in mind. B'Elanna has gotten Voyager out of a lot of tight spots that other engineers probably wouldn't have been able to. There's a reason she was chosen over Joe Carey, in spite of her criminal record. "Before and After" shows just how screwed a Voyager without B'Elanna Torres is. Every time Kes jumps back in time, she tells the crew her problem, and all of them together can't fix it, but the minute she jumps to a time when B'Elanna is alive, B'Elanna can come up with a solution to the problem practically on the spot.

With "Tuvix," losing Tuvok and Neelix for the sake of one combo-person who can't be in two places at once, while also devastating Kes--Voyager's only medic that can leave Sickbay at that time--could spell serious trouble for the crew.

In "Latent Image," the Doctor's breakdown over Jetal's death is said to have occurred shortly before Seven of Nine came onboard. That means it was when Voyager was nearing Borg space, but did not yet have Seven to help them, and Ensign Wildman had a one-year-old toddler onboard. It was probably not just for convenience that Janeway took such extreme measures to ensure that the Doctor continued to function. (Of course it would've been nice if the episode had addressed that. Not to mention where Kes and Janeway's ponytail were for that time.)

 

[Tosk]

To be fair though, some of these may have been with the lives of the rest of the crew in mind.

That's not a positive. Janeway disregarding people's bodily autonomy "for the good of the ship" is a negative character trait.

 

[DonIago]

To be fair though, some of these may have been with the lives of the rest of the crew in mind. B'Elanna has gotten Voyager out of a lot of tight spots that other engineers probably wouldn't have been able to. There's a reason she was chosen over Joe Carey, in spite of her criminal record. "Before and After" shows just how screwed a Voyager without B'Elanna Torres is. Every time Kes jumps back in time, she tells the crew her problem, and all of them together can't fix it, but the minute she jumps to a time when B'Elanna is alive, B'Elanna can come up with a solution to the problem practically on the spot.

With "Tuvix," losing Tuvok and Neelix for the sake of one combo-person who can't be in two places at once, while also devastating Kes--Voyager's only medic that can leave Sickbay at that time--could spell serious trouble for the crew.

In "Latent Image," the Doctor's breakdown over Jetal's death is said to have occurred shortly before Seven of Nine came onboard. That means it was when Voyager was nearing Borg space, but did not yet have Seven to help them, and Ensign Wildman had a one-year-old toddler onboard. It was probably not just for convenience that Janeway took such extreme measures to ensure that the Doctor continued to function. (Of course it would've been nice if the episode had addressed that. Not to mention where Kes and Janeway's ponytail were for that time.)

I can't hear "For the greater good!" without thinking of Hot Fuzz.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

That's not a positive. Janeway disregarding people's bodily autonomy "for the good of the ship" is a negative character trait.

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one."

Okay, beyond just being cheekily contrary, there IS something to the idea of Janeway, as Voyager's captain, having to make choices about her crew that no other captain would have to, thinking about the good of the ship and crew as a whole, rather than as individuals. It's just not a story that Voyager ever really tackled head on.

When looking at Voyager's crew as a finite resource, where every crewman serves a purpose and can't be so casually replaced, any loss of those crew is something that the ship and crew should feel. That should be a matter that becomes all the more meaningful when it comes to the crew whose abilities and position mark them as all the more vital, like the Chief Engineer, the person tasked with keeping the ship running reliably and all its best functionality. So on a strict matter of the importance of crew members on paper, the person who is keeping their ship flying, yeah, keeping the Chief Engineer alive is a matter that reasonably calls for keeping alive regardless.

The problem is that this IS a moral dilemma, established by Voyager's unique circumstances, the kind of moral dilemma that Starfleet vessels would not normally experience. Tackling the question head on would have been the foundation for at least an episode. It could even, say, be the foundation for an entire series, of a Starfleet vessel, cut off from the rest of Starfleet, alone in a far-flung corner of the galaxy, where the crew has to depend on their skills and wits in an effort to survive.

As I'm sure you're getting from the heavy layer of sarcasm, it's the kind of question that Voyager was poised to ask, yet in practice always shied away from. There's a similar matter in Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica, where, because humans now number low enough that extinction is a possibility, the question comes up of banning abortion, because they need to keep having babies just for the sake of humanity's survival.

In a desperate situation, what matters more, the wishes of the one or the good of the many? That's a valid philosophical and moral question that Voyager could have explored with situations like this one. But the choice was made to avoid focusing on that question.

 

[Tosk]

It's a question worth exploring.

But why bother when you can just have an entirely empty cargo bay, not one person wanting to stay behind and live with Amelia Earhart?

Maybe some of them would have stayed if they'd known that Janeway would kill them for the good of the ship? Or force them to live for the good of the ship?

 

[Akiraprise]

But why bother when you can just have an entirely empty cargo bay, not one person wanting to stay behind and live with Amelia Earhart

To keep status quo they could have offered some of the humans in the colony a chance to come with while a handful of the Starfleet crew stayed behind. Probably would have been more realistic. Earhart herself could have become recurring as she learned to pilot 24th century craft. Maybe I will try and make that happen in the forthcoming new VOY game.

 

[Oddish]

But why bother when you can just have an entirely empty cargo bay, not one person wanting to stay behind and live with Amelia Earhart?

That was just plain stupid.

To keep status quo they could have offered some of the humans in the colony a chance to come with while a handful of the Starfleet crew stayed behind. Probably would have been more realistic. Earhart herself could have become recurring as she learned to pilot 24th century craft. Maybe I will try and make that happen in the forthcoming new VOY game.

That would have been cool. Maybe swap out a character who wasn't really working out. Those "Learning Curve" Maquis, maybe, or Lt. Carey.

 

[Akiraprise]

That would have been cool. Maybe swap out a character who wasn't really working out. Those "Learning Curve" Maquis, maybe, or Lt. Carey.

It was probably just a little too early in the series for that episode. Give the crew another year or two of Delta Quadrant strife and some would have probably stayed behind.