Revisiting ST-TNG...

[GalaxyX]

^ I think that episode would lose a lot of its impact in that case, though. Part of "The Survivors" brilliance is that chilling revelation that Douwd just caused an entire species to vanish. Wouldn't be the same if it were the Borg.

Exactly. It's the horror on Picard's face that an entire species he never heard of was wiped out in the blink of an eye. It's incomprehensible, and for an explorer, unfathomable.

The closing line of that episode is perfect. It's one of my favourite TNG stories actually.

What always bothered me about that episode is that someone with the power to destroy an entire race merely by wishing it, would most likely have the power to bring them back. Like Q for example.

"The Survivors" is trying to tell me that this guy had the capability to wipe out a race with his mind, but he doesn't have the power to restore them?

 

[Anwar]

Like Spock said, it's a lot easier to destroy than to create. Recreating an entire species to the exact way it was when you destroyed them would require knowing all those untold billions/trillions and recreating each and every one. Destroying them all would be a lot easier, by comparison.

 

[GalaxyX]

Like Spock said, it's a lot easier to destroy than to create. Recreating an entire species to the exact way it was when you destroyed them would require knowing all those untold billions/trillions and recreating each and every one. Destroying them all would be a lot easier, by comparison.

It's easy to destroy with technology. However, the episode implies he did it with his mind ("wiped them out with a mere thought").

Wouldn't a creature with that much mental power be able to reverse his actions?

 

[Trekker4747]

Depends on the limitations of his powers and further what he meant by "wiped them out with a single thought." His powers may not allow him to create life in such a manner or to undo actions like that. His "single thought" could've been to conjure up a "bigger fish" to wipe out he invading force. But that was only "life" as much as a program on the holodeck is.

He didn't even "really" recreate his wife but simply a "projection" of whom he knew her to be in an attempt to live out his existence in a degree or two of happiness. Hell, it's questionable if even Q can "create" life in such a manner. There's a world of difference between the populated illusions we see Q create or the man in this episode create and creating life, a living, breathing, populating, and occupying race of billions of individuals of a single species.

Entities like this guy, like the Q and other entities displaying great powers may be omnipotent, omniscient and powerful but they're not gods or a billions of year long process of evolving cells to form life.

That, more or less, seems to be a "corner stone" Trek has tried to remain relatively consistent on that creating (organic) life is very, very hard if not impossible to do. And even the "life" created by computer programs and machines is tenuous at best and limited to a handful of individuals. Still lightyears away from creating an entire species out of thin air.

 

[Ubik]

Like Spock said, it's a lot easier to destroy than to create. Recreating an entire species to the exact way it was when you destroyed them would require knowing all those untold billions/trillions and recreating each and every one. Destroying them all would be a lot easier, by comparison.

It's easy to destroy with technology. However, the episode implies he did it with his mind ("wiped them out with a mere thought").

Wouldn't a creature with that much mental power be able to reverse his actions?

See, this is the kind of attempt at logical reasoning that I often feel is inappropriate when dealing with science fiction. It's the same kind of logic people are awkwardly applying to the memory-erasing beam in Conundrum. We're trying to use our own real-life reasoning to explain why an imaginary technology centuries ahead of us doesn't make any sense. But the problem is, what the hell do we know?

Who knows how the Douwd's mind powers work? Who the heck knows how the memory-erasing beam in Conundrum works? Both technologies are made up, and aren't even the point of the episode - they're just the set up, placed there in order to tell a story about characters. It isn't like either of these plot points is contradicting itself (like, say, when the script forgets that a person cannot beam through shields.)

Finding fault with these sorts of made-up technologies and powers isn't useful. One might as well complain about the powers of Zeus in The Iliad, which fluctuate wildly. But each time his powers fluctuate, it's for a specific dramatic purpose, and ultimately, what the hell do we know about how Zeus's power works?

An episode, or book, or whatever, I think, doesn't succeed or fail based on how convincing we find the made-up science fictional or fantastic premise - the question is, does the premise lead to interesting dramatic situations? If it does, then the premise is acceptable, regardless of how implausible we might find it. One should never let logic get in the way of a good story - any author will tell you that.

 

[BillJ]

See, this is the kind of attempt at logical reasoning that I often feel is inappropriate when dealing with science fiction. It's the same kind of logic people are awkwardly applying to the memory-erasing beam in Conundrum. We're trying to use our own real-life reasoning to explain why an imaginary technology centuries ahead of us doesn't make any sense. But the problem is, what the hell do we know?

Part of the problem is: if the viewer/reader doesn't buy the set-up, the rest of the story suffers for it (which is why Conundrum failed).

I'll go to The Expanse which set-up the Enterprise Xindi arc. Why attack Earth to begin with? There are ten million Earth-like planets and so you feel the need to test your weapon on the actual target? Alerting those who you plan to attack later on with your uber-weapon. Everytime I try to get into Enterprise season three, I think back to the set-up and shake my head. The writer is asking you to buy an impossible scenario.

 

[Anwar]

Just because a planet is "Earth-like" doesn't mean it's exactly like Earth. They may have needed to gain data on what the prototype's beam effect would have on the genuine article itself.

 

[BillJ]

Just because a planet is "Earth-like" doesn't mean it's exactly like Earth. They may have needed to gain data on what the prototype's beam effect would have on the genuine article itself.

You keep telling yourself that. Sometimes it's just better to admit the writers' fucked up.

 

[Ubik]

See, this is the kind of attempt at logical reasoning that I often feel is inappropriate when dealing with science fiction. It's the same kind of logic people are awkwardly applying to the memory-erasing beam in Conundrum. We're trying to use our own real-life reasoning to explain why an imaginary technology centuries ahead of us doesn't make any sense. But the problem is, what the hell do we know?

Part of the problem is: if the viewer/reader doesn't buy the set-up, the rest of the story suffers for it (which is why Conundrum failed).

I'll go to The Expanse which set-up the Enterprise Xindi arc. Why attack Earth to begin with? There are ten million Earth-like planets and so you feel the need to test your weapon on the actual target? Alerting those who you plan to attack later on with your uber-weapon. Everytime I try to get into Enterprise season three, I think back to the set-up and shake my head. The writer is asking you to buy an impossible scenario.

An impossible scenario? Like, for example, that a king would decide what parts of his kingdom to give to which daughters based on how much they tell him they love him? That makes absolutely no sense, and I am sure no king in the history of the world has ever done this, but it's the impossible scenario that begins King Lear.

Or how about an impossible scenario like, a country would go to war against and attempt to invade and utterly destroy another country for TEN YEARS, costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of men, just because some guy ran away with some other guy's wife. Completely implausible, but it's the scenario of The Iliad.

Or, if you'd like to remain with sci-fi, how about the impossible scenario of the Martians attacking Earth, having the technology to do this, and yet not preparing for the fact that there would be microbes on the Earth that they wouldn't have immunity for? Today's scientists wouldn't make that mistake, but the otherwise technologically-advanced Martians make this impossible-to-believe mistake in one of the best sci fi novels of all time, War of the Worlds.

Or, if you'd like to stick to Star Trek, how about the impossible scenario of having Kirk defeat a man who tried to take over his ship, having Kirk leave that man on a planet, and then, somehow, failing to follow up to find out that this planet's sun knocked a couple of its system's planets out of orbit? And he simply forgot to let the Federation know what he did, and where he left Khan, so that THEY could prepare accordingly, in case it slipped his mind? Does this man not keep a to-do list, an agenda? This kind of mistake would never happen in today's military, but Kirk does it in, probably, the best Trek movie there is.

Fiction is full of completely impossible scenarios. That's why it's called fiction, and not history, or real life. Who says fiction has to be like real life? That's such a 20th century bias. You think Homer or Shakespeare gave a crap about stuff like that? They knew, as the best writers of today know, that whether a story is great has nothing to do with its possibility.

 

[BillJ]

Fiction is full of completely impossible scenarios. That's why it's called fiction, and not history, or real life. Who says fiction has to be like real life? That's such a 20th century bias. You think Homer or Shakespeare gave a crap about stuff like that? They knew, as the best writers of today know, that whether a story is great has nothing to do with its possibility.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, writers are held to a much different standard. Many in the audience actually scrutinize the material they're being fed.

So whether it's Conundrum or The Expanse, if the set-up fails... a good portion of your intended audience is going to call you out on it.

I've seen many people say that don't like The Wrath of Khan for exactly the reason you posted above.

 

[SchwEnt]

Just because a planet is "Earth-like" doesn't mean it's exactly like Earth. They may have needed to gain data on what the prototype's beam effect would have on the genuine article itself.

Would that be like needing to test the first atomic weapon prototype on Japan itself before really using the weapon on Japan in an attack?

 

[Anwar]

Earth is still Earth, regardless of the location on Earth.

Testing out the planetkiller weapons on some Earth-like planet that turns out to have some kind of mineral on it that Earth doesn't, which messes up the weapon's full effectiveness would necessitate testing out the weapon on the best possible test site: Earth.

And besides, before Daniels told Archer where the Xindi were in the Expanse no one knew what to do so the Xindi had no reason to think anyone would come after them.

It's http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AnthropicPrinciple, the story NEEDS this element to work.

Or, if the Xindi just used the test Probe on some other Terran Colony world as a test and killed everyone there in a bloody massacre to get the human rage pumping, would THAT satisfy you?

 

[BillJ]

Earth is still Earth, regardless of the location on Earth.

Testing out the planetkiller weapons on some Earth-like planet that turns out to have some kind of mineral on it that Earth doesn't, which messes up the weapon's full effectiveness would necessitate testing out the weapon on the best possible test site: Earth.

And besides, before Daniels told Archer where the Xindi were in the Expanse no one knew what to do so the Xindi had no reason to think anyone would come after them.

It's http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AnthropicPrinciple, the story NEEDS this element to work.

Or, if the Xindi just used the test Probe on some other Terran Colony world as a test and killed everyone there in a bloody massacre to get the human rage pumping, would THAT satisfy you?

They could have used one of the many class M planets within their space as a 'proving ground' for the weapon.

 

[Anwar]

Which gives the heroes no motive to investigate the Expanse, at all.

Have them attack Earth and slaughter millions, does.

And like I said, being Class-M still isn't the same as being Earth.

 

[BillJ]

Which gives the heroes no motive to investigate the Expanse, at all.

Have them attack Earth and slaughter millions, does.

And like I said, being Class-M still isn't the same as being Earth.

Forrest: There are rumors of a race creating a weapon of mass destruction and that they are going to target Earth with it.

Archer: Sounds like we should investigate...

Forrest: You think?

***

Lots of different ways to set up a story and get the desired results. Don't take the audience for chumps. The added bonus is that you get rid of the idiotic 'quantum dating'.

 

[Anwar]

...Which isn't anywhere near as dramatic as having Earth get attacked and scarred. It would be like if Best of Both Worlds was just about them defending some random outer colony world instead of Earth and some random redshirt getting turned into Locutus.

Or if Kirk never fell in love with Edith Keeler.

 

[BillJ]

...Which isn't anywhere near as dramatic as having Earth get attacked and scarred.

So it's okay if it's stupid... as long as it's dramatic? No wonder Star Trek 2009 did $400 million in business.

 

[Anwar]

I had my own issues with Trek 09, yes. But I won't deny that it succeeded.

The whole Xindi attack on Earth was meant to be a parallel for 9/11. An attack on what was considered a safe place that motivates a military action due to loss of civilian life.

I dunno, a suicide attack by even more fanatical Xindi faction? Last survivors of their Avian group?

 

[BillJ]

I had my own issues with Trek 09, yes. But I won't deny that it succeeded.

The whole Xindi attack on Earth was meant to be a parallel for 9/11. An attack on what was considered a safe place that motivates a military action due to loss of civilian life.

I dunno, a suicide attack by even more fanatical Xindi faction? Last survivors of their Avian group?

And it didn't work because it lacked any nuance and the fact that the audience had no real connection to the Xindi. They were just an extended Alien-of-the-week.

 

[Anwar]

The audience is never going to feel a connection with aliens they've just met. What are you suggesting, that it be some alien species already encountered that strike at Earth like the Suliban or Romulans or something?

And Hell, the audience didn't mind that the Dominion just upped and showed up in the second season finale of DS9 when all they had up till then was 2 mentions or so.