Spin-offs and poor treatment of TNG?

[Farscape One]

I agree that in the end, the Crystalline Entity needed to be destroyed.

But to compare it to the Borg is not right.

At least the Crysyalline Entity is doing what it does out of a need to feed. The Borg WILLINGLY kill and assimilate billions... maybe even trillions.

The Borg, in my opinion, is a much worse threat, and Picard was wrong to not use the program.

 

[Nakita Akita]

I agree that in the end, the Crystalline Entity needed to be destroyed.

But to compare it to the Borg is not right.

At least the Crysyalline Entity is doing what it does out of a need to feed. The Borg WILLINGLY kill and assimilate billions... maybe even trillions.

The Borg, in my opinion, is a much worse threat, and Picard was wrong to not use the program.

The Borg are just eating too
When you eat it keeps you moving and growing and able to function. You assimilate the nutrients into energy.

The Borg need to assimilate people to replace ones that get killed and to grow and become a larger population. They need to assimilate new world and new cultures to keep improving.

 

[JesterFace]

The Borg are just eating too
When you eat it keeps you moving and growing and able to function. You assimilate the nutrients into energy.

The Borg need to assimilate people to replace ones that get killed and to grow and become a larger population. They need to assimilate new world and new cultures to keep improving.

The Borg don't have to assimilate and destroy to survive.
The entire species wouldn't just vanish if the Borg didn't attack and assimilate, right?

 

[Nakita Akita]

The Borg don't have to assimilate and destroy to survive.
The entire species wouldn't just vanish if the Borg didn't attack and assimilate, right?

Of course they do. It's what they do to survive. Eventually the entire Borg species would die off if they didn't keep assimilating others. Just like the crystalline entity survived by eating planets, just like humans survive by eating animals and plants.

 

[Farscape One]

If that were true of the Borg, then why didn't they assimilate the Kazon?

"Why assimilate a species that would detract from perfection?"
Seven of Nine, "MORTAL COIL"


That tells me there is malevolence involved, not an instinctual survival need like food.

And at this point, the Borg could simply clone humanoids and assimilate as them, rather than go off and kill and assimilate billions of others... if replacing dead drones and such were really a motivation.

The Borg are as close to pure evil as posdible, plain and simple.

 

[Nightdiamond]

I didn't see him wanting to save the Crystalline entity as being right.
I cheered when the Doctor blew it up.
The thing was killing people all over the place, and destroying all life on planets not just people. It's conceivable that it had killed billions upon billions of people and destroyed billions of other life forms.
It needed to be stopped.
The Dr. Was right.
Picard was wrong. But by simply being Picard we are supposed to know that he is right.
The crystalline entity is exactly the same as the Borg and he was wrong not to get rid of the Borg.

That's what the episode was suggesting- that Picard was indeed right and it was wrong to want to kill it.
At the end, Dr Marr wants Data to tell her how her son would feel about what happened, and he tells her that he would not have approved and would have been disappointed in her. Besides Dr Marr seeming to have a mental breakdown while it happened.

So the episode was saying that Picard was right, and that feelings of revenge are wrong.

I agree that in the end, the Crystalline Entity needed to be destroyed.
But to compare it to the Borg is not right.
At least the Crysyalline Entity is doing what it does out of a need to feed. The Borg WILLINGLY kill and assimilate billions... maybe even trillions.

If I recall correctly, didn't Lore communicate with it, and told it to wait until the Enterprise's shields were down before it could attack? And then he said it would "reward" him afterwards.

That suggests it had awareness of what it was doing and could understand language and intent.

The Borg are far worse, but if this true, this may almost put the Crystalline Entity in the same class.

The Borg, in my opinion, is a much worse threat, and Picard was wrong to not use the program.

The episode made it even easier for Picard to avoid considering doing something drastic, by having him rationalize that if they simply return him to collective, his sense of individuality would "infect" the others and the Borg will stop being Borg.

That was it. No thoughts about a memory wipe, or destroying the Borg with a virus. That was a little too easy a way to let them off the hook.

 

[at Quark's]

The Borg are as close to pure evil as posdible, plain and simple.

Captain Amasov of the Endeavor, as quoted in Scorpion would almost literally agree with you: 'It is my opinion that the Borg are as close to pure evil as any race we've ever encountered.'

However I still wonder what the Borg themselves think about it. The Queen seems definitely malevolent, with her gleeful behaviour when assimilating or attacking something. Locutus, on the other hand, simply didn't seem to understand why people would resist them in the first place (not that it mattered to him of course).

 

[Nakita Akita]

If that were true of the Borg, then why didn't they assimilate the Kazon?

"Why assimilate a species that would detract from perfection?"
Seven of Nine, "MORTAL COIL"


That tells me there is malevolence involved, not an instinctual survival need like food.

And at this point, the Borg could simply clone humanoids and assimilate as them, rather than go off and kill and assimilate billions of others... if replacing dead drones and such were really a motivation.

The Borg are as close to pure evil as posdible, plain and simple.

It's too difficult to clone humans, very labor time, material intensive. They've got other things to do. They always strive to increase their numbers and with numbers comes strength. With strength comes the ability to aquire more technology.

They aren't evil, they are just trying to survive and grow.

 

[Farscape One]

It's too difficult to clone humans, very labor time, material intensive.

And yet Ibudan... a single Bajoran scientist fresh off a 50 year occupied world that has been stripped pretty bare... is able to create a full adult clone of himself, kill it, and try to frame Odo for that murder.

Yes... a lone Bajoran could do fairly easily what an entire collective of billions with thousands of planets and resources from those worlds can't.

I don't buy it.

And the Borg ARE evil. It is not a matter of survival, the things they do. They even went another dimension to assimilate it.

If Species 8472 didn't pose such a grave threat to everyone else, I would have completely agreed with Chakotay in letting them fight it out.

 

[JesterFace]

Do the Borg act on instinct? Are they programmed to be evil?

Or does their instinct to assimilate make them evil? A lion killing its prey could be considered evil but that lion is just doing what nature tells it to do to survive.

But is the Borg self aware, really. The hive says that "we will do this and that" but does the Borg ever questions its actions? Probably not. Could it be something like programmed self awareness, the Borg knows what its doing but.. it's like programmed and limited self awareness, they only know what to do and that's Borg's level of understanding.

Well, that writing above was weird.. I don't know how to proceed with this post.

 

[Prax]

Or is it "the Borg is evil," since they are a single entity?

 

[Farscape One]

I don't consider a lion killing its prey evil because it's eating it for nutrients, and bringing it to their young for the same reason.

The Borg don't NEED to assimilate and kill. If that were a true need, the Kazon would have been just as good a source for drones as humans.

I also think of the Borg's 'adding to bring us to perfection' line to be more a religion than anything. We've seen a lot of that in history... people having certain ideas of what they think is perfection or at least the human version of it. It's in current society, too.

 

[JesterFace]

I don't consider a lion killing its prey evil because it's eating it for nutrients, and bringing it to their young for the same reason.

I guess the question is why does the Borg want to assimilate and search for perfection.

Since the Borg knows what perfection would mean to it, there must be some level of intelligence involved, it's not just instinct?
Or.. The level of Borg's intelligence is limited to only one goal, perfection. The Borg knows of nothing else?

Unless..
The Borg get all the experiences and memories of everyone they assimilate, is that perfection? To basically have everything anyone has ever experienced? And after the Borg has assimilated everyone there's no one left to experience anything new.

 

[Prax]

Is Perfection the original ideology of the Borg, or do the change a little bit with each civilization they consume, and perfection is the ideology of the combination of species that make up the Borg?

 

[Therin of Andor]

3. So Neelix gets artificial lungs. Why not help and make fake lungs for the baddie?

The holodeck lungs were temporary and would have confined Neelix to one room forever. Kes donated one of her lungs, IIRC. (Which was silly, because her life span was not expected to exceed nine years, so wouldn't her lung age similarly?)

 

[Farscape One]

The Vidiians did alter her lung so it would be compatible, so maybe that also made it age right with Neelix.

 

[JesterFace]

The Vidiians did alter her lung so it would be compatible, so maybe that also made it age right with Neelix.

The Vidiians could have been nice and alter Kes' whole body to let her live a lot longer.

 

[Prax]

They are not nice people

 

[at Quark's]

They are not nice people

Yep, they're not nice.

Not that I think any species including humans/Federation would still have much "nicety" left after two millennia of struggle to survive the Phage (assuming that what the Vidiians told Janeway is the truth).

 

[Roundabout]

There are moments/episodes that each of the captains are annoying, or when they lose my sympathy.
For Picard, it's when he gets really self-righteous, and has that 'I hate you. I'm disgusted by you' expression.

Picard had too many self righteous moments.

The other captains had their sanctimonious moments as well. But Picard was the one who came across as a patrician, imo. I thought he was a stiff and he seemed unapproachable. His unease with kids was an example of this. He wasn't my favorite captain.

But when Picard was completely out of his element, like when he was wrestling in the mud with his brother, his actions could be really amusing. And during those rare occasions, as with that scene, he can be a sympathetic figure.

Also, not even Picard was perfect on a moral level. There are instances in which he failed, morally. Homeward would be an example in my book.

I would add "Suddenly Human" to that. I would say that Picard failed in that instance too.

The episode followed the typical TNG plot: conflict ... Picard giving his holier than thou speech at the end ... conflict solved.

Not only was Picard wrong in returning the kid, Jono, to the Talarians. The speech that he gave was just outrageous.

Picard basically blamed the victims for crimes committed against them. It wasn't just his excusing Jono for stabbing him. Picard accused himself (and Starfleet) of committing a crime by trying to persuade Jono to stay and be reunited with his biological grandmother.

Picard essentially excused the Talarians of the real crimes that they committed. The Talarians killed Jono's parents and then took Jono as war booty. They kidnapped the kid. Picard twisted the situation around. It was outrageous.




Interestingly, DS9 also had an episode, "Cardassians", that dealt with child custody.

The two situations weren't exactly the same, but there were similarities. In both cases, the kid bonded with and wanted to stay with his adoptive alien parent. Rugal's adoptive father took Rugal in, in good faith. He adopted a kid whom he thought was abandoned, which was opposite of the Talarians who outright stole the kid.

Ultimately, it was shown that both kids were stolen (it was Dukat's shenanigans that got Rugal "orphaned") from their biological parent, yet Picard and Sisko came to different resolutions.

The two episodes aired about 3 years apart. It was a shame that one, the spinoff, got it right but the other, TNG, got it wrong, imho.