Ss Columbia

[Avro Arrow]

True enough. I wonder why none of these had given the Talosians the slave race they purportedly needed...

Was there a Goldilocks species they coveted, one with enough initiative to revitalize the planet but not enough of it to rebel?

According to the Keeper, none of the other specimens had shown the same "adaptability" as the humans.

Of course, the Keeper also said that humans have a "unique" hatred of captivity. Apparently all the other species in that area of space are OK with it?

 

[Ithekro]

Maybe the other species being held had already been conquests of the Klingon Empire?

 

[Timo]

Would it follow that they'd stop hating captivity? I'd think the effect would be the opposite...

It is possible that the other captives were not sapients at all, but merely remnants of the fauna that once dwelt on the surface of Talos IV. The idea of kidnapping alien passersby might have been recent - and since the Talosians now were complete klutzes, they couldn't even build a dedicated containment facility for their first-ever captives, but put them in one of their old zoo cages instead.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[johnnybear]

True enough. I wonder why none of these had given the Talosians the slave race they purportedly needed...

Was there a Goldilocks species they coveted, one with enough initiative to revitalize the planet but not enough of it to rebel?

According to the Keeper, none of the other specimens had shown the same "adaptability" as the humans.

Of course, the Keeper also said that humans have a "unique" hatred of captivity. Apparently all the other species in that area of space are OK with it?

Not necessarily but maybe humans hate it just that little bit more!
JB

 

[Mark 2000]

Obviously, the Talosians were some sort of superpowerful morons. Look at how they put Vina back together. Okay, fine - they had no other humans to look at. Could they not have used themselves as models? You know, symmetry, approximate placement of limbs, etc - they'd have gotten a LOT closer. But ignoring that, could they not have corrected their errors once they had her conscious and were able to read things out of her mind?

Some sort of advanced Pakled relative, the Talosians, I think.

No one's considered that they could have looked into her mind to see what she thought she looked like. And probably to also get an idea of her internal anatomy. Everyone knows what the heart and lungs do. That's a starting point.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Obviously, the Talosians were some sort of superpowerful morons. Look at how they put Vina back together. Okay, fine - they had no other humans to look at. Could they not have used themselves as models? You know, symmetry, approximate placement of limbs, etc - they'd have gotten a LOT closer. But ignoring that, could they not have corrected their errors once they had her conscious and were able to read things out of her mind?

Some sort of advanced Pakled relative, the Talosians, I think.

No one's considered that they could have looked into her mind to see what she thought she looked like. And probably to also get an idea of her internal anatomy. Everyone knows what the heart and lungs do. That's a starting point.

As I said in what I bolded above, I'm willing to allow that perhaps they couldn't read her mind until they had her conscious, and so they had to do some patchwork repair to try to get her to that point before then. But looking into her mind after that was exactly what I considered, and suggested, and still think is valid.

 

[Richard Baker]

I really doubt either she or the other crew members which were killed were so messed up that those aliens could not tell humans basic arrangement and symmetry.
It was important for the plot point though for her to look horrible as a contrast to the mental image version we had seen earlier.

 

[MarsWeeps]

Obviously, the Talosians were some sort of superpowerful morons. Look at how they put Vina back together. Okay, fine - they had no other humans to look at. Could they not have used themselves as models? You know, symmetry, approximate placement of limbs, etc - they'd have gotten a LOT closer. But ignoring that, could they not have corrected their errors once they had her conscious and were able to read things out of her mind?

Yes, that always bothered me. Vina said they had no guide in putting her back together. Well, the Talosians were pretty much the same except for the larger heads, which implied larger brains, which implied more intelligence. They couldn't figure out the human skeleton which had to have been very close to their own? They botched it up so badly that it left Vina a hunchback?

Now if the Talosians resembled a Horta, I can understand the confusion but it's hard to believe they were that clueless.

Who knows, maybe the disfigured Vina was also an illusion to either get Pike to feel sorry for her or agree to her reason to stay behind.

 

[J.T.B.]

^ To give the Talosians the benefit of the doubt I just figure her outward appearance is a manifestation of the great difficulties they had in repairing her injuries. But the dialogue about "they had never seen a human, they had no guide for putting me back together" is definitely not helpful.

 

[Timo]

Everyone knows what the heart and lungs do. That's a starting point.

Umm, no.

Nobody here on this board would be able to describe the functioning of the human heart or the human lungs in sufficient detail for said functioning to be restored after major internal damage. It's a game of A connects to B, with several hundred such connections involved, each with flow parameters none of us has the faintest idea on, and never mind the neural work needed to make the things perform.

You can't build a human by using a children's anatomy book as a reference. And you certainly can't repair a human whose innards now look nothing like the functioning originals, let alone the neat and tidy pictures found in the victim's mind.

What do you assume? That Talosians thought Vina ought to look like that? Obviously, that isn't the case. They didn't lack the knowledge that symmetry was desired (actually it isn't - there's nothing symmetric about the human body at any level), they lacked the knowledge needed to restore that symmetry.

They botched it up so badly that it left Vina a hunchback?

Human doctors do that about ten times out of ten - correcting a major spinal injury is simply beyond the best human medical understanding. Fractured vertebrae can be braced easily enough, crushed ones bypassed with titanium rods or whatnot, but getting the spine to assuredly regrow to symmetric shape isn't within the powers of doctors, not yet.

But the dialogue about "they had never seen a human, they had no guide for putting me back together" is definitely not helpful.

To the contrary, it would appear to tell everything. Seeing a human from the outside and the inside at least once would appear to be an absolute prerequisite for learning human medicine when starting out at a flat zero. And the human getting the seeing done would be unlikely to survive the process; only the next one down the line might benefit.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[J.T.B.]

But the dialogue about "they had never seen a human, they had no guide for putting me back together" is definitely not helpful.

To the contrary, it would appear to tell everything. Seeing a human from the outside and the inside at least once would appear to be an absolute prerequisite for learning human medicine when starting out at a flat zero.

The way people really talk, using "seen" alone implies what is externally visible, and combined with "putting me back together" conjures a picture something like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. Something more like "they knew nothing of human physiology" or "they didn't know how to repair me" would have better conveyed what I was getting at.

 

[Timo]

But that's already doubly telling, as it establishes that Vina can't even speak medicine, let alone understand it well enough to help in her own surgery.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[J.T.B.]

^ I'm just talking about how it was written; I think the lines could have been written a little differently and alleviated the issues that some posters expressed above.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

If the Talosians had a narrow time window to operate on Vina before she died, then they'd have only one shot to get the major surgery correct, and she probably wasn't conscious either. Factor in that some organs may have been destroyed. Plus, they'd forgotten how to operate their most advanced tech, so they could have been limited in what they could do, and maybe more correctly fixing her after the fact simply wasn't an option.

 

[MarsWeeps]

Nobody here on this board would be able to describe the functioning of the human heart or the human lungs in sufficient detail for said functioning to be restored after major internal damage. It's a game of A connects to B, with several hundred such connections involved, each with flow parameters none of us has the faintest idea on, and never mind the neural work needed to make the things perform.

And that has exactly what to do with the Talosians?

You can't build a human by using a children's anatomy book as a reference. And you certainly can't repair a human whose innards now look nothing like the functioning originals, let alone the neat and tidy pictures found in the victim's mind.

How do you know how badly Vina was injured? If she was as bad as you described, she would be dead. According to Vina herself, she said:

"They found me in the wreckage, dying. A lump of flesh. They rebuilt me. Everything works. But they had never seen a human. They had no guide for putting me back together."

The fact that she lived would suggest to me that there wasn't any major internal organ damage. You can live with crushed bones but not with crushed organs.

there's nothing symmetric about the human body at any level

There most certainly is, especially the skeletal frame which has an almost identical left/right symmetry. If you don't think that's symmetry then you don't know what the word means.

They botched it up so badly that it left Vina a hunchback?

Human doctors do that about ten times out of ten - correcting a major spinal injury is simply beyond the best human medical understanding. Fractured vertebrae can be braced easily enough, crushed ones bypassed with titanium rods or whatnot, but getting the spine to assuredly regrow to symmetric shape isn't within the powers of doctors, not yet.

Again, what does that have to do with the Talosians?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Apparently the Columbia's computer was destroyed in the crash, otherwise the Talosians could surely have got the data they needed on human anatomy from its memory banks.

I had thought that they could have read Vina's mind, but apparently this isn't possible if the person being read is unconscious.

 

[Timo]

And that has exactly what to do with the Talosians?

What sort of a question is that? Some people here seem to think that they know how to put together an injured human. Well, they don't. It follows that Talosians could not use Vina as their medical specialist. Not unless we assume she was a skilled surgeon (although she's referred to as "crewman", an odd way to treat a ship's surgeon, or an odd occupation for a surgeon, take your pick). So, that's what it has to do with the Talosians.

How do you know how badly Vina was injured?

Why should I need to? A ruptured spleen is already well beyond any TrekBBS member's ability to put back together. We see how badly off Vina is; we can deduce her original wounds were not trivial.

(Although I don't trust this "Vina" any more than I trust "her" other appearances. She'd be playing it up for sympathy points in the best of cases, and might be dead or nonexistent in the worst case. But let's assume she did end up looking like that.)

Nothing in Vina's mind would help the Talosians reconstruct a bent spine or a crushed ribcage, either, unless we again assume Vina was a skilled surgeon. At the very best, the Talosians might force the bones to an aesthetically pleasant arrangement and hope that the body would heal. The hope would be futile.

There most certainly is, especially the skeletal frame which has an almost identical left/right symmetry. If you don't think that's symmetry then you don't know what the word means.

The emphasis being on the word "almost". Sure, one could probably synthesize a fully symmetric skeleton, or eyes that were identical, or ears that were at the same height, or lungs that were mirror images of each other. But if one tried to repair a broken body on the assumption that it was perfectly symmetric, one would just end up doing further damage.

Apparently the Columbia's computer was destroyed in the crash, otherwise the Talosians could surely have got the data they needed on human anatomy from its memory banks.

This assuming there ever was a Columbia, and a Vina. But yes, it would be quite likely that the ship would have no records of any use to offer - else why would the Talosians be so surprised at what they found in the Enterprise computer?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Arianna]

I never liked the episode "The Cage" or "The Menagerie".

Even assuming the ship did crash there, it's odd that only 1 person survived. Did the aliens even try to fix Vina or not bother as they had her captive and didn't see the point? Although this would be very cruel.

Also while I appreciate that those aliens were very powerful what kind or organisation doesn't look for missing ships? Starfleet couldn't even sent probes? Which would be better than sending humans as a machine would not be susceptible to mind control.

Look at the effort that has gone into finding missing aircraft MH 371.

I never got why Vina or Pike couldn't be fixed with 23rd century medicine or why Vina chose to stay on that awful planet with those dreadful aliens.

They kept her captive for years, lied to her, tried to capture her boyfriend, punished her with pain, FINALLY then she can leave with Pike and his crew but she doesn't? Doesn't she have family and friends? The whole point about the show is that people should have moved on from judging by appearances but she feels compelled to stay because she is injured? If they were making a commentary on how shallow humans are then they made a good point but I don't think that this is the original objective of the show.

Also Pike should have insisted she come with him.

So Pike is injured and BTW they can't fix him. He left Vina behind and, years later, she is just happy to see him again instead of "You ********, you left me years ago, so now I'm suddenly good enough for you?" Plus these 2 can't get any "alone time" as the aliens are constantly in their heads and watching them the way we watch 2 pandas F****** in a zoo. What a terrible life.

 

[Ithekro]

SS Valient was lost for 200 years. Other ships fates were unknown for 100 or more years from around the founding of the Federation until either Kirk or Picard's Enterprise happened to be in the region.

SS Columbia was lost 18 years before Pike's ship heard a distress call from that vessel.

 

[Timo]

Clearly, star travel in TOS isn't supposed to be trivial. Nor is communication across interstellar distances - the entire world of Deneva, with hundreds of millions of inhabitants, could remain silent for a full year before anybody paid a visit!

Nevertheless, the Columbia is attributed with vastly inferior capabilities to what is the TOS norm, supposedly - the whole "Our new ships can-" thing. Plus with radio-only, that is, lightspeed-only communications. But that could simply be because they lost their subspace ansible in the crash.

I never got why Vina or Pike couldn't be fixed with 23rd century medicine

We can't fix most things with 21st century medicine. Why would 23rd be so much better that everything suddenly becomes fixable? The story is built on both suffering the sort of injury that cannot be repaired; it can be arbitrarily ramped up to meet the story demands, up to making both clinically dead if need be.

Doesn't she have family and friends?

If she did, why would she board an expedition sailing out in such a slow ship that it can't do what "our new ships" can? It's not as if this would look like a two-way trip anyway: only old men aboard, men who were old those 18 years ago already.

He left Vina behind and, years later, she is just happy to see him again instead of "You ********, you left me years ago, so now I'm suddenly good enough for you?"

Why wouldn't she be happy? She's a pleasing illusion, after all.

What a terrible life.

To the contrary, it's supposedly paradise all day long. And if that grows boring, they can opt for hell in the afternoon.

Timo Saloniemi