Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 1x02 - "Maps and Legends"

[jaime]

It was alright. But Star Trek isn't Blade Runner.

Indeed. But they are both direct sequels taking place many years after an original where history has caught up a bit (in the case of BR, a lot. I didn’t get my dream of standing on an LA rooftop in my trench coat last year, but I am ok with that. The amusing realisation that Rick Deckard is probably about age amuses me. Harry Potter ain’t far off either. That would be one hell of a classroom before the timelines diverge.)

 

[fireproof78]

Not really. Such a disproportionate response to an event is far from understandable that is why I am hoping it is a point that gets addressed by story's end.

Agree to disagree. I understand it perfectly well. Perhaps not on a government level but on an individual human level I see people react and become protectionist when facing crises. They reject change, and become very narrowed vision.

So, for me, it is understandable. Why this is a point of contention is beyond me.

 

[jaime]

Because when the end credits started to roll, I'm like....that's it? This episode is already over?

That was me in episode one.

It is never me in certain other shows that shall remain nameless. Though the absolute worst are the ones I have to walk in on and ask ‘oh god, isn’t it finished yet?’.

 

[Doc Mugatu]

Two fairly obvious examples in the field of weaponry present themselves when one wants to argue humans shying away from technology: combat gases and nukes. Both would have been of great help in most of the 20th century conflicts. Neither were used to any significant degree, especially not as the terror weapons they were designed to be.

Where that doesn't apply is that both are in abundance today. Combat gases have been used semi-regularly in areas of the middle-east. As for nuclear weapons more countries have those in their arsenal then ever before. In fact the USA has pulled out of treaties designed to limit or reduce their number. Also we are not speaking of bans due to treaties. We are talking of fear resulting from one incident.

 

[jaime]

In theory a streaming show can be as long as the story needs. But commercial consideration tend to trump that.

There was an odd feeling that at least one commercial break scene change was in.

 

[jaime]

Not because of one very limited incident. With that you'd expect an investigation and a report with a conclusion and suggested protocols to prevent a repeat … not an outright ban on it's research. That's an unreasoned overreaction and completely illogical. Starfleet apparently didn't even try to research why the Synths did what they did and that makes absolutely zero sense.

Two. Data in Brothers was an identical if ultimately benign occurrence. The question is...do they know they were hacked? And why didn’t they bother looking for who did it?

 

[Timo]

Where that doesn't apply is that both are in abundance today. Combat gases have been used semi-regularly in areas of the middle-east. As for nuclear weapons more countries have those in their arsenal then ever before. In fact the USA has pulled out of treaties designed to limit or reduce their number. Also we are not speaking of bans due to treaties. We are talking of fear resulting from one incident.

And that is exactly what we are seeing here. Nukes should be flying left and right: they are written deep into the doctrines of all the nations possessing them, hitting first and hitting hard being the chief doctrine regarless of public lies. They are being withheld solely out of gut-wrenching fear - and that indeed stems solely from a single (if double) incident.

Combat gases would have ended WWII in Hitler's favor in minutes. He never had the guts to use those. No Middle East tin-pot dictator has dared field his arsenal in public, either: the technological potential is there, the political will is the absent bit.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[jaime]

I have yet to actively dislike any scenes in the first two episodes. That says a lot because the premiere episodes of every other series with the exception of perhaps the ENT premiere had moments that just bored or annoyed me. Picard kept me interested and wanting to see what was next for two consecutive episodes and that's rare in Trek these days.

Broken Bow bored me. But I agree with your sentiments. I think Emissary was last time I wasn’t bored by anything. I think I read the novel of Caretaker before I saw the premiere, and I think it could have done with more weirdness in its banjo man.

 

[Doc Mugatu]

Agree to disagree. I understand it perfectly well. Perhaps not on a government level but on an individual human level I see people react and become protectionist when facing crises. They reject change, and become very narrowed vision. ...

Well, your lack of being able to support your position through valid example or citation has me concluding your interest may lay more in a desire to be contrarian than a real sincerity of opinion, however, I am more than happy to leave it at an amicable "agree to disagree."

 

[cooleddie74]

The first season of any new Trek series can be so hit-or-miss if not downright mediocre that PIC has its work cut out for it, but so far so good.

 

[Timo]

...OTOH, I for one would be highly interested in knowing what you did mean with these unmentioned but no doubt fascinating examples. Seriously, I mean.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SJGardner]

Where that doesn't apply is that both are in abundance today. Combat gases have been used semi-regularly in areas of the middle-east. As for nuclear weapons more countries have those in their arsenal then ever before. In fact the USA has pulled out of treaties designed to limit or reduce their number. Also we are not speaking of bans due to treaties. We are talking of fear resulting from one incident.

How about nuclear energy instead of nuclear weapons?

Look at the European green movement of the 80s and beyond, for example, that grew out of protest movements reacting to all the high profile nuclear incidents of the era, but especially Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukuoka. Most incidents were thoroughly investigated and turned out to have been caused by human error or a natural vis maior, but these people didn't campaign for increased nuclear safety, they wanted nuclear energy banned outright. And in just a few years, they organized into political parties, sometimes even ending up in government. The German Green Party was polled as the strongest party after the Fukuoka Disaster and it's still just a few points behind the current government party. And while it didn't lead to a total nuclear power ban, the German government has permanently shut down eight nuclear reactors and pledged to phase nuclear energy out completely by 2022. And they weren't the only country to stop building new nuclear plants altogether since the eighties.

 

[Doc Mugatu]

… They are being withheld solely out of gut-wrenching fear - and that indeed stems solely from a single (if double) incident.

They are being withheld, however, R&D in both areas (combat gases and nuclear arms) still advance. Sadly, it's perhaps the one area the Eastern and Western worlds agree.

 

[cooleddie74]

The Trek universe can be, shall we say, intellectually inconsistent in how authorities on Earth and in the Federation deal with perceived public dangers. Genetic engineering? Killed 37 million humans on Earth and more than a century and a half before the Federation even came into existence, but we'll outlaw it. Nuclear energy and weapons? Killed 600 million or more humans on Earth but not only were the earliest ships to colonize Earth's solar system powered by nuclear engines but Earth Starfleet vessels during the planet's war with the Romulans were often armed with nuclear weapons, descendants of the weapons that killed hundreds of millions of innocent people just a little over a century earlier.

 

[fireproof78]

Well, your lack of being able to support your position through valid example or citation has me concluding your interest may lay more in a desire to be contrarian than a real sincerity of opinion, however, I am more than happy to leave it at an amicable "agree to disagree."

Yes, I love being contrarian. That makes me feel all warm and fuzz inside...

Fear is a very complicated emotion and isn't rational. I don't expect rational reactions to fears: Anxiety comes from that fear response, which means individuals will look more positively or negatively depending on how pervasive something may occur to them.

“It’s part of the complicated nature of fear,” Bader said. “When people respond to how much they fear something, part of it is them responding to, ‘How horrible would this thing be if it happened to me?’ and part of it is, ‘How likely is it to happen to me?”

While I have not been successful in finding real world examples, I don't really need it. I know the nature of fear, of human response, and how Trek has treated technology in the past. So, I would expect the behavior from Trek humans, and it is understandable to me.

I don't need it to be understandable to anyone else. But, I would appreciate it if there was not accusation of me just being "contrarian" just because I'm not willing to write a paper for a discussion forum, when research and study is part of my day to day work.

 

[Racefuel]

The Trek universe can be, shall we say, intellectually inconsistent in how authorities on Earth and in the Federation deal with perceived public dangers. Genetic engineering? Killed 37 million humans on Earth and more than a century and a half before the Federation even came into existence, but we'll outlaw it. Nuclear energy and weapons? Killed 600 million or more humans on Earth but not only were the earliest ships to colonize Earth's solar system powered by nuclear engines but Earth Starfleet vessels during the planet's war with the Romulans were often armed with nuclear weapons.

And NX-01 was originally designed to have nuclear torpedoes, don't forget that.

 

[Timo]

Shying away from nuclear power is hardly a human phenomenon. The Germans are getting a lot of flak for their returning to coal-burning, while e.g. China is "going green" by turning increasingly nuclear, and Russia is at least trying to follow suit. Heck, my native little Finland is, too, even if building fission power is rather expensive.

But it's a matter of scale. Humans could be the Germans; Romulans could be the Chinese. Or whatever.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[cooleddie74]

Yep, the spatial torpedoes can be seen as low-yield fusion warheads and thus weren't considered to be nuclear.

 

[jaime]

The Trek universe can be, shall we say, intellectually inconsistent in how authorities on Earth and in the Federation deal with perceived public dangers. Genetic engineering? Killed 37 million humans on Earth and more than a century and a half before the Federation even came into existence, but we'll outlaw it. Nuclear energy and weapons? Killed 600 million or more humans on Earth but not only were the earliest ships to colonize Earth's solar system powered by nuclear engines but Earth Starfleet vessels during the planet's war with the Romulans were often armed with nuclear weapons, descendants of the weapons that killed hundreds of millions of innocent people just a little over a century earlier.

It gives you the feeling that other Federation species had similar stories though...and there’s genetic engineering and there’s genetic engineering. We see the Doctor do a little in Voyager, and there’s the hairbrush saves the day episode with Pulaski I forget the name of.

 

[Timo]

^^What does that mean?

In in-universe terms, "nuclear" probably should remain our word for fission and fusion kabooms. What we want to redefine is "atomic", which is a nonmilitary term that shouldn't be applied to nuclear weapons today and really shoudn't have yesterday, too. Defining it the exact right way would help with certain issues with "Balance of Terror"...

Timo Saloniemi