Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x06 - "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach"

Not what I'm talking about. I was referring to the plot logic rather than the story, of course. The progress of events is arbitrary and preposterous.

Terrible show all around.

 

Ah. Well, it was more or less an idea and an exploration of such idea. All in all it worked well for me.

 

A very “ Trek” style moral dilemma with elements of the Twilight Zone. I liked it it a lot.

 

i had to cruise through the comments and make sure someone had pointed this out. the guard uniforms as well

 

And it makes you face a hard question... at what level of pure evil do you just decide that "it's for the greater good" is no longer enough?

both this episode and the LeGuin short story it's based upon made me ask that question... still not sure I have an answer.

 

I'd like to think I'd be amongst the ones who walk away from Omelas, but would I? I don't do it now. I mean, I know how the bacon gets made, but as long as I don't see it being made I somehow manage to keep eating it. We've discovered that fish and crustaceans show signs of self-awareness, We now know that insects are capable of feeling pain. We still eat them, squish them. We still maintain our cognitive dissonance even when we know.

 

There's the third option, the one no one speaks of... you can eat bacon, or you can go vegetarian... or you can flatten the slaughterhouse. Draw your phaser and destroy the infernal machine before they can plug the kid into it. Walk into that stinking broom closet in Omelas, scoop up the young victim, and carry them out, flinging aside anyone who tries to stop you. Because of the harm you would do indirectly, most would shun this option... but on one occasion in an earlier Trek, Captain Picard tries to carry it out.

This occurs in "Man of the People", when Picard attempts to force Alcar to release Troi. He does this, fully prepared to render him unable to do his job, aware that this failure will reignite a war that has killed thousands. For Picard, the principles outweighed the mathematics. Not saying I agree, not saying I would do the same... just that someone might.

 

That's actually based on a real quote (from baseball player Oscar Gamble).

"They don't think it be like it is, but it do."

 

A profoundly disturbing story. The way Saving Private Ryan is profoundly disturbing.

I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out what TOS or TNG episode(s) this reminds me of.

*****

"Man of the People," "Masterpiece Society," "The Cloud Minders," "Spock's Brain" (that one's obvious enough), "The Perfect Mate." Oh, and Insurrection.

And as to "Omelas" (which I haven't read; so far as I'm aware, the only LeGuin I've read is The Left Hand of Darkness, and I have absolutely no recollection of what it's about), well, As Sherlock Holmes said (paraphrasing Ecclesiastes if I remember right), "There's nothing new under the sun; it's all been done before."

 

"Omelas" not a long story, but it's a difficult read in places. If you decide it's worth a look, it can be found online.

 

I'll also note that the choice of sequence is rather interesting: first, the almost-tongue-in-cheek "Spock Amok" (with its overtly silly, LD-esque, "Enterprise Bingo" B-plot), and then, WHAM!, we see Pike having sex with the leader of a society where a kid who seems like their equivalent of a Dalai Lama turning out to be a human sacrifice.

Something else comes to mind: how exactly could humanoid sentients even evolve on a planet where the habitable zone is high in the atmosphere? There is nothing in the episode to even suggest that the state of Majalis was not its natural state, and if sentient life were to evolve on a planet of "lava flows and acid lakes," it would be radically non-humanoid, most likely similar to Hortas or Excalbians.

 

I don't think they did. Either they settled there, or were forced to migrate there due to a planetary calamity of some sort.

 

You could also add the Enterprise episode Dead Stop to the list.

 

Quite.

 

It's a really brilliant and daring story for Star Trek, which virtually never does anything to make the audience really uncomfortable. At least fifty years overdue.

I've only been able to watch it once.

 

For me, the worst part of this effort is that on three seperate occasions, people intervened in an effort to stop the First Servant from his destiny: the attacking ship, the turncoat guard, and the bit with the transporter. Each time, Pike or his people stepped in and stopped it. They thought they were protecting the boy from those who wished to harm him... but they were keeping him from those who wished to save him. However unknowingly, they were a part of the atrocity.

 

Quite. Which is reflected in Pike's mood at the end of the episode.

And if you add in "Serene Squall," Pike and company are getting fooled a lot, in only two episodes.

 

Tune in for next time when Mudd shows up to start his history of fooling the Enterprise crew, who get fooled three times in TOS by the same guy.

 

As opposed to being fooled into complicity with the sacrifice of a sentient child three times in a single episode, and then getting fooled by a pirate in the very next episode.

 

Neither is a really good look.