The 37's: A Question

[Athena28]

So the humans on the planet were descendants of the 37's. I'm assuming this means descendants of all the 37's except those who were in stasis as they've been in stasis since they were taken. What's always confused me is the humans seem to be implying those in stasis were their actual forebearers.

 

[Farscape One]

I think it's more what those in stasis represent... the people who were taken from Earth but rose up against oppressors and thrived, not so much their literal ancestors.

And if memory serves me, they didn't really think they were alive, which is why John Evansville asks Amelia Earhart in awe, "You're a 37?"

 

[shreefe]

I don't know.
However, thinking of this episode makes me remember how much I disliked the ending. Amelia Earhart should not have settled. She should have been intent on learning how to fly the new ships -- starting with a shuttlecraft, and then aspiring to fly Voyager itself. She and Tom could have become rivals.

 

[Timo]

Apparently, the people in the stasis tubes always were in those stasis tubes. Or at least Fred Noonan has no truck with idiotic stories about "space aliens" - an unlikely situation were he once part of a slave revolt against space aliens.

So the story seems to go that the Briori hijacked about three hundred people from Earth in 1937 for their slave mining project, but kept them in stasis until needed. The folks they did take out of the tubes eventually rebelled and killed the Briori - but for some reason, they did not wake up all of their companions. Or perhaps they woke up nobody, there only having been this small bunch left, for reasons only known to the Briori.

Evansville is the great-etc.-grandchild of one of those who did take part in the original revolt. He is not related to either Earthart or Noonan or Hayes or Nogami. But he relates to them, as part of the bunch that were the actual forebears of the current population.

Now... Why were these four in particular never woken up before Janeway came? Kim's scans refer to five other facilities, presumably with eight chambers in each of those, too - all empty. So, out of 48 pods (for 300+ people? Why would the other chambers be equipped with more pods than this one?), we get four people left inside. Were they rejected because they were inferior (Noonan might have been declared dying of alcoholism, say)? Were they simply the last ones left in a systematic reviving of suitably small batches of slaves? If so, how come there were three hundred slaves awake at one time, capable of performing the revolt? That is, why were the slaves woken up in small batches?

Might of course be the origin story is but a myth. Perhaps there were Briori, but perhaps there never was any slavery. Possibly the humans who woke up were the villains of the piece, and the four were left asleep because they were the only half-decent folks around. Or then there's a completely different story there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Farscape One]

Actually, I think there were 8 of them, but only those four had any dialogue.

 

[Galileo7]

The ending of the episode disappointed me because I thought that Amelia Earhart and others should join the Voyager for their journey back to Earth. Amelia Earhart must have wanted to see what the 24th century Earth would be like.

 

[phantomeagle]

I suspect that Amelia, and the rest, were left in Cryogenic stasis as a safety net. The new residents hadn't realized that they weren't dead, so even hundreds of years later, they left them as an honorarium to their ancestors to show not only who they've become, but to who their ancestors were. No need to disturb the dead.

I guarantee you that had they known they were alive, they would've gotten them out.

 

[chris of nine]

Why did the surface soldiers fire on our guys when they came up?

And I think the 37s, after seeing the cities, probably thought,

“Go back to Earth? Years from here. And this is Paradise. Besides,
We’re already rock stars here.”

 

[Timo]

Why did the surface soldiers fire on our guys when they came up?

Why not? They probably saw a starship land. They know that folks coming out of flying saucers are evil, especially folks familiar with the 37s and their Shrine. What reason would there be not to shoot?

Evansville also directly accuses the heroes of disrupting the radio signal and stealing the 37s. He probably doesn't pack a tricorder that'd allow him to tell that at a distance; he is likely to have gone down to the Shrine himself, witnessed the violations, and thus been ready to whupass any strangers in these parts for the crimes they were obviously guilty of.

And I think the 37s, after seeing the cities, probably thought, “Go back to Earth? Years from here. And this is Paradise. Besides,
We’re already rock stars here.”

Plus, apparently nobody else from outer space has visited the place in fifteen generations, so the place ought to be quite safe for raising kids with funnily geographical names.

Timo Saloniemi