The Acrylic Menagerie

[FredH]

I always thought this was one of the weakest points in the script: "But they had never seen a human. They had no guide for putting me back together."

Let's be generous and assume that literally every other Columbia passenger was destroyed beyond recognition, so the Talosians legitimately don't know what a human looks like. Okay, but they for sure understand what symmetry looks like. They possess it themselves, and their menagerie would be filled with examples. Even with no pattern whatsoever, they could have made Vina look just like a Talosian, lined up her shoulders, made both legs the same length, made the missing parts of her skin look like the non-missing parts of her skin, etc.

In addition, if they had literally no clue, how did they make perfectly believable, age-advanced illusions of Vina's shipmates? Did they read Pike's mind and then magically know enough about human biology to appropriately age-progress them?

For that matter, if they didn't know what Vina should look like when they were fixing her, how did they know what her illusion versions should look like? Presumably they only learned this from her mind after she was conscious, but then why not just "fix" her some more if their medical science is so incredible?

It's just a big, fat lie to make the plot work the way GR wanted it to. Obviously their medical science was barely adequate to save her, and this should have been the explanation. "They saved my life, but they could not physically restore my broken body." Bugged me even as a kid.

Granted it’s of course all for the sake of the story they wanted to tell, but I could buy:

* They do in fact read from Pike’s (and Vina’s) minds what old guys are supposed to look like, and variations thereof so Pike doesn’t just immediately recognize them as elderly guys he’s known.

* They do in fact get what female forms would specifically appeal to Pike, from Pike’s mind.

* It’s one thing to get a perfect image of what a beautiful woman looks like (once Vina’s conscious enough for them to see it in her mind, post-operation), but quite another to then further physically rebuild her that way. Maybe if Vina had herself been a world-class cosmetic surgeon and they could see how to do it in every detail in her mind, but that wasn’t the case.

 

[Christopher]

Let's be generous and assume that literally every other Columbia passenger was destroyed beyond recognition, so the Talosians legitimately don't know what a human looks like. Okay, but they for sure understand what symmetry looks like. They possess it themselves, and their menagerie would be filled with examples. Even with no pattern whatsoever, they could have made Vina look just like a Talosian, lined up her shoulders, made both legs the same length, made the missing parts of her skin look like the non-missing parts of her skin, etc.

Maybe this was a leftover plot point from the original outline where the Talosians were crablike creatures (and pretty obviously knockoffs of the Krell from Forbidden Planet).

 

[Just a Bill]

Granted it’s of course all for the sake of the story they wanted to tell, but I could buy:

* They do in fact read from Pike’s (and Vina’s) minds what old guys are supposed to look like, and variations thereof so Pike doesn’t just immediately recognize them as elderly guys he’s known.

* They do in fact get what female forms would specifically appeal to Pike, from Pike’s mind.

* It’s one thing to get a perfect image of what a beautiful woman looks like (once Vina’s conscious enough for them to see it in her mind, post-operation), but quite another to then further physically rebuild her that way. Maybe if Vina had herself been a world-class cosmetic surgeon and they could see how to do it in every detail in her mind, but that wasn’t the case.

Yeah, I could buy all that too — and that's really my point, that's basically what has to happen — so Vina's explanation is therefore a dumb one on the part of the writer. Her statement is trying to convince us that they had the technology to make her look right, they just lacked the information about how she should look. When in fact we can see with our own eyes that it was obviously the other way around. They know what humans look like, but they aren't able to straighten bones and smooth out scars and such in the physical world.

The line of dialog is 180 degrees backwards; it contradicts what we know from watching the episode, and thereby weakens the storytelling.

 

[FredH]

Yeah, I could buy all that too — and that's really my point, that's basically what has to happen — so Vina's explanation is therefore a dumb one on the part of the writer. Her statement is trying to convince us that they had the technology to make her look right, they just lacked the information about how she should look. When in fact we can see with our own eyes that it was obviously the other way around. They know what humans look like, but they aren't able to straighten bones and smooth out scars and such in the physical world.

The line of dialog is 180 degrees backwards; it contradicts what we know from watching the episode, and thereby weakens the storytelling.

See, I would think it’s no so much that they don’t know how she should look and generally connect — once she woke up, they would —but not the huge level of internal detail that would get her that way. Could they get her to look great on the surface if she was going to lie immobile for the rest of her life, so only the outer appearance mattered? Sure, probably, because then it would just be cosmetic. But to get her looking that way while also being a fully mobile, functioning being? That’s what was too much for them to juggle without a model — of the insides and all the complex biological systems on the inside. They could do a good-looking outside if she didn’t have to move, ever; or they could do something that could move around and “live” independently, but not without basically tearing up whatever they could manage on the outside. So the latter is what they went for. Admittedly, that’s headcanon on my part. I think it’s supported, but I can understand a reading whereby it isn’t.