The episode "Emergence" is absolutely presposterous

[James T Kirk]

I honestly find it a bit insulting. They expect us to believe that the starship created an intelligence all on its own.

Setting aside the fact that this is absolutely beyond impossible, lets let them humor us for a brief moment.

This is a ridiculously far fetched episode that ignores physics and common sense. Seems like they go too far sometimes, its a complete fantasy fairy tale.

Another example would be "Genesis".

Dont get me wrong I love the imagination of Star Trek but stuff like this just makes me shake my head sometimes to be honest and I was wondering what others thought.

Am I spoiling it by thinking too much?

Feel free to discuss.

 

[Melakon]

It was the third to the last episode, and everyone was preoccupied with "All Good Things..." and Generations.

http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Emergence_(episode)

Read the Background section. The idea came from Brannon Braga and the teleplay was by Joe Menosky, two of the most far out guys on the staff.

Braga: I thought it would be neat...

Director Cliff Bole: "I thought Menosky mighta had a couple of mushrooms..."

The technobabble explanation within the episode is it was all caused by a magnascopic storm, whatever that is.

 

[shivkala]

I honestly find it a bit insulting. They expect us to believe that the starship created an intelligence all on its own.

Setting aside the fact that this is absolutely beyond impossible, lets let them humor us for a brief moment.

This is a ridiculously far fetched episode that ignores physics and common sense. Seems like they go too far sometimes, its a complete fantasy fairy tale.

Another example would be "Genesis".

Dont get me wrong I love the imagination of Star Trek but stuff like this just makes me shake my head sometimes to be honest and I was wondering what others thought.

Am I spoiling it by thinking too much?

Feel free to discuss.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-WPlvZguZ4[/yt]

Sorry, I caught the ending of "Emergence" on BBC America today and realized the Train Conductor is The Big Lebowski.

I can't but help to think of a parallel between Q and Picard, especially given their final interaction in two episodes' time. Q, a being of a race that is way older than humans constantly questions humanity's right to be out here, doing what we are doing, especially in light of our history.

In "Emergence," Picard, representing humanity, a race way older than this newly emerging one, trusts it to do what is right, even though it may harm the crew. He bases this on the fact that the intelligence learned from the ship's records.

While he doesn't say outright, I think it's easy to assume that includes historical references on all of the races of the Federation, especially humans, with our violent past. It could have easily read through our history, made the same assumptions Q did, and been hostile. Perhaps the fact that Picard treated it with respect and trust allowed it to continue without harming the Enterprise or its crew. Had Picard been aggressive, it may have reacted aggressively. In other words, had Picard been like Q, the episode might have ended quite differently.

Now if you'll excuse me, my smart phone is spending way too much time with my computer, I need to separate them lest they emerge into a new intelligence.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

As far as I'm concerned, the train conductor (David Huddleston) basically makes the episode. I remember him best as Mayor Olson Johnson from Blazing Saddles, in which he's absolutely hilarious. He has great deadpan timing.

 

[Iamnotspock]

As far as I'm concerned, the train conductor (David Huddleston) basically makes the episode. I remember him best as Mayor Olson Johnson from Blazing Saddles, in which he's absolutely hilarious.

He'll always be the definitive Santa Claus for me.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I honestly find it a bit insulting. They expect us to believe that the starship created an intelligence all on its own.

Setting aside the fact that this is absolutely beyond impossible, lets let them humor us for a brief moment.

This is a ridiculously far fetched episode that ignores physics and common sense. Seems like they go too far sometimes, its a complete fantasy fairy tale.

Another example would be "Genesis".

Dont get me wrong I love the imagination of Star Trek but stuff like this just makes me shake my head sometimes to be honest and I was wondering what others thought.

Am I spoiling it by thinking too much?

Feel free to discuss.

I think you're overthinking. Trek is pretty preposterous from the ground-up. Forehead aliens that always think in human terms? A universe where time is constant irrespective of velocity? Telepathic aliens (and humans in the original show)? The gravity never ever fails even when EVERYTHING else does (at least until the big budget new movies)? Aliens with copper-based blood can breed with humans? And so on.

Enjoy it for what it is, a slightly goofy space adventure. It'll never be realistic science fiction.

 

[BillJ]

One of the few episodes from season seven that I like.

 

[at Quark's]

Not more unlikely than some earlier episodes we saw...

Elementary, dear Data: computer creates intelligent life (or at least, so it is treated), acting on the simple command of creating an adversary that is capable of defeating Data.

Evolution: A swarm of nanites, given the capacity to adapt and improve themselves, eventually creates "swarm intelligence", or something of the kind.

The premise of this episode feels to me as if they took the premises of these two earlier episodes and combined them. This far in TNG's run, it brought me nothing new, and hence I consider it a "filler" episode -- even though it has some nice scenes.

 

[Granola Gwen]

With all the things the show has showed, sentient holodeck characters and whatnot, I could see it happening. I have a hard time paying attention to this episode in general though, it doesn't interest me much.

 

[Timo]

What would even be difficult about creating intelligence?

It's just a matter of lots and lots of computing, supposedly. And computing is evolving at an accelerating pace today. It would be really foolish to predict that brute-force AIs would be outside our reach even twenty years from today, let alone two centuries (during which we make contact with humanoid space aliens who have been at it for additional millennia).

Apart from that, no known issues with "physics" exist as regards the creation of intelligence.

Really, it's a bit surprising there weren't more human-created intelligent lifeforms in the show. But one of those was a main character already! What's wrong with a sidekick (the Enterprise) creating some, too?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[at Quark's]

What would even be difficult about creating intelligence?

It's just a matter of lots and lots of computing, supposedly. And computing is evolving at an accelerating pace today. It would be really foolish to predict that brute-force AIs would be outside our reach even twenty years from today, let alone two centuries (during which we make contact with humanoid space aliens who have been at it for additional millennia).

Apart from that, no known issues with "physics" exist as regards the creation of intelligence.

Really, it's a bit surprising there weren't more human-created intelligent lifeforms in the show. But one of those was a main character already! What's wrong with a sidekick (the Enterprise) creating some, too?

Timo Saloniemi

Agreed.

In fact, the question I'm left with is the exact opposite one:

How do they, given the apparently awesome computational power of the Enterprise's computer, and added on top of that software so sophisticated it can actually create true intelligence on demand (if we accept some episodes' premise), prevent the computer system itself from becoming self-aware and "evolving intelligence" ? As in, why didn't that happen much sooner than in this ep ?

 

[HGN2001]

I don't mind it. I always like trains and there aren't many STAR TREKs that take place on trains!

 

[JirinPanthosa]

How are we judging 'Preposterous' here? Compared to reality or compared to all other science fiction?

 

[Timo]

How do they, given the apparently awesome computational power of the Enterprise's computer, and added on top of that software so sophisticated it can actually create true intelligence on demand (if we accept some episodes' premise), prevent the computer system itself from becoming self-aware and "evolving intelligence" ?

Perhaps they just make the computer sign a contract? "Keep your smartness to yourself and you have all eternity (at your clock speeds anyway) to exist in our mainframe and be as godlike as you wish within those virtual realms - in exchange, we'll ask you to do a few tasks such as operating this starship and opening these doors and playing holographic characters to entertain our kids."

Really, the E-D computer frequently demonstrates enough sentience to pass for a human being at the very least. It doesn't just do the heroes' bidding: it second-guesses them, argues with them, answers questions not asked, volunteers solutions it knows the heroes need even though they don't know it themselves yet... I'd argue this will be commonplace just a few decades from now, it being uneconomical not to install full sentience into blenders and vacuum cleaners because the custom-made parts for deliberately less sapient systems would be prohibitively expensive.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

As far as I'm concerned, the train conductor (David Huddleston) basically makes the episode. I remember him best as Mayor Olson Johnson from Blazing Saddles, in which he's absolutely hilarious. He has great deadpan timing.

The train scenes are my favorite part of this episode, definitely.

As for the concept: I don't think the ep implies that all Starfleet computers will develop sentience. It only happened here because of the nebula, which apparently was already intelligent and reincarnated itself on the Enterprise. It was just a one-off thing.

 

[Ithekro]

How do they, given the apparently awesome computational power of the Enterprise's computer, and added on top of that software so sophisticated it can actually create true intelligence on demand (if we accept some episodes' premise), prevent the computer system itself from becoming self-aware and "evolving intelligence" ?

Perhaps they just make the computer sign a contract? "Keep your smartness to yourself and you have all eternity (at your clock speeds anyway) to exist in our mainframe and be as godlike as you wish within those virtual realms - in exchange, we'll ask you to do a few tasks such as operating this starship and opening these doors and playing holographic characters to entertain our kids."

Really, the E-D computer frequently demonstrates enough sentience to pass for a human being at the very least. It doesn't just do the heroes' bidding: it second-guesses them, argues with them, answers questions not asked, volunteers solutions it knows the heroes need even though they don't know it themselves yet... I'd argue this will be commonplace just a few decades from now, it being uneconomical not to install full sentience into blenders and vacuum cleaners because the custom-made parts for deliberately less sapient systems would be prohibitively expensive.

Timo Saloniemi

The old Cygnet XIV based system was likely sentient the entire time, just trained to keep its emotional tendencies under wraps.

 

[dstyer]

I don't mind it. I always like trains and there aren't many STAR TREKs that take place on trains!

Y'know, this makes me wonder why we haven't heard Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory refer to this episode in that show. He's a big lover of both trains and Star Trek. You would think they would've thrown in a reference by now!

 

[Richard Baker]

This is an episode I wish they could have filmed with the SFX abilities common today. When the Holodeck was described as running several simulation programs simultaneously I was really expecting more than just a couple of out of place costumes on the train.
The old CGI cartoon 'Reboot' had an episode with several different game cubes running at the same time and there was quite a bizarre combination of things happening.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

^Too bad that there can't be a movie that combines both Star Trek and Tron into one movie (particularly the universe of Tron Legacy.

 

[Mojochi]

My advice? Lighten up. Is it any more preposterous than landing on a planet where everyone is living like Earth gangsters from the early 20th century? This is Star Trek, man. We LIVE for the preposterous