Trekkies Against Torture-A Warning To J.J. Abrams
- Thread starter Dusty Ayres
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The Trekkies Against Torture people, or Dusty Ayres? (I happen to know DA in real life - though he may not realize who I am here
- and can say that he's a pretty sincere guy.)While torture for torture's sake is inhumane, under some circumstances torture does provide information. First of all, we must define torture, due to torture being different for each person.
For some, being kept awake for multiple hours is torture - to me its just another saturday night (so to speak).
For me, torture is something that brings you to the precipice of death. Anyway, some episodes of Star Trek have dealt with the subject of torture to my satisfaction.
I want to see Kirk waterboard Nero.
There are certainly plenty of non-lethal forms of torture. In fact, torture is really intended NOT to kill, generally speaking. Torture is intended either to cause ongoing pain and suffering (wherein it's a VERY BAD THING, and totally unjustifiable under any circumstances) or it's intended to provide a MASSIVE incentive towards cooperation (ie, cooperate and the torture will stop) in which case, there are some (rather extreme) circumstances when it could be entirely justifiable.
The trick is that you have to look at WHY it's being done if you're going to determine whether or not it's "OK." Again... if someone had planted a nuke someplace on Manhattan, it was going to go off soon, and there was no way to avoid the blast unless you could FIND it... I'd torture the @#$* out of the bastard and never feel a moment of remorse over it, hoping that by doing so I'd save many, many thousands of other lives.
"The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one."
But there's no question, the "torch to the fingers" thing, while likely not LETHAL, is undeniably torture.
Join TITS: Trekkies Insist Torture Sucks!
Shouldn't this topic be at least rerouted to "General Trek Discussion"? The topic's relevance to the movie is tenuous.
In fact, the entire "Trekkies Against Torture" site itself has a tenuous link to "Star Trek". I'd guess the site is trying to make a more current-day point, drawing in hits by linking it to "Star Trek". Not that that's bad, but is it relevant to THIS forum?
In fact, the entire "Trekkies Against Torture" site itself has a tenuous link to "Star Trek". I'd guess the site is trying to make a more current-day point, drawing in hits by linking it to "Star Trek". Not that that's bad, but is it relevant to THIS forum?
^ No. The only thing their 'movement' can effect is the current Star Trek project...and since Trek XI *is* the current Star Trek project, than yeah...it does have relevance to this forum.
Well, no. It can't affect it. Not right now, anyway. The script is set in stone because of the WGA strike. Short of editing them out completely, if there are torture scenes, or Kirk's new catch-line is, "We have ways of making you talk," they stay.
Though granted, the cause is certainly more noble than a "get Shatner in the film" movement.
The site also provides links to anti-torture groups like Amnesty International, and so on. So, it does have a broader agenda.
No big deal really. Just expressing an opinion.
^
^^...the script is not "set in stone" so to speak, since Abrams can delete anything he wants, and can add any material that was written previously to the strike.
^^...the script is not "set in stone" so to speak, since Abrams can delete anything he wants, and can add any material that was written previously to the strike.
Personally, I like when torture exacts a karmic toll in movies and television. I have no problem with a federation captain committing unspeakable crimes in an effort to get a romulan spy to talk, so long as that captain's skull is punctured by an exposed bolt at some subsequent point during the movie.
I sure would! If I had failed so completely in my duties to serve and protect that I was responsible for something as easily traced as a nuclear weapon being smuggled into the most heavily populated area of the country, while my intelligence apparatus was so totally inadequate that I didn't even know what was happening until I tripped over the guy who planted it while he was on his way out, then my rank incompetence has made me more than acceptably responsible for the deaths of millions of people. There's no better way to top that off than by coercing a false confession and inaccurate intelligence out of someone when I have absolutely no time to waste on that kind of bullshit. In fact, that magnitude of failure is so liberating that there's probably nothing I wouldn't do in that situation. It's not like I could make it worse. Or better, for that matter.
Luckily, real life is not like 24, so people don't have to rely on a borderline psychotic superhuman to protect us from chronic failures of national security so epic they make Pearl Harbor and September 11th look like a kid successfully sneaking outside food into a movie theatre.
I sure would! If I had failed so completely in my duties to serve and protect that I was responsible for something as easily traced as a nuclear weapon being smuggled into the most heavily populated area of the country, while my intelligence apparatus was so totally inadequate that I didn't even know what was happening until I tripped over the guy who planted it while he was on his way out, then my rank incompetence has made me more than acceptably responsible for the deaths of millions of people. There's no better way to top that off than by coercing a false confession and inaccurate intelligence out of someone when I have absolutely no time to waste on that kind of bullshit. In fact, that magnitude of failure is so liberating that there's probably nothing I wouldn't do in that situation. It's not like I could make it worse. Or better, for that matter.
Luckily, real life is not like 24, so people don't have to rely on a borderline psychotic superhuman to protect us from chronic failures of national security so epic they make Pearl Harbor and September 11th look like a kid successfully sneaking outside food into a movie theatre.
I know that you did, which is why I made that comment.
No doubt that a lot of people take Star Trek FAR too seriously, and this "torture warning" is a prime example.
Personally, I didn't like Enterprise simply because I thought it was a poorly executed show (writing wise).
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