What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

Yeah. Take a typical American high school female, physically adult but cared for by parents and schools. Her idea of work is running a cash register at the local Starbucks. Now put that kid in the middle of the woods. Tell her to get dinner by finding roots or mushrooms, or killing and gutting a random rodent. To build a fire without matches. To make a pot or a knife or a blanket out of raw materials. That kid would probably be dead of starvation and exposure within days.

It would have been more merciful for Kirk to just leave them in the complex and drop a photon torpedo on it.

 

I would have rather had Kirk just leave them alone considering that getting them up speed with everyone else would have taken decades

 

Or make some modifications to the complex, so that it could be self sustaining without an organic brain. The Enterprise computer handles that fine. But no, in normal western civilization, men and women live together, and Kirk was determined to force that on these folks, whatever the cost.

I'd say that that was probably not the only planet Kirk left in chaos, possibly mass extinction, due to his style of handling things...

 

"Shades of Grey(TNG)." A bottle episode at the end of a season where the budget had been expended and an almost endless series of clips from previous Riker-centric episodes dating back to Season 1. Is it offensive? No. Is it mind-numbingly boring and just a way to fill a one-hour slot because the series had to deliver a final episode for Season 2? Yep.

 

yeah Kirk is Reckless it always seemed arrogant for him to try and force the "normal" way of life on those people without really considering how it might actually play out

 

Wouldn't be the first time! See also Kirk's actions in The Apple or to a lesser extent in A Taste Of Armageddon, Return Of The Archons and Miri

 

I love Kirk but his way of doing things

 

What was he supposed to do in "Miri"? Just leave school aged children to their own devices? Kirk was forced into the situation in "Armageddon" by Robert Fox. And Much like Vaal in "The Apple", things probably play out completely differently in "Archons" if the Enterprise isn't put at stake by planetary computers.

 

Kirk probably argued for a temporary suspension of the Prime Directive concerning Miri's Planet because it was almost a carbon copy of Earth right down to the continents and other surface features. Starfleet Command clearly agreed that this was a world worth study since at the end of the episode it was mentioned that experts would be sent to the planet to assist the Onlies in rebuilding their society. Humans. Another Earth right down to the continental arrangements. Speaking and writing in English. Yeah, there was probably a big exception made for that planet.

 

I think the Prime Directive is hogwash, and in-universe Starfleet knows it. It flies in the face of human instinct to help and preserve lives, not only the lives of culturally less advanced civilizations but also self-preservation. It is worded sternly to make sure starship crews keep in mind to try to do as little damage as possible when extracting themselves from any situation involving less advanced species.

 

That's why I said "to a lesser extent" because the situations weren't the same. The events in The Apple are most analogous to Spock's Brain because he wasn't restoring a culture to an earlier suppressed form, he was forcing human-centric notions onto a people that had absolutely no clue about any other way of life!

 

The people in "The Apple" had no idea how to live free and independent lives. Certainly, with help, they could learn to do so. But I didn't see the Enterprise offering that help, did you?

 

Someone built Vaal.

That wasn't the format of the show. Much like Miri's world and Beta III, I imagine Federation chaperones would be along eventually.

 

True, but that is limit of our knowledge about the original culture.

 

It's classic era Trek, so of course the solution to everything is hetero-normative sex/marriage/partnership/free love . That even persisted into 90s Trek in some places, like "Up the Long Ladder".
That actually makes me think... what did "Up the Long Ladder" have against artificial insemination? The Mariposans didn't like the idea of sex, the...uh...Irish Stereotypes (forgot their name) were big on monogamy (at least that's what was stated)
So wouldn't artificial insemination been the logical solution?

 

I’m actually not all that bothered with TATV. I just find it fun to think about all the other ways it could have been done. Which turns out to be plenty.

“Scorpion” and “Yesterday’s Enterprise” would have been great Star Trek movies.

Ron Jones should have come back and done the score for ENT. It would have spiced up a number of bland episodes, particularly in S2.

“Endgame” should have actually been Voyager’s 8th season.

I’m actually interested in knowing who was being charged with corruption in the opening teaser of “Endgame.”

Much like Worf & O’Brien, Tasha Yar would have thrived on DS9.

 

And it's irrelevant. Vaal's followers were basically children, possessing intelligence but devoid of knowledge. A self sustaining society requires adults, who have both. Removing Vaal might have been justified, but leaving its followers to their own devices afterward was unconscionable.

 

There was a lot wrong with that episode.
1. Out of 1000 people, figure 900 of them adults, on the ship, you're saying you could find a few who would be willing to be clones.
2. The clones were all the same age. Even if they were produced as adults (which is stupid, given that you would have a grown adult incapable of walking, speech, or basic self care), some would be youthful and others elderly.
3. Killing your own clone is still murder. Why wasn't Riker chucked in the brig?
4. The clone colony had extreme genetic damage, according to Pulaski. Why not let them die off, then start fresh with the Bringloidi (I think that's what they were called).
5. As for artificial insemination, why not have some Enterprise human males "contribute" as well? That would expand the gene pool further.

 

I was just talking about "Yesterday's Enterprise," not any of the dumb retcons that followed it. I personally prefer to just forget that Sela ever existed.

Agreed.

Agreed.

 

Except that Kirk didn't just leave them to their own devices; he introduced a human-centric hetero-normative model of society onto them first, onto a people and culture he knew nothing about. This is why I compared it to his actions in Spock's Brain.

After that he did of course fly off and leave the aliens to their own devices, no argument there!