When Good Characters Go Bad

[Richard Baker]

I believe Kirk would have blinded the entire population if that was the only way of ridding the planet of the parasites. Harsh yes, but I think the population would habe been better off blind for life than to of remained pain filled puppets.

You're forgetting the actual option was to do the titular "Annihilate". Kirk was gonna glass the planet to make certain the parasites didn't spread. The choice would have been "blind 'em or kill 'em."

On a somewhat cruel note---what an idea for planet pacification! As long as you're dealing with a species for whom sight is their primary way of navigating their environment, take maybe 500,000 or so people from the planet to form a ruling collaborator cadre, blind the whole planet, and then put your sighted agents back with maybe a few troops. Would be especially useful if there was some way to restore sight (at the least you could promise LaForge-style visors), you could hold that out as a possibility for the billions of blinded and most of them would probably do ANYTHING to be sighted again (so that you wouldn't have a planet of only useless wards for the rest of their lives).

I can so see the Terran Empire doing that. The Dominion, too.

Hard to imagine what practical worth ruling a planet of blind people would be though- if sight was their primary way of functioning just getting the infrastructure to work would be almost impossible, no matter how hard you want to (day of the Triffids). I could see it as an extreme example of efficiently destroying a planet's population and then you can come in a few years later and use it without the pesky inhabitants, like how the neutron bomb kills the organic life but leaves all the factories/cities/roads etc... intact.

 

[Mojochi]

I think having Wesley return to Starfleet after how they completed his arc was lame and made his character look direction less. "I can't get into Starfleet. I go into Starfleet. I nearly Get kicked out of Starfleet. I choose to try again. Then I grow up and decide I shouldn't be in Starfleet, and go off to pursue higher levels of consciousness and whatnot

Guess what? I'm back in Starfleet again..."

 

[Vandervecken]

You're forgetting the actual option was to do the titular "Annihilate". Kirk was gonna glass the planet to make certain the parasites didn't spread. The choice would have been "blind 'em or kill 'em."

On a somewhat cruel note---what an idea for planet pacification! As long as you're dealing with a species for whom sight is their primary way of navigating their environment, take maybe 500,000 or so people from the planet to form a ruling collaborator cadre, blind the whole planet, and then put your sighted agents back with maybe a few troops. Would be especially useful if there was some way to restore sight (at the least you could promise LaForge-style visors), you could hold that out as a possibility for the billions of blinded and most of them would probably do ANYTHING to be sighted again (so that you wouldn't have a planet of only useless wards for the rest of their lives).

I can so see the Terran Empire doing that. The Dominion, too.

Hard to imagine what practical worth ruling a planet of blind people would be though- if sight was their primary way of functioning just getting the infrastructure to work would be almost impossible, no matter how hard you want to (day of the Triffids). I could see it as an extreme example of efficiently destroying a planet's population and then you can come in a few years later and use it without the pesky inhabitants, like how the neutron bomb kills the organic life but leaves all the factories/cities/roads etc... intact.

But that was why I included restoring their sight (even if with a prosthetic) as a reward for good behavior.

 

[T'Girl]

like how the neutron bomb kills the organic life but leaves all the factories/cities/roads etc... intact.

Not quite, a neutron bomb is still a small nuclear weapon, so the area around the blast (small town sized) would still be destroyed, but it has the radioactive reach of a medium sized weapon.

 

[Richard Baker]

like how the neutron bomb kills the organic life but leaves all the factories/cities/roads etc... intact.

Not quite, a neutron bomb is still a small nuclear weapon, so the area around the blast (small town sized) would still be destroyed, but it has the radioactive reach of a medium sized weapon.

Ahhh- I see your point.