Poll Would You Let a Holographic Hitler Save Your Life?

[JoeCabby]

Yes, of course. What's done is done, we should never let another scientists do this again, but not using what was learned kind of makes the deaths of those who were originally tested completely useless.

Now, I barely remember this episode, but I recall hating it. B'lana doesn't like Moset. So why couldn't they just make Moset look like Hitler, say hey this is George he'll be performing your operation today and be done with it. Episode over.

 

[Kor]

A holographic Hitler wouldn't have the necessary medical knowledge. Mengele did that stuff for him.

Kor

 

[matthunter]

Point of order, Hitler didn't shake Owens' hand, but only because he had been told by his advisors that he either shook all the athletes' hands (he had wanted to congratulate only the German competitors) or none, and chose none. Which meant his snub wasn't a personal one at Owens, whilst FDRs refusal definitely was.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

A holographic Hitler wouldn't have the necessary medical knowledge. Mengele did that stuff for him.

Kor

Any hologram can have the knowledge of one person but the appearance of another.

 

[Orac]

Absolutely! I'd probbly change the holograms skin to make it look like Scarlett Johansson though.

 

[hux]

My main issue with the episode was that it used B'Lanna as the foil for the doctor's Moset programme. She is - in my opinion - the last holdout regarding the doctor's sentience. Her attitude towards him and holograms in general is clearly one that's entirely dismissive. For the outrage to matter, it needed to be someone who strongly embraced the doc's self-awareness and whose moral indignation was built on viewing holograms as more than just tools of the computer. Problem is, Kes and Seven were the only two who fit that bill and neither would have been convincing (for different reasons).

As I said before, Tabor was obviously meant to be the bridge. He's outraged. He's Maquis. She's Maquis. She's outraged. No-one will notice our subtle trick.

Why not just use Tabor? Maybe the cast had a certain number of episodes they needed to have and this one was foisted on Dawson.

She was the worst possible choice though.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Point of order, Hitler didn't shake Owens' hand, but only because he had been told by his advisors that he either shook all the athletes' hands (he had wanted to congratulate only the German competitors) or none, and chose none. Which meant his snub wasn't a personal one at Owens, whilst FDRs refusal definitely was.

Oh. How far have we come? Kind of strange for a person who suffered a disability would be a racist. I'm glad I wasn't born in those days.

 

[CatAteMyTribble]

That episode would have been so much better - and B'Elanna's reaction so much more believable - if it had been the real Moset instead of a hologram. It wouldn't have been hard to set up: his ship could have been taken by the Caretaker a few years before Voyager was, and the rest of the crew either didn't survive the trip, or died somewhere between then and now. His ship finally gave out, and he found himself stranded on an M-class planet. That setup could've been done convincingly with less than a minute of dialogue. Maybe the Thing that Ate B'Elanna could've been one of his experiments gone awry, or trying to kill Moset (with good reason!) and she just got in the way.

Not only would her reaction have been less ridiculous, but the we would've had a more meaningful ethical quandary: what to do with Moset? Bring him aboard, and try to put his expertise to good use? Keep him in the brig forever? Leave him in the DQ to wreak untold havoc on indigenous populations? He'd have conveniently died at the end of the episode, but it still would have been interesting to see those issues examined.

 

[BruntFCA]

I would let actual Hitler save me. As much as VOY traveled in time you never know what situation might arise.

 

[Drone]

My main issue with the episode was that it used B'Lanna as the foil for the doctor's Moset programme. She is - in my opinion - the last holdout regarding the doctor's sentience. Her attitude towards him and holograms in general is clearly one that's entirely dismissive.

This is so true. You can see still see it in Renaissance Man, when she's engaged in the procedure to prevent him from disappearing into the ether. If you study her expression, it's as if she's performing the task with a perfunctory attitude bordering on contempt. Her visage when he is pouring his heart out to Seven is hilarious and helps make the scene one of the funniest in the entire series, IMHO.

 

[Lynx]

There's actually something which is worse than a holographic Hitler.

A holographic Stalin.

 

[suarezguy]

I don't know what I would do if a situation like in "Nothing Human" occurred to me but I probably lean toward more selfishly using the treatment despite the negative consequences that could occur.

Torres's dislike of the Crell hologram seems not inconsistent with having a low view of holograms' natures in general, reactions are likely to be different when it's an image of an actual person. Regardless, the dislike was primarily a dramatizing of that she disagreed with using Crell's knowledge at all.

It seems a very legitimate concern that using research or other products developed unethically can enhance the reputation of the developers or at least deemphasize their crimes and can make the methods seem more legitimate and acceptable for others to use. Precedents can definitely have a major role in future decisionmaking.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Was Herbie (the VDub beatle from those Disney movies) a NAZI Ghost?

 

[hux]

Finally, a sensible post. Herbie was probably Hitler himself. Those mad Nazi scientists somehow managed to get his soul into a beetle just before the Russians arrived.

But what about Lohan?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Never trust a gingernut.

 

[Catarina]

if that were true and i asked, If I liked Herbie does that make me genocidal? eek!

For the sake of comedy here, I'll say no. To take a page from Litchfield Prison: "trust no bitch." Hitler hologram cannot save me.

 

[Drone]

It seems a very legitimate concern that using research or other products developed unethically can enhance the reputation of the developers or at least deemphasize their crimes and can make the methods seem more legitimate and acceptable for others to use. Precedents can definitely have a major role in future decisionmaking.

This is a very consequential issue, which we ourselves have already seen many examples of during the last century or so. That they raise tangled moral and ethical concerns goes without saying. I think that a scenario that can allow such arguments to be minimized, if not disappear, for a time at least, is when the incidents are the product of a losing antagonist in a protracted war. If the ability to tightly and artfully control the reckoning of the story resides with the victors, as has been long recognized to be the case in the rendering of history, then that side can attempt to claim that the work done to develop a technology or product that benefits many, was in fact, authored by them. They can point to parallel research done by their own scientists as leading to the breakthrough or revelation. With the effective concealment of the enemy's records and/or scientists, a convincing scenario can be constructed, that lends credence to the revision of the truth, can make the claims of skeptics extremely difficult to verify (and additionally can cast such doubters as people with an ax to grind), and most significantly can legitimize the fruits of objectionable or reprehensibly obtained efforts for societal good and financial gain. It's interesting to speculate what the ability of 24th century political structures to much more effectively run such games might be, or if there are many societies in which the concept of governmental transparency has appreciable, if not far reaching meaning.