Strange New Worlds season 2 - SPOILERS

[Ryujin]

Interesting! I'd apparently completely blocked it from my mind, though I've only seen most TOS episodes once.

In "Court Martial" the computer would announce the person giving testimony, their rank, and any commendations when the witness put their hand on it. It went on rather long when Kirk sat to testify. They didn't do that in SNW for some reason.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It went on rather long when Kirk sat to testify.

That was deliberate machinations by Kirk's lawyer. It's starts to rattle off his citations, and the prosecutor (one of Kirk's ex-girlfriends of course) says "I think we can dispense with that". The judge's response suggests that would be normal, but the defence insist on hearing it in full - then cuts it off before it gets to the end to make it seem even longer.

 

[Ryujin]

That was deliberate machinations by Kirk's lawyer. It's starts to rattle off his citations, and the prosecutor (one of Kirk's ex-girlfriends of course) says "I think we can dispense with that". The judge's response suggests that would be normal, but the defence insist on hearing it in full - then cuts it off before it gets to the end to make it seem even longer.

Spock's commendation list is also long and plays out, but not as long. That makes it seem to be normal procedure.

 

[Umbran]

The whole point of Star Trek is the idea that human nature can be improved. That might not be true in real life, but it's fundamental in the Star Trek universe.

I'm going to push back on that a little.

Trek doesn't posit that we can change human nature. "Human nature" includes both bad and good (for lack of better terms). Trek posits that we can, by and large, have a humanity that works by the best of our natures, rather than the worst.

 

[Ryujin]

I'm going to push back on that a little.

Trek doesn't posit that we can change human nature. "Human nature" includes both bad and good (for lack of better terms). Trek posits that we can, by and large, have a humanity that works by the best of our natures, rather than the worst.

There's also a certain amount of treating at least some criminal intent as mental illness. There were at least two separate episodes involving treatment of major criminals for mental illness; "Whom Gods Destroy" (the introduction of Garth of Izar, hero of the Klingon War) and "Dagger of the Mind" (in which Dr. Van Gelder was brainwashed by the experimental treatment device at the Tantalus Colony facility).

 

[Umbran]

Sure, but would they impose that view on 348 other worlds? I doubt that they would. Making it legal doesn't mean that Vulcan would engage in it.

Oh, one thought here we ought to consider - humankind is NOT the only species to ever work with genetic augmentation. In ST: ENT there was the "Augment Crisis" plotline.

Khan didn't augment himself. The architect of his augmentation was Adam Soong. One of his descendants, Arik Soong (played by Brent Spiner -Arik was the ancestor of Noonian Soong, who crated Next Gen's Data, Lore, et al.) got hold of some of his ancestor's work - augmented human embryos, which he raised in secret.

Hilarity ensues. Some of Soong's augment "children" eventually steal a Klingon Bird of Prey. Finding out about human augments, and fearing humans were going to augment their military to beat the crap out of Klingons, the Klingons start their own augmentation research. They find a way to augment adult Klingons (it wasn't great - subjects got stronger and faster, and tended to take on some human physical characteristics and then die due to the DNA mismatchs in neurology).

Worse - one of the Klingon augment test subjects had a virus, "Levodian flu", that interacted with the augmentation treatment. The result was an augmentation epidemic that threatened to kill off all Klingons. Eventually, a cure was found that stabilized the virus, so that it stopped after it had given some human-like characteristics, but before it killed.

This plot was intended to explain why some Klingons (the ones in TOS) did not have forehead ridges, while others (Next Gen and later) do.

But it also explains why the Federation as a whole might eschew genetic augmentation - it nearly destroyed the Humans and the Klingons each in their own turn.

 

[Umbran]

"Dagger of the Mind" (in which Dr. Van Gelder was brainwashed by the experimental treatment device at the Tantalus Colony facility).

Blink. It wasn't until today that I realized we have a Tantalus Colony in "Dagger of the Mind" and a Tantalus Field device in "Mirror, Mirror".

 

[Ryujin]

Oh, one thought here we ought to consider - humankind is NOT the only species to ever work with genetic augmentation. In ST: ENT there was the "Augment Crisis" plotline.

Khan didn't augment himself. The architect of his augmentation was Adam Soong. One of his descendants, Arik Soong (played by Brent Spiner), got hold of some of his ancestor's work - augmented human embryos, which he raised in secret. Arik was the ancestor of Noonian Soong, who crated Next Gen's Data, Lore, et al.

Hilarity ensues. Some of Soong's augment "children" eventually steal a Klingon Bird of Prey. Finding out about human augments, and fearing humans were going to augment their military to beat the crap out of Klingons, the Klingons start their own augmentation research. They find a way to augment adult Klingons (it wasn't great - subjects got stronger and faster, and tended to take on some human physical characteristics and then die due to the DNA mismatchs in neurology).

Worse - one of the Klingon augment test subjects had a virus, "Levodian flu", that interacted with the augmentation treatment. The result was an augmentation epidemic that threatened to kill off all Klingons. Eventually, a cure was found that stabilized the virus, so that it stopped after it had given some human-like characteristics, but before it killed.

This plot was intended to explain why some Klingons (the ones in TOS) did not have forehead ridges, while others (Next Gen and later) do.

But it also explains why the Federation as a whole might eschew genetic augmentation - it nearly destroyed the Humans and the Klingons each in their own turn.

I rather preferred the FASA ST:RPG explanation that Klingons did, in fact, genetically manipulate their own species to create both Klingon-Human and Klingon-Romular hybrids, to deal with those races on their borders with them, but the ST:Ent things wasn't egregious by comparison.

 

[Umbran]

Suddenly introducing the Illyrians to try and argue the opposite case could have been an interesting development. Unfortunately if that's what they want, SNW's approach has been 100% unserious even by Trek standards...

We already know that Una's case will not alter the Federation position - Dr. Bashir runs afoul of the same rules against augmentation in DS9.

It isn't supposed to be a serious discussion of genetic augmentation, from a speculative fiction perspective. It is a serious argument that you should judge people on their own merits and actions, not on the basis of any alterations that their bodies may have undergone, and that we should protect people who have been persecuted.

If anyone needs it spelled out, think of it as trans allegory.

 

[Ryujin]

We already know that Una's case will not alter the Federation position - Dr. Bashir runs afoul of the same rules against augmentation in DS9.

It isn't supposed to be a serious discussion of augmentation, from a speculative fiction perspective. It is a serious argument that you should judge people on their own merits and actions, not on the basis of any alterations that their bodies may have undergone, and that we should protect people who have been persecuted.

If anyone needs it spelled out, think of it as trans allegory...

They did manage to slip in the bit of judging each case on its individual merits which would have at least some effect going forward, without necessarily changing the case of Bashir and his fellow augments in DS9.