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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9055168" data-attributes="member: 18">Whilst I don't think the bolded bit is necessarily true - indeed I believe there's some implication at some point that it's not - I don't think the idea is that all genetically modified people are inherently aggressive.Rather that once you start genetically modifying people, particularly to make them "superior" to others, you go down a cultural road that nigh-inevitably results in every possible ill, up to and including apocalyptic war.* This would also explain why Starfleet is particularly against letting in genetically modified individuals. It represents the elite of the Federation in many ways, and by denying people who cheat the system an advantage in getting into the elite, you're doing two things:1) Significantly lessening the motivation to genetically modify people.2) Preventing a culture from slowly growing where the elite seeks the "superior" and genetically modified people gradually come to dominate the organisation, which would seem perhaps inevitable otherwise.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, just mindlessly displaying them as "fine" and "just like anyone else", which offers no serious space for discussion. For example, modifying people to survive an otherwise-inhospitable environment is an interesting concept (and an old one), rarely explored, and potentially challenges the idea of modifying for "superiority" (though they should probably have had the lawyer need a smaller breather thing like a Benzite to show she wasn't "better", just different - otherwise it is the same problem), but SNW just mentioned it and moved on, seemingly not realizing the import.As such, the level of unseriousness with which they've treated the issue and inability to develop any kind of coherent argument apart from an emotion-based one of "being mean to people is bad!" (well duh!) means that I sincerely hope this is the last we hear of this subject from SNW.(Also never addressed, aside from Illyrians, only humans and Klingons ever seem to have done genetic modification, and it seems to have gone very badly for both - though perhaps I'm forgetting some deep Trek lore - which suggests even the logical Vulcans, aggressive Romulans, greedy Ferengi and so on, all think it's an obviously bad idea.)* = Solid evidence for my theory is that the Federation clearly only cares about "first gen" modifications - no-one gives Noonien-Singh stress or legal trouble even though she probably inherited their modifications (which do potentially include modifications to make them better or more aggressive combatants).</blockquote>

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