SYMBIOSIS: A STAR TREK APOCALYPSE

[Ross Scott]

New video! This is a side video I've thought about doing before and now felt like a good time to do so. This is NOT the big side video I've been working on, that's still coming later!

I've had an idea of making a video on this for a couple years, but in addition to wanting to get more videos out faster due to the quarantine, I felt like this one ties in well towards thinking about the state of the world in general.  Hope to have an new Game Dungeon out soon-ish!

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

[DrDudleeDickless PhD MD]

This was a really good video, never watched any of TNG but an interesting conflict. Can you post some of the art you used in the video somewhere, it'd be perfect for a sci fi tabletop story. 

[Icebox]

You came up with some interesting ideas from a so-so episode. 

Edited March 28, 2020 by Icebox (see edit history)

[chiefwhosm]

If anything bad had happened to either planet we'd know about it because Q would have judged Picard and humanity on it

[PapaFrita]

Ross Scott and Star Trek? I AM DREAMING?

Please Ross, don't skip DS9, it's one of the best series. It's less episodic (the last ten episodes are just a continuation) but it's very good and expands a lot on the ST lore. It's darker and isnt afraid to show the bad side of the Federation.

I wouldn't mind more episodes of Star Trek analysis!

[RandomGuy]

The protagonists in Star Trek were always huge pricks. The Prime Directive seemed to be completely arbitrary and defied at will, yet when it came time to save a civilization from extinction with literally just a press of a button or a single sentence, suddenly the Prime Directive was well-defined and important again.

[ScumCoder]

5 hours ago, Icebox said:

You came up with some interesting ideas from a so-so episode. 

 

I wish you were aware from what stray matter
Springs poetry to prosper without shame,
Like dandelions which the children scatter,
Or pigweed of the lowly name.

[BTGBullseye]

Some interesting takes on this, but the fact was that he interfered because it was a distress call, and those take precedence over the Prime Directive. Once the emergency had been taken care of, (the people from the ship retrieved) he had to do his best to put the genie back in the bottle. (not easy mind you) Sadly, in this case, that meant effectively dooming both planets, as he could not interfere to help either side, including not being able to tell the addicts that it wasn't plague related. If you pay close attention, he really wanted to help the addicts, but to do so would actually be a major infraction of the Prime Directive.

 

Seems you may have started off with a false interpretation for your analysis.

 

I'd still like to see more of this though.

[daisekihan]

I don’t know Ross, the premise of this episode seems to have so many plot holes that I don’t know if it’s really worth considering in depth.

 

-We’re supposed to believe Planet A has never even once had someone go without the drug and live? 
-How did this whole scenario get started to make Planet A think they had a virus?

-If Planet B only knows how to make the drug, then all scientists, doctors, and engineers needed to make society work are on Planet A, but they never managed to figure this out?

-If Planet B does nothing but make the drug, doesn’t that mean they have no military? Why hasn’t Planet A just invaded them and taken the drug?

 

And I could go on and on, but you get my point.

Edited March 29, 2020 by daisekihan (see edit history)

[ultrayoba]

I have an idea - Ross, make video about every Star Trek Episode!

 

About episode:

-Thing is, they still have some ships left. One of ships was destroyed but they have 2 or 3 more. They all in terrible condition and since planet switched to making basic goods for planet b to survive they over time forgot about how to fix most complex parts of it. So after picard leave nothing happen probably for quite long time - shipments continue, untill rest of ships they have die. And he warned Planet B that "over time, this will end, so be prepeared that there will be no more shipments". So Planet B have plenty of time to prepear and do something. For example making less and less adictive drug for Planet A and ressurect their own manufacturing, maybe ask Planet A instead of ship goods, ship schemes how to build goods and make food etc, maybe even ship slaves for them on their home planet as option.

 

About DS9:

Never watch it alongside TNG, this series have compleatly different feel. And starts kind of lame but become better over time. People have different poitions over it, but I from ones who thinks it's absoluetly awesome. A lot of people not understand it since it departue from basic scheme, but it have and more deep evolving characters and more deep plots overall. In general remember TNG episode with "God-like observants over planet". Well, imagine it, combined with philosophy, with non-linear time was made into 7 seasons as premisis, where instead of "problem-picard speech - solution" we have very detailed explanation of this question. Of cource, it's not everything what DS9 have - DS9 is where Star Trek started become more and more actual universe with rules, where every event remembered and conneted to something instead of "oh! Random encounter with random race for 1 episode!". But same time DS9 follow all basic rules of star trek. It would be not out of place like "modern trek" is. And even besides that, there is plenty of really great episodes about adventure too. And unlike TNG where charaters evolve very slow and not really deep, here you like live life with them, and more series go, more you like basicly everybody. Exept Vic it was kind of lame actually but it's mine opinion.

 

About Voyager:

I don't like it for same reasons I like DS9. This series unlike DS9 leed to nothing. Nothing changing on ship, characters not change, there no sence of adventure. Every episode is like scrapped TNG episodes with constant time travel and talking clouds it's become old very fast since you know that nothing will happen at the end. It's still trying to be Trekk-y tho and people who just like "random disconected episode" more or less think it's okay.

 

About Enterprise:

There a lot things that from start kind of breaking continuity, if you think about it's twise, but for general watch it's fine and over time they doing more and more work. At it's end it become really good and bring up a lot quality stuff and if it was not cancelled, it might become DS9-like.

 

Also my personal recomendations: Try Star Trek Games! Seriously! Klingon Honor Guard - cool FPS game on Unreal 1 engine when you playing Klingon Warrior. Even more cool - Star Trek Voyager Elite Force and Elite Force 2. Awesome quality FPS games, and first game is litteraly best Voyager episode. They have full set of actors, you can explore ship itself, there a lot thought made into making it's quality Star Trek Games. first game done raven and if you familiar with Star Wars EU and played Jedi Outcast/Jedi Academy - you know what expect. Second game hasPicard and probably most advanced game made on Quake 3 engine. Also adventure game DS9 The Fall. And I sadly not played DS9 strategy game "Dominion Wars" yet.

 

Thanks for video!

[Im_CIA]

 

Numero Juan, Engage !

[Im_CIA]

Ross, what you got to understand is that Roddenberry had a vision of a Humanity that made it. They can make truffles and caviar out of thin air and encounter Gods on the monthly basis, which only warrant a quaint little entry in Picard's journal. Star Fleet, for all it's benevolence, doesn't care about some junkie backwater planet because it's completely above and detached from such basic shit.

Edited March 29, 2020 by Im_CIA (see edit history)

[Icebox]

On 3/28/2020 at 11:28 PM, BTGBullseye said:

Some interesting takes on this, but the fact was that he interfered because it was a distress call, and those take precedence over the Prime Directive. Once the emergency had been taken care of, (the people from the ship retrieved) he had to do his best to put the genie back in the bottle. (not easy mind you) Sadly, in this case, that meant effectively dooming both planets, as he could not interfere to help either side, including not being able to tell the addicts that it wasn't plague related. If you pay close attention, he really wanted to help the addicts, but to do so would actually be a major infraction of the Prime Directive.

 

Seems you may have started off with a false interpretation for your analysis.

 

I'd still like to see more of this though.

That's a good way to sum things up.

[Delicieuxz]

Haha. I saw Ross had a new video uploaded, and I saw it wasn't a game review but something about Star Trek. I wasn't expecting it to be my kind of thing, but because I enjoy Ross' creative and / or mindful postulations in general, I decided to check out what he was saying. I jumped a few minutes into the video and saw some scenes of old TNG and tried to figure out which episode they were from. Then there was the mention of the cargo ship crew sending over their cargo ahead of their crew, and my mind started slowly going 'hey, that's...' as it was putting the pieces together, and then the video mentions the two planets, and I had a sudden experience like the hair standing up on the back of your neck, but this was due to a signal of irritation and displeasure spiking in me.

 

I hate this episode. In fact, despite not being a big Star Trek fan and not really ever writing reviews for TV shows or movies, I actually wrote a review for this episode immediately after watching it because I found it so incredibly fallacious, and like sort-of xenophobic and ignorantly-stereotyping but towards drug-usage instead of people, that it made me flustered and I had to verify that the world knows that this was a really bad episode.

 

So, I'm not of the same view that the episode is merely so-so. To me, it's much worse than that. I classify this episode along with the live-action Super Mario Bros movie as something I would live happier having not known existed and something I wish I could un-watch.

 

Here's the review I wrote for this episode when I first watched it. Some of my issues with the episode are ones or similar to ones Ross also has with it:

 

Quote

 

Watching Star Trek TNG for the first time starting with season 1 episode 1, and I found this episode ridiculous and terrible enough that I had to do an internet search to confirm that I had just watched something so poorly written and thought-out.

None of the premise or explanation of this episode is rational or believable:

- A planet which has figured out space travel hasn't figured out how to examine and understand chemical compounds and has no conception of what drugs are? [edit: And also lacks 20th century understanding of human physiology?]

- An entire planet is addicted to a drug and nobody on it has even been separated from the drug long enough to realize that withdrawals pass? Nobody on this planet ever gets lost in the wilderness, doesn't have the funds to acquire the drug, or any of many other scenarios where they'd inevitably get over the withdrawal period? How do newborns come to be addicted to the drug? Nobody ever just wilfully refuses to take it either out of protest or with a goal to suicide, or some other motivation?

- Picard and his crew violate the "prime directive" worse than speaking simple truth to these people all the time. And Picard violated the prime directive worse than telling the 'drug addicts' the truth when he saved them from their decaying ship - that interventionist action ensured that the entire planet would continue to be drugged, while if Picard hadn't done that they would have been forced to go through withdrawal with no alternative. Picard obviously violated the "prime directive" to save Wesley Crusher... but he wouldn't save an entire planet filled with teenagers of Wesley Crusher's age, and of children and babies younger than him? [edit: Picard's morals kicking-in to disregard the PD only when it affects him and the people he loves makes him out to be an extremely selfish hypocrite - which I blame on the show's writers doing a poor job, and less on the intended character of Picard]

- Picard gives utmost hypocritical speeches on the prime directive and how critical it is in an episode where he violates it multiple times, including wilfully and knowingly by giving the inhabitants of the drug-using planet the coils they need to fix their cargo ships. Picard later reverses that decision, but not for the sake of the prime directive, but because he wanted to cut their supply of the drug - and he openly acknowledges that he's flip-flopping and being selective in where he applies the prime directive by responding to the drug seller's "that's absurd!" comment by saying, "you did not think so when it worked in your favour". There is just 1 minute and 50 seconds between Picard selectively applying the prime directive as a tool for ulterior motives and openly acknowledging that he's doing so, and him giving Dr Crusher a lecture on the prime directive's importance in the elevator. This is stupid.

- The planet that makes and sells the drugs to the other is 100% filled with evil persons who eagerly exploit the other planet's people and feel no compassion or sense of humanity towards them? Not one of the people on that planet cared to send a message to tell the other planet that they're just addicted? An entire planet's population has no compassion, doesn't regard other people are equal to themselves? How could that planet then care for each other? They couldn't, they would inevitably rationalize betrayal of each other just as they do the people on the other planet.


These are just some select major issues with the episode, while I think I could point out a dozen more. This whole episode's premise and execution was completely stupid, and it shouldn't have been done. The episode also is entirely ignorant of the topic of drug use and portrays out-dated (were they ever in-date?) tropes of people who use drugs, and is like watching a very old film that features extreme racial prejudices that were normal at the time, but which reeks of ignorance when watched today.

I would not be surprised to find out that this episode was sponsored by the US government or some other third party - though, the DEA seems a very likely possibility.
 

 

 

There are some things I would add to my review.

 

One of the things I dislike about TNG is that, probably more often in the earlier seasons, Picard makes comments about human civilization having long-since evolved past its 19th, 20th, etc century perspectives towards life and no longer being motivated by selfish gain or a need to toil to survive (with everybody's normal living needs being taken care of), but now being dedicated towards betterment of oneself and human knowledge.

 

But anyone watching the show can see that's a total load of crap. In fact, the only  top-rank officer (captains, admirals, etc) depicted in the series as having some appreciable level of dignity, compassion, and mental sophistication is Picard himself. Nearly all the others in the series are characterized by boorishness, stupidity, arrogance and self-righteousness, closed-mindedness, hypocrisy, cruelty, incompetence, etc. In general, Starfleet and Federation brass that aren't Picard are towards the sleaze-bag moron end of the spectrum, and that's by 2000's standards.

 

For example, the admiral who manslaughtered Data's daughter by saying he was going to take her away to use her for Starfleet's interests, against the desire of her, her father, and Picard. He terrified her into death, showing no consideration for her, anyone, or life in general. That man was a cruel, mindless, heartless, and compassionateless fool by any year's measurement. Yet, he's one of the heads of this Starfleet that supposedly represents an enlightened and evolved human civilization that is all about betterment through knowledge and understanding?

 

That self-contradictory stuff really drags the show down for me.

 

 

And the "prime directive" itself is illogical and inhumane, and is essentially a rule to do evil. There's no such thing as being an objective observer to life. So long as you're living, you're a part of it and your inaction is your complicity in what happened because you didn't act. And the PD forbids people from doing good. Life and its development are not the product of objective observation, but of harmonious intercession and engagement between every capable thing.

 

Would Picard apply the PD upon the human race, if it meant the human race would have been wiped-out before the pyramids were built? So, no Picard, no Picard's friends, no Enterprise, no seeking personal and human civilization betterment through knowledge, no making the universe a better place? If so, then the PD would be self-nullifying as it would never have been created, and therefore its own meaning testifies that it is a falsehood.

 

The PD denies the philosophy of doing to others as you would have them do to you, which is a couple of millennia older than even the 20th century that Picard claims humanity has evolved beyond, and it also rejects the morals of the strong standing up for the weak, and replaces those things with galactic sociopathism that makes an allegedly enlightened human civilization complicit in genocide of other civilizations. It ultimately represents a devolution of humanity, and so I think it's no wonder why the PD barely ever gets mentioned again for the rest of the series, and isn't again featured (from what I recall) as a primary focus in Picard's decision-making.

 

TNG sometimes egregiously lacks self-awareness regarding what it says versus what it depicts, claiming an idea in speech but not manifesting it in the way the show's characters behave.

 

 

But back to the reviewed episode, its plot-holes seem to be so problematic that people can't help but think or say something about them just to fix the picture of reality within themselves because in no way can things just be allowed to stay the way the episode tries to leave them. That episode is something wrong, in my view.

Edited April 3, 2020 by Delicieuxz (see edit history)

[ScumCoder]

2 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

I classify this episode along with the live-action Super Mario Bros movie

Don't you touch that movie, it was awesome.

[Im_CIA]

Quote

But anyone watching the show can see that's a total load of crap. In fact, the only  top-rank officer (captains, admirals, etc) depicted in the series as having some appreciable level of dignity, compassion, and mental sophistication is Picard himself. Nearly all the others in the series are characterized by boorishness, stupidity, arrogance and self-righteousness, closed-mindedness, hypocrisy, cruelty, incompetence, etc. In general, Starfleet and Federation brass that aren't Picard are towards the sleaze-bag moron end of the spectrum, and that's by 2000's standards.

Most of that happened after Roddenberry 'beamed up' half way through the series.

[BTGBullseye]

On 4/2/2020 at 11:19 AM, Delicieuxz said:

For example, the admiral who manslaughtered Data's daughter by saying he was going to take her away to use her for Starfleet's interests, against the desire of her, her father, and Picard. He terrified her into death

That shows that Ross wasn't the only one to misremember the episodes they review... She literally had a critical error in her hardware that killed her, not fear.

[Delicieuxz]

3 hours ago, BTGBullseye said:

That shows that Ross wasn't the only one to misremember the episodes they review... She literally had a critical error in her hardware that killed her, not fear.

It was no error. Unlike Data, she had emotions, and she said she was scared. And the overwhelming sense of dread is what overloaded her circuits.

 

Data might have said something about there being a critical error, but he was conjecturing in terms he could relate to. He doesn't know the sensations of emotion or what negative ones would do to a mind. So, he interpreted it in a technical manner. He doesn't understand subtleties of laughter and jokes, puns, etc, and so he couldn't understand terror and dread.

 

The episode clearly portrayed her distress and confusion at being told she was being torn away from Data and the Enterprise, and her descent into disfunctionality as the worries and distress overwhelmed her. The result of those things was her 'critical error' like someone having a heart-attack from extreme panic or fright. She was killed by the inhumanity she was treated with by the Starfleet admiral.

Edited April 3, 2020 by Delicieuxz (see edit history)

[BTGBullseye]

8 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

And the overwhelming sense of dread is what overloaded her circuits.

So Data lied at the end when saying why she died... That's your theory?

[NightNord]

I actually don't agree that was a bad decision. I think that was the best decision to be made considering circumstances

On prime directive - I don't think he's violated it, as he restored situation to pretty much the closest possible way that would be without Enterprise showing up - as if the freighter would land, but won't be able to take off again

On the whole situation - it's clearly what is called a "social sci-fi", as in - it's not really about technological/realistic situation, but it's a theatrical play about class struggle. Planet B are clearly capitalists, they have knowledge and posses means of production. Planet A are workers.

So on topic of the decisions, what were the variants:

1. Send parts - restore space travel, let the situation to continue for some indefinite, but limited amount of time. Nothing will really change, as it was shown that this civilization as a whole is dysfunctional as it led to the failure of the only thing that kept it sustainable - space travel

2. Do not send drugs - that would make transition period (if any) impossible, angry the population, start the panic and make situation even worse immediately. This drug shipment gave them time that they MAY use to improve things

3. Help planet B somehow - I think the idea here is that it's planet's B fault - they had the knowledge and means to sustain the space travel and they failed it. They are the most dysfunctional part of the society and one transport of food won't help them. And transporting planet's A inhabitants there would just be a slave shipment. Planet B is unreasonable - they don't understand the gravity of the situation as clearly shown - and I think the idea is that they are going to get what they deserve.

4. Tell planet A inhabitants the truth - that would scratch out the planet B inhabitants sent to A possible options, while not really reducing (IMO) negative consequences as plague or not, withdrawal will be real.

I also would not agree that planet B inhabitants won't tell anything - their only assets in possession are knowledge. Stuck on planet A they have options - sit tight and die/be executed as soon as withdrawal kicks in, as planet A inhabitants clearly hate them and will surely blame everything on them. Or tell the truth to the leadership of the planet A and utilize their knowledge and ruthlessness to maybe stir the situation away from the worst scenario. This is basically their only option of survival.

Basically planet B is done in pretty much all variants as it's just dysfunctional (Brave New World, etc - quite common theme among utopias/dystopias/social sci-fi - leaders without/separated from workers can't survive).

 

Planet A have options:

1. Civil war with significant technological step back (planet B people die, no effective control measures)
2. Civil war without significant technological step back (planet B people survive/pass knowledge, but no effective control measures)
3. No war, no loss of knowledge, but creation of capitalist class on planet A (planet B people hijack control of the situation)

TL;Dr: So basically planet A have options ranging from anarchy to communism, with possible status-quo as capitalism. Pretty much whole spectrum - so in that case Enterprise's intervention does not cut out options of future development, but preserves them - which is pretty much what prime directive is about. They don't make choices for the people on planet A, they just ensured that all options are still on the table. And planet B have no choices to begin with, so who cares.