SYMBIOSIS: A STAR TREK APOCALYPSE

On 3/29/2020 at 6:28 AM, 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.

What part of my analysis is false? 

 

I wasn't against Picard saving the survivors.  I was saying he shouldn't have sent the drugs back with them AFTER rescuing them.  If the Enterprise never showed up, the drugs would have burned up in the atmosphere (along with the survivors).  I'm saying him giving back the drugs was the violation; the Enterprise's actions literally changed the course of history for planet A in a big way.  Simply rescuing the survivors wouldn't change the course of history much, if at all.

 

He saw helping the addicts as violating the prime directive.  Fine.  The planet would have gone through hell and recovered in some fashion.  You can argue he shouldn't have helped them, but then he ALSO interfered by giving them one last shipment that would never have made it otherwise.

21 hours ago, Ross Scott said:

What part of my analysis is false? 

 

I wasn't against Picard saving the survivors.  I was saying he shouldn't have sent the drugs back with them AFTER rescuing them.  If the Enterprise never showed up, the drugs would have burned up in the atmosphere (along with the survivors).  I'm saying him giving back the drugs was the violation; the Enterprise's actions literally changed the course of history for planet A in a big way.  Simply rescuing the survivors wouldn't change the course of history much, if at all.

 

He saw helping the addicts as violating the prime directive.  Fine.  The planet would have gone through hell and recovered in some fashion.  You can argue he shouldn't have helped them, but then he ALSO interfered by giving them one last shipment that would never have made it otherwise.

 

The false part was that he had already violated the Prime Directive by saving them in the first place. It's well established that a distress call always trumps the PD.

 

After that, he has to do everything he can to have his presence have the least possible impact on the culture, not cause events to continue as closely as possible to what they had been. That meant that he had to send the drugs, because not doing so would actively put the Federation into their history books as "the bad guys that made us suffer" instead of as a footnote of "this one ship saved our crew, and then left". It's not just about making things continue as if they had never been there at that point, it's about having as little impact on the culture as possible.

On 4/6/2020 at 2:26 PM, BTGBullseye said:

The false part was that he had already violated the Prime Directive by saving them in the first place. It's well established that a distress call always trumps the PD.

 

After that, he has to do everything he can to have his presence have the least possible impact on the culture, not cause events to continue as closely as possible to what they had been. That meant that he had to send the drugs, because not doing so would actively put the Federation into their history books as "the bad guys that made us suffer" instead of as a footnote of "this one ship saved our crew, and then left". It's not just about making things continue as if they had never been there at that point, it's about having as little impact on the culture as possible.

I'd say we're in debatable territory here.  If they really wanted "little impact on the culture as possible", then they should have sent back the drugs AND the ship parts so everything is as it was or sent NEITHER.

 

There's certainly the argument to be made that Starfleet is walking away with things neutral, they gave them back what was theirs + nothing more, but they also changed the course of history for the culture significantly by sending back the drugs.  That's a very LARGE impact on how the development of their culture is going to unfold than if they had not sent back the drugs.

 

Consider this:

 

Scenario A - sent the drugs + the parts:

That would have kicked the can down the road, but had almost no change to the culture.  You can argue the Federation would have artificially prolonged their unsustainable path, but the inhabitants may all but forget about The Federation and it would just delay things, not change the change the course of history drastically.  Culture contamination would be very minor.  Hell, this was what Picard was originally going to do anyway!  He didn't seem to think it was a violation of the Prime Directive initially!

 

Scenario B - withhold everything:

This could create resentment towards the Federation, but that would likely be overshadowed by their larger problems, namely everyone going into withdrawl.  Once they recovered, that might even lead to greater respect for the Federation after realizing they saw what they did not.  Cultural contamination would be minor, but likely insignificant.  This is pretty much the exact outcome that would occurred had the Enterprise not shown up + 4 extra people live and can say The Federation sucks.

 

Scenario C - What Picard did:

Creates a massive power play for the drugs that DRASTICALLY changes the history of the planet.  Moreover these are events that WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED if Starfleet hadn't intervened.  Cultural contamination wouldn't be linked back to Starfleet, but it would still be extreme.  It would be like if aliens came to Earth and escalated the Cuban missile crisis, but did it in such a way we never knew they were here.  Sure, they didn't spread their culture, but they totally screwed with development in an extreme way and led to way more people dying.

17 hours ago, Ross Scott said:

I'd say we're in debatable territory here. 

Very true. If we weren't, this wouldn't be any fun!

 

17 hours ago, Ross Scott said:

Scenario A - sent the drugs + the parts:

That would have kicked the can down the road, but had almost no change to the culture.  You can argue the Federation would have artificially prolonged their unsustainable path, but the inhabitants may all but forget about The Federation and it would just delay things, not change the change the course of history drastically.  Culture contamination would be very minor.  Hell, this was what Picard was originally going to do anyway!  He didn't seem to think it was a violation of the Prime Directive initially!

Honestly, I think they would've had a much higher opinion of Starfleet if he did that, and the interaction would've been far more memorable to the society. I also think that's why he didn't do it, because it would've impacted them more than doing what he actually did.

 

Think about it... Positively or negatively influencing are both possible, and what he did comes about as close to neither positive or negatively influencing them as possible. He made Starfleet look like they wanted nothing to do with the situation, and made it obvious to both sides that Starfleet would not help them. He forced them to do things on their own, and prevented them from ever seeing Starfleet as someone they could "exploit" to further their societies.

 

I think you're comparing apples to mountains.  If the society had a positive / negative opinion of Starfleet, but have no means of contacting them in the future, then it doesn't really matter much either way.  Again, we're weighing their opinion of Starfleet and how that may influence their society vs. ACTIVELY changing their development in a way that will lead to massive changes.

 

In short, yes, what Picard did leaves association with Starfleet at a minimum.  It ALSO dramatically changes their development more than any other option.  Isn't the point of the prime directive to have a minimum impact on their development as a society?  By trying to minimize association with Starfleet, in this case it causes a more tangible prime directive violation.  There's no completely clean option here, but one has a MUCH bigger impact than the others.

 

 

16 hours ago, Ross Scott said:

It ALSO dramatically changes their development more than any other option. 

I'm really not convinced that it would change anything any more than the other options... Both sides of the conflict seem to have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and while this does push things to change slightly, there really isn't any more or less change that could happen.

Two years after this video Star Trek actually did end up revisiting the two planets from this episode... but it was mostly treated as a joke

 

Well I realize this comment is WAY way too late, but screw it, maybe you'll see this somehow.

 

Ross, I think you're being unfair to Picard here. He did the space equivalent of pulling over to help someone change a tire, only to realize the vehicle was involved in human trafficking. None of the actions of these societies are his responsibility; the de facto enslavement is clearly not ideal from a humanitarian (or whatever term applies to aliens) perspective, but Planet A had GENERATIONS to figure out what Dr Crusher figured out in five minutes, and Planet B had that same time to come clean. Both societies made their bed, it's not Picard's job to lay in it.

 

Also, while you're clearly thinking farther into the future than the episode intends, I think maybe you're not looking far enough. Interstellar travel in Star Trek is not some arcane technology developed by a special few. The damn Klingons figured it out, and they're basically space vikings. If Planet A survives, they're going back to space within a couple hundred years. And they're going to be PISSED at Planet B. I mean, just think of all the problems American Whites and Blacks have with their troubled history, even living next to each other to separate individuals from stereotypes. When this video released, there were race riots happening. With the situation between these worlds, Planet B's reputation on Planet A would make the Jews' opinion of the Nazis seem like mild disapproval by comparison. When, not if, Planet A got back to space, they'd be gunning for some payback for those guys that lied to and enslaved their ancestors for generations. And as you said, Ross, Planet B would be going agrarian, assuming they didn't all die out. Agrarian societies aren't known for their space programs or weapons research (other than Fritz Haber), so even if Planet B survives the massive shakeup, they're staring down the barrel of brutal enslavement and/or genocide by Planet A within a couple hundred years.

 

Would love to hear your takes on other ST eps, btw.