Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 5:29am

What a Piece of Work is Man: Star Trek Versions

 

 

Science fiction authors often portray alien races fairly simplistically as avatars of particular qualities.  Humanity, in all of its fallen diversity, tends to stand out.  Of course actual aliens might be just as complex, if not more so as humans.  Any owner of a dog can see complexities between his pet and other dogs.  Long run science fiction series, Star Trek is a prime example, tend to eventually make individuals of alien races more complex. One thinks of the Damar who led the Cardassian rebellion and who started as a two dimensional character, typical Cardassian, and who eventually became a complex, and heroic, figure:

Fictional aliens tend of course to be reflections of parts of our human condition.  Actual aliens might be very alien indeed, their actions and motivations totally opaque to us, which wouldn’t stop us from trying to understand them, since making sense of things is a prime human characteristic, and need.

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Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Tuesday, November 17, AD 2020 5:00am

We have our own aliens on earth. Those who point of view conflicts with reality and thus are evil. It is be clear that Liberals, Atheists, Communists and the Democrat Party are prime examples.

Bob Kurland
Admin
Tuesday, November 17, AD 2020 5:27am

You missed the best one, from Star Trek, Next Generation. The trial to determine whether Data is a sentient being, “The Measure of a Man”:

DJH
DJH
Tuesday, November 17, AD 2020 5:59am

@Michael Dowd–are you still in Michigan? I think you are long gone from here.
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I fear evil people will drive us from our home. You may have heard how Tyrant Gretchen has forbidden restaurant workers and bartenders from working again.
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I am at a loss to understand how any person can deprive another from earning a living by the signing of a document.

Jason
Jason
Tuesday, November 17, AD 2020 8:44am

I’ve always had the sense that the human characters of Star Trek were kind of flat on the whole. Part of that I think was the Roddenberry vision of Star Trek and the monster-of-the-week format; it definitely started to shift and improve after Berman mercifully took over. For example, in Season 1 of TNG (saint preserve us…) there’s the episode where Riker receives the powers of Q and hijinks ensue, but they are basically just hijinks for hijinks’ sake. It is of course fascinating to see Riker reject omnipotence, but then it basically has no discernable effect on his character going forward, which I think is a shame. (To be fair, Riker becomes a much deeper character as the show goes on, but this was a huge miss IMO). There are flashes of deeper character development among the humans in TNG (Picard’s experience with the Borg, for example,) but non-human characters like Data stand out much more prominently in terms of character development.

Part of this seems to me to be because the Star Trek humans believe themselves to to be soulless, and thus there’s no underlying transcendent vision of who they are or what they could become. Their development thus tends towards things external to themselves, since problems are ultimately scientific problems to be resolved accordingly. This serves as a foil for characters like Data who are attempting to transcend some aspect of themselves, and thus gives their characters somewhere to go developmentally.

Cmdr./Cpt. Sisko in DS9 is one human character that IMO really starts to feel like someone who struggles and changes and develops as a result of his experiences. E.g., even though he initially is hesitant and opposed to his role as Emissary, as the series progresses he grows into it, and though he’s never exactly religious, he discovers a faith that transcends his scientistic conception of the universe, so much so that he’s willing to sacrifice his own life for the Prophets’ will, and in the ultimate act of faith is willing to sacrifice Jake because he believes the Prophets’ will protect him. He also goes from a more rogue idealist who will do what he thinks is right to a leader jaded by war and loss who becomes willing to make moral compromises for a specific end and justify them to himself directly because of those experiences, which creates a complex character for whom the consequences of the story and of his actions have an impact on his character.

The Ferengi of DS9, it should be said, are probably the most interesting characters in Berman’s Star Trek series, and their episodes are certainly the most entertaining.

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Tuesday, November 17, AD 2020 8:58am

Part of it is certainly the restrictions of the medium and the necessities of storytelling. Trying to portray another species as varied and complex as humans brings up the question: why not just use humans then? If you’re going to put them in makeup, then they need to be representative of the culture and species as a whole.

It’s kind of the same reason why if Christians show up in a work, they’re kind of a broad, Catholic-like general type rarely specific to any denomination. Like CS Lewis said, to the outsider all they see are the things we Christians have in common, not the differences.

Deep Space 9 given its nature and long running storylines was able to show us over time the greater variety of species. It’s probably not unlike how we’ll actually be with aliens, at first only seeing how they’re all alike and fit the stereotypes, and then learning their subtle differences over time.

Then again maybe we’ll find the borg and discover the nature of things is to reduce all differences to a hivemind. I find it fascinating that both CS Lewis’ space trilogy and Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time warned about the same danger of such.

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Tuesday, November 17, AD 2020 9:00am

Oh and of note, there is apparently a behind the scenes lore that Casey, who played Damar, was prepared to quit over what he believed was a pointless role and the writers had to convince him that they had a grand path prepared for the character. I’m glad he stuck with it. (Was Damar the cardassian Trump? Discuss)

Foxfier
Admin
Tuesday, November 17, AD 2020 12:04pm

The Enterprise clip reminds me of some of the “humans are Space Orcs” flash fiction that is floating around– which is also listed under “humanity, F Yeah!” and “Space Australia” and is generally the kind of fun-happy-joyful stuff I fell in love with.

Foxfier
Admin
Tuesday, November 17, AD 2020 12:10pm

Further evidence of Damar being Cardassian Trump: I have seen memes with Gul Dukat wearing a MCGA hat and making nonsense obviously trying to copy Trump statements.


Doesn’t work so great, because they’re starting from… USSR Japan in space….but it’s fairly close.

I am both terrified and fascinated by the idea of an American Garak, who I’d frame as basically Putin with a much lower association of the good of Nation with good for Himself. (I think Garak is an idealist. A really, really, REALLY scary, amoralistic idealist.)

Pinky
Pinky
Tuesday, November 17, AD 2020 4:22pm

The most fully realized alien character in Star Trek, to me at least, was Jeffrey Combs’ Andorian captain on Enterprise. It could just be what the actor did with it, although I wasn’t that impressed by his Weyoun on DS9.

Spiner did a great job as Data, but I don’t consider him ensouled. The more time that goes by, the more that becomes a problem for me. I mean, I could write a program that responds to a delete command with “please don’t kill me I’m a real person”. If I were the admiral in Measure of a Man, I’d have had Data disassembled head to toe.

Foxfier
Admin
Tuesday, November 17, AD 2020 5:09pm

But by the logic of ‘it could be faked,’ then you can’t consider anybody ensouled. They might just be trained to act like it.

From what the showed, Data would fall solidly in the “must be presumed to have a soul” category– something that Starfleet agreed with, by enlisting him.

The problem of Data’s soul is what made me waaaaaaaay over think it and conclude that attempting to create a true artificial intelligence is every bit as evil as trying to engineer a biological child without mother and father.

Somewhat related, also decided that just as “I know what happened” cannot justify immoral actions to stop what you “know” happened (the “kill baby Hitler” trope), it cannot justify immoral inactions— where you let something bad happen, that you can and should morally stop, because you “know” the result will be “good.”

Kicker is, I don’t believe in time travel, and I’m agnostic on the possibility of artificial true intelligence.

Foxfier
Admin
Tuesday, November 17, AD 2020 5:14pm

Donald- glad someone else can ‘see’ it!

Rudolph Harrier
Rudolph Harrier
Tuesday, November 17, AD 2020 5:15pm

I view true AI in Star Trek the same way as I view the transporter or the warp drive: from everything presented the ideas are absurd in reality, but they clearly work in the context of the story, so I can suspend my disbelief.

Jason
Jason
Tuesday, November 17, AD 2020 8:13pm

Damar was definitely an adulterer; whether it was a “problem” for him or not is perhaps another question.

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Tuesday, November 17, AD 2020 9:36pm

(I think Garak is an idealist. A really, really, REALLY scary, amoralistic idealist.)

I disagree. He’s not amoral, he has a very strict moral code. Once you see it, all his actions make sense. I joke that Garak is ultimately “jobsexual” – because his guiding moral is patriotism and he will accomplish whatever needs to be done for Cardassia and its people.

He is – in some irony – the perfect Soviet Man. What makes him so much fun to watch is that it proves the USSR efforts were always doomed to fail because even if they got their new man, he might disagree about what is actually best for the country.

Garak also demonstrates CS Lewis warning about an improper hierarchy. A man who values his home highest is perhaps a bit better than the complete sociopath – but he would still be quite dangerous and it would be better if he served a higher goal still.

The most fully realized alien character in Star Trek, to me at least, was Jeffrey Combs’ Andorian captain on Enterprise. It could just be what the actor did with it, although I wasn’t that impressed by his Weyoun on DS9.

Jeffrey Combs is a national treasure and I will not hear anything said against him! Weyoun, Brunt (the ferengi), or even the wrestling promoter in the Rock’s Voyager episode, he always brings a great life to his roles.

Foxfier
Admin
Wednesday, November 18, AD 2020 11:02am

I don’t recognize “The good of Cardassia” as a moral code, so it looks like we agree but say it differently… which is so, so perfect for a character that nukes word games.

Especially agree on the heavy Soviet theme, and the inherent tragedy that he both embodies the ideal, and shows it doesn’t work.
The hope for a Phoenix-type rebirth is what makes the Cardassians so fun. (Well, that, and that they apparently consider “moderation” to be vocabulary word of very little use.)

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