Greatest Gen: The pro genocide podcast

[stryke]

They got to Dear Doctor today, and that was what finally got me to drop the podcast. I've been on the fence for awhile now but to be fair they'd been doing a lot better towards the end of Voyager with the invention of the Icheb's brother running joke, and their coverage of s1 of Battlestar Galactica in their other podcast has also been mostly solid. Early Enterprise had been going not as well, as it was clear they were treating the show with kid gloves. Especially Unexpected which was an early sign that this could get annoying. Them being a comedy show has never stoped them from giving an episode a kick around if they felt it deserved it so I wonder if it's just them being on so long now that and are so fully established that they can't be bothered being critical anymore.

And wow annoying it got to put it lightly. If you heard that bloody, unbelievable speech about the Prime Directive and then go "This was a pretty good Archer episode," then I'm just not here for that bollocks. Did not bother to listen for whoever the Shimoda moment would be, just straight nope'd out when I heard that in their summation.

Going to be weird as listening to Greatest Gen first thing on Monday has been my routine for a couple of years now. Then I used to also make it a double bill with Delta Flyers too, and I dropped them as well when they moved so much of the content to patreon only when they started DS9 so I'm sure I'll cope.

[Riedquat]

Dear Doctor's the only episode I've got angry about, and it's really rather disturbing how it has its defenders; it could've been a good episode if it set itself up to demonstrate the dangers of the sort of thinking that it ended up arguing for (well, maybe; I prefer episodes that don't try to shove a message down peoples' throats, whether I agree with it or not).

[Nobody700]

Okay here's an idea to add a moral dillemia.

Say they own the Valakians as slaves. Brutal hard cattle slavery, and they have NO rights. The people of the planet with the disease gained said disease... from EATING the Valakians, who they literally see as pack mules. Phlox is disgusted, and fears that given they are close to achieving warp, could spread across the Galaxy and create more slavery, especially cause a planet that is just 25 days away from Warp 1 has a planet with a tech level of 3rd century North America. Phlox is unsure if he can ethically cure a race that is so built into slavery, and has even killed their own Abolitionists in a civil war that FAILED 3 decades ago. Phlox than finds out what the cure is... and it's effectivly taking a liver from a Valakian, killing them instantly (Cause they need it) and it will cure just 20 of the slavers. Thus, a near genocide of the slave race. At the same time though... he was shown the dying children, as the disease spread, the homeless themselves who have no slaves nor want to own them, are dying. The evil is dying, alongside the innocent. THIS... this can't just be ignored, and yet as Phlox debates with himself, as a doctor he cannot do harm to his patients and he promised to cure the aliens before he found out the truth... yet at the same time, he sees the Valakians DO have art, speech, and a care for family. Phlox is torn... and thus, he knows what their fate will be if he walks away... or gives them the cure.

[Riedquat]

Problem with that is that it would feel very contrived, an extreme evil strawman on the one hand almost always is, even with a little bit of "think of the children!" thrown in - that would just come across as attempting to give a transparently false illusion of balance.

No, "Dear Doctor" is beyond saving as any form of dilemma or justification for the Prime Directive.

[Nobody700]

Hey I FULLY agree, my example isn't perfect either, it's just something LITERALLY MORE THAN LITERAL NAZI PROPOGANDA SHIT. My version of events can get TOO cartoonish so I agree, it's just to quote SF debris

I'm up against the USSR and I'm fucking belgium!

[TGLS]

OK, you wanna do it properly? Well, you need to abandon the prime directive part of the episode. Have the Valakians be a people who were conquered by the other species, but they're treating them OK, like in the episode. The disease is basically War of the Worlds, "oh the aliens cannot resist the native microbes".

There, a moral dilemma.

[McAvoy]

OK, you wanna do it properly? Well, you need to abandon the prime directive part of the episode. Have the Valakians be a people who were conquered by the other species, but they're treating them OK, like in the episode. The disease is basically War of the Worlds, "oh the aliens cannot resist the native microbes".

There, a moral dilemma.

That is a good one.

But I do agree. If they were to do a pre-Prime Directive episode explaining why they should have such a thing, then you really need to come up with a better scenerio.

I think the best way to show the case of the Prime Directive would have been the simple trying to stop a war between two pre-warp civilizations. Or they think they are but they made it worse.

[Thebestoftherest]

The best prime directive argument came from of all things the last episode of the Orville.

[Nealithi]

I have one defense of this episode. T'pol and Archer discussing helping the people. And how the vulcans getting involved still has them on Earth. It goes right to one of Archer's concerns.

For the Prime Directive to even get a hint at coming. They need to screw-up. They need to give them a bad cure. A hint of warp tech. Something that derails that society. And you have to remove the ferengi reference. Or maybe, here me out, the ferengi influence is what causes the issue with the people. Enterprise cannot fix the problem, tackling a disease and catastrophic environment damage is beyond what they can do. Let Phlox beat his head against a wall because he can't fix the problem. His desire to help exceeding his abilities. So Starfleet looks at this and considers a rule to prevent themselves from making the same mistakes as the ferengi did.

[stryke]

Enterprise cannot fix the problem, tackling a disease and catastrophic environment damage is beyond what they can do. Let Phlox beat his head against a wall because he can't fix the problem. His desire to help exceeding his abilities. So Starfleet looks at this and considers a rule to prevent themselves from making the same mistakes as the ferengi did.

I think this is the only way this could have worked. With holding a cure is such an obviously monstrous action that it swallows up the whole episode.