TNG - The Ensigns of Command

[Rocketboy1313]

I kind of consider this episode a perfect encapsulation of what TNG did right.

Here is a problem, it is not wacky or the cause of some godlike being, you have to solve it with heady diplomacy rather than a fist fight. There is some action, but it is more to underline the stakes rather than being there out of obligation (TOS had action scenes that felt obligatory all the time).

It is a simple and coherent issue which has a sad but understandable end. There is humor and it holds up. There is a basic exploration of philosophy with the issues of language and interacting with aliens.

It is certainly better than almost all episodes that preceded it. I mean, the execution is an issue with acting and production values, but I don't really know what else I could ask for from a story perspective.

[animalia]

Does anyone else have problems with the audio in the original clips?

[Frustration]

But if someone is incapable of voicing their opinion on the matter, then there are different views about who has the right to decide for them. Some say their family members should have complete say, while others would say that, barring any indications from them otherwise, the assumption should be that they'd want to live.

This looks like a classic "justice is adherence to impersonal concepts of fairness / justice is caring for and preserving people" disagreement. Unless everyone has exactly the same level of autonomy and agrees completely - which although not logically impossible is both improbable and leaves no conflict to be concerned about - there will always be issues. In reality there will always be people not considered fully capable of giving consent and making decisions, whether they be children, certain elderly people, the medically incapacitated, etc.

No amount of hand-wringing will accomplish anything.

On another topic, I noted the snarking regarding shooting the aqueduct. I had assumed that Data had fired upon a control mechanism that disintegrated in a chain reaction. Yes, it's kind of dumb, but phasers have always been dumb in that they make no scientific sense and their technobabble illuminates nothing. Even if you could genuinely disintegrate matter without releasing large amounts of hot gas and molten solids, there should still be dust left behind, and phaser-disintegrated people just vanish. It's an aspect of the medium that we have to put up with, like sound in space, until we get people truly interested in science fiction.

(I note that Firefly managed it. One more reason to love the show.)

[animalia]

But if someone is incapable of voicing their opinion on the matter, then there are different views about who has the right to decide for them. Some say their family members should have complete say, while others would say that, barring any indications from them otherwise, the assumption should be that they'd want to live.

This looks like a classic "justice is adherence to impersonal concepts of fairness / justice is caring for and preserving people" disagreement. Unless everyone has exactly the same level of autonomy and agrees completely - which although not logically impossible is both improbable and leaves no conflict to be concerned about - there will always be issues. In reality there will always be people not considered fully capable of giving consent and making decisions, whether they be children, certain elderly people, the medically incapacitated, etc.

No amount of hand-wringing will accomplish anything.

On another topic, I noted the snarking regarding shooting the aqueduct. I had assumed that Data had fired upon a control mechanism that disintegrated in a chain reaction. Yes, it's kind of dumb, but phasers have always been dumb in that they make no scientific sense and their technobabble illuminates nothing. Even if you could genuinely disintegrate matter without releasing large amounts of hot gas and molten solids, there should still be dust left behind, and phaser-disintegrated people just vanish. It's an aspect of the medium that we have to put up with, like sound in space, until we get people truly interested in science fiction.

(I note that Firefly managed it. One more reason to love the show.)

How do you define Science Fiction?

[Frustration]

In brief: it's a subtype of fiction in which the speculative is approached with attempts to understand rather than with awe.

Star Wars isn't actually SF - or it's very poor SF - because the setting is science-fictional but is only a backdrop, while the story itself is entirely about mysticism.

[animalia]

In brief: it's a subtype of fiction in which the speculative is approached with attempts to understand rather than with awe.

Star Wars isn't actually SF - or it's very poor SF - because the setting is science-fictional but is only a backdrop, while the story itself is entirely about mysticism.

I wasn't aware that science fiction and fantasy couldn't mix. Not to say that there's anything wrong with your definition. God only knows that I have my own things that I insist on defining my way. Heck the way I organize my anime and manga selection would be indecipherable to anyone else. Yet it makes sense in my mind.

[Deledrius]

As for the Sheliak threat not being characterized enough, I imagine they're like the Breen, they have a reputation of being powerful so no one challenges them but rarely go around conquering stuff, instead they prefer to go by treaties and only use brute force under special circumstances.

An interesting aspect of Trek which occurs to me here is that we're given hints through episodes like this that there are at least a few reasonably-large "empires" (for lack of a better term) which are in either low- or no-direct-conflict with the Federation (unlike the Romulans, Klingons, and Cardassians), but are of roughly-equal-or-better power and entirely independent scattered around the nearby space. We often only ever hear about them once, or possibly a few more times in passing, but that's it.

For obvious reasons most stories tend to focus on the powers in direct conflict. It's a shame that Lower Decks treats everything like a massive joke, because their second-contact premise would be a great one to explore this sort of smaller-scale indirect conflict part of navigating space and the people the Federation encounters.

[CmdrKing]

While true, the irony is that Gul Dukat eventually comes to the conclusion that the biggest mistake the Cardassians made was NOT exterminating the Bajorans because that way would have resulted in them achieving "victory." Though the difference between a homeworld and colonies is pretty noteworthy.

In the case of the Dominion, though, the Cardassians have the oomph to push back the part of the Alpha Quadrant that would care about genocide (i.e. the Federation).

It's worth remembering that, by definition, the planets disputed by the Maquis are at the outer edges of Cardassian territory. So if the Union is already unstable or overextended then the required force in order to make holding those worlds just not worth it for them is a lot less. Heck, as we learned later, the ruling government was unstable enough to be outright deposed by a civilian movement, and it's entirely plausible that without the combination of the Klingon invasion and Dukat's pride leading to them joining the Dominion? The Maquis would have won out.

I don't think that the loss of Bajor was a direct consequence of the Federation-Cardassian War- as I understand it, it was purely about border disputes and the Treaty established firm borders that left Federation citizens on the wrong side, leading to the Maquis. The Cardassians simply abandoned Bajor due to it being too costly, with the war probably just adding to the expenses.

My memory is that the Federation, while they'd have absolutely won a true war with Cardassia, badly needed to not have one of those. One of the reasons they had Sisko's backstory be Wolf 359 was to emphasize the losses to the Borg and how vulnerable and depleted their forces were. So a full scale war with anyone would have left them so weakened that the other major powers would have had their way with them after the fact.

[CharlesPhipps]

In brief: it's a subtype of fiction in which the speculative is approached with attempts to understand rather than with awe.

Star Wars isn't actually SF - or it's very poor SF - because the setting is science-fictional but is only a backdrop, while the story itself is entirely about mysticism.

Both Star Trek and Star Wars are both space opera in my opinion.

[Shuboy07]

Something Chuck didn't note in his review was that the producers also re-wrote Melinda Snodgrass' script that she nearly took her name off the episode. Originally her script stated the radiation did not affect phasers and Data was holding back from using it as a last resort. So when she found out the producers introduced a plot element of Data needing a component from his body to get the phaser working, Melinda Snodgrass was pretty furious. However she approved of the final episode because Brent Spiner's acting actually got her original point across if a bit more subtly.