STD: Lethe

[T-L]

Adding to what you just said, even Mill in his utilitarianism (at the beginning of chapter 4 I think it was) makes essentially this point, as he says that you cannot prove first principles. So he does not prove that utility or happiness is the true moral measurement as such but sets out that it is the one all would desire, and builds his form of utilitarianism from that.

[Sines]

First post on here, and STD does not look too enticing from Chucks reviews. It doesn't help that I cannot look at those aliens and think 'Klingon'. They honestly look more like Cardassians. It just feels like they made them different just because they can. I wouldn't have minded if they still had their forehead ridges, but this looks like they tried some new genetic engineering to make them look Klingon again, and botched up even worse than before. Throw in the magic mushrooms drive and the fanfiction "Secret sister of Spock who can do telepathy across light years", and it just sounds like garbage. Very happy with the Orville though.

I definitely agree with this position of logic versus values. Why should I desire to be happy? Why not desire to be miserable? After all, misery can compel one to achieve greater things to escape it. I should logically wish to be exactly as miserable as I can handle without giving into despair! Except why should I value achievements if I'm not allowed to be happy about them? Logic on it's own is worthless, it's a plane without a destination.

Additionally, Chuck certainly presents a good reason why Vulcans might oppose association with humans. It reminds me of the Kidd Radd definition of a well-intentioned extremist.

"He was just... well, like a lot of madmen. Somewhat accurate view of the problem, really insane view of the solution."

It's important to remember the first part of the assessment. Somewhat accurate view of the problem. This is important because it lets us answer the extremist's concerns, but with a solution we find more palatable. But second, it also prevents us from ignoring the problem ourselves. It prevents us from saying "Well he's just an evil person, what good ideas could he possibly have?" It should be of at least some concern to Vulcans what such strong intermingling with very emotional people will do to their emotional control.

Even if the Vulcan thinks on the matter, and concludes "It does not represent such a significant threat that we should end relations with humans", it was still worth thinking about. Because what if a solution was needed? Surely something like "We shall retain friendly relations, but only a small number of Vulcans will be directly interacting with humans," is a preferable solution to "Suicide bombs". If the reasonable people ignore the problem, then the only solutions presented are "Pretend it's not there" and "Be evil", and some people are going to go for the only solution they are provided. Even a good man might choose 'evil' if his only alternative is 'death'.

And since I brought up Orville, that's a good example of "Humans are inferior" without any malice behind it. Isaac believes that he is superior to biological life forms, but there is no hatred there. No malice, no desire to exterminate. I have no desire to go around killing all peacocks because they are 'inferior' to me in the same way that humans are 'inferior' to Isaac. We don't really know what Isaacs people want, but unless it's total domination of space, or extermination of the lesser races, then they have no reason to attack the Union. And throw a spare robot to the Union to keep up good relations is a very efficient use of resources (one spare robot, and you suddenly have access to all the unclassified information of dozens of species, amongst other benefits).

There's no reason Vulcans can't see Humans the same way. Of course, logic would also demand that they notice they don't often get along with emotional species. Befriending an emotional species would allow them to have a liason between themselves and whomever else they wish to interact with. Given that humans were able to befriend such a severely friendless species such as themselves, it is likely that humans will be good at making friends, and provide a meaningful contribution to Vulcan society through forging further alliances. To deny the downsides of strong emotional control would be illogical. Humans may be inferior in general, but specialties can trump general superiority. In allying with humans, Vulcans can gain the benefit of emotions in diplomacy, without giving up their emotional control. And of course, the humans will benefit from Vulcan philosophy, science and intelligence, making it a mutually beneficial arrangement.

But honestly, the philosophical debate Chuck brought up is more interesting than much of what I've seen from STD so far. I'm not really disappointed, I've had very low expectations for reboots ever since Star Trek 11. I generally expect nothing more than "Good, but misses the point of the original" and I usually get that or worse. Occasional surprises, but I'm just too jaded to get invested these days, at least when it comes to movies and television.

[Linkara]

Honestly, I quite enjoyed this episode and felt it was more like traditional Trek - a rescue mission, character development for a lead (including both a bizarre technobabble device that might as well be magic), and a Captain defying orders to do the right thing. Tilly really started growing on me at this point, too.

Having seen ALL of Discovery now, I really enjoy this episode because of how much it advances Lorca's stuff but how cleverly it does so under the veneer of post-traumatic stress disorder (while also hiding Ash's potential flaws and PTSD because Lorca seems like the kind of guy who would embody toxic masculinity and a "Suck it up" kind of attitude). And hell, even if they hadn't gone with the revelation we would later have for him, Lorca's actions at the end here painted him with either the potential for a fantastic redemption arc... or one of the most complex and interesting villains in a long time in Trek.

[Paul Walker]

I actually really enjoyed this episode. And with the preamble that Chuck gave at the beginning regarding the episode title, it does show a good amount of thought went into this:

Lethe - the river where, if you drink from it, you forget your past.

Tyler - the man with the forgotten past
Sarek - the man who is regretting past decisions
Lorca - the man who re-lives his past

Having recently started a watch-through of DS9, I don't agree that the Vulcans on there are presented in a poor light. For the most part they are represented as allies, save for the baseball episode, where it is a single former rival of Sisko's. Additionally, with both Sarek and the Vulcan admiral shown in Discovery to make logical (if sometimes questionable moral) decisions, I don't think Discovery is falling down the Enterprise rabbit hole.

[AllanO]

I am not absolutely certain I am remembering the episode correctly, but the impression I had was that Lorca was not necessarily expecting the admiral to get captured by the Klingons, but whereas in other cases (including rescuing Sarek) he was willing to go out of his way (including defying orders) to use Discovery to save someone he decides not to here and it is clear that he has a huge conflict of interest making that decision (if the admiral is saved he may well lose his command). So deeply morally flawed, but not the outright Uriah gambit (send the guy you want to get rid of into an unwinnable fight) Chuck sees (it would be interesting to consider how Lorca would have responded to an order to rescue the admiral). However I admit Chuck's interpretation made a lot of sense and is probably consistent with the events portrayed.

I would have said that it is less that people forget about the River Lethe in the underworld and more that stories (movies, TV shows etc.) just conflate the River Styx and Lethe, such that the underworld has a river that Charon (skeletal boatman) ferries you across and the waters of that same river cause forgetfulness and the river may be called Styx or Lethe...

The back of the shirts could say Stud...

[CareerKnight]

When Chuck brought up the Vulcans and their portrayals over the years the first thing I thought of was if TOS had done one of these then the complaint from some fans wouldn't be how disrespectful to Vulcans/Gene these are but oh look another evil/crazy/misguided Vulcan, we haven't seen one of those before. I honestly had no problem with how DS9 used Vulcans and as for people who complain about how ENT used Vulcans my response would be are you sure you don't want to replace Vulcans with Star Trek in general?

[Jonathan101]

In TOS Spock goes violently nuts because he gets horny and then the Vulcans make him fight to the death for the right to marry a girl who doesn't even like him. The idea that Vulcans are some sort of super-rational perfect race has always been more of a stereotype than a reality.

[Nevix]

Having not watched this series, it's kind of meh for me to watch these reviews due to not having much interest.

Chuck is doing a great job breaking them down, and explaining why a logic based society would still have major flaws and splinter groups, but it's the series itself that's just meh.

Just what is the point of Discovery anyway? Usually, there's some kind of point to the series that's set up early on.

Discovery just seems like an excuse to have a war with the Klingons, and to kill a bunch of characters, or worse.

[Warclam]

You said you were going to say things to piss me off, but not once did I hear you say "STD is a good show." I'm confused now.

Does the show have any substance to it other than "look how dark and edgy we are!" and "lol tardigrades are giant right"? Not that I've seen.

I did really enjoy the discussion of how logical people can disagree vehemently. You can make anything good, Chuck, by talking over it.

[TheLibrarian]

I don't mind a villainous faction within Vulcan society for much the same reasons as Chuck stated. What concerns me is the trend to slot the Vulcans into an antagonistic position vis-a-vis the protagonists. There's a longstanding trope in science fiction that predates Star Trek but persists to this day, that logic and rationality exists in opposition to morality. So many "evil AI/robot" stories take the stance that a being of pure logic must necessarily decide human life is irrational and must be destroyed or controlled. What I always appreciated about Star Trek is that logical and rational characters like Spock and Data were also extremely moral and concerned with the sanctity of life. When they falter, it isn't because being rational is a failing, but because moral dilemmas can be just that complex with no easy answers. A big reason I like Trek is because it doesn't usually do the lazy dramatic conflict where the emotional hero who wants to save everyone no matter how improbable their scheme is opposed by the logical, rational character who rattles off statistics and the emotional hero is shown to be right. Trek at its best is smarter and more nuanced than that.

This is also the episode where the fact that Michael is Sarek's foster daughter stopped bothering so much. I still think it's mostly blatant fanservice in a franchise that hasn't been able to really break any new ground in twenty years, but it also makes sense in canon. If any Vulcan is likely to adopt a human child, it's Sarek: he's already open to other cultures through his diplomatic work, we can probably assume he also believes in Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, and he was married to not just one, but two human women. What other Vulcan in Trek is as much of a humanophile as Sarek?