Voyager: The 37s

[drewder]

One thing not mentioned in the video but which has always bugged me about this episode is why did the aliens take Earhart and the others, put them in suspended animation, and then leave them that way on the new planet? Cryogenically suspended humans make for lousy slaves.

[Robovski]

Because ... reasons! Alien reasons you can't possibly comprehend!

[Durandal_1707]

Earhart's been in the news lately.

[Meushell]

One thing not mentioned in the video but which has always bugged me about this episode is why did the aliens take Earhart and the others, put them in suspended animation, and then leave them that way on the new planet? Cryogenically suspended humans make for lousy slaves.

I always assumed that the aliens were driven away before they woke up their last batch of humans. I have not seen the episode since it aired though, so I don't know if that works with the show.

[Dînadan]

One thing not mentioned in the video but which has always bugged me about this episode is why did the aliens take Earhart and the others, put them in suspended animation, and then leave them that way on the new planet? Cryogenically suspended humans make for lousy slaves.

I always assumed that the aliens were driven away before they woke up their last batch of humans. I have not seen the episode since it aired though, so I don't know if that works with the show.

37 is an oddly small batch to leave around though. Unless maybe the aliens had cloning tech and the originals were left in stasis so they'd always have a 'pure' source to harvest from rather than the degrading DNA of cloning the clones of the clones of the clones of... (as we all know in sf, clones always degrade with each generation).

[Meushell]

One thing not mentioned in the video but which has always bugged me about this episode is why did the aliens take Earhart and the others, put them in suspended animation, and then leave them that way on the new planet? Cryogenically suspended humans make for lousy slaves.

I always assumed that the aliens were driven away before they woke up their last batch of humans. I have not seen the episode since it aired though, so I don't know if that works with the show.

37 is an oddly small batch to leave around though. Unless maybe the aliens had cloning tech and the originals were left in stasis so they'd always have a 'pure' source to harvest from rather than the degrading DNA of cloning the clones of the clones of the clones of... (as we all know in sf, clones always degrade with each generation).

That would make a lot of sense. That would also mean the group is dealing with some descendants of their clones. That would be weird.

It's still a pretty small group though. I don't think the writers thought that one through.

[Dînadan]

It would also explain the veneration the descendants had for them; the clone generation that overthrew the alien overlords respecting the originals as being their primogenitors and over the following generations as the fact the generation that rebelled were clones was forgotten, that respect morphed into veneration.

[Admiral X]

Why did the victorious clones never wake up the originals, I wonder.

[Dînadan]

Why did the victorious clones never wake up the originals, I wonder.

Closest I can think of an explanation is out of respect and maybe thinking pulling the plug wasn't humane? And then, as hypothesised above, over the generations that fact was lost and it became something more akin to ancestor worship.

Either that or they didn't know how to work the controls, but that falls apart as that way they wouldn't have been able to appropriate the alien tech to build the Offscreen Cities of Awesome with it (at least as far as I can recall it's implied they did rather than defeating the aliens Ewok style and then advancing to that level on their own), plus iirc the Voyager crew was able to defrost them trivially without needing techtech or quantumbullshit to do so.

[The Romulan Republic]

Earhart's been in the news lately.

Yeah. And I can't help thinking that I'd much, much rather believe that she was taken by aliens than that she died as a Japanese prisoner. Especially considering how WWII-era Japan tended to treat its prisoners.