Re: DS:9 "Extreme Measures"
Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2017 2:18 pm
Course, that doesn't work given Janeway and Picard can summon hot beverages.
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The implications of "not being able to replicate energy" "Tea, Earl Grey, hot!" - Replicator drops a frozen solid cup of tea and suddenly it gets very very cold in Picard's ready-room, as the 0°K Tea sokes up the ambient heat energy.TGLS wrote:Course, that doesn't work given Janeway and Picard can summon hot beverages.
The physics of that don't really work. Any physical object still contains energy - stored in chemical bonds, in the structure of the atom, and potential energy related to local gravity, etc. To give you an idea of just how many forms of energy (and how impossible it is to have a meaningful object without them), see the chart on the wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy#Forms The problem is that all matter has energy, has to have energy - just to be matter. Even if you replicated your objects at absolute zero (no heat - which would, it should be noted, make almost all of them useless, because the extreme low temperature is going to ruin the material properties of the object), they'd still have potential energy, rest energy, etc.Admiral X wrote:I rather liked the idea from some of the early DS9 novels that replicators can create matter but not energy, as in they could create a phaser, but the phaser would be dead.
Tasha Yar's planet is not part of the Federation and its' not like Gene didn't view humans as capable of incredible evil in groups, it's just Earth and the Federation didn't have these sorts of problems. It's actually kind of a smug sort of view, "These humans chose to live outside the Federation and thus they've degenerated into Mad Max."CareerKnight wrote:I still don't know how Tasha had the backstory she did considering Gene's vision on humans in his universe at that point. It seems like it was some idea he came up with shortly after TOS that he hung on to even while his vision shifted more and more to the point its existence caused problems within the universe.Madner Kami wrote:One needs only to look at Tasha Yar's homeplanet or the existence of commerce-based crime (smuggling for example) within the boundaries of the Federation, to instantly see "post-scarcity" as a farce.
You explained this so well. This is why I never had an issue with the virus being created by Section 31. They could have made the issue worse since the Vorta ran things just great on their own, but that’s not an issue within the show itself. Odo whining about Starfleet’s guilt is almost sickening. If it was about him getting sick, then by all means, complain, but that wasn’t really his issue. Maybe he needed to go spend more time in the gamma quadrant and see all the words his people destroyed or enslaved.CharlesPhipps wrote:RE: Genocide
There's an early episode of Babylon Five called "Deathwalker" which had the last member of a species of Space Nazis die at the hands of the Vorlons. This was, essentially, genocide on the part of the Vorlons because she's the last of her race. However, she's a Space Nazi and I actually am adapting the moral dilemma now to a Star Trek tabletop RPG game where the PCs have to decide whether to let a monstrous war criminal rebuild his race with technology.
What does this have to do with the Founders?
Well, the genocide point runs into a moral dilemma which doesn't exist in RL issues because the Founders are all Space Stalin. Every single one of them due to the Great Link is complicit in genocide, mass murder, planned genocide, and slavery. If you were to bring the Founders to trial, you would find them all guilty in a way which normal races aren't since Odo and Laas among a few others are the only ones who aren't part of the Dominion's ruling class and crimes.
Basically, it's like Picard and the Borg or the Doctor and the Daleks.
Well, sort of.
The Founders are not EXISTENTIALLY evil. They are WILLINGLY evil. There's no children of the Great Link to die save Odo and they're all guilty.
Obviously, this has no real life equivalent and Star Trek shouldn't play with that metaphor but the plague as a weapon against the Founders isn't quite the Death Star on Alderaan. What Odo and the others did was more akin to showing Darth Vader mercy.
Good and noble but it's still showing it to people who are all guilty.
Odo's whining wasn't so much about whether the Founders deserved it. It was the fact that the upstanding Federation was just found to be sanctimonious instead. After spending seven years forced to do things their way, maybe even buying into it a little bit himself, and being told that they had the moral high ground all while he's been chafing under the necessity of working within Starfleet moral and legal structure for years... it was revealed that they are willing and able to commit an act of self-defensive genocide. Whether or not it's justified, or even ethical, it still goes against their stated principles. It's profoundly hypocritical. I always read that as the source of his disgust.Meushell wrote:Odo whining about Starfleet’s guilt is almost sickening. If it was about him getting sick, then by all means, complain, but that wasn’t really his issue. Maybe he needed to go spend more time in the gamma quadrant and see all the words his people destroyed or enslaved.
Perhaps. It seems like he should have known better then. LOL. He was about the only person who wasn’t surprised by the existence of Section 31.Deledrius wrote:Odo's whining wasn't so much about whether the Founders deserved it. It was the fact that the upstanding Federation was just found to be sanctimonious instead. After spending seven years forced to do things their way, maybe even buying into it a little bit himself, and being told that they had the moral high ground all while he's been chafing under the necessity of working within Starfleet moral and legal structure for years... it was revealed that they are willing and able to commit an act of self-defensive genocide. Whether or not it's justified, or even ethical, it still goes against their stated principles. It's profoundly hypocritical. I always read that as the source of his disgust.Meushell wrote:Odo whining about Starfleet’s guilt is almost sickening. If it was about him getting sick, then by all means, complain, but that wasn’t really his issue. Maybe he needed to go spend more time in the gamma quadrant and see all the words his people destroyed or enslaved.