Lazerlike42 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 18, 2021 7:18 amI can see that interpretation, and actually we just watched this two nights ago (my wife is watching the series for the first time) and not having seen it in a while my first reaction when you meet the Menk was also to think that it was a sort of "apartheid," but after finishing the episode, and then reading various discussions online about the episode, I'm not so sure that this is a necessary or even a likely conclusion. The episode seems to go out of its way to try to claim that the Menk are not being mistreated, even to the point of having some of the human characters interpret it this way and having (if I recall correctly) Phlox essentially disagree.
Phlox's defense is also insane. "On other worlds, the Menk would have been exterminated."
How many living examples of the species "homo" (but not sapiens) do you know of, on Terra? Or any other near-developed species? Any sort of competitor, would've died out either naturally or unnaturally long before the metal age, due to how ecology works. Can't have two apex predators occupying the same niche. That's just not how nature works and that is long before social considerations like (in this case literal) racism and xenophobia.
In a wierd way I'd even go so far as to say that creating... "exclusion zones" for both species is a really good outcome, if they can't manage to cooperate more closely for whatever specific reason(s). Both survive, both have their habitats, neither is abused or exploited by the other (presuming that this is actually the case and not just lip-service, obviously). That is good, is it not?
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
Our sample size for sapient creatures is too low at the moment to draw any meaningful statistical conclusions. We need to find more worlds hosting at least one sapient species before we can make that judgement.
I vehemently disagree. Nature is full of examples or rather, lack thereof, of species occupying the same niche and being the most successful at it in the same locale. You've got apex species occupying the same ecological niche certainly, but being geographically divided. The moment this geographical divide is removed, one species vanishes sooner or later. See what wild dogs have done in the Americas or cats in Australia, rats on so many islands all over the world. How many races of elephants do you find in Africa? What other species can compare to an Orca? There are reasons why marsupials are teetering on the edge of extinction, now that Australia and New Zealand aren't cut off from the rest of the world anymore and it's not just down to us altering or even removing their habitat. And this list goes on and on and on.
And if you are looking at how humans have shaped this planet and it's ecology since we began using sharpened sticks, stones and fire, then things become rapidly clear and singular. The way we manage to take every resource available and do something that fuels our propagation, doesn't allow for anyone to exist next to us in particular and this isn't me saying that we're horrible and exploitative or anything. That's just me saying: Those are natural processes and us limiting ourselves because we recognize what we do on a deeper level, took quite a while to emerge and obviously isn't fully formed and expressed even by today. If a species on our level emerged today, it may have a chance to survive and prosper next to us. The same happening a thousand years ago? Ten thousand years? A houndred thousand? Hoo boy...
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
Madner Kami wrote: ↑Sat Sep 18, 2021 7:07 pm
I vehemently disagree. Nature is full of examples or rather, lack thereof, of species occupying the same niche and being the most successful at it in the same locale. You've got apex species occupying the same ecological niche certainly, but being geographically divided. The moment this geographical divide is removed, one species vanishes sooner or later. See what wild dogs have done in the Americas or cats in Australia, rats on so many islands all over the world. How many races of elephants do you find in Africa? What other species can compare to an Orca? There are reasons why marsupials are teetering on the edge of extinction, now that Australia and New Zealand aren't cut off from the rest of the world anymore and it's not just down to us altering or even removing their habitat. And this list goes on and on and on.
And if you are looking at how humans have shaped this planet and it's ecology since we began using sharpened sticks, stones and fire, then things become rapidly clear and singular. The way we manage to take every resource available and do something that fuels our propagation, doesn't allow for anyone to exist next to us in particular and this isn't me saying that we're horrible and exploitative or anything. That's just me saying: Those are natural processes and us limiting ourselves because we recognize what we do on a deeper level, took quite a while to emerge and obviously isn't fully formed and expressed even by today. If a species on our level emerged today, it may have a chance to survive and prosper next to us. The same happening a thousand years ago? Ten thousand years? A houndred thousand? Hoo boy...
Lazerlike42 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 18, 2021 7:18 amI can see that interpretation, and actually we just watched this two nights ago (my wife is watching the series for the first time) and not having seen it in a while my first reaction when you meet the Menk was also to think that it was a sort of "apartheid," but after finishing the episode, and then reading various discussions online about the episode, I'm not so sure that this is a necessary or even a likely conclusion. The episode seems to go out of its way to try to claim that the Menk are not being mistreated, even to the point of having some of the human characters interpret it this way and having (if I recall correctly) Phlox essentially disagree.
Phlox's defense is also insane. "On other worlds, the Menk would have been exterminated."
I mean...why?
I was actually thinking about this today and ultimately I don't think that "they mistreated the Menk" can possibly serve as a defense of Phlox/Archer's decision. In the best case it would ne a neutral factor, something which didn't influence their decision and so didn't mean anything one way or the other.
In the worst case, though, if we assume that Phlox and Archer considered the treatment of the Menk in deciding what to do about this plague, it would have to mean that they were "playing God" even more than they say they want to avoid doing, because it would have to mean that they were basically punishing these people for their treatment of the Menk. If the decision is, as they did in the episode, to not offer the cure, then their having considered how the Menk were treated could only have meant that they were siding with the Menk and engaging in some kind of social engineering: "we disagree with the treatment of the minority, so we're going to take an action which will will harm the majority."
CrypticMirror wrote: ↑Sat Sep 18, 2021 6:50 pm
Our sample size for sapient creatures is too low at the moment to draw any meaningful statistical conclusions. We need to find more worlds hosting at least one sapient species before we can make that judgement.
I hadn't even thought of this until today, but isn't this question basically answered within Enterprise itself? The Xindi consist of six different sapient species all of which evolved and lived together on the same planet. Clearly, then, it is possible for this to happen and it would be wrong to say that the two species from Dear Doctor were somehow destined for one of them to displace the other.
Madner Kami wrote: ↑Sat Sep 18, 2021 6:44 pm
How many living examples of the species "homo" (but not sapiens) do you know of, on Terra? Or any other near-developed species? Any sort of competitor, would've died out either naturally or unnaturally long before the metal age, due to how ecology works. Can't have two apex predators occupying the same niche. That's just not how nature works and that is long before social considerations like (in this case literal) racism and xenophobia.
Since the various homo species were all closely related, they were all competing for the same resources, expanded in largely the same ways, and were largely suited for the same sorts of environments. If two sapient species developed from more divergent sources, with different biological needs, they wouldn't necessarily be in such direct competition.
