Lower Decks Season 4

[McAvoy]

I'm not sure you read what I wrote because that makes no sense. The Doctor - a ''man'' who is in love with Seven of Nine, who dreams about her, who is often envious of other guys fancying her - can, through a single button command, cut her up whilst singing.

That is not a person with free will. That is a machine with an ''turn me to evil'' button.



Humans are a slight more complicated than that.

No, they really aren't. Any sort of brain-damage can change the personality of a person. There are plenty of cases showing that.

Look up Antonio Brown if you haven't already heard of him. He is an American former football player. He could be the poster boy for that.

[CharlesPhipps]

I mean you don't need specific incidents.

Alcohol

Drugs

And then say humans can't have their free will compromised.

[clearspira]

May I ask what would prove the Star Trek AI's sentience?

I already gave one excellent example: Kryten.

1) Kryten has CLEARLY broken his programming. He was a slave droid programmed to clean toilets and is now the Red Dwarf's resident science officer, inventor, navigator and pretty much anything else they need. And yes, that does include cleaning, but he does it by choice as but one duty because he lives on a ship of lazy bums. There have been many occasions where he stops doing it out of anger or to have a rest. Whereas Data is an android it was stated to be programmed to want to be more human, the Doctor is a hologram it was stated to be programmed to improve its duty of care. In both cases it is NOT so clear that they have broken their programming but rather taking that programming to its logical extent.

2) Kryten has no ''I am evil'' button. His equivalent as I already noted caused him to make understandable mistakes based on faulty logic i.e. human V animal meat.

3) Red Dwarf in general has better examples of AI sapience than Star Trek with pretty much the entire Series 4000 mechanoid line. In the later series there was a Nazi like cult that hated humans - no toilet cleaning there. There was an earlier model of Kryten in the episode where they went to find the personification of the universe where he has become an artist and adventurer - no toilet cleaning there. And in the same episode Kryten has a mental breakdown over having a mid-life crisis - no toilet cleaning there.

I really do not think it can be explained better than that.

And BTW, to respond to a few other people on here. Yes, humans can turn evil, but I have yet to see a single button press do it. Geordi when brainwashed by Romulans for example required days of constant torture. Sorry, not buying it.

[clearspira]

I mean you don't need specific incidents.

Alcohol

Drugs

And then say humans can't have their free will compromised.

I never claimed that humans could not compromise their free will. I'm claiming that alcohol and drugs alone will not make you want to carve up Seven of Nine whilst singing. You are already a psycho if you want to chop people up, the alcohol and the drugs are just enablers.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Breaking your programming isn't required to prove sapience. A robot can fulfill their original function while still being a sapient being deserving of rights. Artificial life is different from organic life and that's okay.

[hammerofglass]

There's been a couple Star Trek episodes where human characters got their switch flipped to Evil. That TNG one with the addictive videogame ("The Game") is the one that comes first to mind, Chuck even discussed the trope in his review. Ironically Data was immune in that one.

[Thebestoftherest]

There's been a couple Star Trek episodes where human characters got their switch flipped to Evil. That TNG one with the addictive videogame ("The Game") is the one that comes first to mind, Chuck even discussed the trope in his review. Ironically Data was immune in that one.

Catspaw where some of the crews got turn into zombies, Star Trek 5, heck one could argue that what the Borg do, those bugs things.

[stryke]

Weakest of the season for me, then I'm certainly not going to moan much given the fantastic run of form season 4 had for the first six episodes. The Badgey one while it had some flaws did also have some really good moments. Then this one had some solid stuff too, and it's only really that this feels way too much like a early s1 throwback episode that's bringing it down hard for me.

[hammerofglass]

They did a really good job making it recognizably the One Cave Set from TNG-ENT.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Did VOY and DS9 use the same cave set too, or were those different cave sets?

Anyway, I loved this episode. They know exactly what they are doing with that "we're roommates" line. Weakest of the individual stories for me was Mariner's one, but maybe I just found the leg gore a bit off-putting.