DIS: Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

[clearspira]

Or you know, maybe in a universe where Humans are also outclassed in almost every aspect by at least one race yet somehow still end up in command and leadership positions all the time, it can also be seen that other races like Kelpiens can rise above their base instincts and perform their duties just fine. Kind of like what Trek has always been about, but okay, something something SJWs (that's without mentioning the fact that there's been 0 evidence so far that Saru can't perform his regular duties just fine despite his base instincts of fear). I can't wait until a modern edition of Far Beyond the Stars to see some of the mental gymnastics that will come in response to that.

Also I hear a lot of people hating the Kelpiens as a concept- anyone mind elaborating beyond "it's a bad idea because it's dumb"?

If I'm getting this right, within the first page I see complaints people not liking this episode because the weird god-like alien thing is too Trek-cliche, and the other half like to complain that it's not enough like Trek. Okay then.

Comparing the Kelpians to the black rights movement is a false equivalence seeing as black people are capable of everything white people are capable of, but the Kelpians are not capable of everything humans are capable of because humans aren't a race of cowards who fall to pieces every time the going gets tough. I can't imagine any of the other main captains of the franchise putting up with this guy, particularly Kirk, Sisko, and season 3 Archer. The only man I can remotely see who would hire Saru would be season 1 Picard as they surrender just as often as each other.

[Linkara]

Ummm... we haven't seen Saru or any Kelpians (admittedly, we've only seen so many) fall to pieces in a crisis.

The only thing that we've seen from Saru is that he's more cautious... which is frankly a trait we see in plenty of human characters, as well. He's performed his duties just fine and while he's not under mind control, I'd argue it's more like the effects of a drug or, in another Trek example, it's more like when encountering an anomaly that screws with their head or on Enterprise with the planet that made everyone on there more paranoid. He's not thinking clearly because something has removed part of his essential nature. When removed from that environment, he returns to normal.

And as we see later in the season, Saru is a perfectly fine command officer.

[Darth Wedgius]

And just throwing this in there in a non-heated way, but do we know how typical Saru is for a Kelpian. It might be that other Kelpians have this under control better than he does, and wouldn't be so easily cowed.
I mean, could you judge all humans by Kirk?

[MixedDrops]

Once again, there have been zero instances where Saru's base instincts have actually gotten in the way of his duty- as mentioned, this particular case is actually the exact opposite, where his fear being taken away is what caused his lapses in judgment. And as far as that goes, training's only going to do you so much to prepare you for what are basically supernatural occurrences. You say that comparing the struggle to the ones Black People have been through is a false equivalence, yet these arguments sound basically identical to the mental gymnastics pseudo-skeptics use when espousing biological determinism, including against women or various racial minorities (take x biological difference, and then make wild extrapolations).

It just feels like half of you haven't actually watched the damn show.

[clearspira]

Once again, there have been zero instances where Saru's base instincts have actually gotten in the way of his duty- as mentioned, this particular case is actually the exact opposite, where his fear being taken away is what caused his lapses in judgment. And as far as that goes, training's only going to do you so much to prepare you for what are basically supernatural occurrences. You say that comparing the struggle to the ones Black People have been through is a false equivalence, yet these arguments sound basically identical to the mental gymnastics pseudo-skeptics use when espousing biological determinism, including against women or various racial minorities (take x biological difference, and then make wild extrapolations).

It just feels like half of you haven't actually watched the damn show.

I'll tell you the problem with what you just said regarding biological determinism: Every Star Trek race has a hat. Klingons are 99% warriors. Vulcans are 99% logical. Ferengi are 99% greedy. Romulans are 99% untrustworthy. Bajorans are 99% religious. Hirogen are 99% hunters. Kazon are 99% thug. Al-Aurians are the planet of listeners.
Biological determinism in real life is bullshit because human beings have multiple cultures, societies, and ways of doing things. In Star Trek, if you are of a particular race, you WILL be defined by that race unless you are a super special character. And that is why the Kelpians are guaranteed to be 99% cowardly because biological determinism is a fact in the Trekverse.

[Formless One]

If Saru's species experiences anxiety all or most of the time as a survival instinct, they probably have a higher tolerance to it than humans, and the mental health field would be less inclined to label it as a problem in their case. After all, it doesn't appear to cause him behavioral problems under normal conditions-- in fact, it was after Saru's anxiety was taken away that he began acting irrationally and violently towards his coworkers, which would probably be a known issue and a good reason specifically not to try and treat their fears the same way human anxiety is treated. Its like why humans aren't considered abnormal by Vulcans for experiencing and acting on emotions-- our survival instincts are tied to those emotions, and because they are actually not felt as strongly as a Vulcan's emotions are there is less need to exert conscious control over them. Different neural systems, different instincts, different mental norms. It all makes perfect sense.

By the same token, Saru's constant anxiety does very clearly cause him distress and very much affects his day to day actions, causing him trouble when dealing with things like 'a war'.

But no more trouble than what most humans experience when at war. We can only really take him at his word when he says he experiences near constant anxiety, because he doesn't show the same symptoms of it that a human would, other than an unusually high level of vigilance. A human experiencing the same would likely show symptoms of PTSD, but Saru doesn't. When looking at how effective he is at dealing with long term stress, he does appear to be better equipped than humans for managing fear. And badly equipped for dealing with the complete absence of stress; it makes him act like he's stoned off his ass, and he got angry at the thought of being taken off the planet where he was trippin'. His baseline is simply different, and that leads to the conclusion he has to be thought of differently to a human character. Just like Spock, Quark, Worf, Dax, Data, or even Seven. Each has a different psychology than a (normal) human.

Analogously, imagine if an alien witnessed a human with ADHD take an amphetamine. They would notice that suddenly, that person becomes more quiet, more focused, and more motivated. It appears to be a good thing, right? But that doesn't mean the treatment is good for all humans *. Far from it: that response is considered paradoxical, because giving amphetamine to someone without ADHD makes them act like a maniac. With ADHD. And sometimes schizophrenia. One group has a different baseline than the other and reacts differently to identical stimuli, so they have to be treated differently.

* Or even a totally pleasant experience for those with ADHD. Ask me how I know.

Saru is basically the Neelix of this show. Whoever thought that the idea of a herbivore highstrung race of livestock with a fear boner crest ought to be fired (out of a torpedo port).

What's wrong with the concept besides you not liking it? I mean, at least unlike Neelix we have an explanation for why their behavior differs from humans. We are never told a whole lot about Talaxians that would explain anything about why they act like jerks, other than that they used to have a much bigger empire until someone else fought them back to their home planet.

I mean, I think the fear-crest thing is actually pretty clever and a nice touch by the designer, if a bit underexplained in some cases. I mean, most of the time they don't think about these automatic responses when designing aliens. Humans blush when we're embarrassed, go red in the face when angry, and go pale when frightened, which are all instinctive responses left over from an evolutionary time before we could speak and share our thoughts directly with one another. Same kind of thing.

[Formless One]

I'll tell you the problem with what you just said regarding biological determinism: Every Star Trek race has a hat. Klingons are 99% warriors. Vulcans are 99% logical. Ferengi are 99% greedy. Romulans are 99% untrustworthy. Bajorans are 99% religious. Hirogen are 99% hunters. Kazon are 99% thug. Al-Aurians are the planet of listeners.
Biological determinism in real life is bullshit because human beings have multiple cultures, societies, and ways of doing things. In Star Trek, if you are of a particular race, you WILL be defined by that race unless you are a super special character. And that is why the Kelpians are guaranteed to be 99% cowardly because biological determinism is a fact in the Trekverse.

I mean, I know there are real world implications to every decision made in Trek world building, but it does have to be remembered that these are actual aliens we are talking about, and not different races of human. It isn't inherently bad to say that a completely different species should have a different basic psychology from humans, because in the real world that is actually true. Dogs act excited when meeting a human because (and animal psychologists have tested this!) dogs know humans have access to different resources in the world and the part of their brain that experiences pleasure lights up. Cats on the other hand have been shown to apply the same social instincts to humans that they apply to other cats, which explains their pleasant but definitely more distant reaction to their owners. They have different brains from one another, and that explains the different instincts.

Oh, and of course, they are both obligate predators, which is a big difference from humanity.

Where biological determinism becomes more problematic in Star Trek is when it is used to mask cultural determinism and a lack of internal diversity among their aliens. For instance, most Klingons in the TNG era series' acted pretty much the same across the board even though we are told there are twelve different houses. A writer who isn't being lazy or racist would make sure that each of the twelve houses have visibly different cultures, thus showing that as different as their basic psychology is from humans they are at least diverse just like humans. Vulcans likewise have different races (Tuvok VS Spock, for instance), and we are even told that Vulcans and Romulans are evolutionary relatives. But neither Vulcans nor Romulans seem to have any subcultures within them, and the only nods to possible cultural differences in Vulcan's past is either to mention the violent history of Vulcan or the Romulan exodus from the planet (which makes the Vulcans look bad if you think about it too hard). None of this is to say, however, that it is bad for Vulcans to have stronger emotions than humans and a greater talent with logic, and for this to be based on their different neurobiology. Think about it. Humans with Autism often have a great talent for working with machines and logical systems but less skill with social situations, and that appears to be a result of some kind of altered neurobiology. Its not a problem to acknowledge this. What is a problem is to deny people with Autism spectrum disorders their individuality by stereotyping or to act like they are somehow inferior to people without such disorders. That is a line that Trek has admittedly crossed sometimes in the previous shows. That does not automatically mean that Saru being different from a human crosses the line, because if he was going to act identically to a human why make his character an alien at all?

[Kilo]

I dunno, Chuck. Just a few months ago a movie that partially centered on the junk of a creature played by Doug Jones won the Best Picture Oscar. I think discounting how interested people are in the junk of Doug Jones characters is criminally shortsighted

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

I dunno, Chuck. Just a few months ago a movie that partially centered on the junk of a creature played by Doug Jones won the Best Picture Oscar. I think discounting how interested people are in the junk of Doug Jones characters is criminally shortsighted

To my ears that (paraphrasing here) "not even the fanfic writers are interested in Saru'" sounded like a challenge )

[Asvarduil]

I dunno, Chuck. Just a few months ago a movie that partially centered on the junk of a creature played by Doug Jones won the Best Picture Oscar. I think discounting how interested people are in the junk of Doug Jones characters is criminally shortsighted

To my ears that (paraphrasing here) "not even the fanfic writers are interested in Saru'" sounded like a challenge )

Yeah, when I heard Chuck say that in his recording, my only thought was, "Goddammit, Sonnenburg..."

The Saru Rule: "Never expose a blindspot to fan-fic writers."