TNG Suddenly Human

[Yukaphile]

Oh no doubt. But the Feds are the ones preaching about how we MUST accept the values of other races even if they're utter assholes about it. So when push comes to shove, they don't respect that. One thing I do admire the episode for is it breaks the Trek pattern of "stay with your own kind." It's not just with races, though. Anyone ever notice among romances, they tend to be same-racial couples? Geordi has a black girl with a crush on him. Sisko dates a black phantom girl, and then Kasidy Yates. It's extremely uncomfortable in a supposed future utopia where you'd think a white guy, like myself, would just find black women or Asian ladies so gorgeous he'd love to date one. I know random chance has a lot to do with that, but when it's this consistently often, it's a conspiracy. And so I do like this episode for the allegory of accepting your child for what he is, letting him choose his own path, and to not always return with your own kind. To break outside into new horizons.

[CharlesPhipps]

Eh, Star Trek was one of the first major shows to avert that on television with O'Brian and Keiko.

I was really surprised by it as an adolescent.

[clearspira]

Adopting the child of people you have killed makes me inclined to view them poorly rather than positively.

Fair enough, for me, the fact he he didn't enslave or murder Jono as a baby makes me think the reverse.

[Lizuka]

I think it's really a case where both sides of the issue are pretty much in the wrong, but I'm inclined to side with where Jono would be better off which in this case would appear to me to be the society that has everything he's ever known and cared about.

Though really more than anything my strongest opinion of the episode is, "Troi is an idiot."

[Artabax]

Adopting the child of people you have killed makes me inclined to view them poorly rather than positively.

Fair enough, for me, the fact he he didn't enslave or murder Jono as a baby makes me think the reverse.

I don't think poorly of them, I think wierdly. Killing or enslaving the child is obvious. Dad truly loves the child, so I do think positively.

[Yukaphile]

Well, he did say it was alien custom, and he'd lost his son to the Feds, so he saw it as kindly. He obviously never abused Jono, who was determined to impress him.

[CharlesPhipps]

Its more that he chose to take him as a replacement for his own dead child and that is kidnapping in addition to any act of war.

But that's an issue they don't really deal with it.

[Yukaphile]

There is, also, that interpretation.

[Artabax]

;
Its more that he chose to take him as a replacement for his own dead child and that is kidnapping in addition to any act of war.

But that's an issue they don't really deal with it.

,
That issue was over by now. If Enterprise turned up a month later, then sending the baby to Grandma would be the Moral Act. The episode was 16 years later; Jono had grown up in a loving family, him staying was the Moral Act. If he had been 2 ish, 5 ish, that would be a grey area.

[Yukaphile]

Yeah, you can't overcome a lifetime spent with a father figure he clearly loved. Even Picard didn't think he was abused, though Crusher clearly thought otherwise, but again, this is the prototypical "overly soft mother" who'd, as Chuck noted, think a time-out was barbaric.