TNG- 11001001

[Thebestoftherest]

I understand why people like the Bynar's but I never particularly liked them myself. Their whole culture, and yes I'm being humancentric here, seems kinda horrifying to echo some of what clearspira said. The forced "lobotomy" and forced pairing (I'm assuming its forced, doesn't exactly seem like there is alot of choice or individuality on their parts), one in their species cannot be an individual mentally or even physically and have zero choice. They are not benign Borg, they are the Borg if confined to one species though with less gimp suits.

Yeah, the Bynar's are another Star Trek species that have this cultural norm that is horrific from our moral standpoint, which seems to happen a lot, the people of Eminiar VII and Vendikar: who willingly commit suicide if they're reported as a casualty in their simulated war from "A Taste of Armageddon", the Kobali: who use cadavers to reproduce (no not like that) from "Ashes to Ashes", and as will see next review, the people of Kaelon II: who at the age of sixty commit ritual suicide from "Half a Life", just to name some off the top of my head.

While it's not stated that what the Bynar's do is a forced cultural standard like with the Ba'ul's and Kelpien's "balance", or if it's something that was necessary or what they deem as progress, the idea of them replacing apart of a newborns brain with a synaptic processor does raise some red flags like with those other cultures I mentioned, and I see how that is off-putting.

Maybe if they were naturally telepathic, with births always happening with twins that are naturally connected, with their planetary computer and data storage devices being an add on and a cultural norm that the majority of the population do.

Also on a side note, the whole "we lobotomise kids" thing was introduced in the Enterprise episode "Regeneration", with Phlox commenting on how the procedure he saw was "very impressive", just another bit of evidence of Phlox being a sociopath.

Frankly I feel enterprise never care for making sense in the lore, and that if we see them again they will completely ignre Phlox comment.

[CrypticMirror]

I understand why people like the Bynar's but I never particularly liked them myself. Their whole culture, and yes I'm being humancentric here, seems kinda horrifying to echo some of what clearspira said. The forced "lobotomy" and forced pairing (I'm assuming its forced, doesn't exactly seem like there is alot of choice or individuality on their parts), one in their species cannot be an individual mentally or even physically and have zero choice. They are not benign Borg, they are the Borg if confined to one species though with less gimp suits.

Yeah, the Bynar's are another Star Trek species that have this cultural norm that is horrific from our moral standpoint, which seems to happen a lot, the people of Eminiar VII and Vendikar: who willingly commit suicide if they're reported as a casualty in their simulated war from "A Taste of Armageddon", the Kobali: who use cadavers to reproduce (no not like that) from "Ashes to Ashes", and as will see next review, the people of Kaelon II: who at the age of sixty commit ritual suicide from "Half a Life", just to name some off the top of my head.

While it's not stated that what the Bynar's do is a forced cultural standard like with the Ba'ul's and Kelpien's "balance", or if it's something that was necessary or what they deem as progress, the idea of them replacing apart of a newborns brain with a synaptic processor does raise some red flags like with those other cultures I mentioned, and I see how that is off-putting.

Maybe if they were naturally telepathic, with births always happening with twins that are naturally connected, with their planetary computer and data storage devices being an add on and a cultural norm that the majority of the population do.

Also on a side note, the whole "we lobotomise kids" thing was introduced in the Enterprise episode "Regeneration", with Phlox commenting on how the procedure he saw was "very impressive", just another bit of evidence of Phlox being a sociopath.

Frankly I feel enterprise never care for making sense in the lore, and that if we see them again they will completely ignre Phlox comment.

Enterprise's attempts at fanservice never did end well. Well, not before season four; but by then it was too late.

[Thebestoftherest]

I understand why people like the Bynar's but I never particularly liked them myself. Their whole culture, and yes I'm being humancentric here, seems kinda horrifying to echo some of what clearspira said. The forced "lobotomy" and forced pairing (I'm assuming its forced, doesn't exactly seem like there is alot of choice or individuality on their parts), one in their species cannot be an individual mentally or even physically and have zero choice. They are not benign Borg, they are the Borg if confined to one species though with less gimp suits.

Yeah, the Bynar's are another Star Trek species that have this cultural norm that is horrific from our moral standpoint, which seems to happen a lot, the people of Eminiar VII and Vendikar: who willingly commit suicide if they're reported as a casualty in their simulated war from "A Taste of Armageddon", the Kobali: who use cadavers to reproduce (no not like that) from "Ashes to Ashes", and as will see next review, the people of Kaelon II: who at the age of sixty commit ritual suicide from "Half a Life", just to name some off the top of my head.

While it's not stated that what the Bynar's do is a forced cultural standard like with the Ba'ul's and Kelpien's "balance", or if it's something that was necessary or what they deem as progress, the idea of them replacing apart of a newborns brain with a synaptic processor does raise some red flags like with those other cultures I mentioned, and I see how that is off-putting.

Maybe if they were naturally telepathic, with births always happening with twins that are naturally connected, with their planetary computer and data storage devices being an add on and a cultural norm that the majority of the population do.

Also on a side note, the whole "we lobotomise kids" thing was introduced in the Enterprise episode "Regeneration", with Phlox commenting on how the procedure he saw was "very impressive", just another bit of evidence of Phlox being a sociopath.

Frankly I feel enterprise never care for making sense in the lore, and that if we see them again they will completely ignre Phlox comment.

Enterprise's attempts at fanservice never did end well. Well, not before season four; but by then it was too late.

If they do return they will ignore Phlox comment or say he was making stuff up.

[Link8909]

Enterprise's attempts at fanservice never did end well. Well, not before season four; but by then it was too late.

If they do return they will ignore Phlox comment or say he was making stuff up.

Indeed, and the point of this addition doesn't even help the argument that Phlox is making, he was trying to show a counter point to the Borg and how cybernetic implants can be a positive thing, but having "benign" and "lobotomies newborns" in the same sentence defeats that point.

[cdrood]

I have to admit given the Federation and their prime directive I can't blame the Bynar's for thinking they'd be left to die out. Ironically this is pretty much the entire situation with the Romulans later only they didn't come up with a solution and died out.

Normally the prime directive doesn't apply to warp capable species who are asking for help. I also think that it is likely that the Bynars are federation members since even season one federation isn't so stupid as to outsource the complete overhaul of their most heavily armed and powerful "peaceship's" computer to a nonaligned species. It'd be like the US government outsourcing their military communications systems to Huawei.

Yes, for example in "The Cloud Minders", The Prime Directive was never brought up in relation to Kirk's action, just the fact that he abducted and threatened a planetary official.

[Thebestoftherest]

Enterprise's attempts at fanservice never did end well. Well, not before season four; but by then it was too late.

If they do return they will ignore Phlox comment or say he was making stuff up.

Indeed, and the point of this addition doesn't even help the argument that Phlox is making, he was trying to show a counter point to the Borg and how cybernetic implants can be a positive thing, but having "benign" and "lobotomies newborns" in the same sentence defeats that point.

Hell I would say that wasn't standard pratice as much as it happen a few times incase a child has a brain deformity that much be fix.

[cdrood]

Lore is a great character. One of the problems might have been the fact that evil twins were old hat even back then. It is quite hard to write fresh ideas for them. ''Brothers'' was one of them as it introduced the emotion chip which would become important later on.

Another thing that made Lore interesting and stood out from other evil twins was his motivation, him being resented by the Omicron Theta colonists for being "too perfect", and rather than Dr. Soong working to fix his emotional instability, instead opted to create Data to basically replace him, Lore's "You could have just fix me!" from "Brothers" was a really powerful line.

The thing that annoyed be with Lore, ultimately, and what might have been if the hints regarding B4 had been followed up on is that the completely undermine "Measure of a Man". Data is allowed it unilaterally turn Lore of and presumably disassemble him. No trial.

I admit that I'm a little less clear on how "hologram rights" would even work, mainly because they tend to treat what is essentially the user interface as the entire being and write it like a "program" is some monolithic piece of code and data. They are in fact generated by a computer and most likely share most of their code with other "non-sentient" holograms due to modular programming and are connected to shared databases. Don't talk to me about the mobile emitter because if that's what it was, then it shouldn't work when out of communication range.

However, the androids don't share that issue. They are self contained beings.

[Link8909]

Indeed, and the point of this addition doesn't even help the argument that Phlox is making, he was trying to show a counter point to the Borg and how cybernetic implants can be a positive thing, but having "benign" and "lobotomies newborns" in the same sentence defeats that point.

Hell I would say that wasn't standard pratice as much as it happen a few times incase a child has a brain deformity that much be fix.

Absolutely true, and the start of Phlox's point does show how having cybernetic implants or any form of technological aid can be beneficial, Captain Picard's artificial heart and Geordi La Forge's VISOR comes to mind, but when he brings up the Bynars he doesn't mention weather or not the procedure was necessary, thus we can only speculate that it's a cultural practice, and I feel that doesn't really help his argument.

[Aotrs Commander]

I was not keen on this episode personally; even now, I'm kind of really not interested in the by-play of Riker and Minuet.

While Datalore and Big Goodbye were solid enough

Wil Wheaton disagrees about Datalore (to put it mildly).

Hahahahahahaha!

Oh, wow, that was great. Dude's a class act.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

The character of Lore also gave us a short star trek comic from the perspective of Data's cat, who was able to spot the difference. (pun intended)