Today's thought experiment: Now the principle of holographic consultants has been proven, and definitely won't be abandoned without explanation, what other professions should Voyager have on-call?
At this point in their journey, Captain Janeway had accepted the fact she could shoulder the blame of these terrible choices. She wasn't about to lose her best engineer, as this would risk her crew's survival.
I discovered your channel about a month ago and binged every video in about a week. So I think seeing the growth of your videos is maybe a bit more apparent to me. The subtle changes and deeper afterthoughts on the episodes writing and morality have been more and more welcome with every video. Thanks and keep up the good work.
Kim: "This guy is a war criminal. Anyone who recognizes him would rightly loose their crap. I know, how about we just change the skin on the hologram. This Josef Mengele skin would work. And done." Edit: Also, nice bubble wrap organ at 13:43.
It may be a no-win situation. Option 1, you ignore all the benefits gained from the suffering. But then they may have died for nothing. Option 2, you benefit the greater good overall from that torment, but it may be seen as justifying what happened.
I think Janeway dismissed Be'lanna at the end because she knew she needed to hate someone and if she didn't hate Janeway then she was going to hate herself. When she said she would take full responsibility, she meant she would endure being hated by the marquis.
Yeah, her character had a good premise and Kate Mulgrew did her best to act the character, but on the writing side people weren't really sure how her personality should be.
@@HappyBeezerStudios First 4 Seasons were mostly boring with most episodes not mattering at all. They really started to make a difference from the very first episode of Season 5. We see Janeway *regretting* the moral choice of saving the Okampa, we see Janeway turning into a pragmatic human being rather than these evolved humans we keep seeing on Star Trek. Had this Janeway got stuck in this quadrant at Season 1, show wouldnt last 3 episodes. I really like the character growth.
@KertaDrake You miss the point I wasn't talking about why she made the choice, im talking about why she was a jerk about it to belannas face at the end.
regarding the "oh my god" shout-out, I would add an additional possible explanation: cultural adaptation. perhaps this bajoran was around for so long with ppl using this as a phrase to express shock or similar and the meaning lost its original religious linked context, but is still a metaphor. i mean, so much sh*t the crew is dealing with, probably ppl say "oh my god" every five minutes around this guy and so at some point his brain just sub-consciously adapted xD
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. I can see the translator doing more than just translating words and instead also common phrases. That's a thing already with human languages, where sayings aren't translated word by word, but instead translated as a close equivalent in the target langauge. For example, english has the phrase "it's raining cats and dogs" while my native language has "it's raining young dogs", both mean the same, but the exact words are slightly different. The translator might just translate a reference to the prophets.
How unfortunate to have a Bajoran around the one week when you’ve got a Cardassian hologram running… I mean, there’s only like, 3 Bajorans on the whole ship…
@@andrewblanchard2398 Yep, some rare face continuity from VOY! Plus there Tal Celes (“Good Shepherd” and “The Haunting of Deck Twelve”) and Gerron (“Learning Curve”)
@@Meton2526 Two of the three were Maquis (Gerron and Tabor). Tal Cales was Starfleet. Bajor wasn’t part of the Federation at the time, but she probably applied in the same was Ro Laren and Sito Jaxa did, although Tal was a crewman so may not have required sponsorship.
@@andrewblanchard2398 I agree. I never warmed up to Ezri. Dax shouldn’t have been killed though, just have it, either with Jadzia or someone else, do an Ivanova and go off to captain a ship somewhere or something.
That's a nice episode. It's a bit of a shame that the premise makes no sense. The Federation database doesn't say anything about him being a bastard, but the hologram turns out to be a bastard, because in the writers' minds technology is magic, and the Voyager crew just performed necromancy.
You know for all the morals thrown around the fact that they created a guy in a flawed image and then blamed the guy for being like the guy they made him to be and then blame him for stuff he didn't do but ultimately still punish him for gets glossed over. At what point do holograms become worthy of at least the doctors level of personhood?
Janeway’s duty as captain is to the ship as a whole. How much of a bearing does that have on her when she has to weigh the cost of losing her senior engineer versus violating her autonomy?
I considered this too. B’Elanna is the best engineer on the ship. If she does, that reduces everyone’s chances of getting home one day. In light of that, even respecting B’Elanna’s choice to let herself die isn’t such a neat and tidy moral choice.
@@programmerdave9893 Not to mention our in own history we have used data acquired through immoral means. Neglecting a research purely because of morality is idiotic. May be moral, but still idiotic. Unless said research requires immoral actions to be taken to be re-used, I dont see what good will do to ignore it.
I'd wager the Ensign's use of "My God" is a holdover from either a relative or a significant other who descended from a monotheistic culture and used the phrase often. I often use the expletive "Jesus Christ!" to express shock, even though I'm agnostic, as my grandfather frequently used the phrase and I picked it up from him. Edit: I know atheists and Jews who use the phrase as well, for similar reasons, and there are ample examples of this in pop culture (Broad City for instance).
@@Unlimited_LivesThe Question as portrayed by Jeffrey Combs in the DCAU. Being on the spectrum is literally a super power worthy of inclusion as part of the global Justice League.
This episode has been the only episode in all of this series (up until now) I’ve rewatched a scene. The scene where Paris goes off on one in the briefing room was so spectacularly written, acted and directed that it’s on par with some fantastic DS9 eps. One of the best so far. Also that joke about Tom Paris and the neck jizzer really made me chuckle. Keep up this fantastic content, makes my week.
I wish they'd thrown in a line about how Harry's been working on reverse engineering a blank EMH matrix ever since that first attempt in Message in a Bottle Would fit the character, would make sense in the universe, and could be used to explain why we can't just start over with a less evil exobiologist
Not just since then, but since they had issues with the Doctor falling apart. That was the first episode where they noticed that having the only medical professional on board also be a hologram can lead to issues when things go wrong with the computer.
Okay, took 5 minutes to think about this, my pedant nerd hat has been put on, there is a very spesific and unlikely case 'my god' still works here. If Ensign Bajor was a member of the cult of Kosst Amojan mentioned in DS9 a few times. He could have been refering to that singular deity in particular among the other Pah Wraiths. Also to be fair the UT of Voyager would be slightly less up to date as the occupation of Bajor only ended 2 years before they went missing maybe Bajor didn't share thier databases right way (I know there were a handful of Bajorian refugees in starfleet before that). There, best I could do.
One possibility to consider regarding the Bajoran dude, most religious Bajorans wear the ear ring chain thing as a symbol of their faith, this guy wasn't so maybe he doesn't follow his own peoples faith, maybe he converted to a human monotheistic religion while studying at Star Fleet Academy on Earth and the UT wasn't translating anything at all because he was actually speaking in common English the whole time.
Slam dunk, A+, hole in one! Fantastic analysis. On the topic of the Bajoran ensign using a human expression- i like to think of the multiverse as a series of lenses. there's what we assume is base reality, but atop that, you can apply lenses (like the lenses in the Game of Thrones intro) that "change the narrative." like, a lens that can be applied is the TV screen, through which we can access other fictional universes, like the Star Trek universe. But, being the weakling race that we are, we make mistakes, which pollutes the clarity of the lens through which we see- for the writers to accidentally or purposely have Bajoran ensign saying, "My God..." instead of "O my Prophets..." can be described as a fleck on the lens. Who knows what "really" happened, but whether it can be chalked up to a rhetorical conceit (where the writers thought him saying "Oh my Prophets!" was not cool enough/would actually be jarring to hear for the audience) or a mistake where the writers forgot about the Prophets (and that christianity is dead in the 24th century), i think the takeaway here is that we should thank the neurodivergent for noticing this sort of thing.
Worf was raised by humans he speaks English (or federation standard). He would use Klingon words when the direct human translation is not accurate. The same way we use French words (like deja vu) when appropriate so the translator thing might still work.
Where Star Trek does best with its "message show episodes" really is where there is no right answer, and I do think this one excels in that regard. As you said, no one comes out looking like a good guy at the end of this, and that is very smart. Also, I do wonder whether Janeway would have acted quite the same, in the upcoming Equinox, if the doctor had kept the fellow on file.
My thought on unethical research is to punish those who do it severely, but use the knowledge gained- Otherwise you're condemning others to death and suffering *and* making the suffering and death done in it's creation for nothing.
Maybe Ensign Krinkly Nose converted to Christianity. Also, with all their tecnogear, they could have just made the Cardie... "Dr. Killemall" appear as anyone or anything they wanted even if he was the same on the "inside", as it were.
The whole concept of "Tainted Information" is just weird to me. The mathematical proof that 2+2=4 is not somehow "tainted" by knowing that the proof was discovered by a psychopath. Its just knowledge and knowledge is a tool, the important thing is how YOU use it from that point forward.
One of the more ludicruous moral quandry episodes Trek ever did. What are we arguing about here, really? The real Mosset wasn't there, it was only a hologram. And how did the man's medical research wind up in Voyager's database? I doubt the Cardassian Central Command would share it with the Federation. Maybe the Bajorans recovered the data from an abandoned lab facility. But it makes no sense that they'd share it with Starfleet either: "Hey, can you use any of this Cardie torture porn?" Moving on to the Crel Mosset hologram. We're apparently now able to conjure up highly qualified medical experts with operating skills? Why not give the Doc some actually useful assistants? As for holo Mosset: he didn't commit any crimes, so why be mad at him? And seeing him and the Doctor argue, you almost forget they're both computer generated, so Voyager is literally having an argument with itself about data it had no say in acquiring. And if Janeway had no problem ending the life of Tuvix to save Neelix and Tuvok, she shouldn't blink at using Crel's research to save B'Elanna. This should have been a 15 minute episode with Janeway ending the armchair quarterbacking with a simple command decision. "We have the data. We need B'elanna. Get to work." *end of episode*
about that it was only a hologram, during the 50s and 60s many many Israelis were fully boycotting West German products, and not to mention how MienKaumf is still illegal in Israel. its about the representation of the cardassian occupiers rather than the occupiers themselves, a holograpic Mengle is still a hologram and yet I am sure most jews would not allow themselves be treated by it, perhaps even at the risk of death. and for the Bajoran ensign and Belanna, the fact that a cardassian, and especially a villan such as him, saving her life would make her and the Bajoran feel as if they are forced to thank him for saving her, even if he is a hologram, and thus conndoning his actions directly or indirectly
To the point of his research, that’s kind of the point. All the Federation has was his cure for the Virus, NOT his research as to how he attained it. Beyond this, he was a well known and well educated Xeno/Exobiologist who was likely published in regular medical journals both before and after the war. All of his knowledge and experience would of been well documented in the Alpha Quadrant (all except his shady experiments, which would of been kept classified) As for why his actual hologram was a problem, you see it was still based on his actual personality. And as shone in his dialogue, the monster he was was still there, just beneath the surface, regardless of whether he had any memories of his crimes. He still had the willingness and desire to cross the same lines he had done before and, if given the chance, he would do so again. And short of deletion or reprogramming, that core personality would always be both the source of his genius as much as his evil.
That and killing the alien falls fully under self defence; it has no right to another's body, even if consent was given to begin with it could be revoked
I know there's still a ways to go with Voyager, but please tell me you are reviewing Deep Space Nine next. Your presentation style and personal interpretations will be perfect for the series. Anyhow, I love this channel. Thank you for this wonderful content. 👍❣️
The beginning in the holodeck perfectly explains why the crew seems to be constantly run into trouble. We're just getting the highlight reel of what they go through.
@@Unlimited_Lives I feel you dude!! I had a not-dissimilar experience with Red Dwarf. The older I get the more I realise I'm more and more like Rimmer, and I'm fine with this. I suspect those two holograms would get on very well! ☺️
So, query - how is using this guy's knowledge any different than using the collective knowledge of the entire Borg through Seven? Should she be yeeted off the ship as well?
Funny how Roddenberry always had the nazi undertones in the original series. And once he passed during tng, the production continued with said undertones
In this episode the entire crew (or much of it) are *forced* to watch hours of something mind-numbingly boring, just to appeal to the holographic doctor's vanity. They all HATE this but won't tell the Doc they hate it, to spare his feelings? It seems rather cruel not to let him in on how the entire crew think he's so boring it's like torture watching this stuff. This is what make some people go onto shows like Britain's got talent and humiliated as they have no idea how bad they are, nobody told them. ----- When Lt. Barcley was playing Cyrano de Bergerac on TNG, there was a similar situation. He sucked as an "actor" within that episode, but the whole crew applauded, much to Data's confusion. Riker explains: "Because it's polite..." But Barclay was a very anxiety-ridden human. Not an egocentric EMH. Unless it's a CHILD performing (or someone who's obviously a nervous beginner) pretending to enjoy poorly performed music or artistry just seems mean.
the guy who says "my god" when their society is known to have multiple deities: the species (I am not 100% on the spelling, Bejoran) has regular contact with humans, maybe we could just put it down to a learned thing. Sure, they have the universal translators so they may not pick up on the language but the translator would still pick up on a human calling on one deity not plural and so maybe this particular Bejoran just picked up on that
The episode deals with the documentary Mengeles heritage (Mengeles Erben). I'm not sure if the documentary is available in English but it is about doctors experimenting on humans in concentration camps and Japanese doctors experimenting on prisoners of war. The results of these experiments were trove of knowledge used by CIA and science in general and has always been an ethical dillema because of thejustification. Just as the US circumvented their ethical reservations against torture in intelligence gathering on US soil by simply transferring it to foreign soil and actually having a governor with questionable ethics in Florida who served in the most infamous torture camp lacking due process and human rights on every level. While DeSantis is post this voyager episode it still makes this particular episode especially interesting as to the question of morals and ethics in society and the value of life and dignity. Another reference would be acres of skin - US prison population enslaved by the constitution and subjugated to medical experiments. Though I'm not sure of how much the writers would be aware of current US ethics failures in the US prison system. Mengele is probably the point of reference for this episode.
And it wasn't just Germany and Japan that had their questionable research. Who was it that didn't treat syphilis on purpose to monitor the diseases progress. Without telling the infected people. We all did bad stuff in the past (and in some cases present), there is no way to deny that.
My thoughts about Janeway are In "Night" we saw how her decision to strand the crew in the Delta Quadrant had caught up with her and she was willing to make a sacrifice to ensure they got closer to their destination, but the command crew told her to go swivel and that they needed her. What if her choice here was done out of guilt as well, her choice left Torres in this position and so she thought she was returning the favour by over ruling Torres's choice and making the right call. When she later goes to her quarters she was expecting/hoping Torres would do something like "I disagree with the decision but I understand why you did it, thank you." That didn't happen and so it hurt Janeway and she lashed out unintentionally
This one I have to admit I find really facinating. It's like the Voyager version of Duet on DS9, and actually takes the risk of going grey with war crimes. It's a choice that is very risky and honestly I think needed more discussion afterwards, but there in lies the weakness of, "event of the week," writing. Though you did give voice to something that was a bit of an issue for me as well. Why is Marl Carx the only expert in the database? They are tooling around with so much information that I refuse to believe that he was the only expert they had data on. It is something that always sort of bugs me when we talk about Nazi science, that "sure they were horrible but they got results." I think that that kind of attitude adds just a bit of fuel to those who believe that the ends will always justify the means.
Personally I believe if the knowledge now exists regardless of how it came about you can’t put the gene back in the bottle or change history so you might as well use it for the benefit of others. I can’t speak for anyone else but if I died being tortured but the knowledge gained from my death could save someone else life I’d be all for it, at least my death would not have been in vain. This is not to say that we should not take issue with how the knowledge was obtained, we certainly should, but more as a learning experience to never do that kinda shit again.
"This is not to say that we should not take issue with how the knowledge was obtained, we certainly should, but more as a learning experience to never do that kinda shit again." But you leave out the bit that it happening to you would in fact be it "happening again", because if it had never happened we wouldn't have it as a topic of conversation to begin with.
Yeah, I don't really get the idea that using that knowledge would encourage future unethical methods... If we judge the methods and the induviduals who used them harshly, there is pretty much just _one_ motivation I can think of that would be encouraged, namely that of someone who doesn't give a damn about how they are judged (directly, by the society around them, and of course by history) and only care about those findings. And I rather doubt there are all that many individuals with a motivation like that around to worry about...
Completely agree, the mathematical proof that 2+2=4 is not somehow "tainted" by knowing that the proof was discovered by a psychopath. Its just knowledge and knowledge is a tool, the important thing is how YOU use it from that point forward.
I think Janeway's dismissal at the end - and really, deciding to use the research at all over B'Elanna's objections - could be interpreted as part of her long side toward being willing to use more and more morally questionable means to get her "family" home in tact (even if that often, in practice, only extends to named cast members not named Tuvix). You can see signs of that slide with, for instance, her pact with the Borg, and without spoiling, you will see a good number of other instances going forward right up through the (*coughs*) endgame.
It's interesting to me that while the debate between the crew on whether to use this knowledge or not was never fully settled... the Federation appears to have done so and decided it's fine, hence why they have the full knowledge of this man in the computers of all of their ships. No one on the pro-knowledge side actually brings this up, probably because the writers didn't think about the implications.
This is such a dumb episode. They never had a problem with using Seven's Borg knowledge and she often talks about which species was assimilated to acquire the knowledge. B'Elanna often helps Seven use Borg technology for Voyager. If B'Elanna is against benefitting from the suffering of others, why is she OK with using knowledge gained from the assimilation and genocide of billions of people?
I like the idea of a non-humanoid species, but I guess witht he tech limitations of the time they really couldn't do anything more than face jizzer. Well ok they probably could have and chose not to. Ah well. Loved the gag about the second most unpleasant thing that's been on top of her.
Tech and budget innit? We either end up with CG stuff or a guy under a rug. Part of it might also be that social interactions, which is where Trek often shines for me, are more difficult with anything truly alien.
@@Unlimited_Lives Oh yeah budget is also a factor I'ms ure. I can see that with the social interactions, but man would it be interesting to have seen them try. Though they did have that fish person on enterprise and that just reminded me of that dude from star wars, not a wars fan so I don't remember his name. The guy who grunts or whatever and people know what he's saying. He? She? It? Eh I don't know.
Worf was raised by humans on Earth. Perhaps the universal translator isn’t turned on for him if he’s speaking common? It wouldn’t translate Stovakor if it’s not monitoring everything word for word.
That suggests the UT is capable of understanding linguistic nuance and forgoing translation where appropriate. Or deliberately overriding translation to the user's default language if they're multilingual and the conversation would have additional meaning in the original tongue. All of which suggests the God business is a lack of contextual understanding by the UT, supporting the conclusion in this one AND the headcanon for Neelix. Satisfying.
@@Unlimited_LivesBajor wasn’t a federation member when Voyager departed DS9 either. The Kardashian computer on DS9 probably has greater fine tuning in that series than Voyager’s UT does.
Thank frell for those screens Space Dogs! Much of the knowledge regarding the treatment of frostbite came about through the use of experiments on concentration camp prisoners. This gave me Unit 731 vibes. The USA covered up as much as it could of Japan's crimes in exchange for the knowledge gained by the horrific, systematic, torture and murder of people. (I will not give details it is enough to give nightmares.) The 'knowledge' turned out to be useless. My only real quibble (apart from it all falling to bits with any real thought) with this episode was it being pretty obvious the Cardassian was a 'bad guy' who got a bit of a kick out of it.
The same missiles that were shot at London lead to landing on the moon. But not in all cases did the scientist choose to be evil, and instead more a result of circumstance.
I've always enjoyed this episode, the questions it raises and the sad fact that I still don't have any answers to them, I would like to say 'No! we will not use the research of such a bastard' but end up talking myself into circles, between the needs of the many and respect for the wishes and autonomy of the patient and suffering of those tortured.
The Bajoran ensign is a Christian. After leaving Bajor, he lived on a colony where was training to be a Benedictine monk. When the colony ended up on the Cardigan side of the border he joined the Maquis because the Cardigans kept setting fire to the vineyards..
Some may call out the Dr. being ok using the Cardassians help since it was B'lana, someone close to him. It took courage to acknowledge he'd do it again if he didnt delete the program.
This episode seemed to be more sanctimonious than moral. The reality of all of these situations is that information wants to be free. Even if something is discovered through genocide, child sacrifice, or jaywalking, it has been discovered. It is objective reality. You cannot jail it. You cannot punish it for being discovered in the wrong way. You can only attempt to 'quarantine' it off in hopes that the evil spirits don't infect all the good people who might learn of it, which is ultimately futile at best and a cynical gesture at worst. So somebody learns something from an unethical experiment on a human. What do you do to "purify" it? Have a priest conduct the experiment on a chicken and, upon finding the data to match, declare it "ethical" once more? Absurd. But the alternative is to just declare the entire field of study verboten and then never speak of it again, which is even more absurd. What can happen is that individuals can be punished for their crimes. Victims can be compensated. Countries can be sanctioned. Unethical people can be prevented from profiting from their crimes. All of these things are concrete actions against concrete entities. But to declare war against information is ALWAYS going to be a losing battle.
To expand on your closing rant a bit, Star Trek is infamous for its "planet of hats" issue and thus I'm sure this was not intentionally done by the writers, but I feel it's equally reasonable in universe to believe that the individual Bajoran ensign in question could be a follower of a different faith. They are after all someone who is exposed to the myriad other cultures that participate in the Maquis and Starfleet. I've long felt Trek could do with a fair bit more social variety, but then so could series set in our own present day reality, so I also digress.
Nabbed from a comment I just wrote elsewhere: "I did consider the alternate religion option. The lack of an earring could be circumstantial evidence of this, but we learned in S1E16 that Tuvok doesn't allow them in the same way Picard did for Ro, so that could explain the lack of one too. Ultimately, the one defining feature of Bajor is their religion, and the cultural importance it took on during the Occupation. Is that simplistic writing? Of course it is. But it still supports the overwhelming likelihood that he's a follower of it. In fact, it suggests he's more likely than the average Bajoran to be a follower. If the Prophets are a symbol of Bajoran resistance to Cardigans, a Maquis member would have reason to find even greater meaning in that." I agree that oversimplification of alien culture is a problem. It's a point that ties into what I said previously about how science fiction is a right bugger to make immersive because of the required work for background. But we have what we have and, for better or worse, Bajorans are The Prophet People.
There's plenty of room for alternate explanations for that comment, he could belong to a monotheistic minority cult on Bajor, he could have converted to some other religion, or he could have adopted a common turn of phrase after years of mixed company. The phrase seems common enough in trek despite many if not most people being some flavor of atheist or agnostic.
Common enough in **the viewer's translation** of Trek, which proposes an interesting tangential question: Do Bajorans hear "my God" or "by the Prophets" when it gets translated to them? I did consider the alternate religion option. The lack of an earring could be circumstantial evidence of this, but we learned in S1E16 that Tuvok doesn't allow them in the same way Picard did for Ro, so that could explain the lack of one too. Ultimately, the one defining feature of Bajor is their religion, and the cultural importance it took on during the Occupation. Is that simplistic writing? Of course it is. But it still supports the overwhelming likelihood that he's a follower of it. In fact, it suggests he's more likely than the average Bajoran to be a follower. If the Prophets are a symbol of Bajoran resistance to Cardigans, a Maquis member would have reason to find even greater meaning in that.
There's a nice little thematic sting here: The alien is also making an ethical choice to exploit another for its own survival. Admittedly, it's rather selfish, but that's not a million miles away from the choice to sacrifice people you don't know to save people you do. And best of all -- given the outcome, the alien seems to have made the right choice: Both it and B'Elanna survived. .
Of course, this whole thing could be avoided (in Universe, at least) if they remembered that the Cardie IS A HOLOGRAM! We know they can alter what they look like, because they do in other episodes, so why not make him look like Dr Mora (or Dr Bunsen Honeydew!)? If they'd rescued a real Cardassian who then offered to help the crew and it then emerged he'd been engaging in unethical experiments at Gallitep, that would make it a real dilemma, but the medical data is still there, just the image of the Cardassian is gone. Yes, I get what they're trying to say about medical ethics, but the way they present it is just ridiculous.
Never mind that it needing the appearance of the original, why use the personality (and why do they have data that allows them to replicate it)? Just use something else. A fictional character even
The "what if they rescue a real cardie who turns out to be evil" is basically the situation with Neelix and that scientist in another episode. Where they find out that the scientist isn't just running around trying to help Talaxians who have that sickness, but was also a crucial to developing the whole thing. In the end it turns out he isn't really that much of a monster and never wanted the stuff to be weaponised, and is even suffering himself. Another example of Voyager taking a least a step towards grey morality.
Another way could have been to have it been revealed that the test subjects were actually volunteers and that there had been a virus at a bajoran camp that had threatened the entire 20,000-30,000 colony and because it only affected bajorans, they needed to test vaccines on the colonists. Only after 30-40 deaths did they finally find a vaccine to save everyone. Problem is that the ordeal was soo stressful that the cardassian doctor would later on commit suicide. They could do a similar plot twist - where once the cardassian doctor discovers what happened they do go into a nervous breakdown and end up deleting not only the program but all of the knowledge with it.
There is precedence from TNG where Jordie made the hologram of Leah Brahms. The replacement doctor seamed to be more of a case of Harry giving up the the first hurdle of something that was going to be beyond him anyway. You could see the benefit of basing a Holo-consultant on a real specialist as personality can impact aptitude and approach to problem solving however you would think they'd maybe select a template who was a bit more ethical. The other issue I could foresee would be if they realise they have access to all this information would they fall into some sort of Dunning-Kruger trap?
The holodeck can indeed create personalities. From Geordies Leah Brahms how he want's her to be, to the Moriarty hologram to the fact that the Doctor becoming a person.
In fairness, as Tom Parris just asked and the Doctor said that he couldn't have all the Medical Data in is program. It makes sense that they couldn't make one because Tom and Kim don't know what they're doing, so with the Doctor and only putting a limited set of Data in the new Consultant allowing it to work.
My question is how hard would it have been just to change dude’s face? It was a freaking hologram!! My other point about the language is I think maybe they picked it up from the other cultures. Most of the people on the ship are human. So I can see exclamations being picked up that way. Kind of like how everyone of. DS9 drinks raktajino.
Fantastic analysis. This is one of the reasons I love Voyager. Recreating a Cardassian war criminal on the holodeck? Best bring a Bajoran with you! No wonder Kim stayed an ensign… And as for the Cardassian doctor, it’s weird that they wouldn’t publicise the fact that they used healthy Bajorans for their research. They saw the Bajorans as an inferior species, a resource to be consumed. So it’s strange that they wouldn’t know that. Anyways, it’s a great episode all the same 👍🏼
*And as for the Cardassian doctor, it’s weird that they wouldn’t publicise the fact that they used healthy Bajorans for their research* Well, that would be like critical race theory and they don't want information of them being portrayed bad going out. So like Florida, they want to see the benefits of their inhuman research.
So the Federation uses his medical research, yet claims to know nothing about him nor how it was conducted? And invited him to speak in Federation territory? Sounds like an Operation Paperclip job to me.
I heard that German rocket scientists during world War II based their technology on Robert Goddard's research. And unless I'm mistaken, the rockets that Goddard built were never used in warfare.
To answer your rant about characters with other dieties using phrases like "Oh, god," the answer is much simpler and much less theoretical. The translator isn't bring used on Worf or the Bjoran; they've simply picked up the phrase. I know Muslims that use "God!" in the expletive sense instead of shouting "Allah!" I myself will do it, too, despite having no religion. As for the question of when immoral becomes acceptable: information has no moral value. Medical knowledge is not corrupted because it was largely supplied by grave robbing and just doing stuff to people, and the odd murder. Arguably, rejecting that information after the fact would be immoral, as the involuntary sacrifice of those people is squandered and new people must be placed at risk to reobtain that information. The moral quandry actually revolves around interacting with the entity that immorally procured that information. Working with the Cardigan is morally questionable, helping him to obtain new information is morally questionable, allowing him to preform morally questionable procedures is unethical. It's a good episode and the obvious answer of using the second best would have avoided ut.
Refusing to use the knowledge gained from an unethical means would simply mean that any victims of that unethical means suffered in vain. It doesn't mean I like it or agree with the method. There's likely no way to discover that information another way, so my eternal death lacks moral high ground.
20:20 or suitable for a Teen rating for TV 😅 But your first thought I also had. Brilliant deduction About Neelix: he does have a 'Forest' aka Afterlive so its likely he does have a diety. He is also very sensitive to (fake) monks and their faiths. All signs point to a deeply rooted believe.
i had an idea for a costume its like this but the parasite has the letters I R S on it. the idea is when anyone says nice costume you say..what costume?
I liked this episode for the difficult subject it tried to tackle, but it never sat right with me that the Voyager crew would be the ones to wrestle with it. Why? Because in the immediate aftermath of the Borg-Species 8472 conflict (either the end of Scorpion Part 2 or sometime in the next episode), B’Elanna sends a report (I believe through Chakotay) telling Janeway that some of the modifications the Borg made to Voyager are improving their systems (I believe it was making their EPS conduits run more efficiently). She made the recommendation (and Janeway agrees) to leave those specific Borg components where they are. That’s not anything related to Seven’s regeneration alcoves, things necessary to a passenger/potential new crew member’s survival. That’s adding a few percentage points of efficiency to your power distribution network when it was doing its job quite well beforehand. If they can do that for such an unimportant outcome even though that technology comes from Borg assimilation, why does B’Elanna’s survival bring up the ethical issue? “Using the knowledge would validate what the real Marl Carx did”? So why aren’t those percentage points of additional EPS efficiency validating everything the Borg do? Hell, don’t we need to scrap the Delta Flyer as well? This crew had seemingly already decided where they came down on this particular dilemma (in particular B’Elanna), so it was jarring to see them readdress it, and in contradiction to their previous decision (and again, over things less important). I was particularly surprised by how Tuvok missed this.
That is the age old question. Are we allowed to use data from unethical experiments? Are we morally obligated to deny that knowledge? Are we morally obligated to use that knowledge, because otherwise all those people died for nothing...
I think this is a great voyager episode that takes a black and white issue (nazi 'scientists' with no real scientific method or ethics producing little of real scientific value whilst harming and killing many unwilling subjects) and makes it grey, as we at no point are told the Cardassians research wasn't scientifically sound and did benefit B'lana. It rises above the normal voyager junk and actually presents a thoughtful moral issue and doesn't try and force the author's opinion. Both sides are given space to make their case, and no easy "third way" is presented. Janeway makes a decision, and her actor does a great job of making it clear she's aware it could be the wrong one, but it has to be made. There is also a delicious moment of foreshadowing when the doc says something like "I don't care if he's the worst person ever, so long as he can help my patient", words the doc is forced to eat later. The only issues I have are a) as you point out, couldn't the second best doctor for this be used? b) is deleting him murder? He seemed pretty sentient to me; and even if the man he's based on is a massive war criminal, the hologram didn't do anything wrong, and c) I wish voyager had ever explored the rights of the individual Vs the collective need to survive of the ship. After all, there are no new ensigns or experienced crew replacements coming when someone dies on the ship. Voyager would be far less likely to make it home without an experienced chief engineer. Janeway is often seen overriding the desires of her crew to keep them alive, which could be down to this, but it's never really explored. She just does it and then the reset button is pushed. Battlestar had a whole episode around this sort of thing, where abortion was outlawed in the fleet to try and reverse the falling population. Whilst they didn't need to go that far, it would have been interesting to see Janeway have to argue her position against someone.
To quote Aamin Marritza, "You can never undo what I've accomplished; the dead will still be dead." To not use the research that could potentially save lives is just posturing for the appearance of looking noble and just. The torture that got the results has been long done. Using that research to save lives takes some modicum of positivity from heinous acts. Not using it would be more insulting in my opinion.
@@Unlimited_Lives lol thank you 😂 the job is good only way too hot right now, over 110°F this week here in Arkansas🥵 so I shall very much enjoy my weekend as should you 💚🌹💚 (space dog cracks me up every time 😂 )
I know it's not the same thing, but think about safety rules and regulations. For almost every safety rule, feature and regulation, there was likely some disaster that happened that cost dozens if not hundreds of lives that some rule, feature or regulation could have prevented or reduced in severity. However, it took said disaster to force a person or people in charge to make those changes or to even be aware of a danger in the case of dangers we might have had no real way of knowing about until we learnt the hard way? How much of our every day lives are safer only because someone else paid the ultimate price? Think about how many cautionary tales we've heard (real or imagined) where we've learnt what not to do, lest something terrible happen to us. How many cases has it been where something *did* happen to someone and that's the only reason we know not to make the same mistake? Like I said, I know it's not the same thing as a war crime. However, it still a case of history being written in blood.
On your point about the "oh god" comment I think there is a simpler explanation. That Bajoran is a Christian. The assumption that an alien couldn't have either been raised in a Christian faith or have converted to one seems to me a little dismissive of the real world example we have. And would be akin to assuming that any Indian you meet would be a Hindu, or any Arab a Muslim. We know the federation is multicultural and welcome cultural interchange so it seems quite plausible to me. An alternative and I think better explanation is that I, as an atheist, still use "god" as a curse. Because that's just how my language works. If the Bajoran had been around humans enough who use the phrase for cultural-linguistic reasons he could easily have adopted it as idiomatic and used it without even thinking.
A close medical relation is a certain textbook created by, I believe, Eduard Pernkopf, I don't know enough to go into detail but, essentially, nazi medical textbook that's been banned despite how useful it is and has been in the past. It's a very difficult discussion despite any clear logic that could win out - as, after all, we're not just logical beings.
I dunno, maybe I'm a dreamer, but I've never thought that technology/advancement made under criminal acts is itself defined by those criminal acts. In the case of the small pox situation, the idea that somebody would intentionally infect a child with a terrible disease is and of itself reprehensible, but does that mean you couldn't prove something is safe through volunteers and then observe whether the theory works to get the same result? Sure, it takes longer to do so, but the end result is the same. So are cures defined by the actions the human decided to do to obtain it, or the science beneath why it works in the first place? In the rocket case, we send up many rockets today without using slave labour and death camps in order to make it happen, so is the fact those were the conditions in which this technology came about really the defining factor of a science that existed long before those efforts to discover it took place? -- and let's be real, the German intent for that technological branch wasn't to create satelites to transmit the weather to people. I guess my view is that you can acknowledge something is good and at the same time condemn methods or exploitative actions used to create it. If anything we should be aspiring to be promoting the will to develop these sort of things for the good of all humanity in the first place, instead of constantly relying on investment in war machines to fluke through its discovery. But if we're going to be guilty and deny ourselves advancements because they were built off atrocity, then is there anything we do or use in life acceptable?
I'm grateful you explained the Nazi forced labor camps directly supporting that rocket technology, and the early forced vaccination of a child. Where I live, a lot of people deny the Nazis did such things at all. But there is abundant records from the Nazis own records. Anyway, the real examples show how messy, and present, these moral dilemmas can be. One thing I feel was avoided was too unilaterally blaming someone innocent for the dilemma, in particular victims, B'Elanna or the alien, whatever its motivations. I think the Doc showed too much openness and trust, but he hasn't been alive all that long as his own person, so it fits his character. The episode bothers me, I think that was the point, that it works on that level. As for the OMG slip, I think it worse raising, as the idiom in English is so embedded I think it makes, as you say, immersive SF very difficult. Try and imagine Bones McCoy not saying it, so what if there was no Bones McCoy, one would have to re-invent a similar sanguine character, ad nauseam throughout all time. The is a popular YT deepfake channel that uses, "Oh my Force". Can humanity empathize with aliens who might not enjoy such a grounding unconscious invocation or blaspheme to connote moral outrage? I think we'd better strive for such SF. I submit such writers exist, Samuel Delaney comes to mind in Babel-17, conveying a variety of odd perspectives. Star Trek once boasted sci-fi greats among its writers, but it has gotten a bit too mainstream since.
I notice that the ensen doesn’t have his ear ring. That is a religious expression. It is possible that this particular bajoran doesn’t worship the profits.
In my opinion it's fine to find some benefit from knowledge obtained through unethical means, as long as we know the knowledge is sound. For one thing, once we know a fact, it seems irrelevant how we first came to know it because there's always more than one way to figure the same thing out, it's only relevant how we apply our knowledge after it's been obtained. And secondly, it seems to me to be a slap in the face of all the people who've suffered for that knowledge of we say we can't use it to benefit the rest of humanity, if I was tortured by mad scientists for years and came out of it to find out that the discoveries made, while true, were disregarded because it came about through my torture, I'd be more upset at having been tortured for nothing. If we can find some benefit from unethical research it'll at least give some meaning to the cruelty suffered by the victims. The realirt is, though, that the same knowledge that we gained from unethical research could've been gained by more ethical means, and usually, it's more robust when we do learn it, so the only real benefit to disregarding ethics in science is the speed by which hypotheses can be tested and therefore sometimes we can potentially learn certain things faster. Learning certain things faster isn't an excuse to inflict harm on a few people in an attempt to save more, though, because of that was done for all research, everyone would be dead, close to death, or severely depressed in less than a month, and the results of the research would be skewed, too, so only a small minority of it would be useful. But when ethics are disregarded by someone trying to learn something, and we can be confident that what they learned was correct and sound, then we probably would've figured it out through ethical means a little later anyway, so why not use that knowledge slightly sooner than when we would've had it?
So, my take on the ethics of using unethical research has always been that to NOT use it after it has already been obtained is to cause the suffering and death of the victims to be in vain. Much of what we currently know about the harmful effects of smoking, and of how the human body responds to extremely cold temperatures, was directly pioneered by Nazi Germany, and its unethical research using members of groups that were targeted by the Holocaust (primarily Jews, but also every other "non-Aryan" group). Does that mean we should all start chain smoking and not dressing appropriately in cold weather? No. And, I reiterate, to do so would be to cause the victims of those awful experiments to have suffered and died for literally nothing. This isn't to say those methods are retroactively justified by the good being done in the present by the data obtained. The use of that knowledge does, indeed, carry an ethical debt. One that can only be repaid by refusing to allow the victims to be forgotten, and by constant introspection and eternal vigilance against current and future unethical research.
Today's thought experiment: Now the principle of holographic consultants has been proven, and definitely won't be abandoned without explanation, what other professions should Voyager have on-call?
Perhaps a holo cook (everyone seems to be unhappy with Nelix cuisine anyway and we dont want to provoke a mutiny, dont we)
a counselor. with all the stuff they go through, they need one of those.
@@comentedonakeyboard I think that is more an issue with ingredients
An ethics council to try and reign in Janeway's path of destruction. Including allowing the deletion of probably sentient holograms.
Holo sex council.
Im sure a vulcan ship could use one of those
At this point in their journey, Captain Janeway had accepted the fact she could shoulder the blame of these terrible choices. She wasn't about to lose her best engineer, as this would risk her crew's survival.
I discovered your channel about a month ago and binged every video in about a week. So I think seeing the growth of your videos is maybe a bit more apparent to me. The subtle changes and deeper afterthoughts on the episodes writing and morality have been more and more welcome with every video.
Thanks and keep up the good work.
Cheers! Glad to have you!
I'm going through a tough time right now, and every time I see one of your new vids pop up, it makes me feel better, thanks.
Glad I could help, and I hope things turn around or you get the support you need.
@@Unlimited_Lives Thanks :)
Kim: "This guy is a war criminal. Anyone who recognizes him would rightly loose their crap. I know, how about we just change the skin on the hologram. This Josef Mengele skin would work. And done."
Edit: Also, nice bubble wrap organ at 13:43.
I noticed the bubble wrap too. Perhaps they're the brainial nodes...
@@Unlimited_Lives I guess we can be glad Mosset didn't start popping them
"Doctor you must try this, it's really quite satisfying!"
@@Unlimited_Lives Maybe it's an air head?
It may be a no-win situation. Option 1, you ignore all the benefits gained from the suffering. But then they may have died for nothing. Option 2, you benefit the greater good overall from that torment, but it may be seen as justifying what happened.
I think Janeway dismissed Be'lanna at the end because she knew she needed to hate someone and if she didn't hate Janeway then she was going to hate herself. When she said she would take full responsibility, she meant she would endure being hated by the marquis.
Yeah, her character had a good premise and Kate Mulgrew did her best to act the character, but on the writing side people weren't really sure how her personality should be.
@@HappyBeezerStudios First 4 Seasons were mostly boring with most episodes not mattering at all.
They really started to make a difference from the very first episode of Season 5. We see Janeway *regretting* the moral choice of saving the Okampa, we see Janeway turning into a pragmatic human being rather than these evolved humans we keep seeing on Star Trek.
Had this Janeway got stuck in this quadrant at Season 1, show wouldnt last 3 episodes.
I really like the character growth.
Plus in the end, she was ordering saving essential crew. What would they do, replace her with Carey? They already forgot he existed over a year ago!
@KertaDrake
You miss the point
I wasn't talking about why she made the choice, im talking about why she was a jerk about it to belannas face at the end.
Maybe the Bajoran ensign was simply using what to him is a simple colloquial English expression.
regarding the "oh my god" shout-out, I would add an additional possible explanation: cultural adaptation. perhaps this bajoran was around for so long with ppl using this as a phrase to express shock or similar and the meaning lost its original religious linked context, but is still a metaphor. i mean, so much sh*t the crew is dealing with, probably ppl say "oh my god" every five minutes around this guy and so at some point his brain just sub-consciously adapted xD
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.
I can see the translator doing more than just translating words and instead also common phrases. That's a thing already with human languages, where sayings aren't translated word by word, but instead translated as a close equivalent in the target langauge. For example, english has the phrase "it's raining cats and dogs" while my native language has "it's raining young dogs", both mean the same, but the exact words are slightly different.
The translator might just translate a reference to the prophets.
How unfortunate to have a Bajoran around the one week when you’ve got a Cardassian hologram running… I mean, there’s only like, 3 Bajorans on the whole ship…
Fair point.
I'm guessing all Voyager Bajorans were Maquis ? Bajor was not part of the Federation when Voyager departed DS9 right?
@@andrewblanchard2398 Yep, some rare face continuity from VOY! Plus there Tal Celes (“Good Shepherd” and “The Haunting of Deck Twelve”) and Gerron (“Learning Curve”)
@@Meton2526 Two of the three were Maquis (Gerron and Tabor). Tal Cales was Starfleet. Bajor wasn’t part of the Federation at the time, but she probably applied in the same was Ro Laren and Sito Jaxa did, although Tal was a crewman so may not have required sponsorship.
@@andrewblanchard2398 I agree. I never warmed up to Ezri. Dax shouldn’t have been killed though, just have it, either with Jadzia or someone else, do an Ivanova and go off to captain a ship somewhere or something.
That's a nice episode. It's a bit of a shame that the premise makes no sense. The Federation database doesn't say anything about him being a bastard, but the hologram turns out to be a bastard, because in the writers' minds technology is magic, and the Voyager crew just performed necromancy.
You know for all the morals thrown around the fact that they created a guy in a flawed image and then blamed the guy for being like the guy they made him to be and then blame him for stuff he didn't do but ultimately still punish him for gets glossed over.
At what point do holograms become worthy of at least the doctors level of personhood?
Janeway’s duty as captain is to the ship as a whole. How much of a bearing does that have on her when she has to weigh the cost of losing her senior engineer versus violating her autonomy?
I considered this too. B’Elanna is the best engineer on the ship. If she does, that reduces everyone’s chances of getting home one day. In light of that, even respecting B’Elanna’s choice to let herself die isn’t such a neat and tidy moral choice.
@@programmerdave9893 Not to mention our in own history we have used data acquired through immoral means. Neglecting a research purely because of morality is idiotic. May be moral, but still idiotic.
Unless said research requires immoral actions to be taken to be re-used, I dont see what good will do to ignore it.
I'd wager the Ensign's use of "My God" is a holdover from either a relative or a significant other who descended from a monotheistic culture and used the phrase often. I often use the expletive "Jesus Christ!" to express shock, even though I'm agnostic, as my grandfather frequently used the phrase and I picked it up from him.
Edit: I know atheists and Jews who use the phrase as well, for similar reasons, and there are ample examples of this in pop culture (Broad City for instance).
2:25 “Janeway grabs a gun from the guard..”
So smooth, she’s hiding her weapon stashes on people now.
Quality comment.
LOL
You im actully feeling bad for paris after this ep. You were evil on him. 😅
I really enjoyed the performance of Marl Carx, kudos to the actor. ❤
Carl Marx? Hmmm not sure how that seems appropriate given doctor, but Mosef Jengele would be on the nose.
Maelon’s experiments to cure the Krogan genophage in Mass Effect always reminded me of this episode.
You've just made me realise that I liked Mordin Solus because he's brain spicy. To think it took decades to realise I wasn't neurotypical...
@@Unlimited_Lives Mordin is my spirit Salarian; we both think aloud.
_“Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your lungs!”_ - Marl Carx
@@Unlimited_LivesThe Question as portrayed by Jeffrey Combs in the DCAU. Being on the spectrum is literally a super power worthy of inclusion as part of the global Justice League.
This episode has been the only episode in all of this series (up until now) I’ve rewatched a scene. The scene where Paris goes off on one in the briefing room was so spectacularly written, acted and directed that it’s on par with some fantastic DS9 eps. One of the best so far. Also that joke about Tom Paris and the neck jizzer really made me chuckle. Keep up this fantastic content, makes my week.
I wish they'd thrown in a line about how Harry's been working on reverse engineering a blank EMH matrix ever since that first attempt in Message in a Bottle
Would fit the character, would make sense in the universe, and could be used to explain why we can't just start over with a less evil exobiologist
Not just since then, but since they had issues with the Doctor falling apart. That was the first episode where they noticed that having the only medical professional on board also be a hologram can lead to issues when things go wrong with the computer.
im suprised you didnt complain about how the doctor said that in earth history they never made expirements like the cardigan did
Okay, took 5 minutes to think about this, my pedant nerd hat has been put on, there is a very spesific and unlikely case 'my god' still works here. If Ensign Bajor was a member of the cult of Kosst Amojan mentioned in DS9 a few times. He could have been refering to that singular deity in particular among the other Pah Wraiths. Also to be fair the UT of Voyager would be slightly less up to date as the occupation of Bajor only ended 2 years before they went missing maybe Bajor didn't share thier databases right way (I know there were a handful of Bajorian refugees in starfleet before that). There, best I could do.
One possibility to consider regarding the Bajoran dude, most religious Bajorans wear the ear ring chain thing as a symbol of their faith, this guy wasn't so maybe he doesn't follow his own peoples faith, maybe he converted to a human monotheistic religion while studying at Star Fleet Academy on Earth and the UT wasn't translating anything at all because he was actually speaking in common English the whole time.
Slam dunk, A+, hole in one! Fantastic analysis.
On the topic of the Bajoran ensign using a human expression- i like to think of the multiverse as a series of lenses. there's what we assume is base reality, but atop that, you can apply lenses (like the lenses in the Game of Thrones intro) that "change the narrative." like, a lens that can be applied is the TV screen, through which we can access other fictional universes, like the Star Trek universe. But, being the weakling race that we are, we make mistakes, which pollutes the clarity of the lens through which we see- for the writers to accidentally or purposely have Bajoran ensign saying, "My God..." instead of "O my Prophets..." can be described as a fleck on the lens. Who knows what "really" happened, but whether it can be chalked up to a rhetorical conceit (where the writers thought him saying "Oh my Prophets!" was not cool enough/would actually be jarring to hear for the audience) or a mistake where the writers forgot about the Prophets (and that christianity is dead in the 24th century), i think the takeaway here is that we should thank the neurodivergent for noticing this sort of thing.
Worf was raised by humans he speaks English (or federation standard). He would use Klingon words when the direct human translation is not accurate. The same way we use French words (like deja vu) when appropriate so the translator thing might still work.
Sto'vo'kor always seemed more like Valhalla than christian heaven. And a klingon superfan as Worf would totally pick that description on purpose.
Absolutely brilliant!
Where Star Trek does best with its "message show episodes" really is where there is no right answer, and I do think this one excels in that regard. As you said, no one comes out looking like a good guy at the end of this, and that is very smart.
Also, I do wonder whether Janeway would have acted quite the same, in the upcoming Equinox, if the doctor had kept the fellow on file.
I wonder how much of it could have been avoided if they just gave him a human body
My thought on unethical research is to punish those who do it severely, but use the knowledge gained- Otherwise you're condemning others to death and suffering *and* making the suffering and death done in it's creation for nothing.
Maybe Ensign Krinkly Nose converted to Christianity.
Also, with all their tecnogear, they could have just made the Cardie... "Dr. Killemall" appear as anyone or anything they wanted even if he was the same on the "inside", as it were.
The whole concept of "Tainted Information" is just weird to me. The mathematical proof that 2+2=4 is not somehow "tainted" by knowing that the proof was discovered by a psychopath. Its just knowledge and knowledge is a tool, the important thing is how YOU use it from that point forward.
" The universe is vast and we are so small. There is really only one thing we can ever truly control... whether we are good or evil . "
One of the more ludicruous moral quandry episodes Trek ever did. What are we arguing about here, really?
The real Mosset wasn't there, it was only a hologram. And how did the man's medical research wind up in Voyager's database? I doubt the Cardassian Central Command would share it with the Federation. Maybe the Bajorans recovered the data from an abandoned lab facility. But it makes no sense that they'd share it with Starfleet either: "Hey, can you use any of this Cardie torture porn?"
Moving on to the Crel Mosset hologram. We're apparently now able to conjure up highly qualified medical experts with operating skills? Why not give the Doc some actually useful assistants? As for holo Mosset: he didn't commit any crimes, so why be mad at him? And seeing him and the Doctor argue, you almost forget they're both computer generated, so Voyager is literally having an argument with itself about data it had no say in acquiring.
And if Janeway had no problem ending the life of Tuvix to save Neelix and Tuvok, she shouldn't blink at using Crel's research to save B'Elanna. This should have been a 15 minute episode with Janeway ending the armchair quarterbacking with a simple command decision. "We have the data. We need B'elanna. Get to work." *end of episode*
Well said with many valid points.
about that it was only a hologram, during the 50s and 60s many many Israelis were fully boycotting West German products, and not to mention how MienKaumf is still illegal in Israel.
its about the representation of the cardassian occupiers rather than the occupiers themselves, a holograpic Mengle is still a hologram and yet I am sure most jews would not allow themselves be treated by it, perhaps even at the risk of death.
and for the Bajoran ensign and Belanna, the fact that a cardassian, and especially a villan such as him, saving her life would make her and the Bajoran feel as if they are forced to thank him for saving her, even if he is a hologram, and thus conndoning his actions directly or indirectly
To the point of his research, that’s kind of the point. All the Federation has was his cure for the Virus, NOT his research as to how he attained it.
Beyond this, he was a well known and well educated Xeno/Exobiologist who was likely published in regular medical journals both before and after the war. All of his knowledge and experience would of been well documented in the Alpha Quadrant (all except his shady experiments, which would of been kept classified)
As for why his actual hologram was a problem, you see it was still based on his actual personality. And as shone in his dialogue, the monster he was was still there, just beneath the surface, regardless of whether he had any memories of his crimes.
He still had the willingness and desire to cross the same lines he had done before and, if given the chance, he would do so again.
And short of deletion or reprogramming, that core personality would always be both the source of his genius as much as his evil.
If you think about any of the episode it all falls apart very very quickly. I think they were trying to go for a Unit 731 or Nazi scientist feel.
That and killing the alien falls fully under self defence; it has no right to another's body, even if consent was given to begin with it could be revoked
I know there's still a ways to go with Voyager, but please tell me you are reviewing Deep Space Nine next. Your presentation style and personal interpretations will be perfect for the series. Anyhow, I love this channel. Thank you for this wonderful content. 👍❣️
The beginning in the holodeck perfectly explains why the crew seems to be constantly run into trouble. We're just getting the highlight reel of what they go through.
The unit coming Counterpoint. Is my favourite episode. A classic beautiful people episode with a look at duty over lonliness
"Because of course the doc is the kind of person to give a slideshow presentation". He says, in a slideshow presentation 😂
I think it was around season 2 when I realised, while writing a script, that the Doctor was me. I'm at peace with this.
@@Unlimited_Lives I feel you dude!! I had a not-dissimilar experience with Red Dwarf. The older I get the more I realise I'm more and more like Rimmer, and I'm fine with this. I suspect those two holograms would get on very well! ☺️
So, query - how is using this guy's knowledge any different than using the collective knowledge of the entire Borg through Seven? Should she be yeeted off the ship as well?
Funny how Roddenberry always had the nazi undertones in the original series. And once he passed during tng, the production continued with said undertones
In this episode the entire crew (or much of it) are *forced* to watch hours of something mind-numbingly boring, just to appeal to the holographic doctor's vanity. They all HATE this but won't tell the Doc they hate it, to spare his feelings? It seems rather cruel not to let him in on how the entire crew think he's so boring it's like torture watching this stuff. This is what make some people go onto shows like Britain's got talent and humiliated as they have no idea how bad they are, nobody told them.
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When Lt. Barcley was playing Cyrano de Bergerac on TNG, there was a similar situation. He sucked as an "actor" within that episode, but the whole crew applauded, much to Data's confusion. Riker explains: "Because it's polite..." But Barclay was a very anxiety-ridden human. Not an egocentric EMH. Unless it's a CHILD performing (or someone who's obviously a nervous beginner) pretending to enjoy poorly performed music or artistry just seems mean.
the guy who says "my god" when their society is known to have multiple deities: the species (I am not 100% on the spelling, Bejoran) has regular contact with humans, maybe we could just put it down to a learned thing. Sure, they have the universal translators so they may not pick up on the language but the translator would still pick up on a human calling on one deity not plural and so maybe this particular Bejoran just picked up on that
The episode deals with the documentary Mengeles heritage (Mengeles Erben). I'm not sure if the documentary is available in English but it is about doctors experimenting on humans in concentration camps and Japanese doctors experimenting on prisoners of war. The results of these experiments were trove of knowledge used by CIA and science in general and has always been an ethical dillema because of thejustification. Just as the US circumvented their ethical reservations against torture in intelligence gathering on US soil by simply transferring it to foreign soil and actually having a governor with questionable ethics in Florida who served in the most infamous torture camp lacking due process and human rights on every level.
While DeSantis is post this voyager episode it still makes this particular episode especially interesting as to the question of morals and ethics in society and the value of life and dignity.
Another reference would be acres of skin - US prison population enslaved by the constitution and subjugated to medical experiments. Though I'm not sure of how much the writers would be aware of current US ethics failures in the US prison system.
Mengele is probably the point of reference for this episode.
And it wasn't just Germany and Japan that had their questionable research. Who was it that didn't treat syphilis on purpose to monitor the diseases progress. Without telling the infected people.
We all did bad stuff in the past (and in some cases present), there is no way to deny that.
My thoughts about Janeway are
In "Night" we saw how her decision to strand the crew in the Delta Quadrant had caught up with her and she was willing to make a sacrifice to ensure they got closer to their destination, but the command crew told her to go swivel and that they needed her.
What if her choice here was done out of guilt as well, her choice left Torres in this position and so she thought she was returning the favour by over ruling Torres's choice and making the right call.
When she later goes to her quarters she was expecting/hoping Torres would do something like "I disagree with the decision but I understand why you did it, thank you." That didn't happen and so it hurt Janeway and she lashed out unintentionally
Hey, looks like Palmer-thing actually survived 1982 on Earth. If anything knows about exobiology it would be The Thing.
This one I have to admit I find really facinating. It's like the Voyager version of Duet on DS9, and actually takes the risk of going grey with war crimes. It's a choice that is very risky and honestly I think needed more discussion afterwards, but there in lies the weakness of, "event of the week," writing.
Though you did give voice to something that was a bit of an issue for me as well. Why is Marl Carx the only expert in the database? They are tooling around with so much information that I refuse to believe that he was the only expert they had data on. It is something that always sort of bugs me when we talk about Nazi science, that "sure they were horrible but they got results." I think that that kind of attitude adds just a bit of fuel to those who believe that the ends will always justify the means.
Personally I believe if the knowledge now exists regardless of how it came about you can’t put the gene back in the bottle or change history so you might as well use it for the benefit of others. I can’t speak for anyone else but if I died being tortured but the knowledge gained from my death could save someone else life I’d be all for it, at least my death would not have been in vain. This is not to say that we should not take issue with how the knowledge was obtained, we certainly should, but more as a learning experience to never do that kinda shit again.
"This is not to say that we should not take issue with how the knowledge was obtained, we certainly should, but more as a learning experience to never do that kinda shit again."
But you leave out the bit that it happening to you would in fact be it "happening again", because if it had never happened we wouldn't have it as a topic of conversation to begin with.
Yeah, I don't really get the idea that using that knowledge would encourage future unethical methods... If we judge the methods and the induviduals who used them harshly, there is pretty much just _one_ motivation I can think of that would be encouraged, namely that of someone who doesn't give a damn about how they are judged (directly, by the society around them, and of course by history) and only care about those findings. And I rather doubt there are all that many individuals with a motivation like that around to worry about...
Completely agree, the mathematical proof that 2+2=4 is not somehow "tainted" by knowing that the proof was discovered by a psychopath. Its just knowledge and knowledge is a tool, the important thing is how YOU use it from that point forward.
By the prophets, that was a good episode
I think Janeway's dismissal at the end - and really, deciding to use the research at all over B'Elanna's objections - could be interpreted as part of her long side toward being willing to use more and more morally questionable means to get her "family" home in tact (even if that often, in practice, only extends to named cast members not named Tuvix). You can see signs of that slide with, for instance, her pact with the Borg, and without spoiling, you will see a good number of other instances going forward right up through the (*coughs*) endgame.
It's interesting to me that while the debate between the crew on whether to use this knowledge or not was never fully settled... the Federation appears to have done so and decided it's fine, hence why they have the full knowledge of this man in the computers of all of their ships.
No one on the pro-knowledge side actually brings this up, probably because the writers didn't think about the implications.
This is such a dumb episode. They never had a problem with using Seven's Borg knowledge and she often talks about which species was assimilated to acquire the knowledge. B'Elanna often helps Seven use Borg technology for Voyager. If B'Elanna is against benefitting from the suffering of others, why is she OK with using knowledge gained from the assimilation and genocide of billions of people?
That's a great point. What could possibly be less ethical than using Borg technology?
Yeah, I was kind of thinking that. Why isn’t Borg technology questionable? Is it because it’s coming from Seven who is volunteering it?
I like the idea of a non-humanoid species, but I guess witht he tech limitations of the time they really couldn't do anything more than face jizzer. Well ok they probably could have and chose not to. Ah well. Loved the gag about the second most unpleasant thing that's been on top of her.
Tech and budget innit? We either end up with CG stuff or a guy under a rug. Part of it might also be that social interactions, which is where Trek often shines for me, are more difficult with anything truly alien.
@@Unlimited_Lives Oh yeah budget is also a factor I'ms ure. I can see that with the social interactions, but man would it be interesting to have seen them try. Though they did have that fish person on enterprise and that just reminded me of that dude from star wars, not a wars fan so I don't remember his name. The guy who grunts or whatever and people know what he's saying. He? She? It? Eh I don't know.
Indeed! That was a sic ass Paris burn! 💀
Yeah that Paris joke was hilarious.
4:35 they tried to cram ALL of it in there. Not just one specific area Space was the limiting factor.
As usual. On a space ship.
Worf was raised by humans on Earth. Perhaps the universal translator isn’t turned on for him if he’s speaking common? It wouldn’t translate Stovakor if it’s not monitoring everything word for word.
An interesting point. Do we ever learn if Worf is speaking or Klingon when talking to other Klingons? Hmm...
@@Unlimited_Lives The shows have instances where someone switches to untranslated Klingon. Jadzia flirts with Worf in Klingon when they first meet.
That suggests the UT is capable of understanding linguistic nuance and forgoing translation where appropriate. Or deliberately overriding translation to the user's default language if they're multilingual and the conversation would have additional meaning in the original tongue.
All of which suggests the God business is a lack of contextual understanding by the UT, supporting the conclusion in this one AND the headcanon for Neelix. Satisfying.
@@Unlimited_LivesBajor wasn’t a federation member when Voyager departed DS9 either. The Kardashian computer on DS9 probably has greater fine tuning in that series than Voyager’s UT does.
Thank frell for those screens Space Dogs!
Much of the knowledge regarding the treatment of frostbite came about through the use of experiments on concentration camp prisoners.
This gave me Unit 731 vibes. The USA covered up as much as it could of Japan's crimes in exchange for the knowledge gained by the horrific, systematic, torture and murder of people. (I will not give details it is enough to give nightmares.) The 'knowledge' turned out to be useless.
My only real quibble (apart from it all falling to bits with any real thought) with this episode was it being pretty obvious the Cardassian was a 'bad guy' who got a bit of a kick out of it.
The same missiles that were shot at London lead to landing on the moon. But not in all cases did the scientist choose to be evil, and instead more a result of circumstance.
I'm sure Kira said "hell" quite a few times.
I've always enjoyed this episode, the questions it raises and the sad fact that I still don't have any answers to them, I would like to say 'No! we will not use the research of such a bastard' but end up talking myself into circles, between the needs of the many and respect for the wishes and autonomy of the patient and suffering of those tortured.
Exactly, it's a real question where every possible answer is uncomfortable and they set up the episode slowly enough that it works for the context.
I think the docs slideshow was the best sideshow ever.
I could be wrong but I think the dogs are up to something...
The Bajoran ensign is a Christian. After leaving Bajor, he lived on a colony where was training to be a Benedictine monk. When the colony ended up on the Cardigan side of the border he joined the Maquis because the Cardigans kept setting fire to the vineyards..
Some may call out the Dr. being ok using the Cardassians help since it was B'lana, someone close to him. It took courage to acknowledge he'd do it again if he didnt delete the program.
This episode seemed to be more sanctimonious than moral. The reality of all of these situations is that information wants to be free. Even if something is discovered through genocide, child sacrifice, or jaywalking, it has been discovered. It is objective reality. You cannot jail it. You cannot punish it for being discovered in the wrong way. You can only attempt to 'quarantine' it off in hopes that the evil spirits don't infect all the good people who might learn of it, which is ultimately futile at best and a cynical gesture at worst.
So somebody learns something from an unethical experiment on a human. What do you do to "purify" it? Have a priest conduct the experiment on a chicken and, upon finding the data to match, declare it "ethical" once more? Absurd. But the alternative is to just declare the entire field of study verboten and then never speak of it again, which is even more absurd.
What can happen is that individuals can be punished for their crimes. Victims can be compensated. Countries can be sanctioned. Unethical people can be prevented from profiting from their crimes. All of these things are concrete actions against concrete entities. But to declare war against information is ALWAYS going to be a losing battle.
Just gotta say Marl Carx is the most on-point random name yet.
To expand on your closing rant a bit, Star Trek is infamous for its "planet of hats" issue and thus I'm sure this was not intentionally done by the writers, but I feel it's equally reasonable in universe to believe that the individual Bajoran ensign in question could be a follower of a different faith. They are after all someone who is exposed to the myriad other cultures that participate in the Maquis and Starfleet. I've long felt Trek could do with a fair bit more social variety, but then so could series set in our own present day reality, so I also digress.
Nabbed from a comment I just wrote elsewhere:
"I did consider the alternate religion option. The lack of an earring could be circumstantial evidence of this, but we learned in S1E16 that Tuvok doesn't allow them in the same way Picard did for Ro, so that could explain the lack of one too. Ultimately, the one defining feature of Bajor is their religion, and the cultural importance it took on during the Occupation. Is that simplistic writing? Of course it is. But it still supports the overwhelming likelihood that he's a follower of it. In fact, it suggests he's more likely than the average Bajoran to be a follower. If the Prophets are a symbol of Bajoran resistance to Cardigans, a Maquis member would have reason to find even greater meaning in that."
I agree that oversimplification of alien culture is a problem. It's a point that ties into what I said previously about how science fiction is a right bugger to make immersive because of the required work for background. But we have what we have and, for better or worse, Bajorans are The Prophet People.
My theoretical counterargument for a planet of hats universe is that maybe that is the norm and humans are just strangely diverse.
I dont see why when they first realized there would be a problem they could not have changed the new holo doc's race n name.
There's plenty of room for alternate explanations for that comment, he could belong to a monotheistic minority cult on Bajor, he could have converted to some other religion, or he could have adopted a common turn of phrase after years of mixed company. The phrase seems common enough in trek despite many if not most people being some flavor of atheist or agnostic.
Common enough in **the viewer's translation** of Trek, which proposes an interesting tangential question: Do Bajorans hear "my God" or "by the Prophets" when it gets translated to them?
I did consider the alternate religion option. The lack of an earring could be circumstantial evidence of this, but we learned in S1E16 that Tuvok doesn't allow them in the same way Picard did for Ro, so that could explain the lack of one too. Ultimately, the one defining feature of Bajor is their religion, and the cultural importance it took on during the Occupation. Is that simplistic writing? Of course it is. But it still supports the overwhelming likelihood that he's a follower of it. In fact, it suggests he's more likely than the average Bajoran to be a follower. If the Prophets are a symbol of Bajoran resistance to Cardigans, a Maquis member would have reason to find even greater meaning in that.
There's a nice little thematic sting here: The alien is also making an ethical choice to exploit another for its own survival. Admittedly, it's rather selfish, but that's not a million miles away from the choice to sacrifice people you don't know to save people you do. And best of all -- given the outcome, the alien seems to have made the right choice: Both it and B'Elanna survived. .
Of course, this whole thing could be avoided (in Universe, at least) if they remembered that the Cardie IS A HOLOGRAM! We know they can alter what they look like, because they do in other episodes, so why not make him look like Dr Mora (or Dr Bunsen Honeydew!)? If they'd rescued a real Cardassian who then offered to help the crew and it then emerged he'd been engaging in unethical experiments at Gallitep, that would make it a real dilemma, but the medical data is still there, just the image of the Cardassian is gone. Yes, I get what they're trying to say about medical ethics, but the way they present it is just ridiculous.
An EMH but they're Dr Bunsen Honeydew sounds like a great Lower Decks gag.
Never mind that it needing the appearance of the original, why use the personality (and why do they have data that allows them to replicate it)? Just use something else. A fictional character even
@@niceguy191 Lol good point, but then they wouldn't have a Yatzi story to be able to virtue signal about.
The "what if they rescue a real cardie who turns out to be evil" is basically the situation with Neelix and that scientist in another episode. Where they find out that the scientist isn't just running around trying to help Talaxians who have that sickness, but was also a crucial to developing the whole thing.
In the end it turns out he isn't really that much of a monster and never wanted the stuff to be weaponised, and is even suffering himself.
Another example of Voyager taking a least a step towards grey morality.
Another way could have been to have it been revealed that the test subjects were actually volunteers and that there had been a virus at a bajoran camp that had threatened the entire 20,000-30,000 colony and because it only affected bajorans, they needed to test vaccines on the colonists. Only after 30-40 deaths did they finally find a vaccine to save everyone.
Problem is that the ordeal was soo stressful that the cardassian doctor would later on commit suicide.
They could do a similar plot twist - where once the cardassian doctor discovers what happened they do go into a nervous breakdown and end up deleting not only the program but all of the knowledge with it.
Pretty sure just changing the way he looked would have made everyone go "Okay, that's fine"
There is precedence from TNG where Jordie made the hologram of Leah Brahms. The replacement doctor seamed to be more of a case of Harry giving up the the first hurdle of something that was going to be beyond him anyway.
You could see the benefit of basing a Holo-consultant on a real specialist as personality can impact aptitude and approach to problem solving however you would think they'd maybe select a template who was a bit more ethical.
The other issue I could foresee would be if they realise they have access to all this information would they fall into some sort of Dunning-Kruger trap?
The holodeck can indeed create personalities. From Geordies Leah Brahms how he want's her to be, to the Moriarty hologram to the fact that the Doctor becoming a person.
In fairness, as Tom Parris just asked and the Doctor said that he couldn't have all the Medical Data in is program. It makes sense that they couldn't make one because Tom and Kim don't know what they're doing, so with the Doctor and only putting a limited set of Data in the new Consultant allowing it to work.
Neck hugger 😂
My question is how hard would it have been just to change dude’s face? It was a freaking hologram!!
My other point about the language is I think maybe they picked it up from the other cultures. Most of the people on the ship are human. So I can see exclamations being picked up that way. Kind of like how everyone of. DS9 drinks raktajino.
Fantastic analysis.
This is one of the reasons I love Voyager. Recreating a Cardassian war criminal on the holodeck? Best bring a Bajoran with you! No wonder Kim stayed an ensign…
And as for the Cardassian doctor, it’s weird that they wouldn’t publicise the fact that they used healthy Bajorans for their research. They saw the Bajorans as an inferior species, a resource to be consumed. So it’s strange that they wouldn’t know that.
Anyways, it’s a great episode all the same 👍🏼
*And as for the Cardassian doctor, it’s weird that they wouldn’t publicise the fact that they used healthy Bajorans for their research*
Well, that would be like critical race theory and they don't want information of them being portrayed bad going out. So like Florida, they want to see the benefits of their inhuman research.
So the Federation uses his medical research, yet claims to know nothing about him nor how it was conducted? And invited him to speak in Federation territory? Sounds like an Operation Paperclip job to me.
Sounds like something from Section 31...
I heard that German rocket scientists during world War II based their technology on Robert Goddard's research. And unless I'm mistaken, the rockets that Goddard built were never used in warfare.
The "my god" coming from the basorin was a good catch. It should have been "by the prophets!"
To answer your rant about characters with other dieties using phrases like "Oh, god," the answer is much simpler and much less theoretical. The translator isn't bring used on Worf or the Bjoran; they've simply picked up the phrase. I know Muslims that use "God!" in the expletive sense instead of shouting "Allah!" I myself will do it, too, despite having no religion.
As for the question of when immoral becomes acceptable: information has no moral value. Medical knowledge is not corrupted because it was largely supplied by grave robbing and just doing stuff to people, and the odd murder. Arguably, rejecting that information after the fact would be immoral, as the involuntary sacrifice of those people is squandered and new people must be placed at risk to reobtain that information. The moral quandry actually revolves around interacting with the entity that immorally procured that information. Working with the Cardigan is morally questionable, helping him to obtain new information is morally questionable, allowing him to preform morally questionable procedures is unethical. It's a good episode and the obvious answer of using the second best would have avoided ut.
Refusing to use the knowledge gained from an unethical means would simply mean that any victims of that unethical means suffered in vain. It doesn't mean I like it or agree with the method. There's likely no way to discover that information another way, so my eternal death lacks moral high ground.
I'm sure somebody else has already said this, but: Worf speaks English (or Russian, perhaps), having been raised on Earth.
Marl certainly had a Foul Chi
20:20 or suitable for a Teen rating for TV 😅
But your first thought I also had. Brilliant deduction
About Neelix: he does have a 'Forest' aka Afterlive so its likely he does have a diety. He is also very sensitive to (fake) monks and their faiths. All signs point to a deeply rooted believe.
How much "wrong" has been done and will be done with good intentions?
I'm pretty sure Worf speaks Federation Standard, aka English.
All they had to do is change the holograms appearance and all that drama would have been avoided.
i had an idea for a costume its like this but the parasite has the letters I R S on it. the idea is when anyone says nice costume you say..what costume?
I liked this episode for the difficult subject it tried to tackle, but it never sat right with me that the Voyager crew would be the ones to wrestle with it. Why?
Because in the immediate aftermath of the Borg-Species 8472 conflict (either the end of Scorpion Part 2 or sometime in the next episode), B’Elanna sends a report (I believe through Chakotay) telling Janeway that some of the modifications the Borg made to Voyager are improving their systems (I believe it was making their EPS conduits run more efficiently). She made the recommendation (and Janeway agrees) to leave those specific Borg components where they are.
That’s not anything related to Seven’s regeneration alcoves, things necessary to a passenger/potential new crew member’s survival. That’s adding a few percentage points of efficiency to your power distribution network when it was doing its job quite well beforehand. If they can do that for such an unimportant outcome even though that technology comes from Borg assimilation, why does B’Elanna’s survival bring up the ethical issue?
“Using the knowledge would validate what the real Marl Carx did”? So why aren’t those percentage points of additional EPS efficiency validating everything the Borg do? Hell, don’t we need to scrap the Delta Flyer as well?
This crew had seemingly already decided where they came down on this particular dilemma (in particular B’Elanna), so it was jarring to see them readdress it, and in contradiction to their previous decision (and again, over things less important). I was particularly surprised by how Tuvok missed this.
That is the age old question. Are we allowed to use data from unethical experiments? Are we morally obligated to deny that knowledge? Are we morally obligated to use that knowledge, because otherwise all those people died for nothing...
I think this is a great voyager episode that takes a black and white issue (nazi 'scientists' with no real scientific method or ethics producing little of real scientific value whilst harming and killing many unwilling subjects) and makes it grey, as we at no point are told the Cardassians research wasn't scientifically sound and did benefit B'lana. It rises above the normal voyager junk and actually presents a thoughtful moral issue and doesn't try and force the author's opinion. Both sides are given space to make their case, and no easy "third way" is presented. Janeway makes a decision, and her actor does a great job of making it clear she's aware it could be the wrong one, but it has to be made.
There is also a delicious moment of foreshadowing when the doc says something like "I don't care if he's the worst person ever, so long as he can help my patient", words the doc is forced to eat later.
The only issues I have are a) as you point out, couldn't the second best doctor for this be used? b) is deleting him murder? He seemed pretty sentient to me; and even if the man he's based on is a massive war criminal, the hologram didn't do anything wrong, and c) I wish voyager had ever explored the rights of the individual Vs the collective need to survive of the ship. After all, there are no new ensigns or experienced crew replacements coming when someone dies on the ship. Voyager would be far less likely to make it home without an experienced chief engineer. Janeway is often seen overriding the desires of her crew to keep them alive, which could be down to this, but it's never really explored. She just does it and then the reset button is pushed.
Battlestar had a whole episode around this sort of thing, where abortion was outlawed in the fleet to try and reverse the falling population. Whilst they didn't need to go that far, it would have been interesting to see Janeway have to argue her position against someone.
To quote Aamin Marritza, "You can never undo what I've accomplished; the dead will still be dead."
To not use the research that could potentially save lives is just posturing for the appearance of looking noble and just. The torture that got the results has been long done. Using that research to save lives takes some modicum of positivity from heinous acts. Not using it would be more insulting in my opinion.
😁👍
Hey! Hope the job's still treating you well! Have a good weekend. OR ELSE.
@@Unlimited_Lives lol thank you 😂 the job is good only way too hot right now, over 110°F this week here in Arkansas🥵 so I shall very much enjoy my weekend as should you 💚🌹💚
(space dog cracks me up every time 😂 )
Turns our this particular Bajoran accepted Jesus as his personal savior.
I know it's not the same thing, but think about safety rules and regulations. For almost every safety rule, feature and regulation, there was likely some disaster that happened that cost dozens if not hundreds of lives that some rule, feature or regulation could have prevented or reduced in severity. However, it took said disaster to force a person or people in charge to make those changes or to even be aware of a danger in the case of dangers we might have had no real way of knowing about until we learnt the hard way? How much of our every day lives are safer only because someone else paid the ultimate price?
Think about how many cautionary tales we've heard (real or imagined) where we've learnt what not to do, lest something terrible happen to us. How many cases has it been where something *did* happen to someone and that's the only reason we know not to make the same mistake?
Like I said, I know it's not the same thing as a war crime. However, it still a case of history being written in blood.
This episode doesn't enterily work for me because this is Voyager. Deleting Moset is meaningless as the data still exists in the Alpha quadrant.
The holo cardi is literally a straw man, deleted in place of the real one, conveniently after he is not needed any more.
16:30 the need of the many.
On your point about the "oh god" comment I think there is a simpler explanation. That Bajoran is a Christian.
The assumption that an alien couldn't have either been raised in a Christian faith or have converted to one seems to me a little dismissive of the real world example we have. And would be akin to assuming that any Indian you meet would be a Hindu, or any Arab a Muslim.
We know the federation is multicultural and welcome cultural interchange so it seems quite plausible to me.
An alternative and I think better explanation is that I, as an atheist, still use "god" as a curse. Because that's just how my language works. If the Bajoran had been around humans enough who use the phrase for cultural-linguistic reasons he could easily have adopted it as idiomatic and used it without even thinking.
do we even know if he is speaking a bajoran language? he might as well be speaking english, or french, or western desert high vulcan.
A close medical relation is a certain textbook created by, I believe, Eduard Pernkopf, I don't know enough to go into detail but, essentially, nazi medical textbook that's been banned despite how useful it is and has been in the past. It's a very difficult discussion despite any clear logic that could win out - as, after all, we're not just logical beings.
I dunno, maybe I'm a dreamer, but I've never thought that technology/advancement made under criminal acts is itself defined by those criminal acts. In the case of the small pox situation, the idea that somebody would intentionally infect a child with a terrible disease is and of itself reprehensible, but does that mean you couldn't prove something is safe through volunteers and then observe whether the theory works to get the same result? Sure, it takes longer to do so, but the end result is the same. So are cures defined by the actions the human decided to do to obtain it, or the science beneath why it works in the first place?
In the rocket case, we send up many rockets today without using slave labour and death camps in order to make it happen, so is the fact those were the conditions in which this technology came about really the defining factor of a science that existed long before those efforts to discover it took place? -- and let's be real, the German intent for that technological branch wasn't to create satelites to transmit the weather to people.
I guess my view is that you can acknowledge something is good and at the same time condemn methods or exploitative actions used to create it. If anything we should be aspiring to be promoting the will to develop these sort of things for the good of all humanity in the first place, instead of constantly relying on investment in war machines to fluke through its discovery. But if we're going to be guilty and deny ourselves advancements because they were built off atrocity, then is there anything we do or use in life acceptable?
I'm grateful you explained the Nazi forced labor camps directly supporting that rocket technology, and the early forced vaccination of a child. Where I live, a lot of people deny the Nazis did such things at all. But there is abundant records from the Nazis own records. Anyway, the real examples show how messy, and present, these moral dilemmas can be. One thing I feel was avoided was too unilaterally blaming someone innocent for the dilemma, in particular victims, B'Elanna or the alien, whatever its motivations. I think the Doc showed too much openness and trust, but he hasn't been alive all that long as his own person, so it fits his character. The episode bothers me, I think that was the point, that it works on that level. As for the OMG slip, I think it worse raising, as the idiom in English is so embedded I think it makes, as you say, immersive SF very difficult. Try and imagine Bones McCoy not saying it, so what if there was no Bones McCoy, one would have to re-invent a similar sanguine character, ad nauseam throughout all time. The is a popular YT deepfake channel that uses, "Oh my Force". Can humanity empathize with aliens who might not enjoy such a grounding unconscious invocation or blaspheme to connote moral outrage? I think we'd better strive for such SF. I submit such writers exist, Samuel Delaney comes to mind in Babel-17, conveying a variety of odd perspectives. Star Trek once boasted sci-fi greats among its writers, but it has gotten a bit too mainstream since.
I notice that the ensen doesn’t have his ear ring. That is a religious expression. It is possible that this particular bajoran doesn’t worship the profits.
In my opinion it's fine to find some benefit from knowledge obtained through unethical means, as long as we know the knowledge is sound. For one thing, once we know a fact, it seems irrelevant how we first came to know it because there's always more than one way to figure the same thing out, it's only relevant how we apply our knowledge after it's been obtained. And secondly, it seems to me to be a slap in the face of all the people who've suffered for that knowledge of we say we can't use it to benefit the rest of humanity, if I was tortured by mad scientists for years and came out of it to find out that the discoveries made, while true, were disregarded because it came about through my torture, I'd be more upset at having been tortured for nothing. If we can find some benefit from unethical research it'll at least give some meaning to the cruelty suffered by the victims.
The realirt is, though, that the same knowledge that we gained from unethical research could've been gained by more ethical means, and usually, it's more robust when we do learn it, so the only real benefit to disregarding ethics in science is the speed by which hypotheses can be tested and therefore sometimes we can potentially learn certain things faster. Learning certain things faster isn't an excuse to inflict harm on a few people in an attempt to save more, though, because of that was done for all research, everyone would be dead, close to death, or severely depressed in less than a month, and the results of the research would be skewed, too, so only a small minority of it would be useful. But when ethics are disregarded by someone trying to learn something, and we can be confident that what they learned was correct and sound, then we probably would've figured it out through ethical means a little later anyway, so why not use that knowledge slightly sooner than when we would've had it?
So, my take on the ethics of using unethical research has always been that to NOT use it after it has already been obtained is to cause the suffering and death of the victims to be in vain. Much of what we currently know about the harmful effects of smoking, and of how the human body responds to extremely cold temperatures, was directly pioneered by Nazi Germany, and its unethical research using members of groups that were targeted by the Holocaust (primarily Jews, but also every other "non-Aryan" group). Does that mean we should all start chain smoking and not dressing appropriately in cold weather? No. And, I reiterate, to do so would be to cause the victims of those awful experiments to have suffered and died for literally nothing.
This isn't to say those methods are retroactively justified by the good being done in the present by the data obtained. The use of that knowledge does, indeed, carry an ethical debt. One that can only be repaid by refusing to allow the victims to be forgotten, and by constant introspection and eternal vigilance against current and future unethical research.