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Re: ENT S1: Dear Doctor

Ok, here's my two pennyworth.

Firstly, Star Trek is entertaining TV fantasy drama. But it's lousey Science fiction. Apart from warp drive (which may actually,maybe,just possibly work) the things ST does to true science is what normally happens in an extreme porn film. This is because ST is mostly written by normal TV scriptwriters with a bit of help from the odd real sci fi writer or real scientist, who they mostly ignore for the sake of a good story. Now the problem with Hollywood scriptwriters is they do like to act the great philosopher and sci fi gives them lots of opportunity to do so. So, these half wits get involved with huge moral questions like the ones in "Dear Doctor" and then display their ignorance.

Now the great thing about TOS was the concept of the Prine directive and Kirk's attitude towards it. For Kirk, the Prime Directive was basic guidence, BUT reality, pragmatism and compassion ment that very often, he rightly ignored it.
When TNG came along, the prime directive was absolutely binding and going around it was almost a capital offence, federation PC. Reality, pragmatism and compassion went out the window.
Mix this worship of the prime directive with some Eugenics and bad evolutionary theory and you get the utter moral mess that is "Dear Doctor".

Consider this. We are trying to save and conserve the Giant Panda, even though it is an evolutionary dead end. Why? Compassion. We try to save primative tribes in the Amazon basin. They are threatened by being in the way of loggers and cattle farmers, as well as genetic susceptabilities to the deseases of modern man. Why? Compassion.
The morals of Dear Doctor say all these things should be allowed to die, that compassion should never count and should be ignored. People with no compassion have scientific names. Sociopaths and Psychopaths.

Now as old Flox uses very bad concepts of evolution (there is no genetic "judge" making judgements on who should live or die, there is certainly no genetic imperative for one race to get out of the way of another.) and a complete lack of compassion, what is he? Psychopath quoting bad science? Joseph Goebbels?

I've been checking out the forums and youtube comments pages to see peoples views on "Dear Doctor". It's about 20/1 negative with most saying the considered this episode "offensive" and "fascist". I agree totally and I think those who comment that Flox & Archer make the right decision really need to look at their own moral compass. Or see a analyst to see if they are psychopaths as apparantly there are quite a lot of them about.

If you want some good sci fi that deals with a "post scarcity society" like the Federation, may I recommend the "Culture" novels by Iain M Banks. The Culture is a vastly powerful advanced (Federation plus several thousand years) utopia with citizens living idyllic lives due to the brilliance of the technology. But it certainly has no prime directive. The prime directive would make a Culture citizen puke. There is only right & wrong, good or evil and the Culture WILL get involved, you just might not notice as they are very subtle. And frankly, The Culture is a lot more believable than the Federation.