Star Trek

It says something that Maddox is the only "jerk-of-the-week" antagonist to get the sinister synth score in his first scene, as that sort of music usually signifies, and I'm quoting SF Debris here, "That your chest has been hollowed out for a dick monster".

And it says scores about Data that he never begrudges anyone about this trial.

The brig in "Heart of Glory" looks more like a locker room than a holding cell.

Maddox was not evil, he was foreboding the same way that Keyes and his science team were from E.T.'s perspective. I like that.

I still don't get why Starfleet was able to seize Lal in "The Offspring". Picard all but spells out his legal precedent but the Admiral just steamrolls over him, saying that Data is unfit to raise an android? Because having two androids cancels out the rights of both? (Mind you, I can totally buy the Federation doing that.)

There have been many, many attempt in the franchise to repeat "Measure of a Man", and I'm not confident any of them are successful. For one, there is an uncomfortable lack of continuity with regards to which machines are sentient. I'm thinking of the VOY episode "Flesh and Blood", in which it was outright stated that some holograms aren't capable of autonomy. Then why is the Doctor so malleable? He's just a medical tool, why would he need sentience? And even if he was programmed to grow, then why would Starfleet sentence the others to dilithium mines, effectively enslaving them just like Picard had forewarned? And this is never addressed?

It feels like we're just retelling a story, rather than building upon it. That's partly why I could never get on the "A.I.s are people too!" bandwagon. There are no defined parameters.

The Voyager episode "Author, Author" comes close, but it is very heavy handed on the analogy. The Federation couldn't accept the Doctor as sentient, but they were willing to give him rights as an artist.

Making the EMH a sentient AI (and it's kind of scary that they can make living people on a whim with cut and paste, come to think about it) doesn't really make sense. Do you really need sentience to do medical examination and care?

Holographic rights shouldn't have existed as an arc. The trait that separates sentient holograms from recreationals should by definition (and by the Starfleet v. Data precedent) entitle them to full rights. The guy in "Author, Author" who argued that the Doctor writing a holonovel was no different from a replicator making a cup of coffee must not have the intellectual capacity to operate a replicator.

My father described the end as "judges hardly ever want to create sweeping precedents"

edited 26th Nov '14 11:36:15 PM by TParadox

Legal arguments can stretch for years. The problem with the court ruling in Measure of a Man was that it only applied to Data.

Lal's creation opened a whole can of worms for the Federation. Again, the cast had to define and refine Data's rights. Not unlike the civil rights battles in Real Life.

Again I refer you to Sf Debris wonderful review of The Offspring.

And on a sad note, They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Lal could have been a guest star. The actress was open to it. Again, the Trek writing staff hated paying royalties to another writer and some didn't like putting other's characters in their eps.

Lal could have been like Seven of Nine and the Borg children.

edited 26th Nov '14 11:53:24 PM by TairaMai

I see your point.

I can respect the show's reluctance to set it in stone. What is 'sentience'? That's what makes Data so magical, and it's an ongoing mystery in real life. To go back to "The Offspring", Picard scolds Data for creating a brand new lifeform. By taking the step of giving an inanimate robot the gift of autonomy, he created life. Playing God, essentially. That's good; it's a vague but plausible guideline for what sentience is.

Okay, so then Data composes a paean to his cat, stating that Spot is "not sentient."

=/

That still leaves holograms, and I think you're right, it was a mistake for me to even bring that up. The Doctor is a hologram who might as well be human but isn't because of a network edict forbidding any human drama. I prefer not to even think of them as holograms. So many of them die pointlessly (Real Life, Nothing Human, Fair Haven) that it undermines everything the show is about.

Don't mind the Borg kids that much, not even Naomi. But this is not a ringing endorsement to my mind.

edited 27th Nov '14 12:51:25 AM by johnnyfog

A big part of the debate comes from where the actual life form originated from. Stumbling across a silicon-based life form like the Horta defied the current understanding of what life is but they were open to the mysteries of the universe. Data was an experiment from a known scientist who (excepting Lore and a few others) left No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup on a far-fetched theory that happened to work. Data was created as proof of a mechanical brain that functioned largely the same as a biological brain.

The exocomps from "Quality of Life" were accidents built on Unpredictable Results and the basic question of something designed to be a hammer possibly being a life form. Holograms like the Doctor are Starfleet issued projects designed to make intelligent decisions and interact with the crew with a professional level of responsibility, standard holograms in holonovels more likely have a large set of responses built in according to their base-line programming. Both are things that were not intended to be life forms, but ended up uncomfortably close to that buzzword of sentience.

I always thought the sentient holograms they were using by the time of Voyager were based on studying how the Enterprise computer executed the command that brought Moriarty to life. Except the timelines don't work out, since it would have taken years to develop the techniques to do it on purpose (I think I read a fanfic or something where approving the EMH project was one of the things Crusher did in her year at Starfleet Medical), and Ship in a Bottle establishes that this groundbreaking accident with far-reaching implications was forgotten about for five years, and they only rolled out intentionally autonomous programs the next year.

One other thing that was comfortably vague about Lal's creation was that it happened in a way that nobody had to actually understand what Soong got right. People had been experimenting with just copying Data's matrix for years, but Data was the first one to get it right. Except I think in the end she succumbs to the same thing all the other attempts did.

/Star Trek has an assertion that the "cascade failure" that plagues new AI is the exponential growth of pattern recognition patterns that makes them fully sentient. Lal couldn't handle it, and the Doctor needed a stable autonomous hologram with a compatible matrix to merge with him in order to have enough capacity to get through it. And I think Soong's pre-Lore prototypes bit it due to that too. But the WMG suggests that Soong is the only one who either realized cascade failure wasn't a failure, managed to develop hardware/software that could come out the other side, or both.

I dunno how to feel about Moriarty. He was cool as balls but wasn't he pissed that they just locked him away and completely forgot about him? Isn't that what their solution in the end was? Lock him in a little simulation and put him on a shelf?

If he ever gets out, he's going to be super mad. But at least they better accommodated him the second time. The first time they just shut him off, and when he came back five years later he complained of flashes of consciousness without any sensory input, which is what scientists think would happen to a brain in a jar.

When they reasserted control, they put him in a continuously running simulation with enough information about the known galaxy to provide adventures for a lifetime. Which is basically the proposed solution for the brain in a jar problem, and a neat compromise between his demand for freedom and the impossibility of it. But if he discovers it was a lie, he'll be really angry again.

Sounds like an expanded universe novel premise.

I once read a fanfic where Moriarty was discovered by the photonic aliens from Bride of Chaotica, who liberated him and gave him one of their devices they use to exist in our realm. He went off after revenge.

I knew those Fith Dimensioners couldn't be trusted.

The Borg kids were a neat idea, done in by the lackluster Star Trek Voyager writer's room. Then again, kids are hard to write for.

Case in point: TNG's The Bonding. I'll spare you the Sf Debris review and the twist. Let's just say that the young boy's performance was bad: a child written as an adult. Neat idea done in by the "Roddenberry Box" (humans are teh awesome perfectness!) and the poor kid trying to act with bad writing.

Seven and the Borglings, Data and Lal: we could have seen an emotionless character grow and have to become more to raise a younger version. Lots of good ideas there.

Then again I know how Hollywood works: you have to pay the writer who created the character, does the actor get billing etc.

Garett Wong is a nice guy, but Harry Kim was... belgh. Of course when he won a spot on "50 most Beautiful People" in ...People magazine his run on ST:VOY was bulletproof. They needed any good press due to their sinking ratings at the time.

edited 27th Nov '14 7:26:26 PM by TairaMai

I love how Garrett Wang talks about... I think it's "The Gift" where Harry's awkward around Seven and she interprets his behavior as meaning he wishes to "copulate", and is amenable to anything that would increase the efficiency of their teamwork, and Harry turns her down. Wang is still disappointed in Harry for saying no.

Hm, now that I think about it, the gay actor insisting that no straight character would refuse Seven probably doesn't say good things about... somebody.

About Harry, I think. Poor, dumb Harry

edited 27th Nov '14 8:29:30 PM by maxwellelvis

I know Movie Bob is a touchy subject (even I can only take him in small doses), but he did have a valid point on EndersGame:

The main lead actor had to convey a bunch of emotions from a character with a lot of depth. A child actor had to convey a bunch of emotions from a character with a lot of depth.

Adults have trouble with roles like that.

Terry Farell had to take acting lessons to get into the role of Dax. She admitted it during a TV Guide interview. I used to have the "special issue" that was both a Trek anniversary and a DS 9 and Star Trek Voyager puff piece.

(What Could Have Been: she also read for the role of Talia Winters on Babylon Five, but the pay offered by the studio wasn't enough to pay her rent, according to Terry herself).

A lot of the acting in the early series is both bad acting and writers rolling "1s" over and over. Terry grew into the role of Dax and by late season two those lessons were paying off. Too bad the writers rolled a 1 for Dax's death.

Voyager, had a lot of issues. I still like Seven of Nine and, dammit, Janeway is starting to grow on me.

But man they pulled a lot of horkers. The Maquis were wasted.

If the Roddenberry Box of "Everyone is perfect" was so bad, why did you crawl back in and kill all conflict for Voyager huh Taylor? Berman? BRAGGA?!

At least Jeri Taylor was trying to live through Janeway...

They missed why Scorpion was so good:

edited 27th Nov '14 8:43:16 PM by TairaMai

The best Voyager episodes were always the ones that tested the crew being isolated. "Year of Hell" was downright terrifying because of how far they took the premise. Also, an interview with David Gerrold posted a few pages back suggested the whole "in the future humans don't have conflict" was more Roddenberry's lawyer acting through him than something he believed himself (It's more likely Roddenberry wanted all the characters as consummate professionals, not debating with each other as though there isn't a chain of command). Studio politics took a long time to get past that.

I've also seen some people refer to "child actor syndrome" where an otherwise good episode is ruined with having a kid in it and, therefore, relying on them to carry some of the story. You CAN find good child actors ("Rascals" worked wonderfully because of the talent they had), but the guest kids tended to be hit or miss.

Rascals.. I liked better when I first saw it, but it hasn't aged well.

Here's the thing with child actors, the fatal flaw:

Due to child labor laws, no matter how crap the take is, no matter the problems on set, they have to be home by 5 pm. PERIOD. And they do need to still go to school or have a tutor.

Hence Alexander had Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: they could get around Stage Mom and child labor laws. See also Dawson Casting, (averted on Star Trek Voyager for some reason).

edited 27th Nov '14 9:57:48 PM by TairaMai

Very astute.

What I always found dumb about child labor and acting is that tutoring hours are counted toward the maximum number of hours they're allowed to work.

BBC America is playing this really big ass Star Trek TNG marathon. Had a lovely couple of documentaries in the morning and a really interesting interview of Patrick Stewart from William Shatner.

What are everyone's thoughts on the Unification two parter? I'm watching the second half now, I really like it.

TNG really hit it's stride at the 3rd season. There is a reason it was beating NFL Football, 60 minutes and other network programming when it was on the air. Laser-Guided Karma for NBC, given that TNG was in syndication and NBC canceled TOS back in the day....

I realized recently that the reason I didn't like Tasha Yar was because I didn't like anyone during the first season.

First - second season crew was not very good.

edited 28th Nov '14 6:52:11 PM by BaconManiac5000