1.22 — “Symbiosis”

Comments

10 responses to “1.22 — “Symbiosis””

1. 

   Kevin Black

   January 12, 2015

   This is a good example of a principle I originally discovered reviewing TOS 2.5, “The Apple.” I’m sympathetic to ambitious flops/misfires. But lazy episodes make me maaaaad. Apathetic is worse than wrongheaded.

   Reply
2. 

   Randi Cohen

   January 12, 2015

   Shockingly, I liked this one!  I caught your point about the Prime Directive while watching, but at least this episode made me think a tiny bit about a larger social issue, which is the #1 most important thing about Star Trek to me, and which thus far has been entirely absent from TNG.  See below:

   Wow, at least, a real Star Trek episode!  Love Picard and Krusher in this one (at last!  I can like them!).  Gutsy of Picard to gamble Riker’s life on whether D’jon is a killer or not.  

   I am not sure why the aliens have forgotten how to run their own spacecraft (mental dullness courtesy of long-term use of opiates?).  But that is a minor quibble.  I may not agree with Picard’s choice to withhold the truth and potentially agony-saving medications from the addicted aliens, as well as repaired ships, but I do get why he made it.

   I wonder how it would have gone if he had refused to repair the ships but let the addicted race in on the secret and given them some medical help to get through.   Or threatened to the B’rekkans that he would if they did not resolve the matter on their own within a couple of years.  I guess it is tempting to exercise the power that advanced technology and knowledge afford, but hard to know exactly the right way to use it.  

   At the very least, it would have been nice if he could have made a Kirkian appeal to the Brekkans that if they don’t find another source of industry, their addicted friends will one day figure out the puzzle and probably annihilate them out of anger.  Good thing that apparently they are not killers!

   Anyway, all this is minor.  Finally an episode that provokes some thought and in which none of the characters (including the aliens) acts in a totally ridiculous manner.  And finally the crew of the Enterprise is actually taking seriously the loss of alien lives (at the opening when 2 are lost beaming out).  I think this is a first for the series.

   Yar and Wesley have a preachy moment that could have been edited out, but at least the view of addiction espoused on the show is accurate.

   Overall, the first really good episode that I would put on a par with a TOS non-klunker episode.  Thought-provoking, interesting, and well-acted.  It kept my attention throughout.  Thank heavens. 

   Reply
3. 

   Kevin Black

   January 12, 2015

   Hah! Yes, an interesting contrast of reactions!

   I was stuck at the level of “They didn’t hammer out a plausible set of circumstances to form the setting of this story.” You know, why can’t the crinkly-nose aliens just promise to send payment for the shipment within 30 days? Why is the whole fleet within months of total failure, in exactly the same trivially repairable fashion, on the same schedule? Etc. The stark premise that the one culture has no industry at all and the second culture has no initiative at all was too much. All I could think was, “You guys aren’t even trying.”

   I agree completely that the germ of a good idea was present, to explore a certain kind of negative cultural symbiosis and its potentially interesting moral implications–they just didn’t (it seemed to me) do the work necessary to develop that story, and sell it.

   Reply
4. 

   Randi Cohen

   January 13, 2015

   I don’t know… it didn’t seem that sociologically implausible… why work when someone else is paying the bills and has been for centuries?  A fair point about the

   credit but I can imagine more strange cultural variances than just the lack of interplanetary credit.

   Agree the Prime Directive is again misinterpreted.  And truthfully I can’t fault you for not liking the episode, certainly the ideas introduced could have been explored more

   thoroughly and in a more nuanced manner.  Still, the fact that it is bringing up “big ideas” in any way is so refreshing!

   This brings the eps I have liked so far to 2.  Hopefully more to come…

   Reply
5. 

   Kevin Black

   January 13, 2015

   We need a tiebreaking vote!

   Reply
6. 

   Kevin Black

   January 13, 2015

   Comments on this thread are not meant to say that I think matters of taste are subject to popular vote. 🙂

   I think the prime directive was probably motivated originally by the intuition that attempts to interfere in an unbalanced technological situation by engaging in social engineering, however well-intentioned, are as likely as not to backfire, to the huge detriment of the less developed culture. See: the real world. Also, moral relativism theory says that our judgments about the choices made by foreign/alien cultures are inherently suspect. This doesn’t stop the Federation from engaging in trade relations for vital resources, however, when the culture is sophisticated enough to provide something of value, even if it isn’t space-faring, see “Friday’s Child,” “Errand of Mercy,” and “Mirror, Mirror.” It doesn’t stop anthropological research, or building relationships with natives in situations in which technological superiority is withheld and disguised, see “A Private Little War.” 

   It does mean that maybe we shouldn’t smash a primitive society’s central controlling computer (“Return of the Archons” and “The Apple,” in which Kirk does just that), or engage in the kind of social manipulation shenanigans found in “Bread and Circuses,” “Patterns of Force,” and “A Piece of the Action.” Although in the last one, Kirk decides that having already made an unwitting mess if things, the best path forwards is to break the rules some more. I remember reading that someone wrote a comic book story about a return to the “A Piece of the Action” planet, where it was discovered that Kirk’s new interference had completely devastated the place, not long after the Enterprise flooshed away.

   There’s a case to be made that the prime directive (which wasn’t even called by that name until late in the second season) wasn’t very rigorously applied in TOS–but so far, I don’t like the direction they are taking with the stories about it in TNG. More to come, I gather. Sigh.

   Reply
7. 

   Randi Cohen

   January 13, 2015

   Agree that the whole Prime Directive usage in this episode makes little sense, although also agree with Kevin that perhaps it was intended to avoid “getting involved in a land war in Asia”  and so has some justification (see, A Private Little War).  

   But yes, that whole “don’t save the dying girl even though you have superhuman powers, Riker, because using them would potentially corrupt you in the abstract” logic is frustrating at best, and this is perilously close to that logic.  

   On the other hand, can Enterprise go around randomly righting wrongs in the Universe, Quantum Leap-style?  Where is the line where people need to work things out for themselves in their own time even if there is more suffering along the way?  Wouldn’t there be infinite work to do if the Federation started meddling in internal politics of sovereign space nations anytime it perceived injustice?

   Also, saving one people from addiction means dooming the other culture to losing its entire economic underpinnings, with all the chaos and potential suffering that entails.  Does the Enterprise want to take on helping them to cope with the repercussions?  What would stop the addicted race from vengefully destroying the drug pushers once they realized what was going on?  It would have been better, I think, if these questions, which are the most interesting ones in the episode, had been addressed on their face rather then sweeping them under the carpet of “The Prime Directive”.

   Then it might have been a great episode, rather than one I am choosing to pass on my personal rating scale for making an attempt.

   Reply
8. 

   sunny jim

   January 13, 2015

   I’m going to nit-pick a small point here – What about the medical ethics issue for Dr. Crusher?  Doesn’t she have a duty to tell her patients (the two aliens going through withdrawl) the truth about their condition, and encourage them toward a course of treatment that will be better for their health in the long term?  What the hell justification is there for not telling them the truth immediately?

   Reply
9. 

   Randi Cohen

   January 13, 2015

   I would have loved to see Crusher passionately making that point to Picard!  That would have been a real “Bones”-type moment and enhanced her credibility vastly as a doctor and as a thinking person on the show.  

   Boy, it is too bad we are not writing this series!  

   Reply
10. 

    R. Alex Reutter

    January 15, 2015

    It’s an actual scientific mission?!  Yellow alert!  

    Hm… maybe these prominences were more impressive back in 1987.  I’m not feeling it.  Looks just like our sun.

    Then, a distress call.  A freighter is about to burn up in the atmosphere of a planet in the system.  The freighter captain, and seemingly his crew, are less than competent at their jobs.  How did they get these spaceships in the first place?

    Tasha is once again at the transporter controls.  This time we see her wave off an engineer.  Maybe she’s better qualified?  The crew sends over their cargo before the crew, and when the people start to come over, two are lost.

    The four survivors begin to fight with self-powered electrical impulses, or something, and Yar has to break them up.  “Behave yourselves, gentlemen.”  I like the slightly dangerous undertone of her delivery and her later note that it’s a difficult weapon to confiscate.  Unfortunately, we’ve quickly gone from a scientific mission to the Itchy & Scratchy show.

    No… no, it’s not the Itchy & Scratchy show, it’s a cultural mystery.  So… the cargo is “medicine”, but the two survivors who are “infected” seem to have symptoms that are more like withdrawal than sickness.  Has Dr. Crusher never been instructed in what drug addiction looks like?  The “medicine” is even called Felicium!  Have they abandoned Latin completely?

    Okay… Dr. Crusher isn’t a complete idiot.  She figures it out when she seems the Ornarans taking the Felicium.

    Wha..?  Why can’t they interfere?  Picard gives no reason other than “we can’t”.  

    Yar suddenly gives a “knowing is half the battle” lesson on drugs.  This is only interesting in that you wonder if she herself was an addict.

    Oh, we conveniently forgot about the electrical powers of the Ornarans so that they threaten Number 1 and Picard could talk them down.  Frakes pulls a Shatner-worthy mug as he’s being electrocuted.

    They’ve twisted themselves into into a bad spot, trying to make Picard “clever” in his application of the Prime Directive, but as thoroughly discussed above, it all seems like a hack job.  Would have loved to see that proposed discussion between Crusher & Picard, with Yar involved to provide the ex-addict’s perspective.

    Reply