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Yeah I'm happy to accept that it's magical sci-fi conversion therapy that does work, but it's still an episode about a queer woman being unpersoned and the crew going 'drat that's hosed up' and just flying off at the end, it's horrific and I don't think the writers realised the magnitude of what they'd written, given like no other episode even touches that type of darkness
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Apr 26, 2024 15:26
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? It's prime directive 101 do we have the right to interfere in other societies hosed up bullshit they went to that well so often. Soooo often
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Apr 26, 2024 15:28
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:? It's prime directive 101 Let's count the number of prime directive episodes that don't end with the prime directive being broken: The Outcast
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Apr 26, 2024 15:30
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It's one of the hazards of trying to do sci fi allegory of real world marginalized groups, you can't really encompass the whole of the problem in 48 minutes. At best you get something silly and awkward like "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" and at worst you get Kitty Pryde using the n-word.
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Apr 26, 2024 15:38
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My read from the time I watched the episode when I was 12 when it first aired was that someone was essentially killed for being who they were. 32 years later, it's clumsy for sure which opens up other reads on the episode. But I have trouble seeing an angle that puts anything the J'naii does as anything other than wrong. Also, though Picard tells Riker that they can't interfere, he knows his first officer. The fact that he wasn't confined to quarters or dressed down afterwards makes me think Picard wanted him to succeed and deal with the consequences afterwards. It's easier for him to advocate on Riker's side if he's not a co-conspirator.
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Apr 26, 2024 16:08
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No Dignity posted:Yeah I'm happy to accept that it's magical sci-fi conversion therapy that does work, but it's still an episode about a queer woman being unpersoned and the crew going 'drat that's hosed up' and just flying off at the end, it's horrific and I don't think the writers realised the magnitude of what they'd written, given like no other episode even touches that type of darkness Half a Life: Lwaxana's new boyfriend goes home to be put to death and the crew goes 'drat that's hosed up' and flies off. The Perfect Mate: The Enterprise is complicit in trafficking a woman into slavery. The crew goes 'drat that's hosed up' and flies off. Hard Time: O'Brien is traumatized almost to the point of suicide and there's no easy technobabble way to fix it. The crew goes 'drat that's hosed up' and... um... stays put. The good guys don't always win and horrific things sometimes happen to characters.
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Apr 26, 2024 16:11
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Homeward: The entire bridge crew is ready and willing to condemn an entire pre-warp civilization to death because they haven't reached an arbitrary point of progress, until Nikolai saves them.
F_Shit_Fitzgerald fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Apr 26, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 16:14
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The Survivors: The Enterprise finds out that a guy committed genocide against an alien species. The crew goes 'we have no law to handle your hosed up crime' and flies off.
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Apr 26, 2024 16:17
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The Uxbridge situation seems to raise different questions than the other ones, as I imagine the Federation does have laws on the books regarding genocidal acts. The problem is that Uxbridge appears to be a Q, or something approaching a Q, and he might do the same thing to the Federation he did to the Husnocks if they try to arrest him. He might do the same thing to the Federation if they don't find him guilty. Or not guilty enough.
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Apr 26, 2024 16:24
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What are they going to do, put him in jail? Bunkmates with Tom Paris?
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Apr 26, 2024 16:40
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Yeah, they're not so much worried about him acting against the Federation as they are realistic about the fact that they have no way to punish him, and on top of that, they've never before had a legitimate reason to question mens rea for genocide, he's deeply regretful, he's already punishing himself, and he'd undo it if he could. That's not a situation the Enterprise can really improve in any regard.
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Apr 26, 2024 16:45
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Powered Descent posted:Half a Life: Lwaxana's new boyfriend goes home to be put to death and the crew goes 'drat that's hosed up' and flies off. The Perfect Mate: The Enterprise is complicit in trafficking a woman into slavery. The crew goes 'drat that's hosed up' and flies off. Hard Time: O'Brien is traumatized almost to the point of suicide and there's no easy technobabble way to fix it. The crew goes 'drat that's hosed up' and... um... stays put.
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Apr 26, 2024 16:48
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That's a completely TNG era phenomenon. Kirk seemed to have more latitude to actually interpret the Directive for himself (controversially, in the case of something like A Private Little War), but Picard adheres to rigidly to the letter of the law that there are several times over the course of the series where they're about to let an entire alien species vanish. The scene in Homeward, I think, is one of TNG's worst moments - right up there with Code of Honor.
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Apr 26, 2024 16:50
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disaster pastor posted:Yeah, they're not so much worried about him acting against the Federation as they are realistic about the fact that they have no way to punish him, and on top of that, they've never before had a legitimate reason to question mens rea for genocide, he's deeply regretful, he's already punishing himself, and he'd undo it if he could. That's not a situation the Enterprise can really improve in any regard. He should be forced to have bad tea for eternity
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Apr 26, 2024 16:54
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:That's a completely TNG era phenomenon. Kirk seemed to have more latitude to actually interpret the Directive for himself (controversially, in the case of something like A Private Little War), but Picard adheres to rigidly to the letter of the law that there are several times over the course of the series where they're about to let an entire alien species vanish. The scene in Homeward, I think, is one of TNG's worst moments - right up there with Code of Honor.
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Apr 26, 2024 16:57
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Nessus posted:The Uxbridge situation seems to raise different questions than the other ones, as I imagine the Federation does have laws on the books regarding genocidal acts. I think what Picard was getting at was more like they probably don't have laws for 2nd degree genocide and they don't have a dozen nigh-omnipotent beings to serve as a jury. The scope of his actions and levels of power eliminate the possibility of objectivity.
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Apr 26, 2024 17:01
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:I think what Picard was getting at was more like they probably don't have laws for 2nd degree genocide and they don't have a dozen nigh-omnipotent beings to serve as a jury. The scope of his actions and levels of power eliminate the possibility of objectivity. There's also the matter of enforcement.
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Apr 26, 2024 17:03
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That's the real problem. We can charge you with 40 billion counts of first degree murder, but then what are we going to do with the omnipotent being who can delete an entire species with a thought? It's a good example of a problem they don't solve because there is simply nothing the Federation can do about it except leave him alone and hope he's genuine about the pacifism and remorse.
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Apr 26, 2024 17:33
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Grand Fromage posted:That's the real problem. We can charge you with 40 billion counts of first degree murder, but then what are we going to do with the omnipotent being who can delete an entire species with a thought?
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Apr 26, 2024 17:40
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He wandered the galaxy for a long time before he met his wife. I'm certain he's aware he could use his powers all over the place. He deliberately chose to not use his powers while he was married and then the first time he used them was in a moment of grief and rage that annihilated an entire civilization. I really doubt he'd be receptive to "hey how about you come out and meddle in the galaxy for us?"
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Apr 26, 2024 17:44
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Uh, actually, I'd say that manipulating a godlike being into "doing good" is great example of the kind of cosmic arrogance the Federation should avoid.
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Apr 26, 2024 17:59
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Powered Descent posted:Half a Life: Lwaxana's new boyfriend goes home to be put to death and the crew goes 'drat that's hosed up' and flies off. The only mistake there was leaving Timicin behind. The planet literally favoured having their sun go out rather than use a solution from a guy who was too old because he dared question tradition. Just like there's the Omega directive Starfleet should have a fragging directive which orders you to glass any planet that shows levels of stupidity so high they endanger the quadrant.
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Apr 26, 2024 18:01
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:That's kind of the point. Showing that conversion therapy "works" removes the argument "we shouldn't do conversion therapy because it doesn't even work" and puts the question of "should we do conversion therapy?" onto exclusively ethical grounds. No. Star Trek doesn't straight up ask "hey is it good to genocide [real life groups]" when it reframes or makes an allegory for something. It uses an alien species, or a similar idea, but it doesn't do the exact same thing. In contrast, The Outcast is literally just doing the thing. "Oh, you have a gender that society doesn't approve of? Time for mandatory therapy to fix you" is what happened to me, in Canada, in the 2000s. It's not a reframing, it's not an ethical discussion, it's just loving doing it. If you go and look at the M-A page for the Outcast, the writers discuss how it's supposed to be an allegory about gay tolerance. As someone already noted (and as Frakes himself has opined on), they didn't feel they could hire a male for the role to go with Frakes, so they hired a woman and made it about gender instead. And they made it even worse with that change. As I already noted, I don't blame the writers. Or anyone involved in it, honestly. But the actual end story is horrible and inexcusable in 2024. (Reminder that this whole thing started by someone saying "11:59" is the one unwatchable episode in all of Trek you should absolutely skip, which is a fun joke opinion, but that's the measure I'm comparing the Outcast to.)
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Apr 26, 2024 19:53
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Absolutely not joking about skipping 11:59
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Apr 26, 2024 19:56
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zoux posted:Absolutely not joking about skipping 11:59 it's not a good episode but I think it's fun to see Kate Mulgrew in Lifetime movie protagonist mode
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Apr 26, 2024 21:16
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Nessus posted:The Uxbridge situation seems to raise different questions than the other ones, as I imagine the Federation does have laws on the books regarding genocidal acts. I must, once again, draw a distinction between genocide and extinction. McSpanky fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Apr 26, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 21:25
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Yeah I'm sure Arivia and I aren't the only gender-nonconforming people ITT and I feel like the least you should expect from Star Trek is that it not affirm that undercurrent of suspicion that there's just something inherently wrong with you as a human being. I really don't care that it was the 90s
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Apr 26, 2024 21:33
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Arivia posted:No. Star Trek doesn't straight up ask "hey is it good to genocide [real life groups]" when it reframes or makes an allegory for something. It uses an alien species, or a similar idea, but it doesn't do the exact same thing. In contrast, The Outcast is literally just doing the thing. "Oh, you have a gender that society doesn't approve of? Time for mandatory therapy to fix you" is what happened to me, in Canada, in the 2000s. It's not a reframing, it's not an ethical discussion, it's just loving doing it. I'm very sorry that happened to you, but that is literally not what that episode is doing, unless we get reductive to the point of saying every time someone dies by another's hand the show is supporting murder by "just loving doing it". The J'naii aren't directly converting gay people to straight or trans people to cis, the society doing the "fixing" is unambiguously portrayed as wrong for doing so, and they only get away with it because of the tragedy of our heroes coming too late to the rescue, not because they decided the J'naii were right. And the show extensively frames Prime Directive issues generally as "is it right for us to interfere in the affairs of less developed/sovereign polities", the actual cause of interference is rarely morally ambiguous in and of itself. As for what the writers intended, that's always interesting to learn for academic purposes, but it really doesn't change anything about how I approach this episode. There's no stunning revelations there given when it was made and broadening allegories tends to make them more effective, not less.
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Apr 26, 2024 21:54
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It's a lovely episode, Spanky
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Apr 26, 2024 22:06
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Halloween Jack posted:Yeah I'm sure Arivia and I aren't the only gender-nonconforming people ITT and I feel like the least you should expect from Star Trek is that it not affirm that undercurrent of suspicion that there's just something inherently wrong with you as a human being. I really don't care that it was the 90s I still don't see how the episode is affirming that. The people doing the techno-conversion poo poo to Soren are the bad guys. Our protagonists all find the practice, and the attitude behind it, unambiguously evil. Yes, the episode ends tragically, but that's not at all the same thing as saying the bad guys were right after all.
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Apr 26, 2024 22:31
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Halloween Jack posted:It's a lovely episode, Spanky How can I argue with this ironclad reasoning?
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Apr 26, 2024 22:34
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McSpanky posted:How can I argue with this ironclad reasoning? You might want to read the room just a little in arguing with every trans in the thread about how a story about conversion therapy was handled
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Apr 26, 2024 23:07
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It's definitely not a perfectly told story but I will say that I and my family in the 80s/ 90s did not know any out trans people (or even gay people really) and the fact that Riker (the hero) was like no gently caress that and then the result was basically that they killed her... was powerful. I've never once heard that anyone took away from that episode anything positive about conversion therapy, quite the opposite. They didn't just fix something that was broken, they unpersoned her and she's gone. that part is just dead, and it was written as tragic and wrong. The fact that Future Space Science can lobotomize someone not to be queer is just a quintessentially sci-fi way of examining the real practice that exists now. Given the constraints put on them by the studio at the time I've always felt they did a pretty good job of that I'm sorry to hear other people didn't have that experience and I'm now going to talk about it with all my queer nerd buddies and get their take because I'm so surprised and curious
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Apr 26, 2024 23:25
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zoux posted:Kitty Pryde Is this from the new x man cartoon or the comics?
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Apr 26, 2024 23:33
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Arivia posted:No. Star Trek doesn't straight up ask "hey is it good to genocide [real life groups]" when it reframes or makes an allegory for something. It uses an alien species, or a similar idea, but it doesn't do the exact same thing. In contrast, The Outcast is literally just doing the thing. "Oh, you have a gender that society doesn't approve of? Time for mandatory therapy to fix you" is what happened to me, in Canada, in the 2000s. It's not a reframing, it's not an ethical discussion, it's just loving doing it. Yeah, good points. From everything I've read the episode was written with the intention of using it as an allegory for gay tolerance and that didn't change. It's just they were either totally ignorant of how close to home the story was going to be or didn't think it was similar enough. It's like trying to do an allegorical story about the Holocaust and using Romani as a stand-in for Jews. The idea of it being an allegory becomes less and less the closer it gets to a real-life situation. If they really wanted to do a sci-fi allegory about homosexuality they could have gone with something like: -A species that reproduces asexually but some want to have sexual relationships (IIRC this happens near the end of The Forever War) -A planet with an overpopulation crisis and heterosexual sex is forbidden -A species with an immune system intertwined with their reproductive system in such a way that having sex with the same person twice is usually lethal, and someone is an outcast because they want monogamy -A vulcan whose Pon Farr is different in that it doesn't drive them to fight or mate and is instead pleasurable which is seen as an abomination
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Apr 26, 2024 23:47
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- a captain or chief engineer who doesn't want to gently caress their ship
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Apr 27, 2024 01:22
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CPColin posted:- a captain or chief engineer who doesn't want to gently caress their ship Belief can only be suspended so far.
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Apr 27, 2024 01:25
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Khanstant posted:Is this from the new x man cartoon or the comics? Comics, in the storyline "God Loves, Man Kills"
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Apr 27, 2024 01:29
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:Yeah, good points. From everything I've read the episode was written with the intention of using it as an allegory for gay tolerance and that didn't change. It's just they were either totally ignorant of how close to home the story was going to be or didn't think it was similar enough. It's like trying to do an allegorical story about the Holocaust and using Romani as a stand-in for Jews. The idea of it being an allegory becomes less and less the closer it gets to a real-life situation. Funny enough Star Trek did do an episode with a Holocaust denial allegory where the people being genocided were heavily Roma- and Jewish-coded. It ended with the Federation crew shrugging their shoulders and saying "both sides say they're right, but the accuser is interrupting our party with these nice friendly people and being rude. Who can say what the truth is?" and just flying off. http://www.littlereview.com/getcritical/trek/remember.htm
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Apr 27, 2024 01:37
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Is the argument "you can't talk about conversion therapy' or "you can't talk about trans people"? As far as I know they weren't trying to do the latter, and as for the former, why not? I don't think it's a great episode, but the performances are pretty good and stuff about alien gender and sexuality stuff is always pretty interesting. The tragic ending is upsetting, but it's not the first or last time Star Trek does some dark stuff, and the episode is cearly trying to put forwards a positive message.
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Apr 27, 2024 02:46
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