The next discusses Star Trek: Picard, Season Three, Episode 7, “The Dominion.”
I reckon there’s a few generations who had been raised, in complete or half, by their televisions. With surrogate dad and mom who confirmed us a greater way of life was potential and that the simple answer isn’t all the time finest. Jean-Luc Picard was a pacesetter of precept, with spine and a perception that humanism ought to all the time prevail. When given the prospect to , who had tortured, dehumanized and used him as a meat puppet to homicide 1000’s of his colleagues, he demurred. In his personal model of the Trolley Drawback, he was initially in favor of wiping them out till his colleagues, together with an aghast Dr. Crusher, satisfied him in any other case. Their objections helped reawaken his humanity and reminded him that there was a greater means.
Star Trek: Picard doesn’t simply really feel its lead made the unsuitable determination again then, it abdicates any kind of debate to justify why the choice is healthier. Holding an unarmed Vadic prisoner on the Titan, Picard and Crusher agree the one plan of action is to execute her. This comes after Crusher has already conceived constructing a brand new anti-changeling virus, solely giving a second’s thought to the notion that it will be genocidal. Crusher, so typically Star Trek: The Subsequent Technology’s most ethical compass, even says that Picard’s lure has invited demise upon the Titan. When Jack is threatened, there’s no contemplation of alternate options or smarter options past these discovered on the business-end of a phaser. Are we watching Star Trek or 24?
However, to be even-handed, it’s additionally potential to supply a weaker, however current, argument that Picard is wrestling with America’s place in a post-Iraq world. For the reason that Dominion Struggle has been retrofitted (fairly completely) as a Struggle on Terror analog, then the changeling virus should now be seen as equal to the invasion itself. Shaw has given voice to the concept greater than as soon as that the changeling virus has radicalized a era of zealots searching for revenge. But when that’s the case, why is there not a larger examination of what any of that might imply in the true world? Perhaps as a result of it’s so arduous to think about what a peace would appear to be that there’s no level even making an attempt.
I’d love nothing greater than to see Star Trek convincingly argue for the alternative simply to see what that might appear to be. And it’s clearly one thing that Trek of previous engaged with, in “,” Picard wrestles with the choice made in “I, Borg,” telling Riker “the ethical factor to do was not the proper factor to do.” A greater venue for this, nevertheless, was in Deep House 9, a present a lot better suited to portray its canvas in shades of grey than The Subsequent Technology’s beige-carpeted explorers. “,” arguably one of the best hour of Trek ever made, makes the case that killing two individuals will save billions extra, and makes it properly. However Avery Brooks and Andrew Robinson’s performances each present that whereas they will make that case intellectually, neither has something near a clear conscience.
As for the remainder of the episode, Picard hatches a plan to lure the Shrike and lure Vadic on board by taking part in possum, which ends up in some phaser-fu fights when Jack realizes that he’s telepathic, sufficient to cross his punch-fight data onto LaForge. In the meantime, we study that Vadic is, or was, a sinister Part 31 scientist who merged with certainly one of her changeling captors, and a changeling that she was torturing and experimenting on has vowed revenge on the Federation. At this level, my sympathies are nearly lurching towards the changelings.
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