So I'm just going to do this one post, commenting on the two most recent episodes of Enterprise, and leave it at that. Who knows? I may be compelled to complain again in the future, but it's not going to be a "regular feature" of this blog.
The writers of Star Trek aren't just inconsistent with story details, they're negligent
Today's post is blue, just because I'm feelin' wild and crazy!
Ok, I've finally decided to write about Star Trek on my blog. I've hesitated to do this for a while, for two reasons.
1) I'm sure if commentary on Star Trek is what you're looking for, there are countless other sites on the web that do just that, and do a much better job at finding plot holes than I'll do here. Try Google.
2) Star Trek being a weekly show, I figured if I started commenting on it, I'd be compelled to continue, and nothing will kill this blog dead faster than that kind of weekly commitment! So I'm just going to do this one post, commenting on the two most recent episodes of Enterprise, and leave it at that. Who knows? I may be compelled to complain again in the future, but it's not going to be a "regular feature" of this blog.
Anyway, in the most recent episode (and I don't know any of them by name) Trip ends up in a coma from an accident with the warp engine. Dr. Flox' plan is to use a critter from a desert planet -- which for some reason lives completely submerged in a tank of liquid, uh-huh -- to create a clone of Trip so as to harvest part of the clone's brain to transplant into the original Trip to effect a cure. They use the story as a fairly obvious morality play on the ethics of using cloning technology to create human transplant organs, where a complete human individual needs to be grown, merely to harvest his organs. I don't oppose this kind of morality play, and in fact think these are the kinds of issues people need to think through today as this will be a real ethical dilemma we'll have to work through soon in the real world. After all the Raelians claim to have already cloned a human being, and have only refused to prove it to the world... If they didn't actually do it, it'll only be a matter of years, decades at most, before someone does.
What people need to realize is this: A clone of you would be most like your twin -- not some kind of mindless automaton, but a real person that will take 20 or so years of child rearing and education before you can call him or her "grown up" -- a person just like you and me absolutely deserving of all human rights. The only difference between a clone and someone born the usual way would be the problem animal clones currently have -- a mysteriously shortened lifespan. However this is nothing more than a medical condition to be overcome. Human cloning will not be a way to create a mindless army to carry out your nefarious scheme, but a way to create more people, just like "test tube" babies and the more traditional horizontal hokey-pokey.
Anyway, the lifespan of the clone in this episode of Enterprise was only 15 days, in which time it would be born, grow into an adult, grow old and die. The clone at one point in his "adult" life -- about 10 days old -- discovered research from the planet the critter he was came from, that there is a drug that very likely could slow his rate of growth and allow him to live out the rest of his life in a more normal time span for a human being. This plot device is used for a debate on the rights of the clone vs. the rights of the original. Ultimately the clone "solved" this intractable moral dilemma by sacrificing himself to the brain transplant, which would kill him. It was thought in the beginning that the clone could survive the transplant and live out the last five days of his life, but too late Dr. Flox discovered this was not the case after all, and that the transplant would in fact kill him.
The gaping plot hole in this Star Trek episode so big you could fly a Borg cube through it is this: Once the clone's brain tissue was transplanted to Trip, it would only live for five more days. Would this be long enough to cure Trip? The new part of his brain isn't going to last long -- is it only needed to kick start the rest of his brain?? That would be a plausible explanation, but it's also one I thought of myself. The writers of Star Trek did not tell us this. They overlooked it completely -- even after the whole deal about the five more days the clone could have lived had they opted not to do the transplant. Another explanation would be the drug the clone mentioned that would slow his aging process. But at the time Dr. Flox acted like this drug was really dangerous or something. That doesn't make it seem likely that he'd use it on the transplanted tissue.
So the writers were so busy rendering moral anguish and ethical dilemma over the whole situation that they completely left out a rather large technical detail that speaks to whether the whole idea that created the ethical quandary would even work!!
Clearly somebody forgot to write "Tech Here".
The episode before that was the one where they discover humans living on a far away planet as if in the American old west. Cowboys. Turns out their ancestors had been abducted by aliens from Earth, from the old west, and brought to this planet as slave labor. They'd since overthrown their oppressors and won their freedom, and were now oppressing the remnants of their abductors.
Now I like this kind of story. It's interesting to see how they're going to explain away the idea of having not only found human beings living so far from Earth, but also living as if in a page torn from our very own past. Cowboys. The old west! Ye-ha!! I also like the notion of colonies of humans formed from people supposedly abducted from Earth by aliens at various times in history. It�s a fun idea to think about, though I absolutely do not believe aliens have ever really visited us here on Earth. I also liked the episode of Star Trek Voyager where they discovered Amelia Earhart, and several other people from around the 1930s, on a planet left there in suspended animation under similar circumstances of alien abduction.
But back to the "old west" planet. So here they all are living in an old west town, riding horses, drinking whiskey in the saloon, and lynching the descendants of the aliens who abducted and brought their ancestors here. Bar keep! I'll have me a sarsaparilla! Play me a tune on that thar player piana!
Wait a minute -- horses?!? Huh? How did horses get to the planet where in between lynchings the cowboys rustle something called "blue horn cattle"? Are we to suppose the aliens abducted horses too? It's plausible -- a human slave labor force would be much more effective if you let them use the beasts of burden they'd bred for centuries for that purpose themselves� But again -- I thought of that!! The writers of Star Trek offered no explanation whatsoever for the all the horses seen everywhere.
Now I still nominally "like" Star Trek. I have to be watching it to be able to write all this, don't I? But the writers are just getting really careless, and yes, negligent with this kind of detail. They leave the real fan with a lot of work yet to do to make the story consistent. It's annoying because I do basically like the show, even still. I've liked all incarnations of Star Trek, some more, some less. That's why this kind of carelessness with important plot details is so disappointing.
