Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Star Trek and Moral Myopia: The Myth of the Neutral Action

I am a huge Star Trek fan. I grew up on watching every week the trials and travails of the Voyager crew with my mother and sister. When I grew older one of my mother's boyfriends gave her a TV recorded set of the best Next Generation episodes. Even if he stank as a boyfriend, that was pretty sweet. It was only near the end of high school that I started watching Deep Space Nine. It turned out to be my favorite, and continues to be till this day, and likely forevermore.

Like all shows, Star Trek has had its ups and downs. And there is one episode in particular I despise like none other. What are its sins? Is it bad writing, laughable effects, shoddy pacing, infuriating character derailment?

It is none of these. It is evil.

That word is not one I use lightly or frivolously. Furthermore, it is often seen as one of the best episodes of the show by some people. A justification is in order.

The episode in question is from the oft derided "Star Trek: Enterprise." Entitled "Dear Doctor," it employs a narrative device of having the character Doctor Phlox narrate his day to day thoughts and happenings as a letter he is writing to a human friend of his back on the his home world. During the episode, an alien race contacts the vessel and begs the Enterprise for help. Their entire species is dying. Their own doctors being helpless to stop the disease the is afflicting an increasingly large portion of their race, the Valakians have turned to aliens for help.

Captain Archer of course agrees to help. When the crew arrive on the Valakian home world, one of the first things noticed is the Valakians are but one of two sentient species on the planet. The other species are called the Menk. They are unaffected by the disease, and are generally seen as less intelligent and capable than the Valakians. They usually are servants and service workers for the Valakians. Evidence from Phlox's and the other crew mates interactions with them though indicate that the Valakians are underestimating their abilities and intelligence.

The central conflict comes to a head when Phlox discovers that the so called "disease" is a genetic mutation that is increasingly prevalent among the Valakians. He comes up with a cure, but refuses to use it.

Why?

Because according to him, the genetic disease means that nature and evolution have destined the Valakians to die, and the Menk to rise up and dominate the planet. After one day of interaction with the Menk, the Doctor concludes they are getting smarter. To cure the Valakians would interfere with their natural evolution. So to death's cold embrace they must go.

That's bad. What's even worse is that Captain Archer agrees with this garbage, citing the old cliche of "not wanting to play god." And thus an entire species is doomed to die painfully by one man. And then the episode even has the temerity to have Archer winkingly cite some sort of "Prime Directive" to not interfere that Starfleet should cook up one day.

Tabling the the fact this episode's understanding of evolutionary biology would be laughable in a less despicable context, this script has a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire concept of the Prime Directive and non-interference. The Prime Directive was Gene Rodenberry's response to the United States believing it had the right to organize the affairs of any country it pleased, famously resulting in such lovely enterprises such as the Vietnam War. The core of the Prime Directive was about formally making note of the dangers in believing you know better than the natives how to run things.

Yet none of this applies to the situation in this episode. The Valakians were begging for help. And they weren't asking for weapons to crush a hated enemy or for technology they didn't know how to handle or understand. They merely desired survival. Rather than Vietnam, this was India getting hit by a tsunami.  

Yet incredibly, this episode is cited by many as one of the few episodes that Enterprise did well, that had complex moral dilemmas and even handed debate.

Now, most of these people are smart enough to defend the unadulterated horse manure that is this episode's take on evolutionary science. Yet defend this episode they do.

This comment from a Star Trek reviewer's website* is fairly representative of the general arguments of the defenders:

The question of the hour is about stakes--on the one hand, many seem to agree that when the extinction of a species is the inevitable outcome of inaction, any moral nuances are rightly cast out in favour of simple human compassion. It sounds alright in those terms, but only because the stakes are so high...the problem is our compassion sometimes blinds us to the larger picture. We see existing as an end unto itself, because, evolutionarily speaking, we want to exist for as long as possible. This isn't a question of correcting the injustice of an agressive alien culture against another or aiding the victims of some isolated natural disaster, we're talking about one crew, one man taking responsibility for the ultimate fate of an entire species, and by proxy an entire civilisation. Becoming extinct by way of your own genes is not "genocide."

What Archer realises, finally, in this episode is that holding up human values an example is one thing, but inflicting them, even upon request, on a scale beyond the comprehension or purview of what any individual can possibly apprehend is hubristic in the extreme.

To quote the ever-wise Picard, "[t]he Prime Directive has many different functions, not the least of which is to protect us. It keeps us from allowing our emotions to overrule our judgment." 


Got that? Preventing an entire sapient species from dying is letting compassion overrule our reason, and to do so is "inflicting" human values on another species, even on request. Because desire for your species not to die is a human value. And of course, would be playing god.


While the conflation of compassion and irrationality is both annoying and distressing, there is a far more fundamental flaw in this reasoning that inspired me to write this post.

The flaw is this: Doing nothing isn't staying above the fray or morally neutral. Doing nothing is as much a choice as choosing to interfere.

Captain Archer pushes a button, an entire race is saved. He does nothing, they are doomed. They are doomed because of a choice he made, even if it was to do nothing but watch. The commenter would have us believe that Archer was refusing to play god. This is only compatible with opting for genocide of an entire species if you believe in the fallacy described above.

Rather than going for the uncertainty of a living and breathing society, Archer prefers the quiet certitude of a tomb.

*Seriously, if you have any interest in Star Trek, read this guy's site. While I intensely disagree with his opinion on this episode, most of his reviews are spot on and are quite thought provoking.
http://www.jammersreviews.com/st-ent/s1/deardoctor.php

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