"Your Honour, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life. Well, there it sits. Waiting." - Picard
"Your Honour, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life. Well, there it sits. Waiting." - Picard
TNG s2e9 "The Measue of a Man"
That episode annoyed the shit out of me.
First off the entire premise of a court martial or hearing is freaking stupid.
The admiral forcing Riker to "prosecute" Data is stupid.
The idea that Starfleet (or the federation) doesn't already have some list of qualifications for sentience or sapience or whatever term you want to use to say 'they're like us'; is patently stupid. And we'll add to it that an Admiral whose job it is to weigh in on these matters, wouldn't have checked if such a test existed, is even more so.
The only realistic thing in this episode is some exploitive asshole shopping around for an incompetent (or bribable?) judge.
but what bugs me most of all? when Riker makes the "So he can be turned off," argument, Picard didn't immediately whip out a phaser and say, "yeah. So can you. <ptssssrrrshhhh>" and then have Crusher bring him back just to make a point.
Another nit about Riker's argument: at one point he detaches Data's arm to demonstrate that he's a machine. Four years later Riker's arm was amputated and reattached by the subspace aliens in Schisms.
Man, okay, I'm being pedantic, but it's a pet peeve of mine, so bear with me. It's "court-martial", not "court marshall". "Martial" means "pertaining to war" or, by extension, the military.
Apparently the process of setting up a hearing and appointing advocates that way is borrowed from US navy processes, which is a fun factoid I read somewhere, but it does raise questions about why Starfleet seems to model its legal system and a bunch of other stuff on an archaic national military tradition despite being neither American nor the military. But then again, it actually isn't the first time Trek sets up that bit of lore, since it's also the framing of the flashbacks for The Menagerie in TOS. Where, by the way, they outright say Starfleet has the death penalty, which just seems insane and barbaric.
The legal argument makes less sense, and I sympathise with the impulse to want a specific standard for sentience. But again, Trek shows a bunch of times they don't have one. TNG alone has like what? Three, four examples of episodes where the plot hinges on whether a nanomachine or a non-humanoid entity or some other random hostile thing is sentient or not.
fixed the typo, I should have known better.
In any case, like, the Prime Directive absolutely would require a robust, well crafted definition. Like. without one... are Serpent Worms sentient? I mean, they probably have some form of sensory apparatus, right? they feel. yet how often do we see starfleet officers slurping down gagh? or beaming down to some random world and fucking up the environment for science? at least some of those plants and all the animals "feel".
In order for the Prime Directive to be enforced... it would have to be something that's not totally left to arbitrary standards. Even if the courts were ran by some of the galaxy's most notorious stoners... it'd still have to have some level of precedent.
And it's not like this isn't the first time they came up with artificial intelligence that's possibly sentient. You got Vger, the M-5 multitronic thingamadoo. Then y you got things that weren't immediately recognized as sentient- Horta, the microbe thingies discovered earlier in Home Soil. the Crystalline Entity in Datalore.
this question would come up every single time a ships captain makes first contact with a new species. it's part of why they have the prime directive.
Like, IRL, JAG-lady would have just interviewed Picard, maybe Riker or some of the other senior crew, Maybe consulted Troi. Sat down with Data and worked through whatever test would almost certainly exist for guidelines and then render a decision. (this technically would have been a deposition.) And that decision would have been "Maddox you're an ass for wasting our time with this shit." (maybe worded a bit more politely.)
The underlying purpose of the article is to show that while some in starfleet are... not as enlightened, most of starfleet is and it makes the right decisions. But like. nope nope. That this went that far shows they're not nearly as enlightened as they think they are.
Which could have been a very sinsister and subversive backplot that could have been amazing, I guess. but then they stuffed it down like it wasn't. (I mean, a lot of people in the US think our legal system is amazing and fair and enlightened. it's not.)
It also annoyed me because the ending of the TOS episode I, Mudd was about how the androids were given freedom and independence and were now able to form an independent society and develop as a culture.
But suddenly androids don't count?
The arguments made should already be sorted, undoubtedly. It's the grandiose speeches and courtroom drama in and of itself that make it memorable. Strange New Worlds s2e2 "Ad Astra Per Aspera" is a more worthy entry.
Absolutely the hell not. Ad Astra Per Aspera actually has all the issues people sometimes attribute to Measure of a Man with the added problem of being effectively a rehash of Measure of a Man with a much worse script.
I mean, in Ad Astra they are literally having a hearing about an officer having illegal genetics because she was modified by her parents. The entire notion is absurd, as the implication is that had she disclosed her mods she would have been rejected while hiding her mods is itself illegal. So suddenly Starfleet doesn't just outlaw making genetic modifications, it straight up makes people WITH genetic modifications illegal.
Which is crazy and wouldn't even fly on any semi-reasonable legal system today. It's straight up genocidal, as presented. At the very least it's actively racist. And for lore reasons they end up needing to simultaneously let her off the hook while keeping what is now recontextualized as outright apartheid stand because it needs to remain in place to still not make much sense when it applies to a different character later in the lore.
I get what they were going for, but man, it was one of the early instances of SNW wanting to do a thing and not quite getting the point of the thing they were trying to do.
I dunno. I think Picard taking a phaser to Riker because he's being a dick would be even more memorable. Glorious. Possibly even grandiose if Picard put a little brandish in the draw.
Lets just be realistic here, the Prime Directive wouldn't work if they hadn't already sorted them. first off, the PD is restricted to sentient life or cultures. If it weren't, eating a non-replicated salad would break the PD. or keeping a houseplant. Which, then would obviously require some highly codified definition of what 'sentient' was- and almost certainly would have already had massive amounts of precedent, including standardized tests to be applied whenever someone who might be sentient is found.
Presumably, the only reason the PD would not apply to Data is because he was "made". but the PD applies to clones, which are also made.
"Did you run the sentience tests?" "yes...?" "Did he pass?" "but he was manufactured!! they don't apply?" "Did he pass?"
Maddox new this, is which is probably why he waited until Data was off Earth, or so far on the fringe that the only appropriate place to hear this was on a fringe space station so new that the JAG officer didn't have enough jurors and had to do a drumhead trial.
Man, it always gets me.
Not even the Picard speech, although it's a good Picard speech.
It's the slavery bit with Guinan. Goldberg is gut-wrenchingly good in that scene. She defines the character, the episode, the subject and the entire show with the energy of a "very special episode" but the gravitas and emotional punch of genuinely all-timer good sci-fi.
It's too bad Whoopi Goldberg has ruined so much goodwill by being generally unpleasant because she really is a terrific actor.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
I'm not particularly keen on projecting artists onto the finished product, particularly compared with the average outrage culture of US terminally online people. Even if I was, she isn't a presence in my local media, so "generally unpleasant" wouldn't be a factor anyway.
How can I be a good man if we don't discuss what a good man is?
There might be a few bits of discussion glossed over. Furthermore...
One of my favorite episodes exposing that just because someone is different and built differently doesn't mean there less of a person. Idk how you all don realize that this show has extreme amounts of subtle political tones to it. As someone who is autistic I even see it. It a show and sometimes not everything in it lines up. It's for entertainment. that episode helped me realize that just because I'm autistic and trans doesn't mean I'm less of a person because I'm different.
My thoughts every time I see that episode:
That's a great quote. I like it.
The stoicism of Marcus Aurelius rings true even now. Also a brilliant TNG episode, well worth the occasional rewatch.
Idk, kind of a trash philosophy when applied.
I'm sure all the world's greatest dictators thought themselves the best of men.
