Athene Watches Star Trek Enterprise: How To Get Away With Franchise Murder

[Leila Hann]

It's needless to speculate, because the episode utterly butchers biology and medicine.
"Genetic degradation" is not a thing.
A species doesn't evolve into dying out, unless there's sudden changes in the environment. The above infectious agent could be such a change, but then the episode goes and says it's entirely genetic, so who the fuck knows? You can interpret this episode as being something like that infectious agent meeting something like sickle cell anemia - genetic traits that are beneficial unless you get two copies of it are absolutely a thing. But why would you?
What most viewers will get out of this episode is a butchered version of evolution where it has some intent or destiny you can interfere with - for one species to get some place, while the other doesn't.

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One thing that SFDebris pointed out is that this episode misunderstands evolution in two incompatible ways. On one hand, we have this insane genetic destiny bullshit with the Velakians somehow "evolving" themselves to death for no reason. On the other, we're told that the Menk are getting smarter and more capable, but that they won't be able to reach their full potential with the Velakians crowding them out. So, evolution both doesn't care about environmental pressures, and DOES care about environmental pressures (but still not in the way it actually does irl), simultaneously. It's just tripping over itself to justify genocide, no matter how little sense it makes even according to its own internal logic.


Anyway, I first saw this episode when I was a dumbass 20 year old griller, and even then I thought it was both painfully science-illiterate and extremely fucked up morally. In retrospect, looking at it from a more critical standpoint, it's even worse than I remembered. The fact that Phlox was not only okay with genocide, but was also okay with apatheid, and also thinks his own species is superior to seemingly all others, and also apparently can't understand why anyone would care about their pets or empathize with fictional characters...this episode is either painting him as a total psychopath personally, or Denobulan society as a nightmare horrorshow that the Romulans and Cardassians could never hold a candle to.

Not that many of those alleged traits of Phlox's are consistent beyond this episode. There are plenty of instances of him caring about both animals and fictional stories throughout the series both before and after this. Fortunately.


It's kind of too bad, because if you stripped away the nazi shit the idea of a species who just can't get emotionally invested in things that don't read as real people to them could be interesting to explore in Star Trek. If the Denobulans were persistently written as perplexed by other species' investment in stories (almost like the Thermians from GQ, but for different reasons) and near-familial attachment to pets, that would be a fine hat for them. Especially if you also took the Epicurean angle seriously and have them all be adventure and novelty-seeking extroverts, so we can maybe understand why they find stories boring and would rather do things themselves.

And of course, even within this episode, the writers ruined that possible interpretation by having Phlox say that his people DID used to watch movies once before they learned to touch grass and that they are very smug about this. So, no interesting xenopsych, just one more way that Denobulans are assholes to pile atop the many others.

 

[JevvyPython]

Besides the obvious I wish they'd done something to explore the Vulcan comparison here. It would've been a good chance to really examine the good things the Vulcan did for Earth, that the Humans are now taking for granted and even find stifling.

There's a lot I didn't get to cover in this one since the plot is small but objectionable. Mainly more details like this:


Buddy, who on this ship don't you feel superior to?

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The really terrifying thing is that, simply by volunteering to work on a Human ship, Phlox is probably one of the most outgoing and friendly representatives of his species.

 

[Stardust&Scotch]

Buddy, who on this ship don't you feel superior to?

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Fuckwad could look at a xenomorph and say "it's clearly not intelligent enough to feel contempt, therefore I am the superior being".

...god, there's a thought: if you dropped this crew into "Alien" instead of the Nostromo, I'd have a hard time not actively rooting for the xenomorph.

 

[grommile]

Fuckwad could look at a xenomorph and say "it's clearly not intelligent enough to feel contempt, therefore I am the superior being".

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This just makes me think of "I'm laughing at the superior intellect."

 

[dhasenan]

I'm reasonably sure the Vulcans have sufficient transport capacity for such a thing.

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It would be a very lengthy project. They'd need to set up a colony and manage transportation to it. It would take time to grow the colony to self-sustaining levels for the entire Menk population, and a decent chunk of that will be research to adapt their crops and farming techniques to the new lands. They'd need to develop industry from scratch. The Vulcans would also need communications so the Menk don't believe (reasonably!) that this is a genocide project and they're going to be fired into the sun.

It's probably decades of work.

Also I'm not sure they have that kind of transport capacity. If it's a whole planet of people, you're probably looking at hundreds of millions. We don't see ships in this era with passenger capacities above, what, a few hundred? The Enterprise has a crew of like 55. And it could be weeks to get to the colony, even at Warp 5. It's reasonably likely that population growth will be faster than transportation rates.

A species doesn't evolve into dying out, unless there's sudden changes in the environment.

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They can, actually!

Consider a genetic mutation that causes a male mosquito to produce sperm that will only produce male mosquitos. This is also a sex-linked trait, so it will be passed on to the offspring. 100% of that mosquito's offspring will have the trait. Each subsequent generation, more and more of the mosquitos will be male. Eventually, the entire population will die out because there are no more female mosquitos.

This has even been tested. There are a couple hundred mosquito species that are relevant for spreading malaria, and we're pretty sure none of them are essential to their ecosystems. If this pans out, we could mostly eradicate malaria.

 

[Red Rationalist]

It's probably decades of work.

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Oh, I don't disagree here. However, if Dr. Phlox cares so much about a species that he is willing to cause a genocide, I think a couple of decades lobbying for the non-genocide solution are something he would certainly be willing to try. Unless he wants to purge the Valakians, while using the Menk as a prop.

Also I'm not sure they have that kind of transport capacity. If it's a whole planet of people, you're probably looking at hundreds of millions. We don't see ships in this era with passenger capacities above, what, a few hundred? The Enterprise has a crew of like 55. And it could be weeks to get to the colony, even at Warp 5. It's reasonably likely that population growth will be faster than transportation rates.

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The Enterprise isn't a good baseline for comparison here. It's a military ship, designed for a small number of (theoretically) competent specialists. There are presumably ships with a lot more transport capacity, especially for colonization. Think of the difference between cruise ships and submarines.
Earths very first colony ship could move several hundred people and the Vulcans have been around the block for quite some time. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume they have some significant advancements in transport capacity, given that they had hundreds of year to work on their designs and specifically the engines.

 

[ElMariachi]

This week on T'pol is right...

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You know that this episode will be wild when T'Pol and Archer agree on something.

 

[FaeGlade Plural]

Consider a genetic mutation that causes a male mosquito to produce sperm that will only produce male mosquitos. This is also a sex-linked trait, so it will be passed on to the offspring. 100% of that mosquito's offspring will have the trait. Each subsequent generation, more and more of the mosquitos will be male. Eventually, the entire population will die out because there are no more female mosquitos.

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<Tobi>

First, it's obviously not evolution if it is introduced into a population via genetic engineering. Though of course, you could suppose that such a trait could occur on it's own.
Second, this can actually be tested in evolutionary algorithms, and generally fails in any larger population.

Third, it should be rather obvious why. For the modified trait (let's call it trait B) it is beneficial if there are more female mosquitoes around. After all, it results in more male mosquitoes, which need female mosquitoes to produce. Thus, it is selecting against itself. You may argue that that is the point, to wipe the species out. However, you are forgetting about the original trait (let's call it trait A). As long as it is still present in the species, any population with it will have a reproductive advantage.
To examine this further, let's split our Mosquitoes into several populations - 2 are enough for our purpose, though in reality you would of course have more.
Population B has the modified trait, Population A does not.
Let us assume that the modified trait spreads far enough in population B that they all, or nearly all, have it. This sharply reduces their ability to reproduce - by 95%, as stated in the article.
Population A, meanwhile, keeps their original reproductive rate. This gives population A a massive reproductive advantage.
Now, we may assume that population A and B may cross over at some time. This may happen due to geographic distance, or it may happen because both populations lived in the same place, but we must treat them as seperate because both have different traits!
You may assume that Population B spreads it's trait into Population A at that point, which of course is true. However, Population A still exists, and B is at a reproductive disadvantage over it. Thus, it is not possible for Population B to out-compete it.

This is really just a basic way in which disadvantageous traits can persist to some extent in a species. The assumption is that the trait spreads throughout the whole species, but the only testing was done on small populations, where that is more or less a given. You can not extrapolate that to a whole species.

Note that this does not mean that genetically modified mosquitoes would not work, since they could be introduced into many populations (so in that example, both population A and B and all others would have the modified trait).

 

[Athene]

If it's a whole planet of people, you're probably looking at hundreds of millions.

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We don't know how many people are on the planet and we especially don't know how many Menk there are. We only know that 12 million people are dying a year and that has the Valakians launching dozens of suicide ships into space to try to contact people for a cure.

How much of the population is Menk? We don't know. They could be the majority, a significant minority or be less than a million people. Is it just that single village? Who knows, the episode doesn't think it's important enough to mention!

 

[RecklessPrudence]

*snip*

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*snip*

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I'm far more interested in the other mozzie gengineering project, the one that doesn't risk disrupting whole ecosystems - making them literally incapable of being vectors for malaria. There's the possibility of doing the same for other mozzie-borne diseases like Dengue or Ross River, but malaria's both the easiest to make mozzies incapable of carrying and the worst for its effect on humans. Apart from that one tweak the mozzie is entirely normal. (EDIT: I think they're also gonna breed mozzie males selecting for the things that will make them attractive to females, so as to ensure as many of the mozzie population gets their genes from their tweaked males as possible? Basically breeding super-sexy males after they tweak them. Yes, the scientists involved are gonna breed mozzie gigolos, lol) And it's done using a gene drive, so that one tweak is essentially hyper-dominant and will go to all offspring.

Interestingly, the 'wipe out the mozzies' research is mostly being done by countries who don't have to worry about mozzie-borne diseases, as well as the US, while the 'make the mozzies mostly harmless' research is mostly being done by countries that either have large mozzie populations already or soon will due to climate change.

 

[Avernus]

First, it's obviously not evolution if it is introduced into a population via genetic engineering. Though of course, you could suppose that such a trait could occur on it's own.

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It does happen on its own spontaneously in a number of insect species. Since it takes only a single genetic mutation it can and does emerge randomly despite being a long term disaster for that population.

 

[Lord Chimera]

Re-reading the episode's script, Phlox has this say:

We'd be interfering with an evolutionary process that has been going on for thousands of years

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Then you have this from the ENT episode "The Chase":

You're wondering who we are, why we have done this, how it has come that I stand before you, the image of a being from so long ago. Life evolved on my planet before all others in this part of the galaxy. We left our world, explored the stars, and found none like ourselves. Our civilisation thrived for ages, but what is the life of one race, compared to the vast stretches of cosmic time? We knew that one day we would be gone, that nothing of us would survive. So, we left you. Our scientists seeded the primordial oceans of many worlds, where life was in its infancy. The seed codes directed your evolution toward a physical form resembling ours. This body you see before you, which is, of course, shaped as yours is shaped, for you are the end result. The seed codes also contained this message, which we scattered in fragments on many different worlds. It was our hope that you would have to come together in fellowship and companionship to hear this message. And if you can see and hear me, our hope has been fulfilled. You are a monument, not to our greatness, but to our existence. That was our wish, that you too would know life, and would keep alive our memory. There is something of us in each of you, and so, something of you in each other. Remember us.

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Humanity and the others races which might include the Denobulans are product of an interfered evolutionary process that happened billions of years ago. The irony...

So yeah, Phlox's version of evolution isn't set on stone.

 

[Memphet'ran]

Oh fuck off. Phlox is written like he's self diagnosed himself with Asperger's in 2007 and is posting about how he's not handicapped by his emotions. Also he's either a liar or once again the writers can't remember shit because he watches The Court Jester in a later episode where he's even tripping balls so he has even less excuse.


I would rather listen to Neelix, Henry Mudd and Season 1 Wesley Crusher record season's worth of podcasts than spend 10 minutes with this guy. He's telling us that he quite simply has zero ability to feel actual empathy for others. Not in the Vulcan repressed way, but in a really fucking smug way. Can you imagine? Being moved to tears by the struggles of another person? This is during For Whom the Bell Tolls, so he probably thinks Farewell to Arms is a jokebook. I. Fucking. Hate. This. Guy.

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This could be interesting if his species are like those Elves from The Nightmare Stacks and are basically all sociopaths. An attempt at a sympathetic portrayal of a member of a species like that could be quite interesting.

If I went that route, I think I might make him an Elaasian, cause I've got an idea that their society might work kind of like how Charles Stross's Elves work, with their "make you fall in love with them" tears serving a role in their society similar to the role the geas serves in Strossian Elf society.

Or another proposition: keep the plot mostly the same, but use it as a surprise villain reveal: until now Phlox looked like your typical aloof but well-meaning doctor, and then this episode comes, give us his POV on the week's situation and life in general, and you realize how fucking wrong this guy is in his head, and have him lie to Archer about the fact that he can make a cure, and worse, have him instead cook up a medicine to help the symptoms (as "the best" he can do) that will actually strengthen the plague so even another warp-capable race will have a hard time developing a cure, so that Phlox's twisted vision of evolution can carry on unimpeded.
Then have the rest of the series continue as normal, except that now you'll always second guess Phlox's true intentions: when he says that he can't find a solution to this week's problem, is he genuine or lying for the sake of his Space Mengele twisted belief? When he treat a patient and give him medicine, is it just what's written in the label, or did he add some extra ingredients?

Of course, it'll all come together in a future episode where his villainy is revealed to the crew, at which point they either stop him or he escapes and continue his dark works. (selling his services to the highest bidder to fund his researches)

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Or, a softer version of this, a belief in something like Providence is a major part of the philosophical tradition of Phlox's people and his reaction to this situation reflects that. I think that might work nicely as a deconstruction of that teleological view of evolution Star Trek has going.

 

[Athene]

This could be interesting if his species are like those Elves from The Nightmare Stacks and are basically all sociopaths. An attempt at a sympathetic portrayal of a member of a species like that could be quite interesting.

If I went that route, I think I might make him an Elaasian, cause I've got an idea that their society might work kind of like how Charles Stross's Elves work, with their "make you fall in love with them" tears serving a role in their society similar to the role the geas serves in Strossian Elf society.

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Replacing Phlox with a Discworld Elf.

 

[Kuja]

"Nobody ever said Denobulans were nice."

 

[Kadmus]

But that would require the writers realising Phlox was a villain and a psychopath, not the guy with the very sensible and very reasonable point about how we have to secure a future for our white children play god by not playing god since the slave species managed to fill his personal criteria for being people.

 

[Tylonius]

This is the guy that once said "It's unethical to harm a patient; I can inflict as much pain as I like. "

 

[SemiSaneAuthor]

"Nobody ever said Denobulans were nice."

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... So. Phlox as a member of a secret surviving population of Iconians and they are in fact the main villains before the Romulan War?

Why can I in a one line sentence, that isn't that well thought out, come up with basically a better plot than most of Enterprise?

 

[Red Rationalist]

... So. Phlox as a member of a secret surviving population of Iconians and they are in fact the main villains before the Romulan War?

Why can I in a one line sentence, that isn't that well thought out, come up with basically a better plot than most of Enterprise?

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Because Enterprise writing is optimized for the least amount of effort, and has a fundamentally terrible outlook on the world? Seriously, the writers of Enterprise included ideas just to fill time, especially when it came to temporal cold war.

 

[Memphet'ran]

Consider a genetic mutation that causes a male mosquito to produce sperm that will only produce male mosquitos. This is also a sex-linked trait, so it will be passed on to the offspring. 100% of that mosquito's offspring will have the trait. Each subsequent generation, more and more of the mosquitos will be male. Eventually, the entire population will die out because there are no more female mosquitos.

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The episode as written would work a lot better if the problem was something like this and Valakians were almost asexual and mated only to reproduce (so you wouldn't have to worry about a lot of the potential nasty social consequences something like this would have in humans). That way, nobody would be dying of the disease, the Valakian population would just be gradually getting smaller as the birth rate declined and the older generations died of natural causes; the place would basically look like Japan. In a situation like that Archer choosing to "not play God" would be much more defensible; he could just go "this is properly a decision for the democratically elected government of Earth, not me," and it'd be completely understandable, there wouldn't be any body count associated with giving the cure a few years or decades later instead of right now.

Re-reading the episode's script, Phlox has this say:


Then you have this from the ENT episode "The Chase":

Humanity and the others races which might include the Denobulans are product of an interfered evolutionary process that happened billions of years ago. The irony...

So yeah, Phlox's version of evolution isn't set on stone.

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Speaking of Prime Directive ironies (not my website):

"Note also that the Prime Directive is based on the (inferred) ethics of the benign alien observers imagined by UFO‐cultists. The oddity of this is highlighted in the episodes when the Enterprise becomes a UFO; like "First Contact" (ST:TNG4), with its brave UFO‐spotters vs. a Malkorian government coverup. But hang on; twentieth‐century Terran Ufologers never were being watched by the United Federation of Planets!"

I think I said earlier in this discussion that the Prime Directive might work better as an institution the Federation inherited from much older cultures, and one idea I kind of like is in Star Trek the resolution of the Fermi Paradox is "the Preservers have enforced relative non-interference with developing societies for billions of years," and the Prime Directive is basically the Federation writing galactic law into its own constitution as part of its treaty with the Preservers (lots of people get away with violations of galactic law as long as they're on a relatively small scale compared to the galaxy, but aggressive imperialists who make a habit of conquering pre-warp planets tend to get stomped by the Preserver equivalent of Black Angels sooner or later).

 

[JevvyPython]

You know in an 'ideal' revised Star Trek Enterprise I wouldn't want to fix Phlox entirely. It could have been genuinely interesting to have him, and possibly his species, be this psychopathic and morally broken, but nonetheless trying, on some level, to play nice with others and how people try to handle and encourage that.

I have this image of Phlox smiling at an injured crewman, laughing at a joke and to all appearances giving good bedside manner then walk over to Archer and tell him stone faced that he's discovered Ensign Javers is lactose intolerant and his entirely bloodline will have to be sterilized.

 

[FaxModem1]

I will note that I'm a defender of the Prime Directive in a lot of cases, the chief one being that you don't know what's best for people and getting involved without being asked to do so presents a dangerous diplomatic attitude.

Having a bunch of aliens come by and solve the Black Plague prevents the Renaissance from happening, and that prevents all sorts of positive developments for Western civilization, such as the emergence of labor rights, the Age of Exploration, the Science revolution, the Enlightenment, etc.

You don't want to uplift a species like the Krogan from Mass Effect or the Kazon from Star Trek as they're still not ready to deal with the realities of having to play nice with other yet, and would be a menace to their neighbors. Giving warp drive or advanced computers to someone like Genghis Khan is probably not going to end well for anybody.

That said, in cases of Extinction level Events, it's probably best you stop the asteroid from hitting the Stone Age level planet or their atmosphere from going kaput or whatever. This is why episodes like this and Homeward come across as so monstrous, because our heroes are happily watching an entire culture be wiped from the universe when they could easily fix it, and the locals either don't need to know you did so, or are already aware that you exist so there won't be any damage done.

 

[Dahak]

Laying it on really fucking thick there aren't we guys? Surprised you didn't just have Archer say "We need some kind of primary directive out here!"

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Judging by Miri (Sending messages into space to beg for help means General Order 1 doesn't apply), TOS Starfleet doesn't agree that the Prime directive would apply here.

That said, in cases of Extinction level Events, it's probably best you stop the asteroid from hitting the Stone Age level planet or their atmosphere from going kaput or whatever.

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Like in the Paradise Syndrome. Though there they were trying to stop the asteroid before they actually knew the planet was inhabited.

TOS does have two episodes showing the need for the Prime Directive. Piece of the Action and Patterns of Force. The second of which has the Federation historian who created NaziWorld explicitly state he should have stuck to the Prime Directive.

But actually being as well written as the original series is apparently beyond the Enterprise writers. And would lower the opportunities for the protagonists to own the liberals by being hard men making hard decisions while hard.

Smithian heroes who somehow manage to live in a harder scifi universe (in at least two senses of the term) would be looking at them and wondering if the Enterprise crew deserved a Mohs number as high as 3.

 

[FaxModem1]

A fan theory I've held onto as to why Archer became so much more reasonable in later seasons is One, the Xindi war made him grow up a lot, simply due to having to be outside of his comfort zone for so long and seeing negative things impact him because he couldn't fix things.

And Two, Archer had Surak's katra in his brain for a period of time at the beginning of season 4. If anyone can stabilize and make one appreciate the need for logic, peace, and understanding, it's the founder of Vulcan society and logic being in your head and ripping away illusions you have about how evil Vulcans are.

Phlox? I think Phlox just kind of bided his time being with humans, and was even surprised at the end of season 4 that he actually cared about them.

 

[Athene]

Judging by Miri (Sending messages into space to beg for help means General Order 1 doesn't apply), TOS Starfleet doesn't agree that the Prime directive would apply here.

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I think a good rule of thumb is that if the Ferengi have made contact with an alien race, you are in a race to stop them from exploiting them, even if the crew of the Enterprise doesn't know that.

We the audience do however and so WHY DID YOU SAY THE FERENGI HAVE MADE CONTACT?!