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

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Athene said:
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?!
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What's more surprising to me is that they met the Ferengi and haven't already been given a cure.

Granted, a lot can change between the 22nd and 24th centuries, but the TNG era Ferengi at least are supposed to be up there with the Federation when it comes to science (biomedical stuff in particular, in fact, even if they're usually shown using it for more dastardly purposes than healing). If Phlox was able to figure out a cure in just a few weeks or whatever, then Ferengi doctors should be able to do the same. And, as you pointed out, the Ferengi would just love to turn an entire planet into debt slaves, so if anything they'd be much more motivated to give this their all than Phlox was.
 
Leila Hann said:
What's more surprising to me is that they met the Ferengi and haven't already been given a cure.

Granted, a lot can change between the 22nd and 24th centuries, but the TNG era Ferengi at least are supposed to be up there with the Federation when it comes to science (biomedical stuff in particular, in fact, even if they're usually shown using it for more dastardly purposes than healing). If Phlox was able to figure out a cure in just a few weeks or whatever, then Ferengi doctors should be able to do the same. And, as you pointed out, the Ferengi would just love to turn an entire planet into debt slaves, so if anything they'd be much more motivated to give this their all than Phlox was.
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I figure the Valakians didn't have anything the Ferengi wanted to buy.
 
Leila Hann said:
What's more surprising to me is that they met the Ferengi and haven't already been given a cure.

Granted, a lot can change between the 22nd and 24th centuries, but the TNG era Ferengi at least are supposed to be up there with the Federation when it comes to science (biomedical stuff in particular, in fact, even if they're usually shown using it for more dastardly purposes than healing). If Phlox was able to figure out a cure in just a few weeks or whatever, then Ferengi doctors should be able to do the same. And, as you pointed out, the Ferengi would just love to turn an entire planet into debt slaves, so if anything they'd be much more motivated to give this their all than Phlox was.
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They probably didn't have a doctor on board and are going to rush back :V
 
Athene said:
They probably didn't have a doctor on board and are going to rush back :V
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Or the Varakians aren't part of whatever exploitative health insurance scam the doctor on board is registered with, so they had to get in comms range to negotiate exactly how much of the wealth the planet of debt slaves will generate has to go to the HMO.
 
I recall a DS9 episode where Quark tried to claim to Sisko that Ferengi were morally superior to humanity (not that I exactly consider him a reliable source); it would have been funny if he could have included this mess in that.

"Ohhh, the big bad Ferengi exploited the Varakians ruthlessly? Well, at least we didn't leave them all to die like you did!"
 
Avernus said:
I recall a DS9 episode where Quark tried to claim to Sisko that Ferengi were morally superior to humanity (not that I exactly consider him a reliable source)
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TBH, for all that he's maybe not the most reliable source on Ferengi culture as a whole, he's also genuinely surprisingly close to a conscience for DS9 from time to time (not with regards to his business practices, give or take reluctance to sell weapons and willingness to sell food cheap to the Bajorans during the occupation, but with in particular his attitudes towards violence). A critic I particularly like once pointed out that:
Abigail Nussbaum said:
When the [Dominion] war breaks out and the Starfleet characters begin sublimating themselves to the war effort, knowingly and willingly going to their deaths or sending others to theirs, Quark watches in mute, and sometimes not so mute, horror.
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He's consistently the one who remains the most horrified by violence, and he surprisingly often cuts through the pretensions of others -- 'House of Quark' in particular:
Quark said:
Go ahead, kill me. That's why I'm here, isn't it, to be killed? Well, here I am, so go ahead and do it. You all want me to pick up that sword and try to fight him, don't you? But I don't have a chance and you know it. You only want me to put up a fight so your precious honour will be satisfied. Well, I'm not going to make it so easy for you. Having me fight D'Ghor is nothing more than an execution, so, if that's what you want, that's what you'll get. An execution. No honour, no glory. And when you tell your children and your grandchildren the glorious story of how you rose to power and took Grilka's House from her, I hope you remember to tell them how you heroically killed an unarmed Ferengi half your size.
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Not to say that he wouldn't have a rose-tinted view of the Ferengi (he absolutely does, and between Ferengi treatment of women and, y'know, capitalism, I'm skeptical of his claim that Ferengi didn't have slavery [if maybe not full-on chattel slavery, tbf]), but I think there's something to the idea that, at least with regards to cruelty, genocide, and so forth, the Ferengi genuinely might be better. (Hell, while we don't know how well the reforms Ishka pushes through stick, or whether they'll be implemented across all of society or mostly just at the upper fringes, it is worth pointing out that within the runtime of the show (just a few short years, in-universe!) Ferengi society has, at least on the surface, changed incredibly radically (and for the better)).
 
I can't wait until we get to A Night in Sickbay. If Dear Doctor assassinates the character of Dr. Phlox, then A Night in Sickbay is where we find out how truly deranged Captain Archer really is.
 
Reveen said:
Huh, I guess Operation Space Paperclip didn't work out so good.
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Vulcan High Command surreptitiously brought Phlox and Co over to their space after defeating the Denobulan Reich, but now that they've realized how worthless their research actually was they're trying to hide their shame by fobbing them off on unsuspecting client species like the humans?

Sounds canon to me.
 
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The Victorian said:
I can't wait until we get to A Night in Sickbay.
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That is not a sentence I expected to read today or ever, actually.
Reveen said:
Huh, I guess Operation Space Paperclip didn't work out so good.
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Yeah, it's like they got Lysenko, while hoping for someone like Haber. If you rescue nazi scientists to use them in a cold war, check their work for basic errors first! I'm sure this advice will save many readers from this common error.
 
Leila Hann said:
Vulcan High Command surreptitiously brought Phlox and Co over to their space after defeating the Denobulan Reich, but now that they've realized how worthless their research actually was they're trying to hide their shame by fobbing them off on unsuspecting client species like the humans?

Sounds canon to me.
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This is the real reason they built Earth's first Warp 5 starship.

"These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. And to keep Dr Phlox and Captain Archer as far away from us as humanly possible!"
 
JevvyPython said:
This is the real reason they built Earth's first Warp 5 starship.

"These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. And to keep Dr Phlox and Captain Archer as far away from us as humanly possible!"
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Well, as Mariner put it over in Lower Decks, "You know what they say; keep your friends close, and your enemies way the hell somewhere else."
 
"Eugenics fanboy convinces his dumbass reactionary captain to commit genocide by inaction in the name of an abhorrent instrumentalisation of evolution" could actually be an interesting Star Trek plot if it was something the heroes had to fight against instead of doing it themselves. This really is SecCom shit lol.
 
Speaking of exactly how awful they were in this episode, even if it was entirely against the spirit of Star Trek, I'd kind of like to see an AU of Season Three where the Xindi were just acting on Archer's behavior. They thought that the Enterprise's actions were representative of humanity and decided they had to destroy them while they could still be defeated.

Aiming to wipe out an entire planet/species would still be terrible but if they're looking at Earth as a rapidly advancing militant culture that goes around the galaxy engaging in eugenic genocide they could be turned into real anti-heroes or anti-villains.
 
Frankfawn43 said:
I.... What? This shit can't be real. You have to be fucking with us. You can't tell me this shit actually went on television. They couldn't have actually done a eugenics and genocide episode and end with the bad guy actions being the heroic morale. This is insane. It is like saying all the doctors who healed both sides of a war and criminals are in the wrong despite swearing to heal everyone they can and not do harm. Christ this show is killing my brain cells. Thank God some other schmuck is watching this.
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I saw it on first airing and was completely stunned by the conclusion (and the reasons used to justify it). It is, by a very long chalk -- not that there isn't some competition -- the single worst episode in the entire franchise.

There's some people out there who like to play games about whether Phlox's argument is 'really' genocidal on the grounds that the Enterprise does give pallative measures and the entire species isn't gonna die, like, tomorrow. Those people are fundamentally missing the point of the objections.
 
It say a lot about Dear Doctor that its generally considered to be worse than the other "Worst episode in the franchise" Threshold, which is the one where Tom Paris and Janeway turn into Newts and breed.
 
IfIhadaHammer said:
It say a lot about Dear Doctor that its generally considered to be worse than the other "Worst episode in the franchise" Threshold, which is the one where Tom Paris and Janeway turn into Newts and breed.
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Yes, but they got better and we then pretended they never turned into Newts in the first place. [/Nobody expects a partial-Python Bad Joke right now!]

How did Dear Doctor get better? And how can we petend it never happened?
 
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