Rajin & Similitude

[Alelou]

I would love to see an pen ended discussion of this episode. Gloves off. I feel fairly certain that there are some who don't believve that this is the most wonderful episode of Enterprise. I will fess up. I am one who doesn't care for the Episode at all.

There have been quite lively discussions/arguments about this episode already -- you might want to do a search of older threads about it and pick up where they left off.

I'm not particularly interested in revisiting those arguments myself at this point, but I'm probably just exhausted from a nice weekend rich in Trekkiness.

[Silverbullet]

Alelou, believe I will give it a pass. Been slapped down and burned on other boards over this Episode.

I had been too frank in some posts on what I disliked about the Episode.

I overlooked that basicaly it was a Soap Opera Episode. Designed to tug and the feelings of the audience.

So the holes I saw were not about the soaper aspect but nit picking at holes in the science.

Learned my lesson.

[Distracted]

Heh. Science? What science? Since when has Trek had anything even remotely resembling accurate science? I'm no physicist, so I won't even get into "warp drive" and the debate about whether it's possible or not, but just looking at what I do know something about...human biology...is enough to give anyone like me who's even remotely OCD about scientific accuracy a very large ulcer. Cloning I can buy. I can even suspend disbelief enough to accept a rapidly growing clone. I mean, if you're gonna be amoral enough to create a sentient being for convenience's sake you might as well make it VERY convenient, right? The fact that we already have a name for tissue which grows at uncontrolled speeds, and that name is CANCER, shouldn't make it totally impossible to somehow take all the growth restraints away from human tissues and still have the resultant being come out looking at least remotely human, right? And we'll just completely disregard the fact that it would require CONSTANT high calorie nutritional intake without pause 24 hours a day to even come close to keeping up with such a growth rate. I can do that.

No. My bone of contention was with the memory transfer business, which, if you'll pardon my language, was the biggest load of horseshit I have EVER seen in ANY SF storyline, bar none. What moron came up with that? What could said moron possibly have used to justify such an assumption? Clones are identical twins of their donors. End of story. No "genetic memory" or pseudo-psychological mumbo-jumbo could possibly explain memory transfer between donor and clone. It's asinine.

Ummm...you did say you wanted a "gloves off" discussion, right?

[Silverbullet]

Distracted, I was thinking in terms of things like when the Enterprise achieved a speed of 12kph that Archer told the Shuttle to come in. Regardless of the fact that the shuttle could never generate ernough power to overcome the Enterrpise weight factor since they were held in a magnetic bind. also overcome the magnetic clamp on eterprise. In open space a slight shove by one of the Shuttlepods would have been sufficient to get Enterprise moving and keep moving. but not in that Iron anomlly with its magnetic hold on enterprise. the anomoly did kill enterprise interia when it w s traveling at a speed of almost 6 in Warp drive. It did it suddenly. anyway, by coming in the shuttlepods would have ceased providing power to continue the momentum of Enterprise. the Entrprise was still in the anomoly and it would again be stopped suddenly as no power was being provide for the momentum. If Enterprise had been in open space then the shuttlepods could have come in but not in the anomoly.

Second. Once the Enterprise was out of the anomoy it was in Xindi space and any Xindi ship that came along, reptilian, would call in a few friends and there would be a helpless Enterprise with no power and no weapons. the xindi would have the happy choice of destroying enterprise and crew, boarding Enterprise and taknng the crew captive then destroying Enterprise or simply towing Enterprise to their home planet and then boarding and taking the crew captive.

The bit about the Lyserian scientists performing secret experiments to create an enzyme to extend the life span of a clone. Well if they were experimenting in secret they damned sure were not going to publish anythng. so, how could Phlox replicate their experiments. He said that there was no evidence that a workable enzyme had been developed. So, Phlox could not be able to replicate, he would not know what engrediants would go into the enzyme or even if he had access to the engreidants, what species of clone the enzyme was being developed for. the enzyme may have kiled a human clone. so that bit of business was stupid.

There were other things but you can see what I mean by science.

[WarpGirl]

Bravo Dr! And even IF genetic memory was possible wouldn't it work both ways? I mean the whole point of creating Sim was to give Trip a brain transplant am I right? I haven't seen it yet. So wouldn't Trip recover Sim's memories as well? I know I read a story about it on HoT, although the title and author escape me at the moment. But Trip never does remember ANYTHING about Sim. So it makes even less sense.

To be fair to ST the "Earth science" was pretty accurate I aced highschool with it. BTW I really liked Distracted's story "Charlie" on HoT and FF.net.

[Alelou]

Yes, I love Distracted's story Charlie too. I still think Similitude was the most moving episode they did on Enterprise, even though the 'science' in that particular bit of science fiction was utterly ridiculous (and even within the episode they broke their own rules of how the thing was supposed to work).

[WarpGirl]

Because I haven't seen it yet I can't judge, but off the bat I have a crazy feeling that everyone in that episode has gone slightly insane. The medical ethics are non-existant, morality (human but ESPECIALLY Vulcan) is cast off, and on top of it all there are no consequences. I hope it's as good as you say, but I have little hope.

[pdsldl]

To watch and appreciate Star Trek you can't ever worry about science. Trip got pregnant with a child that only had it's mother's DNA. I'm sorry but how exactly does that work unless you're birthing clones. Can't remember which vital mineral or whatever they always needed that in real science is heavy water. They didn't even bother to make things seem plausible most of the time. I did well in science but I'm not a geek and the errors are obvious even to me so you know they didn't invest in a science consultant to at least make sure they weren't going against known real science.

Sim was about the ethics of science and scientists. It was about rights and choices on both sides of the cloning issue. Things which according to recent news and scientific reports we will all be dealing in real life sooner than I ever thought possible and not just in a scifi flick. It also served to advance the TnT storyline in that episode and Harbinger so why sweat something the whole franchise is blatantly guilty of.

[Distracted]

Thanks for the positive strokes about "Charlie", guys. When I wrote it I had to grit my teeth and go with what the writers gave me, which honestly didn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense, and make a believable story out of it. I liked what I came up with, but a lot of people didn't. Each to his own.

I'm no physicist, silverbullet, so I have to admit that I don't understand a lot of what you just said, but SF in general ignores known science all the time. Inertia would make "dogfights" in space ponderously slow, but did you see the fighters in BSG take 20 minutes to turn around? Of course not. It may be good science but it's bad TV.

My philosophy in writing Star Trek fanfiction is to try to use the known (admittedly often ridiculous) established technobabble and plausibly build from there. Assume THIS impossible thing is possible and THEN what happens? Otherwise my OCD-ness would make it impossible for me to write any of this. It's all FANTASY, people. None of it happened. None of it probably ever WILL happen. So I try not to stress about it too much. Except to gripe when it's too stupid for words.

I do that with a lot of TV shows, BTW, not just ST. You don't want to watch House with me and my husband in the room. We drive my daughter nuts picking apart the bone-headed stuff they write about on that show. It can be fun to look for loopholes as long as you don't take them...or yourself...too seriously.

And reproduction without male fertilization exists naturally in the animal kingdom in some insects, reptiles, and even rarely in sharks. It's called parthenogenesis, so the writers of the episode where Trip gets pregnant by the lizard girl actually did their homework. Of course, how she managed to transfer the embryo to him using nothing but a bowl full of shiny rocks was never explained.

[WarpGirl]

I hate "House" too for that reason and others, I'm a professional patient not a Dr. but you pick things up. The Trek Science doesn't usually bother me too much because if Steven Hawkings can love and guest star on ST, there is really no need to throw a hissy fit over anything. I have to admit I absolutely dread writing the upcoming technobabble in my fic. But I will try, and fight like a Klingon.

[Distracted]

Technobabble. Argh. The bane of my existence. I am technologically impaired. Seriously.

My friends who are gadget-oriented helped me a lot... Rigil and Elessar and BnB among others. And I used to steal shamelessly from the comments on my stories, where commentors like Mitchell and Navigator used to tell me what I was doing wrong, ie: Use your resources!

[WarpGirl]

Oh I'm not above groveling like a maiden heroine in a 1940's swashbuckler. I'll eek out every bit of information I can. But really you shouldn't worry your work is AWSOME! One thing that bothers me about this whole cloning business in "Sim" if the process was illeagal why wasn't the research destroyed? And how does Phlox know how to preform the proceedure?

[Distracted]

I'm assuming there's a subspace internet where you can find out things like how to make a thermonuclear warhead with household chemicals and a coffee can. Assuming the existence of such a hypothetical construct, finding illegal cloning instructions would be a piece of cake.

[WarpGirl]

Actually that makes a peverse amount of sense. To tell you the truth the whole concept bothers me A LOT! But the fact that nobody was reprimanded after Enterprise returned really boggles my mind. What did Archer destroy the evidence? I can't believe Trip would have remained silent. I can't believe Trip would have gone along with the plan at all. At his core he's quite conservative comparatively speaking. And I STILL can't believe T'Pol went along with this without protesting.

To quote Surak..."As far as possible, do not kill. Can you return life to what you kill? Then be slow to take life."

OK so they didn't put a phaser to Sim's head but they created him only to harvest his tissues, KNOWING that there was no proven way for him to survive. And they didn't even reaserch the few options he had. Sorry that is murder.

[Distracted]

Yep. And part of the wonderful "violate every ethical standard known to man and pay no consequences" theme that underlies so much of ST. Devolved salamander babies with the captain's DNA are still down on the planet? No problem. Leave 'em. Destroy an entire culture by destroying the computer that's been caring for them for centuries? No sweat. They need to grow up anyway. Have a drug-addicted commanding officer during war time? Sure. She's fine now.

Consequences never follow the crew from episode to episode. If they did, it would be a soap opera instead of SF, and we wouldn't want that, now, would we? Nobody would watch that.