Yeah, she's not bad.
Star Trek: Picard
- Thread starter SHIELD Agent 47
- Start date
Probably yeah.
Everybody seemed super cool with it. Giving Robocard his rank back and everything. Super weird considering the Federation was blatantly racist against Synths five seconds ago *and* the last time Picard was (partially) synthetic he killed 11,000 people.
All Star Trek episodes were on DVD.
Well, it is Star Trek . . .
Sure. And also the internet. But they set every card in place. Some time after Nemesis, Picard made Beverly a mix tape and tried out a romance and it didn’t work and this is 22 years after Nemesis and Beverly hasn’t seen any of them for “20 years” which I think we can take as ABOUT 20 years. The actor is 35 now but 33-34 when it was filmed. That’s at the high end of typical range for actors playing 20-year-olds in movies. Tom Holland and Zendaya are 26 and recently played 18. There is absolutely no reason to try and think she hid a baby from her coworkers for 15 years and THEN went into hiding when she decided to let her teenager back in.
Then again, this is the same show that made Picard a synth in order to cure him of a disease, instead of technobabbling a cure.
You might not be looking at the big picture. Jean-Luc had a field trip to Las Vegas to see the Statue of Liberty when he was 7. His soul was destroyed at that time, because they used a transporter beam that annihilated his physical and spiritual form, because it is the most convenient way to have someone that looked just like pick up some memories that could be copied into a 3rd Jean-Luc back home later that day.
But then you gotta wonder, why the fancy robot body? Why don't they just reset from the last transporter pattern? It would be an interesting take on Star Trek (or on a parody) if they just always did that every time an officer died on an away mission. Or maybe not Ensigns. We aren't made of money here.
I mean, isn't everyone a copy because the transporter rips them apart and then puts then back together? Shaw is a bigot anyways so he calls it out but nobody else really cares because it literally doesn't matter.
If its not important to the resolution of this season, it literally never mattered at all.
If its not important to the resolution of this season, it literally never mattered at all.
I’d assume mostly because they don’t want to write around people being functionally immortal.
Exactly. So one must wonder *why* it was ever done at all. They’ve had to clumsily write around a stupid idea for two seasons. Better to have just had Q gift him back his actual body considering that would make sense. Certainly more than “Well, Gul Dukat wounded you so badly here that they also had to put you in a synth body they DRM’d to be equally as shitty as your human one despite the fact you’re going around annihilating alien races and could certainly use super strength, super intelligence, etc”.
Exactly. So one must wonder *why* it was ever done at all. They’ve had to clumsily write around a stupid idea for two seasons. Better to have just had Q gift him back his actual body considering that would make sense. Certainly more than “Well, Gul Dukat wounded you so badly here that they also had to put you in a synth body they DRM’d to be equally as shitty as your human one despite the fact you’re going around annihilating alien races and could certainly use super strength, super intelligence, etc”.
Right. Its dumb.
But they could have used Picard's synthness to push for equality and understanding for synthtic life to normalize relations after the decades worth of prejudice perpetrated by the federation. Picard is now a synth ex-borg and it has not mattered at all outside of having a connection to Seven, which has never been exploited to its fullest potential.
If they were making him a robot they could have made it relevant, but they haven't, so why even bother with it in the first place?
I'll never understand.
But they could have used Picard's synthness to push for equality and understanding for synthtic life to normalize relations after the decades worth of prejudice perpetrated by the federation. Picard is now a synth ex-borg and it has not mattered at all outside of having a connection to Seven, which has never been exploited to its fullest potential.
If they were making him a robot they could have made it relevant, but they haven't, so why even bother with it in the first place?
I'll never understand.
Based on this post, it sounds like you believe that a digital consciousness is nothing more than a computer copy of the person. Shows up UpLoad (on Amazon) are just a bunch of computer code and not the person?
On the transporter talk, the episode of TNG where Barclay saw things during the transport makes things even messier in that regard. it's one of those technologies you really do need to take the MST3k mantra to, as unsatisfying as that sounds. Especially given other uses, like when they used it to de-age Pulaski.
As for digital copies of people being that people, it is definitely a huge can of worms that's on the level of cloning. As an example of cloning issues themselves, take the case of the two Rikers - if our Riker had died before they found Thomas Riker, would he have been accepted back effectively as the original? Between incidents like that and the Boimler clone, I expect the Federation by the time period of the later parts of Picard has established case law to cover incidents of direct cloning of people(mentally or otherwise) so by the time Picard got resleeved into a synthetic body, it was legally a non-issue.
Ultimately Star Trek has always been soft Sci-Fi, even if it is harder than a lot of other series. If you're looking for a harder Sci-Fi take on the idea of person copying, this short story(written in the format of a wiki article) delves into some of the ways that things could go off the rails: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
As for digital copies of people being that people, it is definitely a huge can of worms that's on the level of cloning. As an example of cloning issues themselves, take the case of the two Rikers - if our Riker had died before they found Thomas Riker, would he have been accepted back effectively as the original? Between incidents like that and the Boimler clone, I expect the Federation by the time period of the later parts of Picard has established case law to cover incidents of direct cloning of people(mentally or otherwise) so by the time Picard got resleeved into a synthetic body, it was legally a non-issue.
Ultimately Star Trek has always been soft Sci-Fi, even if it is harder than a lot of other series. If you're looking for a harder Sci-Fi take on the idea of person copying, this short story(written in the format of a wiki article) delves into some of the ways that things could go off the rails: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
Riker and Pulaski were both cloned. He then vaporizes both after discovering them. Ibudan (sp?) killed his own clone, and Odo arrested him for it. Meanwhile, Jadzia (or was it Bashir) irresponsibly “grew” the sample they found in Ibudan’s possession, which turned out to be another clone. That person then left the station to live his life.
Point: Star Trek seems to have evolved its standing on cloning as the franchise progresses, at first not seeing them as sentient life (or was that a non-womb abortion, of which we know Pulaski supported in-womb abortions anyway so she would be okay vaporizing a test tube clone?) to charging someone with killing their own clone to considering a clone it’s own person.
In universe you can draw a lot of assumed conclusions about the shift. Did Riker cause an uproar, which led to laws being established? Is it okay to kill your clone in the Federation but not Bajor?
Forget in-universe. What is this thread’s take on mental upload? Travelers is a great TV show, but even it seems to be unsure of digital consciousness when they reupload Marcy. Then again, Trevor talks about seeing his old body as a lifeless shell. San Junipero left me uncomfortably shaken for weeks after seeing that Black Mirror episode, unsure of how I felt about the idea of my kids’ generation mentally transferring themselves to post-death servers (I think the timeline is too soon for Gen X, which is basically who was uploading, let alone us millennials — but maybe for Zennials).
Does a soul follow consciousness? Is a soul tied to the original body only? Is the soul, in fact, consciousness?
Point: Star Trek seems to have evolved its standing on cloning as the franchise progresses, at first not seeing them as sentient life (or was that a non-womb abortion, of which we know Pulaski supported in-womb abortions anyway so she would be okay vaporizing a test tube clone?) to charging someone with killing their own clone to considering a clone it’s own person.
In universe you can draw a lot of assumed conclusions about the shift. Did Riker cause an uproar, which led to laws being established? Is it okay to kill your clone in the Federation but not Bajor?
Forget in-universe. What is this thread’s take on mental upload? Travelers is a great TV show, but even it seems to be unsure of digital consciousness when they reupload Marcy. Then again, Trevor talks about seeing his old body as a lifeless shell. San Junipero left me uncomfortably shaken for weeks after seeing that Black Mirror episode, unsure of how I felt about the idea of my kids’ generation mentally transferring themselves to post-death servers (I think the timeline is too soon for Gen X, which is basically who was uploading, let alone us millennials — but maybe for Zennials).
Does a soul follow consciousness? Is a soul tied to the original body only? Is the soul, in fact, consciousness?