Does anybody else get irrationaly angry at S4E22 "Half a life"?
Posted by HiNoKitsune@reddit | TNG | View on Reddit | 5 comments
I read several reviews who mention that the episode deals with the concept of euthanasia, only it really doesn't at all. IRL euthanasia is an ethical dilemma when it is about a person's subjective suffering outweighing their will to live and what can outweigh the sanctity of life. That would be at least a sort-of ethical dilemma, even though in this day and age euthanasia becomes more and more accepted anyhow.
But in this episode we have instead the most stupid and illogical society who kills of healthy people who don't want to die and I hope their stupid sun blows up in their faces for being so incredibly dumb. I bet they achieved warp drive before that moronic rule went into effect, assuming similar lifespans, because a not-insignificant deal of our research and progress is done by people over 60 who, oh yeah, have accumulated an insane wealth of knowledge in their damn field and are amazing teachers and scholars. And NOBODY on the enterprise questions this and points out that their imbecilic tradition got started at some point pretty far down their historic road and is therefore just another man-made idea that could just be discarded.
Y'know, you won't be a burden to your kids, you have goddamn matter replicators and are about to be solar-forming as a society, one would assume you could manage to slap together a decent AI care robot, you complete ninnyhammers. Somehow between this planet and the one where everyone runs around half-naked and you get put to death for the destruction of peonies, this planet manages to come off as the bigger waste of literal space. End rant. Thank you for listening.
KnuckleMonkey_782@reddit
Nah, if the federation valued life at all, they'd have sent 15 war ships to that planet, subdued the population, and squash any type of rebellion. Short term hurt, long term gain. That or let there star die, and prevent any type of attempt to revive it. Life is valuable, and any people or society that does not value it, does not deserve to exist. You may think that's hypocritical, and it isn't. “Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.” - Charles James Napier
Fragrant_Parsnip_175@reddit
Personally that entire planet should be wiped out. They're all Hypocrites. They'll gladly put people down around 60. But then try and keep their star alive... would laugh if we got an update on this. if their planet got wiped out and the only person who could've stopped had been dead for 30 years.. then its just poetic justice and karma.
ConfessingToSins@reddit
They genuinely should mention in an episode that this planet was destroyed or was otherwise dealt with. They become immediately hostile when told someone is seeking asylum and threatened to straight up attack a superior military power. They should have been immediately disarmed and forbidden from leaving their region of space because not only are they hostile if you actually watch the episode it's clear that if their world had the upper hand they'd go around to other places enforcing their genocide-alike.
Star Trek very often cops out on actually saying something is bad. Genocide and militarist attitudes like this are bad and should be strictly demilitarized.
RadleyCunningham@reddit
I think it's a fantastic episode to demonstrate the sympathetic side of Lwaxana. I think she's the perfect voice of the frustration we all felt with the absurdity of the custom of another planet.
I really think that they captured the frustration we can feel in that situation. Starfleet does not interfere in the customs of other cultures. That doesn't mean that we can't feel like our own sense of ethics and morality is invalidated.
We have a right to express disapproval, just like Lwaxana did. It would be crossing the line to interfere based on our own culture's beliefs.
I don't know if I sound coherent. This one episode has always been an interesting one to me.
ConfessingToSins@reddit
It would not. The planet in this episode is committing a straight up genocide except it's based on age rather than race. The state exercises its power to force the elderly into killing themselves and when someone challenges it they straight up become immediately violent and militarist. If anything their escalation of an asylum request directly into a threat of war means that the Federation should have basically immediately considered them hostile and dangerous and put in safeguards to keep them contained to their region of space.
Star Trek does this 'well we can't judge them!' ploy a lot and sometimes it's acceptable. Here it is not. This is a nation/planet that is systematically engineering the execution of people based on a immutable fact of their existence, enforcing it via the use of state force, and then becoming hostile to a superior power when a citizen attempts to exit their system of control. They are in all ways a dangerous, hostile actor. In many ways their demeanour makes them more dangerous than other TNG factions who would later prove to at least be rational actors.