Real Life in Star Trek, Samaritan Snare
Disclaimer
In these posts, we discuss a non-âFree as in Freedomâ popular culture franchise property, including occasional references to part of that franchise behind a paywall. My discussion and conclusions carry a Free Culture license, but nothing about the discussion or conclusions should imply any attack on the ownership of the properties. All the big names are trademarks of the owners, and so forth, and everything here relies on sitting squarely within the bounds of Fair Use, as criticism that uses tiny parts of each show to extrapolate the world that the characters live in.
PreviouslyâŚ
I initially outlined the project in this post, for those falling into this from somewhere else. In short, we attempt to use the details presented in Star Trek to assemble a view of what life looks like in the Federation. This âphaseâ of the project changes from previous posts, however. The Next Generation takes place long after the original series, so we shouldnât expect similar politics and socialization. Maybe more importantly, I enjoy the series less.
Put simply, you shouldnât read this expecting a recap or review of an episode. Many people have done both to death over nearly sixty years. You will find a catalog of information that we learn from each episode, though, so expect everything to be a potential âspoiler,â if you happen to have that irrational fear.
Rather than list every post in the series here, you can quickly find them all on the startrek tag page.
Samaritan Snare
Honestly, the less said about this episode, the better. Letâs just dive in where things become relevantâŚ
WESLEY: Those Academy cadets can be extremely competitive.
Remember that, in Coming of Age, one of Wesleyâs friends almost died trying to run away from his family, because they wanted him to become that competitive. This seems closely associated with the drive for status that weâve seen throughout the franchise. And if I remember correctly, weâll eventually look back on Wesleyâs line as an understatement.
DATA: Commander Riker is correct. While the information imparted to cadets at the Academy is unquestionably vital for prospective Starfleet officers, it nevertheless requires a significant period of supplementary systems training and situational disciplines.
None of them appreciated their educations, then?
DATA: Yes, sir, but not quite as perspicuously.
We havenât seen this kind of alpha-male posturing in quite a while. I hoped that we had seen the last of it, but apparently not.
PICARD: Oh, please. I feel fine.
âŚ
PULASKI: Youâre concerned about your image. Donât worry. If you get yourself down to Starbase Five-One-Five, your image will be safe with me.
See? You think that I alone complain about Picardâs macho posturing, but even Pulaski calls him out on it.
GOMEZ: Archaeology, semantics, literature, art. You could learn a lot from Captain Picard.
It would seem that Picard has a fan.
And youâll probably recognize Ensign Gomez from her previous appearance in Q Who?, where I talk about her in a bit more depth.
WORF: Rhomboid Dronegar Sector zero-zero-six.
While I assume that ârhomboidâ refers to anything looking like a rhombus, I canât find any reference to a âDronegar,â and I donât spot any anagram that makes any sense.
GREBNEDLOG: We are far from home.
Meet the Pakled, who decided that we didnât all find the Ferengi sufficiently embarrassing. In this case, we have a species seemingly modeled on people with developmental disabilities. Most of them also look overweight, as well. And they seem to want us to find them funny, or at least pathetic until they turn violent.
Theyâll get mentioned throughout the series and blend into the background on Deep Space Nine, but wonâtâto my recollectionâget another speaking part in this era.
And then Lower Decks came along. Iâve probably expressed my frustration with the show before now, but hey, if you donât like it, you can write your own blog. Regardless, Lower Decks has a unique position in the franchise as a comedy, in that it could comment on all the ways that the franchise has failed to live up to its own ideals. The âsecond contactâ premise could show how the franchise keeps looking for easy solutions to societal problems. And when they heavily use a culture like the Pakleds, they could surprise us and indicate that the Enterprise-D mission reports come off as more than a little racist and ableist. And yet, they donât. Instead, they reify the franchiseâs flawsâin this caseâby trying to mine laughs out of the crew outwitting people who increasingly resemble offensive stereotypes of people with developmental issues.
RIKER: Donât they seem a little slow?
I would not call that an appropriate question to askâŚ
WESLEY: ETA thirteen-thirty hours, sir. Itâs not exactly warp speed.
PICARD: More like a late twenty-second century interplanetary journey.
WESLEY: Sir?
PICARD: You should read more history, Ensign.
Apparently, Federation history lessons focus on how fast people traveled at various timesâŚ
RIKER: Look at them. Theyâre certainly not Jarada or Romulans.
The Jarada appeared in The Big Goodbye.
PICARD: The cardiac replacement procedure. It has a very low mortality rate. Two-point-four percent.
Given that this equates to roughly a one-in-forty-two mortality, I feel like I need to ask two questions.
First, did they try to sneak a straight reference to The Hitchhikerâs Guide to the Galaxy into the script, then bury it to avoid people noticing? It seems odd, but this sort of thing does happen when you have writers who consider themselves âfans first.â
Second, that seems like a terrible survival rate. With only todayâs science and technology, I count fifteen American hospitals with better than a 95% one-year survival rate for heart transplants, in the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients database. Without the need to wait for a donorâI have to assume that they replicate organs based on the recipientâs biology on demand, at least for someone like Picard, given the number of times that weâve heard that Starfleet values certain people over othersâI feel like a Federation doctorâs should have an order of magnitude better chance at success, not a couple of percentage points.
And that ignores the question of why a doctor in the Star Trek universe would operate at all. Rather than cutting up a patient, weâve already seen them use transporters to âresetâ someone to a prior state, so it shouldnât take much imagination to swap out their hearts seamlessly, while transporting. The fact that they donât may suggest a high cost to using a transporter. Starfleet might not have a problem footing the bill on an occasional extra transport or two, because they already need to pay to move a thousand people through space at many times the speed of light, but for a heart operation, their equivalent of the VA Hospital system has funding problems.
I donât actually propose to interpret this as definitely saying that the Federation under-funds veteran services, but I will say that it would describe the situation in our world since at least the time that this episode aired.
Actually, a third question. In The Voyage Home, âthe doctor gave [a patient] a pill, and [she] grew a new kidney.â Kidneys, as I understand the body, have significantly more complexity than hearts. Can they not give Picard a pill that grows him a new heart, eighty years later? Or did that elderly womanâs survival prevent her grandchild from going to medical school, which would have given them the career to invent that pill and revolutionize medicine as we know it?
WESLEY: Everyone knows. You donât like kids. Thatâs too bad. Youâd have made a good father.
Look, I see Wesley as a kid, because Iâve hit middle age. But at Wesleyâs age, who calls themselves kids?
Also, Iâd argue about the inappropriateness of Wesley trying to openly judge Picardâs paternal instincts, but he might see it as shopping for a new stepfather, for all we know.
WESLEY: Were you ever married?
PICARD: Never had the time.
This must explain why he takes a few days to play murder-mystery video games while he has work to doâŚ
WESLEY: No problem. Where women are concerned, I am in complete control.
PICARD: Really? I always rather had to work at that.
Again, they feel it appropriate to talk about their sexual prowess with a minorâŚ
PICARD: Several friends and I were on leave at Farspace Starbase Earhart. It was little more than a galactic outpost in those days.
I assume that they named the facility after Amelia Earhart, though I have to admit that I donât like the feel of âfarspace starbase,â as a term.
WESLEY: Was this before the Klingons joined the Federation?
Previously, weâve assumed that the Klingons had only entered into some alliance with the Federation, but this indicates that they have full membership.
PICARD: Thatâs right. Well, my mates and I were at the Bonestell Recreation FacilityâŚ
How interesting. They honored Chesley Bonestell, âthe Father of Modern Space Art.â
Anyway, Picard tells his macho story about how he had clever insults and almost fought off a group of far stronger opponents, whichâŚsure, Jean-Luc.
WESLEY: But William James wonât be in my Starfleet exams.
Father of American Psychology William James certainly seems like someone who Starfleet would find interesting, given how frequently they center psychology in the strategies that they use against people. Though I can understand Wesleyâs assumption, since nobody in this universe seems to believe in therapy.
WORF: Then force it must be.
I feel like everybody on the crew desperately wanted to say thatâŚ
PULASKI: Weâve got to go.
TROI: Yes, the Captain needs our help.
I like how they suddenly donât care about their colleague, because they have a white guy to worry aboutâŚ
LAFORGE: Blowing that hydrogen exhaust through the Bussard collectors sure put on a nice light show.
One assumes that you find a Bussard collector as part of a Bussard ramjet, which scoops up (collects) hydrogen as it travels, using it for fusion, which powers a magnetic field to propel the ship, a theory based on a design by Robert W. Bussard.
Now, I appreciate referencing historical figures as much as anyone. However, consider how silly it sounds to still name the device after its inventor, four hundred years later. Weâve managed to drop Edisonâs name from almost everything that he invented, in a few short decades. And sure, you can point to the Cassegrain reflector telescopeâ1672, so invented about 350 years agoâas an instance where we do that today, but we only really use Cassegrainâs name on the rare occasions that we need to compare different telescope designs, such as when shopping for one. We also have a similar edge case when singling out a specific archaic design, such as a âTorricelli storm glassâ to specify his transitional device between storm glass and barometer, or an âEdison bulbâ to refer to a glass lightbulb with a visible filament.
PULASKI: Saving your life.
I find it implausible that only Pulaski could perform this operation. Theyâve given us almost no indication that she has such great skill at surgery.
Also, the other doctors didnât seem worth quoting, so I didnât have a better place to comment on their wardrobe, but I have to tell you, a team of doctors wearing a blood-red robe doesnât exactly inspire confidence. They might have thought that it looked futuristic, or did it to reference the various science fiction books that have doctors assigned to color-coded departments based on specialty, but regardless, that color gives the impression that they (a) expect extensive blood splatter, and (b) have no interest in washing out the stains or changing smocks before heading to the next surgery. This takes all the mistrust of buying furniture that matches your petâs fur, and amplifies it significantlyâŚ
Meanwhile, Picard makes it clear that he has learned absolutely nothing from this experience, still desperate to look strong. And hilariously, the story utterly fails to make a connection between Picardâs obsession and the Pakledsâ obsessionâŚ
Conclusions
We find out that the Klingons have apparently joined the Federation, and that the government frequently names facilities after explorers and space-adjacent workers.
The Good
Pulaski, for once, calls Picard out on his toxic masculinity.
The Bad
We continue to see the Federationâs obsession with status. Arguably, the episode revolves entirely around status, despite Wesley only mentioning it once. Data and Riker spar over who had the better education, while Picard puffs up his chest to denyâto his doctorâthat his heart problems affect his life. Wesley also rejects the idea of reading anything that wonât help him pass his exams.
Anti-intellectual sentiment has returned to the discourse, with an argument over who can most thoroughly bash the idea that the Academy properly trains officers. However, Riker also has ableist things to say about the Pakled.
Despite prior episodes assuring us that future medicine looks like magic, this shows us that their eraâs heart surgery looks almost identical to ours, slightly more advanced than the 1980s, but not qualitatively different.
Adults still find it reasonable and comfortable to talk about sex with a teenaged colleague. The crew also searches for an excuse to engage in violence, then considers abandoning an abducted colleague.
The Weird
Picard gives the impression that history books talk mostly about travel speeds, which I imagine would go to justify their disinterest in academia.
Adolescents on the cusp of going off to college apparently think of themselves as children.
And maybe most importantly, doctors dress for surgery in a way that appears that their priority is to hide blood stains.
Next
I know, I know. You read this, thinking to yourself that yes, this episode felt extremely uncomfortable, but could they have an episode even more uncomfortable, maybe with a âcountry mouse and city mouseâ theme sure to offend everyone of Irish descent? Find out next week, in Up the Long Ladder.
Credits: The header image is cropped from Heart Valve surgery at the Clinical Center by NIH History Office, released into the public domain.
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Tags: scifi startrek closereading