I'm trying to understand somebody else's problem, mind you, but near as I can figure his objection is that it's enslavement of the dolphins and they Don't Enslave Animals In The 24th Century. When it's pointed out that whales in the Trek universe are provably intelligent and have languages and can be asked things, and that it's therefore reasonable to suppose that dolphins can be intelligent and be conversed with (if the Universal Translator works with swarms of two-dimensional insects from another universe, it should work on river dolphins) he switches to The Federation Is Enslaving Sentients!
His complaint seems to be based on the assumption the dolphins would be taken against their will, stuffed into boxes barely big enough to contain them, and left to sit for years at a time. The objection seems to assume that the dolphins can't possibly be there voluntarily, or happily, and that the ship is designed to make them miserable.
I don't get it myself; and I don't mind dolphins (from Earth or from other worlds -- wouldn't a Vulcan Porpoise be a neat concept?) serving.
For cancelling the show just as it's catching on ... well, I'm not surprised, really; it's always like that. It's infuriating they wasted years driving away all the casual and traditional Trek fans until the group that was left couldn't sustain the show long enough for people to hear that they stopped making it bad on purpose. The Usenet chatter's been really positive, and -- to judge from the quality of the nitpicks -- the show has to have been doing pretty well. (Year Three only just started in Singapore, and Year Four probably won't until late this or early next year, so I haven't got any opinion on it.)
It's a shame they can't take all the hours wasted on go-nowhere, do-nothing stories like that whole Temporal Cold War nonsense and put it into making a Star Trek-based show.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rosecarmine
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-04 12:20 am (UTC)I'm trying to understand somebody else's problem, mind you, but near as I can figure his objection is that it's enslavement of the dolphins and they Don't Enslave Animals In The 24th Century. When it's pointed out that whales in the Trek universe are provably intelligent and have languages and can be asked things, and that it's therefore reasonable to suppose that dolphins can be intelligent and be conversed with (if the Universal Translator works with swarms of two-dimensional insects from another universe, it should work on river dolphins) he switches to The Federation Is Enslaving Sentients!
His complaint seems to be based on the assumption the dolphins would be taken against their will, stuffed into boxes barely big enough to contain them, and left to sit for years at a time. The objection seems to assume that the dolphins can't possibly be there voluntarily, or happily, and that the ship is designed to make them miserable.
I don't get it myself; and I don't mind dolphins (from Earth or from other worlds -- wouldn't a Vulcan Porpoise be a neat concept?) serving.
For cancelling the show just as it's catching on ... well, I'm not surprised, really; it's always like that. It's infuriating they wasted years driving away all the casual and traditional Trek fans until the group that was left couldn't sustain the show long enough for people to hear that they stopped making it bad on purpose. The Usenet chatter's been really positive, and -- to judge from the quality of the nitpicks -- the show has to have been doing pretty well. (Year Three only just started in Singapore, and Year Four probably won't until late this or early next year, so I haven't got any opinion on it.)
It's a shame they can't take all the hours wasted on go-nowhere, do-nothing stories like that whole Temporal Cold War nonsense and put it into making a Star Trek-based show.