The Case For Genocide Against Phlox And Archer

[Sonnenburg]

This is an article I wrote up to examine the moral issues surrounding Dear Doctor, when Phlox and Archer decided the right choice was to withhold the cure from the Valakians. I'm hoping it'll present some new thoughts on the subject. It was written in response to a resurgence of the opinion that it wasn't genocide.

Article

[Aaron]

Hey Chuck, you mind if I cross post this on DITL?

[Batman]

Actually species CAN and HAVE evolved into extinction. Evolution isn't the process of actually GETTING better at surviving,it's the process of TRYING to. Not always with positive results. The RESULT of evolution is either a species that DOES get better, or one that disappears.

[Academia Nut]

Uhhh... no, especially not in this case, since evolution is based off of who dies more than who lives. In the show it was like everyone was evolving, ohh... let's go with ALS as an example. The way evolution works is that those with the trait should get killed off, not spread it around. This also evidently wasn't based off of a change in environment resulting in maladaption, which is you know, how species actually go extinct, not suddenly having all of their DNA just stop working properly enmass, which is stupid.

[Deathstalker]

If The Deathstalker remembers correctly, Archer spouted off about there not being any guide lines for him to follow on whether to intervene or not, this being before the Prime Directive. What makes this situation stupid is the Phlox takes it upon himself, not consulting other doctors, not informing Starfleet or asking the Vulcans what he should do. He up and says, "I have a cure and you don't, sucks to be you!"

I imagine a case could be made IF the PD had been in effect, that Phlox had done the right thing, by not interfering. It is still stupid, but the PD is stupid in most instances anyway.

But no PD means free reign, no reason not to send a cure, except for Phlox's sole decision not to help.

[Steve]

Ah, it'd be nice to hear the following sometime:

"Jonathan Archer and Phlox, you are hereby convicted of attempted genocide. Due to the scope of the damage you attempted to cause this tribunal feels it has no choice but to sentence you to death by hang..."

*whispers among the tribunal*

"As per the Amazonian delegate's recommendation, we sentence you to death by snu-snu."

[lord Martiya]

I'm for the death, but why the snu-snu? Wouldn't be better tie them up and give them to the House of Duras?

[Swindle1984]

If The Deathstalker remembers correctly, Archer spouted off about there not being any guide lines for him to follow on whether to intervene or not, this being before the Prime Directive. What makes this situation stupid is the Phlox takes it upon himself, not consulting other doctors, not informing Starfleet or asking the Vulcans what he should do. He up and says, "I have a cure and you don't, sucks to be you!"

I imagine a case could be made IF the PD had been in effect, that Phlox had done the right thing, by not interfering. It is still stupid, but the PD is stupid in most instances anyway.

But no PD means free reign, no reason not to send a cure, except for Phlox's sole decision not to help.

From what I can tell from TNG, the PD prevents Starfleet from interfering with pre-warp cultures unless those cultures are aware of their existence and explicitly ask them for help. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

Seems to me that the Valakians, by engaging in interstellar travel specifically to meet warp-capable species (interesting that they knew they existed at all, much less that there were a bunch of them. I guess others aren't as worried about meddling as Starfleet.) in hopes of finding a cure. And they specifically asked the Enterprise to help them.

So even had there been a PD, Archer and Phlox still fucked it up.

[Steve]

I'm for the death, but why the snu-snu? Wouldn't be better tie them up and give them to the House of Duras?

That was my attempt at humor. Guess it wasn't as funny as I thought. C'est la vie.

[erik_t]

What little I saw of Enterprise left me finding Phlox a decent character, and moreover a decent man(-with-head-ridges), at least by the standards of Trek. Did I see so little of Enterprise that I got a completely inaccurate impression, or was this episode just out of character for the protagonists?

[Samuel]

What little I saw of Enterprise left me finding Phlox a decent character, and moreover a decent man(-with-head-ridges), at least by the standards of Trek. Did I see so little of Enterprise that I got a completely inaccurate impression, or was this episode just out of character for the protagonists?

When ever they add in the PD, characters become several categories more evil. Not as bad as the Mirror Universe, but still...

[Pablo Sanchez]

After reading the particulars I'm just caught up in imagining what the Menk would think 50,000 years down the road if they become a sapient spacefaring race and meet the future UFP. They would have grown up as a people among the ruins of a lost civilization, about whom they might even have primitive legends, and then they would see the historical record. What effect do you think that would have on them? What would they think about the Federation? It's mind-boggling.

But yeah, Phlox and Archer are basically monsters. What if, instead of condemning the Valakians to death, they gave the Valakians the cure but then looked for another planet suitable for setting up a Menk "colony" where a seed population could be planted and allowed to have it's leap forward? Oh wait, the best solution is to let a population of sentient beings who are not even remotely evil, but actually quite humane, die off so that maybe in 50,000 years you could end up with another population at the same level of advancement. Reading about this episode on memory alpha, the good news is that it apparently would have taken until the 24th century for the Valakians to actually go extinct, so that potentially they came up with their own cure in the interim, or contacted another interplanetary group that was not FUCKING EVIL, or the UFP subsequently reversed Archer's and Phlox's decision. So instead of condemning the Valakians to extinction, maybe they just ensured the death of huge numbers of them while they took the long way to curing the disease.

[Darth Wong]

As much as I would agree that they're horribly unethical, I would hesitate to characterize their actions as genocide. I would prefer to say that they are guilty of millions of counts of criminal negligence causing death. The sentence for such grandiose indifference to sapient life would still be severe, however.

[Pablo Sanchez]

As much as I would agree that they're horribly unethical, I would hesitate to characterize their actions as genocide. I would prefer to say that they are guilty of millions of counts of criminal negligence causing death. The sentence for such grandiose indifference to sapient life would still be severe, however.

Phlox is a doctor and Archer a military officer, as well as apparently effectively an ambassador plenipotentiary for Earth (he was able to unilaterally represent Earth in this case), so their actions are held to a much higher standard than would be an ordinary person's. An ordinary person who refuses to aid a dying person might be charged with criminally negligent homicide (I assume that your phrase is just the Canadian version of the same crime), but a doctor who is capable of saving a person's life but refuses can definitely be charged with murder, especially if one can prove he refused care not because of mere callous indifference but specifically because he wanted the person to die. Given that Phlox had the cure in his hand, and withheld it so as to intentionally cause the extinction of the Valakians, I would say he's guilty of murder. Archer is also culpable in the crime, because he was Phlox's commanding officer and, acting in breach of his responsibilities as an officer and ambassador, he allowed him to withhold the cure.

[Stofsk]

What little I saw of Enterprise left me finding Phlox a decent character, and moreover a decent man(-with-head-ridges), at least by the standards of Trek. Did I see so little of Enterprise that I got a completely inaccurate impression, or was this episode just out of character for the protagonists?

When ever they add in the PD, characters become several categories more evil.

Only because most writers don't understand/don't care to understand what the Prime Directive is supposed to mean. The PD was written to, ironically, bring ethical exploration into the Star Trek world. In other worlds, we wouldn't just repeat the kind of ruthless imperial colonisation that characterised real world history, we would explore but in a humane way.

I haven't got a problem with the PD as it was depicted in Kirk's time, but sometime after TOS and beginning with the TNG period, it morphed into this dogmatic "Must not intervene EVER" philosophy, which went against the precedent set by TOS. Literally, Trek went from "We're here to offer you medical supplies and education if you'll be our friends" to "We have a cure to your plague, but we're not gonna give it to you because we're cunts."

[lord Martiya]

I'm for the death, but why the snu-snu? Wouldn't be better tie them up and give them to the House of Duras?

That was my attempt at humor. Guess it wasn't as funny as I thought. C'est la vie.

I was replying in fashion.

[18-Till-I-Die]

One has to wonder what would have happened to the Menks if the Valakians hadn't died off. Apparently they were just as, or more, capable of functioning on that world but held back only because they lacked technology to compete with the Valakians. The Valakians were riding high for millions of years and then...what? So what was so wrong with the Valakians that fucked them up this bad?

I don't know, clearly the Valakians couldn't survive on their own or else they wouldn't have developed this disorder. If their DNA was really just "shutting down" it's possible that no matter what you do as a stop gap the "virus" or whatever would kill them. I hate to sound fatalistic but it's possible the Valakians were, indeed, a literal genetic dead end...that they evolved some kind of flaw that just made them incapable of survival on even the most basic level. If that's the case, saving them isn't like saving the Giant Panda or something, it's like saving a race of impotent lepers. What ever you do, they probably can't reproduce anymore if their DNA is "shutting down" (mind you I've only heard about this episode like today, correct me if I'm wrong) and even if they could they're still a dying people.

Maybe Archer made the wrong ethical choice, but under the circumstances, if the Valakians were indeed that fucked up...I just can't see any objective reason to save a people who will die off anyway. More so even if you did, what happens to the Menk then? You're just saving one species and condemning another to extinction. It's no better and saves no more lives it just changes the names. One way or another one species is going to die off...why save the ones who are already, naturally dying? Whay doom another species to extinction, a species that actually has a healthy gene pool? What's so special about the Valakians that the Menks are irrelevent to them? Technology? Art?

What I'm saying is, if you save the Valakians the Menks will surely be supplanted and die out, or worse enslaved. You know this, if you read history at all. If you save the Menks...well, the Valakians were dying anyway, by no fault of Archer's since he just stumbled upon it. I'm just not mustering up a lot of sympathy for a race that is literally, literally genetically incapable of survival. Are the Valakians really so special that they must NOT EVER die out, that the universe will be poorer for their passing? Are the Menk really that worthless they're extinction would be preferable to the Valakians' apparently natural die off?

[Drooling Iguana]

Reading about this episode on memory alpha, the good news is that it apparently would have taken until the 24th century for the Valakians to actually go extinct, so that potentially they came up with their own cure in the interim, or contacted another interplanetary group that was not FUCKING EVIL, or the UFP subsequently reversed Archer's and Phlox's decision. So instead of condemning the Valakians to extinction, maybe they just ensured the death of huge numbers of them while they took the long way to curing the disease.

IIRC, at the end of the episode Archer did provide the Valakians with a treatment for their disease that was expected to be effective for roughly a decade. Considering that their planet is less than a year's journey away from Earth (as this episode took place in the first season) if the UFP does reverse Archer's decision within that time then they may be able to get the cure to them without any further loss of life.

[lstyer]

After reading the particulars I'm just caught up in imagining what the Menk would think 50,000 years down the road if they become a sapient spacefaring race and meet the future UFP.

I think a follow-up story in the original series time-frame would be interesting, maybe one in which some other space-faring culture is shown to have helped the Valakians, who now, understandably, have a big problem with humans.

[Patrick Degan]

One has to wonder what would have happened to the Menks if the Valakians hadn't died off. Apparently they were just as, or more, capable of functioning on that world but held back only because they lacked technology to compete with the Valakians. The Valakians were riding high for millions of years and then...what? So what was so wrong with the Valakians that fucked them up this bad?

I don't know, clearly the Valakians couldn't survive on their own or else they wouldn't have developed this disorder. If their DNA was really just "shutting down" it's possible that no matter what you do as a stop gap the "virus" or whatever would kill them. I hate to sound fatalistic but it's possible the Valakians were, indeed, a literal genetic dead end...that they evolved some kind of flaw that just made them incapable of survival on even the most basic level. If that's the case, saving them isn't like saving the Giant Panda or something, it's like saving a race of impotent lepers. What ever you do, they probably can't reproduce anymore if their DNA is "shutting down" (mind you I've only heard about this episode like today, correct me if I'm wrong) and even if they could they're still a dying people.

Maybe Archer made the wrong ethical choice, but under the circumstances, if the Valakians were indeed that fucked up...I just can't see any objective reason to save a people who will die off anyway. More so even if you did, what happens to the Menk then? You're just saving one species and condemning another to extinction. It's no better and saves no more lives it just changes the names. One way or another one species is going to die off...why save the ones who are already, naturally dying? Whay doom another species to extinction, a species that actually has a healthy gene pool? What's so special about the Valakians that the Menks are irrelevent to them? Technology? Art?

What I'm saying is, if you save the Valakians the Menks will surely be supplanted and die out, or worse enslaved. You know this, if you read history at all. If you save the Menks...well, the Valakians were dying anyway, by no fault of Archer's since he just stumbled upon it. I'm just not mustering up a lot of sympathy for a race that is literally, literally genetically incapable of survival. Are the Valakians really so special that they must NOT EVER die out, that the universe will be poorer for their passing? Are the Menk really that worthless they're extinction would be preferable to the Valakians' apparently natural die off?

Evolution doesn't work that way. The speciation of one distinct line does not mean the automatic extinction of the progenitor species or even its cousins on the evolutionary tree (a thing to keep in mind the next time you hear some dumb twat like Larry King ask how apes and monkeys can continue to exist since humans are around on Earth). Species continue to exist and thrive so long as there is still a niche in the ecology they can fill. Extinction occurs only when the local environment changes so fast that a species cannot adapt to it, or their predators so completely overwhelm them that they can't keep up their numbers. Disease would count as the first condition of extinction. Nor does one particular species act as a "barrier" against the evolution of another line if one group can find an environment in which their divergence and perpetuation of that line can proceed uninterrupted.

In any case, it's not anybody's privilege to make the decision that one intelligent species is going to "die out anyway and the universe won't miss them" and thus refuse to proffer aid that could help their survival based on an abstraction just as much as to decide another species is worthelss and thus "deserves" extinction based on an abstraction. This episode was not only scientifically incompetent but ethically incompetent as well.

[Sonnenburg]

After reading the particulars I'm just caught up in imagining what the Menk would think 50,000 years down the road if they become a sapient spacefaring race and meet the future UFP.

I think a follow-up story in the original series time-frame would be interesting, maybe one in which some other space-faring culture is shown to have helped the Valakians, who now, understandably, have a big problem with humans.

I imagine it ending as a decimated populace enacts a harsh vengeance on the Menk, annihilating them and forcing themselves to flee their world. Between their genetic treatments and the effects of surviving and rebuilding in an alien world, they become accustomed to wearing full body suits and wearing large masks to protect themselves from the environment. As they enter the galactic community, they would be hostile to all except the Ferengi (mentioned in this episode as having had contact with them, and probably would be the ones to eventually sell them the cure), accustomed to using aliens as slaves the same way the Menk were used after their treachery was discovered. Eventually, when the time was right, they would avenge themselves on Starfleet by bombing their headquarters in San Francisco two and a quarter centuries after the betrayal of their people.

[Thanas]

Long live the Breen?

[Samuel]

Why does your explanation make more sense and is more interesting than the official backround?

[18-Till-I-Die]

Evolution doesn't work that way. The speciation of one distinct line does not mean the automatic extinction of the progenitor species or even its cousins on the evolutionary tree (a thing to keep in mind the next time you hear some dumb twat like Larry King ask how apes and monkeys can continue to exist since humans are around on Earth). Species continue to exist and thrive so long as there is still a niche in the ecology they can fill.

Yeah but see, that's the thing, from what I understand (and keep in mind, Sonnenberg's essay is my entire guide to this episode's plot) the Menk had already evolved to sapience...they were just a technologically backwards culture. According to Memory Alpha they were "treated as a lower class", which I believe is perhaps the most asinine PC codeword for "treated like minority underclass" I've ever seen. That alone means that, yes, the Menk were indeed being hindered in their continued development by the Valakians, who apparently treated them like shit, possibly as slaves from the vagueness of that statement. They weren't like chimps who, while clearly sapient, are not on par with humans. This is more like a primitive tribe of humans being ruled over by a powerful but dying race of humans. Plus they were two seperate species apparently, evolving from different genetic lines, or again that seems to be what Sonnenberg's essay implies. If the episode said different then you'll have to fill me in.

Extinction occurs only when the local environment changes so fast that a species cannot adapt to it, or their predators so completely overwhelm them that they can't keep up their numbers. Disease would count as the first condition of extinction.

Yeah but that's my point. This isn't like the Giant Pandas, who were perfectly fine until we destroyed most of their habitat, or those Yangste (spelled that wrong) dolphins who died because of our pollution...this is a race who has literally hit a dead end. They mutated some kind of fatal flaw, they're a failure, they can no longer function. Evolution dealt them a shitty card, not humans, not pollution, not deforestation, but simple chance. Logically then there is no reason that any "cure" would do much anyway, because any race that is literally a genetic dead end already as shown that EVEN WITH ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY they failed to survive and thrive in their niche.

The Valakians are, in a word, a complete failure as a species. They failed where the common roach was able to succeed: not dying. Frankly one has to wonder what massive inbreeding it takes to develop a flaw that extreme, but it's really irrelevent beyond the fact that nothing at all would be served by helping them...they can't survive much longer anyway, if their gene pool is so shallow that it's literally bone dry.

Nor does one particular species act as a "barrier" against the evolution of another line if one group can find an environment in which their divergence and perpetuation of that line can proceed uninterrupted.

The Menk were clearly intelligent, from everything I've read. The only thing they lacked was technology...now maybe the episode said different, but so far the only logical explanation for why these clearly intelligent people were so backwards is that "they were treated as a lower class" by the Valakians. And really, I'm not surprised to hear that. In our own history "backwards" races were always "treated as a lower class" by the more technological "enlightened" races.

I mean, really is it so hard to believe the precious Valakians were probably keeping the Menks as pets or most likely slaves. How else do you interpret "lower class". If they're a class, clearly they're considered intelligent enough to be part of society, and really again that's just a codeword for opressed minority. So yeah the Valakians, by the accounts I've seen, probably have done a lot to keep their less advanced roomies down. In fact if they were used as slaves it would probably explain why they were kept alive so "mercifully" as Sonnenberg put it: they're probably property. Again if they were shown as some kind of special second class citizens or something, let me know, but everything I've seen has politely tap danced around the real problem here: why ELSE would an intelligent race develop NO technology in all this time if they weren't being held back purposefully by someone who wants them to stay stupid and quiet.

In any case, it's not anybody's privilege to make the decision that one intelligent species is going to "die out anyway and the universe won't miss them" and thus refuse to proffer aid that could help their survival based on an abstraction just as much as to decide another species is worthelss and thus "deserves" extinction based on an abstraction. This episode was not only scientifically incompetent but ethically incompetent as well.

I agree, at least to a degree. But the point is that you have two races here, and one of them will surely die, because two technologically sophisticated races can't really co-inhabit a planet with limited resources. Imagine if there was some seperate race that evolved beside humans...now imagine how they'd feel about our global warming. Or all that oil we're wasting. That's what I mean. So saving the Valakians means that, inevitably, the Menks will be destroyed one way or another. This is simply unavoidable. Saving the Menks means, yes, dooming the Valakians to destruction.

The question is ethically and morally cold blooded to a profound degree, but really it comes down to which race you think deserves it more. Since the Valakians are already dying because of their fucked up gene pool, I say save the healthy race. Now that's ethically and morally brutal and cold and horrible, but really what else can you do? Set up a Menk colony? That's asinine, and more so how do you know the Menk can even survive on this colony world, they may be able to breathe the air and drink the water but some random virus there may mutate and kill them all. Moving the Menk is not a possibility. And neither is them just tooling along and developing an advanced society while the Valakians sit by and twiddle their thumbs, because anyone who knows anything about history will tell you that's simply not going to happen.

One race has to die. The only reason the Valakians hadn't wiped out the Menk before probably is because, as disgusting as it sounds, they probably thought the "stupid, bestial" Menks were cute pets or good workers. The Menks I see have no say in this, nor any defenders it appears. I really don't see what was so precious about a dying race who already admit they treat their cousins like shit...I'm sorry like a "lower class", whatever that's worth. The Valakians don't think shit of the Menk, and this rush to defend them is, I can't help but think, really based on people just relating to the high tech fancy Valakians more than the "lower class" Menks.

[Pablo Sanchez]

This is more like a primitive tribe of humans being ruled over by a powerful but dying race of humans. Plus they were two seperate species apparently, evolving from different genetic lines, or again that seems to be what Sonnenberg's essay implies. If the episode said different then you'll have to fill me in.

Oh, so you didn't see the episode, or even bother reading about it on Memory Alpha or Chuck's Opinionated Enterprise episode guide. Jesus, it's not that hard to look this shit up.

The Valakians actually treated the Menk far better than humans have ever treated one another in an equivalent situation. They displaced the Menk from the best land and pushed them into less viable areas, but justified themselves by using the land far more productively and sending a portion of the excess production the land provided back to the Menk in the form of free gifts to support them. So, in effect, they robbed the Menk of the opportunity to survive by primitive subsistence agriculture and instead provided them with everything they needed without expecting them to do anything for it, and certainly without enslaving them. Instead, the main criticism of this system was that they treated the Menk like pets. Phlox himself points out that this is a shortsighted analysis and that the extent of Valakian-Menk interspecies harmony is pretty unique.

Also, the Menk were not equivalent in evolutionary terms to the Valakians; they were tool-users and even practiced agriculture, but they were clearly less intelligent, like the difference between homo sapiens and earlier hominids like Erectus. They were able to communicate at a primitive level but at no point is it ever suggested that they were at that time as intelligent as the Valakians, only that potentially thousands of years in the future they might evolve to that point. Their tools and the use of agriculture probably were given to them by the Valakians.

Finally, your reasoning is self-contradictory. If it is ethically correct to allow the Valakians to "evolve" into extinction, how can it be ethically wrong for the Valakians to out-compete the Menk? In fact if it is ethically the correct decision to get rid of the Valakians for the benefit of the Menk, then conversely it would have been right and justifiable for them to have displaced the Menk to the badlands and then allowed them to starve to death, because that's how natural selection works. The Menk occupied the same niche as the Valakians but couldn't compete. Instead the Valakians chose to keep the Menk alive by seeing to their needs and, although you apparently like to assume differently because you're not big on reading, demanding nothing in return.

The Valakians are, in a word, a complete failure as a species. They failed where the common roach was able to succeed: not dying. Frankly one has to wonder what massive inbreeding it takes to develop a flaw that extreme, but it's really irrelevent beyond the fact that nothing at all would be served by helping them...they can't survive much longer anyway, if their gene pool is so shallow that it's literally bone dry.

Evidently you didn't even read Chuck's essay, because one of his problems with the episode is that this reasoning is nonsensical from an evolutionary perspective.

The Menk were clearly intelligent, from everything I've read.

Which, as we've established, is very little. Cheers.