Star Trek Discovery Tangent - Philosophy of Mind and Dr. Culber's Return

I wonder what philosophy of mind people make of Culber’s return?

How long does someone have to be brain dead for the physicalist to say the mind is dead? 

Is the restoration of Culber’s body being inexact from his prior state the cause for his mind to feel not fully himself?

At the moment, the physicalist model could fit the story.

However, I suppose a dualist would say the fact that he feels in his mind something has changed is a reflection of the persistence of his mind from his previous body?

For an academic discussion of the entire Star Trek canon in light of the "Mind-Body" problem in philosophy, check out this item published in the Science Fiction Research Association.

Star Trek Discovery Episode 2.6 - good moments but muddleheaded on some plot points

Am finally all caught up.

Episode 2.6 was a frantic story with some good moments (Doug Jones and company are fantastic actors) but overall it left me feeling unsatisfied due to some of the plot points.

As I have mentioned on many previous occasions that I accept that “suspension of disbelief” is a part of story telling and in particular science fiction story telling. On this occasion, I believe the scriptwriters tried to stuff too many things into this story and though individual moments work the whole thing falls down.

*** Spoilers ahead ***

Once again the red bursts and the red angel lead the Disco team on another errand of mercy. However, on this occasion, it is less clear that a positive outcome was assured. To recap, the first time they went to a signal, they found a crashed Star Fleet ship and rescued that crew before the asteroid crushed it. In the second signal, they went to a planet that was going to get wiped out by radioactive rocks dislodged from its ring system. In both cases, the way the Disco crew can help was clear: get the people off the ship in case one and stop the rocks in case two.

In this third scenario, it is much less clear that things will turn out right. There was the obligatory discussion about the prime directive and whether it was the time and place to interfere with the current order on the planet Kaminar. Some Trek fans will object to the blatant violation of the Prime Directive. However, there is in the history of Star Trek story telling many occasions where the Prime Directive was ignored so that doesn’t bother me too much.

One near parallel story from the Original Series was “A Taste of Armageddon” where the society the Enterprise visited was at war with its planetary neighbor. The two sides settled into a “balance” of death based on mathematically launched attacks. To preserve their society, instead of real bombs inflecting real damage and deaths, they skipped the damage part and retained the death part by having the calculated casualties of war die in painless death booths. Captain Kirk determines that the society is stuck and destroys the computers running the war and challenges the two sides to truly deal with their conflict.

Another near parallel from Star Trek Enterprise was “Dear Doctor” when Dr. Phlox and Captain Archer discover a planet where the dominant species is dying of a disease while the subservient species is evolving to greater ability. Archer has to decide whether Phlox should give them the cure and thus interfere with the development of the planet. Ultimately, Archer decides against providing the cure and sets the groundwork for what eventually would be formalized in the Prime Directive of non-interference.

Captain Pike’s decision to interfere in the Kaminar balance could probably be defended on the grounds that the Red Burst and Red Angel entity was interfering and Disco wasn’t in the position to stop that interference. That could be debated - what would the Red Angel have done if the Disco squad left Kaminar the minute the Baul asked them to leave? Could the Red Angel have disrupted the balance of Kaminar without the cast and crew of Disco? It seems not hence the red bat signal for Discovery to go there.

Another possibility would be the defense on moral grounds that one society was oppressing another society and it was within the power of Pike and company to do something about it. That could be debated as the Baul were about to kill all the Kelpiens as a result of Disco’s intervention and it was the Red Angel’s intervention that saved the Kelpiens. Pike could not have been sure the Red Angel would intervene although it was a possibility given their past experience with the red burst signals and red angel actions.

In terms of suspension of disbelief, Pike opting to set aside the Prime Directive I can accept.

However, there were three other big suspension of disbeliefs that sunk the story.

#1 The Baul who claimed to truly understand the dangers of the evolved Kelpien species sure acted very non-chalantly when they captured Saru! If he was so dangerous, why didn’t they kill him right away? If he was so dangerous, why didn’t they have much more aggressive restraints and technology to prevent him from doing his deeds of sabotage?

#2 The sabotage that Saru was able to accomplish was not believable. How could he just whack some of the electronics in his prison cell and hack the Baul communications system and send the vahar’ai signal that transforms Kelpien society? Way. Too. Easy.

#3 The transformation happened so fast! In the previous episode, Saru had a long and agonizing process before his transformation was complete. I suppose you could say the Baul communications network amplified the signal much more than the thing-a-blob from last week.

#StarTrekDiscovery

Star Trek 2.4-2.5 "Things are not always what they seem"

I think you could call the various story lines in episodes 4 and 5 as variations on the theme: “things are not always what they seem.”

*** Beware spoilers ahead ***

In these two episodes there are various situations where it appears one way at first and as the story unfolds, it turns out to be something else: the giant alien globe that snags the Discovery out of warp, Saru entering into the phase of death when Kelpiens either get culled by the aliens that dominate his home world or go mad, “May the ghost” that only Tilly can see, and the species May belongs to are fighting “a monster” that is wrecking the portion of the mycelial network they inhabit.

I think this message of “things are not always what they seem” is a good message as a life lesson. As for how well they work in the respective story threads that is more of a mixed bag. Certainly, the actors play it out extremely well and so as aways I’m a fan of how well they work things out even if sometimes the material they get to work with is a bit convoluted.

As I’ve mentioned before, I think Star Trek is at its best with “seek out new life and new civilizations” stories. The alien globe story line merges with Saru’s story line very nicely and I continue to view Doug Jones as clearly having the most interesting character to work with. We find out the alien globe is dying and wants to impart its knowledge to somebody - anybody - and in this case the computer banks of Discovery. Saru is dying and eventually he realizes it is because he is empathically linked to the death of the giant globe alien. Eventually, the penny drops in his mind and he makes the connection. He and Burnham scramble to the bridge to convince Pike to lower the shields and receive the message thus fulfilling the final wishes of the dying alien giant-thing-a-blob. As Michael helps Saru off the bridge to head to his death, the entire bridge crew silently stand in honor of their comrade, a truly beautiful moment.

No, they can’t write Saru out of the show!

Well, not to fear, after some more dramatic moments, Saru with Michael’s help discovers that by weathering the death syndrome, his threat ganglia fall off and he is restored to health minus the gripping fear that dominated his life! He also realizes that the whole natural order of his home world is a sham. Things are not as they appear to be!

The same thing happens in the other story lines. “May the ghost” is actually trying to get help to save her world and she knows Tilly can help her do so. Eventually, Tilly, Stamets, Burnham, and May figure out that the “monster” is Dr. Culber who was doing everything he could to survive in the mycelial network.

I wonder if the return of Dr. Culber was always in the plans from day one or a result of the uproar from fans when he was shockingly killed off in the middle of season one?

Anyway, this is science fiction and the scriptwriters brought him back through some convoluted intermix of Stamets and the mycelial network. It reminded me a bit of Star Trek III-TSFS when Spock's katra (soul) was download into Dr. McCoy’s mind and Spock’s body was reconfigured when it crashed on the Genesis planet and the his body and soul was reconnected by a Vulcan mystical process back on his home world. Thus, it would appear that TSFS held to “substance dualism.”

I’m not sure if ST-Disco’s Return of Dr. Culber falls into “substance dualism?”

Dr. Culber would up in mycelial network because Stamets had existence in both the ST-Disco world and the mycelial network concurrently. Somehow, he became the gateway for Dr. Culber (dead in the ST-Disco world) to be reanimated in the mycelial network world. However, for some reason, he doesn’t fully belong there, hence his scrambling about wrecking havoc in the mycelial network. And yet, when he tried to cross back into the ST-Disco world, he couldn’t cross over so he doesn’t really belong there either. But somehow, when “May the ghost” uses here pod transportation gadget he is fully restored. Did you get all that?

In terms of the acting, it is all well done but the whole concept is so confusing that it doesn’t really make sense within the “rules of the game” set up by the writers.

In ST-Disco, on three occasions they really pushed the “suspend disbelief” button so hard that it was annoying to me: the Tyler/Voq character, the concept of accessing the mycelial network and using it as a transportation highway, and now the return of Dr. Culber.

Suspending disbelief is part of any work of fiction and in particular science fiction so I grant it but if you push that button so hard that it starts cracking or breaking some viewers will throw up their hands and give up. Net-net though I still remain a viewer of ST-Disco. Perhaps, I’m just in too deep: I did go pay actual money to see Star Trek V - TFF, Star Trek - Insurrection, and Star Trek - Nemesis, in arguably the worst of the three movie versions of the Star Trek canon.

Final thought: they have been teasing the appearance of Spock since episode one and still nothing. I guess they are stringing us along as long as they can before he shows up!

#StarTrekDiscovery

Wide World of Soccer February 2019 - the six teams I follow

Time for the expectations round up!

QPR and Liverpool are now in the second half of their seasons.

QPR is constrained by the FFP sanctions so I had forecasted: "At the low end for QPR is the practical goal of AVOIDING relegation [.....] There are 24 teams in the Championship so the bottom half is 13-24 and the upper half of that is 13-18. If they get to 18, they should throw a parade around Loftus Road!"

QPR stands at 18th but have been on a losing streak of late. They are 10 points clear of the relegation zone but the Championship season is 46 matches. Come on you R's, you gotta stay in the Championship!

As for Liverpool FC, my forecast: "a lively race for the title (win or lose) would be wonderful for the long disappointed Liverpool fans. Winning a title of any kind would be nice as well (League Cup, FA Cup, Champions League, or Premier League)."

They are in a close contest with Man City and Tottenham. They crashed out of FA and League Cup. Tonight, they play in leg one of the Champions League against the mighty Bayern Munich! Can they bring home Premier League title? Can they win the European Cup? It is going to be tough as injuries have started to deplete the team. But I'm calling for them to win the Premier League! 

As for the other four clubs:

Falkenberg - They got promoted to the top league! The goal is to stay in the top league!

Elfsborg is in trouble. They finished 12th just 4 points out of the relegation zone. Hard to keep track of the club via English language media. But the expectations of the venerable old club is low at avoiding relegation. They have always punched above their weight considering that their home town of Boras (pop. 66K) is small compared to the big boys in Stockholm (960K), Gothenburg (572K), and Malmo (312K) so they really should be a solid mid-table team (7-10 place) occasionally challenging for European play.

LAFC is an expansion club with a high ceiling and they are living up to it! Last season they got bounced in the knockout round of the playoffs. This season the minimal expectations has to be one playoff win and perhaps even making it to the conference finals (2 playoff wins). They finished 3rd last year so they need to move up to at least 2nd for the season to be considered a success.

LA Galaxy finished last season in seventh place out of the playoffs. Thus, this season they need to make the playoffs and win at least one game. Finishing 4th in the table would be a reasonable goal. There are a lot of question marks for this team as it is largely the same as last year's team plus/minus a couple of players. The key additions are Polenta (centerback) and Antuna (speedy midfield wing) and if they live up to their billing the Galaxy could be competitive in every game. Zlatan is another year older. Will he continue to be a force to be reckoned with? As for the rest of the team, will the pieces fit together and they stay healthy in particular the rather thin defensive line.

Star Trek Discovery 2.3 - a mom's life & a pro-life message?

Good Disco.

Bad Disco.

Good ST-Discovery is the characters and the actors bringing them to life.

Bad ST-Discovery is the multiple story arcs on the assumption more is better.

Story line 1 - the red bursts/red angel
Story line 2 - the complicated lives of Sarek/Amanda/Michael/Spock (he is some how connected to the red burst/red angel)
Story line 3 - Tilly and the alien entity
Story line 4 - Klingon royal palace intrigue
Story line 5 - Michelle Yeoh's character is now part of Section 31

I would hope the writer's room will not be giving equal weight to all five balls they have juggled into the air! Will they all get mashed together into a mass of confusion and dis-satisfaction?

In this episode, in brief, the complex lives and hard times of being a mom in the far away future yet having age old challenges.

Amanda, Spock's mother and wife of Sarek, hasn't had much to do in previous flavors of Star Trek and so it is great to see her life get filled in a bit. Everyone can relate to her dilemma of feeling regrets and responsibility for how her children turned out. Mia Kirshner has done a wonderful job bringing to life Amanda Grayson. Her name seemed familiar and a quick check on the interwebs say I have seen her as the ruthless killer Mandy in 24. I wouldn't have made the connection as the two characters are as different as can be and it is a tribute to Kirshner's range as an actor.

Meanwhile, on the Klingon home world, it is not surprising that L'Rell is having trouble keeping things under control. She came to power under the threat of global annihilation that is not the best foundation for a stable government. And, of course, as a woman in a male-dominated society things are even more difficult for her. And we find out she had a son with Voq while all of this was going on further complicating things.

I've never been a fan of the whole Voq/Tyler plot device. It is such a mess but it is what it is and it looks like Tyler will be spun off into the Section 31 spin-off Star Trek with Michelle Yeoh's Mirror Georgiou and will probably appear a few more times in Disco season 2. Shazad Latif is a fine actor but the character he plays was just too much for me. In science fiction you have to “suspend disbelief” sometimes but some concepts are just way too nutty.

Anyway, after episodes 1 and 2 with tight stories, episode 3 was a mixed bag to me. As usual, high marks for the actors for their performances but the episode just threw too many balls in the air.

Lastly, did anyone notice the Pro-Life message in L'Rell's actions pertaining to her pregnancy? The child was very "inconvenient" for her, yet she had the child brought to full term by ex-utero technology!

#StarTrekDiscovery

Star Trek Discovery 2.2 - science and religious faith in this episode

I think Star Trek is at its best when they lean into the “explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations.” This happens on the “away missions” and especially on ones when the question of whether the “prime directive” applies. Thus, the episode “New Eden” had both elements going for it and I enjoyed it very much.

In the story, the scriptwriters advance the “Red Burst” signal story line some more and raise questions about the role of faith in society.

First, a quick science inquiry about the “Red Burst” signals: are these light based phenomena?

Certainly, it seems so from the way they are described. Science nerds will know that light travels fast. Science nerds will also know that in the scale of the galaxy and interstellar space the distances are vast even at light speed! Thus, if the latest “Red Burst” signal was determined to be ~ 50,000 light years away in the Beta Quadrant, and the Burst is a light based phenomena (like observing a supernova - an exploding star) then the burst was initiated 50,000 years earlier! This “Bat Signal” to come help these people living on “New Eden” would have taken place 49,800 years before the “Red Angel” whisked them away from Earth to park them on Terralisia. Have the scriptwriters worked this into their story arc?

If the signals are intentional from some intelligence, then that intelligence would have to have a completely different perception of linear time. This is not new to Star Trek as this idea was leaned upon heavily in Deep Space Nine where the “wormhole aliens” or the “Prophets of Bajor” were not constrained by linear time.

The other interesting feature of the story was its discussion of religious faith. There are two points that could serve as a springboard for conversation.

One question could be: what is god?

There was a quick conversation by the cast and crew about how a sufficiently advanced technological race would be viewed by a less advanced race as god. This theme has appeared in a number of stories throughout Star Trek’s history. In any case, it is expected that god would be very powerful and capable and in those Star Trek stories those societies become dependent upon and often grossly distorted by that powerful god-like entity.

In addition to “power” and “might,” our understanding of god would also include goodness of character. The mythic Greek pantheon of gods had powers of various type but in the end they also had the foibles of humanity.

Will be interesting to see how this story arc plays out. What intelligence is behind the signals? What is the “Red Angel?” If the “Red Angel” could whisk away people from earth and park them 50,000 light years away, what is motivating them to be enlisting our Disco family in errands of mercy? We shall see how the writer’s room works out the role and nature of this “higher intelligence(s)” interacting with more ordinary species.

The other issue the episode raises is the notion of stitching together all the world’s religions into one that all the people on Terralisia can follow. Captain Pike, whose father was a science teacher and comparative religion teacher, observed that the people on New Eden has a faith that works for their society by merging all the faiths of earth. People often say: oh, aren’t all religions basically the same? They all want people to be good. And so it appears that the people on Terralisa have actualized this.

But is this somewhat simplistic story telling on the part of the script writers?

Certainly, at a superficial level, there are many similarities between the major religious faiths. However, upon closer examination, there are differences that would not be easy to paper over. To cite just one: in the non-theistic faiths of Hinduism and Buddhism, the central claim is karma. Briefly, karma is the concept that one’s current life was impacted by the sins of one’s prior life in a series of reincarnations. In the Christian faith that I hold, the central claim is that Christ died for our sins and was resurrected from the dead for our salvation.

The religion project of New Eden would only work if all the faiths merged together were pruned of their major differences prior to putting them all together.

#StarTrekDiscovery

LA Galaxy - hmmmm ....

Polenta and Antuna officially announced.

Still no word on how they are going to get down from 4 DPs to 3.

Latest rumor is a restructured contract for Giovani dos Santos that extends him but at a level below DP.

That was also rumored as a way to keep Romain Alessandrini with LA but not as a DP.

Will LA add someone on the defense before the start of the season?

The roster lists seven defenders but don't see Arellano and Hilliard-Arce getting many minutes except as emergency defenders due to injury of someone from the top five.

Also, really don't know how you can have Zlatan, Ola, JDS, GDS, Alessandrini on the field at the same time. Where do you park each guy?

Am anticipating Lletget and Antuna to also get minutes, how do they fit in with the top five offense-minded players already mentioned.

How about this for position assignments with primary option before the slash and the secondary after the slash (prime/secondary):

2: Zlatan/Jamison, Ola/Boateng
4: Lletget/Antuna, GDS/Lletget, JDS/Kitchen, Alessandrini/Pontius
4: some combination of the main five defenders

UPDATE:
I do wonder if financially, the Galaxy are not in the position to get mid-priced defenders and they are going to go with Skelvik/Polenta/Steres/Romney/Fletcher getting the lion's share of the minutes. Thus, if injuries hit, the Galaxy are going to have to rely on Hilliard-Arce, Arellano, and their best prospects from Galaxy II?

Star Trek Discovery Season 2 Episode 1

Star Trek Discovery Season 2 Episode 1

Stylistically similar to season 1 in that the frantic pace and high production values is kept up in the season opener. But more importantly and positively, is the feeling of visiting old friends felt in season 1 continues in season 2. Saru, Tilly, Stamets, and Burnham are well played by their respective actors.

Will be interesting to see where the "red bursts" story line is going. Will be interesting to see where they are going with Spock/Burnham/Amanda/Sarek story line.

Huge hats off to Jeff Russo and the soundtrack he writes for the show. Check out the short behind the scenes videos. There are a couple focusing on the music of ST-Discovery.

Anson Mount as Captain Pike is a plus and an opportunity to explore a character we don't know much about from the Original Series (Menagerie/Cage) and two small parts in the Kelvin-verse films (Star Trek-2009, Into Darkness).

On Trek trivia, am curious to see if the "red shirt" motif will be transitioned to the "blue shirt" motif as you could see that fellow getting written out of the show the minute he started talking!

#StarTrekDiscovery