Revenge is often seen as the most understandable or forgivable motivation to do harm, but when does it go too far? Should it stop at harmless pranks, or escalate to warping someone’s reality? An illegal Ferengi technology allows one to control another person’s perception of events. Captain Picard becomes the unknowing victim of this mind control orb when a Ferengi captain DaiMon Bok takes revenge upon the Starfleet officer for the death of his son nine years prior. Picard was serving aboard the Federation ship Stargazer when they encountered and destroyed what turned out to be a Ferengi vessel commanded by Bok’s son. The aggrieved Bok uses a combination of falsified data, a derelict old Federation ship, and mind control to convince Picard that he is aboard the Stargazer and being attacked by the Enterprise.
Mind control technology aside, the story of Picard’s manipulation sheds light on the pitfalls inherent to relying on technology to interpret the past. Forensic science, and the tools it uses, have improved immensely over the past century. It was only in the not too distant past that we didn’t know what DNA was or its potential to be used in criminal investigations. However, now that the use and knowledge of DNA is ubiquitous, some interpret it as a gold standard of infallible evidence, and overlooking whether it may have been contaminated, planted, or otherwise falsified. The same phenomenon can occur with any new technology used as documentation to piece together past events or a person’s actions. Facial recognition technology, surveillance, digital footprints, and more can all be used against us as much as they can be a reliable ‘witness’, with each new addition contributing its own botched testimony. The unquestionable trust we have in every new technology introduces an additional factor for error. Bok used falsified ship’s log entries to ‘prove’ that Picard destroyed his son’s ship maliciously, rewriting the past and warping the poor captain’s perception of his own reality. This is exactly what large language model AI technology is already capable of, and Star Trek predicted it decades ago. Fortunately, as we are becoming wiser to the unreliability of our AI-polluted Internet, so too did Picard refuse to fall for Bok’s tricks. He claimed to have never made the log entry, and his friends believed him. However, the power of the mind control orb was stronger than a convincing fake voice recording, and Picard found himself on the old Stargazer trying to destroy the Enterprise.
Using their knowledge of past events, the Enterprise crew was able to outmaneuver Picard and convince him to destroy the orb with his phaser. In an impressive example of relative morality, the Ferengi first officer puts an end to this horrifying mind control endeavor, not because it is unethical or cruel, but because it was not profitable. Perhaps Bok should have manipulated his own crew first before targeting Picard.
Hopeless Trekkie 