For as long as we have been conscious creatures, capable of making choices and hurting others, humans have pondered the problem of evil. When given the option between causing harm or avoiding harm, why choose harm? There are situations in which injury is unavoidable, or someone in a difficult position has to choose the lesser … More Evil by Design, TOS: S3E22 “The Savage Curtain”
Like most little girls, I dreamed of what it might be like to be a princess once upon a time. As an adult, I often find myself longing for a more medieval existence, free from the internet and the complexities of modern geopolitics. Plague, infection, and dangerous childbirth notwithstanding, anyone born before the industrial revolution … More The Clouded Divide, TOS: S3E21 “The Cloud Minders”
A short walk through any of our broken and dystopian cities makes us long for the rosy age when the Earth was a beautiful garden, unspoiled by human progress. It seems that our running water and food on demand were delivered at a deep and devastating price. If only we could go back to a … More Poisoned Paradise, TOS: S3E20 “The Way to Eden”
As this year slides indiscriminately into the next, the passage of time drains our lives more steadily and relentlessly than any other natural phenomenon. No matter what choices we make, risks we consider, or pitfalls we avoid, there is nothing we can do about our inevitable decline and insignificance. The same force that drains our … More Age Old Advantage, TOS: S3E19 “Requiem for Methuselah”
Back in my undergraduate days, I was listening to a lecture on scientific data preservation and backup. The professors were happy to introduce all the options available, including cloud storage, external hard drives, and even CDs back then. The aged professor let us know that he had used every single type of data storage, and … More Broken Record, TOS: S3E18 “The Lights of Zetar”
Malfunctioning medical equipment features in some of my favorite SciFi stories. In the Dr. Who episode “The Curse of the Black Spot” a menacing specter which kidnaps all the main characters turns out to be an automated tissue sampling device. With a similar robotic commitment, the Aperture Science research AI take over the facility long … More Automated Ghost, TOS: S3E17 “That Which Survives”
In 1968, an influential new book blew society’s collective mind. The Population Bomb, by husband and wife team Paul and Anne Ehrlich, predicted a world in which hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s, despite anything we may do to stop it. If you’re reading this in the far future … More Population Dud, TOS: S3E16 “The Mark of Gideon”
Racism has always been a sensitive and polarizing issue. The original Star Trek was opening our minds to the possibility of a better future, just as the American civil rights movement achieved many of its ambitious goals. However, civil rights on paper does not always translate to civil rights in practice, and humanity has been … More Under Your Skin, TOS: S3E15 “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”
Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad, and whom Kirk wishes to cure he must first understand. When the Enterprise crew visits the asylum planet Elba II, which houses individuals deemed dangerously insane, Captain Kirk encounters Garth of Izar, a former Starfleet captain who has descended into madness. Kirk and crew were delivering … More Positive ID, TOS: S3E14 “Whom Gods Destroy”
The late American author Sam Levenson summarized the beauty of commitment with his insightful quote: “Love at first sight is easy to understand; it’s when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.” Unfortunately, movies and television must make due with much shorter runtimes, and thus we … More Taming of the Crew, TOS: S3E13 “Elaan of Troyius”
Hopeless Trekkie 