Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x08 "Four-and-a-Half-Vulcans"
hallettj@leminal.space 7 months agoSo La’An became Romulan; Spock said her case was different because of her augmented heritage. Does that imply that Romulans augmented themselves? And that’s what distinguishes them physiologically from Vulcans, and is what makes them kinda evil?
I guess why wouldn’t Romulans augment themselves? And they got the bad Khan Singh kind of augmentation, instead of the good Illyrian kind.
I love the swift eyebrow raises when La’An and Pike say the thing they cannot discuss together!
Does that imply that Romulans augmented themselves? And that’s what distinguishes them physiologically from Vulcans, and is what makes them kinda evil?
I guess it makes some sense. They never got the teachings of Surak. So to control their emotions maybe they looked in to genetic augmentation, and it turns out, they turned evil. Which to be fair, a very common theme in Star Trek (exect when it’s not).
I’m too sleepy to stop this train of thought. Could Bashir have been augmented by an Illyrian doctor? Or a doctor whose work was informed by Illyrian methods?
StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 7 months ago
La’an didn’t become Romulan.
That was just the inference that she and Pike made as they both had awareness that Romulans existed.
In fact, it was a misdirection and further evidence that Vulcans can be blind in their prejudices.
The two of them locked onto the explanation that they knew and never considered that La’an’s heritage of altered DNA might lead to manipulative and territorially conquering behaviour like her ancestor Khan.
It was turning off the impact of the balancing unaltered human DNA and augmenting her brain function that let the Khan-like behaviour dominate.
I thought it was a fairly deft look at the risks of emphasizing different elements of brain function through intervention.