A Brief Nerd Moment...
I watched a really good episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation a few days ago about a lone Borg survivor of a crash landing. While on board the Enterprise he slowly learns to view himself as an individual entity. Yet he also discovers that friendship can help him get rid of the loneliness that he feels while being away from the collective and all of their "voices" in his head. This produced lots of thoughts about identity, the self, the other...A subplot was the enterprise crew's wrestling with the ethics of using "Hugh," (as the Borg boy comes to be named), as a carrier for a virus to infiltrate and eventually destroy the Borg when he rejoins them. There are all kinds of ethical issues at play in this episode-is it ok to destroy an entire race if they are literally and totally incapable of anything other than destroying humans and their way of life? Is all sentient life valuable? Once Hugh has become self-aware, is it ethical to let him return to the collective?
I really liked this episode because of its alternating portrayal of Hugh as isolated and lonely and as a killing machine who would "assimilate" you at the first command by the collective.
Who am I kidding? Every moment for me is a nerd moment.
posted by Mike @ 10:12 PM
2 Comments:
I would love to share this nerd moment with you, but I don't watch Star Trek. I'm probably with you on a lot of other nerd moments though! :)
I didn't really watch Star Trek until I got a DVR.
At least not since my junior high years when these shows weren't re-runs...
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