I’m your nerd host, Chris Hardwick
Nerdist is a place where we nerds come together and share the nerdery that we find. It's also my home to various elements of the Nerdist Empire. You might recognize me from TV. You don't realize that's where you know me from, but it is. You think you went to college with me or I look like your cousin's friend, but that is not the case. At one time or another you stumbled upon me on your moving picture box in such cerebral gems as MTV's "Singled Out" and Noam Chomsky's "Shipmates." and so much more...
Say hello to the contributors.
I think you’re missing the point. It isn’t happiness vs. unhappiness. It’s chemically induced satisfaction with the status quo vs. mankind’s true nature: to aspire, to grow, to achieve. It’s the very ethos of Star Trek, to explore, seek out, boldly go, etc. Not to bliss out on spores and achieve nothing. Kirk is right to separate the colonists from their drugs and give them back their humanity.
There are spores that affect rodents that cause them to be unafraid of cats, which causes them to be eaten by cats because what the spore really want is to be inside the cats so they can reproduce and start all over again. The people aren’t saying, “We’re happy — Leave us alone.” The spores are using the humans to say it. Just like they are using the humans to cultivate the plants that produce more spores.
The only difference between the spores and, for example, the parasitic invaders from TNG is the scope of their ambition. The spores just want to soak up radiation and reproduce, instead of taking over the Federation, but they are no less sinister. Letting them get away with it would be tantamount to murdering the colonists.
This has to be one of the dumbest arguments I have ever heard.
None of these people were given the choice on whether they had their mood changed.
The whole point is choice.
If after the people were brought out of this decide that they prefer the calm and happiness, then fine.
But these people were never given the chance to chose in the first place.
Y
The people were drugged plain and simple.
They were invaded by a foreign body from the spores.
For anyone to think what happened to them was good, then I would hate to know such a selfish person.
Yeah, what everyone else has said. There was no sense of purpose on Omicron Ceti III; no sense of accomplishment. Gene Rodenberry was pretty clear that to him, the human adventure was everything. Happiness – and it is a legitimate goal – should come from struggle and achievement. Otherwise, what’s the point? The show is about a ship called Enterprise, after all. Look up the word
Heh I guess I’m just repeating what everyone else has already said, but I do totally agree with John on this one.
If the happiness was genuine, rather than imposed as a form of mind control, then wouldn’t you have seen a lot of people saying they want the spores back? Instead, as soon as anyone fights off their influence they want to go back to their pre-spore lives.
Also if the colonists had been the sort of people who wanted to spend their lives just sitting around, doing a bit of farming, not worrying about anything, presumably they could have just stayed on Earth? The Federation is already pretty much a utopia where (most) people don’t have to worry about doing a job they hate or going hungry.
The very fact that these colonists set off into uncharted space to settle a new world indicates that they wanted a life where they were striving and achieving things, rather than staying home and living the easy life, which to me shows that the spore-induced society was something imposed on their actual desires rather than just removing their worries
That said, I do agree that Kirk’s reaction to these sort of situations does seem to say a lot about him and his inability to be happy