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this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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Daystrom Institute
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I think it would behoove the series to revisit this issue in the future, and maybe shed some more light on why the eugenics laws exist, and why they're implemented in the way that they are.
As it stands, they haven't done much more than gesture toward the Eugenics Wars and said, "we don't want that to happen again." That's pretty much the bare minimum of what they should do - past franchise instalments have suggested that (human) genetic augmentation tends to produce unstable megalomaniacs (as Spock crudely put it, "Superior ability breeds superior ambition"). It would be nice to know whether this is still a likely side effect.
I'd also like to see more examination of what other Federation worlds have to say about this. Have other species had their own Eugenics Wars? Have any of their societies flirted with Gattaca-style hellscapes?
Overall, I keep coming around to this idea that the series is presenting regulations on eugenics as a bad thing, and I think they need to shade in some of those grey areas.
Absolutely. The prosecution wasn't given any opportunity to justify the laws whatsoever. It's hard to imagine such a black & white stance on the issue being believable, but they just completely sidestepped it, again.
I enjoy science fiction as a way to critique the social issues of our day through recontextualisation. Because this episode didn't get into the technical details of eugenics, it served far more obviously as an allegory for our present day discrimination - which probably makes it difficult to write compelling opposition that then doesn't just read as racist/transphobic apologetics or whatever.
I mean, I still think it would be possible to do. But I can see the constraints the writers are working with and why they chose to not get into the weeds. It's a shame.