Would the Federation have banned "Insurection" immortality?

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sunnyside
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Would the Federation have banned "Insurection" immortality?

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A comment in another thread got me thinking about the movie. In principle that radiation or whatever seems like it would have been a great boon to the population of the Federation. However the Federation seems to have dealt with a lot of futuristic stuff by banning it. Certainly via cybernetics, genetic engineering, cloning, and who knows what they could already have seriously expanded humanities lifespans and capabilities, but that's all banned. There was also another episode where they bring in the retired ambassador to negotiate a hostage rescue and he takes what I believe were banned rejuvenation medicines that brought him back to youth.

So perhaps in the context of the movie the Admiral might have spouted off about helping the Federation, when he and those working with him would have never had any intention to make what they were doing widely known, but would have simply benefited themselves in a way that couldn't be so readily detected by Starfleet medical, and perhaps have attempted to gain power by offering to others in need clandestinely.
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Re: Would the Federation have banned "Insurection" immortali

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Cybernetics aren't banned - Geordi alone is proof of that! Not to mention Picard's artificial heart, Nog's artificial leg, and the Bynars.

I don't think the rejuvenation stuff in Too Short a Season was banned either. He got it from some non-Federation species, nobody in the Federation knew about it.

They do show Human lifespans being longer than they currently are. In Enterprise "Observer Effect" they said the average lifespan of Humans was "about a hundred years"; today in the US it's 78.4, so they're predicting that over the next 150 years lifespans will go up by around a third. That's not bad!

And of course there's McCoy in Encounter at Farpoint. Yes, he was depicted as being a very old guy - but he was still on active service, still physically and mentally capable. He was nowhere near as frail as the oldest people alive today, which to me implies that he could easily have gone another 10 or 20 years. And even if we took 137 as the average lifespan in TNG, that's another one third increase over Enterprise - and not far short of double today's lifespans.

(Hmmm, now I'm thinking I should write an article about this... if I do, I'll be sure to credit you for the idea.)

What they don't seem to go for is radical modifications for immortality. Such a thing may be technically possible using the "Pulaski transporter technique" or the methods you mention. But the attitude I get from TNG is "Death is a natural part of life and trying to live forever is stupid and immature". They don't seem to mind using medicine to live a long full lifespan, but they don't want to extend it unnaturally.

The Insurrection thing is an interesting dilemma on that front, actually - would they think of that as a "natural" thing, or as an artificial abomination? Certainly nobody ever objects to the idea of using the technology to prolong everyone's lives.
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Re: Would the Federation have banned "Insurection" immortali

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Graham Kennedy wrote:Cybernetics aren't banned - Geordi alone is proof of that! Not to mention Picard's artificial heart, Nog's artificial leg, and the Bynars.
My impression was that there was an exception to the ban on cybernetics if they were for medical purposes, but their use as a medically unnecessary upgrade was banned.

In that vein the Bynars (were they even members of the Federation?) required their cybernetic components for survival.


On the note of banning things, Kirk and company came across a number of pretty impressive things, like super speed juice, but we never hear of them again.

Obviously there could be all sorts of Treknobable reasons why anything might only work in that region of space during a solar flare and are useless otherwise. And the side effects could be considered too dangerous. But still, some prohibitive directives would explain a whole lot and explain it better IMHO.
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Re: Would the Federation have banned "Insurection" immortali

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sunnyside wrote:My impression was that there was an exception to the ban on cybernetics if they were for medical purposes, but their use as a medically unnecessary upgrade was banned.
And what gives you that impression?
In that vein the Bynars (were they even members of the Federation?) required their cybernetic components for survival.
They require them once they have them. I doubt they require them as such - surely the bynars originally evolved as a wholly organic species who then began to upgrade themselves with cybernetics.
On the note of banning things, Kirk and company came across a number of pretty impressive things, like super speed juice, but we never hear of them again.
Yep. Someday we should all sit down and work out what the Federation would be like if everything they've ever stumbled across was put to full use.
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Re: Would the Federation have banned "Insurection" immortali

Post by RK_Striker_JK_5 »

Graham Kennedy wrote:
On the note of banning things, Kirk and company came across a number of pretty impressive things, like super speed juice, but we never hear of them again.
Yep. Someday we should all sit down and work out what the Federation would be like if everything they've ever stumbled across was put to full use.
It's an interesting question if they used everything they had to its supposed fullest potential. Gods, just making up the list would be interesting. :D
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Re: Would the Federation have banned "Insurection" immortali

Post by Teaos »

Maybe its their rainy day locker. Shit the only break out when they need and end game. If you use it to much your enemies can counter it, if they dont know you have it...
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Re: Would the Federation have banned "Insurection" immortali

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Teaos wrote:Maybe its their rainy day locker. Shit the only break out when they need and end game. If you use it to much your enemies can counter it, if they dont know you have it...
yeah, they've had their hands on a lot. Ian made a thread on that.

I can see, from a writers perspective, why they drop the stuff. They have a hard enough time keeping everything else straight. And you've got a good point. If you distribute anything widely, the Romulans will have their mitts on it in no time, or other powers will come up with a counter.

It would have been fun to see them bust out some can of overpowered superpower juice from some secret compartment in the captains quarters in a particularly dire emergency in just one episode though. You could establish that the ship just had one dose to get back to "normal" in the next episode so the dramatic tension isn't destroyed.
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Re: Would the Federation have banned "Insurection" immortali

Post by Teaos »

Would make a good movie or more likely a epsiode arc in a series. Something Borg like posses a real threat, they finally open facility X and unleash hell.

Or it could be a novel based around the time of the two Borg assults. A Federation Admiral and some guy are standing at a desk watching the reports come through, their finger hovering over a button, they ae supposed to activate "X" when the Borg reach Earth, each time they are stopped moments before they need to activate thus no one ever hears about it.
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