I’ve been a “Trekkie” for some time now, and decided to explore ARP topics in episodes that I haven’t seen. Today, I focused on an episode from The Original Series. Before starting this project I have mostly neglected the older adventures of the Enterprise mostly because it’s hard to endure the shoddy special effects.
Underneath the cosmetic flaws, the episode, “Space Seed”, was very thought-provoking and made me consider writing about Eugenics for my paper. In the episode, the crew of the Enterprise discovers an old Earth ship; it contains Khan, a character with super strength thought to be the product of genetic warfare in the 1990’s. The crew discovers that many genetically engineered supermen were left unaccounted for after this time, and that Khan was a very powerful leader on Earth.
It made me laugh to think that the writers of the series projected genetically engineered people to be force in warfare of the nineties. Obviously, we have lived through those years and no super-people took over the world. What exactly would be the timeline for such technology? I wonder if it’s possible now, and that society hasn’t done so because of the cautionary tales of old shows such as this one. With the controversial nature of genetic engineering in politics today, I’d like to research its use in militaristic situations. With the amount of popular fiction regarding the topic, I’m sure that I would not have trouble writing about how governments reconcile the possibility of effective new technology and the moral ambiguities attached to it.
I have personally seen this episode, although it has been awhile. My dad is a "trekkie" and it kinda made me one too. There for awhile I was obsessed with the original series and I am not sure why. Maybe it was because I had read some books about the characters in that series but anyways before I get too off topic, I agree that it would very interesting to see if such technology does exist or what it would take to create it.
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