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"Racing The Night" Aliens Hmm....

vacantlook

vacantlook

Super Moderator
\"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

In the Crusade episode "Racing The Night," Gideon says that if they find a cure for the plague, that they'll bring it to that planet to help cure the alien people there. Since we know that a cure is found, I wonder if the cure was indeed brought to this planet, and if so, would the alien civilization there decide to try and establish diplomatic and perhaps economic connections with Earth and/or the Interstellar Alliance.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

On a related, but insignificant note, I really liked the prosthetic work done for the aliens of that planet.
 
Re: \"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

Interesting question and, short of JMS pooping in to answer himself, I guess all answers will be no better than speculation.

For my part, I would like to think the Excalibur would have passed the cure along, because that fits with the "pain in the ass, but true to his word" character that Gideon seemed to be.

It may also have raised some interesting additional sub-plots given JMS' comment that the cure when found "was not what it seemed to be".

Hopefully someday we may find out - but I'm not holding my breath just yet.
 
Re: \"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

The aliens were the same race as Dureena. Even if the Excalibur did not return, she would.
 
Re: \"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

The aliens were the same race as Dureena. Even if the Excalibur did not return, she would.
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No, incorrect, you're thinking about the "lost tribe" of her people (Dureena's from from Zander Prime.), that Dureena found in "Patterns of the Soul" not "Racing the Night."
 
Re: \"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

Would Gideon still have been alive when the cure was found? It was my impression that Gideon was meant to die before then. But definiely the Dr. would've done everything in her power to ensure they went back and coughed it up to them.
 
Re: \"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

Would Gideon still have been alive when the cure was found? It was my impression that Gideon was meant to die before then.
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That (from the unfilmed script "End of the Line") could have been just a Season 1 to Season 2 cliffhanger. I find it hard to believe that Galen could not have done something (e.g. shadow skin) to prevent Gideon from getting killed, especially after having read the Technomage trilogy. From the script, from memory, I get the feeling that Gideon felt the impact (like you would through a bulletproof vest), but was not necessarily killed.
 
Re: \"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

No, incorrect, you're thinking about the "lost tribe" of her people (Dureena's from from Zander Prime.), that Dureena found in "Patterns of the Soul" not "Racing the Night."
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Opps, yes.
 
Re: \"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

I wondered about this question, too, so much that I wrote a story to answer it :)

It's a tough question. Gideon promised to deliver the cure of he found it, but there have to be consequences. The people of that planet have to answer for all the murders they have committed. Who should be punished? The leaders? The people in hibernation?

Who decides on a suitable punishment, when so many species have lost people to this planet's experiments? Does the ISA decide? But what about races which don't belong to the ISA? There are some reallu thorny moral issues raised by this one.

The answer I arrived at in my story was that the survivors (there were few. I had most of the population wiped out by their own keeper, driven mad by a Technomage initiated madness) had to agree to accept judgement from a tribunal made up of races whose members had been murdered, before they were given the cure.

This was the only way that Gideon could keep his promise and still ensure that some sort of justice prevailed. Even so, he wasn't comfortable with the solution.
 
Re: \"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

The answer I arrived at in my story was that the survivors (there were few. I had most of the population wiped out by their own keeper, driven mad by a Technomage initiated madness) had to agree to accept judgement ......
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Of course, you realized that you went out of your way to simplify the problem immensely, from the practical POV.

The whole tribunal for each individual approach becomes unworkable with an actual planetary scale population .... say maybe a few billion.

Obviously a toddler would not be as culpable as a cabinet minister. So how does the scale slide between the two? How much of the specifics of the plan, and what information gathering techniques would be, were made public? How do you prove who knew what, or who was complicit in the execution of the plan to what degree? That was tough enough to do in the aftermath of WWII, even when the groups passing judgement had been on the same planet at the time of the government sanctioned crimes.

Or when you are talking about a full planet, do you fall back on the age old theory of "war reparations"? How do you arrive at an actual figure per casualty, even assuming that a comprehensive list *can* be compiled? How much is enough to be a just punishment but not so oppressive that it just plants the seeds of a future war (the winners got this one wrong after WWI)?
 
Re: \"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

Facinating sounding Fanfic Demon. However, if the Keeper was dead, and most of the population was dead, what was your justification for not believing they had suffered enough, and justice had been done? Because, afterall, they were victims of the plague themselves, despite the fact that their leadership handled the search for the cure in a very unethical way.

Was it Gideon's decision to involve a tribunal, or did they get wind of it, and insist that the residents be tried, before they allowed Gideon to cough up the cure
 
Re: \"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

Of course, you realized that you went out of your way to simplify the problem immensely, from the practical POV.
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Damn right I did! :D It was the only way to keep the story manageable.

How much is enough to be a just punishment but not so oppressive that it just plants the seeds of a future war (the winners got this one wrong after WWI)?
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That's exactly the question I had Gideon ask himself. And what right did he have to give an answer? In my story, Gideon is married and a father, and he asks himself what decision he would have made had it been his son who had the plague. Would he have been so self-righteous if the lives of his wife and son had been on the line?


Facinating sounding Fanfic Demon. However, if the Keeper was dead, and most of the population was dead, what was your justification for not believing they had suffered enough, and justice had been done? Because, afterall, they were victims of the plague themselves, despite the fact that their leadership handled the search for the cure in a very unethical way.
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But the population supported the actions of the leaders. If they opposed it, they could have stayed out of hibernation and died. The only people in those storage areas were the ones who had actively supported the unethical search.

Was it Gideon's decision to involve a tribunal, or did they get wind of it, and insist that the residents be tried, before they allowed Gideon to cough up the cure
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In my story, the ISA made the decision as to how to proceed. Gideon demanded that the cure should be delivered, as he'd made the promise, but the ISA set the terms.
 
Re: \"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

Ah, so you're drawing a direct corelation between hibernating and approving of what was being done while they were hibernating. I envisioned those were completely separate issues. The population was put into hibernation, with one "Keeper" being responsible for being a rep. regarding finding a cure, but, I didn't see that the hibernating people were aware of the lengths the "Keeper" would go to find that cure.
 
Re: \"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

Whereas I worked on the basis that the population had given at least tacit approval for the actions the Keeper took in finding a cure. At the very least, they chose not to know what their leaders did on their behalf. That excuse wasn't accepted after WW2, and I assumed it wouldn't be accepted by the ISA.
 
Re: \"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

The big difference is that the keepers have only killed a few hundred people. The Nazis killed millions and also fought wars.
 
Re: \"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

You're assuming they only killed hundreds. I don't think the number was ever specified. Who knows how many ships could have been hidden around the planet? And even if it were hundreds, does the number make the crime any less heinous?
 
Re: \"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

Thats the point isn't it. We don't really know how many of their race have been sacrificed.

Also do we know that a cure for humanity would work for them?

:D
 
Re: \"Racing The Night\" Aliens Hmm....

You're assuming they only killed hundreds. I don't think the number was ever specified. Who knows how many ships could have been hidden around the planet? And even if it were hundreds, does the number make the crime any less heinous?
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The only people they can kill are the people who visit the planet. Since there is no trade or tourism the only visitors are explorers. There are only a few explorers around at any one time.
 
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