Episode: Majority Rule (1×07)
(Original Air Date of 10/26/17; viewed on Hulu on 10/27/17)
Notable Guest Stars:
Ron Canada (Adm. Tucker) – Second appearance on the show.
Steven Culp (Willks) – One of my favorite guest stars of all time. He’s been on Star Trek, The West Wing, JAG, NCIS. He is forever Major Hayes or Web.
So the concept of voting for executions seems rather weird. We don’t even know what the two men did that brought them to this point, but apparently everyone’s life is down to social voting. (EDIT: As I am watching this as I write, I have to correct this from later in the episode; we do know what they did.)
Gordon has now been upgraded from last spot from “Person you don’t want on an away mission.” I have to wonder why John thought it was a good idea to “dry hump” the statue considering they were on a foreign planet. I mean, given he’s a senior officer you would think the idea of different cultural ideas might have sunk in. Not to mention he’s technically at work and not hanging out with his colleagues afterwards.
Also, if they had the ability to know various hat choices, surely they had time to research the planets historical figures?
So from what I heard before I watched, and what I saw when I watched, this episode is an allegory about Social Media and the trial of public opinion. John got caught dancing with the statue and was put on Youtube. It became Viral, and now the general public is voting on him and whether they believe his apology. Should his apology not be believed, he gets more downvotes. If he gets to a certian amount of downvotes, he’s electrically ‘corrected’ before being sent home.
The Chat, I am assuming is their version of “The Talk”, which is a show I dislike for many reasons, which I’m not going into here because this is a “Review as I watch” post rather than a discussion about media and female discourse.
I think perhaps this is also some discussion on the various forms of democracy, and how it can be corrupted.
Not sure this episode is going to be one of my favorites, but it was well acted and some of the shots were nicely done as well.
Notable Quotes:
John: “It’s these jeans – if I leaned back now I’d give myself a vasectomy”
~*~
Claire: What if people try to collaborate this?
Lysella: Don’t worry, they won’t.
Pros:
- They do have the point of cyber bullying and the masses not fact checking. Many times people will get self-rightious on social media and don’t take into concideration the person’s age, intent, or knowledge base. I’ve seen people who consider themselves social activists go after people who don’t have the awareness to know what they are saying/doing is offensive/not correct. They bully these people rather then educate them or at least allow them to go educate themselves.
Fact checking is always a problem on the internet. I’ve been guilty of this a few times myself. You read something, and perhaps you trust the source and just post it, or you forget because you are reading something on your phone on your break and have to get back to work. And it gets spread because everyone else is also reading while on a break or not looking at the source because they trust you and it spreads from there. I’ve tried to get into the habit of looking at the websites I read, and also bookmarking thigns if I don’t have time to really go into it. Also making sure to read various articles on the subject to double check facts.
- THe fact that not all things are instantly curable at this stage of the game. Sometimes Future based Sci-fi shows like their medical stuff to be 98% solved. One of my great pet peeves about TNG was the fact that colds and headaches were treated as something that rarely happened anymore.
Cons:
- I can’t imagine this system working for a world population. Also it can’t be completely unstructured or there would be no way of enforcing the popular vote.
Final Grade: B
Sokorra Lewis 