Group: alt.startrek · Group Profile
Author: GeneKGeneK Date: Jul 7, 2008 16:09
> Uh, it is torture. Look, the salt monster is just doing its thing to
> live. Spock striking the salt monster repeatedly is hardly different
> than the group of policemen standing around beating the hell out of
> Rodney King. Spock tortured the salt monster. Perhaps you are one of
> those "wide stance" Republicans who define torture as anything that
> the "other" guy does in response to what you first did to them... Or
> perhaps you think torture must involve Vincent Price wearing black and
> controlling a swinging pendulum over someone chained to a slab rising
> from a pit...is, uh, that how you define torture?
For one thing, torture has to inflict suffering, of either
a physical or psychological nature. In this case,
"Nancy's" reaction is to stand there and take it with
no indication of suffering (IIRC, the actress actually
smiles at one point), then to backhand Spock and
send him flying across the room. Spock's intent
here is not to cause "Nancy" any harm or pain (he
was previously attacked by the creature when it killed
Crater, probably went through the full range of useless
actions starting with the neck pinch and knows what
he's doing is laughably harmless to the creature), but
to demonstrate to McCoy through his utter inability to
cause either that the creature was not who or what
McCoy thought it was.
GeneK
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