Synopsis: On planet Exo III, Captain Kirk and Nurse Chapel visit her former fiancé, Dr. Roger Korby.
When Captain James T. Kirk and Nurse Christine Chapel come across Dr. Roger Korby, he is living in underground tunnels, ruins left by the former inhabitants of the planet Exo III. The “old ones” also left technology to make androids, but not androids with positronic brains, like Lt. Commander Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation; this technology allows a person’s entire consciousness and soul to be transferred into an artificial life form. Korby tells Kirk that a human converted into an android can be programmed for the better. Korby also says: “No one need die again. No disease, no deformities . . . I’m offering you a practical heaven, a new paradise.” But is he?
Korby tries to convince Kirk that this is a great gift for humanity. He must know that this is going to be a difficult sell, because he doesn’t allow Kirk and Chapel to contact the Enterprise. Kirk rebuffs Korby, comparing his ideas about re-programming people with Genghis Khan, Caesar, and Hitler.
There is an old adage, something along the lines that the only things in life that one can be certain about are death and taxes. If we take taxes to mean more than just financial constraints, but to also include taxing challenges that we need to confront in order to become ourselves, there is a lot to this statement. To remove both death and challenges would take away what it means to be human.
But then, what is it about androids, the superhuman creations, that fascinate us? They give the illusion of ambivalence having moved beyond giving into human emotions and needs and wants. But might this same ambivalence be gained by allowing us to feel and accept our human yearnings? To name them, to listen to what they are trying to tell us, to accept them as separate entities and see through their perspectives, and then to bring them back into ourselves. This is the essence of James Hillman’s four movements in Re-visioning Psychology – personifying, pathologizing, psychologizing, and dehumanizing. Korby just wants to dehumanize.
Original post created 10 January 2021
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