SNW s1e6 "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach"
this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2026
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I thoroughly enjoyed this episode (besides the flagrant OSHA violations obvi!). I was already into SNW but this, finally, was a real moral quandary for Pike. Do you "allow" this civilization to use this technology that they don't really understand but believe is necessary, leaving a child in an unknown level of suffering, or do you "rescue" the child from that suffering?
Thus condemning an entire civilization to literal collapse. Pike's look of resignation and disappointment just before he beams away is chilling.
it's one of those trolley problems made to put a mirror on our society. not only there isn't a right answer, but to find one misses the point.
I highly recommend you read the actual source material by U.K. LeGuin "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas".
No, collapsing a society based on child suffering is good actually. Go vegan today.
he meant literally collapsing a society. as in, their foating cities would crash into a river of lava.
I simply wouldn't have made my floating cities above a river of lava depend on a childs suffering. Complete skill issue
it was their ancient ancestors that built the city. entire planet lava. they were looking for alternatives but couldn't find any. you... understand that this is fiction, right?
yeah I was joking
oh okay i wasn't familiar with that one. reminds me of an IASIP scene lol.
then will you collapse our society? which relies on much more child suffering??
why am I asking? this is Lemmy, I'm sure you already have the matches to burn it all up
pretty sure our society is gonna collapse soon. Capitalism is nearing it's end.
i wish. any moment now
going vegan doesn't stop child suffering
yes it does, a lot of cows need to give birth to produce milk for example
that has nothing to do with child suffering. and going vegan doesn't stop dairy production anyway.
yes it does x2
Someone mentioned it in another comment. I was surprised to not have heard of it before now. It's on the list.
it's like 2 pages. put it at the top of the list and get it done
It's like two pages and a powerful metaphor that gave me a good push towards veganism.
that would be a pretty extreme trolley problem hahaha. did you learn ethics from michael? "kill one child, or kill an entire civilization. tick tock!"
(just kidding! i agree that the point is that there isn't an answer")
not sure if the story predates the trolley problem (definitely predates its memification), but yhea, it can be abstracted into a trolley problem.
the story also asks to look at all the suffering which out society relies on and asks us why aren't we leaving it if we choose to leave Omelas
someone mentioned that it's only a few pages long so I'm gonna try and read it as soon as i can get my hands on a copy.
https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf
it's available online. it's a good read, 30 minutes read 2 hours of digesting it afterwards
Cool! Gonna go make some coffee, read this then watch the video someone linked further up. 👍
Was that ever established? I remember having the impression that this was some ancient technology they had just always used and didn't necessarily understand. Somewhat like that society in TNG with the planetary cloaking shield that was slowly killing them all.
Just the visual of the orange lines connecting from the platforms to the machine. Other than that, we have to extrapolate from the dialogue:
Presumably because they read The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas!
why would you re-traumatize me like this
That does appear to be much more than coincidence. Strange that it never came up for me in school aside from the usual dystopian readings (1984, The Giver, Island, Fahrenheit 451, etc.).
I thought it was the worst episode of the first season. Yeah, it technically poses a moral dilemma, but it doesn’t do anything with it. The truth of the matter isn’t revealed until the very end, so there’s no time for anything other than Pike abruptly giving up and walking away from it. No exploring alternatives or grappling for clever solutions, just… giving up.
That’s my recollection, anyway — haven’t watched it since it came out.
Thats a fair critique for sure. I may have been a bit starved for classic Trek by the time this aired 😂 . I dont think it was the WORST episode though. I'd probably vote for the orion episode as worst of season 1...
edit: thinking about it more, i think the main "point" of the story was that sometimes the best intentions simply aren't enough. no matter how much starfleet might try to impose their moral viewpoint on other cultures, there will be no-win scenarios with no good answer. you just have to learn how to live with the guilt of not being able to save everyone.
I can see that. Personally, “Pike cooks himself out of a bad situation and then pirate-speaks on the bridge for fun” is all gold, but that’s clearly a matter of how high your tolerance for very dumb humour is…
It’s entirely possible I’ll see more value in “Lift Us…” when I rewatch the series. I hope so!
Yeah, I think I get what they were trying to do with bringing back the camp of the original series but it was a bit too much for me. That said, I didn't mind their version of a "holodeck" episode! (the elysian kingdom)
i disagree with your "it doesn't do anything with it" critique tho. not everything needs resolution. it's a retelling of a classic le guin. there's no resolution in the le guin either.
I love episodes with no neat resolution, like DS9's In The Pale Moonlight or TNG's Journey's End. But episodes like that are about the struggle with the unresolvable problem. We watch the show's respective captains grapple with and debate the problem for the whole episode.
This episode is mostly a mystery about what the situation with the planet might be. It poses it's dilemma at the end and then immediately throws up its hands.
And honestly, my recollection is that the "unresolvability" is less than there's no conceivable way this society could carry on without child torture, and more that the prime directive means this is all outside of Federation jurisdiction. Which feels more like moral abdication than a real ethical dilemma.
I think there's lots of reasons Le Guin's story works for me when this doesn't, but a big one is that there's no heroic "captain" figure. It's about making the reader face their own complicity in unethical societal structures. I don't feel pushed to do that with SNW because I'm busy yelling at Pike about what he should do, not looking inward.
this is like the core of federation society haha. they wouldn't be able to live with themselves if they couldn't handwave things away with the prime directive.