The Lunar Missions - Big Success or Total Screw-up?
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The Lunar Missions - Big Success or Total Screw-up?
by DocDenim » Sat Jul 03, 2004 4:38 am
Post follows a thread started in "Captain Black dilemma" topic, by Doc Brown, originally posted on MSN Forum 03/04/2004. The same post is copied here for the purpose of this topic - Chris
Hey All!
(and Chris, feel free to move this if it's in the wrong spot)
As luck would have it - I happen to have a rough draft of the Crater 101 post that I did last fall - it’s only in hard copy and not quite verbatim what hit cyberspace at that time, but I think all of the salient points are here - so I shall simply re-key the thing laboriously. (A labour of love, of course!) I seem to recall that it generated some very interesting rebuttals at the time. (Doc Brown - you probably have your response to this one in your archives....I think you’ll find that there was some discussion about the actual ‘purpose’ of the Mysteron Complex in Crater 101...it’s another maverick pet theory I have....)
The Lunar Missions - Big Success or Total Screw-up?
The gist to this particular theory is that the whole purpose of the Mysteron’s Lunar Complex wasn’t (in all likelihood) as a base for the Mysterons to use as a place from which to attack Earth and/or Lunar colonies at all - the genuine purpose of the Lunar Complex may have been to give humans Another Chance. Think about this:
The Mysteron’s Lunar Complex was built (geographically speaking) quite close to a number of Earth’s Lunarville colonies - but for proximity of attack, they could likely have put it a little further out of reach of easy discovery without too much problem...they do seem to manage things quite all right all the way from Mars, after all. And why, do you suppose, the Lunar Controller chose to announce that he’d made contact with and negotiated a settlement with the Mysterons on the time schedule that he did? The Complex wasn’t finished yet, giving Spectrum and the Lunar Authorities an opportunity to do something about it before it was too late, so to speak. I think the Mysterons may well have wanted to see just exactly what they’d actually do. As we know, Spectrum was able to get in there, steal the power source and then demolish the Complex (which may not have been necessary, after they’d disabled it by taking the diamond pulsator) (which the Mysterons may have intended that they do) and then get away clean. So what did Spectrum do next? They used the pulsator to call up the Mysterons to apologize for blowing up the Martian complex.
I would like to submit that it’s no small wonder that the Mysterons weren’t listening at that point. What if, just maybe, the purpose of the Lunar Complex was a Test, to see whether or not the humans would repeat their first mistake? Perhaps the inital destruction of the Martian complex was an error in Black’s judgement. But that simply can’t be said for the destruction of the Lunar site - the humans learned about it, talked it over, and then very deliberately arranged by concensus to destroy it. (Using a low-yield nuclear device - “Arrangements have been made with the Lunar Authorities to carry this out” I believe Colonel White said. And “Of course, it must be destroyed at once.” Proving on the whole what sort of aggressive, territorial and short-sighted creatures we really are, even Colonel White. The Mysterons (well, my Mysterons, anyway) have to be plenty confused about the actual motives behind any ‘peace’ offerings from Earth’s authorities. While the destruction of the Lunar complex was widely publicized and hailed as a success (The Inquisition) I wonder myself it it might not have been the greatest blunder of the War of Nerves to date.
Enjoy!
Doc Denim
A gold mine indeed - and not least because of that very last point about the Moon. Black wasn't there, it's true - which might tell against the earlier-expressed idea that his presence is necessary for the Mysterons to function, were it not for the fact that the Mysterons were actively attempting to establish themselves there. We had a good old debate on the old forum about whether the destruction of Crater 101 was a tactical success or a failure in the long term, but we didn't actually (as far as I remember) touch on why the Mysterons built it in the first place.
Could it have been to act as some sort of booster station for their powers - perhaps as a backup plan in case Black got himself zapped? Or were they simply attempting to establish a colony there? The trouble with that idea is that if it's right, then why on earth did they draw attention to it by declaring independence before they were ready, so to speak? They could have waited until they'd assimilated all the personnel at Lunarville 7 (an easy enough task after they'd got the controller), then denied landing facilities to any spacecraft from Earth that attempted to investigate. By acting prematurely, they effectively scuppered their own plan by allowing the craft carrying Scarlet, Blue and Green to turn up, discover the complex and destroy it.
Going back a bit though, I'm also wondering whether the fact that the Controller DID attempt to distance himself from mankind's war with the Mysterons shows that mysteronised reconstructions do have an independent consciousness after all. A pre-programmed automaton would have done his job, kept his mouth shut and quietly worked away on behalf of his masters - but a fully-fledged Mysteron might feel sufficient indignation at the state of affairs that he might try to take independent steps to amend it. Perhaps he made that fatal tactical blunder precisely because Black wasn't there to stop him - who knows?
Doc Brown
Hey All!
(and Chris, feel free to move this if it's in the wrong spot)
As luck would have it - I happen to have a rough draft of the Crater 101 post that I did last fall - it’s only in hard copy and not quite verbatim what hit cyberspace at that time, but I think all of the salient points are here - so I shall simply re-key the thing laboriously. (A labour of love, of course!) I seem to recall that it generated some very interesting rebuttals at the time. (Doc Brown - you probably have your response to this one in your archives....I think you’ll find that there was some discussion about the actual ‘purpose’ of the Mysteron Complex in Crater 101...it’s another maverick pet theory I have....)
The Lunar Missions - Big Success or Total Screw-up?
The gist to this particular theory is that the whole purpose of the Mysteron’s Lunar Complex wasn’t (in all likelihood) as a base for the Mysterons to use as a place from which to attack Earth and/or Lunar colonies at all - the genuine purpose of the Lunar Complex may have been to give humans Another Chance. Think about this:
The Mysteron’s Lunar Complex was built (geographically speaking) quite close to a number of Earth’s Lunarville colonies - but for proximity of attack, they could likely have put it a little further out of reach of easy discovery without too much problem...they do seem to manage things quite all right all the way from Mars, after all. And why, do you suppose, the Lunar Controller chose to announce that he’d made contact with and negotiated a settlement with the Mysterons on the time schedule that he did? The Complex wasn’t finished yet, giving Spectrum and the Lunar Authorities an opportunity to do something about it before it was too late, so to speak. I think the Mysterons may well have wanted to see just exactly what they’d actually do. As we know, Spectrum was able to get in there, steal the power source and then demolish the Complex (which may not have been necessary, after they’d disabled it by taking the diamond pulsator) (which the Mysterons may have intended that they do) and then get away clean. So what did Spectrum do next? They used the pulsator to call up the Mysterons to apologize for blowing up the Martian complex.
I would like to submit that it’s no small wonder that the Mysterons weren’t listening at that point. What if, just maybe, the purpose of the Lunar Complex was a Test, to see whether or not the humans would repeat their first mistake? Perhaps the inital destruction of the Martian complex was an error in Black’s judgement. But that simply can’t be said for the destruction of the Lunar site - the humans learned about it, talked it over, and then very deliberately arranged by concensus to destroy it. (Using a low-yield nuclear device - “Arrangements have been made with the Lunar Authorities to carry this out” I believe Colonel White said. And “Of course, it must be destroyed at once.” Proving on the whole what sort of aggressive, territorial and short-sighted creatures we really are, even Colonel White. The Mysterons (well, my Mysterons, anyway) have to be plenty confused about the actual motives behind any ‘peace’ offerings from Earth’s authorities. While the destruction of the Lunar complex was widely publicized and hailed as a success (The Inquisition) I wonder myself it it might not have been the greatest blunder of the War of Nerves to date.
Enjoy!
Doc Denim
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DocDenim
by DocBrown » Sat Jul 03, 2004 4:40 am
And hello there Doc Denim! I have indeed got my contribution to this one, and I'll paste it in below. (I agree - you may want to move this into a new thread Chris - the lunar complex question is one of those that could run and run. [Come to think of it, did I mean "(lunar complex) question", or "lunar (complex question)" when I wrote that?] Before I do though, I'll apologise in advance if the end result contains a smattering of control characters – particularly between the paragraphs. I usually assemble replies off-line and then paste them in, and there appears to be a tendency for these to slip through as meaningless text. I’m still learning how to prevent this happening. But anyway, this is what I wrote at the time:
Why did Colonel White apparently accept it as axiomatic that the complex had to be destroyed? Surely for the same reason that Kennedy was prepared to risk WWIII to get those Soviet missiles out of Cuba in 1962 – and I think there are a lot of parallels with that incident. It’s my understanding (it may be incorrect, but I’ve seen this in print many times) that the actual physical presence of the ICBMs in Cuba wasn’t any more threatening per se than the hundreds already stationed in Soviet territory – any of which could have been used at any time to decimate the US. True, the time between launch and impact of those missiles would have been vastly shorter – but no more so than that of the missiles in American bases in Turkey at that time. What presumably outraged Kennedy was the symbolism of it: the United States was simply not prepared to permit the Soviets to establish a foothold in the American hemisphere – a view that continued right up to the disintegration of the USSR. Colonel White’s reaction was probably similar: the moon is a little too close to us for comfort, and you’ll stay off it if you know what’s good for you. Presumably the Mysterons didn’t see it that way at all, and therefore saw no moral conflict in the counter-plan of executing Scarlet when he tried to negotiate peace, and proceeding to attempt to blow up Cloudbase. Looking at it that way, it could be argued that we’re pretty lucky that the Mysterons didn’t abandon their war of nerves and simply launch Armageddon in the wake of the destruction of their complex in Crater 101 – just as very nearly happened over Cuba. Perhaps the whole thing was, as Denim has suggested, a test. If so, it seems to me that we failed it with flying colours.
Incidentally, in another parallel, the Kennedy administration clearly had no problem with the idea of organising spying missions over Soviet territory – in much the same way that Spectrum tried to establish a camera on Phobos to keep an eye on the Mysterons. And just as with the Gary Powers incident, the Mysterons forcibly demonstrated their determination to put a stop to it.
This is off-track, but while I’m thinking about it, it occurred to me a while back that there are also many parallels between Stingray and the Iraq standoff during the 1990s. Commander Shore presumably considered it self-evident that the WASPs had every right to organise regular submarine patrols of the oceans to ensure that the underwater races were behaving themselves, but probably would have been outraged had Titan decided to start up regular terror fish patrols along the coastlines of the major landmasses. I wonder how the situation would have developed if Shore had come to the conclusion that Titan had WMDs?) Getting back to the point though, there’s this thing about two wrongs not making a right. But is there any “right” in this situation at all? It seems to me that putting aside the point that the Mysterons are demonstrably nasty opponents, there are simply two views – those associated with our interests, and those associated with their interests. The two are in conflict, and the end result – as usual – is war. The irony of the situation is that there was no NEED for the views to conflict. Black made a mistake in attacking the complex. The Mysterons made a mistake in assuming that Black was representative of humanity – and until such time as they can be convinced that this is not the case* then the war will continue. The lunar expedition certainly did nothing to make them reconsider that view. An opportunity lost? I think so.
[* It’s been said that diplomacy is the art of saying ‘good doggy’ until you can lay your hands on a rock. I suspect the Mysterons may have been pondering that saying when they formulated their response to Colonel White’s message.]
DocBrown
Why did Colonel White apparently accept it as axiomatic that the complex had to be destroyed? Surely for the same reason that Kennedy was prepared to risk WWIII to get those Soviet missiles out of Cuba in 1962 – and I think there are a lot of parallels with that incident. It’s my understanding (it may be incorrect, but I’ve seen this in print many times) that the actual physical presence of the ICBMs in Cuba wasn’t any more threatening per se than the hundreds already stationed in Soviet territory – any of which could have been used at any time to decimate the US. True, the time between launch and impact of those missiles would have been vastly shorter – but no more so than that of the missiles in American bases in Turkey at that time. What presumably outraged Kennedy was the symbolism of it: the United States was simply not prepared to permit the Soviets to establish a foothold in the American hemisphere – a view that continued right up to the disintegration of the USSR. Colonel White’s reaction was probably similar: the moon is a little too close to us for comfort, and you’ll stay off it if you know what’s good for you. Presumably the Mysterons didn’t see it that way at all, and therefore saw no moral conflict in the counter-plan of executing Scarlet when he tried to negotiate peace, and proceeding to attempt to blow up Cloudbase. Looking at it that way, it could be argued that we’re pretty lucky that the Mysterons didn’t abandon their war of nerves and simply launch Armageddon in the wake of the destruction of their complex in Crater 101 – just as very nearly happened over Cuba. Perhaps the whole thing was, as Denim has suggested, a test. If so, it seems to me that we failed it with flying colours.
Incidentally, in another parallel, the Kennedy administration clearly had no problem with the idea of organising spying missions over Soviet territory – in much the same way that Spectrum tried to establish a camera on Phobos to keep an eye on the Mysterons. And just as with the Gary Powers incident, the Mysterons forcibly demonstrated their determination to put a stop to it.
This is off-track, but while I’m thinking about it, it occurred to me a while back that there are also many parallels between Stingray and the Iraq standoff during the 1990s. Commander Shore presumably considered it self-evident that the WASPs had every right to organise regular submarine patrols of the oceans to ensure that the underwater races were behaving themselves, but probably would have been outraged had Titan decided to start up regular terror fish patrols along the coastlines of the major landmasses. I wonder how the situation would have developed if Shore had come to the conclusion that Titan had WMDs?) Getting back to the point though, there’s this thing about two wrongs not making a right. But is there any “right” in this situation at all? It seems to me that putting aside the point that the Mysterons are demonstrably nasty opponents, there are simply two views – those associated with our interests, and those associated with their interests. The two are in conflict, and the end result – as usual – is war. The irony of the situation is that there was no NEED for the views to conflict. Black made a mistake in attacking the complex. The Mysterons made a mistake in assuming that Black was representative of humanity – and until such time as they can be convinced that this is not the case* then the war will continue. The lunar expedition certainly did nothing to make them reconsider that view. An opportunity lost? I think so.
[* It’s been said that diplomacy is the art of saying ‘good doggy’ until you can lay your hands on a rock. I suspect the Mysterons may have been pondering that saying when they formulated their response to Colonel White’s message.]
DocBrown
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DocBrown
by Prismatic Avatar » Thu Aug 17, 2006 11:08 am
I love this theory and agree it could run and run. Much though I consider my species to be one of the biggest blights on Creation, however, I do need to raise one small particle of defence. The Mysterons have declared, on several occasions, that it is their avowed intention to destroy all life on Earth. All life - not just Humanity. Unless the Moonbases are totally self-supporting, the destruction of all life on Earth would mean the death of everyone on Luna, as well. Therefore the Human presence on Luna is very much part and parcel of Earth, unless the Mysterons were willing to support them when they eradicated Earth. Spectrum - and Earth - knows precious little about the abilities of the Mysterons and with the stakes as high as the survival of the entire Human species, they simply could not permit the existence of the Mysteron base on Luna.
Change the scenario a little: aliens on Luna declare war on Earth, then start building a base in a small country on Earth, which chirpily declares that it's formed an alliance with these aliens and will allow them to do whatever they like on the surface. Would your reaction be to shrug and say 'okay'? Or even closer: another country declares war on us and then starts to build a base within our own borders. On a planetary scale of things, the distances are comparable.
Luna is literally on top of us. There is never a moment when some part of Earth's surface is not directly under her gaze. The same cannot be said for Mars. White has tens of millions of people under his protection. He can't afford to play perhaps-games when faced with a demonstrably lethal and hostile force. The Mysterons seem to be coping okay from Mars, but Humanity has managed to win quite a few battles. It could be argued that that proved the Mysterons needed to be nearer in order to be more effective.
White simply couldn't take the chance.
Change the scenario a little: aliens on Luna declare war on Earth, then start building a base in a small country on Earth, which chirpily declares that it's formed an alliance with these aliens and will allow them to do whatever they like on the surface. Would your reaction be to shrug and say 'okay'? Or even closer: another country declares war on us and then starts to build a base within our own borders. On a planetary scale of things, the distances are comparable.
Luna is literally on top of us. There is never a moment when some part of Earth's surface is not directly under her gaze. The same cannot be said for Mars. White has tens of millions of people under his protection. He can't afford to play perhaps-games when faced with a demonstrably lethal and hostile force. The Mysterons seem to be coping okay from Mars, but Humanity has managed to win quite a few battles. It could be argued that that proved the Mysterons needed to be nearer in order to be more effective.
White simply couldn't take the chance.
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Prismatic Avatar
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by Doc Denim » Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:24 am
Prismatic Avatar wrote:
Thank you!
It will become rather important in future fan-fic....
Have fun!
Doc Denim
I love this theory
Thank you!
It will become rather important in future fan-fic....
Have fun!
Doc Denim
...no one expected an Australian Inqusition....
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Doc Denim
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by James. C » Thu Jan 18, 2007 11:32 pm
Well remember the pulsator was part of the attack on Cloudbase...
But why not just employ the method used in NCS' Chiller? Raises questions methinks...
But why not just employ the method used in NCS' Chiller? Raises questions methinks...
Come and get me Earthman!
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James. C
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