Torchwood Dilemma (poll) (spoilers inside)

Akrasia

If you were in the position of the Prime minister and you were told to give up 10% of the worlds children to an existence of infinite malaise and slavery, or else the entire planet would be wiped out, what would you do?

Badboy1977

This Dilemma has historical roots. The Romans ,I think, used to do something similar if a town rebelled. I know the Nazi's ceratainly did. If you give in to tyranny it will prevail. The 456 were obviously not capable of taking the kids themselves-otherwise they would have just gone ahead and done it.

That leads me to think they were not as powerful as they presented. A war would be preferable to the chasms it would open in society and the dark political forces it would unleash if a 10% offering was made. Where would this policy of appeasement end?

Better to at least start a war and find out the real capabilities of the 456 than just give in straight away.

pixelburp

Well I would have fought. I mean consider this; we know UNIT have powerful weapons & alien tech (up until recently they had a giant flying fortress ffs, and I bet they were replacing it / had equivalents). Hell we know that the UK & Torchwood have a giant space laser for taking care of pesky motherships (the first Xmas special), so what I found somewhat hard to swallow was that neither the US / UK governments, nor UNIT made even the slighest attempt to fight the alien menace, even though it has been established in both shows that they have the technology.

There was lip service paid to the fact that they couldn't locate any alien ships (not to mention justifying the whole thing with talk of over-population), and perhaps after the finale in season 4 of Dr. Who UNIT is weak (though this could have been mentioned), but even so. We rolled over wayyyy too easily.

pwwillia

but wasn't it the case that when they confronted the 456, they pretty much implied that they wouldn't directly fight humanity but release a virus which would wipe out the planet. then move in and take control of earth? remember they couldn't detect their ships or from were they came from.

pixelburp

pwwillia wrote: »

but wasn't it the case that when they confronted the 456, they pretty much implied that they wouldn't directly fight humanity but release a virus which would wipe out the planet. then move in and take control of earth? remember they couldn't detect their ships or from were they came from.

Perhaps, but generally when you make a threat like that you give a harsh lesson or example to show that you're not bluffing. Sure the 1965 segment talked of some super flu, but no such threat was made this time iirc.

ixoy

I think we did roll over too quickly as well following what was a ridiculously small demonstration. The aliens should really have done something more spectacular, such as casually wiping out say Manchester or Birmingham. Having said that, it's clear they were cowards - at least if they offer the kids, there's less chance of an alien maser beam incinerating their own precious kids. There's far less doubt by caving in then trying to fight and risk losing everything. I think it makes sense in the context of what we saw of them.

I also didn't get a global sense to this - how was the rest of the world preparing for this moral dilemna? How were they finding their 10%? Given the time zone differences they couldn't have just used the school ruse.

How did Brian Cowen react - surely 10% kids would be an excellent saving for the government in terms of state spending? Did he say offer 30% of the kids, selling the other 20% to other states in a sinister form of carbon credits? Did anyone else do that?

minkii79

There is absolutely no way they should've even considered giving them the kids. For 1, if they DID set off a virus, then they would probably kill the kids, anyway, so why would they shoot themselves in the foot? And 2, last time 12, this time 10%, next time all, time after slavery for breeding.

iguana

If something like this happened in real life the first thing the governments would do, after the haggling attempt failed, would be contact the governments of poor countries and arrange to "buy" their 10% in exchange for debt relief or trade agreements. The world would be told that the aliens were a kind, beneficial species who had come to rescue the poorest children on earth and give them a better life. The parents who object to their children being taken would probably be shot and this would be covered up. And there would be faked scenes of tearful but hopeful parents sending their kids to space on every news channel.

Eventually the truth about the treatment of the parents would come out and people would suspect the aliens were not good. Lots of people in the west would be angry, they'd boycott certain good and countries. They'd sign lots of petitions and arrange protests. But at the end of the day they would go home and look at their kids in bed and be grateful that they were born in a developed nation and that their world is continuing as usual. Just the same as we all do when 33,000 children die each day from poverty.

If for some reason the aliens insisted on the 10% being an equal distribution from each country it does make sense to take them from the least productive section of society for an awful lot of reasons. Beyond the obvious desire to leave the people we need for our society to function. If you take children randomly you will be taking 1 child from about 30% of families and there will be almost nobody who won't lose a cousin/nephew/godchild. That would make every adult in the world join together and fight the government.

If you take all the children from one section of society only that 10% will be affected. The people who lose their children will also mostly lose their nieces and nephews. While they have more to lose they won't be able to fight as effectively when the rest of the country knows that if they keep the head down their families will all be ok.