The episode BTW is entitled "Stitch in Time" and is written by: Steven
Barnes and direted by: Mario Azzopardi.
At 06:01 PM 28/7/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Marcus,
>In that episode, erasing the rape from the scientist's past made her a
>totally different person (you can barely recognize her when the cop finds
>her again), but she still became a scientist and invented the time machine.
That was the big question when the cop came back from preventing the
scientist's rape. Her life would be different, but how? There is a hoary
old myth that women who are successful in non-traditional fields are
somehow failures a "normal" women. The scientist in the original time-line
could have fit into this stereotype, brilliant and driven in her work, but
socially dysfunctional. The storyline here rejected that myth. The changed
scientist was just as successful as a scientist, while being happy and
gregarious.
>I found it very interesting how the story explores the question whether
>it is justifiable to kill a person who have not yet commited the crimes
>he is going to be executed for in future. In other words, to kill one yet
The scientist had a way of justifying her killing: all the men she killed
has already been properly tried, convicted, and executed "before" she
killed them. She was merely carrying out a legal sentence, just doing it
early and actually preventing the crimes. Without capital punishment, she
could not have used the same argument. (An alternative argument could be
that taking one life to save an innocent life is justified, and in these
cases she could be absolutely certain she was saving lives.)
Howard
Scott & Aronoff Translation & Editorial Services
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
alterego@alterego.montreal.qc.ca
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