27:30 actually I interviewed Bill Wolcoff on my channel and he said that it was directly the intention to use LeGuin as the basis for the episode

For me the most heartbreaking line in LeGuin’s story also marks an important difference from the SNW episode: “Please let me out, I’ll be good.” Because it implies that (unlike the First Servant) the child in Omelas *does not understand* what is being done to them, and is denied even whatever consolation might come from knowing the purpose their suffering serves. The Omelas child appears to think they are enduring a punishment because they were bad in some way, and might someday be released if they promise to be good, which the reader knows will never happen. That’s the line that punches me in the gut hardest whenever I read the story.

I swear, you'd think Starfleet would have a form for potential host planets to fill out before a ship visits them. "Do you certify that you're civilization is not powered by the continuous suffering of one (or several) small child?" "Do you certify that any member of our crew will not be executed if they accidentally break a window while playing football?" etc.

The moment they first dropped the word "Ascension" I was like "Ohhhhh, they're _totally_ puttin' that kid in a murder machine..." 😅

I'm surprised no one has brought up Spock's "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one".

That Ursula Le Guin story is way more heartbreaking, haven't stopped thinking about it all day. I suppose Star Trek didn't want to go that dark even though the acting on that kid having one moment of fear just before he gets connected was also horrific.

You’d be hard pushed to find a sci-fi writer who hasn’t been strongly inspired by LeGuin.

Le Guin's Omelas story is the kind of thing meant for a Star Trek episode which makes episodes and societies based entirely on thought experiments all the time. Surprised there wasn't a ToS or TNG episode that does this.

Le Guin is an amazing author. I definitely recommend the Earth Sea series and the Hainish Cycle, as well as the novel The Left Hand of Darkness.

I did catch up with the short story after reading about the similarities between it and this SNW episode. In agree with you that this is a case of inspiration rather than adaptation. Indeed, when I first saw this episode, I was reminded of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," wherein a small town regularly has a lottery, the "winner" of which is stoned to death, for reasons lost to collective memory but enshrined in tradition. If the lottery were not held, if the child in Omalas were freed, it the First Servant were not connected to the machine, would their communities still thrive? Perhaps, but no one seems to have the courage to find out.

One important question is: did James Cameron rip off Ursula Le Guin's story, The Word For World Is Forest, when making Avatar, and the answer to that is...100% yes.

I think we all resonate with the “Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach” and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” stories is they reflect, indirectly, the way our current society is set up. He who shall not be named referred to the US as the “shining city upon a hill” much like the floating cities in the Star Trek episode, but what children are suffering to support our lifestyle in this shining city? Have an EV car? Some of the minerals used to create the batteries for EVs have major issues with child labor when mined. Don’t have an EV? What about a smartphone? The same minerals are used in batteries for smartphones. This is just one example of an industry with child labor issues. There are many others both known and suspected. As I write this, Republicans are trying to roll back child labor laws that have protected children in the US for over a century. If you live in the developed world, especially if you live in the US, these suffering children should be on your mind everyday, but who among us would be willing to walk away from Omelas?

"Genre fiction, as Terry Pratchett has pointed out, is a stew. You take stuff out of the pot, you put stuff back. The stew bubbles on.” ― Neil Gaiman

Left Hand of Darkness & The Lathe of Heaven are works by Leguin that are still very memorable for me. The Wizaed of Earthsea is sketchier in my mind for some reason. The Left Hand of Darkness definitely expanded my mind regarding gender binaries & gender roles some 40 odd years ago. It's amazing how relevant that novel is to current events considering when it was written.

I feel like a tribute or inspiration is perfectly acceptable, I mean otherwise nobody is allowed to re-interpret works

I think this episode is honestly one of the stories that shows a weakness in SNW. They spend the entire episode building up to the dramatic reveal (that pretty much anyone could guess long before it's revealed), and basically no time examining it and what it really means to the society. No time discussing how the society might try to extricate itself from this situation and the reasons why they haven't. It's a huge missed opportunity. In fact, it's so focused on drama, that "Tots Drama" must be the 4th pillar of their society, because there's no reason for them to show the ceremony to Pike and act like they'd have no idea how he'd react. They've spent the entire damn episode hiding what's going on exactly because they know the reaction will be bad.

Glad you mentioned James at the end. The whole concept originates in criticisms of moral consequentialism and anyone familiar with the arguments could easily wrap a setting around such thought experiments; crafting a plot and characters is the part that makes the episode good

I did not know about Le Guin, so upon seeing the episode, I mostly thought of parallels to "The Lottery" by Shirley Jacskson. Your summary did not indicate how the child is chosen in Le Guin story and I quick search on the web did not seem to yield an answer. So maybe it is left ambiguous. But in the Trek episode it is absolutely a lottery. Also, I do not recall the episode giving an explanation as to why another child can't just be plugged into the machine if something happened to the lottery "winner". The implication seems to be that physically any child will make the machine run. But that the system that keeps the public willing to accept the suffering of the child is very delicate and requires the ritualism to keep going. Where it not for the established traditions the city has built around the rituals, more people could start to object and bring the society down. So even in an emergency, where the first servant is replaced last minute due to a kidnapping or assassination, any deviation could devastate the system they have worked out.

The more active role of the Ones Who Walk Away in the Trek episode is important to me, because it's what always bothered me about the original story. It never sat with me that they just left, instead of actively trying to do something to help the imprisoned child.

Didn't they also do this in the new millennium Doctor Who? The floating city of London on the back of a Leviathan.

Getting inspiration is never a bad thing. Ursula paid tributes in her own work. If the writers of SNW had straight up taken the story word for word and used it as their own, which would have been very hard for the reasons you identified, then there would have been an issue. A credit in the episode would have been nice though.

I am glad that you shared this. But there is so much more. Ursula Le Guin said that she rewrote the story of Khronos, changing the old man who was entrapped by the Watchers with a child because it tugged at the heartstrings more strongly. 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas', William James's 'The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life', as well as Fourier, Bellamy, Morris, Wells, and Dostoyevsky, among many others have reworked the Khronos/Cronos story of the sleeper to comment on current culture. It is a story as timeless as the Suffering Servant. Do haters desire to trash all of the great ancient works and ban them from modern interpretations on the immutable conditions of being? I applaud all of these authors.

Ursula K. Le Guin, my favourite anarchist author.

I've been trying to get my partner into Trek for a year, and strange new worlds is where it finally stuck. We're both neurodivergent. Her reaction to this episode was really something - she hated on Pike for trying to save the kid. "How dare he not respect her culture! He's supposed to be enlightened!" I know her reaction will be well in the minority, but I love that nutrek spawned a series so well written that we can talk philosophy over each episode.

Starship Captains, like paramedics/er staff, should never say "it'll be/it's been quiet/slow/uneventfull." That's a sure fire way for things to get set off into a massive hellscape of chaos. Now, I would be inclined to say that the episode feels more like a homage to Le Quin's story Those Who Walk Away. Even if the writers of Star Trek SNW had taken the story beat for beat, the perspective is vastly different. In the Those Who Walk Away, we are given the information from a resident of Omelas, whereas in the episode our perspective is that of the crew of the Enterprise. I don't know, that's just how I see it.

The Original Series ripped off Robert Heinlein's Puppet Masters novel in the episode where flying creatures would attach themselves on the backs of humans and control them. Kirk's brother was in this episode and died due to these creatures.

Never knew about this before I saw the episode, but I had just re-read a compendium of Le Guin's short stories, _"The Wind's Twelve Quarters"_ a few weeks earlier and so it didn't take me long to realize that the story was very reminiscent of _"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"_ . This wouldn't even be the first time one of Le Guin's stories inspired Trek - her Hanish series novel _"The Left Hand of Darkness"_ was a direct inspiration for the Next Generation 5th season episode _"The Outcast"_ and from that series her _"Law of Cultural Embargo”_ is pretty much the root inspiration for the Federation's General Order 1: The Prime Directive.

I saw LeVar Burton read a short story live here in Portland about 5 years ago. That short story was by Ursula K Le Guin. That is all.

One of the things I missed in Voyager and some of DS9 and TNG (and of course ENT) was the "poetry titles" that TOS and TAS used. I haven't caught SNW yet, but I am pleased to see that tradition is back!

I think it's funny the fact that no one knows where the copying versus stealing quote comes from, is probably because everyone who said it was "stealing" the quote from someone else

Bear in mind one terrifying similarity between three characters. This episode was all about three people who were destined to live out their lives stuck in a big chair.

I'm torn. I definitely feel like it maybe doesn't *rip off* the story but it definitely lifts heavily from it, specifically the components of the suffering child kept in the dark below the city, the festival, etc. But did it also expand on in the context of SNW's characters and arching themes of self-sacrifice, destined pain, and such? Totally and that adds a different nuance that the original story didn't have for obvious reasons. I'm just not sure, it still doesn't entirely sit well with me... I think I would've at least liked a credit footnote or something saying "inspired by" or "in memory of LeGuin" or something that would've fended off these discussions of plagiarism etc etc

Something I didn't really appreciate until watching this video's recap is how vital the subplot with M'Benga's daughter is to making the whole story work. The Omelas thought experiment is only really interesting if the sacrifice of the child involves a tradeoff that is *understandable* even if it's not morally acceptable. The problem is that life in the Federation, at least on the core/home planets, is *already* generally depicted as pretty utopian, and they seem willing to share non-military tech and resources with other already-advanced species. But against that backdrop, the Omelas tradeoff doesn't seem like a genuine moral quandary: A society that tortures a kid to make already incredibly comfortable and wealthy people like 2% better off is not making some appalling but comprehensible tradeoff; they're just irredeemable sadists. You couldn't sell it as something otherwise decent-seeming people are able to rationalize. The M'Benga subplot drives home that, idyllic as it might normally seem, there's still plenty of disease and death and suffering there that the people on Majalis avoid. Which pushes the Majalan society back into the realm of "interesting moral quandary" rather than just making them cartoonishly monstrous. At least if you don't think about it too hard, since it's implied the Majalans *could* share their medical tech with the Federation if they wanted, and that at least some of it would work without the whole child torture machine. But shh, never mind that.

Sometimes I think people confuse tropes with entire concepts, and this is the case with Strange New Worlds' "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach." Le Guin didn't really pioneer the trope of "Powered by a Forsaken Child" that both her short story and the SNW episode operate on - you can trace this trope all the way back to mythology across a variety of different belief systems and religions. I don't think creative use of a literary trope really requires an explicit "inspired by" or "based on" acknowledgement, personally speaking - so Robin Wasserman and Bill Wolkoff don't really need to thank Le Guin specifically, just as Le Guin doesn't need to thank the individual historians who preserved ancient mythology. Now if more specific elements of Le Guin's work were employed I'd say my view would change, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. The two stories stand well enough on their own, in my view, and in many ways tell a different story despite sharing a core similarity.

I do agree that "rip-off" or other such terms go too far. But this really does raise the question, "How close is too close to no longer only be 'inspired by' a previous work?" It may be a semantics thing mostly, but it does have legitimate repercussions insofar as things like crediting and citing previous creators and remuneration and compensation for the use of that work. I don't know where that line lies. It's a tricky situation, only compounded by all the times that big companies do this very thing to be able to "use" a work without paying for the "rights" to use the work.

There's a line from John Hodgman's book More Information Than You Require that has always stuck with me: "Ideas are not property, they are infections. They have no allegiance to their host body: they pass from brain to brain untraceably, or simply break out spontaneously, separated by continents or even centuries, without explanation." I always try to keep it in mind during conversations like this. No idea is truly original; our creativity comes from combining ideas into new forms. The only "ripping off" is repeating combinations that have already been tried.

I think most of the best episodes of _Trek_ from across all of its series and movies are variations on existing sci-fi stories. It's not stealing to explore an idea someone else already examined.

It's an important thought piece. And we do benefit from the suffering of children.

This feels like a trolley car with extra steps

Le Guin was an amazing author. Her works still to this day help me cope with some of the harsh realities of life. Steve to you, I recommend, the poem “The Valley”. It’s one of the best things ever put to paper and I still get choked up reading it aloud. Cheers buddy.

When I watched the episode I had never heard of the Omelas story and Le Guin has only ever been in my periphery.. To me, the story seemed really parallel to present day arguments against gun laws in the US. "Thoughts and prayers for the children who suffer but there's simply nothing we can do." Based on your summary and quotes from Omelas, I get the same vibe but in a much broader sense of a general criticism of our capitalistic system-- we all know that people suffer under the weight of it but "obviously it's better this way because of all the prosperity afforded to the rest of us" (quotes because it's not my opinion). For me, it was both interesting thought experiment and horrifying commentary on our current reality.

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omalas was hugely influential. It's to the point where there's an entire entry on TVtropes, "Powered By A Forsaken Child." I'm not really sure if it counts anymore. It's like saying that all space opera sci-fi is a ripoff of Forbidden Planet. That being said, JK Rowling definitely ripped off Le Guin with the wizard school, but that's a whole other issue.

I mean, if you're gonna "steal," steal from the best, right? But I actually think that this isn't a case of theft so much as conscious, genuine homage to LeGuin. I'm glad you mentioned The Dispossessed up front because as soon as it was revealed that Prospect VII was a colony world, I got serious Dispossessed vibes as well. So it's like, what if Omelas but Dispossessed but Star Trek?

I saw the video title and automatically knew which TNG episode he was referring to. Time for me to finish reading the Hainish cycle. Seriously, at the very least, read *The Left Hand of Darkness* .

Also, didn't they steal Spock's brain in TOS to run an idyllic city? Which predates the Omelas story.

If you haven't read The Left Hand of Darkness you haven't lived.

So, the comment about Pike getting a peek was an unintended reference to the "Pike's Peak" memes about his hair...or was it?

For me, I believe Omelas did inspire the episode, but I feel there is a fundamental point of difference in the two that changes the entire dynamic of the premise, which I feel most people are ignoring. The Enterprise Crew. They are outsiders who are there to function as Judge, Police, Executioners. Le Guin's story is about the natives of Omelas and the reader judging the morality of the situation. The Star Trek episode is about the Enterprise Crew & the writers judging the morality of the situation.

I once translated the same concept from LeGuin into a RPG scenario. The players didn't know the short story beforehand and that put them into the position of choosing what to do. I think this kind of story is even better when they are translated into interactive media (RPG, videogame or similars), that gives weight to the moral dilemma when the public doesn't only observe it, but partakes in it.

Ursula Le Guin is one of my very favourite authors so this episode suffered a bit in my estimation from that. In a "Le Guin did it better!" Kinda way. I still think that, but after a rewatch I did like the episode a bit more. There's a lot it does well. Making the kid a central character we get to know and sympathise with is an obvious choice in expanding the premise and building a narrative. The story the Majalans tell themselves, that the First Servant makes a willing sacrifice for the rest of them that they must honour & be grateful for, doesn't hold up to scrutiny when you consider that the First Servant is chosen at birth & raised his whole life for this. How can that be a real choice? I wouldn't put it among the best of the season but Strange New Worlds set such a high average that it's still a pretty great episode.

Stretching a 7 page short story to one hour of TV without introducing any more content may seem like an impossible task, but if anyone could, it's the writers for Star Trek Picard.

I've heard of that story before. What troubled me more was the pilot, which basically reprised "The Day the Earth Stood Still" with the Enterprise crew as the aliens (Klattu). No, there wasn't any Gort, but it's still similar. And foreshadowing this by having Pike watch the old movie doesn't make it more acceptable.

"Who Actually is Captain Sisko's Greatest Nemesis?" I feel like everyone will say Dukat or Winn, but IMHO it's himself. Ben fighting against the will of the Prophets and his sacrificing his Starfleet ethics? Ben Sisko is his own worst enemy.

I think that U. K. LeGuin, a titan of science fiction and moral visionary, would welcome this episode disseminating her vital message to a new audience. The SNW episode was very well done, took up Leguin's motif and ran away with it with excellent results. I only wish U.K. LeGuin had lived long enough to write a story about the society the ones who walk away from Omelas had built... now that would be a challenge! Thanks for a great segment and the U.K. LeGuin appreciation, Steve!

If a show were created to examine the everyday life in the Federation, Le Quin is one of the few people who I think could've done it justice. Most writers only add more technology to their everyday life and leave it at that. No real thought about how motivations and experiences might change in a different milieu with different adaptation structures

Omelas spelled backwards is Salemo, which is of course very close to Salem (of witch trials fame). Yet it's semitic root means "peace", as the Arabic "salaam" and Hebrew "shalom" show. That was also the root of King Solomon's name, the wisest king in the Bible. The Bible tells the story of how Solomon decided the case of two women who came to him, both claiming to be the mother of the same infant boy. In order to reveal by their reactions which one loved the boy most (and thus presumably was the real mother), he acted as though he'd decided to kill the baby, but then awarded him to the woman who was willing to do whatever it took to save him. So, perhaps Le Guin played on the double-edged sword of the historical and religious connotations of the word Salem, while also invoking a kind of reverse symmetry that invites us to see ourselves as in a mirror. Or then again, maybe my weird penchant for spelling things backwards is running away with me...

It's a very good point that, while the story obviously takes inspiration from Le Guin, nothing is wholly original. Inspiration is a chain that goes back forever. Also, while the SNW story does put Pike in a position where he has to make the moral decision form the short story, it also has other things to teach him that aren't in Le Guin. Lessons like there are some things worse than his apparent fate, and also, in the context of that fate, that there are things he can't control, that he can't fix.

There's also been criticisms of the character of Una ripping off DC Fontana as well (at least not attributing back to her) and of course, going back to the days of Voyager, "Blink of an Eye" ripping off "Dragon's Egg," and I think the differences are enough (well, I think the episode "Ghosts of Ilyria" should have added a note at the end "In Memory of DC Fontant" myself, but that's just my opinion). We can also look at many pop culture movies, etc. and their similarities such as Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine" which is obviously at least a homage to Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." As someone who has taken Master courses in Post Modern Literature, common syncretic allegories and references and sources to find and discover are very, very common nowadays than ever before (back in the day it was more truly public domain to the bible, legends, myths, fairy tales, etc.). While I have a few issues with this episode, it's not "oh my, ripping off Ursual Le Guin." Actually, the 9th episode may have even more callbacks to the Alien/Ripley universe, but again, this is a common trend in postmodern storytelling. As always when it is truly plagiarism, etc. but none of the examples I just mentioned do that. Mollie and the Old Man KZfaqrs may always complain about this, but I understand enough what's going on. It's more who does it better when they do this, of course. :)

That episode was very hard for me to get through... I hope, that I'd be one of the people to leave the city. I just don't believe I could live a life of joy, while an innocent child suffers !!!! It would eat my soul up...

I have loved Le Guin's writing for many years. Along with the people Le Guin credits for her inspiration there is another short story with a the germ of the idea in it. Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery".

To be fair, the Emperors Golden Throne in Warhammer 40,000 heavily drew on this idea in the 80s too

Very good analysis and excellent ending, Steve

This is also a very notorious and most famous thought experiments in philosophy: "The Trolley Problem" It states: "A train is barreling down a track at five people. You’re in position to throw a switch, diverting the train to another track where it would only hit one person. So here’s your choice: Should you let the five people die, or make an active choice to kill the one person?"

Omelas always reminds me of the Gadsden flag, commonly seen flying from the houses in my area. "Don't tread on me," it reads. But being familiar with the people who live in those houses, I sadly know to add the parenthetical "go tread on that neighborhood I wouldn't dream of living in instead."

I was in a production of Omelas in Portland OR. back in the 80s. Got to meet Le Guin a few times. She was a pleasant and gracious lady. In retrospect I don't think the production was that successful because too much had to be explained to the audience. But it was fun. Oh and Dovstoevsky.

This also reminds me of the real life child goddesses of Nepal, the Kumari. While they don't necessarily suffer, they also aren't given a choice, and as soon as they hit puberty, they are no longer considered devine and have to figure out how to live like normal people after having been worshipped their whole lives.

I find that stray baseball or softball with the Star Trek ships distracting. As a possible solution, you could get a borg cube, similar size and place them next to each other and it would look nice geometrically.

For a relatively quick, easy, and rewarding introduction to Le Guin, I highly recommend The Lathe of Heaven. I take it as a deceptively simple-seeming play on the fairy tale of the fisherman's wife, and having read it I have found myself reflecting back on it often over the years. They've tried to adapt it a couple of times, but the very first one by PBS, starring a young Bruce Davison as George Orr, probably remains the best.

If Harlan Ellison had written 'Omelas (and was still alive) he would have sued for a credit.

I think any beef with the episode isn't that it was done, but the degree to which the original Le Guin story was or wasn't listed in the credits, based on specific story points that elevate the subject from philosophical musings to a specific expression of the idea. For instance, the TOS episode Arena has basically an adaptation of an earlier story, and was credited as such, even though the Trekness of it made it distinct from the original story. Drawing inspiration from the specific Le Guin story without crediting it, and then falling back on justifying it by saying it was drawing upon the same themes she did and just a coincidence, or that it's OK to rip her off because she was drawing upon earlier works (which still begs the question of the degree to which the writers of the specific episode were aware of what influenced Le Guin) seems like a deception.

I think my favorite take on the tale of Omelas is The Scholomance series by Naomi Novik, because (scholomance spoilers below) It features the daughter of one who walked away from an Omelas grabbing a metaphorical gun in one hand and metaphorical brick and mortar in the other, and walking ominously back in.

Now do the episode that “homages” Aliens but with the Gorn instead of the Giger Xenomorph

...And did any other "Babylon 5" fans out there think that the kid being plugged into the Great Machine thingy was kinda like that Minbari dude (Draal, played by John Schuck) being plugged into the Great Machine on Epsilon III? Remember the words of Robin Bailes: "It's not theft; it's referencing."

Personally I think the safest and most respectful thing to do would have been to give Le Guin co-author credit. Yes there are sub-plots, characterisation and general fleshing out and the episode writers certainly did enough to justify their own credits but the core of the story comes from Le Guin's work, the rest is decoration rather than any new twist on the idea so I'd say this goes beyond mere "inspiration". As for the legal precedents, you get all kinds of odd judgements in plagiarism cases (the world of popular music is full of them). Maybe it depends on how well known you think the Le Guin story is (Steve suggests very - I'm not sure). I was familiar enough to recognise that this was a retelling without having actually read the original but I have no idea how typical that is of the audience in general.

Since this was also supposedly based on an unused Roddenberry script, I wonder when said script was written and who Roddenberry was influenced by.

Yo this was good! I just happened upon your channel but I'm glad I watched this! That episode was definitely one of the best but thanks for introducing me to that short story from which it was inspired. I'll be looking for more work by that author. I'm a trekkie first but love good sci-fi. But I also appreciate good art and that short story was a good one. Thanks bro.

Sacrificing a child so the greater whole can thrive is common fixture in many stories, Steinbeck's; The Pearl, the Saint George myth, lots mythology and even history built around child sacrifice.

I admit to -- while watching the episode -- turning to my wife and saying "This reminds me of an Ursula K LeGuin story". I'm glad I wasn't the only one. 😀

Le Guin has long been influential in the most thought-provoking examples of sci-fi on the screen. Star Trek: The Next Generation’s episode ‘The Chase’ centres around the crew’s discovery of fragmentary DNA evidence that all humanoid species are descended from a single species, who ‘planted’ their DNA throughout the galaxy. This concept is the same as Ursula Le Guin’s ‘Hainish Cycle’ of novels and stories, which comprises the majority of her science fiction genre writing. Avatar was partly inspired by (i.e.ripped off) Ursula Le Guin’s ‘The Word for World is Forest’, a haunting novel featuring humans trying to mine (i.e destroy) a planet populated by humanoids living in and having a psychic connection with the forest.

I love that people get into a craze about this stuff. Last week I saw a review of the Enterprise episode 'Dawn' and how many say it's a rip off of Enemy Mine. And if that's true and this episode is a rip off Le Guin too, then the first Star Trek pilot is a rip off of Forgotten Planet! This isn't the critique that people think it is. It's just how writing works.

Despite having a crush on Lindy Booth since Jett Jackson, I think I must've fallen asleep before this episode ended, because I can't recall that horrible ending (my despairing wife would sometimes not wake me, and in my torpor, and due to not being entirely sold on the series, I guess I didn't go back for a recap). That reminds me of the denouement of Torchwood's Children Of Men, though, which may also owe something to Omelas.

Only “Omelas” isn’t properly a story at all, but more a parable, or thought experiment, or mediation, on the way we live our lives; as opposed, perhaps, to the way we should be living them. As such, the SNW episode, which for better or worse IS an actual story, cannot be said to be a ripoff. I’m more interested in the question of what LeGuin, who I was privileged to meet some years ago, would have thought of it as art. As a world-famous genre author who liked Trek (she wrote an appreciation of TNG for TV Guide as it was ending its run), I suspect that she would have enjoyed it, but who knows?

Maye SNW should acknowledge her in any new credits. a starship Le Guin, a starship EarthSea.

Out of all the new Trek, Strange New World's is hands down the best of the bunch.

I love that you brought up how it’s a classic utilitarian thought experiment. Many writers have used it as a jumping off point. That said, a story credit, or at least a special thanks, for LeGuin would’ve been nice to see. The very end had me cackling as well, Gene absolutely loved plagiarising (but not Gene L Coon!)

Great episode. You keep getting better and better at this.

It was a nice adaptation of Le Guin's story. I just wish there had been some kind of acknowledgement for her.

The One Who Walk Away from Omelas is more of an Outer Limits episode than a Star Trek episode...

Once (back in the pre 'net days of BBSes) someone asked "What would you do if the couple in the apartment above yours had a *really noisy* bed?" Somebody answered "I'd just oil the bed." "That's silly," I thought. "It's not your bed -- You'd be interrupting the couple upstairs." Then, I let my imagination wander and wrote a short story (4-5 pages, I guess) about how that interaction would work -- complete with inside jokes and transporting characters from the community into the story. My story won an award for the best post of the year, even thought *everybody **_also_** knew about the interaction that it was sourced from.* In fact, the fact that everybody knew about the source of the premise of the story probably made it that much more interesting. You could probably start with the premise of "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas and create *dozens* of stories -- each one being quite distinct from all the others.

I think the way Torchwood: Children of Earth twisted this trope was fun

If I recall correctly, Pike believes he will die, not end up in a blinky chair. The thing about LeGuin's story and the adaptation is the question is not whether we would walk away. We (and, as hinted, members of the federation) are residents of Omelas.

Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness is one of my favorite books, I let a few years pass before I go back and read the book again. Her style, her worlds are unique in the SciFi genre.

And Lequin was probably, ‘inspired’ by The Lottery, Shirley Jackson

The details common to many 20th century SF stories are a language that can be traced backwards through pulp magazines and novels back to John Carter of Mars (originally written as a western), the Story Magazines like 'Blue Book' and 'The Argosy' that published so many adventure tales in the late 19th century and then further back to the early 19th century as 'penny dreadfuls' sensational papers, much like comic books later, which publicised Wild West stories, Horror tales and weird incidents. Details: a gun in a crime or gangster pulp magazine was often a 'blaster', a word later adapted for SF. A 'beamer' can be either a weapon or a communications device back then. SF of the 1920s used mystery rays (suggested by 'X-Rays') to do many things, not least 'deflectors', 'attractor and pressor rays', and both 'shields and screens' against other types of rays, including weapons (perhaps first in the stories by E. E. 'Doc' Smith's 'Skylark' and later 'Lensman' stories.

I know of two other Trek episodes that have "riped off" a great work of SF. The first is the TOS episode Arena, which is remarkably similar to a 1944 short story by Fredric Brow also titled Arena. The other is the Voyager episode Blink of an Eye, which has striking similarities with the 1980 novel Dragon's Egg, by Robert L. Forward. The first rip off was unintentional, the writer independantly came up with the same idea, the similarities were noticed soon before filming the episode was to begin, the production team reached out to Brown who was happy to let the episode be made in exchange for a mention of his name and story in the credits, which was done. The other, well, nobody knows for sure, except for those directly involved, because nobody ever made a statement, official or otherwise, about it. Both work of literature are outstanding in their own right, I strongly recommend you look them up.

where can I got a DS9 Niners Cap from?

A lot of things are inspired by something else: The Lion King is Hamlet, but in the African savannah; Titanic is Romeo and Juliet, but on the eponymous ship. Superman's origin is the story of Moses. These pieces of media have been acclaimed to varying degrees and hardly, if ever, derided for the fact that they have been inspired by something else. And it's not like Kurtzman was trying to cover anything up.

That story is particularly suited to Star Trek because it's core philosophical principle is whether it's better to take a sure deal with horrific conditions, or if it's better to try for something better, even knowing you will fail. The Federation does exist on the suffering of many, but it *tries* to avoid it. They want a world where noone suffers unduly. And it's unachievable. But that pursuit is worthwhile in and of itself, and in Star Trek is often the core of our protagonist's ideology. Idealism vs Utilitarianism

I remember reading this story in the 90's! I had wondered if this episode had been taken from it because I recognized the theme while I watched it.

Another Le Guin work likely tapped for aspects of story is ‘The Word for World is Forest’. Film ‘Avatar’ is similar to this and another by Le Guin (?) in which the main character is a young, human girl in deep empathy with forest environment under seize.