Wow… 72 comments in 2 pages… that must be a new record!

You could call her an old salt in a way; someone experienced with a cool enough head to steady the buffs when things get a little dicey. She is a fascinating character and I can’t wait to find out more about her.

One point I’d like to make is that while Aria is correct in studying past events which have gone wrong to learn new and better ways to operate better in potentially hostile environments, I must say that in this case it would make it hard to study this event to learn lessons if nobody from the original team survived to tell the tale

On that I agree, I think Scavania does have an alterior motive for getting everyone back home safe and sound…and it isn’t because she wants to record their experiences for posterity more like she knows they’re the only experienced survey team this side of their current dimension! She can’t achieve her own goals if the Survey Team dies.

Well–and please keep in mind that the story is always in flux and the answer I give now may not agree with what I finally commit to comic pages in the future– they get limited training. They all get some, but it isn’t emphasized. (Other types of physical training are, though.) However, you’ll note that Vessa seems to know what she’s doing, so while they may not all keep those skills current, some choose to do so.

As a comparison, they also all learn those First Contact Protocols–which are equally disused by TerSA’s Survey Teams– but Zan seems much more cognizant of the fine points than the others.

Weapons – especially ranged ones – are one of those restrictions, and I think the concern here is not that giving SCT members weapons will turn them into bloodthirsty killers, but that proper handling of those weapons in an unknown situation depends as much on experience as training. Someone mentioned that modern military forces get a fair bit of training on when and when not to use weapons, and I’d expect such training to be standard for future organizations that use weapons – military, civilian, or otherwise. However, there are times when you get a situation where things get ambiguous, where training will not help you and you need to make a judgement call. Someone making the wrong call – or someone just simply panicking and either firing a gun wildly or freezing up and not firing when he/she needs to – can lead to disastrous consequences.

In this case, I understand TerSA’s “when in doubt, don’t” policy.

I expect also that while armed combat is off the options list, that doesn’t necessarily mean that unarmed combat is forbidden. After all, once someone closes on you and attacks with deadly intent, it’s a safe bet that first contact has failed and defending yourself would be a suitable response. Question, Tara: do SCT teams get hand-to-hand combat training?

I can understand that some people object against the reasoning of the TersA survey team, but I personally don’t see any problems in this story to have a team of professionals with such an extreme view on themselves and their work. They work in an extreme environment (space) with a task that might have extreme consequences. That they regard themselves (and might be regarded by others) as expendable is, in a morbid way, fascinating (in the same morbid way H.R Giger’s monster in ‘Alien’ is fascinating ) and actually adds to the story’s ‘sense of wonder’. A nightmare kind of addition which mismatches with the generally quite ‘bright’ tone in the story, but hey, I kinda like that.

The extreme view that they are expendable does not necessarily reflect entirely well on TersA, to be honest. There are historical cases during the 1900s of military organizations who’s members I suspect to some extent considered themselves expendable (and who’s leaders definitively considered them expendable when the need arose, which it did). The Eastern Front in WWII comes to mind as an example. So even if the Galaxion crew seem to be a bunch of idealistic, happy chaps they might have some darker insights of the larger picture they are part of (which they apparently have decided to accept anyway). Or they are perhaps just happily unaware of what kind of (very?) darker machinery they REALLY work for.

(Ouch… just managed to compare the nice TerSA contact survey team with such nightmares like the most fanatic troops in Germany and Soviet Union during WWII… probably not a good thing! I’ll catch hell for this for sure!)

(Some posts written by ex-military folks here indicates that there ARE military forces where soldiers don’t consider themselves expendable which I don’t doubt for a second. However, military forces come/has come in a number of variants with all kinds of mindsets, some including the notion of own forces actually BEING expendable.)

Also, the current party (Scavina + the rest) as a whole have multiple, conflicting objectives. One objective is to do a first contact survey which when it fails (which it apparently has) requires them to leave and that as far as I can tell, do so more or less permanently. Another objective is to find out more about the fate of Hiawatha’s crew, which requires Scavina to actually return, in spite of potential rake assaults.

So both sides of the discussion in the party is right, because they both each tries to pursue one of the (conflicting) objectives the party have.

From a bigger picture perspective, I’m not sure Scavina is right. However, as she’s the most awesome character in the story and Hiawatha is like ghost that haunts her from the pas, I’m inclined to say: Have it her way and let her return with whatever crew, stunners and tasers she find necessary. And, oh, an unarmed, Jack Bauer clone can be handy too, if instructed to keep any rake wielding aliens he runs into conscious long enough to provide useful information about what happened with Hiawatha’s crew.

And yes, I like this comic a lot, so keep up the good work Tara!

I don’t think I was suggesting that we train people for possible alien encounters, rather we train people on how to minimise risk. Lets look at your points:

(1) the technological levels of the two civilizations are likely to be hugely discrepant [quite the opposite of what happens in human-to-human interactions]
(2) such encounters will be fraught with peril on scales corresponding to entire civilizations, not individuals, and..
(3) the potential for lack of understanding and subsequent disaster is very high.

All three are very good points but you can associate those points with an average day in Afghanistan today let alone an encounter with the Minari. Thus the practices for ensuring the survival of your clients remains much the same.

We’re not suggesting for a moment that Scanavia and co go down next time armed to the teeth rather that they take the proper steps to ensure their safety. Surely everyone would agree with that?

I personally think Tara has worked the last 5 pages brilliantly. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Sorry, I disagree. I do hope we become a more peaceful people. But I hope we will still have a basic survival instinct which will allow us to continue defending ourselves if faced with an unprovoked assault.

The ’21st-human-culture-chauvinism’ comment might well work if the survey team had attacked first. They didn’t, hence the sentence doesn’t work all that well.

No no no. I don’t recall anyone suggesting that Tara rework her dialog. I for one would encourage her not to. She has pretty much answered all issues and points of contention. Keep in mind that this is an ongoing work of art and there are a lot of things that Tara has yet to share with us. TerSA apparently has very few experiences with hostile alien environments. Life bearing planets appear to be quite rare in the universe of Galaxion. That may change…

Specifically, I am really quite fascinated by this general idea of how to train for a possible encounter with alien intelligence because any rational consideration of the problem leads to the conclusions that (1) the technological levels of the two civilizations are likely to be hugely discrepant [quite the opposite of what happens in human-to-human interactions] (2) such encounters will be fraught with peril on scales corresponding to entire civilizations, not individuals, and (3) the potential for lack of understanding and subsequent disaster is very high. Given these points, it’s astonishingly unlikely that anything corresponding to a “personal weapon” would have any bearing on any aspects of the encounter — including personal survival of the team — other than a negative impact on a species-to-species interactions. So I find the perspective quite plausible, especially from a scientific point of view.

Having said this, I guess even if you don’t find the perspective what you would chose yourself, I don’t understand for the life of me why you would find this perspective so unbelievable as to be “objectionable” to the point of asking the author to consider changing the dialogue. If you can’t suspend disbelief in SF for the purposes of seeing what the implications are for the storyline, when can you?

Carry on…