|
|
Post by dans on Sept 1, 2023 11:42:59 GMT
What are the ethics of sending a super powered infant to a world where the sender knows in advance that the infant would be powerful enough to destroy the planet and none of the inhabitants would have the power to stop him? Suppose that baby were to crash to the planet, and then have a crying fit, screaming with his super powerful voice that can shatter eardrums and mountains, and began kicking and slamming the ground with limbs that are powerful enough to move continents? Suppose that baby were found and brought to an orphanage and suddenly unknowingly activated both super speed and flight powers and crashed through everything in front of him? Suppose that baby unknowingly turned on his super powerful x-ray vision and bathed everyone around him in super powerful x-rays. Or perhaps worse, turned on heat vision which is hot enough to ignite a star and didn't even realize it?
I think the legend would be a lot better if the sender had no idea that the baby would be super powered on the other end...
|
|
|
|
Post by lawrenceliberty on Sept 1, 2023 19:07:13 GMT
I've always been amazed that baby Kal-El never lost his temper and accidentally hurt someone without thinking about it. I guess he had super self-control even as a infant.
|
|
|
|
Post by DocQuantum on Sept 2, 2023 2:09:46 GMT
The Earth-2 origin shows Kryptonian children being far more advanced intellectually and emotionally than Earth children, and since they have super-strength and the ability to leap vast distances on Krypton-2, that makes sense. They would have to know how to handle the sheer power they wield almost from birth, much like many animals learn how to walk as soon as they're born.
|
|
|
|
Post by redsycorax on Sept 2, 2023 3:36:20 GMT
The current iteration of Earth-3's Ultraman demonstrates what a less inhibited Kryptonian would have done in the place of Superbaby. However, I suspect that there's a comparatively easy resolution to dan's initial concerns. It would have been comparatively easy for Jor-El to install an educational programme within his son's starship so that Kal-El could learn about controlling his latent superpowers en route and effectively inhibit him from adverse behaviour. It may also be the case that Kryptonian children's developmental psychology is faster than that of Earth children, or that Kal-El's starship took one or two years to traverse space from Rao's solar system to that of Earth, which might have given the educational programming enough time to properly socialise Kal-El into the humane and circumscribed use of his superpowers.
|
|
|
|
Post by johnreiter902 on Sept 2, 2023 10:38:16 GMT
The Earth-1 Superbaby was, we know flashback stories, superhumanly mature for a boy his age when he came to Earth. It was unnecessary to punish him, for example, because once he knew he had made his parents sad he resolved to never disobey again.
|
|
|
|
Post by dans on Sept 3, 2023 1:07:17 GMT
I suppose it is possible that Kryptonian humans are evolved to the point where their babies rarely have tantrums. Or perhaps there was some sustained evolutionary pressure millenia ago on Krypton for children to be quiet and not violent in order to live long enough to reproduce. In the post-Crisis Krypton, I wouldn't be surprised if they had implanted emotional control devices in all their kids. Glad that particular version of Krypton is not part of our canon.
|
|
|
|
Post by jonclark on Sept 3, 2023 1:30:18 GMT
I've always preferred Kal-El arriving on Earth to be more of a crapshoot with lucky results. Never cared for the versions where Jor-El has a full dossier on Jonathan and Martha plus the exact coordinates for the rocket to reach their farm.
So for me there are no ethics involved beyond shooting your kid into space because you believe the planet will explode.
As for the lack of accidents, Kal just has an instinctive and empathetic control of his powers
|
|
|
|
Post by redsycorax on Sept 3, 2023 2:17:34 GMT
I think we'll have to agree to disagree there, Jon. It would be logical for Jor-El to install an educational programme in Kal-El's starship to instruct him in the
proper and circumscribed use of his superpowers once he reached Earth and there's no necessary time frame for the duration of Kal's fight from Krypton to
Earth. Added to which, the ultra-solar radiation must have also accelerated Kal's intellectual development once he reached Earth, even as an infant/toddler. So
yes, he would be quite mature for his age as time went on.
|
|
|
|
Post by jonclark on Sept 3, 2023 5:18:15 GMT
I think we'll have to agree to disagree there, Jon. It would be logical for Jor-El to install an educational programme in Kal-El's starship to instruct him in the proper and circumscribed use of his superpowers once he reached Earth and there's no necessary time frame for the duration of Kal's fight from Krypton to Earth. Added to which, the ultra-solar radiation must have also accelerated Kal's intellectual development once he reached Earth, even as an infant/toddler. So yes, he would be quite mature for his age as time went on. The problem there is that having just Kal launched depends on that rocket being a prototype If Jor-El has time to prepare a whole set of lessons then he has the to build a rocket big enough to hold Lara if not himself. |
|
|
|
Post by dans on Sept 3, 2023 11:16:18 GMT
I agree with Jon, I never liked the narrative of Jor-El knowing so much about Earth before he launched. Particularly that he knew so much about Earth before he ever discovered that Krypton was doomed...I think the story is more compelling when Kal is launched into the unknown. That is the story I learned originally, and to me everything added to that is an unwelcome retcon.
|
|
|
|
Post by starskyhutch76 on Sept 3, 2023 18:07:19 GMT
I think we'll have to agree to disagree there, Jon. It would be logical for Jor-El to install an educational programme in Kal-El's starship to instruct him in the proper and circumscribed use of his superpowers once he reached Earth and there's no necessary time frame for the duration of Kal's fight from Krypton to Earth. Added to which, the ultra-solar radiation must have also accelerated Kal's intellectual development once he reached Earth, even as an infant/toddler. So yes, he would be quite mature for his age as time went on. The problem there is that having just Kal launched depends on that rocket being a prototype If Jor-El has time to prepare a whole set of lessons then he has the to build a rocket big enough to hold Lara if not himself. It was shown in the Krypton Chronicles mini-series that Jor-El actually had a whole fleet of rockets ready for the disaster. Unfortunately, they were in Kandor, the only city that took his warning seriously. Then Brainiac shrank and stole the city. |
|
|
|
Post by jonclark on Sept 3, 2023 23:34:56 GMT
The problem there is that having just Kal launched depends on that rocket being a prototype If Jor-El has time to prepare a whole set of lessons then he has the to build a rocket big enough to hold Lara if not himself. It was shown in the Krypton Chronicles mini-series that Jor-El actually had a whole fleet of rockets ready for the disaster. Unfortunately, they were in Kandor, the only city that took his warning seriously. Then Brainiac shrank and stole the city. I sort of knew that. But it amounts to the same thing, Jor-El didn't have time to build another full scale model between the loss of Kandor and the destruction of Krypton. It wasn't like he had time to design a dozen systems to provide mental stimulation and detailed goodbye messages and a complete history of the universe. If he took the time to build all that odds are the planet explodes and the rocket is still on the drawing board |
|
|
|
Post by redsycorax on Sept 4, 2023 2:23:40 GMT
There could be a chicken and the egg situation involved here, though. What say Jor-El recorded most of the educational content for Kal-El before he knew about Krypton's impending fate, and then added the additional content about superpowers later on? And why wouldn't Jor-El know about exoplanets (like Earth, from his perspective?)? Furthermore, why wouldn't a technologically advanced society like Krypton have access to advanced telescope imaging technology capable of scrutinising amenable exoplanets in detail?* Look at NASA's own SETI programme, for instance. *And remember, one ancestral member of the House oF El, Sul-El, was the Kryptonian equivalent of Galileo when it came to that particular technological development, so it makes sense his descendants would maintain some interest in current technological developments in that area: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jor-El |
|
|
|
Post by johnreiter902 on Sept 4, 2023 3:42:56 GMT
For that matter, Jor-El's grandfather was a Kryptonian mad scientist who actually visited Earth
|
|
|
|
Post by dans on Sept 4, 2023 11:22:09 GMT
For that matter, Jor-El's grandfather was a Kryptonian mad scientist who actually visited Earth which was added long after his origin was established and is another part of the retconning to the legend that I would prefer had never happened....
Perhaps Krypton would have been aware of alien planets, as we are also - but if they had the FTL imaging technology that they had to have had in order to do real=time imaging of Earth, it is really hard to believe they didn't have a space program to go along with it...
|
|
