Question about the babies
Where they taken from their mothers right after their born... ? Put in the nursery? Or was it a test tube thing?
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MovieChat Forums > Logan's Run (1976) Discussion > Question about the babies
It has been a really long time since I've seen the movie. But for some reason I was under the impression that the babies were grown completely outside their mother. But I could be wrong. I don't recall seeing any pregnant women in the film but that doesn't mean anything.
film didn't detail it. I think the book covered a LITTLE more but I don't recall the scientific details.
Logan says, "There's a few over there that could have been his seed mother..."
Probably an external process but they didn't write that part in to the movie as important.
It was pretty much implied to be artificial insemination and gestation. Even in the book it talks about nurseries run by automation.
What's more curious, though, is that sex is rampant in this society, yet reproduction is totally controlled. How were they administering contraceptives? Was it being fed in the food? That is pretty much ignored in both media.
"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"
Where they taken from their mothers right after their born... ? Put in the nursery? Or was it a test tube thing?
Artificial insemination and artificial gestation. They are not taken from their mothers, since not even their mothers ever see the baby. Their eggs are taken from them, sperm is added, and voila! Test-Tube Baby. This is done for a very fundamental reason: Detachment.
When babies are normally born, immediately after the umbilical cord is cut and the baby is wiped down and wrapped up, it is placed right in the mother's arms. What this does is engender a powerful bond between mother and child that goes beyond reason and emotion. Because what happens is that the mother goes through a phase known as Post-Partum Depression, and it affects women individually in all kinds of ways, but one way it can affect them is they may get violent even toward an innocent child. By helping to establish this bond, she's far less likely to do anything harmful to the child while she undergoes Post-Partum Depression.
This bond is antithetical to the order of things in the city in Logan's Run. No mother would ever want to see her child face Carousel, no matter how much she believed in it. Her instinct is to see to the survival and success of her child, and to see her child bear grandchildren. Women have a natural nurturing instinct that promotes the very thing this city has succeeded in destroying; the Family.
By detaching mothers and fathers from their offspring, they effectually sever any instinctual, emotional, and even reasonable bond between them. This enables the city to control the population much easier, and to inculcate the culture of Carousel and the Lifeclocks and all that without too much obstruction from those seeking to build families and legacies within the community. share
THAT was an epic response!
And are we on our way to that system now? As mothers pretend to bond, then moments later go back to Candy Crush, Facebook or Reality TV and let the STATE raise their kids via school systems?
I see a LOT of children out there who look and act like they were an inconvenience to their moms.
There is another aspect I hadn't mentioned, and it goes into part of the way the city is meant to operate. I didn't mention it because it's a little jarring to our sensibilities.
In the opening ticket of the film, it says that the inhabitants of the city, to include the specialized Sandmen, live for pleasure. Notably, sexual pleasure.
Even if you presume a population in the tens of thousands, or let's square it off to a round million, if they do not go anywhere for decades on end, you'll eventually develop children that are the result of in-breeding. Logan might've very well had a son as the product of a union between him and a sister, a cousin, or other relative that he didn't even know about. Logan did indicate that the child he saw in the nursery could be from one of the indicated ladies that he pointed to, where Francis says, "You're just not trying." This implies, with no real refutation in the film, that the computer or other powers-that-be really don't care too much who breeds with whom. Granted, this is speculation.
Now, remember, this city had at one of its goals to control the population, to aid humanity's quest to whittle down the population because prior the planet had become overpopulated. Children that are the result of frequent in-breeding develop abnormalities. Did you happen to notice too many "abnormal" people in that city? Meaning, did you see anyone infirm, or disabled in anyway? Granted, it's the 23rd Century, and medical technology is quite impressive (the New You shop was interesting), but did you see any? I didn't. If a child is born with certain abnormalities, such as hemophilia (a very common malady among in-breeding peoples), or worse, what is done with these children? Are they terminated before or even after cell division? Are they aborted? Or, are they so benevolent as to correct at the cellular and genetic level any abnormalities?
I ask because to correct the problems might be counterproductive to the overall goal. If you weed out the sick and indigent before they are even fully developed into a form, say, past the 6th or 7th month of gestation, you would eventually develop and promote a smaller, overall healthier population that serves the goals of the city.
But, this begs other deeper questions. I noticed no considerable challenges to these people's lives. We have problems in our day and age with regard to the infirm not so much to be a burden upon us, but a joy, and as importantly as a means of humbling us to callings higher than our meager selves. The indigent would interfere with the culture of pleasure that the city promotes, not to mention the casual disregard for life itself that the culture has adopted and engendered. Challenges make us better people overall, both individually and as a society.
Interesting points. You could also go the other way with the potentially inferred technology going.... maybe all kids born in "Breeders" (test tubes) were completely planned genetically by properly matched DNA donations making everyone closer to a perfect race... they all seemed really healthy overall (different from us NOW, but it was a 70's film) so, instead of inbreeding, they could be achieving the exact opposite.
I never really saw the movie or the book forcing a deeper ideology of "purpose" or reason for living on us, other than Logan feeling things you weren't supposed to embrace like wondering and questioning. Still, the end result was people needing more and the system breaking down to allow more: the failed section of Cathedral, the need for Sanctuary and finally city collapse to reality.
But I see your points and the speculations are great, except they are not shown, supported or developed in the film at all really.
"Few over there that could have been his seed mother..." sort of points to the initial fertalization taking place via sex... then... what? maybe girls submit to a daily extraction of eggs and sperm? We don't know the details.
Also, probably just a writing error put in to further the distancing of thier society, up front, Logan THINKS the baby is his next version? "Anyway, he isn't yours anymore", Francis says.... how would they even know that??
Just thought..... NEW YOU can fix everything, so if people were broken, I bet NEW YOU could make them shiney and new - even internally or at a cellular level - even if they were inbred.
There's a lot of questions this film raises, which is one of the reasons why I like it so much. It shows just enough, tantalizing you with situations that are so provocative that they go beyond the film itself. This is why I put it up in my top ten list of great Sci-Fi films, along with Blade Runner, Forbidden Planet, and Gattaca.
Good sci-fi doesn't necessarily impose an ideology on anyone; rather it explores an ideology, or ideas. It's a laboratory for politics, where one can explore the ideas of a premise to logical extents. Logan's Run presumes the following:
That there was a period in Earth's past relative to the film where people were suffering the effects of overpopulation, war, and other maladies. In an effort to survive this cataclysm, the people, back then, or some of them, built cities to house some people in; probably their children. We don't know the details of that event. What we're seeing is the results after so many decades, perhaps centuries, of this plan. The premise also explores that this idea, for all intents and purposes, worked. We don't know how other cities fared, but that's immaterial for the discussion of Logan's Run.
Great sci-fi, done well, need not explore the whole ramifications of the situations they present. Bad sci-fi, on the other hand, doesn't at all, and you can tell the difference between good and bad sci-fi when what it presents is never deleterious or consequential in any way. That becomes propaganda.
Case in point: Star Trek - The Next Generation.
If you're not familiar, ST-TNG presents a military warship with families aboard. The starship Enterprise is a warship, even if its purpose is to explore the galaxy. It is meant to go directly and deliberately into harm's way, taking with them, if necessary, everyone who didn't sign up for the service that commands her to go. In spite of numerous events where ships are lost and/or destroyed, there is never any consequence to this policy. It's treated as normal.
Logan's Run, on the other hand, shows us, warts and all, the consequences and curiosities of the City designed with Population Control at its goal, and the culture it uses to promote this goal.
I think you are right. That's exactly why I like it too, the questions it asks and answers. More thought provoking than glitzy CGI fest. The effects stick by today's standards but the effects work to support and tell the story that is a good "what if" and "who what how why" type of Sci-Fi. We could use more INTERESTING storys over effects these days.
shareMaybe I missed something, but didn't Logan know that one of the babies was his toward the beginning? And then later, there's a dialogue regarding the seed mother and he says something to the effect that it could have been any of those girls over there and his buddy says he should be less certain, implying that if he got around more, he'd really have no idea who the seed mother might be.
With that in mind, I have to conclude that the system was relying on normal sexual selection and there was no sort of contraception. Rather, fertilized eggs were extracted from women. Pregnancy was understood, but it was a weird concept to that society, so that lends itself toward that notion as well.
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WyldeGoose, are you implying that ST-TNG is bad Sci-Fi? I too think that there would be many anxiety disorders among the children on the show. However, I cannot bring myself to ever call it "bad Sci-Fi". I'm not sure what to think...
shareWyldeGoose, are you implying that ST-TNG is bad Sci-Fi? I too think that there would be many anxiety disorders among the children on the show. However, I cannot bring myself to ever call it "bad Sci-Fi". I'm not sure what to think...
I'm not implying it. I'm saying it. It is bad sci-fi. In fact, it's not sci-fi. It's propaganda masquerading as sci-fi.
Good fiction, sci-fi or otherwise, as I've said, takes a premise and explores it, looking at it in various ways to show you the merits and flaws, pros and cons, the good with the bad, and the benefits gained versus the price. Logan's Run does all this brilliantly. We are shown a future where Mankind, in order to survive the crises brought on by overpopulation, food shortages, war and other calamities, have created a society within a city designed squarely to reduce populations, through promoting hedonism and a detachment from one generation to the next.
Star Trek TNG rarely does anything like this. What TNG does is give you a premise that is meant to rankle your sensibilities, and just go with it like there's nothing wrong. Take for instance the fact there are families aboard the Enterprise, a warship. But, how can this be? Well, they explain in Season 2 Peak Performance that Starfleet is not a military organization. They just run with that, never exploring that nonsense, or even the potential problems with believing such drivel. Captain Picard, a seasoned officer, a grown adult man, says "Starfleet is not a military organization" with a straight face, as though he believed it.
In TNG, there are no consequences to bad actions or ideas. There are no ramifications that are addressed because of the premises they present. When Riker tries to save his androgynous alien girlfriend from being cured, he's never punished for it. Similarly, when he dares question the orders of his superior officer in front of another officer, in Chain of Command, he is never punished beyond being relieved of duty. In the real world, such actions would land him in prison, and rightly so.
Data is a sentient android. Never is this really challenged. Since the episode Measure of a Man, though Data is never declared or proved to be sentient, the rest of the series presumes that he is, and anyone who thinks otherwise is either misinformed or is a bad guy and that's that. Never is this premise ever challenged.
Now, you ask why all this is propaganda. Well, propaganda is about promoting an agenda. When you watch TNG, ask yourself what is it that the writers and producers are trying to promote.
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I am a little bit more puzzled at your assertion that Logan's Run is good sci-fi. There are many plot holes that are big enough to fall into a deep abyss in, and many elements that are never explained to even a reasonable degree.
I think the thing that made TNG the most realistic to me is how everything begins to fall apart at the end of the series. Here we are presented with a mostly utopian view of how things have turned out for humans and their place in the future, only to have it thrown back in our faces with the Kardassian war being out of their control, Wesley Crusher calling them on their hypocritical nature, and Ensine Ro leaving to fight with the Bajorans while dealing a final blow to Picard in the penultimate episode. The carefully constructed facade that is the "perfect 23rd century" implodes just as the series ends causing you to question the viewpoint that you had before. That to me is well made Sci-Fi.
To each their own I suppose. Thank you for your well thought out response and your informed analysis on why you feel the way you do. At least you have a reason that makes sense to you.
EDIT: Even the "Lower Decks" episode in which we see how those who aren't in the inner circle are really just used as pawns, and a young woman is sent on a suicide mission because of her cultural background almost works in direct opposition to what was seen before. The questioning begins there for me, and it seems that they spent a great deal of time in the last season deconstructing what we have come to hold as truths, and causing us to reexamine why we felt the way we did in the beginning.
I didn't say that Logan's Run had no plot holes, but it falls into the criteria for good sci-fi. There's a lot about Logan's Run that I don't quite understand, but for the most part it's a good yarn about a man who discovers the truth about the society that's been constructed around him.
TNG and DS9 may show some aspects of how their utopia begins to fall apart, but keep in mind that none of the problems are addressed by anyone. For instance, when Betazed is taken by the Dominion/Cardassians during the war, never is that examined the way we would commiserate over such an event if it happened in our world today. War has a way of waking people up to the problems that are inherent in ourselves and what we're doing; TNG or DS9 never even acknowledges these problems.
When I first heard Picard say "Starfleet is not a military organization," as if he believed it, that knocked me off my feet. Even when I was 14 and heard that, I knew that was a gigantic problem. Mindset, in any organization, is very important. If the US Army or Navy didn't think of itself as a military organization, how would that affect policy, training, planning, unit development, development of new weapons and equipment, etc.? You can say that this mindset might've led to the defeat at Wolf 359 by the Borg or the capture of Betazed, but never once is it even considered that maybe there's a problem with Starfleet itself, borne out of a conceit brought on by comforts brought on by peace (which can happen to any nation). We don't see much change as a result, and what changes we do see we cannot be certain if they are the result of a serious self-appraisal.
They removed the families off the Enterprise-E in First Contact, for instance, but you might say that this was the result of wartime operations during the Dominion War. We don't really know, though, because this is never explored, among other things.
And that's a shame, really. They avoided great premises for some very good drama and character development. I think if they had went after these premises, TNG would've been far better than it was.
I think that the fundamental disagreement that we are having is what constitutes "good scifi." I personally don't have to have everything spelled out for me to make a leap and start thinking about the abstract consequences of a situation. I think the show purposely played out with a serial nature without many lasting changes happening to the characters for the sake of the format that they were going for. I am able to accept that in the format, most storylines are wrapped up in an hour long episode or two. While I still enjoy stories that unfold and one episode builds on another, I cannot fault TNG for not being this type of show.
I accept it for what it is, I appreciate the morality plays with which we are presented, and at the end of each episode I generally draw my own conclusion on what was right or wrong and how I would react in such a situation. My conclusions may not be what the writers had in mind, but at least they have allowed me to think about the topic.
I cannot agree that Logan's Run made me think about anything deeper. I already know that fascist governments are bad, a society that is made up of nothing but young people will lack the ability to develop any true insight (this coming from a 25 year old), and that if you hold onto rigid belief systems you can end up a pawn to those who are ultimately handing down said systems.
On a final note, when you say that none of the problems are addressed by anyone in TNG or DS9 (though I have only seen the former series), I would say that's rather realistic. Most people don't go around talking about the problems that are building up around them, they stick their head in the proverbial sand. I don't believe the characters continuing on as if nothing happened makes the entire show "bad scifi," in fact I think it makes it closer to actually capturing a blatant human failing.
Thanks for the great discussion! It's been a while since I've had one. ;)
There are no natural births--that's why Logan and Jessica didn't understand the concepts of mother and father as told to them by the Old Man. Reproduction is controlled by the city computers and is artificial. The civilization of Logan's world is the result of population control balanced against available resources--the computer controls both births and deaths. This is explained more in the novel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan's_Run
It's easy to assume they were grown artifically but she says that some people think cubs go bad because they arnt raised with their mothers. Because she seems to know women can have children, This makes me believe that children are born normally and raised by robot nannys completely way from their parents.
shareI'm sure at some point during the film they mention that birth mothers are 'one possibility', or something like that, implying there are multiple ways to have children in this world, with natural genetic conception just being one.
shareno its not. The line was that all babies were born in tubes. Which made some of them go crazy hence why there are send to the catherdeal. a Seed mother propably means someone donated some eggs for male's sperm. The line about birth mothers had to do with maybe have a (9 month) pregancy and living with the mom would be a better experience for the children.
shareEvidence.
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