Sector General: Difference between revisions

 

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* [[Alien Lunch]] - Averted somewhat, as none of the meat dishes served [[Future Food Is Artificial|are actually meat]], in order to avoid [[Squick|squicking out]] patients or staff who might happen to resemble some other individual's meal. Any atmospheric condition worth its salt has several species eating together, though, and those people ''quickly'' learn to keep all eyes on their own plates.

* [[Alien Non-Interference Clause]] - The Monitor Corps conducts psychological assessment of pre-spaceflight civilizations before presenting them with alien monsters dropping out of the sky. This doesn't really constrain the protagonists, since involving the hospital station is shorthand for 'screw it':

* [[Ambiguous Gender]] and [[Gender Neutral Writing]] - In order to avoid confusion, aliens are properly referred to as "it"; characters thus only have their gender specified if they appear in a novel written from the point of view of a member of their species.

* [[As You Know]] - Setting exposition is often delivered this way, sometimes [[Justified Trope|justified]] as a test of knowledge.

** Which is nothing to Major O'Mara expressing concern. The last time O'Mara expressed concern a spaceship had just crashed into the station.

* [[Distress Call]] - There are two ways of [[Subspace Ansible|communicating faster-than-light]]. One is by targeting one specific recipient and adding massive amounts of compression and redundance to let any of the signal get through past the background noise. The other is by forgetting all of that and [[Tim Taylor Technology|plugging the transmitter into a nuclear reactor]], causing what amounts to a traceable, incoherent, omnidirectional scream.

* [[Eat That]] - People who try to eat while carrying an Educator tape will find out what it feels like to have a part of you screaming that your dish isn't even for the right species. People who are Educated six ways to Sunday will find it out several times over, simultaneously.

** Hospital food even gets its own feature-length novel, in ''The Galactic Gourmet.'' You thought Jello and creamed chicken were bad? Just wait till you see what they're serving on the PVSJ ward.

** An exception is made for the [[Human Alien]] Etlans, who intermarry with Earth-humans, though no [[Half-Human Hybrid|Half Human Hybrids]] result.

** The early books explicitly state that inter-species sexual attraction is considered a mental illness, which was probably passed over later because of worries about the [[Unfortunate Implications]] if readers saw it as a metaphor for real-world inter-ethnic relations.

* [[Language of Truth]] - DBLF Kelgians. Their rippling fur spells out their emotions at all times, so they just never developed the concept of the lie and are always brutally, bluntly honest.

** Also, their fur adds context and nuance to their speech. So without understanding what the fur "says", it's like [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|communicating by text without any body language cues]].

* [[Martial Pacifist]] - Every member of the Monitor Corps we've ever met. Nobody uses lethal force, and the Monitors would much rather talk a bad guy down rather than resort to some less-savory means, like stun gas. This pacifistic attitude is even [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in ''Star Surgeon'', where a full-blown [[Recycled in Space|nuclear war in space]], involving fifty-odd planets, one hospital station and thousands of ships, is described as a "police action."

** Later books seem somewhat cynical of the Monitor Corps defining of everything they do as police actions, up to and including the Etlan War and planetary invasions.

* [[Mr. Exposition]] - sometimes Thornnastor and O'Mara, but mostly Dr. Conway. He talks in whole pages of exposition. It's even lampshaded by O'Mara when he says that one of the reasons why Prilicla is promoted is because he's not a bore.

* [[Naive Newcomer]] - Cha Thrat in ''Code Blue - Emergency!'' - and to an extent the Great Gurronsevas in ''The Galactic Gourmet''.

* [[No Biochemical Barriers]] - On one hand, there are no cross-species diseases (a virus from one species simply will not infect or affect a creature from another, though the entire station still jumps whenever someone but mentions that term) and every kind of environment up to and including the [[I Love Nuclear Power|reactor core]] is inhabited. On another, there's no mention of beings that require a ''different mix'' of a particular type of atmosphere, and some foodstuffs are cross-species.

* [[Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions]] - Played around with repeatedly. On the one hand, only a few of the humans seem to believe in (or at least mention believing in) a god or gods; on the other hand, more than a few of the other species do. To that end, the hospital's one chaplain is a BRLH Tarlan who [[The Atoner|gave up a promising surgical career out of guilt over dead patients]] and now handles the religious concerns - or at least, psychological problems / ethical conflicts with a religious element - of ''all'' species.

** For example, the "rollers" from Drambo (in ''Major Operation'') are incredibly boastful, but this is explained as being because they can never stop moving (their circulation is powered by their movement), so they have very little time to impress mates.

* [[Psychic Powers]] - A few alien species have abilities outside the norm. All are classed under V in the species classification system. Humanity has telepathic potential... in its evolutionary history. The faculty was never used and is now atrophied and nonfunctional, only serving to make humans a bit more susceptible. It goes up to the VUXG, who look like prunes and are [[Teleporters and Transporters|teleportive]], [[Telepathy|telepathic]], and [[Mind Over Matter|telekinetic]]. One of them attempted to give sentience to a race of plant-eating dinosaurs by giving them the power to [[Flight|fly]] telekinetically. Apparently that ability is [[90% of Your Brain|inherent and dormant in any large enough brain]] and needs only to be activated, but the VUXG refused to give it to humans when asked by one, saying they did not need it.

* [[Reassigned to Antarctica]] - Basically the entirety of ''Code Blue: Emergency!'' is Cha Thrat shuttling through these, beginning when her home planet pressures her into going to Sector General and ending when she's kicked out of ''the Maintenance division'' for disobeying a direct order. She ultimately winds up working in the only place she hasn't yet been exiled from, the Psych department, but since O'Mara actually ''wants'' her there it doesn't qualify as this.

* [[Rousseau Was Right]] - Watching what White has pulled off with alien biologies is half of the draw of the series. The other half is its use as comfort literature. Ultimately we can all get along, understand one another and make things out all right with some hard work. "Wouldn't it be nice if everyone was nice" is a fairly generic message, but it has the advantage that White doesn't need to lecture the reader about it and can just have characters not be jerks to each other.

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[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]