Kerrigan and Zeratul's Encounter: Method Behind Madness?

[Norfindel]

Becoming "incapable of empathy and compassion" is enough of a personality change to me to say it's a different personality. What would anyone do if stripped from empathy and compassion, and given lots of power? You can call that your choice?

[Turalyon]

Can't agree more about all this split personality stuff, Eligor.

Don't know about Kerrigan being always being devoid of personality whilst being infested. She may have been an just an angry drone with a leash when the Overmind was still around, but its death really opened her up as someone being metaphysically free. She chose to go down that (evil) path in BW and there were hints of regret at times (after the slaughter in True Colours). All this complex subtlety is gone with this "split personality" direction.

[Eligor]

Becoming "incapable of empathy and compassion" is enough of a personality change to me to say it's a different personality. What would anyone do if stripped from empathy and compassion, and given lots of power? You can call that your choice?

Her personality may have changed, but she still was a single entity with much of what made the human Kerrigan who she is carried over. She had memories of interactions with Raynor, and Mengsk, and COULD think in human terms, if not feel all of the emotions. That's what made her interesting. It wasn't some take over of Sarah Kerrigan by a malignant entity (the way WoL seems to imply), it was what Sarah Kerrigan had become.

My problem with her de-infestation is that there's too much "magic" in it, how could she be given back those human traits she lost (and that we knew and saw she had lost) by some alien artefact? Her biology may be accomodating such emotions again, that's true, but it doesn't mean that her personality would instantly revert to her pre-infested self. In fact if it's not permanently damaged she would need a lot of time to learn how to think, and act and feel like a human again, and then she still wouldn't be the same Kerrigan that existed before the infestation.

[Norfindel]

Why do you consider magic when she's turned human, but don't when she's turned Zerg? Ok, realistically, if parts of her DNA were overwritten in all her cells, that information is probably impossible to recover.

Other than that, there i don't see any problems: she's turned Zerg, is completely stripped from compassion and given huge power, so she decides to punish all Terrans (and even the Protoss, for some reason) instead of just trying to kill Mengsk (which she could have done, but chosen not to, apparently to make him suffer more). If she's turned human again, she would recover that human aspect, and be horrified by her actions. You don't kill hundreths of innocent people without feeling any guilt, unless you simply are like that, and Kerrigan didn't seen to be like that pre-infestation.

On top of that, while been Zerg, even if she had reasoning, and could choose how to do her tasks, she couldn't go against the will of the Overmind, and had to follow it's orders.

She was not possesed by any means, i agree about that, but i think that she was utterly changed by the infestation, and not only physically, and it wasn't her choice.

[Eligor]

Why do you consider magic when she's turned human, but don't when she's turned Zerg? Ok, realistically, if parts of her DNA were overwritten in all her cells, that information is probably impossible to recover.

For the same reason you don't hear about victims of intense brain damage ever fully recovering. Infestation is a scientifically understandable process, it's the hijacking and restructuring of an organism by a virus, of course no real virus is as purposefully organized as the one on which the Swarm is based, but allowing for the theoretical existence of such a virus controlled by an entity like the Overmind, Kerrigan's transformation into the Swarm isn't scientifically impossible, especially taking into account the long incubation period of her transformation into the Queen of Blades (Kerrigan clearly spends weeks if not months inside the Chrysalis). What the Artefact does however is incredibly specific and doesn't make much sense. If it absorbs Zerg genetic information then it should've absorbed Kerrigan entirely, because with the sort of physical restructuring she's got it would've been almost impossible for her to have any original Human cells left in her body (perhaps her skeleton and maybe parts of the nervous system, but then there's a question of whether would Zerg cells tolerate existing side by side with non-Zerg cells without trying to convert them into their own bio-chemical system, which somehow doesn't sound very likely). But then it doesn't just absorb the Zerg "essence" (for lack of a better term) out of her, but almost completely restores her human form AND personality (which would imply complete, precise and VERY specific restoration of her nervous system) in a matter of seconds! Which, unlike Infestation, is really quite a miracle with NO scientific or even pseudo-scientific explanation behind it whatsoever. And even if we suppose that Kerrigan's original personality lay hidden under the veneer of the Queen of Blades for all that time, the transformation is still quite miraculous, with no underlying logic or explanation to support it.

[Norfindel]

Oh, yes, i agree about that. The guy that wrote that either didn't knew much about genetics, or didn't cared, which is a horrible way of telling a story. On top of that, the Zerg are multiple modified organisms, even if the Artifact could wipe some part of the Zerg DNA it "recognizes", it would left all the rest, as no Zerg strain has the same DNA than another.

Had they chosen to say that the Artifact stripes the Zerg from the misterious energy they use, and that is very similar to the DT, thus leaving them KO for them to get to Kerrigan, and use a nanobot serum designed to restore her by using a former DNA sample (also serves as excuse to raid a Ghost training center, which could realistically have a Kerrigan blood sample for some reason).

Still, i think that if whatever the Zerg did to her brain keeped most of her personality, but made her much more aggressive, maybe reverting it could return her to normal. Still, i don't think we really know enough about the brain or the method the Zerg use to change it to say for sure. Maybe she had some kind of brain parasite, or something like that, and didn't really suffer brain damage in the infestation process.

[Gradius]

Is it safe to speculate that infestation always = evil and that the artifact wipes that away too? The writers might just say that Kerrigan turned 'evil' the instant she realised Mengsk and Raynor abandoned her at New Gettysberg and that the infestation did nothing but just turn her into a pawn with advanced Zergy powers.

That would be the writers' prerogative, yes.

For the same reason you don't hear about victims of intense brain damage ever fully recovering. Infestation is a scientifically understandable process, it's the hijacking and restructuring of an organism by a virus, of course no real virus is as purposefully organized as the one on which the Swarm is based, but allowing for the theoretical existence of such a virus controlled by an entity like the Overmind, Kerrigan's transformation into the Swarm isn't scientifically impossible, especially taking into account the long incubation period of her transformation into the Queen of Blades (Kerrigan clearly spends weeks if not months inside the Chrysalis). What the Artefact does however is incredibly specific and doesn't make much sense. If it absorbs Zerg genetic information then it should've absorbed Kerrigan entirely, because with the sort of physical restructuring she's got it would've been almost impossible for her to have any original Human cells left in her body (perhaps her skeleton and maybe parts of the nervous system, but then there's a question of whether would Zerg cells tolerate existing side by side with non-Zerg cells without trying to convert them into their own bio-chemical system, which somehow doesn't sound very likely). But then it doesn't just absorb the Zerg "essence" (for lack of a better term) out of her, but almost completely restores her human form AND personality (which would imply complete, precise and VERY specific restoration of her nervous system) in a matter of seconds! Which, unlike Infestation, is really quite a miracle with NO scientific or even pseudo-scientific explanation behind it whatsoever. And even if we suppose that Kerrigan's original personality lay hidden under the veneer of the Queen of Blades for all that time, the transformation is still quite miraculous, with no underlying logic or explanation to support it.

Unfortunately there's no proof that it works the way you describe, especially since nanobots are apparently enough to remove infestation. See sandwichbird's post:

I didn't talk about a virus here. I'm thinking more about some kind of microscopic eukaryote based entity. The zerg cells wouldn't actually mutate the host cell's genetic code. Their metabolic activities would alone alter the host physical and behavioral aspect. If you're able to somehow remove every zerg cells present in the host (artifact thingy) then normal metabolic functions of the host would carry back on. Of course, this would only count for an organism that was infested like Kerrigan and not for one that was born "Zerg" which is why the artifact would kill zerg units(and structures I assume) but not Kerrigan.

[Arkalis]

There is no 'science' in 'science fiction'

[Turalyon]

Regardless of whether you find it satisfying knowing Kerrigan is a split-personality or some continuous personality, the implication that she was "good" intially and was always "good" after her de-infestation seems like a final nail in the coffin in removing any significance that BW had on the SC universe out of existence.

BW was ultimately about Kerrigan finally coming to grips with her new lease on life. If the above is true about WoLs artificat turning her "good", WoL has rendered that meaningless as well. It gives the impression I just wasted my whole time with BW.

Along with all these other retcons mentioned by many others, there is no sense of satisfaction gained out of it all because there is no sense of finality from previously established end plot points. This lack of finality also extends even into the actions and behaviours of characters in the story. Instead, we get plot devices (ie: artifact) to artificially kick-start a seemingly unnatural chains of events and hackneyed character development.

[Eligor]

@Gradius - The original StarCraft manual states that the Zerg infest other species by means of a virus. Of course it's validity becomes questionable with all the recent retcons, but sandwich_bird's explanation doesn't account for why would the artefact restore Kerrigan's human form or (for that matter) leave her with the Zerg "dreads". Her restoration to almost completely human form within moments still doesn't make sense. I love Norfindel's version of events though, I can buy into nanobots re-versing Infestation, as long as we know that it's a long, complex reverse-incubation sort of process (with questionable chances for success).

@Arkalis - That's why I put "pseudo-science" next to "science" in my previous post. There must be some sort of logic behind what things do, or don't do. At the moment, the artefact is nothing more than a Deus Ex Machinae (and a bad Deus Ex Machinae) for the writer's convenience to magically bend the Universe into any shape they want, instead of playing by the rules of the story.

@Turalyon - Pretty much exactly my thoughts on the matter.