The morality of Janeway's actions in 'Endgame'

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Voyager' started by Vurok, Aug 26, 2010.

  1. Vurok

    Vurok Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    Janeway had no right to affect the timeline, causing untold changes to billions of people's lives - even wiping people out of existence altogether (such as Sabrina Wildman). It was an immoral act. Discuss.
     
  2. Avon

    Avon Commodore Commodore

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    it was all a holodeck. didn't you notice fat riker had replaced neelix and was asking all the crew about feelings?
     
  3. Deckerd

    Deckerd Fleet Arse Premium Member

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    If you make that claim for this story then you have to make that claim for every time travel story ever told.
     
  4. kimc

    kimc Coffee Mod Admiral

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    True. But then I suppose you can make an excuse for those who time traveled by accident...

    Despite being a Voyager and Janeway fan I too find the morals of "Endgame" to be shockingly questionable. Add to the selfish altering of time the overuse of the borg plus the icky C/7 relationship and here's a finale that I haven't been able to re-watch. In fact, even though I own Season 7 I usually stop at "The Void". End on a high note. :)
     
  5. Vurok

    Vurok Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    Indeed, same is true of Harry and Chakotay in 'Timeless' and most other time travel stories.

    The travellers from the 29th Century fighting the Temporal Cold War were moral though, because their actions were in retaliation and focused on restoring the timeline.
     
  6. Deks

    Deks Vice Admiral Admiral

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    What exactly happened at the end of TNG in Season 7?
    Time travel.
    And a blatantly obvious overuse of it.

    For what?
    For the purpose of saving mankind from extinction, and thus changing the alternate future in which the Enterprise-D is still alive and well (even retrofitted).

    Q was the main player here, and Picard was an idiot who made a mistake.

    Why not simply let it all run it's course and allow humanity to be destroyed if we're all for the preservation of the timeline?

    Seriously ... virtually every time-travel episode had some kind of an selfish factor involved that placed doubts onto the heroes morals and whatnot.
     
  7. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    All Good Things was about mirror universes. Picard was having no impact on the futures he was visiting after blundering through the past and present in the 2 other timelines from the story which were taking place. It was a sideways story not a back and forth story. Okay. Diagonal. Mirror universes at different points in history.

    Janeway was a moron. She thought she was creating a mirror universe when she told Tuvok she wouldn't be coming to see him any more, and the Queen was a Moron when she told Old janeway that the she old janeway would be dead if she killed her younger self despite... Okay so there's no practical way the Queen wouldn't know for sure that the kathy's past and future were now disconnected and she could have mistook it all for a predestination paradox. because anything other than a predestination paradox is illegal under federation law.

    Why would Sabrina and Harry commit suicide?

    In most stories timelines are overwritten, in others: alternate timelines are created veering away from established continuitybirthing new worlds of possibility. Janeway was either a monster or a tourist, but then if she was just running off to, creating a mirror universe to play in and there were no harmful effects to her home present... then why dispatch a Starship? Unless they were actually worried about cultural contamination, that Janeway's social impact on a parallel universe would be unfair rather than deadly, and gods help them but what if the Borg, more borg a universe with two factions of borg, followed her trail back to the 25th century?

    Again it's probably a mirror universe story, or Kathryn's a right utter (*&^.
     
  8. Adm_Hawthorne

    Adm_Hawthorne Admiral Admiral

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    If it wasn't supposed to happen the way it did, then why didn't the time police come in and fix the damage like all the times before?
     
  9. JanewayRulz!

    JanewayRulz! Vice Admiral Admiral

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    ^^ :techman: Because it was supposed to happen, because even though it was immoral it was a part of their 29th century history and because the Admiral paid for her sin by dying a horrible, gruesome glorious death.
     
  10. Adm_Hawthorne

    Adm_Hawthorne Admiral Admiral

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    I'm not sure the time cops would care how the Admiral died. But, based on what we've been told of the Trek universe, I believe it was, in fact, supposed to happen.

    Otherwise, it would have been corrected by the cops.
     
  11. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Or because she smashed the 29th's century federation's dominance over time, and time's NEW masters approved of Janeway destroying Humanities future which gave them their opportunity to rise to the top it was THEY who needed sleeping dogs to lay.

    These are the idiots who forgot to take the Doctor's Mobile emitter with them when they towed Voyager back to the future... Or was that part of a larger plan too?

    Besides we have watched several conflicting and inconsolable timelines over the years from season to season progressing each towards a mildly to completely different 29th century.

    In relativity Janeway says "What's the Temporal Prime Directive" but in Shattered She says that she hates the Temporal Prime Directive. These two different Janeway's had completely different educations at Starfleet Academy and there could have been all manner of other differences in their lives that... Because of Kes in Fury, the Vidiians wouldn't of been able to do Squat in Deadlock and both Naomi might have lived, which means that she there's every chance she wouldn't have crossed Kim over if it wasn't to replace the baby too.

    Besides ITS THE WRONG FRICKING QUEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    In my mind, it just wasn't another actress playing the same person, it was another lady who was crowned instead of the usual monarch who was involved with Voyager all along which brings the criss cross of Picard meddling with Founders day right to the fore because it was "that" Queens interplexing beacon which upgraded the 21st century Borg into the colossus Kathryn met in Scorpion who are not the Borg anyone had ever met before because the story telling slipped sideways into a mirror universe created by timetravellers splitting the timelines willy smurfing nilly.

    Time was already out of joint. The future was unbound.
     
  12. Deckerd

    Deckerd Fleet Arse Premium Member

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    Or, y'know, the writers didn't bother about all that.
     
  13. Adm_Hawthorne

    Adm_Hawthorne Admiral Admiral

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    Nah, that's too simple an answer.
     
  14. exodus

    exodus Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Exactly! If we all remember "Future's End", the Time Cop were willing to destroy Voyager & all onboard to prevent what they thought was Janeway destroying the lives on millions.

    All those crewmen getting back home to their loved ones would have also caused a small baby boom.
    The medical knowledge collected by the Doc. would allow more folks to live longer and a possibly more kids being born. So I don't see it killing millions in "Endgame" but rather an increase in population. Besides didn't we learn from the end of "YOH" that things don't change, instead they just might happen anyway?

    Besides Trek is written for the Captains to be heroes, not villains.
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2010
  15. Deckerd

    Deckerd Fleet Arse Premium Member

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    I sort of liked Endgame even although I've always believed time travel stories are utterly preposterous. We have to ignore so much non-science in ST but that has always been one leap of faith too far. On reflection, however, perhaps it's just that although Endgame was badly judged and silly, it was infinitely better than what the Enterprise fans got as their valediction.
     
  16. Adm_Hawthorne

    Adm_Hawthorne Admiral Admiral

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    Don't forget the knowledge they brought about the Borg and the new technology that was bound to have been welcome since the war.

    There was a lot Voyager brought back that was really needed.

    Also, they Federation had just been through a war. They needed a hero, a face. I'm willing to bet that Janeway and crew were the morale boost the Federation need to keep motivated to move forward.
     
  17. exodus

    exodus Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Yep.

    Plus like I said, the end of "YOH" and Annorax still working on the time calulations just shows that events in time might still happen anyway. So all those folks at the start of "Endgame" have a good shot at still existing.
     
  18. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    You do remember that we saw two different 29th centuries in Futures End?

    in the beginning we saw a Captain Braxton that believed that history was set and nothing could change it because time was a single DETERMINED flowing river. At the end of the second episode a second Captain Braxton shows up who understands that time is many rivers determined rivers and he has the technology to scan several alternate timelines for peculiarities.

    The second Braxton believed in branch theory rather than determinism and would have laughed at you in the face in you tried to tell him that a leads to b leads to c leads to a.

    Obviously the techgap was filled because of the mobile emitter.

    But if time was branch theory, then that's mean that someone else would have had to have also kicked off the computer revolution in the last iteration that lead to the creation of Janeways 24th century if the second Braxton had better science.
     
  19. Adm_Hawthorne

    Adm_Hawthorne Admiral Admiral

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    What does that have to do with Janeway's morality in Endgame?
     
  20. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Did Janeway create a parallel timeline which had no effect on her own home she left or did Janeway exterminate all life in the universe she came from as well as for 30 years back through time till "modern day" mulliganing history rebegetting time to play out differently forcing everything and everyone in the universe to do over with no guarantees everything would be "good".

    People and empires could rise and fall or rise and fall merely differently... But is Sabrina going to be the same kid, the same meat and the same brain with the same soul, if her mother conceives her with a different person in a different place at a different time? (DUH!) And is Miral going to be the same person when the first 16 years of her life is going to either be brought upon Voyager or in the AQ?

    Branch theory or determinism?

    Both realities disconnectedly happened or one happened at the annihilative expense of the other.

    Tourist or mass murderer?

    Actually what do you call some one who kills every one in the universe? An omnimurderer or a unimurderer? Maybe a holistimurderer or an infinimurderer?

    And if she was a tourist, then technically that which we saw was all happening in a mirror universe/parallel timeline which housed no one she knew or loved or had a right to fuck with more so than a complete uppity stranger depending on when that universe split from the trunk of mainlined realities that Janeway might have MADE this universe (as if she was God!) in which the 2378 events happened, or she travelled to this contemporary but still mirror universe which would have existed independently without her interruption albeit just differently without her input which makes it the same prime directive matter of cultural contamination as with visiting any other world period that doesn't need to be assaulted by imperialism and knowitalism.

    Got that?

    Now if Janeway was really being a dick, there are POLICE who POLICE time and parallel time as we found out in Futures End who put an end to dick moves and make sure the Temporal Prime directive is upheld.

    No one tried to stop her.

    So maybe she didn't do anything wrong because it was above board or like the Nazi's in WWII, some really really really bad things have to happen to insure the integrity of our history other wise we and the world we live in would be completely different... You know, pulling at the threads of the the tapestry of our lives?

    (Sorry Exodus)

    There was an Avengers comic recently. Spider-Man, Captain America (Captain America died and was replaced by his WWII child side kick Bucky a few years ago our time.) are talking about time travel and saving the day.

    Spider-Man "It's inevitable! the first time you travel through time, you always try to kill Hitler. It's like on a bucket list. You can't help yourself."

    Captain America "I did it."

    Spider-Man "Did What?"

    Captain America "I killed Hitler."

    Spider-Man "Oh... Really?"

    **crickets**

    Professor Farnsworth Killed Hitler several times in a recent NEW episode of Futurama.

    Oh the Hilarity!
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2010