Picard was right, Sisko was in the wrong..

er.. yes. The issue is that Sisko is often seen in the Trek community as the virtuous party in Emissary when he meets Picard. I simply differ in my perspective, since IMO Picard couldn't do anything feasibly to prevent assimilation.

We all think differently though, not necessarily in black and white terms.

 

???

Sisko is almost universally recognized as the most emotional, most volatile, and ultimately, the most human of the ST captains. In Emissary, he is presented as a man who's life has stalled because the memory of his wife's death overwhelms him. The only thing he has going for him is his relationship with his son. By the end of the episode, the Prophets get Sisko to realize that he has been wallowing in misery, a realization that implicitly begins his healing. Sisko's hostility towards Picard is not understood to be justified, but it is seen as being natural. Indeed, Sisko has always been regarded as the opposite of Picard, the one who makes emotional choices, not rational ones.

 

I know it's natural. As said, I'm just stating my view, contrary to the popular ideal.

 

The characters themselves got over this scene (where the hostility between them has been vastly exaggerated by fans to begin with) in an hour. After twenty years, shouldn't fans start to get over it by now?

 

^Excellent point. I saw "Emissary" a few months ago for the first time in over ten years and I was shocked to learn that there was far less tension between the two than I remembered.

 

You're making the assumption that there is a right and wrong in this situation.

 

In a lot of ways, Picard and Sisko are in the same situation. They've both been victimized by the Borg, and neither man will ever recover completely.

 

Seems to me that certainly loading the non-combatants into escape pods - life boats would be the way to go, there would have been enough for all of them, and still had enough left over to accommodate the crew if necessary.

Load the life boats up and when ready briefly drop out of warp, jettison the boats into space and re-engage warp. Total time lost less than a single minute.

Inform Starfleet where the boats were dropped in case the ship is disabled or destroyed.

Universally? No, but I would definitely agree with "most volatile."

I'd say Kirk was the most Human of the ST captains.

 

I don't think there is. Just stating my view in response to the common "Sisko was right to be 'a bitch' to Picard" belief.

No life situation, even fictional scenarios like this, is black and white.

 

But IS that the "common" belief? Because I haven't seen a lot of people in the fandom expressing that.

 

No one on Earth died during that engagement. Nearly everyone on a Starship did.

 

The cube didn't reach Earth there, we've seen examples of the Borg harming people who weren't aboard starships.

Picard:
Two Federation outposts in sector three zero have been destroyed,
there's been no communication with Federation starbases in sector three one ...

That's from The Neutral Zone.

The New Providence colony had 900 people.

 

It's a bit strange that Jake and Jennifer stayed in their quarters apparently in the outer rim section of the Saratoga.

Heck, even Kirk ordered Elaan of Troyius to go to sickbay, the innermost protected part of the ship, anticipating a battle with the Klingons.

Bob

 

^You know, after I posted that I thought about it some more and I realized that if they had done that, they would have made it a priority to get all the children off the ship. So Jake still shouldn't be there. So now my guess is that the Saratoga just didn't have time to offload any civilians.

 

I like the Galaxy-class ship that carried families aboard. As mentioned, this class has a separable saucer, so the civilians could be evacuated, if needed. And, you could leave the civilians behind at the nearest starbase before going into a known battle.
I wish more classes of starships had family accommodations.

 

There is a 3rd option that they might have been the only civilians on the ship?

 

IIRC and according to this screencap, there were other civilians aboard - which IMHO, should have gathered and stayed during battle in a better protected part of the ship close to the escape pods.

Bob

 

This is admittedly a more fanciful thought, but:

Perhaps Saratoga's comm systems were offline for a time, and when they got the announcement that the Borg were heading for Wolf 359 they either had absolutely no time to "waste" offloading civilians, were already in the system and the battle basically started on top of them, or insert your own explanation here.

I think any starship captain who found out about a Borg incursion in an area where if they wanted to make a difference they needed to be there as soon as possible would not stop to drop off civilians. It's safe to assume that, children excepted, the civilians knew what they might be getting into when they asked to be on the ship in the first place.

I'm unaware of anyone who thought Sisko was "virtuous" with regards to Picard. Rather I think a number of people feel that Sisko's ire was understandable on an emotional level if not an intellectual one (since objectively Picard isn't to blame for Jennifer's death).

 

Do we know if there was a decent amount of time between the fleet coming together and then the battle itself? I ask because even 30 or 45 minutes prior to battle should be enough to round up all the civilians into a ship (you have 40 of them, you can spare one -- and indeed, one did survive) and head for a starbase while the others do battle.

Yeah, there's a tinge of 20/20 hindsight in there, but Starfleet was expecting a big battle in any sense.