Was Janeway a hypocrite in Equinox? It does seem like some of her moral authority in regards to Captain Ransom and his actions was a bit dubious, as shown by these videos: http://www.sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/v920a.php http://www.sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/v921.php
Just a suggestion, but you might want to distill the salient points of your part 2 and part 3 SF debris vids into a paragraph or 2 if you'd like to start a discussion. I'm not ready to sit through 33 minutes of commentary, especially one that begins with season 2's "Alliances". As for your question "was she a hypocrite?" I'd say no. Janeway and her crew were never rescued by a fellow Federation crew with a superior/intact ship at the risk of their own lives. She/her crew never repaid that rescue by stealing their Federation brethren's shield generator and purposely leaving them to the mercy of aliens intent on exacting murderous revenge upon "humans" for heinous crimes committed by Voyager. Ransom committed the worst crime he could have done in Janeway's eyes. He sacrificed HER ship & crew not for food or survival but just so he could run away home. Imagine the fireworks going off if Equinox arrived on Earth "three months later", hailed as heroes when in reality they were the "24th century's version of the Donner party". A group ready to eat their own, NOT so they could survive, but merely so they could get home a little faster.
Yeah, she was. "I'm going to hunt you down, torture your crew and kill you all for violating the virtues of humanity by killing people. We're better than that."
Janeway helped the Borg defeated Species 8472 which led to the Borg assimilating other species in the DQ and as it turned out in "In The Flesh" 8472 was the lesser of the two evils. So Janeway helped the Borg survive a war the Borg themselves started and then Borg went around destroying more civilizations in the DQ, it seems like Janeway has more blood her hands then Ransom does.
People who murdered Laura Palmer shouldn't throw stones. The Cloud. Practically day two. Janeway cut a baby open, and sucked food out of it's stomach for her savage crew's mercenary requirements. That's exactly what Ransom did. The Next Emanation. Janway finds a graveyard worth of stuff, a mysterious element that will make the ship gop faster, and Neelix's space wok cook hotter. It's awesome. It hardly matters that the "stuff" happens to be hundreds of millions of rotting corpses laid to sanctified eternal rest. That's exactly what Ransom did!
Didn't we learn from DS9 that morality doesn't win wars? You say, Janeway stopping Species8472 caused the Borg to destroy more civilizations in the DQ, vs. what? Letting Species 8472 win and having them destroy life in all 4? It was an invasion. They didn't speak a verbal language to reason with them yet, so they weren't going to distinguish humanoid Borg for humanoid anybody else. Everyone on two legs or that opposed them were dead meat. Is that what you honestly see as a better solution?
BINGO!!! sfdebris comes to the conclusion he does cause he can't see the forest for the trees. He misses the whole point of Janeway rescued the Equinox crew and they paid her back for it by trying to kill her to cover up murder. If sfdebris opened his home up to someone he called "friend" and they turn around and tried to kill him for it, would he believe they deserved to be treated fairly?
Friends? They were her subordinates. Their fair comeuppence started off with being her nicely treated crew, to being slave labour a couple inches form being lodged into a stasis tube for the next 50 years. By the way, it wasn't that Sisko did a bad thing, it's that he owned it. He did a bad thing he could live with. Janeway never did a bad thing and never had to worry about repentance or redemption because no matter what she did, how ####ed up she got, by the end credits or the next episode, everything morally ambiguous was upside down and back to front until she was lily white because her soul was made of teflon.
I wish sfdebris could be banned from discussions. I am never going to listen to sfdebris. They should NOT have been her subordinates. MY GOD how long are they going to hang onto this starfleet rank stuff? Okay I get they hang onto it on the ship, for structure and culture blah blah. But why rank became relevant between Ransom and Janeway.. that's just narrow mindedness on their parts. Mud.
The route home requires choices. Creating alliances requires choices. They meet a beautiful alien princess. Janeway thinks she can clobber her as soon as her back is turned, but Ransom thinks that he can clobber her after he has finished sleeping with her. Someone has to be in charge to make these decisions. besides, you can tell that assholes wrote the rules. Whoever has the stronger ship is in charge. If ransom had a super weapon... Actually Janeway is ignorant that Equinox is tactically superior. And Ransom chooses not to correct her. When the vivisection drive is working, Equinoxes top speed is a hundred times greater than Voyagers. I don't care if Voyager's Phaser array is twice the size of Equinoxes, once Equinox has it's gas tank filled up, Equinox would be half way home before Janeway could even lock on her phasers. If Ransom had been honest he would have been in charge, Janeway would have jumped up and down, and then Ransom would have been able to legally get Tuvok to send Janeway to the brig until she gets with the program.
Why or WHY couldn't they be two individual ships with individual crews who could choose to align or go their separate ways?
If the Captain in charge of the Fleet, the Fleet Captain if you will, felt that they were more stronger apart than together, then yes, that could have been the plan, but Janeway who turned out to be in charge wanted a fleet of two Starships to over power the next pack of assholes who tried to say no to her. Humans build communities.
25 percent of her crew was a prison labour conscript press gang. She wasn't building anything. Back in the Federation, Janeway answered tot he local Starbase, who answered to the Admiralty on Earth. Considering Voyagers size, puny half pint that it is, it's either going to go on shitty tactical tiny stealth missions where the ships inconsequentialness is an asset, or joint missions with another, to many other ships, or Voyager could have even been attached to a "warfleet" like were constantly referenced in the later seasons of Deep Space Nine.
So? Tactically superior means which ship will win in a head-to-head fight. Since ships don't fight at warp, the Equinox's greater speed is irrelevant. It's a perfectly sensible rule. Remember that one time she offered to let whoever wanted out stay behind and colonize that one planet? And I imagine anyone who requested to settle down with any of the friendly societies along the way would probably be allowed to, also. As for non-working passengers home... that could have been an interesting subplot somewhere; so long as they stuck to their quarters and didn't get in the way, I doubt they'd be forced to work, but who'd want that, and the resentment of all their fellow crew?
Tactically superior does not only mean firepower. It means whatever it takes to win. Neither ship had the fire power to fight these space dolphins head on. It's just a question of if no matter how fast Equinox ran they followed, or if Ransom was going in circles fishing in a fishing ground until he had enough fish to get all the way home. (DOLPHINS ARE NOT FISH!) (Shut up.) There was an episode of TOS where a Starbase Commander takes over Enterprise and fails to out gun the bad guys, and then begins to issue his Surrender, which is when Kirk takes back command and tells the pilot to go to warp 8. Running away is another word for winning.
Running away is retreating, how many battles/wars were won by the side which always retreated? Sure you can retreat, but a retreat is only usually temporary until you can gain tacical superiroty over the enemy, once you believe you have tactical superiory you attack.
Running away is retreating, how many battles/wars where won by the side which always retreated? Have you ever heard of a Pyrrhic Victory? ... Surviving = Winning. Doomed suicidal assault = Losing. Retreat is not a bad thing most of the time. Sure if you're on home soil and you're the line between assholes and innocent civilians, retreat can seem bad, but even then, win the war not the battle. I really don't think that Ransom tried running away because he still needed another 56 space Dolphins to make it all the whole way home. Could the Dolphins have made it back to/found Earth, or got back to Earth in less than 40 years?