Was Janeway a bit of a tyrant?

[teacake]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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The Pilot is black and white.

Janeway is a Villain.

And people think she's arrogant for it.

Then you have Night where she faces her demons and people think she's selfish or some other bad thing for it.

And then you have Endgame where future Janeway tries to atone for some of her sins and people think she's a psycho because of it.

If Picard had made the same decision in the Pilot it would be seen as him letting his compassion and other fine Trek ideals rise above the letter of the law.

If Picard had his Night episode it would be seen as a "broke your little ships" scenario and we would all have sagely nodded that of course Picard was in the end a man who had his struggles, and we would have forgiven him

If Picard had an Endgame where his future self returned to save Data and Crusher or whatever it would be hailed as a great Buddy episode, the vaunted friendships of Trek, in the spirit of TOS blah blah.

[Guy Gardener]

Night is when her demons escaped. There was no dealing with them. They escaped. fucked her up, and then she built a better cage and got on with the job of saving the day once she got distracted by all that life and death drama again.

Nothing changed.

(Which is why we got on exactly the same bus in the Omega Directive.)

In First contact, Picard was ahabbing it, Lilly called him on it. He says fuck really? My bad. Plenty more letters int he alphabet.

Everything changed.

(Although, he had supposedly put everything in order when he mud wrestled his
Brother in Family.)

In Time Squared Picard went back in time to save the ship, and his younger self shot him dead.

Dead.

"You're a loser, you suck good bye."

Captain Janeway at the least short of murdering herself should have put Admiral Janeway in stasis and allowed temporal investigations to deal with her when they got home.

Hey?

Icheb, was at the Academy, they could have asked him to lean his studies towards a career in Temporal Investigations? Bought the admiral out of stasis as a labrat until he was wearing his big boy pants enough to pwn her.

[Gov Kodos]

Omega Directive? She was following Star Fleet orders. Ridiculous orders, but orders none the less. Besides, that episode was before Night, as I recall.

[Guy Gardener]

Actually the scene I was thinking of from Omega Directive, might have been from Night.

"sigh"

Rewatching all of star trek is so low on my priorities.

[teacake]

But Guy, think of the posts you could make!

[Guy Gardener]

Posts I have already made and forgotten about.

Remember when Lister deleted the memory of reading Agatha Christie from Holly's database?

[teacake]

Tell me about it. I once was reading some cached forum posts from years back in another universe, they didn't have the avatars etc.. Read a really great post full of stuff I had never thought of. Then I saw it was my post. This has happened several times now.

[Guy Gardener]

Limited recall, it's how any marriage lasts past the I'm going to drown you stage.

[sonak]

AuntKate wrote:

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Actually, it was the Caretaker that stranded them, and many others before them (like the Equinox). Janeway didn't have to offer them help. She could have left them high and dry, but she didn't.

We can't assume that their attempt to use the Caretaker's array would have been successful or that the Kazon would have given them enough time to figure out how to do it.

Once the captains decided to cooperate, Chakotay committed the Maquis to Voyager when he crashed their ship into the Kazon ship.

I guess it's just a matter of perspective.

of course your argument assumes that the array attempt wouldn't have been successful because otherwise you can't argue that Janeway didn't strand them. You're arguing backwards: the array COULDN'T have sent them home, because Janeway CAN'T be responsible for stranding them.

Had they tried and then failed, then of course she wouldn't be responsible. But she blew up the array instead.

Moreover, it was a pretty clear PD violation. Take Voyager out of the equation, and the Kazon get the array and become a dominant power. Janeway influenced regional politics to a huge degree based on her own say-so.

[teacake]

It's interesting that she saved the weaker species from the stronger in her eyes and yet if all the Ocampans develop like Kes that will not be the case at all. Rather we potentially have a race of super beings with super grudges wiping out the Kazon in the future.

[Guy Gardener]

The Prime Directive protects everyone from UNFORESEEN consequences.

American weapons George Bush snr sold Saddam in the 80s to get Gaddafi, are still being used to kill American soldiers today.

[AuntKate]

sonak wrote:

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of course your argument assumes that the array attempt wouldn't have been successful because otherwise you can't argue that Janeway didn't strand them. You're arguing backwards: the array COULDN'T have sent them home, because Janeway CAN'T be responsible for stranding them.

Had they tried and then failed, then of course she wouldn't be responsible. But she blew up the array instead.

Moreover, it was a pretty clear PD violation. Take Voyager out of the equation, and the Kazon get the array and become a dominant power. Janeway influenced regional politics to a huge degree based on her own say-so.

My position is that we don't know if Voyager could have successfully used the Caretaker's array--for whatever reason--and so it is pure speculation what might have happened. They might have been successful or not. To assume they would have been successful is just as much of a guess as to assume they would have failed.

I don't see how my argument is any more backward than yours. You say that the array COULD have gotten them home and therefore Janeway IS responsible for stranding them. I'm just saying--maybe not.

I don't think it was a PD violation, at all. Here is what Memory Alpha says about it in their Prime Directive article:

"In 2371 (Stardate 48315.6), Captain Kathryn Janeway destroyed the Caretaker's Array to prevent the Kazon from using it aginst the Ocampa, even after Tuvok said "[destroying the array] will alter the balance of power... the Prime Directive would seem to apply". Janeway justified her action by stating, "We didn't ask to be involved...but we are." to prevent the bellicose Kazon from using thr array to dominate the surrounding region. It can also be argued that the Caretaker's actions made the Ocampa society so dependent that it retarded their society's natural growth and evolution to the point that their society was stagnate. By destroying the array, Janeway released the Ocampa from their dependence on the array and placed them back on a path towards natural, cultural evolution. Hence the Prime Directive would not apply in this instance. (VOY: "Caretaker")"

[Guy Gardener]

Between the lines, what Janeway said was "This is not an internal matter. We are participants in this conflict with a vested interest in the greater good that can be rendered by a positive outcome which we have an obligation to see through to a conclusion because we have emotional connections with the locals which are equivalent to legal connections."

Which is bullshit.

How was Janeway involved?

She met a slave cow race living on a kazon world in kazon controlled space and felt sorry for them because their masters were assholes? Most slaves really arn't happy about it, and didn't even put a band aid on the problem.

according to this a free person who stole a slave in America was subject to execution.

Can we expect the Kazon to be less draconian?

if that's how they felt abvout taking the girl who spits in thier food, how do you think they'll feel about the woman who blows up their space station they've been trying to aquire for the last 50 years?

Did Janeway know that it would take her two years to remove herself form the limits of Kazon influence?

She knew that they were a reputable species that traded with everyone in that sector.

Not that the Kazon Oogla really amounted to much after that.

And the Kazon Nistum's beef with the Janeway was all about Seska being a dick.

Seriously.

On that day.

The first day (third?)

How was the Federation legally and politically entangled in that mess?

What jurisdiction, and what responsibility, and what duty of care did the empire of which Kathryn was the chief representative of have a singular fleck of interest in some backward hillbillies playing with godleveltech and smiting some masochistic lemmings thy legally had the right to smite as hard or often as they wanted?

The Prime Directive told her to walk away if she wasn't welcome.

Instead she started a war that might last for the next million years.

Janeway starts a million year war which the federation might lose and Seska gets knocked up.

Who to you sounds like the better diplomat?

[Gov Kodos]

The Holy Writ Prime Directive of TNG Trek is something Janeway can use as toilet paper as far as I care.

[Guy Gardener]

She can use it as toilet paper, but I want to know why she's using it as toilet paper.

All I wanted for her to say is "I've been a naughty girl. A naughty, naughty girl."

Sisko did so in in the pale Moon light.

Picard in Justice and Pen Pals.

I suppose kirks end around in A Private Little War when he became an Arms dealer was closer to what Janeway did...

KIRK: Is it? She wants superior weapons. That's the one thing neither side can have. Bones. Bones, the normal development of this planet was the status quo between the hill people and the villagers. The Klingons changed that with the flintlocks. If this planet is to develop the way it should, we must equalize both sides again.

Tipping the balance of power back to how it was, is still playing with the balance of power, because the balance of power shouldn't be stagnant, what if the best thing in all possible universes was that the kazon got that array and spread that technology across the quadrant as businessmen and not warriors, which is certainly possible given how they turned Ocampa's practically useless (DS9 Statistical probability) cormaline deposits into such a must have hot ticket item.

Besides, when we saw Tyrees World in DS9 (image in the sand) next, the place was a wasteland.

Kirk and the Klingons had killed everyone.