What Right Did Janeway Have to Force the Ferenghi Home?

[hux]

Look, we all know that Janeway is a cream-filled nutcake who spends her evenings chewing on the skulls of babies and when she's not attempting genocide or murdering Tuvix, she's petulantly sulking because Chakotay stopped her from killing Lessing but...

What, in the name of buggery, did she think she was doing in False Profits? The Ferenghi are not part of the Federation and she has absolutely no right telling Arridor and Kol that they must return with her to the Alpha quadrant. Hell, she doesn't even have the right to tell them to wipe their arses.

No Federation jurisdiction, no prime directive issue, none of her God damn business.

What if, instead of the Ferenghi, it had been the Grumparians (a native Delta quadrant species) fleecing the Ga'Nah province with advanced technology. Would she still stick her oar in? Is it the Federation's responsibility to police the entire galaxy?

Oh and if captain Insaneway hadn't pissed about attempting to force the Ferenghi to do things she had absolutely no right forcing them to do, she could have used the frikkin Barzan wormhole to get home.

Idiot!

 

[Shumsky]

Haters gonna hate!

 

[Shumsky]

Janeway is fine.
Besides everything past TNG has nothing to do with true trek (Gene vision of peaceful future).

It's just a fun SF series. That is all. Prime directives and moral don't matter.
Sisko murdered Romulan ambassador and poisoned the whole Maquis planet, for example.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I like DS9 as a critique of TNG's utopianism, showing how the principles of peace apply to a universe that is not peaceful. Sisko didn't murder that ambassador, Garak did, and Sisko willfully turned the other way, and if he had not done that, the entire Federation would have been conquered. It leaves you to answer the question whether utopian principles morally outweigh the death of your entire civilization. Like, if you could have lived with yourself if you had an opportunity to stop a holocaust by murdering one person and chose not to because murder is wrong. Critique of utopianism fits just as much into Star Trek as utopianism.

Janeway may not have had legal jurisdiction to bring the Ferengi back with her, but you could argue self defense. Slavery is an act of aggression and she has a right to defend innocent victims of aggressive acts. And Voyager is not the only Trek where moral judgments are placed above strict legal judgments.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Ferengi are an inherently untrustworthy race, so I can't blame Janeway for trying to protect unsuspecting innocent people from them.

Especially in the Delta Quadrant, where nobody knows anything about the Ferengi and how much they like to cheat.

 

[Paradise City]

I don't really mind myself but in the pilot getting marooned in the DQ was over Janeway's Prime Directive scruple. .

And after the pilot the PD goes out the window as she hands out top Federation tech like sweets and she travels around like the Lone Ranger with Chakotay as her Tonto.

She does violate the PD here like she doesn't know about it. I'd excuse these kinds of episodes if she wrangled over it or there was some controversy attached to it but there isn't.

And of course it helps that the Ferengi are bungling slapstick Fagin-esque villains so the audience doesn't care to notice it either. It's obvious that they've been set up by the writers to be kicked out by the Lone Ranger and her team.

 

[Shumsky]

I like DS9 as a critique of TNG's utopianism, showing how the principles of peace apply to a universe that is not peaceful. Sisko didn't murder that ambassador, Garak did, and Sisko willfully turned the other way, and if he had not done that, the entire Federation would have been conquered. It leaves you to answer the question whether utopian principles morally outweigh the death of your entire civilization. Like, if you could have lived with yourself if you had an opportunity to stop a holocaust by murdering one person and chose not to because murder is wrong. Critique of utopianism fits just as much into Star Trek as utopianism.

Well sisko didn't just sacrifice one man. He tricked entire romulan empire into war which resulted, probably, in countless romulan victims.
So he just preferred murder of romulans instead of humans. Understandable.

But Original Trek and TNG where not about utopian universe. They where about utopian Earth. What I mean, they dealt with topics like racism, euthanasia etc. so our problems here and now. and they did it in an original and fun way.
The point was to show US we can live all in peace and evolve. it wasn't about intergalactic politics and wars what DS9 turned trek into.

Don't get me wrong I enjoy both DS9 and VOY but they did cheapen trek.

 

[hux]

Besides everything past TNG has nothing to do with true trek (Gene vision of peaceful future).

Argghhh! No, not true Trek.

My eyes! My eyes!

I've always liked you Shumsky. Ever since I first met you, just now.

The Ferengi are an inherently untrustworthy race, so I can't blame Janeway for trying to protect unsuspecting innocent people from them.

All well and good but Janeway has absolutely no legal influence here. She's basically just embracing might is right. The Ferenghi should have just told her to piss off.

Arrogant, tyrannical Hoo-mons dictating terms to the universe again.

 

[Shumsky]

I've always liked you Shumsky. Ever since I first met you, just now.

Awww I love you too!

 

[Shumsky]

The Ferengi are an inherently untrustworthy race, so I can't blame Janeway for trying to protect unsuspecting innocent people from them.

I'm a Ferengi and this offends me!

All well and good but Janeway has absolutely no legal influence here. She's basically just embracing might is right. The Ferenghi should have just told her to piss off.

Arrogant, tyrannical Hoo-mons dictating terms to the universe again.

They tried to justify it by saying that Federation marooned them in Delta quadrant so it was their fault!

But, don't care about Janeway breaking PD. Didn't even cross my mind.
I really liked that episode. It was fun to see a bit of Alpha Quadrant.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Ferengi are an inherently untrustworthy race, so I can't blame Janeway for trying to protect unsuspecting innocent people from them.

All well and good but Janeway has absolutely no legal influence here.

Perhaps not, but neither do the Ferengi.

She's basically just embracing might is right. The Ferenghi should have just told her to piss off.

And why should she have listened to them?

Janeway knew what the Ferengi were capable of. No other race in the Delta Quadrant did. She was entirely justified in warning others of the Ferengi nature and trying to protect innocent people from their predatory and exploitative tactics. And there is no Starfleet Command in that quadrant to keep her from doing so, not that they would have tried.

Besides, since the Ferengi themselves are already interfering with a pre-warp civilization, how can it be a violation of the Prime Directive for Janeway to try and correct such interference? You are claiming that the Ferengi have the right to do whatever they want in this instance, so why does Janeway have less of a right to try and fight against what they're doing?

 

[Jeffe525]

Janeway is fine.
Besides everything past TNG has nothing to do with true trek (Gene vision of peaceful future).

This is a complete BS statement. GR's "vision of a peaceful future" ONLY applied to the cultures of Earth. He never intended to portray a dull galaxy completely devoid of conflict. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to brush up on their TOS (did anyone say Klingons?)

Prime directives and moral don't matter.

More BS. VOY struggled with these classic ST issues all the time.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Haters gonna hate!

Lovers gonna love!

Janeway is fine.
Besides everything past TNG has nothing to do with true trek (Gene vision of peaceful future).

Gene wrote cowboy stories for cop shows.

Old dinosaur, casting couch letch.

Janeway may not have had legal jurisdiction to bring the Ferengi back with her, but you could argue self defense. Slavery is an act of aggression and she has a right to defend innocent victims of aggressive acts. And Voyager is not the only Trek where moral judgments are placed above strict legal judgments.

The planet looked like it didn't have a global government. Medieval. Childlike. It requires restraint from advanced species not to think about tattooing barcodes onto the foreheads of slaves, or strip mining on a planetary scale. Also how many villages were these "businessmen" preying on? It can't just have been the single village square, and the 40 people living near by. Yes, it's rude, to con these people, but these were the same rubes who were lighting a bonfire to BBQ our friendly neighbourhood Ferengi on. Seriously, 7 years to milk one village poorly? Not a threat, leave the alone.

The Ferengi are an inherently untrustworthy race, so I can't blame Janeway for trying to protect unsuspecting innocent people from them.

No one is innocent, and there's a line between protecting idiots and declaring war on billions of predators.

She's basically just embracing might is right. The Ferenghi should have just told her to piss off.

And why should she have listened to them?

You do remember that the Ferengi used the correct legal arguments, and Janeway backed down because she was acting like a dick.

 

[Lynx]

She had all right to do so because it was the Federation which (indirectly) caused the situation on Barzan due to its clumsy behavior while negotiating over the wormhole seven years earlier.

What Janeway actually did was to correct the situation.

If I had been one of the inhabitants of that planet, I would have been more than happy to see the alien exploitators being sent back where they belonged.

Besides that, there were maybe relatives to Arridor and Kol back at Ferenginar who were happy to see them back home again.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

there's a line between protecting idiots and declaring war on billions of predators.

Are you suggesting the Ferengi are a serious military threat to Starfleet?

In any case, I doubt their government would be too happy with what Arridor and Kol did. If we're supposed to believe anything Quark says, the Ferengi have never practiced slavery, yet that's exactly what these two were doing here.

(And, since Ferengi always cheat when they can get away with it, legal arguments coming from them don't really carry much weight.)

 

[Guy Gardener]

Monetizing religion is not slavery.

I could say something horrible about the Catholics, or I could just say "Scientology".

Lynx, this is an example not an accusation, imagine you killed someone by accident, and rather than admitting what you did to Johnny Law, You cut them up, disposed of the body in the sea, and created a paper trail so that friends and family of the body you removed life from, don't have to become sad or pay for a funeral.

Secretly reversing a problem you generated is not always a good thing.

 

[DEEP SPACE NEIN]

I like DS9 as a critique of TNG's utopianism, showing how the principles of peace apply to a universe that is not peaceful. Sisko didn't murder that ambassador, Garak did, and Sisko willfully turned the other way, and if he had not done that, the entire Federation would have been conquered. It leaves you to answer the question whether utopian principles morally outweigh the death of your entire civilization. Like, if you could have lived with yourself if you had an opportunity to stop a holocaust by murdering one person and chose not to because murder is wrong. Critique of utopianism fits just as much into Star Trek as utopianism.

Well sisko didn't just sacrifice one man. He tricked entire romulan empire into war which resulted, probably, in countless romulan victims.
So he just preferred murder of romulans instead of humans. Understandable.

But Original Trek and TNG where not about utopian universe. They where about utopian Earth. What I mean, they dealt with topics like racism, euthanasia etc. so our problems here and now. and they did it in an original and fun way.
The point was to show US we can live all in peace and evolve. it wasn't about intergalactic politics and wars what DS9 turned trek into.

Don't get me wrong I enjoy both DS9 and VOY but they did cheapen trek.

Utopian Earth? I'm pretty sure racism and assisted suicide aren't idiosyncratic or inherent of Terran society considering the show's primary theme is coexistence among space faring species. Also, both of those examples don't allow us much room to accurately gauge what you think etcetera covers or utopian means since racism is a learned behavior via cultural osmosis and class warfare that can effect unwilling recipients while euthanasia and critique of is only relevant to parties willing to undergo or partake in operation or ethical debate/policy making.

Utopianism is predicated on a dynamic system subject to what a demographic finds ideal so a racist utopia can exist just as a progressive people with a core belief system and set of values can still have conflicting opinions of murdering their loved ones.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Racism is from having races. In Star Trek humans are not divided down into small groups specified by skin tone and the geography of their great, great, great, great grand parents anymore.

Black people are not oppressed in the future because other nonblack people can't find a reason to hate black people, but because all black people are just people just the same as all other people, and that blackness, "brownness" is not recognizable as segregatable aspect of person-hood in the future.

(There's almost certainly no white pride either.)

A hundred years after the Earth United, Checkov still gives a shit about Russia, and a 200 years after Earth United Picard gives a shit about France, so maybe regionalism is still a thing, let's blame that in sports, but pigmentation is most likely been demoted to a sexual fetish, rather than a reason to kill someone.

Yeah, the Federation is a fricking utopia, deal with it.

 

[DEEP SPACE NEIN]

Who said it wasn't one?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Brian.