What Right Did Janeway Have to Force the Ferenghi Home?

[Guy Gardener]

What you say is very sensible, but why would the (typical warlike) Klingons (who we'd only met up till that point. Klingon civilians with different passions were unknown to the audience.) sign that?

They have manifest destiny, and very little interest in commerce, diplomacy or peace.

 

[Paradise City]

What you say is very sensible, but why would the (typical warlike) Klingons (who we'd only met up till that point. Klingon civilians with different passions were unknown to the audience.) sign that?

They have manifest destiny, and very little interest in commerce, diplomacy or peace.

Even a savage no-nonsense guy like Kruge cites interstellar law to Kirk even if it is tongue in cheek and the Klingon ambassador in IV cities it to pronounce Kirk a criminal. When Praxis goes pop again we have a Klingon citing interstellar law to keep the Feds off the furniture whilst they try to firefight the fireball on their own.

Klingons through all their brutality and cavalier attitude to life, do have a code of honour and sometimes the theme that bubbles up is that it's cowardly to attack the unarmed.

It's a little like Saudi Arabia cutting off the hands of people and engaging in mass public executions for trivial reasons whilst sitting with a straight face on a human rights council. That country isn't alone, scores of other countries partake in the same grotesque hypocrisy. Diplomacy is the realm of the most grotesque hypocrisy imaginable but its one theatre of operations that an astute government would never ignore.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I think the real issue that whatever interstellar law is, is that for a species like the Klingons to feel so strongly about it, it must have been around for hundreds or maybe thousands, and was probably taught, by an older race who had since died out, to the Vulcans as a young species, and they taught it to the still younger races once it seemed like they needed some rules to stop them acting like a bunch of assholes.

The Romulans own 1/4 of the AQ and half of the BQ, but no one knew that they were angry Vulcans until 2267, or that they existed until 2160... But yes, the Romulans were there at Khitomer signing the accords, and involved in Colonel West's plot if you believe the out takes, and they could have signed on to the interstellar law stuff in the (Earth era) middle ages without anyone noticing their ears.

 

[hux]

So basically the prime directive was invented by another culture and everyone in the galaxy recognised its importance and played ball.

It's just that - for some reason - Starfleet are the only ones who bang on about it like they're the only people in the universe with the morality and intellect to embrace such a high-minded ideal. Or is it the humans? Bolian crew members sit there thinking, oh look, the humans are patting themselves on the back for "inventing" the prime directive again.

It's like when humans go on about Cochrane inventing warp and all the aliens onboard who had warp centuries before humans just roll their eyes.

 

[urbandefault]

She's Kathryn Effin' Janeway, and she can do anything she damn well pleases. As long as the coffee holds out.

 

[Guy Gardener]

So basically the prime directive was invented by another culture and everyone in the galaxy recognised its importance and played ball.

It's just that - for some reason - Starfleet are the only ones who bang on about it like they're the only people in the universe with the morality and intellect to embrace such a high-minded ideal. Or is it the humans? Bolian crew members sit there thinking, oh look, the humans are patting themselves on the back for "inventing" the prime directive again.

It's like when humans go on about Cochrane inventing warp and all the aliens onboard who had warp centuries before humans just roll their eyes.

Nope.

(I might be misreading you?)

The Prime Directive and Interstellar Law are two different things, and we have no idea when either of them were invented (Well we know when Starfleet's Charter was drafted, or at least we did until Enterprise fucked it all up). Hell, the Prime Directive is not even a human law or a Federation Law, it's not even a law. It's a regulation of Starfleet. Logically if you're not in Starfleet, even if you're human, but an immoral person, you can #### up and rape any worlds, culturally or geologically, which you feel like, if you have the power to do so, and you got a firm handle on who might be miffed by you asteroid-fieldifying heavily populated planets, and try to do something about you.

T'Pol spent a couple episodes trying to teach Archer about not interfering with prewarp cultures, or helping less advanced races out of a pickle and into a blender. So yes the Federation, and before that "humans" inherited the Prime Directive from the Vulcans who had been in space for half a million years, and who had just spent a century trying to make sure that humanity didn't blow itself up as it "invented" and used antimatter to make warp reactors despite being bared from openspace by their pointy eared overlords. If you start helping a dullard, you need the stickitudity to keep helping that dullard until their wits pick up enough speed that they don't need help anymore, or there was no reason to start helping the imbecile in the first place.

If you can't commit to the long game, don't commit.

Think about it, in the real world if you help someone a lot for a weekend to clean their house, and they become accustomed to that help, start to depend on that help, and have no idea how to maintain that degree of "helpededness" (I had to ruminate about that one.) they're most likely going to backslide and feel sad, or push on and fuck up by trying to do the work of two or three people when they are only one person.

Other alien races have no requirement not to use their less intelligent neighbours as resources to be tapped and used up... Of course, if they do that enough, someone is going to stand up eventually and punch them in the nose. Acting like an asshole lets people treat you like an asshole.

The Prime Directive and what we know of interstellar law seems to be "the Golden Rule".

Treat others as you would have them treat you.

Basic shit, yeah?

 

[hux]

You're being disturbingly coherent, Guy.

I don't like it.

 

[Guy Gardener]

An hour ago, I fell in love with the gorgeous Ingrid Oliver for the first time, all over again.

She'd taken off her glasses, so I had no ####ing idea who she was.

I may have less mounting disrespect for Lois Lane from this point forward.

 

[hux]

Better.

Did you see her rape Mark in Peep Show.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The pilot soured me so I did not continue watching, after already downloading 6 seasons.

I'm sure someone will bully me into watching more peepshow someday, maybe.

 

[hux]

My second favourite sitcom (if you can call it a sitcom) but then you're the guy who said "Open all hours" is better than "Porridge" so it might not be your cup of tea.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I formed those opinions as a seven year old.

Back then I also thought that The Love Boat was quality viewing.

Watching old shows when they were made or close to when they were made is quite different to watching old shows in the future (the present.), so my opinions gathered on this subject as a seven year old are more valuable to me now than if I was to refresh the data.

What would be a get is if they Kate Beckinsale was to play the role of Gobbler's daughter in a remake/sequel, but vampires (no pun intended) have probably been trying to talk her into doing that cheap trick for the last 2 decades since she became someone.

 

[hux]

Gobbler? Not a name one might want in prison.

I'd like to see a Trek-style reboot starring Peter Kay.

 

[Tim Thomason]

I think the real issue that whatever interstellar law is, is that for a species like the Klingons to feel so strongly about it, it must have been around for hundreds or maybe thousands, and was probably taught, by an older race who had since died out, to the Vulcans as a young species, and they tight it to the still younger races once it seemed like they needed some rules to stop them acting like a bunch of assholes.

The Romulans own 1/4 of the AQ and half of the BQ, but no one knew that they were angry Vulcans until 2267, or that they existed until 2160... But yes, the Romulans were there at Khitomer signing the accords, and involved in Colonel West's plot if you believe the out takes, and they could have signed on to the interstellar law stuff in the (Earth era) middle ages without anyone noticing their ears.

I assume the Interstellar Law cited by Chang (neither Kruge nor the ambassador in IV never mentioned interstellar law) is just a treaty between the Federation and the Klingon Empire (and maybe other powers), perhaps the Organian Treaty. It's not some ancient codex passed in time immemorial.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The point of Kitohmer is that there was no treaty regarding peaceful conduct between the Federation and the Klingons.

Flag of truce? That's old school Napoleonic shit.

 

[hux]

If one of the Ferengi had vaporised Janeway in an attempt to resist her, would he have been arrested for murder or let off because it was an act of self defence (since she had absolutely no authority forcing them to do anything).

 

[Drone]

Janeway passionately despised the Ferenghi and is a well known Ferenghiphobist. She presumably has a lot of fascistic paraphernalia in her quarters. I imagine she broke the prime directive on a weekly basis by violently oppressing any species that had big ears or an unfortunate pronunciation of the word humans.

I think we can all agree, she is monster.

She has no jurisdiction in the episode. It's her own hatred.

Did we ever see the other side of the story. What about those who loved and benefitted from this brand of Ferenghi capitalism injected into their society. Did Janeway care about them? What about them! What about them!

Well, thankfully you've made your intentions plain in this "screed", even to a dense dullard as myself (sort of a tip off that your didn't respond to my previous post at all). Thanks for the assist!!

Exactly.

So the impact of the prime directive will be utterly negligible unless all the other space powers agree to the same terms.

I'm not aware of any such agreement and the actions of the Cardassians on Bajor would suggest there is no such agreement.

Picard and his crew might have a massive, soul-searching, heart-wrenching debate about the importance of the prime directive then two weeks later some other major power comes along and says meh, fucke em... let's start mining.

Hey, that's life. No one ever made the claim that Starfleet is all powerful, did they?

But is there any such agreement? Nothing in the show has ever suggested a quadrant-wide acceptance of the PD. If it isn't the case then the Federation having such a policy is pretty irrelevant.

Why would there need to be such an acceptance? In part, it anticipates and codifies the validity and process of conflict with non-Federation races in certain situations. There would be no point in including those codicils if there was never any intention of following through with them. It's not as if the Klingons or Ferengi weren't aware of the PD in all its dimensions. If they choose to wantonly violate certain parts of it, fine, but they clearly shouldn't have any illusions of being immune from the consequences of those actions.

She sensed an injustice and had to poke her nose into it because she felt it was wrong and went all for it until they pointed out she couldn't. End of story. Which I liked. :P

She sensed nothing and didn't move to act based on a personal command interpretation. She clearly had the right to proceed as she did, based on an obvious reading of a provision of the PD, as I cited earlier. I find it odd that no one has seen fit to dispute that since my post.

I'm not sure who the "they" are you refer to, but while it took some improvisation from their original plan to dislodge the Ferengi, she ultimately could and accomplished what she intended on doing. From your stance, I'm not sure how the story ended in a satisfactory way, other than of course another viable possiblity for being able to return home going by the boards. If it gives you a degree of pleasure to attribute that to Janeway's supposed arrogance and stupidity, well I guess you can revel in that at least.

If one of the Ferengi had vaporised Janeway in an attempt to resist her, would he have been arrested for murder or let off because it was an act of self defence (since she had absolutely no authority forcing them to do anything).

Is there any real need to seriously answer that as this charade winds its way along?

 

[Guy Gardener]

If one of the Ferengi had vaporised Janeway in an attempt to resist her, would he have been arrested for murder or let off because it was an act of self defence (since she had absolutely no authority forcing them to do anything).

If the vapourization happened on Takar. No body, no evidence, no murder.

If the Murder happened on Voyager, their balls would be nailed o the wall.

Remind me how bad Red Heat was, if we want to think about a local cop teaming up with a foreign cop to catch a running murderer.

 

[hux]

Red Heat was the zenith of 80's movie genius.

What if they grab the Ferenghi (against their will) then go through the wormhole and instantly go back to Federation space. If the Ferengi kick up a fuss, could Janeway be hand-slapped for breaking the PD and forcing the Ferengi to do something against their will. A hand slap being the standard Federation punishment for breaking the PD.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Prime Directive issue at heart was that the Takarians would be distraught after being abandoned by their Gods.

Kidnapping the Ferengi was breaking a much simpler law to identify and observe called "kidnaping".

Janeway doesn't get any immunity from prosecution that I'm aware of that lets her operate above the law. Well, Omega Directive, but apart from that, if she pisses off the wrong people, she can easily lose her ship and serve time in a penal colony for breaking regular laws like anyone else.