How can Picard have an ethical, legal or professional duty to abandon and violate his ethical and legal oath?
Why is there resistance to the idea of Starfleet being military?
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How can Picard have an ethical, legal or professional duty to abandon and violate his ethical and legal oath?
To that end, there's a fan who's created his own Star Trek show (concept) on deviantArt.com which has an Andorian captain commanding a starship (named after Joan of Arc) whose mission is not to explore the galaxy and discover new life, but to protect and defend the Federation and it's member planets from harm. I'll post a link to this when I can, as this PlayStation III isn't good for posting links of any kind and can't access deviantArt due to the browser being obsolete.
Because it would protect the group of people (these in federation) that he supposedly is sworn to protect.
"They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back."
One of Picard's superior officers told Picard that his decision was wrong and if the opportunity presented itself again he was to destroy the Borg..
I was watching that episode(s) not too long ago, and they give you the impression that it did effect all Borg and forever changed them. I don't know if part 1 and 2 have different writers, but at the very end of part 2, Hugh finally makes the statement "We can't go back to the collective"
The Borg feel small in Descent and iBorg.
That was probably part of his oath, the oath presumably also included that he would not act, even to protect the Federtion, by any means necessary.
Yes, which Picard felt was contrary to not only his own ideals but the enumerated binding principles of Starfleet so there's at least a significant amount of disagreement about what should get prioritized.
I sometimes wonder if Picard truely has a grasp on what "the enumerated binding principles of Starfleet" actually are.
Admiral Nechayev (Descent): "Your priority is to safeguard the lives of Federation citizens, not to wrestle with your conscience."
Data (and LaForge) constructed the invasive program, and Data was fully aware of what it would do. Data, who has been shown to disobey orders when he thought they to be wrong/illegal, had no problem constructing the program.
I (personally) feel that Picard later came to realize that what he did was foolish and wrong. His "we fall back" speech indicated that the Federation suffered defeats at the hands of the Borg prior to the invasion of First Contact.
In the first scene of FC, we're told of the destruction of the Ivor Prime colony. Later, starships are destroyed and people killed, before the Cube itself is destroyed.
I do see Picard's point, in that he spoke with Hugh himself--he does have to live with himself.
But then again, we do have to remember that after that episode later on, the Borg destroyed more cultures, attacked the Fed again and took more lives and crippled the Fed fleet.
And Beverly was sort of doing the same thing that she did in Chain of Command. She seemed very reluctant and repeatedly argued against releasing the virus, knowing full well what the Borg was about. She knew it would never stop trying to destroy them and other innocent cultures, and they don't feel remorse, pity or regret.
Funny how earlier, when the Borg came close to invading earth, she came up with an idea to create a killer breed of nanintes to destroy the Borg cube.
I think it's that type of thinking that leaves fans and commentators wondering if Starfleet is a military or not.
^Part of the reluctance to consider Starfleet the military is that if that a military organization generally does have the connotation of being pretty aggressive or even ruthless in tactics if not in general. Considering it the military would make the organization in past series generally seem oddly docile and non and/or the characters deceptive as they claim their missions and main purposes are peaceful.
That line, in response to him objecting that her actions would violate his oath, seems to admit that that being the priority is her opinion, that the oath itself does go against her preferred course of action but she feels it shouldn't be considered and wishes others would also disregard it.
That line, in response to him objecting that her actions would violate his oath, seems to admit that that being the priority is her opinion, that the oath itself does go against her preferred course of action but she feels it shouldn't be considered and wishes others would also disregard it.
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Not just Picard's oath, Picard went on that he is bound not just by an oath, but also bound by his "conscience to uphold certain principles," in other words Picard personal point of view outside of his oath.
This is what Admiral Nechayev was referring to with "not to wrestle with your conscience."
When Admiral Nechayev directly ordered Picard to " if you have a similar opportunity in the future, an opportunity to destroy the Borg, you are under orders to take advantage of it. Is that understood?" Picard didn't respond with his oath wouldn't permit him to follow such an order, because it wasn't his oath that stopped him from destroying the Borg in I Borg, it was his personal conscience and his world-view that he had no choice but to respect Hugh's rights as an individual.
Picard was able to accept Admiral Nechayev directly order, because his Starfleet oath permitted him to.
Again, it was never a problem with Picard's Starfleet oath.
Well they pretty much were both talking about different things at once and talking past each other, Picard admitting that his decision was influenced by his own ethical beliefs rather than just the oath and Nechayev objecting to that but not denying that the oath may have strongly supported the decision or provided a basis for it. The overall oath and guidelines/policy does seem fairly ambiguous (not surprising that it and Starfleet would have multiple, not-completely-consistent principles and even priorities) but it still seems like she feels Picard was overly bound by the rules and their enumerated principles and he and the rest of Starfleet shouldn't be.
It is pretty disturbing that an admiral and other leaders feel committing genocide against an opponent group should be the expected, default standard decision if there's the opportunity to do so and I think it's better if captains, other crew and different admiral-level leaders consider that antithetical to what the organization should be and how it should act.
It is pretty disturbing that an admiral and other leaders feel committing genocide against an opponent group should be the expected, default standard decision if there's the opportunity to do so and I think it's better if captains, other crew and different admiral-level leaders consider that antithetical to what the organization should be and how it should act.
I very much doubt that this is standard Starfleet policy, but rather a reflection of Starfleet's belief (at the time) that the Borg were a totally intractable, ruthless and nearly unstoppable foe that cannot be negociated with. After all, they don't follow this with Klingons, Romulans, Gorn, Cardassians, Breen or even the Dominion.
Good point, the situation was very unique, although Nechayev's phrasing and apparent reasoning would seem to also apply to the Romulans, Klingons and maybe Cardassians (although we did see her being much more reasonable with regard to the Cardassians so the uniqueness of the Borg probably is to be inferred).
Considering what we saw by the time of Voyager, the attack would only have cut off a small section of Borg (one ship probably) as it be removed from the Collective. Only future Admiral Janeway's direct attack on the central hub and Queen managed to do something approaching significant damage, and even that likely only infected the main hub and was then cut off from the rest of the Collective, which would likely resume acting like they did back in "Q Who" A decentralized machine race.
In my mind, the whole collective was destroyed. Maybe they were all disconnected, which would cause chaos in the regions of space where they are. Or they were annihilated.
I know a lot of people like Harry Kim's speech, but I find it so incredibly bizarre. He says "...so that we can do something we all believe in, I can't think of a better way..."
Is he referring to wiping out the Borg there? Or just destroying the hub portals? Either way, it's weird. Couldn't he just have said "No one's been more obsessed with getting home than I, but what's more important? Getting home myself? Or protecting that home, and all our loved ones from a grave threat?"
I'm sure a professional writer could polish that, but you get the idea. #harrykimisnutz
I know a lot of people like Harry Kim's speech, but I find it so incredibly bizarre. He says "...so that we can do something we all believe in, I can't think of a better way..."
Is he referring to wiping out the Borg there? Or just destroying the hub portals? Either way, it's weird. Couldn't he just have said "No one's been more obsessed with getting home than I, but what's more important? Getting home myself? Or protecting that home, and all our loved ones from a grave threat?"
I'm sure a professional writer could polish that, but you get the idea. #harrykimisnutz
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If Starfleet was very militaristic and did nothing but patrol borders and discuss war, it wouldn't be the Star Trek I know. Wouldn't want it any other way..
But at the same time, if Starfleet is tasked with defending the Federation, I would think they would have to make aggressive military decisions at times. And they can't be naïve.
in Chain of command the crew seemed to suggest the changes to make the Enterprise more battle ready were unnecessary, since the Enterprise, as they say, is always ready for anything, right?
But at the same time, preparing a vessel to be ready to fight because they might have been on the brink of a war, makes sense.
They found out that a Cardassian fleet was sitting in a nebulae. Geordi suggested they were there for scientific research--this was after he himself found out they tried to annex the same system during the last war.
Crusher didn't want to get sickbay ready to receive potential casualties. You know it's downer, but she did choose to join Starfleet-- she could have had a private practice, took a position on a colony, a station-- which suggests it is a military and humans won't admit it perhaps?
I think Trek hints that in the 24th century humans are very pacifistic, and are reluctant to do anything involving warfare-- which may be why other alien cultures think they're weak, naïve etc.
Admiral Janeway from the future
*never mind the fact that I just thought this nearly a week later.
Obviously, Captian Sisko didn't have a problem like this when he did whet he did to bring the Romulans into the Dominion War on the side of the Federation in 'In The Pale Moonlight.' Looks like he learned what to do differently from what Picard did.
But which one of them reflects the standards of the majority of Starfleet officers?
Aside from Garak murdering Vreenak, it is important to remember that Sisko did have proper authorization from Starfleet to do everything else seen in In the Pale Moonlight.
And Admiral Nechayev probably agreed with this outcome as well, unlike what Picard did with the Borg.
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