Watched The Visitor for the first time in 10 years

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine' started by Photon, Mar 26, 2021.

  1. Swedish Borg

    Swedish Borg Commodore Captain

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    Whatever Janeway was Archer was worse. As far as I know, Janeway never decided to withhold a cure that could save an entire planet.
     
  2. Oddish

    Oddish Admiral Admiral

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    Yeah, about that...

    JANEWAY: "You're not to warn these people. That's an order."

    Compared to Picard in "Homeward", Janeway in "Time and Again", and Archer in "Dear Doctor", Sisko chasing a Maquis-allied colony off a planet doesn't seem so bad.
     
  3. Swedish Borg

    Swedish Borg Commodore Captain

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    Poisoning an entire planet just to get one man seems a bit much though, don't you think?

    However, give a new kind of WMD to the borg seems to top it all off... After all the Borg are responsible for destroying thousands of worlds anything that helps them reaches an apex of horror.
     
  4. Oddish

    Oddish Admiral Admiral

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    Well, Janeway DOES eventually give a WMD to the Borg, but in a very different way...

    JANEWAY: "Must be something you assimilated!"
     
  5. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    For the nth time, Sisko didn't "poison a planet". He did render it poisonous to human life, but I feel those trying to polarize views of Sisko often forget that little detail. The episode ends with a zero-sum game as the Maquis and Cardassians end up trading planets in any case.
     
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  6. Markonian

    Markonian Fleet Admiral Moderator

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    Ah well, that totally justifies it then.
     
  7. Swedish Borg

    Swedish Borg Commodore Captain

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    Sure, everything is so simpler when you're simplistic... I don't see how you can evacuate a planet in ten minutes on a moment's notice personally. I mean what if people are spelunking and they didn't get the message? I've seen cartoons more realistic than that!!!
     
  8. Bad Thoughts

    Bad Thoughts Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The planet that Cardassians went on to inhabit? It seems that with simple grammar, in can be shown than a planet that is inhabited is habitable.
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2021
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  9. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I wasn't arguing as to whether or not it was justified, but I do feel (rightly or wrongly) that those who leave it at "Sisko poisoned a planet" without including what is to me a significant qualifier are at best not aware of what actually happened or at worst are pushing an agenda.
    I'm sure there probably were casualties...on both sides, in fact. And on the Malinche. But they apparently weren't significant enough for anyone to comment upon them.
     
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  10. Takeru

    Takeru Space Police Commodore

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    That doesn't make Sisko less of a criminal asshole who should have been removed from command. This called for a mutiny and the entire crew sucks for not pulling out their phasers and throwing him in the brig.
     
  11. Vger23

    Vger23 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    It's an emotional powerhouse of an episode. I've only seen it 3 times. I purposefully don't over-watch it, because I never want it to become "just another episode" and I want that impact to stay true each time I do decide to revisit it.

    That's how much I like this one.
     
  12. Bad Thoughts

    Bad Thoughts Vice Admiral Admiral

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    They should have mutinied just like Scotty over Eminiar VII.
     
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  13. Oddish

    Oddish Admiral Admiral

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    Crews never mutiny when we think they should.
     
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  14. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I literally said in part of the post that you quoted that I wasn't looking at the moral or legal implications of Sisko's actions. It just bothers me that people knowingly or unknowingly distort the facts of them.
     
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  15. Bad Thoughts

    Bad Thoughts Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Indeed. I'm perfectly willing to debate the morality of what Sisko did, feeling it at least to be a questionable tactic of war, but it gets over-exaggerated with hyperbolic language and deception with regard to scale. And as much as Janeway gets more guff for being a woman, I can't help but wonder why the black captain receives such harsh criticism when one captain planned the extermination of all life on a planet and another collaborated with a genocidal species, helping them to develop weapons.
     
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  16. Oddish

    Oddish Admiral Admiral

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    Don't forget the original Kirk. His modus operandi seemed to be:
    1. Go to a planet where life is very different than Federation norms.
    2. Force Federation norms on them.
    3. Leave.

    Now, sometimes that works. The computer generated war planet, Kirk probably forced an end to the war by making the factions choose between peace and fighting for real. But in "Spock's Brain" and "The Apple", it's debatable whether the inhabitants of either of those planets survived his intervention.
     
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  17. Bad Thoughts

    Bad Thoughts Vice Admiral Admiral

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    FTFY
     
  18. Oddish

    Oddish Admiral Admiral

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    Let's try this instead...

    Leave the cleanup to the Cerritos's 23rd century counterpart.
     
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  19. Takeru

    Takeru Space Police Commodore

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    You were arguing semantics, when people say he made the planet uninhabitable they obviously mean "uninhabitable for the current maquis population", saying people distort the facts feels disingenuous. The problem with Sisko's actions is that he endangered the lifes of many people and the episode overlooks that and throws in a "people are starting to evacuate" line as if that makes it better.
    Imagine someone sets fire to a house and then someone else looking from a distance says "people are beginning to run out of the back door" ... does that make it okay? Even if no one is trapped by the fire or falls and is trampled to death during the panic that's still a crime and no one would excuse it by saying "They traded homes with the smokosians, they like their houses charred, no one's homeless"

    The problem I have with his episode is that Sisko went way too far and there were zero consequences, in the end everyone acts like it was no big deal and then it's never brought up again.

    The things aren't really comparable, Janeway collaborated with the borg to stop species 8472 from sterilizing the galaxy, Sisko wanted to catch a guy he felt personally betrayed by. And unlike Sisko Janeway had to face the consequences of her actions in Hope & Fear.
     
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  20. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Given the number of people who say "Sisko poisoned a planet!" without providing the significant clarifier, I'm not comfortable making assumptions as to what people mean, and in legal/moral matters, semantics can make a hell of a difference. I've freely allowed for the possibility that people may be speaking carelessly, or may genuinely misremember the episode, but do you really think nobody's ever been intentionally hyperbolic about this?

    If you can't say what you mean, how can you be expected to mean what you say?

    As I've said since I started talking about this, evaluating the legality/morality of Sisko's actions here is outside the scope of the point I'm trying to make. But, on that front...

    Personally I think Sisko's actions were rather extreme, and possibly illegal, but Eddington and by extension the Maquis did attack a Starfleet vessel (the Malinche), and then we have this line...

    SISKO: When you attacked the Malinche you proved one thing, that the Maquis have become an intolerable threat to the security of the Federation...

    It's unclear whether Sisko himself is making that determination, or whether it came from someone higher-up on the ladder, but it seems entirely possible that Sisko is describing a change in legal status with regards to how the Federation views the Maquis, one that may free him to do things that Federation law/Starfleet regulations would have proscribed under normal circumstances.

    Your analogy about setting fire to a house would be more comparable if the house was filled with people who'd been formally declared as terrorists, or at least people harboring terrorists.
     
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