Given Picard's speech to Wesley about how important the truth is, it's hard for me to imagine him signing off on even the parts of Garak's plan that Sisko knew about, given how flagrantly the truth was deprioritized.
Yes, the first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth - except when lives are immediately at stake. If the Enterprise gets boarded by child slavers, when asked where the anklebiters were, Picard would have a moral duty to tell whatever fib he could to convince them
"no, actually, we dropped them all off at our most recent Starbase stop, this is adults-only month on board, but no, you can't check out Cargo Bay 2, we've got a really poisonous gas leak down there, and never mind the life-signs in that area; it's probably just a sensor error." There's no ambiguity to be had there.
The question, then, becomes how direct and short must the line from lying to saved lives be for dishonesty to remain ethical, and how underhanded Picard in particular would be willing to act in order to very likely save not just the Federation, but the rest of the Quadrant as they knew it. Though we've seen Picard in battle many times, we never saw him in a sustained war. I could see him deliberately recusing himself from any kind of strategic war consideration, if he didn't feel he had the willingness to make necessary hard calls, and I can also see him making and grappling with hard calls the way Sisko did. What I
can't see him doing is insisting on Starfleet acting purely honorably in a time of losing war, thereby very tangibly risking the deaths of billions of Federation citizens.
@Gaith how about a different approach? Rather than trying to come up with an abridgment of the series, some list of important episodes (which we obviously disagree on), why not tell us what you like in Trek, and we can recommend episodes in the same vein? You can expand your knowledge of the franchise and avoid any "hate watching," and we can find some enjoyment from your reactions.
Thank you, I genuinely appreciate the offer. I am interested in checking out at least parts of
DS9 someday
because it's a different kind of
Trek, even if I'm not necessarily interested in all of it, and to be honest, though I thought I'd start this conversation now, I may not be in a life position to do a proper exploration of the series for some time. I do think that when I do so, I'll use Spectrum's guide as a starting point, so I'm particularly interested in specific feedback on that guide.
And, fear not, even though Spectrum rated it (great in quality, but) of little overall plot importance, I'll be sure to put "Duet" on the watch list.
