"Future's End": Starling's villainy?
- Thread starter Ragitsu
- Start date
Hmm... It's hard to say because in the episode we only get to see one side of him. Maybe a 6? Maybe I'm being too harsh or not harsh enough? It's been a while since I last saw the episode... Or a 4? I have no idea.
If I am remembering the episode correctly, Starling is a tech mogul who gets his hands on 27th century tech and wants to monetize it for his own personal profit. He does do some immoral things to protect his interests. He is definitely an antagonist. But he is not outright evil. He is not seeking to destroy the world. On your villainy scale, I might rate him a 4.
Nowhere near as much a villain as Braxton, who just opened fire on Voyager rather than hailing them.
The villainy comes from
1) Holding LA hostage, or at least claiming he did
STARLING: Well, it wouldn't get you anything. I've rigged the timeship.If you try to teleport it again, if you even go near it, Los Angeleswill look like the face of the moon.
JANEWAY: You'd destroy an entire city? You don't care about the future,you don't care about the present. Does anything matter to you, MisterStarling?
STARLING: The betterment of mankind.
2) risking the future. Note that he didn't deny the risk or claim that Janeway was making it up
JANEWAY: If you even attempt to travel to the future, you risk creating a temporal explosion that could cost billions of lives, including yourown.
STARLING: I'm willing to take that risk.
The villainy comes from
1) Holding LA hostage, or at least claiming he did
STARLING: Well, it wouldn't get you anything. I've rigged the timeship.If you try to teleport it again, if you even go near it, Los Angeleswill look like the face of the moon.
JANEWAY: You'd destroy an entire city? You don't care about the future,you don't care about the present. Does anything matter to you, MisterStarling?
STARLING: The betterment of mankind.
2) risking the future. Note that he didn't deny the risk or claim that Janeway was making it up
JANEWAY: If you even attempt to travel to the future, you risk creating a temporal explosion that could cost billions of lives, including yourown.
STARLING: I'm willing to take that risk.
Yet Braxton blew up an entire solar system
Admittedly, when it came to fleshing out Starling, there was not much meat on the bone as far as his operation was concerned, but we didn't get a sense that his introduction of technologies upset Earth's development, yes? At least, it appeared that humanity hadn't (yet) imploded by utilizing developments well in advance of its general societal maturity.
That said, he was certainly willing to have people (e.g., Rain, Tom and Tuvok) killed in order to protect ChronoWerx and he had no compunctions about inflicting torture (e.g., subjecting The Doctor to pain subroutines) to get what he wanted.
That said, he was certainly willing to have people (e.g., Rain, Tom and Tuvok) killed in order to protect ChronoWerx and he had no compunctions about inflicting torture (e.g., subjecting The Doctor to pain subroutines) to get what he wanted.
Since The Doctor's not flesh-and-blood, Starling may not have perceived that as being a particularly evil act? He doesn't have the exposure to the EMH that we do.
The accompanying smile on his face tells me didn't care one way or the other.
I honestly didn't find Starling that compelling. Ed Begley, Jr. played him too cartoonishly 'bad corporate executive' for me to call him a villain. (Likely an acting choice by Begley rather than what the script calls for.)
I'd probably rate Starling a 2.5 out of 10 on the villain scale.
I'd probably rate Starling a 2.5 out of 10 on the villain scale.
One wrong move and you're holo-dust.
I have to agree. Even when Janeway had warned Stirling that his actions might threaten Earth, he merely dismissed her warnings due to his own greed and arrogance. He didn't care. The guy was a monster . . . or he had become one.
iirc the debate is basically Janeway insisting that her timeline must be preserved at the expense of people in the 90s, while Starling's position is that his present is more important than a future that, from his perspective, hasn't happened yet.
I don't think either of them are wrong, both have a duty to do what's best for the people in their own timelines, that duty just puts them at odds. Having said that, I don't remember it too well; I haven't rewatched it much precisely because I remember finding the script's black-and-white view unconvincing, and the "haw haw haw, i will annihilate LA to prove i'm evil" generic corporate bad guy trappings just render the whole story dull in a way it didn't have to be.
I don't think either of them are wrong, both have a duty to do what's best for the people in their own timelines, that duty just puts them at odds. Having said that, I don't remember it too well; I haven't rewatched it much precisely because I remember finding the script's black-and-white view unconvincing, and the "haw haw haw, i will annihilate LA to prove i'm evil" generic corporate bad guy trappings just render the whole story dull in a way it didn't have to be.
Hmmm. He was ready to annihilate billions just to make a profit. Started with a full 10 for that. Subtracted 2 because there was a certain difficulty in believing that narrative, and 1 more because he hooked the Doc up with a really cool mobile emitter. So...
10. Evil Incarnate
9. Donald Trump's Worse Cousin
8. Monstrous
7. Loathsome
6. Despicable
5. Evil
4. Nasty
3. Naughty
2. Misunderstood
1. Pretty Decent
10. Evil Incarnate
9. Donald Trump's Worse Cousin
8. Monstrous
7. Loathsome
6. Despicable
5. Evil
4. Nasty
3. Naughty
2. Misunderstood
1. Pretty Decent
Considering the fact that he was a businessman in every sense of the word, there is a good chance he would have asked/demanded for a hefty ROI in exchange for that doohickey.
I don't consider Starling a "monster" like, let's say the Female Changeling. He's more like an egocentric person in the 20th century who had found a spaceship, stole equipment from it which he used to start the "computer revolution", making a fortune out of it and then trying to further devbelope his product att all costs.
And he actually did some good things too, due to his dabblings with time, humanity avoided The Eugenic Wars, WWIII (at least postponed it) and might be to some help when it comes to restore Garak in future stories. maybe his dabblings can save Vulcan and Romulus as well.
When you're talking future people who will potentially exist or not exist though is that really the case? When Gillian Taylor was taken to the 23rd century, any potential future descendants would no longer be born, which is one major change, but what about the butterfly changes -- she doesn't get a job somewhere and Charlie does, which means that Charlie meets Dana instead of Beatrice, and suddenly Charlie and Dana have kids, but Charlie and Beatrice's kids are wiped out. Those kids live very different lives, change people meeting, and thus the next generation diverges at an exponential rate -- and that's assuming that the timing of conception didn't make any difference. Maybe Gina and Harry still meet, but one of them got back late one night so their kid was conceived a few days later.
(Trek seems to have some sort of "destiny" thing, where no matter the changes in the past, the same people still exist in the future. That even applies to the mirror universe where the same physical people are born despite very different backgrounds)
Does that make Kirk - or anyone using time travel - evil for risking and realistically changing history, wiping out trillions of lives in the future? Does it make Taylor evil for leaving her native time?
I think there's an environmental angle to the episode though to this which didn't come out strong enough -- if it wasn't Ed Begley Jr I wouldn't even have considered it.
Starling is willing to risk danger in the future for gain to society now. That's exactly what mankind has done for decades. We knew in the 90s that our immediate actions which benefited us today were causing damage which wasn't going to be paid for decades, but we still chose (and still choose) to jump on a plane to go on holiday, or drive to the shop, etc.
I think he's a 2 to 3 on the scale, mainly because of the (potentially baseless) threat to LA.
^ Star Trek is full of contradictions like that. My personal fave is that the Borg go back in time and wipe out Cochrane's entire ground crew and flight crew... but nothing changes. Like the support personnel for Earth's first warp flight and their (now-erased) descendants had absolutely no bearing in historical events.
That's the source for my term "durable timeline". Say what you want about PRO, it does show how one randomly misplaced object can rewrite history completely.
That's the source for my term "durable timeline". Say what you want about PRO, it does show how one randomly misplaced object can rewrite history completely.
You're conflating several sets of moral decision-making and frameworks.
Most people were born into a set of circumstances where they have to use fossil fuels, and can't easily escape them. If much of the United States is built around car traffic, is the person who drives a car every day to work evil because if they don't have other practical options?
Meanwhile Starling is personally planning on doing something very risky and dangerous to get advanced technology from the future to profit himself. He's already plenty wealthy from the tech he stole from Braxton. He doesn't need more. He's not even planning on giving the future tech away as an altruistic act. When people from the future tell him this is a very bad idea, he says he doesn't care and tries to do it anyway. That's evil.
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