Was Janeway right to put the crew in stasis in episode "One"?

[Romulan_spy]

I recently rewatched the episode "One" (S4E25). In the episode, Voyager encounters a large nebula that is emitting lethal radiation. The Doctor and Seven appear to be the only ones who are immune to the radiation. The Doctor says that there is no way to block the radiation or inoculate the crew so the only two options are to either put the crew in stasis and go through the nebula which will take a month or to avoid the nebula but that will add another year to their trip. Janeway decides to put the crew in stasis and trust the Doctor and Seven to get them through the nebula. Naturally, things go wrong. the nebula starts affecting the tech on the ship. Eventually, the Doctor goes offline and Seven has to get the ship through the nebula completely alone. She starts to suffer severe hallucinations. She is forced to take power from life support to keep the crew in stasis alive. In the end, the ship gets through the nebula just as Seven passes out, the crew awakens and wakes her up and all is well.

My question: Was Janeway right to put the crew in stasis?

Putting the entire ship in the hands of just 2 people for a month seems very risky. Now I realize that starfleet ships are highly automated but lots of unforeseen problems could arise. The Doctor and Seven have to monitor ~150 stasis pods as well as all the systems on Voyager, any one of them could threaten the ship. That is a lot for just 2 people to do. If something happens to either one of them, it would leave the other alone to fix the problem. In the episode, something does happen to the Doctor and Seven is completely alone to get the ship safely through the nebula. She barely succeeds. If Seven had been incapacitated first then the Doctor would have been all alone to save the ship and he has limitations as a hologram. The nebula was affecting the computer and his program would have shut down or he would have been confined to sickbay unable to address problems on the ship. Voyager is screwed. If both had been incapacitated, that's game over, the crew dies. There is also the possibility that if anything had happened to the life support to the stasis pods, some of the crew could have died even if they did get through the nebula.

I get the crew did not want to waste another year when they could cross the nebula in just a month, but would a year detour really be all that bad considering the risks of putting the crew in stasis? Was it worth it to save a few months on the journey? I would argue that the smarter choice would have been to avoid the nebula and take the 1 year detour. It certainly would have been the safer choice.

 

[Gaith]

Yeah, it's a completely indefensible decision that should have produced a mutiny.

But then, if one thinks about it, especially once the female Caretaker search fizzled out, they should just have found the nearest Planet Hawaii and settled down ASAP. Given the amount of scrapes they get into, their odds of surviving the journey home, no matter how long it took, was pathetically slim.

 

[Uncle Sock]

I’d imagine that by the time the crew found out what happened to Tuvix, they’d learned not to question Janeway’s orders — or else...

 

[Guy Gardener]

Momentarily, I thought the title was...

"They should have gone into stasis in the first episode".

 

[Romulan_spy]

But then, if one thinks about it, especially once the female Caretaker search fizzled out, they should just have found the nearest Planet Hawaii and settled down ASAP. Given the amount of scrapes they get into, their odds of surviving the journey home, no matter how long it took, was pathetically slim.

There is a little bit of a difference imo. Going into stasis to get around a local nebula is a tactical decision. Deciding to travel the entire Delta Quadrant to get home is a strategic one. I agree with you that realistically the odds of Voyager getting back to the Alpha Quadrant was very slim so maybe the better strategic decision would have been to settle down on a nice planet. But one might make the case that the need to get home justified the risk strategically, especially since Voyager could potentially make smart tactical choices to increase their odds of survival. For one, Voyager probably should not have investigated every dangerous anomaly or getting involved in the affairs of unknown aliens. But then we would not have gotten the adventures of the week.

 

[Uncle Sock]

For one, Voyager probably should not have investigated every dangerous anomaly or getting involved in the affairs of unknown aliens. But then we would not have gotten the adventures of the week.

But that would’ve also meant a pretty boring 70-year journey for the ship and crew. The “anomaly of the week” and random alien encounters might seem unnecessary at first, but when you think about it, they actually make sense—every anomaly and every encounter could turn out to be an unexpected shortcut home.

 

[Gaith]

There is a little bit of a difference imo. Going into stasis to get around a local nebula is a tactical decision. Deciding to travel the entire Delta Quadrant to get home is a strategic one.

Can't agree with that difference in terminology. Given there's no urgent need to get out of that part of space, the stasis plan is just as much a strategic decision as the one to keep voyaging for home - just a much worse one.

 

[Farscape One]

I suppose one could argue the reason Janeway decided to go through was to give the death of that crewman on the bridge in the beginning some meaning. If she decided to go around, then that death was for nothing.

But overall, yes... it was not a very sound decision, leaving only two people to take care of the ship for a month. (In "THE 37's", Chakotay sates the ship couldn't function with less than 75 people.)

 

[Gaith]

I suppose one could argue the reason Janeway decided to go through was to give the death of that crewman on the bridge in the beginning some meaning. If she decided to go around, then that death was for nothing.

LOL, there's a literal term, the sunk cost fallacy, named for that kind of emotional, illogical thinking. How "meaningful" would the crewman's death have been if Janeway's plan had gotten everyone killed?

 

[Farscape One]

LOL, there's a literal term, the sunk cost fallacy, named for that kind of emotional, illogical thinking. How "meaningful" would the crewman's death have been if Janeway's plan had gotten everyone killed?

Emotional and illogical thinking is something she has done multiple times, considering some of Janeway's other decisions. So it's not unheard of.

 

[Gaith]

Emotional and illogical thinking is something she has done multiple times, considering some of Janeway's other decisions. So it's not unheard of.

Which is why the Voyager crew needed a council of decision-makers/direct democracy to make non-urgent, life-or-death decisions such as these. It's one thing for a captain to have absolute authority to make tactical decision in the midst of a battle or other immediate survival scenario, but it's bonkers to give any individual, no matter their rank, the authority to put their whole crew in a coma they may well never awaken from in order to shave a tiny percent off their projected journey home. Like I said, this is mutiny-worthy.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I suppose one could argue the reason Janeway decided to go through was to give the death of that crewman on the bridge in the beginning some meaning. If she decided to go around, then that death was for nothing.

But overall, yes... it was not a very sound decision, leaving only two people to take care of the ship for a month. (In "THE 37's", Chakotay sates the ship couldn't function with less than 75 people.)

That's how many people they need to still "uncomfortably" do everything they should be able to do with a full crew.

In this episode, was it a month on impulse, or a month on thrusters?

The writer is being an idiot if they think that maintaining 1/2 impulse is anything short of constantly risking certain death, just because it happens to be 40 million times less swift than warp speed.

People die falling off bicycles, every day.
...

There retroactively is precedent for this course of action in the episode of Enterprise, where almost exactly the same thing had already will have happened, that a stellar History buff like Janeway would have read about in Grade School.

 

[Farscape One]

That's how many people they need to still "comfortably" do everything they should be able to do with a full crew.

In this episode, was it a month on impulse, or a month on thrusters?

The writer is being an idiot if they think that maintaining 1/2 impulse is anything short of constantly risking certain death, just because it happens to be 40 million times less swift than warp speed.

People die falling off bicycles, every day.
...

There retroactively is precedent for this course of action in the episode of Enterprise, where almost exactly the same thing had already will have happened, that a stellar History buff like Janeway would have read about in Grade School.

While "DOCTOR'S ORDERS" is essentially a remake of "ONE", Phlox was alone for only 4 days.

That's vastly different from 4 weeks. Plus, that situation was a dire need to get to Azati Prime to save Earth. Janeway's was just to save some time... nothing was really at stake.

 

[Deks]

Was it the right call for Janeway to put people into stasis?
Probably not.
But, given that a starship is NOT a democracy, usually what the captain says, goes.

Still, one could argue that Janeway and the crew did NOT know about the negative effects the nebula would have on VOY systems - but the thing is, if it affected the crew, chances are it would have affected the ship (especially the neural gel packs - which did happen - albeit fairly late in the crossing), so they at least should have mentioned that as a possibility and discussed of the pros and cons.

I think that in this scenario, had they opted to go around the nebula, the crew would have extended their trip by 'more than a year'... and I'm guessing that Janeway was a bit impatient and frustrated that a 'nebula' was standing in her way (albeit one that already killed one crewmember).

She was a bit unreasonable sometimes and from her (and other crew's perspectives - except perhaps Tom Paris), the stasis pods were a proven technology that worked, and most of them likely went through stasis training (Torres didn't probably because she dropped out of the Academy in her second year - and most likely the Maquis as a whole were previously just UFP citizens who had no such formal training), so there was no immediate 'issue' that this was an obstacle and its possible that stasis pods are still used in Starfleet, albeit sporadically.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

I mean, her risk paid off, the ship made it through the nebula, and no one other than that crewman died. In the final analysis, I'd say that is a good argument that she made the "right" decision. Especially considering that the next episode led to them encountering Arturis and cutting off another three hundred light years off the trip - even acknowledging that he was looking for them, how much time would he have ended up spending trying to play catch up with them if they hadn't had the encounter when and where they did?

The thing about the whole journey, really, is that the "safer" option was always to settle down on a planet and forget the Alpha Quadrant. Nothing about their trip was "safe." Everything was a calculated risk, and in this instance, the risk was one month in stasis, with only Seven and the Doctor in a position to do anything about the maintenance of the ship and crew, versus an additional year on an already decades-long journey they were already trying to find ways to cut down, rather than add to.

Also, realistically, there's the simple fact that the writers were prone to thinking in only two dimensions and in much smaller terms than anything in space would actually end up being - "around" or "through" was a common tactic in the way that they'd write the conundrums that Voyager would face, despite the fact that many of the phenomena that they'd end up encountering could probably actually be avoided a lot easier than they portrayed. But out of universe answers to in universe questions are boring.

 

[Gaith]

I mean, her risk paid off, the ship made it through the nebula, and no one other than that crewman died. In the final analysis, I'd say that is a good argument that she made the "right" decision.

That's an out-of-universe answer to the question, and, as someone here said recently,

out of universe answers to in universe questions are boring.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

Not out of universe, just after the fact.

 

[Farscape One]

Considering Arturis' ship used quantum slipstream and could easily bypass that nebula, Voyager could have encountered him at any point before or after there. It wasn't reliant totally on him going past the nebula.

 

[Gaith]

Not out of universe, just after the fact.

Eh, but Janeway and Voyager had out-of-universe plot armor. There was no way the writers or the studio would have allowed Janeway to make a major decision most of the crew came to view as a terrible mistake, and let alone written a story in which a large chunk of the crew died for good. Ergo, from an out-of-universe perspective, every major decision Janeway makes is the "right" one, because it always works out for the best. (Even Arturis' complaint, while presented as understandable, isn't presented as being correct. Janeway tells him she viewed Species 8472 as a bigger galactic threat than the Borg, and that she stands by that view, and he doesn't really have a counter-argument.)

And, by "after the fact" reasoning, if one decides to drive home drunk after a night of partying, and manages not to get in a wreck or hurt anyone, than that decision was the "right" one. I think we all see the logical problem there...

 

[Ragitsu]

People of the future are made of sterner stuff; Starfleet personnel in particular are used to the riskiness inherent to space travel.