Most morally questionable act by a protagonist?

[Deranged Nasat]

All this fascinating discussion has gotten me thinking, and I hope this is still on topic and doesn't warrant a new thread:

Do you think sometimes the morally questionable actions were diluted by the exact circumstances the writers chose to put them in? That didn't come out at all well, so I'll give an example:

In the Enterprise episode "the Shipment", Archer, Reed and company break into Gralik Duur's home and hold him at gun-point. Reed and co rush throughout the house with their guns before telling Archer Gralik clearly lives alone. Then the whole interrogating Gralik/Gralik's shock at his kemocite being used in WMDs, etc, begins. I always thought, however, "well, what if he didn't live alone? What if he had a child with him?". This niggled at me throughout the episode, seeing as Archer and co's actions would take on a far darker edge if that had been the case. It seems to me some acts by protagonists would be considerably more questionable if the writers weren't avoiding certain details (not that I'm saying it was a mistake to ignore them, simply that this episode made me think a bit). Is anything like this striking anyone about any of the choices in the poll, say?

 

[Peter the Younger]

All this fascinating discussion has gotten me thinking, and I hope this is still on topic and doesn't warrant a new thread:

Do you think sometimes the morally questionable actions were diluted by the exact circumstances the writers chose to put them in? That didn't come out at all well, so I'll give an example:

Oh, definitely! For instance, it sure was fortunate for Riker that his clone hadn't woken up yet - how would it have changed things the clone had opened his eyes, or worse yet, started begging for his life? What if the procedure to save Sim's life wasn't conveniently unrealistic? Hell, how many times in Trek has some planet's problem been wrapped up neat as a bow via some inspiring speech by the captain? The writers/producers let themselves off the hook all the time.

Caveat: In some cases complications may be cut out for practical reasons: there isn't enough time in the ep do address it properly, the studio says it's too controversial, it would distract from the A plot, etc. Some things just aren't practical to do in a television series, I understand that.

But I still wish somebody had said - for instance - "What if Trip dies in this episode, and Sim becomes the new Chief Engineer?" That would have been balsy.

 

[USS Triumphant]

But I still wish somebody had said - for instance - "What if Trip dies in this episode, and Sim becomes the new Chief Engineer?" That would have been balsy.

Maybe. But it might have been too much like when O'Brien died and was replaced by his other self on DS9 - and it would have only been ballsy on a 'meta' level. I loved that ep of DS9 (I was surprised), but I also like the Enterprise episode they way it is - focused on the hard unpleasant decision for the characters involved. A decision that has analogs in the real world, and makes one think a little.

 

[Anwar]

I have big issues with THG:Homeward. Picard is a mass-murderer, pure and simple. He had the means to save millions of people and he didn't.
And he justified his inaction with the ludicrous notion that the less advanced people would all comit suicide as soon as they found out about him. He didn't even have the excuse of following Boraal - or human - morals; only the prime directive.

By all means - let's hear your arguments.

There was no way to evacuate that entire planet in the time they had, and if they had tried it would have taken hundreds of ships working round the clock to do so. Then they'd have to transport them to another world suitable for them and leave behind a large task force to adjust their culture to the massive changes.

Once done, this would set a precedent that the pro-interventionalists would continually bring up, forcing Starfleet to have to establish a bureau for this. A bureau dedicated to finding endangered worlds and protecting them/transplanting them.

Where are the ships, crews and resources for such an operation to come from? Starfleet would run its' resources dry to do so, and deplete their numbers from other areas such as DEFENSE in order to even try it. The Federation would become a Galactic Nanny State and leave itself wide open to attacks from their enemies while spending everything they had babying the rest of the galaxy.

I'm not talking about evacuating the native population; primarily, I'm talking about stopping the disaster altogether.
The TNG crew did such a thing many times - for example, in pen pals, deja Q, a matter of time, cost of living, and probably a few other episodes. But in homeward, they didn't even try to come up with a solution; the creeps just watched how millions die, in order to obey the prime directive.

And if stopping Boraal's destruction wasn't possible, they should have evacuated as many as possibe. I'm not talking about the few dozen that survived; I'm talking about tens/hundreds of thousands.

As for the Federation having no resources - Enterprise did exactly nothing during that entire episode. Picard was not willing to use availabe/unused resources to save tens of thousands!
If the Federation does not have the ability to evacuate millions from a doomed planet without sacrificing its security - and that's far from being proven - then Starfleet shoud try to save as many as possible with the availabe resources.

If the Federation/Picard don't do even that, they have no right to call themselves a moral man/a moral, humanitarian organization - because they're not. The Federation is a narcissistic empire, calously leting others die because they're not worthy of salvation, and Picard is a fanatic, killing millions in order to follow a nonsensical rule or because he's afraid of a future that will never happen:

Your "nanny state" is based on an impossibility; you assume that these mass extinction events are so widespread, that if the Federation tries to save the sentient species that are threatened with extinction, it will have no resources left. That's nonsense; if these events would happen so often, then no intelligent species would exist in the entire universe - life being snuffed out everywhere long before evolving sentience.

Even if, by some impossibility, an universe with frequent mass extiction events and intelligent life would exist, the Federation would not go bankrupt if it tried to save threatened species - multiple times in TNG, this was accomplished in record time, by some tech solution; and if it comes to evacuating the population, the Federation could at least use its unused resources - which are huge - to save as many as possible.

Strength and development come from facing adversity and surviving despite it. If they baby-fed the Galaxy there's hardly be any development or growth for any of them. And there was no way they'd have been able to evacuate that planet in time, and it would've taken thousands of ships working around the clock to do so if they had.

And yes, Trek would have us believe that there are lots of extinction events happening all the time. It happened to Earth as well, but humanity was lucky enough not to have been around when it happened. And likely they also happen to worlds developed enough to survive them on their own as well as the ones that can't.

And yes, if they committed themselves to going around the Galaxy looking for every endangered world they would use up all their resources quickly and leave themselves wide open to attack and domination from their enemies. Save a world on the outer rim from a meteor? Great, but while you were busy doing that Earth and the core planets got burned in an invasion and now all those people you saved have to look forward to is domination by hostiles.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

To me, it is nonsensical to believe there is no such thing as objective truth. Either a thing is, or it is not. (Yes, I'm aware of what quantum physics says may be true. But let's confine our discussion to ONE timeline--the one that we all share.)

Morality isn't about what is, it's about what ought to be.

And famously, you can't derive an ought from an is, or the other way around.

So, then...how do you derive the ought unless there is something it should be? Is rape, for instance, only wrong because you have decided that right now, you feel it is wrong? If there is no objective right or wrong, you could easily decide the rules have changed if you happen to feel like it tomorrow.

(I use "you" in the generic sense, not referring to you specifically.)

Good response! I apologise, because I didn't phrase my comment well. Your comment has shown me what I should have said was " (I personally believe)there is no such thing as objective moral truth", as morality is by definition subjective. You're quite right that there is such a thing as objective truth in the sense of our reality. Again, I apologise for the rather ill-thought-out phrasing.

Don't worry!

I am not so sure there is no way to prove objective moral truth. Even if we remove religion from the equation--we can look at the precedent of natural law to determine that there must indeed be constant precepts. Now, I personally believe that all of these laws exist--from the scientific to the mathematical to the moral--because they were ordained to be so, which puts an inherent rightness into their existence. But even without turning in that direction, I do believe there is still ample precedent to suggest the existence of objective moral law.

Let's look at it this way. There are laws of physics that we know of, that must be obeyed. The same goes with mathematics. Our bodies are constructs that function within that framework. I believe that we have an immortal soul within these bodies--but consider that the soul, in order to interact in the world, must do so with a body that is comprised of matter from this universe and must adhere to its laws. There is no reason not to believe that even interactions between people are subject to a series of laws.

The trick is that human interactions come with so many variables, some of them unknown, that determining right or wrong based on the consequences becomes impractical without introducing a dangerous element of subjectivity into the process. After all, I will be the first to admit that we do not know everything; our consequence-based analyses are therefore bound to be flawed. So for non-theistic analyses, I usually prefer something similar to Kant's categorical imperative...but it would take me a damn long time to explain it, longer than I have right now.

Obviously I could make a flawed interpretation of those laws and behave in an improper way based on that interpretation. But the fact that I have interpreted a law wrongly does not mean a law didn't exist...simply that I misunderstood it, or willfully disobeyed it--one of the two. And as they used to say on the X-Files--the truth is out there.

(Do forgive me if I can't answer in a timely or lengthy enough fashion, BTW. The joys of a full-time job... )

 

[Myasishchev]

To me, it is nonsensical to believe there is no such thing as objective truth. Either a thing is, or it is not. (Yes, I'm aware of what quantum physics says may be true. But let's confine our discussion to ONE timeline--the one that we all share.)

Morality isn't about what is, it's about what ought to be.

And famously, you can't derive an ought from an is, or the other way around.

So, then...how do you derive the ought unless there is something it should be? Is rape, for instance, only wrong because you have decided that right now, you feel it is wrong? If there is no objective right or wrong, you could easily decide the rules have changed if you happen to feel like it tomorrow.

(I use "you" in the generic sense, not referring to you specifically.)

That is precisely how morality is generated.

A consensus is reached on what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, based partly on genetic predispositions for and against certain behaviors and partly on rational deliberation as to what kinds of behaviors will allow society to operate in the most efficient fashion.

At higher stages of development, consensus is codified as law and enforced by a dispassionate executive. Conflicts continue to abound between what is "moral" and what is "legal"--what is wrongful is not always unlawful--but only because certain, more fundamental rules intervene. And it is of course not the case that this is identical between societies. In America, the fundamental rule that "it is never right to silence an opinion with force" trump rules of etiquette like "don't use racist slurs." In Europe, the opposite is often the case.

Now, in that example, I think the Europeans are wrong, but I realize that this is my subjective opinion, born of my agreement with the fundamental American rule, and demonstrably right only by whether it achieves a more equitable social results. It is not objectively correct by any means.

Like in Duane's Spock's World, there's a scientific mode of thinking, and an ethical mode. They cannot reliably reinforce the other.

 

[Tuvok]

Sisko poisoning an entire planet just to catch one guy, killing probably thousands of innocent civilians in the process (there was no way everyone escaped in time). Seriously, how he got away with that and NO punishment is just absurd.

I don't know about the killing of thousands. For one thing, we don't know how many settlers there were (we've seen colonies of a few dozen or so), the Maquis are more than space-capable, and importantly, nothing of a death toll is mentioned on screen, which is very crucial to Trek storytelling as a whole. Keep in mind that earlier in the episode, Eddington escaped Sisko b/c Sisko was forced to save a Cardassian ship, so Sisko killing civilians to catch one man would be very inconsistent within the episode.

Rather, I think polluting the entire planet, and the later confession that Sisko never waited for Starfleet approval to bomb the planet, are both much more solidly controversial than the hypothetical situation of Sisko killing thousands with no inference. We have concrete proof of the first two, no proof of the third. That's why for the past ten years, points of debate with episode in the fandom focus on the first two points as opposed to any supposed civilian deaths.

Actually no mention of deaths on either aerial attack.

Both Cardies and Marquis got off planet in time otherwise they would angst over the loss.

Plus the Marquis start lobbing around bio-weopens at Cardie settlements and claim the highground, they better get ready for an opponet to get dirty.

Also while the Marquis felt abanddoned the Federation made a treaty, they cry about getting beat on by the Cardies and having to move but a Treaty was made.

Its a big Verse, find another damn planet.

That being said that Enterprise Next Gen episode where Picard and Co leave a settlement to die in a planetery explosion to perserve the ever precious Prime directive and having the gall to have a moment of silence.

What the hell.

 

[Anwar]

There was no way to stop what was happening to the planet in time, it was a rare and unpredictable event, and there was no way to evacuate that planet's population in time. Not even enough people for genetic material to continue their species elsewhere (my problem with the ending, not enough people in that village Nikolai saved). The moment of silence? Probably because there was no point in falling to pieces over the inevitable.

 

[apenpaap]

My choice is Archer and Phlox's idiocy in "Dear Doctor". Though "Homeward" comes close.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

I have big issues with THG:Homeward. Picard is a mass-murderer, pure and simple. He had the means to save millions of people and he didn't.
And he justified his inaction with the ludicrous notion that the less advanced people would all comit suicide as soon as they found out about him. He didn't even have the excuse of following Boraal - or human - morals; only the prime directive.

There was no way to evacuate that entire planet in the time they had, and if they had tried it would have taken hundreds of ships working round the clock to do so. Then they'd have to transport them to another world suitable for them and leave behind a large task force to adjust their culture to the massive changes.

Once done, this would set a precedent that the pro-interventionalists would continually bring up, forcing Starfleet to have to establish a bureau for this. A bureau dedicated to finding endangered worlds and protecting them/transplanting them.

Where are the ships, crews and resources for such an operation to come from? Starfleet would run its' resources dry to do so, and deplete their numbers from other areas such as DEFENSE in order to even try it. The Federation would become a Galactic Nanny State and leave itself wide open to attacks from their enemies while spending everything they had babying the rest of the galaxy.

I'm not talking about evacuating the native population; primarily, I'm talking about stopping the disaster altogether.
The TNG crew did such a thing many times - for example, in pen pals, deja Q, a matter of time, cost of living, and probably a few other episodes. But in homeward, they didn't even try to come up with a solution; the creeps just watched how millions die, in order to obey the prime directive.

And if stopping Boraal's destruction wasn't possible, they should have evacuated as many as possibe. I'm not talking about the few dozen that survived; I'm talking about tens/hundreds of thousands.

As for the Federation having no resources - Enterprise did exactly nothing during that entire episode. Picard was not willing to use availabe/unused resources to save tens of thousands!
If the Federation does not have the ability to evacuate millions from a doomed planet without sacrificing its security - and that's far from being proven - then Starfleet shoud try to save as many as possible with the availabe resources.

If the Federation/Picard don't do even that, they have no right to call themselves a moral man/a moral, humanitarian organization - because they're not. The Federation is a narcissistic empire, calously leting others die because they're not worthy of salvation, and Picard is a fanatic, killing millions in order to follow a nonsensical rule or because he's afraid of a future that will never happen:

Your "nanny state" is based on an impossibility; you assume that these mass extinction events are so widespread, that if the Federation tries to save the sentient species that are threatened with extinction, it will have no resources left. That's nonsense; if these events would happen so often, then no intelligent species would exist in the entire universe - life being snuffed out everywhere long before evolving sentience.

Even if, by some impossibility, an universe with frequent mass extiction events and intelligent life would exist, the Federation would not go bankrupt if it tried to save threatened species - multiple times in TNG, this was accomplished in record time, by some tech solution; and if it comes to evacuating the population, the Federation could at least use its unused resources - which are huge - to save as many as possible.

Strength and development come from facing adversity and surviving despite it. If they baby-fed the Galaxy there's hardly be any development or growth for any of them. And there was no way they'd have been able to evacuate that planet in time, and it would've taken thousands of ships working around the clock to do so if they had.

And yes, Trek would have us believe that there are lots of extinction events happening all the time. It happened to Earth as well, but humanity was lucky enough not to have been around when it happened. And likely they also happen to worlds developed enough to survive them on their own as well as the ones that can't.

And yes, if they committed themselves to going around the Galaxy looking for every endangered world they would use up all their resources quickly and leave themselves wide open to attack and domination from their enemies. Save a world on the outer rim from a meteor? Great, but while you were busy doing that Earth and the core planets got burned in an invasion and now all those people you saved have to look forward to is domination by hostiles.

First - I don't agree with the notion that a culture can only advance if noone helps her.
History shows that, if the more advanced civilization doesn't specifically try to destroy the less advanced culture - its social order, institutuions etc - the less developed civiliztion always profits from the interaction - it advances at an astonishing rate without losing its individuality.

Secondly - Earth was hit by a mass extinction event 250 MILLION years in the past - and life needed hundreds of millions of years to recover from the blow. What you're suggesting is akin to earth - and any other planet - being depopulated every 10 million years - intelligent life could never evolve anywhere.
Star trek did show a few extinction events - to be more specific, they showed how Enterprise prevented such disasters again and again with minimal resources. Most likely, Federation officials sent Enterprise to stop all such events they heard of (from half the GALAXY) - and, considering Enterprise's efficiency at doing that - pen pals, deja Q, a matter of time, cost of living - their decision was justified.
Except homeward - here, they let MILLIONS die without even trying to do anything.
They didn't even try to evacuate a few tens of thousands of people - which was well within Enterprise's capabilities.
BTW, 10 thousand people represent more than enough genetic material to continue their species. Humanity numbered far less than 10000 when our ancestors left Africa - 150 is the latest estimate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Actually no mention of deaths on either aerial attack.

Both Cardies and Marquis got off planet in time otherwise they would angst over the loss.

Plus the Marquis start lobbing around bio-weopens at Cardie settlements and claim the highground, they better get ready for an opponet to get dirty.

Also while the Marquis felt abanddoned the Federation made a treaty, they cry about getting beat on by the Cardies and having to move but a Treaty was made.

Its a big Verse, find another damn planet.

That being said that Enterprise Next Gen episode where Picard and Co leave a settlement to die in a planetery explosion to perserve the ever precious Prime directive and having the gall to have a moment of silence.

What the hell.

About the Maquis - The Federation chased them because, as federation citizens, they had to obey its laws - including the treaty with the cardies.
If the federates didn't consider the maquis federation citizens, the feds would have no justification to hunt them down - foreign nationals are under no obligation to follow your laws.

But, you know, citizens have not only obligations; they have also rights - the right to be protected by their state against a genocidal foreign power, among others.
When it was time to save the maquis, the Federation betrayed them and let them to die. Apparently, the maquis were citizens of the federation only when this benefited the feds, not when it was an inconvenience to big brother.

If I were a surviving maquis, I would feel no allegiance to the federation whatsoever - and for good reason.

About TNG:Homeward - I completely agree.

 

[JiNX-01]

I already had a big argument over the larger negative consequences if Picard HAD saved them of his own accord, would you like me to repost them here? (my arguments agree with Picard)

By all means - let's hear your arguments.

There was no way to evacuate that entire planet in the time they had, and if they had tried it would have taken hundreds of ships working round the clock to do so. Then they'd have to transport them to another world suitable for them and leave behind a large task force to adjust their culture to the massive changes.

Once done, this would set a precedent that the pro-interventionalists would continually bring up, forcing Starfleet to have to establish a bureau for this. A bureau dedicated to finding endangered worlds and protecting them/transplanting them.

Where are the ships, crews and resources for such an operation to come from? Starfleet would run its' resources dry to do so, and deplete their numbers from other areas such as DEFENSE in order to even try it. The Federation would become a Galactic Nanny State and leave itself wide open to attacks from their enemies while spending everything they had babying the rest of the galaxy.

You make a good case for the Federation's helplessness in the face of a planetary catastrophe ...

However, that isn't the reason the crew just sat in orbit and watched, knowing millions were dying. That is what makes the decision reprehensible.

 

[Tuvok]

Actually no mention of deaths on either aerial attack.

Both Cardies and Marquis got off planet in time otherwise they would angst over the loss.

Plus the Marquis start lobbing around bio-weopens at Cardie settlements and claim the highground, they better get ready for an opponet to get dirty.

Also while the Marquis felt abanddoned the Federation made a treaty, they cry about getting beat on by the Cardies and having to move but a Treaty was made.

Its a big Verse, find another damn planet.

That being said that Enterprise Next Gen episode where Picard and Co leave a settlement to die in a planetery explosion to perserve the ever precious Prime directive and having the gall to have a moment of silence.

What the hell.

About the Maquis - The Federation chased them because, as federation citizens, they had to obey its laws - including the treaty with the cardies.
If the federates didn't consider the maquis federation citizens, the feds would have no justification to hunt them down - foreign nationals are under no obligation to follow your laws.

But, you know, citizens have not only obligations; they have also rights - the right to be protected by their state against a genocidal foreign power, among others.
When it was time to save the maquis, the Federation betrayed them and let them to die. Apparently, the maquis were citizens of the federation only when this benefited the feds, not when it was an inconvenience to big brother.

If I were a surviving maquis, I would feel no allegiance to the federation whatsoever - and for good reason.

About TNG:Homeward - I completely agree.

Yeah, but technically speaking with the Treaty the Marquis colonies where in Cardie space.

Cardies are not known for being all warm and fuzzy.

They could have moved.

But they didnt. Where they abandoned by the Prime Version of the Federtion .

Yes they where.

But they had a choice.

And they made it. They fought back which I get. But the moment they lob bio-weopens at settlements and claim the high ground because its a Cardie settlement. That's classical justification vis a via Us vs Them. And labeling Them as diffrent enough to warrent it okay to launch a killer cloud of gas onto their homes.

When they do that the risk dragging the Federation into a war.

You do what you have to do to prevent that. And if the Marquis was willing to piss all over the line of restraint. Don't end up sheding much tears when their tactics are used against them.

In that kind of war there are no moral highgrounds on either end, just options and choices.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Tuvok
Your presentation of events is not accurate.

As established in DS9:The Maquis, most federation colonies that sympathised with the Maquis were in a neutal zone, a "demilitarized" zone between the cardassians and the federation.
The cardassian colonies from that area attacked the federate ones, which defended themseles - the maquis appeared.

The federation offered to relocate the colonists - they refused to abandon their homes, they fought for them.

If the federation had left the colonists alone now, leaving them to their faith - considering them no longer federation citizens, I would have no problem with the federate actions.
But the feds didn't leave them alone. The Federation chased the maquis/the colonists like animals, in order to preserve its precious peace with the cardassians. In doing that the Federation implicitly confirmed the colonists' status as federation citizens which must obey federate laws.

Eddington - a maquis - used a chemical weapon on the cardassians.
Now, you must understand that not all the colonists are maquis - many are children, elderly, persons that never interacted with a maquis. And yet, Sisko did use a similar weapon on a colony - on civilians that only sympathised with the maquis, that never fired a weapon. At least Eddington had the excuse on using the gas on enemies; Sisko used it on his people, federation citizens, people he swore to protect!

And when the dominion killed every single colonist from the demilitarized zone - every single man, woman and child - the mighty Federation did absolutely nothing. I guess they were not federation citizens when it was not in big brother's interest, when the federates actually had the obligation to protect them, and not the right to hunt them down like criminals!

The Fedetation betrayed the colonists - they were hunted down, gassed by biological weapons, and then they were left to die. If that's how the Federation treats its people who are not drones and worship every directive they are given, then I wouldn't want to live in this hypocritical Federation.

 

[Anwar]

I'm not talking about evacuating the native population; primarily, I'm talking about stopping the disaster altogether.
The TNG crew did such a thing many times - for example, in pen pals, deja Q, a matter of time, cost of living, and probably a few other episodes. But in homeward, they didn't even try to come up with a solution; the creeps just watched how millions die, in order to obey the prime directive.

And if stopping Boraal's destruction wasn't possible, they should have evacuated as many as possibe. I'm not talking about the few dozen that survived; I'm talking about tens/hundreds of thousands.

As for the Federation having no resources - Enterprise did exactly nothing during that entire episode. Picard was not willing to use availabe/unused resources to save tens of thousands!
If the Federation does not have the ability to evacuate millions from a doomed planet without sacrificing its security - and that's far from being proven - then Starfleet shoud try to save as many as possible with the availabe resources.

If the Federation/Picard don't do even that, they have no right to call themselves a moral man/a moral, humanitarian organization - because they're not. The Federation is a narcissistic empire, calously leting others die because they're not worthy of salvation, and Picard is a fanatic, killing millions in order to follow a nonsensical rule or because he's afraid of a future that will never happen:

Your "nanny state" is based on an impossibility; you assume that these mass extinction events are so widespread, that if the Federation tries to save the sentient species that are threatened with extinction, it will have no resources left. That's nonsense; if these events would happen so often, then no intelligent species would exist in the entire universe - life being snuffed out everywhere long before evolving sentience.

Even if, by some impossibility, an universe with frequent mass extiction events and intelligent life would exist, the Federation would not go bankrupt if it tried to save threatened species - multiple times in TNG, this was accomplished in record time, by some tech solution; and if it comes to evacuating the population, the Federation could at least use its unused resources - which are huge - to save as many as possible.

Strength and development come from facing adversity and surviving despite it. If they baby-fed the Galaxy there's hardly be any development or growth for any of them. And there was no way they'd have been able to evacuate that planet in time, and it would've taken thousands of ships working around the clock to do so if they had.

And yes, Trek would have us believe that there are lots of extinction events happening all the time. It happened to Earth as well, but humanity was lucky enough not to have been around when it happened. And likely they also happen to worlds developed enough to survive them on their own as well as the ones that can't.

And yes, if they committed themselves to going around the Galaxy looking for every endangered world they would use up all their resources quickly and leave themselves wide open to attack and domination from their enemies. Save a world on the outer rim from a meteor? Great, but while you were busy doing that Earth and the core planets got burned in an invasion and now all those people you saved have to look forward to is domination by hostiles.

First - I don't agree with the notion that a culture can only advance if noone helps her.
History shows that, if the more advanced civilization doesn't specifically try to destroy the less advanced culture - its social order, institutuions etc - the less developed civiliztion always profits from the interaction - it advances at an astonishing rate without losing its individuality.

Secondly - Earth was hit by a mass extinction event 250 MILLION years in the past - and life needed hundreds of millions of years to recover from the blow. What you're suggesting is akin to earth - and any other planet - being depopulated every 10 million years - intelligent life could never evolve anywhere.
Star trek did show a few extinction events - to be more specific, they showed how Enterprise prevented such disasters again and again with minimal resources. Most likely, Federation officials sent Enterprise to stop all such events they heard of (from half the GALAXY) - and, considering Enterprise's efficiency at doing that - pen pals, deja Q, a matter of time, cost of living - their decision was justified.
Except homeward - here, they let MILLIONS die without even trying to do anything.
They didn't even try to evacuate a few tens of thousands of people - which was well within Enterprise's capabilities.
BTW, 10 thousand people represent more than enough genetic material to continue their species. Humanity numbered far less than 10000 when our ancestors left Africa - 150 is the latest estimate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans

There was nothing that could have been done to stop the catastrophe in "Homeward" and it would've taken hundreds if not thousands of ships to evacuate that many Boraalans. Where were they supposed to get those numbers in like 36 hours?

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Anwar
Enterprise was shown preventing half a dozen global catastrophes with minimal resources in TNG - I gave the names of a few episodes in my above posts.
Why didn't they saved Boraal? - because Picard&crew didn't want to.

Even if the Boraalan catastrophe could not be prevented - which is highly unlikely - the Enterprise alone, without additional ships or resources could have saved tens of thousands of boraalans - you know, the ship that had nothing do do for the entire episode. Alone - as in no hundreds/thousands of ships.

Did Picard&crew do any of those things? No. Did they even try? No.
They just stood by and callously watched MILLIONS die. That's inexcusable.

Anwar, that's the second time I'm repeating myself - and you just state the same thing over and over again, without even responding wo my arguments.
Read my posts in the future, OK?

 

[pheonix]

They are all almost equally morally questionable, though if I had to pick one I would have to pick Sisco poisoning a planet...


I second adding this...

Riker's murder of Yuta in "The Vengeance Factor". He was in communication with the ship, and could have had her beamed to the brig any of several times when she was weakened by his stuns and had to take a moment to regroup. But instead he keeps ramping up his weapon until he disintegrates her!

I too remember thinking there had to be something else he could of tried instead of killing her like why not some one tackle her or something.

 

[Anwar]

Anwar
Enterprise was shown preventing half a dozen global catastrophes with minimal resources in TNG - I gave the names of a few episodes in my above posts.
Why didn't they saved Boraal? - because Picard&crew didn't want to.

Even if the Boraalan catastrophe could not be prevented - which is highly unlikely - the Enterprise alone, without additional ships or resources could have saved tens of thousands of boraalans - you know, the ship that had nothing do do for the entire episode. Alone - as in no hundreds/thousands of ships.

Did Picard&crew do any of those things? No. Did they even try? No.
They just stood by and callously watched MILLIONS die. That's inexcusable.

Anwar, that's the second time I'm repeating myself - and you just state the same thing over and over again, without even responding wo my arguments.
Read my posts in the future, OK?

I have, and I simply disagree. There was no way to stop the planetwide event without building some kind of planetary shielding device from scratch. They didn't have the time for that in 30 or so hours. Other disasters they stopped were much smaller in scale and easily stopped with their weapons, etc.

And no, the Ent-D on it's own could not hold tens of thousands of people.

 

[The Badger]

In 'Homeward' Worf's brother suggests saving lives by deploying some sort of 'atmospheric bubble' to protect the Boralaans. Picard's refusal is on the grounds that it would cause cultural contamination, not for any technical reason.

 

[Anwar]

Uh-huh, and what about the rest of the planet? It would still be devastated by the catastrophe meaning as soon as any of those small villages expanded beyond the bubble there would be nothing left for them to expand into. And also, where were they supposed to get that many bubbles to shield all the Boraalan settlements with? That's still thousands if not millions on people, not just Nikolai's one small tribe.