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Most morally questionable act by a protagonist?

Which act was the most morally questionable?

  • Riker's clone killing in "Up the Long Ladder"

    Votes: 11 6.7%
  • Sisko poisons a Maquis colony in "For the Uniform"

    Votes: 39 23.9%
  • Sisko deceives the Romulans in "In the Pale Moonlight"

    Votes: 22 13.5%
  • Janeway "murders" Tuvix in "Tuvix"

    Votes: 39 23.9%
  • Janeway's interrogation of Noah Lessing in "Equinox, Part 2"

    Votes: 8 4.9%
  • Phlox's refusal to help the Valakians in "Dear Doctor"

    Votes: 21 12.9%
  • Other (describe it)

    Votes: 23 14.1%

  • Total voters
    163
Since stealing someone's DNA hasn't been done in real life, they haven't gotten around to redefining the term yet ;).
Actually it happens quite a few times, for decades. A woman aquires a man's DNA, usually sperm from inside a condom, impregnates herself (turkey baster) in order to gain financially. Your basic economic predator.

Rape is by definition a sexual act forced on a person.
Not force, lack of concent. That's why having sex with someone below the legal age, even with their acquiescence, is rape. If you have permission to use force during sex that's not rape.
 
Rape is by definition a sexual act forced on a person.
Not force, lack of concent. That's why having sex with someone below the legal age, even with their acquiescence, is rape. If you have permission to use force during sex that's not rape.
:rolleyes: If you have permission to use "force", then it's not forced. :vulcan:

Having sex with a person below the age of consent is not rape, it is statutory rape, and while this particular phrase includes the word rape, many other phrases to describe the same act (such as "corruption of a minor") - in different jurisdictions or different languages - do not.
 
Well, for one thing Tom Riker wasn't the result of someone else stealing Riker's DNA he was just the result of a transporter accident. Not quite the same as DNA theft and using said stolen material to purposely make a clone.

QFTW!:techman:

Actually, it's pretty much the same.
The Riker clone was innocent of the DNA theft much as Tom Riker had nothing to do with causing the transporter accident.
 
I actually once read somewhere where someone wondered if Sisko having sex with the mirror universe Dax, was the same thing.

I think his hands were tied (so to speak) so he had no choice- he had been kidnapped and put in the situation.

Another one I can bring up is Odo; he promised Kira and her group that he would disable the alarms at a certain time, (so Rom could disable something), but instead he got so heavily involved with the Female Founder, that he didn't do it, and simply stopped caring.

Rom got caught, and when Kira told him that he just gave the Alpha Quadrant to the Dominion, he was completely nonchalant, as if he didn't care one bit.

His personality completely changed, at least for a while.

Fortunately he changed back in time to help Kira, but that was a serious 360 attitude change for a moment.
 
I actually thought Odo should have been punished for that. At the very, VERY least, some sort of formal board of inquiry. Letting it go unpunished because of personal attachment was actually a morally questionable act on the part of Kira.
 
That, and the fact he was so willing to just have sex with the female changeling to begin with (AFTER he knew about all the nasty stuff she's done). Seriously, he went from agreeing with Sisko that he shouldn't have made contact with the Founders to sleeping with one and betraying everyone to "Whoops, shouldn't have let goo sex change my mind, my bad!".

And no one held it against him at ALL one episode later.
 
Indeed. AND I believe I remember that he knew his vulnerabilities in the face of the Great Link BEFORE that incident. It would have been one thing to link if he could control it such that he could gather intelligence and keep his wits about him. But he KNEW it had druglike effects on him and did it anyway!
 
The issue disappeared so fast, I actually forgot about it, until I read this thread.

Yep, I don't see what excuse Odo could use, not under any drugged influence, or he wasn't forced to behave that way.

Wer'e talking the entire Alpha Quadrant here. Billions of lives and freedom.

Odo doesn't even try to offer an excuse-he just doesn't care!

ODO; I didn't forget. It just... didn't seem to matter.

I remember watching that episode when it first premiered, I thought, "poor Kira must really feel alone right now".

I understand how torn Odo was between his people and the Federation, though he sided with the Federation.

Plus, he sided withthe Bajorans against the Cardassians too.


I mean technically, Odo isn't doing anything against the Federation, and he didn't start the war itself, but this one is a doozy.
 
Didn't Archer torture a prisoner?

IIRC, he only threatened him to throw him out an airlock if he didn't start talking. That's not torture. If you follow through with it, that's murder. If you don't, it's probably an empty threat.

It has to be Sisko conning the Romulans into entering the Dominion war, resulting in thousand of Romulan lives being lost.

But how many more Romulan lives would have been lost if they'd stupidly decided to remain neutral while the Dominion prepared to attack them?

Anyway, I'm in the school of thought that Vreenak had his enemies in the Senate who 1) knew very well what happened on DS9 (either they had direct intel or they deduced the general situation - I cannot fathom Romulans being so dense that they wouldn't have any inkling of what happened) and 2) were happy to keep their mouths shut because they had the same opinion as Sisko and Garak.

I believe there's a novel that takes place shortly after "In the Pale Moonlight" where Captain Sisko meets with a delegation of Romulan senators. One of them very strongly implies to Sisko that he knows or at least suspects that the recording was faked but is still happy to exploit it for his political ends of forcing the Romulan Empire to join the war.

If I disagree with the American death penalty, do I have the right to "not let other people be killed against their will" by breaking convicted death-row criminals out of your jails? ;)

Perhaps. Perhaps not. At the very least, I'd say that, if you had a death row inmate in your custody, you would not be morally obligated to turn him over to his executioners. However, his executioners would be morally permitted to use force to take him from you and you would be morally permitted to use force to stop them. At that point, it starts becoming more of a practical, political argument than a moral one, since, on moral terms, you'll probably just have to agree to disagree.

When Kes came back and nearly destroyed Voyager in "Fury". She used her nearly infinite power in an attempt to destroy the comparatively helpless Voyager crew, and if Janeway hadn't shot her ass they would all have died.

At that point, Kes was no longer the protagonist of the story. She was the antagonist and has no more relevance to this thread than when the Doctor went evil after tampering with his own personality program in "Darkling."

I'm not taking sides here, but I'm reminded of a story I heard recently of Churchill and another official were dancing when Pearl Harbor was struck. At the time, they didn't know the severity or the tragedy of the attack, all they knew was that after months and months of trying to get the US to join the Allies in the war, the Japanese had done that for them. They were dancing b/c they knew they now had a fighting chance.

In this instance, I feel like America = Romulans, the British = UFP.

Klingons will ALWAYS be Russians (thanks, TUC!) ;)

Perhaps, although I always saw the analogy this way:
United States = the Federation
United Kingdom = Klingons. They were the waning empire.
Soviet Union = Romulans. The Romulans had originally signed a non-aggression pact with the Dominon, just as Stalin had done with Hitler. Only later did they join the war on the other side.

But not every human in the DMZ was in the Maquis, surely? Sisko basically ethnically cleansed a civilian population!

Perhaps they weren't all Maquis combatants. However, wasn't it technically a planet that the treaty had ceded over to the Cardassians but the Federation colonists refused to leave? So while they may have claimed to be Federation citizens, they were really part of a secessionist group for which we don't have any name except "Maquis."

I think it's interesting that Janeway murdering Tuvix is getting so many more votes than Riker and the clone murder. To me, those situations are very similar. I'd also say that Riker's actions were slightly worse than Janeway's because at least she had the shaky excuse of getting back two crew members in exchange for the killing. Riker and Pulaski were pretty much just like: "Cha, these clones creep me out, let's kill 'em."

I'm wondering if the clone murder isn't getting a lot of votes because it was presented in a less interesting way onscreen. I seem to remember the clones were sleeping, and Riker looking kind of stressed out and shooting them with a phaser. In fact, I can't even recall if he shot them both, or if Pulaski shot her own.

Also, while the fate of Tuvix was the central question of "Tuvix," the clone killing was kind of an afterthought in "Up the Long Ladder." Perhaps we're easily distracted by all the silly Irish people.

Well, rape is the act of implanting ones' DNA into another without their consent.
No, it's not. If it were, then forcing oneself sexually on someone while using a condom would not be considered rape. Rape is by definition a sexual act forced on a person.

For pete's sake, can we just get Benson & Stabler in here to settle this!

I voted for "Tuvix." That episode can still stimulate some pretty strong screaming matches even 13 years later.

I would also mention "Memorial," where Captain Janeway becomes a willfull participant in the brainwashing of potentially thousands of unwary travelers who pass too close to that planet.

And while it may not be morally questionable, I thought it was certainly boneheaded: "The Communicator." Due to Captain Archer's extremely narrow definition of "cultural contamination," he nearly starts a nuclear war on this planet. Rather than reveal the existence of extra-terrestrial life to the planet's natives, he lied to them, which led them to believe that their enemy had developed sophisticated genetic technology to create some kind of super-soldiers. It could have very easily created such unease in the balance of power that they would have chosen a preemptive nuclear strike. This was the episode that was so stupid & frustrating that I gave up on Enterprise as a regular viewer.
 
There was a DS9 episode (early Season 2, "Invasive Procedures" I think?) where Quark allowed a bunch of mercenaries access to the station so that an angsty Trill could steal the Dax symbiote, which nearly led to the death of Jadzia. This wasn't Quark's normal petty profiteering, even if that was his original intention. His actions nearly caused the death of a major character. At this moment, he demonstrated that he was, intentionally or not, too dangerous to keep on the station. Commander Sisko should have given him the boot immediately after that and placed his name on the Federation equivalent of the no-fly list. But somehow, Quark never seemed to receive any punishment at all for his actions here.
 
I’m not so sure about Picard & co. getting a bunch of Sona killed in order to help 600 Baku, who were happy and proud about the fact that they contributed absolutely zilch to larger society, hoard for themselves a resource that could have had incalculable value for hundreds of billions of people.

2 points:

1.) Since the Baku discovered the planet, they had a legitimate claim to sovereign ownership of it.

2.) I think there were also larger environmental concerns about decimating the unique ecosystem of the planet for what seemed to me to likely be short term gains. Leaving the planet as is would make it a unique source of perpetual youth that has inherent value and should be protected, not strip mined. (However, I'm less fond of the deleted scene where Captain Picard won't even let Quark set up a resort on the planet.)
 
I voted in this poll before I saw Enteprise. If I could change my vote now, I'd vote for Phlox's and Archer's decision in Dear Doctor - but that one was not just morally questionable, it was not even just definitely wrong, but, unlike the other choices here, it was downright idiotic. The reasoning based on quasi-science made no sense whatsoever (why does it seem so often that Trek writers love writing stories about evolution, yet seem to have no clue about what evolution is?)
 
There was a DS9 episode (early Season 2, "Invasive Procedures" I think?) where Quark allowed a bunch of mercenaries access to the station so that an angsty Trill could steal the Dax symbiote, which nearly led to the death of Jadzia. This wasn't Quark's normal petty profiteering, even if that was his original intention. His actions nearly caused the death of a major character. At this moment, he demonstrated that he was, intentionally or not, too dangerous to keep on the station. Commander Sisko should have given him the boot immediately after that and placed his name on the Federation equivalent of the no-fly list. But somehow, Quark never seemed to receive any punishment at all for his actions here.
quark was in love with jadzia, naturally, he would assist her to get rid off that hideous internal parasite. this major character was eventually killed by a plot device, anyway.
i can't understand why janeway is criticized for the death of tuvix. doesn't she have the responsibility to save the lives of her crew and friends?
one even bashed janeway for changing the timeline in endgame. geez, she's got to care for her crew, not the very remote chance to undo the universe. her main objective changed anyway, from bringing the crew home to destroying the borg transwarp hub with its aperture near earth (probably used by the borg in first contact). the borg were a infinitely more dangerous and powerful enemy than the dominion, this act saved more federation lives than sisko's coward and hesitant deeds in 'the pale moonlight'.
 
There was a DS9 episode (early Season 2, "Invasive Procedures" I think?) where Quark allowed a bunch of mercenaries access to the station so that an angsty Trill could steal the Dax symbiote, which nearly led to the death of Jadzia. This wasn't Quark's normal petty profiteering, even if that was his original intention. His actions nearly caused the death of a major character. At this moment, he demonstrated that he was, intentionally or not, too dangerous to keep on the station. Commander Sisko should have given him the boot immediately after that and placed his name on the Federation equivalent of the no-fly list. But somehow, Quark never seemed to receive any punishment at all for his actions here.
quark was in love with jadzia, naturally, he would assist her to get rid off that hideous internal parasite.
Yes, especially if she has no intention whatsoever of getting rid of the "parasite" which happens to be an integral part of her being and personality...and especially considering the fact that, even if she wanted to, she would die once the symbiont is removed. :vulcan:
 
i can't understand why janeway is criticized for the death of tuvix. doesn't she have the responsibility to save the lives of her crew and friends?

That would be because this Dr Mengele wannabe KILLED IN COLD BLOOD A SENTIENT BEING in order to chop her up for spare organs.

It's equivalent to a contemporary doctor killing a healthy person in order to harvest her organs and use them to save two persons who are on their deathbed.
 
No, it was a case of two sentient beings who, with no say in the matter, were fused into one being and thus trapped in said form with no way to voice their displeasure over the situation. Tuvix can't be believed when he says he spoke for them because he naturally wouldn't want to "die". It's like two innocent people having their parts removed without which they can't really live, and now the choice is to put those parts back in the rightful owners or not while some third guy who got the parts brushes their concerns about the other two aside.

And please, if she left Tuvix alone then we'd just be here complaining she didn't do anything to help Tuvok and Neelix.
 
There was a DS9 episode (early Season 2, "Invasive Procedures" I think?) where Quark allowed a bunch of mercenaries access to the station so that an angsty Trill could steal the Dax symbiote, which nearly led to the death of Jadzia. This wasn't Quark's normal petty profiteering, even if that was his original intention. His actions nearly caused the death of a major character. At this moment, he demonstrated that he was, intentionally or not, too dangerous to keep on the station. Commander Sisko should have given him the boot immediately after that and placed his name on the Federation equivalent of the no-fly list. But somehow, Quark never seemed to receive any punishment at all for his actions here.

Much love for this post. That, and the early bit in which Quark deliberately overbooks the transports evacuating civilians from the station, totally ruined the Quark character for me. I simply could not find his antics amusing after seeing him in this light.

In the same way, I was unable to find Q amusing after he introduced the Federation to the Borg.

I guess in the 24th century, folks don't hold grudges anymore?
 
I would have chosen one of the many TNG "The Prime Directive says we must let them die" episodes.
 
Only twice that happened, and in "Pen Pals" they DID end up helping out.

"Homeward", there was no way to save everyone on that planet.
 
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