Ok, so the crew of the Equinox were killing 100s of creatures in order to shorten their journey home... Now unless I am mistaken, they did not know that the creatures were sentient, they thought they were just like wolves, who attacked in response to the Equinox crew killing them... Don't get me wrong I'm not condoning what they did, but Voyager attacked a Borg Sphere without provocation just a few episodes previous, in order to harvest a component to help them get home...in the process hundreds of Borg Drones died, but a Borg Drone is someone who has been enslaved to the will of the collective and who could be saved or else would not have died but for Voyager attacking them... Why is one right but the other wrong?
Because killing a enslaved Borg drone is doing it a favour. Luring an alien out and killing it is certianly not.
Where did the idea that you'll be doing a borg drone a favour by killing it? Picard in First Contact is the only person who's ever said that and he was hardly at his most rational at the time... We see time and time again how the drones can be rescued and disconnected from the collective... And it's not just me, in Unimatrix Zero, Janeway shows horror at the thought of the death of Borg on such a large scale when the queen is arbitrarily blowing up ships...if it's a good thing, why not encourage it?
My understanding (haven't seen the episode in awhile) is that the Equinox crew did know the aliens were sentient, or at least potentially so. Anyway, in the enlightened 24th Century, I would assume it's Starfleet policy not to make assumptions about such a thing. I don't really see how the wolf analogy holds up, since, as pointed out, the aliens didn't start attacking Equinox until Equinox began killing them en masse. I would imagine Starfleet takes a dim view of its crews killing -any- species in such a manner, sentient or otherwise. As for the Borg...it's legitimate to ask whether attacking a Borg vessel that has not already attacked you is a moral thing to do, but at the same time I doubt Voyager had the resources to liberate Borg individuals en masse.
Ok, a sleeping wolf, it wouldn;t have attacked if they hadn't poked it... And what if the crew was starving and instead of using the aliens as fuel, they were eating them... when you come right down to it, they're going to die in the Delta Quadrant if they don't get home, and since SF has never asked Voyager before or after if they have heard from the Equinox, it's clear no one's going to come looking for them...they're in a desperate situation and they made a difficult choice and like Voyager they chose to kill sentient beings in order to do it...
What would've made more sense would be to work with the alien culture that worshiped these ethereal aliens... explain how the creatures have a special property about them that could help them power their engines. If "donations" of their essence could be provided, then perhaps they'd be able to synthesize more. Or at least try to make some kind of arrangement where they'd donate over a period of time to give them enough of what they needed, all without killing any of the aliens. But no... the Equinox commander decided it just better to take what they wanted, abducting and killing the aliens. It was morally wrong on several counts.
It's the old morality vs. survival debate. In a normal situation what they did was heinous. In survival situations it still is, but becomes acceptable. At least it does outside of the Star Trek ideal, which is why Janeway took the whole thing so poorly.
Ransom knew that the aliens were sentient beings, saying otherwise is just BS on his part. At least the Borg were confirmed as hostiles to, well, everyone so there's nothing all that bad about attacking THEM for once.
I don't believe I need to spell this out, but here it goes. Because exploiting another species for your selfish purposes is wrong. When I say wrong, I mean morally indefensible. When I say selfish I mean this act was for the sole benefit of the Equinox Captain & crew. Put another way, would you enslave another human being to have a more comfortable existence, or make a terrible existence tolerable. Does your survival justify their sacrifice. Different people can have different answers, but it points to the kind of world we want to live in. Not everyone can have a happy life, but everyone can have a life not taken by others And don't go into the Janeaway comparison, her character was not stable. The S H A T I N A O R
Equinox was 30 thousand light years from home, and they needed to kill another 63 to get home. So a single space beastie ground down into feul equals about 500 light years. On the other hand, Voyagers cruising speed is one 1 thousand light years per year. For short hops they beat their averaged speed... But really Ransom can't have used more than a couple flippers to propel so little form the site of his original sin? With conventional engines Voyager was able to scoot back to the space where the beasties flocked and the aliens who worshipped them lived, and know to despise and hate Equionox and the Federation, in a number of hours. Which means they were probably single digit light years away from the space beasties spawning grounds. From this I can draw two conclusions. 1. Ranson had just started murdering these beasties days or hours before they met up with Voyager. DAYS or HOURS! Days or hours before Janeway intersected with their tragedy, Ransom and his crew her perfectly honourable and beloved Starfleet officers beyond reproach. For gods sake you heartless witch, sling shot around some sun, go back a week and stop these idiots from becoming monsters! But no, she'd rather hunt and incidentally kill as many of them as human beings as possible until she's honour bound to feed this Equinox Crew to the beasties she promised that she would murder for them. 2. Ransom was going in circles. We have always assumed that the beasties were flying at high warp following Equinox, which is a stunning piece of navigation without instrumentation, even if it was all by instinct that from a different dimension they can follow a tiny tin can from one side of the galaxy to the other. But if these beasties wouldn't follow Ransom on some Charles Bronson vengeance kick all the way back to Earth or Ransom couldn't trust that they keep appearing consistently no matter how many tens of thousands of light years he got away from this area, or if they couldn't trust that they wouldn't get shit scared afraid and give up after he'd executed another 5 dozen... He couldn't. Ransom was most probably trawling. Rudy wasn't going to leave the Beasties common space/home until he at least had the 63 of them he needed to stock up his fuel tank and get back to Earth. So if the Beasties weren't tracking him, it wasn't some massive use of math, intellect and savvy to keep finding Equinox, they were just most probably herd creatures being herded, even if they talk about how uch it sucked to be treated like stock.
But "The Borg" is just the will which shackles the drones to the collective, the Borg is never harmed by the attacks, only the people who have been shackled to its will... Why is it indefensible? The Equinox didn't mean to kill the first creature, they were just studying it...after it died they had no way to inter it, but they discovered that it had a chemical make up that could be converted into fuel...so they used it... it's possible at this point the creatures began attacking and every time they killed one, the Equinox crew then used the body to get them further, hardly morally indefensible when they're under attack and trying to turn the desperate situation to their advantage... No, but if the Equinox crew didn't know that the creatures were sentient, then they weren't to know... Put another way, we enslave cattle, but the view isn't that's wrong... Janeway was supposed to be our moral compass for the series, ST has always been clear that the Captain is right and moral, and any time they're not, the episode explores the reasoning and presents it...
Plenty of Borg are willingly part of the Collective, they aren't all assimilated (Seven's line was just her making a big assumption, and her not knowing everything about the Collective was made clear in the show). If it's wrong to attack the Borg because the drones are being controlled, then it's wrong to ever fight a Borg vessel regardless of reason.
The Next Emanation. Janeway discovers a rare element, which can make her ship go faster and betterer. Upon discovering that it's all corpse juice welling up in a mausoleum she decides to ignore this plunderable resource int he name of good taste. The Cloud. Janeway sees this giant baby full of stuff she wants, only she doesn't know it's a giant baby. Kathy thinks it's a cloud. She turns Voyager into a huge hypodermic needle to suck out all the gooey inner goodness until she figures out she''s basically eating, almost raping this giant baby and empties Voyagers batteries to help rectify her error. If Janeway had not been able to save the giant baby, would she have juiced the corpse and fed it into their intermix chamber or been a decent human being and walked away after paying some respect? (Chakotay would have mutinied if Janeway tried that imperialist shit.) Honestly. We've been to this rodeo before, and Janeway should have been able to call Ransom on it, that she had exactly been in his shoes and chose the high road at least twice.
It's mainly because people just didn't like Janeway that they thought Ransom was in the right. Even if she HAD been in his exact situation, and persevered, folks still would think it was bad she called him on anything.
Ransom was right? When was Ransom right? Even his last minute bid at doing the right thing was only because he went insane. Ransom was only going the right thing when he was insane think about that. As soon as his insanity cleared up, he would be back being a bad persona all over again. He was doing right for the wrong reasons.
??? Ransom was never in the right. He blatantly broke the prime directive. Even I will admit that Janeway went a little overboard with her reaction to his betrayal of all that he was taught as a 'Starfleet Captain' by almost letting Lessing be killed by the creatures, but I understand that they were thousands of light years away from the Alpha Quadrant and here Janeway was following by protocol and her ever so mighty principles and Ransom was just cutting corners and defying his very position as a Captain by killing those lifeforms. Either way Ransom could never be considered to be doing the right thing, at least not in my eyes.
You can't call a Starfleet officer a liar or a murderer or any other bad word without it seeming like insane libel because you are questioning their unimpeachable honour, because they are all beyond question and would never have been able to raise to their current position if there was ever the possibility of a chink in their personality. It's like 15th century Italy out there in future-space. Then again, even to question their honour, is to stain them irreparably. Post hoc ergo propter hoc? Yes, most definitely.
Janeway was never in the position of Ransom like some previous posts state, voyager was capable of being self sufficient for many years, Nova class vessels were support ships and not designed for long term solo missions. If the equinox met the same species voyager did i.e. kazon, hirogen ect it would not have lasted 2 minutes.
Janeway got into a state of being totally "fucked" and entirely outgunned all the time. Hell in Resistance she even turned to prostitution briefly to win out over some poor ordinary joes just trying to make ends meet. And not the good kind of hooker that gives you sex at an affordable rate, but the bad kind of hooker who ties you to the bed and then her boyfriend beats you unconscious while she takes your wallet and shoes. Year of Hell. She gave time travel technology to dozens of species because she dropped the ball and got her ass kicked. Seriously. When Janeway told all those other ships to turn off their temporal Shields at the end... The reply from all those other ships helping her fight Annorax, should have been.. "Go Fuck yourself." Since really, why on Io would they feel the necessity to commit suicide at that point Just to give some temporal doplegangers a blank slate to grow up in a freshly tilled timeline? It wasn't their Year of Hell. Basics. Janeway was sharpening spears to level and decimate a village of primates because they were being piggy and not interested in sharing their valley with her. How many of those dopey mud caked bastards would Janway have killed just because she's an awful neighbour if Chakotay hadn't saved the day by rescuing that alien princess from a lava flow and then negotiating peace which they were open to and receptive to without being conquered by a Vulcan built trebuchet? (OH MY GOD! Trebuchet is French for super-bucket!?) The Void. Janeway shone through on this one eventually, but not till after Tuvok and Chokotay tried to strong arm her into preying on the weak and she actually said "I spent all night looking through the Starfleet regulations trying to find a justification for piracy, but I couldn't find a single by-law anywhere to legalize the killing of weaker stupider species to seize their food and technology if we are hungry and short on supplies. I tried people, but unfortunately, we are not allowed to be thugs and assholes, even if if it seems like a good idea." It took her hours of reading documents she should have already memorized, to convince herself not to be Ransom. The Equinox 5 were on board at that point. Having them trying to convince Janeway to be a pirate rather than Tuvok and Chakotay would have mad a shit load more sense.
I know a lot of people liked Equinox, but frankly I thought it was terrible. I know it was a season-ending cliffhanger, and the second part was written by a different writer (RDM, if I'm not mistaken) who was essentially handed a poorly written part I and was forced to figure out an ending for part II. The Janeway arc was completely out-of-character, in an inexcusable way. The plothole of Voyager being able to track down the race that had the technology to contact the subspace creatures very quickly, despite the fact that Equinox should have been thousands of light years past that point of space is too large to ignore. The crew of Equinox being more interested in taking their shit-can back to Federation space rather than accepting the repairs Voyager was offering is hard to stomach. Especially since they want to do it at the expense of stranding Voyager. It was also eerily similar to BSG and Battlestar Pegasus (oddly, a RDM series), except of course for the fact that the Pegasus had an Admiral. The crew of Pegasus also took many moral liberties to survive. I wonder if Moore took cues from this Equinox when writing BSG.