Best and worst moral dilemmas in Star Trek

[BillJ]

Best...

Justice - I don't know how to communicate this, or even if it is possible, but the question of justice has concerned me greatly of lately. And I say to any creature who may be listening, there can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions.

A Private Little War - Spock, ask Scotty how long it would take him to reproduce a hundred flintlocks. A hundred serpents. Serpents for the Garden of Eden.

Too Short a Season - Whatever you wanted from Jameson isn't possible any more. And you wanted revenge. You blamed your war on him, and there's no doubt he had a lot to do with it. But you had the weapons and you used them. You could have tried for negotiations for peace on your planet long ago. Instead you chose to fight. How many of those forty years of civil war are on your head, Karnas?

In the Pale Moonlight - Precisely. And the more the Dominion protests their innocence, the more the Romulans will believe they're guilty because it's exactly what the Romulans would have done in their place. That's why you came to me, isn't it, Captain? Because you knew I could do those things that you weren't capable of doing. Well, it worked. And you'll get what you want, a war between the Romulans and the Dominion. And if your conscience is bothering you, you should soothe it with the knowledge that you may have just saved the entire Alpha Quadrant and all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal, and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a bargain.

Worst...

Star Trek: Insurrection - Ugh. Less depth than an episode of Penelope Pitstop. The posters should've read, "Yuppies battle eminent domain!"

Let This Be Your Last Battlefield - Heart is in the right place but as subtle as a sledgehammer to the testicles.

Homeward - Using the Prime Directive as a shield against helping a child race survive a cataclysm. Really?

 

[sonak]

"Justice" has a good speech, but is is really a strong dilemma? I don't think Picard letting Wesley die over some barbaric law is really much of a choice.(Wesley jokes aside)

it's only a "dilemma" for PD fundamentalists.

 

[BillJ]

"Justice" has a good speech, but is is really a strong dilemma? I don't think Picard letting Wesley die over some barbaric law is really much of a choice.(Wesley jokes aside)

it's only a "dilemma" for PD fundamentalists.

I think it is, because it deals with a states power over non-citizens who violate the law.

We may see it as barbaric but who are we to criticize what another state chooses to make illegal? Who are we to decide what laws we will and won't follow in a foreign land?

 

[sonak]

"Justice" has a good speech, but is is really a strong dilemma? I don't think Picard letting Wesley die over some barbaric law is really much of a choice.(Wesley jokes aside)

it's only a "dilemma" for PD fundamentalists.

I think it is, because it deals with a states power over non-citizens who violate the law.

We may see it as barbaric but who are we to criticize what another state chooses to make illegal? Who are we to decide what laws we will and won't follow in a foreign land?

Er, Wesley was being sentenced to death for violating a law he didn't even know about. Also, what he did was basically wander on to some restricted property or something. I guess I'm just a "cultural imperialist," because I think we can say that it's pretty barbaric.

 

[BillJ]

"Justice" has a good speech, but is is really a strong dilemma? I don't think Picard letting Wesley die over some barbaric law is really much of a choice.(Wesley jokes aside)

it's only a "dilemma" for PD fundamentalists.

I think it is, because it deals with a states power over non-citizens who violate the law.

We may see it as barbaric but who are we to criticize what another state chooses to make illegal? Who are we to decide what laws we will and won't follow in a foreign land?

Er, Wesley was being sentenced to death for violating a law he didn't even know about. Also, what he did was basically wander on to some restricted property or something. I guess I'm just a "cultural imperialist," because I think we can say that it's pretty barbaric.

I think when you're on foreign soil the onus is on you to know and respect their customs and laws because no one is forcing you to visit their land (or planet). But different strokes for different folks and all that.

 

[Takeru]

As I recall the movie Christopher, the Baku never claim the planet, never said it was theirs. That solely came from Picard. Neither did the Sona claim it. The Federation clearly thought of it as theirs.

The federation was wrong, it wasn't their planet. An uninhabited starsystem belongs to no one, when the Baku moved in the planet became theirs, they didn't have to say it.
The movie said it was a federation world, but why? It wasn't colonized by the federation, there were no space stations, no trade routes they used. Was it theirs because they had a colony two starsystems over?

What I don't get is why the Sona even contacted the federation. Who cares about the Baku, the Sona could have build a spa on the other side of the planet to use the radiation. Geordie got brand new eyes in a few days, I'm sure spending two or three weeks on the planet every other year would have been all the Sona needed. If they and the federation considered it a federation world, why not simply buy it or trade it? The federation thought it was just a dinky little world in some stupid place that prevents subspace communication, why wouldn't they give it to the Sona and why wouldn't the Sona be willing to get rid of one of their worlds? Lose a regular world, gain a Super Radiation Spa. They could have bullshitted a "We would like to have a place in the Briar Patch for spiritual reasons" explanation and the federation would have probably bought it. Countless Sona constantly coming and going would have made the story believable, those are obviously pilgrimages.

The Tuvix dilemma wasn't very good in my opinion, because their was only one moral choice: Not killing Tuvix!
Tuvok and Neelix had effectively died in a transporter accident, they were gone. It sucked for their friends, but guess what, it always sucks if you suddenly and unexpectedly lose loved ones. Murdering an innocent person to get them back is wrong, no matter what! It's an evil and selfish act that cannot be justified!
I really wish the episode had ended with Neelix and Tuvok punching Janeway in the face because they remembered everything Tuvix thought and felt when he was executed.

 

[sonak]

As I recall the movie Christopher, the Baku never claim the planet, never said it was theirs. That solely came from Picard. Neither did the Sona claim it. The Federation clearly thought of it as theirs.

The federation was wrong, it wasn't their planet. An uninhabited starsystem belongs to no one, when the Baku moved in the planet became theirs, they didn't have to say it.
The movie said it was a federation world, but why? It wasn't colonized by the federation, there were no space stations, no trade routes they used. Was it theirs because they had a colony two starsystems over?

What I don't get is why the Sona even contacted the federation. Who cares about the Baku, the Sona could have build a spa on the other side of the planet to use the radiation. Geordie got brand new eyes in a few days, I'm sure spending two or three weeks on the planet every other year would have been all the Sona needed. If they and the federation considered it a federation world, why not simply buy it or trade it? The federation thought it was just a dinky little world in some stupid place that prevents subspace communication, why wouldn't they give it to the Sona and why wouldn't the Sona be willing to get rid of one of their worlds? Lose a regular world, gain a Super Radiation Spa. They could have bullshitted a "We would like to have a place in the Briar Patch for spiritual reasons" explanation and the federation would have probably bought it. Countless Sona constantly coming and going would have made the story believable, those are obviously pilgrimages.

The Tuvix dilemma wasn't very good in my opinion, because their was only one moral choice: Not killing Tuvix!
Tuvok and Neelix had effectively died in a transporter accident, they were gone. It sucked for their friends, but guess what, it always sucks if you suddenly and unexpectedly lose loved ones. Murdering an innocent person to get them back is wrong, no matter what! It's an evil and selfish act that cannot be justified!
I really wish the episode had ended with Neelix and Tuvok punching Janeway in the face because they remembered everything Tuvix thought and felt when he was executed.

moving onto the planet wouldn't have helped some of the Son'a in time. Picard's actions basically ensured those Son'as deaths.

The Son'a came to the UFP because they thought it was their planet. As BillJ says, if it WASN'T an UFP planet, then the Son'a would be free to go there and remove the Baku anyway.


the Baku lose either way because INS is badly written.

 

[DonIago]

I suppose the hilarious follow-up to "Insurrection" would be the Federation Council voting to forcibly remove the Baku in any case. Or deciding with the revelation of the Sona's relationship to them that it was now an internal matter that the Feds shouldn't be involved in.

 

[Anwar]

For me, 'I Borg' might qualify as the worst moral dillemma. They know the Borg have wiped out or assimilated billions, they find something that MIGHT stop the Borg cold, nobody else has a real issue with this, and Dr Crusher then starts blathering about the ethics of wiping the Borg out.

I'm sorry, Doc. Any idea how many people, Galaxy-wide, were killed or assimilated by the Borg just during your little ego-trip? I don't know, but would guess that it is probably a lot more than one. Every time I see this episode, I seriously want to slap the bejeezus out of the good Doctor.

In the end, it didn't matter because we found out in "Descent" that even if they had used Hugh as a carrier the virus wouldn't have spread beyond his ship (which was just a scout ship anyways, not a Cube).

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Star Trek: Insurrection was the worst of all because it seemed obvious that moving 1000 people off a planet to improve the lives of BILLIONS of people was the obvious right choice.

That should have been a valid moral dilemma. It's not right to stomp on the rights of a few people just because lots of people will benefit (that Vulcan saying to the contrary always creeps me out.)

I think the problem was, the Federation has always been depicted as a black box of infinite abundance. We don't know much about how things work in there, only that nobody ever wants for anything.

But now we have some kind of medical need that the Federation suddenly has - since when? It seemed arbitrary and unconvincing to me.

The supposed dilemma in In the Pale Moonlight relies on the belief that a government's decision to go to war actually depends on intelligence, whereas everyone who cares to know, knows that intelligence is faked to justify war.

But the oh so holy Federation isn't supposed to be up to such hijinks! Star Trek ain't nuBSG, the rules of the game are different.

Or maybe the point was to tell us, the rules of the game aren't as different as we may have been led to believe. In which case, ITPM is highly significant for that reason.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

Star Trek: Insurrection was the worst of all because it seemed obvious that moving 1000 people off a planet to improve the lives of BILLIONS of people was the obvious right choice.

That should have been a valid moral dilemma. It's not right to stomp on the rights of a few people just because lots of people will benefit (that Vulcan saying to the contrary always creeps me out.)

You might want to look up eminent domain laws.
I suspect they'll REALLY creep you up.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

You're right, they do.

But to extend this analogy, the Federation is using eminent domain to build a new freeway when it's never been previously hinted that they are particularly desperate for new freeways, and in fact, just the opposite. Which leads to the suspicion that they are just being dicks. Or that a writer is inventing a situation for the sake of the story that doesn't really jibe with Star Trek's established ground rules, which would be okay if the story were good, which it's not.

 

[sonak]

You're right, they do.

But to extend this analogy, the Federation is using eminent domain to build a new freeway when it's never been previously hinted that they are particularly desperate for new freeways, and in fact, just the opposite. Which leads to the suspicion that they are just being dicks. Or that a writer is inventing a situation for the sake of the story that doesn't really jibe with Star Trek's established ground rules, which would be okay if the story were good, which it's not.

the magic particles hadn't been discovered before, so of course they hadn't thought of ways to make use of them.

Was the council supposed to fund expeditions to look for fountain of youth planets?

They were lucky the Son'a gave them the heads up, until Picard decided getting into Anij's pants was more important than healing wounded soldiers fighting the Dominion War.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

For the record, I don't support the separation of Tuvix.

I do.

As do I.

It's a matter of mathematics as much as anything else: either one person dies (Tuvix) or two people die (Tuvok and Neelix). Surely it is better that fewer deaths occur?

Why should Tuvix's supposed right to live - which I submit he doesn't have, since he only exists because of a transporter accident - trump TWO people's right to live, which they obviously do have?

Ah, but you might say, if you could kill one person today and therefore save two people, would you do it? The analogy does not hold, because the transporter accident that created Tuvix cannot happen IRL. There are no transporters, so there will never be a Tuvix; there is no living soul who exists in our world due to the same circumstances, so therefore logically we will never face the dilemma of what we would do in that case. All life in OUR world has an innate right to exist, but Tuvix was utterly unique - he had no such right.

 

[Nightdiamond]

In the end, Insurrection doesn't present a real soul searching moral dilema, because the Federation didn't have an imminent danger if they couldn't get their hands on the particles.

The Federation was interested in the particles because of research that could potentially lead to cures-- of non named ailments at that.

600 people are still a lot of people-- is it possible "the needs of many" concept has gotten a bit warped over the years?

Still this reminds me of that Voyager episode where a holographic Cardassian doctor wanted to torture a creature in order to remove it from BE'lana. If they didn't, she would die, in order to remove it, the doctor claimed they would have to kill it.

The Tuvix thing- I dunno, the moment he told Janeway 'you're making a big mistake', as they forced him onto the transporter pad- damn, that was one hell of a delimma. Even the doctor called it murder.

As goofy as the idea/Voyager was, that was superb story writing.

 

[sonak]

In the end, Insurrection doesn't present a real soul searching moral dilema, because the Federation didn't have an imminent danger if they couldn't get their hands on the particles.

The Federation was interested in the particles because of research that could potentially lead to cures-- of non named ailments at that.

600 people are still a lot of people-- is it possible "the needs of many" concept has gotten a bit warped over the years?

Still this reminds me of that Voyager episode where a holographic Cardassian doctor wanted to torture a creature in order to remove it from BE'lana. If they didn't, she would die, in order to remove it, the doctor claimed they would have to kill it.

The Tuvix thing- I dunno, the moment he told Janeway 'you're making a big mistake', as they forced him onto the transporter pad- damn, that was one hell of a delimma. Even the doctor called it murder.

As goofy as the idea/Voyager was, that was superb story writing.

yeah, no imminent need of magic healing particles when you're fighting a war to save the Alpha Quadrant, right?


who needs revolutionary medical advances in a war?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Any supposed advances gained by the Ba'ku planet's rings would not be of much help against the Dominion.

 

[sonak]

^ Any supposed advances gained by the Ba'ku planet's rings would not be of much help against the Dominion.

wow, that's some statement. Any particular reason you think that?

 

[DonIago]

For the record, I don't support the separation of Tuvix.

I do.

As do I.

It's a matter of mathematics as much as anything else: either one person dies (Tuvix) or two people die (Tuvok and Neelix). Surely it is better that fewer deaths occur?

Why should Tuvix's supposed right to live - which I submit he doesn't have, since he only exists because of a transporter accident - trump TWO people's right to live, which they obviously do have?

Ah, but you might say, if you could kill one person today and therefore save two people, would you do it? The analogy does not hold, because the transporter accident that created Tuvix cannot happen IRL. There are no transporters, so there will never be a Tuvix; there is no living soul who exists in our world due to the same circumstances, so therefore logically we will never face the dilemma of what we would do in that case. All life in OUR world has an innate right to exist, but Tuvix was utterly unique - he had no such right.

So what's the difference between a risky procedure in "Insurrection" and a risky procedure in "Tuvix" such that your views as to what one should do are diametrically opposed?

 

[BillJ]

^ Any supposed advances gained by the Ba'ku planet's rings would not be of much help against the Dominion.

wow, that's some statement. Any particular reason you think that?

I tend to agree with Mr. Laser Beam, nothing here suggests meta-phasics was ready for wide spread use. Plus we just don't know how fast those particles would regenerate body parts outside the concentrations we see in the rings. The whole thing they tout is the fact that it will double lifespans.

So my opinion is that if the Dominion War goes on for twenty or thirty years, meta-phasics may be a game changer. Anything less and I just don't see the advantage. People staying healthier, longer may allow you to double your manpower in fifty to a hundred years. But the Jem'Hadar was pumping out new soldiers daily...

Just another angle where Star Trek: Insurrection fails.