Was Janeway a bit of a tyrant?

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Voyager' started by The Overlord, Mar 14, 2012.

  1. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    And people think she's arrogant for it.

    Then you have Night where she faces her demons and people think she's selfish or some other bad thing for it.

    And then you have Endgame where future Janeway tries to atone for some of her sins and people think she's a psycho because of it.

    If Picard had made the same decision in the Pilot it would be seen as him letting his compassion and other fine Trek ideals rise above the letter of the law.

    If Picard had his Night episode it would be seen as a "broke your little ships" scenario and we would all have sagely nodded that of course Picard was in the end a man who had his struggles, and we would have forgiven him

    If Picard had an Endgame where his future self returned to save Data and Crusher or whatever it would be hailed as a great Buddy episode, the vaunted friendships of Trek, in the spirit of TOS blah blah.
     
  2. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Night is when her demons escaped. There was no dealing with them. They escaped. fucked her up, and then she built a better cage and got on with the job of saving the day once she got distracted by all that life and death drama again.

    Nothing changed.

    (Which is why we got on exactly the same bus in the Omega Directive.)

    In First contact, Picard was ahabbing it, Lilly called him on it. He says fuck really? My bad. Plenty more letters int he alphabet.

    Everything changed.

    (Although, he had supposedly put everything in order when he mud wrestled his
    Brother in Family.)

    In Time Squared Picard went back in time to save the ship, and his younger self shot him dead.

    Dead.

    "You're a loser, you suck good bye."

    Captain Janeway at the least short of murdering herself should have put Admiral Janeway in stasis and allowed temporal investigations to deal with her when they got home.

    Hey?

    Icheb, was at the Academy, they could have asked him to lean his studies towards a career in Temporal Investigations? Bought the admiral out of stasis as a labrat until he was wearing his big boy pants enough to pwn her.
     
  3. Gov Kodos

    Gov Kodos Admiral Admiral

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    Omega Directive? She was following Star Fleet orders. Ridiculous orders, but orders none the less. Besides, that episode was before Night, as I recall.
     
  4. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Actually the scene I was thinking of from Omega Directive, might have been from Night.

    "sigh"

    Rewatching all of star trek is so low on my priorities.
     
  5. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    But Guy, think of the posts you could make!
     
  6. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Posts I have already made and forgotten about.

    Remember when Lister deleted the memory of reading Agatha Christie from Holly's database?
     
  7. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Tell me about it. I once was reading some cached forum posts from years back in another universe, they didn't have the avatars etc.. Read a really great post full of stuff I had never thought of. Then I saw it was my post. This has happened several times now.
     
  8. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Limited recall, it's how any marriage lasts past the I'm going to drown you stage.
     
  9. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    of course your argument assumes that the array attempt wouldn't have been successful because otherwise you can't argue that Janeway didn't strand them. You're arguing backwards: the array COULDN'T have sent them home, because Janeway CAN'T be responsible for stranding them.

    Had they tried and then failed, then of course she wouldn't be responsible. But she blew up the array instead.

    Moreover, it was a pretty clear PD violation. Take Voyager out of the equation, and the Kazon get the array and become a dominant power. Janeway influenced regional politics to a huge degree based on her own say-so.
     
  10. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    It's interesting that she saved the weaker species from the stronger in her eyes and yet if all the Ocampans develop like Kes that will not be the case at all. Rather we potentially have a race of super beings with super grudges wiping out the Kazon in the future.
     
  11. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The Prime Directive protects everyone from UNFORESEEN consequences.

    American weapons George Bush snr sold Saddam in the 80s to get Gaddafi, are still being used to kill American soldiers today.
     
  12. AuntKate

    AuntKate Commodore Commodore

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    My position is that we don't know if Voyager could have successfully used the Caretaker's array--for whatever reason--and so it is pure speculation what might have happened. They might have been successful or not. To assume they would have been successful is just as much of a guess as to assume they would have failed.

    I don't see how my argument is any more backward than yours. You say that the array COULD have gotten them home and therefore Janeway IS responsible for stranding them. I'm just saying--maybe not.

    I don't think it was a PD violation, at all. Here is what Memory Alpha says about it in their Prime Directive article:

    "In 2371 (Stardate 48315.6), Captain Kathryn Janeway destroyed the Caretaker's Array to prevent the Kazon from using it aginst the Ocampa, even after Tuvok said "[destroying the array] will alter the balance of power... the Prime Directive would seem to apply". Janeway justified her action by stating, "We didn't ask to be involved...but we are." to prevent the bellicose Kazon from using thr array to dominate the surrounding region. It can also be argued that the Caretaker's actions made the Ocampa society so dependent that it retarded their society's natural growth and evolution to the point that their society was stagnate. By destroying the array, Janeway released the Ocampa from their dependence on the array and placed them back on a path towards natural, cultural evolution. Hence the Prime Directive would not apply in this instance. (VOY: "Caretaker")"
     
  13. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Between the lines, what Janeway said was "This is not an internal matter. We are participants in this conflict with a vested interest in the greater good that can be rendered by a positive outcome which we have an obligation to see through to a conclusion because we have emotional connections with the locals which are equivalent to legal connections."

    Which is bullshit.

    How was Janeway involved?

    She met a slave cow race living on a kazon world in kazon controlled space and felt sorry for them because their masters were assholes? Most slaves really arn't happy about it, and didn't even put a band aid on the problem.

    according to this a free person who stole a slave in America was subject to execution.

    Can we expect the Kazon to be less draconian?

    if that's how they felt abvout taking the girl who spits in thier food, how do you think they'll feel about the woman who blows up their space station they've been trying to aquire for the last 50 years?

    Did Janeway know that it would take her two years to remove herself form the limits of Kazon influence?

    She knew that they were a reputable species that traded with everyone in that sector.

    Not that the Kazon Oogla really amounted to much after that.

    And the Kazon Nistum's beef with the Janeway was all about Seska being a dick.

    Seriously.

    On that day.

    The first day (third?)

    How was the Federation legally and politically entangled in that mess?

    What jurisdiction, and what responsibility, and what duty of care did the empire of which Kathryn was the chief representative of have a singular fleck of interest in some backward hillbillies playing with godleveltech and smiting some masochistic lemmings thy legally had the right to smite as hard or often as they wanted?

    The Prime Directive told her to walk away if she wasn't welcome.

    Instead she started a war that might last for the next million years.

    Janeway starts a million year war which the federation might lose and Seska gets knocked up.

    Who to you sounds like the better diplomat?
     
  14. Gov Kodos

    Gov Kodos Admiral Admiral

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    The Holy Writ Prime Directive of TNG Trek is something Janeway can use as toilet paper as far as I care.
     
  15. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    She can use it as toilet paper, but I want to know why she's using it as toilet paper.

    All I wanted for her to say is "I've been a naughty girl. A naughty, naughty girl."

    Sisko did so in in the pale Moon light.

    Picard in Justice and Pen Pals.

    I suppose kirks end around in A Private Little War when he became an Arms dealer was closer to what Janeway did...

    Tipping the balance of power back to how it was, is still playing with the balance of power, because the balance of power shouldn't be stagnant, what if the best thing in all possible universes was that the kazon got that array and spread that technology across the quadrant as businessmen and not warriors, which is certainly possible given how they turned Ocampa's practically useless (DS9 Statistical probability) cormaline deposits into such a must have hot ticket item.

    Besides, when we saw Tyrees World in DS9 (image in the sand) next, the place was a wasteland.

    Kirk and the Klingons had killed everyone.
     
  16. Lord Manitou

    Lord Manitou Commander Red Shirt

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    Where women are concerned is something I don't know about. The blowing-up of the array was probably a women thing.
     
  17. Gov Kodos

    Gov Kodos Admiral Admiral

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    TNG's PD has always struck me as condescending and paternalistic and have no patience for it. Why should the folks on Tyree's world have kept fighting so, when they had a history of relations before the guns came along. Why wouldn't they have one day just made peace like any rational people. Instead, the story treats them as children who can't handle their own natures or relationships between communities because of these 'superior' cultures' interference.

    If the PD is so important, in Voyager, the Caretaker was an outside force himself, and possessed a technologically more advanced than the Federation. Why shouldn't they prevent more advanced Caretaker tech falling into Kazon hands? They certainly wouldn't allow the less advanced tech of the Federation fall into Kazon hands.

    Once he died, Janeway was left in possession by default, more or less, not only by being there but was brought there by the Caretaker. Being in possession of superior technology she'd be remiss in PD responsibilities to let advanced technology in her possession to fall into less advanced people's hands. Her destroying the array would seem a justifiable following of the PD as I see it.
     
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2012
  18. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The Prime Directive is focused on the natural development of any species development if Starfleet doesn't interfere.

    If Janeway wasn't there.

    How would things have played out?

    Which is exactly the argument which those Ferengi used to win over Janeway so that they could continue exploiting those hapless aborigines.

    So Voyager hadn't been pulled into the Delta Quadrant?

    The Kazon might have gotten around Caretakers self destruct, and if they did, they would have taken the Array... Considering they'd been putting plans together to seize the array for years, gods, they noticed the power beaming had been increasing in speed, they weren't idiots, it seems likely that could take out the Arrays selfdestruct without too much effort considering how well they did that exact same dealio to Voyager in Basics.

    it's their thing.

    Their entire fleet, is predicated on the fact that they took the trabe Fleet before their captains could activate their self destructs... Do you have any idea how the Trabe would have been treated? Imagine Scarlett form Gone with the Wind suddenly kicked in the face every time they think that she isn't on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor fast enough if the Coloured people had won the US Civil War?

    In personal terms.

    Remember when you first moved from home and your mother kept trying to clean your apartment? 2 possibilities. Either you let her and you never learned to look after yourself, or you didn't let her and took responsibility for your own filth... You know I'm talking directly to you about your 20s, and your spouse making your life a delight right now is just an emergency replacement for your mother.

    If Bryce Ewing jumped off a bridge would you?

    It doesn't matter how every one else was meddling in the affairs of younger races, their chickens would come home to roost, so what if caretaker screwed over the Ocampa, saving them from the Caretaker is also screwing them over and saving he Ocampa from the Kazon is also screwing them over. So what if they die out, maybe down the line the Kazon will remember all that genocide, feel bad about it and grow up. Bad things pile up until somethign good happens, sometimes.

    Some species, it is there lot to be preyed upon by a stronger older race and diverted, perverted into new direction other than cultural momentum would have sent them.

    Janeway forgot that the Prime Directive was supposed to protect the Kazon from her, and herself from the Kazon, of which she did neither.

    Lord Manitou, you're one brave SOB.
     
  19. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I'm not a fan of the post-TOS PD, but that's just silliness. Who is Janeway to decide what the Ocampa's natural evolution should be? And what about the Kazon? She just became their enemies and denied them access to a balance of power changing technology. TNG-era PD would say that's a no-no. Janeway seems to be adopting a sort of Kirk-like flexible TOS-era PD interpretation, which would be ok, EXCEPT that for other situations in Voyager she's a strict regulations enthusiast. It just shows that Janeway was written so inconsistently and that they didn't get a good handle on her character.
     
  20. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Janeway was fine with the Kazon taking the array initially, even though she knew exactly who they were and how they behaved. it seemed as though that she didn't believe that she or her crew were at all involved in what was happening here in the Delta Quadrant.

    If Jabin had not picked a fight, Janeway would have turned off the self destruct, used the array to get home and then, maybe she would have sabotaged the frakk, and maybe she would have left it intact, it all depends on after Caretaker died who was laying claim to that piece of real estate... once it was their array, she couldn't blow it up legally, and lets face it she was proposing a joint mission before everything went to hell after she called Jabin "uncivilized" and them is fighting words on most worlds, and it's like Kathryn had never had a conversation with a Klingon or a Cardassian before, to anticipate how a warlord from a savage childrace might take offense to be called names.