Was Sisko a Javert

[Timo]

No, it wasn't supposed to destroy the biosphere or the ecosystem. It was supposed to kill humans, while leaving the planet habitable for other humanoid species, explicitly including Cardassians.

I used to think that evacuation would have been flat out impossible, too. But Sisko gives the locals fair warning of what he's going to do, supposedly "less than an hour" in advance. And lack of ships need not be any sort of a problem: these people arrived here on ships, fairly recently at that (in the aftermath of the old war with Cardassia, supposedly, and that one was still going on in the early 2360s) and we never were told that they would have merely hired the transportation.

As for the population of Solosos III, it certainly didn't number in millions or even hundreds of thousands. After all, Eddington says that only Sisko's intent to escalate his campaign to cover all Maquis worlds would make "hundreds of thousands" homeless. That gives an average population of mere thousands for the supposedly hundreds of worlds in the disputed areas, and jibes well with what we saw of DMZ worlds before this.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dale Sams]

I must be conflating ("The Chase" I think) where the Enterprise happens upon some Klingons (?) wiping out all the plants (??) on a planet. All I remember is a graphic showing everything turning brown.

 

[TheRoyalFamily]

Also, Sisko only fired two torpedoes, and fairly close together too, exploded into the upper atmosphere. That would take days, at least, to affect the whole planet (the way the green stuff spread was completely weird). Sure, he might have dropped them right on top of the colony, but it would still take time to fall. Scanners indicated that transports were scrambling after the attack; they obviously had some time to prepare (I'd bet that they were always on a short notice for evacuation, in case of Cardassian attack).

 

[Jono]

You honestly think that a planet with thousands, if not millions of people, can be evacuated by a terrorist group that doesn't even have enough ships to fight their enemies in an open battle in the window of an hour? We couldn't even evacuate New Orleans with a week's foreknowledge of Katrina.

I was under the impression that Sisko destroyed the biosphere, rendering the planet uninhabitable. He didn't introduce anything directly lethal to the colonists.

Also, they have a bit more resources than 'we' do, and finally, N.O. could have been evacuated with the proper application of resources.

He released trilitium resin into the atmosphere. It's a waste product produced by warp engines. In Starship Mine the bad guys tried to steal some from the E-D, and it was commented more than once they had to be careful with it or they would "be dead before they know it" and tampering with the container blew up the terrorist chick's ship. It's also the same crap that was in those uber warheads Janeway used to destroy the Caretaker's array. That stuff's lethal.

Slight nitpick: Janeway used tricobalt devices to destroy the Caretaker's array.

 

[R. Star]

I was under the impression that Sisko destroyed the biosphere, rendering the planet uninhabitable. He didn't introduce anything directly lethal to the colonists.

Also, they have a bit more resources than 'we' do, and finally, N.O. could have been evacuated with the proper application of resources.

He released trilitium resin into the atmosphere. It's a waste product produced by warp engines. In Starship Mine the bad guys tried to steal some from the E-D, and it was commented more than once they had to be careful with it or they would "be dead before they know it" and tampering with the container blew up the terrorist chick's ship. It's also the same crap that was in those uber warheads Janeway used to destroy the Caretaker's array. That stuff's lethal.

Slight nitpick: Janeway used tricobalt devices to destroy the Caretaker's array.

Curse my inability to keep technobabble straight!

 

[Timo]

...It was Soran in ST:Generations who blew up entire stars with trilithium - and Riker and Worf needed to have a "cabbagehead" dialogue on the subject before coming to terms with the possibility that trilithium could achieve this. The weapons potential of the substance probably isn't obvious, considering the lack of countermeasures in "Starship Mine" and the seemingly slow pace at which Picard realizes what the intruders are after.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Jono]

I'm pretty sure Changeling Bashir's bomb had trilithium as well.

 

[Timo]

...Plus protomatter and who-knows-what.

Dax: "Looks like someone's been doing some modifications to the Yukon. I'm also picking up large amounts of trilithium, tekasite, and protomatter on board."
Kira: "A bomb. If it explodes inside the sun- "
Dax: "It could trigger a supernova."

This of course assuming that there ever even was a bomb aboard. Or a Changeling. After all, the true tactical function of the seeming nova-bombing run in the end was to create a diversion so that the Dominion fleet could slip in through the jammed-open wormhole unchallenged. A smart Changeling would just send a decoy towards the Bajoran sun, transmitting the fake signatures of a potent bomb (easier to come by than an actual bomb) and, of course, a Changeling, while making a clean getaway and laughing at the Federation, Klingon and Romulan starships scrambling out of the way of the imagined explosion.

Doesn't change the fact that Dax and Kira seemed to think a cocktail of trilithium, tekasite and protomatter would cause a supernova explosion in a neat and tidy main sequence star.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[commanderkai]

Also, Sisko only fired two torpedoes, and fairly close together too, exploded into the upper atmosphere. That would take days, at least, to affect the whole planet (the way the green stuff spread was completely weird). Sure, he might have dropped them right on top of the colony, but it would still take time to fall. Scanners indicated that transports were scrambling after the attack; they obviously had some time to prepare (I'd bet that they were always on a short notice for evacuation, in case of Cardassian attack).

Yeah I'd point out they probably had some ships around in case they needed to evacuate due to a Cardassian attack, but the way that the chemical was spreading was quite rapid, and if this was a developed colony, and not just concentrated refugee camp, it would be extremely difficult for the Maquis to have ships around any human settlement, from homesteads to cities.

More importantly, Sisko never actually scans the colony to make sure. He heads towards the nearly colony, gives the warning, scans to see if the Maquis react, and then fires. He never scans to make sure there are enough cargo ships to evacuate the planet, or that the ships on the planet are in range of all humans on the planet before the weapon kills them.

Considering how rapidly the Maquis colony started evacuating, I'm not sure if these weapons would take days to reach human settlements.

 

[R. Star]

Yeah for them to take off within a minute, that's pretty much a statement "It's hitting the fan now, if you're close enough to a ship get on, otherwise sorry buddy."

Sure hope I wasn't out camping that day, or turned off my phone, just didn't live near a ship or something. I'm sure no one did that though.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

It was pretty explicit in the episode that what Sisko released would kill humans after prolonged exposure but not immediately.

 

[Timo]

...Which in practice would mean that several weak individuals would die immediately and several strong ones would persist beyond the date provided by the manufacturer.

But Sisko did give his warning "less than an hour" (that is, more than a half) before firing the torpedoes, after which there was a cut for this entire "less than hour". I rather doubt Sisko spent all of that staying mysteriously mum; he might well have gotten the lowdown of his target in sufficient detail to optimize his attack pattern and whatnot.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[R. Star]

...Which in practice would mean that several weak individuals would die immediately and several strong ones would persist beyond the date provided by the manufacturer.

But Sisko did give his warning "less than an hour" (that is, more than a half) before firing the torpedoes, after which there was a cut for this entire "less than hour". I rather doubt Sisko spent all of that staying mysteriously mum; he might well have gotten the lowdown of his target in sufficient detail to optimize his attack pattern and whatnot.

Timo Saloniemi

I don't know. Even Worf, the most trigger happy guy in the franchise, questioned his order to fire. So even he seemed surprised by the implications, even if he obeyed after it was repeated... loudly. Seems to me Sisko wasn't discussing much with anyone as POed at Eddington as we was.

 

[Timo]

It's a trademark of Trek skippers to hold the cards close to the chest, even as regards their own crew. Sisko could well have asked Worf, Dax, Nog and the rest for all the relevant data in a typically circumspect way, splitting the job according to the expertise of the respective officers - and Worf would be the last guy to put together something like that, even if Dax might have guessed what young Ben was up to this time.

Really, Sisko would only need to know things like "What is the population and population distribution?", "How many ships do you think they have?" and "Do you detect any increase or decrease in local comm traffic?". He could insert the specs of trilithium fallout himself, being no slouch in the usual renaissance man department.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[WesleysDisciple]

A curious side note.

Am I the only person who hopes the end of the war, meant a better future for the maquis. With fewer cardassians left alive, and cardassia weakened politically.

 

[R. Star]

What Maquis? Aside from the ones the Federation took prisoner and the handful on Voyager, they were all slaughtered when Cardassia joined the Dominion.

 

[DonIago]

Do we know for certain that whatever Sisko released would be lethal versus merely...very unpleasant?

Sorry, it's been forever since I've seen the episode.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

The federation makes peace with the cardassians; several federation colonies are in the vicinity of the demilitarized zone.
The cardassians keep breaking the treaty, killing federation colonists. The federation cheerfully lets this happen while doing nothing.
The colonists form the Maquis to fight back.
The federation savagely hunts down the Maquis.
Sisko, a starfleet captain, destroys 2 Maquis colonies (containing non-combatants, children, elderly) with only a low realistic chance of the inhabitants escaping their now destroyed home. That's a WAR CRIME by any legal definition.
The dominion attacks the Maquis colonies (which are still federation colonies - that's the justification given by starfleet for hunting them down; if the Maquis were independent, the federation would have no right to impose its jurisdiction on them), utterly destroying them. The federation cheerfully does nothing, despite it being clear that war with the dominion is imminent (Sisko mined the wormhole a few days/convoys later).

Yes, Sisko WAS a Javert. And a WAR CRIMINAL.
And the federation, starfleet and Sisko should be ashamed of their treatment of the Maquis. They proved themselves to be unworthy of loyalty. Indeed, any surviving Maquis is more than justified to view the federation as his/her proven enemy.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Sisko was not a Javert...but neither was Eddington a Valjean.

 

[MikeS]

I only just got onto the fact that Chakotay's Maquis ship was called Valjean (only seen VOY once). It seems that the writers were obsessed with the parallels with Les Mis.