Starfleet - war criminals? (Sisko and Starfleet Command)

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine' started by Baxten, Mar 26, 2017.

  1. Voth commando1

    Voth commando1 Commodore Commodore

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    Kim is pretty green but I don't think he would forget to address his superior officer correctly that sounds like something Barclay would do.
     
  2. Prax

    Prax Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    He does it all the time. Paris is even worse, but Paris is the kinda guy that can get away with that sorta thing. Wesley might be the worst!

    "Data, Data!". "Hey Geordi, I got this new..."
    I wish just once we'd have gotten a "That's Lt Commander LaForge to you, ACTING ensign Crusher."

    Barclay doesn't do that stuff
     
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  3. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    They certainly have. Indeed, they ceased to be a danger in the episode "The Menagerie". Or more exactly, they ceased to be a danger Starfleet could do anything about in that episode.

    The death penalty was in force in that episode. It failed to achieve anything. Starfleet officers were deluded into doing the Talosians' bidding - across interstellar ranges no less! If the Talosians wanted to take over the universe, or corrupt our minds, or eat our women and steal our bread, they could, and the death penalty would be of zero help there.

    Which makes it easy to accept that by the time of "Turnabout Intruder", there no longer is a death penalty associated with GO7. And, given how that death penalty only existed for a brief moment between "The Cage" and "The Menagerie", that there now is a new death penalty, this time associated with GO4. Given the rate at which starship skippers stumble onto deadly threats to life, the universe and everything, these things must be coming and going all the time.

    (In contrast, the wordings of General Orders probably don't change at all - each simply contains a list of potential sanctions including death penalty, and Starfleet makes it a policy not to activate more than one of those at a time.)

    Plenty of uses for death-penalty-as-deterrent in the 24th century, too. Perhaps time travel at certain times carries the sanction? And over and over again, it's found that the sanction does zip - if somebody with a time machine did want to terminate the universe with time travel (or was a klutz certain to collapse all existence with his past-altering antics), it would by definition already be too late to do anything about it.

    It's almost as bad with war crimes. If you win, who could prosecute?

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  4. TheSublimeGoose

    TheSublimeGoose Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    What if... all the ST we've seen... is just one elaborate vision produced by the Talosians?!
     
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  5. Spot261

    Spot261 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Barclay is more likely to stammer and get their name wrong.
     
  6. Bad Thoughts

    Bad Thoughts Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Although I'd like to say it no longer exists, I don't think it's entirely clear. Star Trek always tried to have its cake and eat it too, especially in the 24th century: it sets action-adventure stories of individual heroism in a culture of "high modernism." It claims that everyone has been thoroughly trained in ethics, allowing them to make proper decisions, but it also puts a lot of decisions making into one person--the captain. Even in TNG, Picard is making the critical decisions that could lead to war. In The Defector, Haden offers Picard only advice on how to proceed with Tomalak. Same thing held when Jellico was in command. In order to balance the two sides, writers (much to their chagrin) had to sidestep difficult moral questions. If someone was going to do something rash, it was not going to be Picard, but Riker or, most likely, Worf. Second, the consequences were going to be minimal, as when he exposed himself to the Mintonkans, or when Picard used the phasing device from the Pegasus. Third, some technobabble solution came to the rescue. Fourth, and most importantly, there were some types of stories that they could not, or were not allowed, to tell, as when Roddenberry told Beimler and Manning that if Picard found a planet where the Holocaust was taking places, the Enterprise would have to warp away.

    The result is that the moral plays of the TOS era were replaced with upstanding behavior. In the late 1980s, the notion that we could live ethical, socially conscious lives was refreshing, but it comes off at times like the equivalent of abstinence education when compare to TOS.

    In the end, I don't think that the supposed century between General Order 24 and the trilithium weapon is relevant. General Order 24 was a dramatic device that allowed the writers to move the story along without a lot of exposition. The trilithium was a shortcut to bring in Eddington by fighting the insurrection on the same terms, taking peoples' homes from each other. If Picard would not have used the device, he would have understood protecting the treaty at the cost of loyalty to humanity. It's another technobabble solution.

    I can admit that General Order 24 was a dramatic device; why won't others admit the same of the trilithium weapon? What would be nice is if people approached Sisko with the same attitude as they did other Star Trek characters, not simply comparing him to Picard, but comparing him to the other captains, whose behavior might not always have been so noble.
     
  7. Jedman67

    Jedman67 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Geordi and Wesley apparently do not get any benefit from that.
    Could be. The writers were never interested in establishing "canon" for future shows, they wanted to make a good hour of TV.
     
  8. Baxten

    Baxten Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Last edited: Mar 28, 2017
  9. Tenacity

    Tenacity Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    An actual swastika is joined at the center point, not composed of four clearly separated units.

    Nice try, but no prize.

    And the US Navy IS a global force for good.
     
  10. Spot261

    Spot261 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    It's a global tool for US policy, that's not necessarily the same thing
     
  11. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    All those angles are right.

    I'll show myself out.
     
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  12. Bad Thoughts

    Bad Thoughts Vice Admiral Admiral

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    If they were the star of the show, like Stewart, they could have demanded more "fucking and fighting."
     
  13. TheSublimeGoose

    TheSublimeGoose Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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  14. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

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    This post is pure hogwash. If Star Trek were so beholden to Nazi ideology, surely there would have been several episodes of the various Trek series revolving around transplanting tired Nazi clichés into scifi settings. Thank Goddenberry that never happened.

    No, the trufact is that Star Trek idolizes the Illuminati. Observe and assimilate, Sheeple.

    The Enterprise-D deflector dish:

    [​IMG]

    Is shaped like the all-seeing eye of Illuminati lore:

    [​IMG]

    With rays of light beaming out from it:

    [​IMG]

    Just like on US currency:

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    From this I can conclude that Gene Roddenberry was not actually a visionary out to change the world, but was instead... hold on to your butts... a TV producer out to make money! Roddenberry even tried to distract us from the truth with all that nonsense about there being no money in the future, as if we wouldn't notice his machinations!

    The proof is in the architecture, you fools. Why is the Paramount Studios backlot a bunch of rectangular buildings, almost as if the structures were meant to represent the stacks of cash Star Trek had made for the studio? Notice right at the center left is the building named for Roddenberry. Things that make you go hmmm.

    [​IMG]

    Random quote to impress you with my worldliness:

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    Wake up minions. You are being played by the system.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Mar 28, 2017
  15. Mr. Laser Beam

    Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

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  16. TheSublimeGoose

    TheSublimeGoose Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    I'll alert the Above Top Secret forum crowd of your discoveries!

    Mind=Blown
     
  17. kkt

    kkt Commodore Commodore

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    That's the Maquis account of the situation. I'm not sure they're a reliable narrator.
     
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  18. TheSublimeGoose

    TheSublimeGoose Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    I rewatched "For the Uniform", and it turns out that Captain Sisko's actions were even more reprehensible than I first thought. He actually threatened to use biogenic weapons on all Maquis colonies, one after another, until Eddington surrendered himself. If that doesn't prove this was about Captain Sisko's ego, I don't know what would. There would have been casualties eventually. Sisko got lucky the first time, when the writers decided that all the Maquis, to quote Mr. Schneider over at EAS, were " ...were waiting in shuttles with their engines already warmed up..."

    Also, this isn't entirely relevant but...

    Once the Cardassian Union joined the Dominion (I say this isn't relevant because this happened after "For The Uniform") a state of war ostensibly existed between the Federation and the Cardassian Union.

    Therefore, no treaties signed by both parties would be relevant anymore, again, ostensibly.

    Point being, I wonder how the Federation treated the Maquis between when the CU joined the Dominion and when the Maquis were wiped out? And how they were treated afterwards when the Maquis became a shell of its former self?
     
  19. Bad Thoughts

    Bad Thoughts Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Meh. I think the Babylon 5 conspiracy is more concerning.

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  20. TheSublimeGoose

    TheSublimeGoose Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    But knowing Cardassian tactics and ethics, would you have much reason to doubt that they were the initial aggressors? It's possible they weren't, but I for one can't condemn the Maquis' actions in totality.