Are we all on the same page about Michael's part in starting the war?

[Spectre Of The Fun]

Are we all on the same page about Michael starting the war with the Klingons? To me she is not guilty of starting it is something she has been made a scapegoat for. That's one reason why she is restored in rank by Starfleet at the end of the war.

She had every right to defend herself on the Klingon Ship of the Dead given the circumstances. The Klingons were going to attack even if she had never been there. It seems to me that gossip and misunderstanding about her mutiny among Starfleet rank and file took on a life of its own divorced from the facts. Michael's reasoning about firing first was to smash a would be strongman before he could use aggression against the Federation to further his own ambition (even though he also had an ideology that he genuinely believed in about keeping racial and cultural purity).

Anyway T'Kuvma was going to push the Klingons into war regardless of anything Michael did or didn't do.

I ask because I saw a ScreenRant article that seemed to think Michael was held to a higher standard than Kirk and Spock would be for later actions that seriously violated the chain of command. For Michael she really did break the rules but a war broke out where it didn't for Kirk and Spock even though it was probably *going to happen no matter what she did. There was a need to have her made a scapegoat for more than her actions really amounted to.

*There was logic to her Vulcan influenced belief about hitting the Klingons first and humiliating T'Kuvma before he could impress the other Houses into joining his war. It might have been right but it wasn't her call to make. Or was it?

 

[Mudd]

Her reasoning about firing first was to show strength rather than to cause damage. We saw her dad explain it to her.

She mutinied and was charged with mutiny not with "starting the war."

 

[Hythlodeus]

mutiny, noun:
an occasion when a group of people, especially soldiers or sailors,refuses to obey orders and/or attempts to take control from people inauthority


Burnham is many things, but not a group of people.

 

[Mudd]

That's interesting to know, thanks. Why don't the show's writers know it?

 

[Guy Gardener]

She tricked the rest of the crew for 15 seconds into assembling a mutiny.

 

[F. King Daniel]

She revenge-killed T'Kuvma instead of capturing him alive which was the mission. Thus, he became a martyr and the war lasted 9 months instead of a day.

 

[Guy Gardener]

That wasn't mutinous.

Her phaser wouldn't have a kill setting if she wasn't allowed to lay waste to the enemy when pertinant.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Didn't we do this already. You know when the episode aired and like the following year after that?

 

[Mudd]

She revenge-killed T'Kuvma instead of capturing him alive which was the mission. Thus, he became a martyr and the war lasted 9 months instead of a day.

Well now, there's a reach.

The mutiny, so called, was the attempt to fire on the Klingons. For which she got life imprisonment while Lorca got put in charge of the most important project of the war for executing his entire crew.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Well now, there's a reach.

How's it a reach? They spell out why they have to capture him alive, and then Michael changes her phaser to kill and shoots him in the chest after Georgiou is killed.

The mutiny itself is dodgy since she had no backup and was just bullshitting her way through. But her being responsible for the war lasting is concrete.

 

[Timo]

I guess the ongoing writer intent is clear, and as outlined in the OP: the scapegoating via legitimate charges on illegitimate actions combined with a harsh sentence and deliberately bad publicity, the inevitability of the war, the reasons for Burnham's actions, the fact that when the Feds essentially won the war with zero casualties they could reset everything and hail Burnham as a hero and feel good and all.

The interesting bit for me is how Starfleet treats the use of kill vs. stun...

We see time and again that stun is not only a fairly harmless way to bring down somebody you don't want to harm, but also the more efficient of the two settings. As per "Into the Forest", if your aim is to stop a Klingon on his tracks, stun does exactly that. Kill only works if you use the make-disappear setting, or get lucky.

Kirk seems to have absorbed this well enough, successfully waging war on stun in "Errand of Mercy". Why did Burnham not use stun, then?

- This would have allowed her to shoot without fear of hitting Georgiou
- This would have stopped T'Kumva for certain
- This would have rendered T'Kumva helpless to whatever sadistic punishment Burnham wanted to inflict, rather than dead and not caring any longer

Transporter evacuation was supposedly on the menu anyway. A priority would have been to get Georgiou beamed to sickbay; an obvious bonus would have been to beam T'Kumva to wherever Burnham wanted to iron his ridges flat. When drawing her gun, Burnham was not thinking in terms of being beamed away before being able to reach those two; that came as a rude surprise to her.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BillJ]

I was hoping it was the same page about never talking about Discovery season one again!

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Vulcan hello was a long string of centuries old secret war crimes, which is why it wasn't being taught at the academy.

Were Vulcan ships waving the Federation flag, still Vulcan Helloing during first contact situations in the 23rd century at new species?

 

[Timo]

Hey, Vulcan ships don't count as First Contacts! Just go watch "Move Along Home"...

So it seems Vulcan is doing stuff all on its own without formally smearing the name of the UFP. Might be every member is.

As for war crimes, does the Federation even believe in those? Every example we hear of is from the mouths of UFP enemies: Gul Dukat and Kira agree the former ought to have been honored with such charges, the Dominion accuses our heroes, and so forth.

Certainly the UFP believes in conventions regulating how wars can be fought. But that violations of those conventions would be war crimes... Certainly some things have changed, and the one assumption we can drop is that the war crimes would be the same as ours. Using corpses as weapons is obviously fine in the 2250s, say, or do-good Georgiou would not have done so. Offing entire populations is also fine, as per General Order 24. But the further debate is on whether the concept of war crime survives in the UFP at all, or is regarded as a relic of more barbaric times or trademark of more barbaric civilizations.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Cyrus]

I guess we are not all on the same page.

 

[Timo]

...What would be the point of having Star Trek then?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[drt]

mutiny, noun:
an occasion when a group of people, especially soldiers or sailors,refuses to obey orders and/or attempts to take control from people inauthority


Burnham is many things, but not a group of people.

While not the dictionary definition, the United States Uniform Code of Military Justice considers it mutiny if a person acting alone "creates any violence or disturbance" with the intent to usurp or override lawful military authority. Burnham attacked her superior officer then tried to override Georgiou's orders, therefore she would be guilty of mutiny under the UCMJ and it would appear Starfleet uses a similar definition.

 

[matthunter]

mutiny, noun:
an occasion when a group of people, especially soldiers or sailors,refuses to obey orders and/or attempts to take control from people inauthority


Burnham is many things, but not a group of people.

So, if you kill all but one of a group of mutineers, is the last one alive no longer mutinying? What are they then?

 

[Mudd]

You know, stupid as "Lorca is from the MU" was, it might have taken a little of the curse off of how stupid giving the bomb to the Cannibal Queen was if it had been used to foreshadow Starfleet's moronic corruption.

Or did they do that? I assume they didn't because the Admiral who was sleeping with him seemed to believe he was just plain old vanilla Lorca.

 

[BurnhamAll]

The war wasn't her fault, but her behavior was definitely court martial-worthy. So no, I guess we're not all on the same page. And that's a good thing. It means the story that was told creates discussion of what's right and what's wrong, as the best stories should.

You know, moral debates, like Star Trek. Funny how that works.