Best and worst moral dilemmas in Star Trek

[The Overlord]

What are the best and worst moral dilemmas in Star Trek? I think one of the best is from the DS9 episode Pale Moonlight, that comes off as a very hard moral decision. "In The Pale Moonlight" asks some tough questions, like is it okay to commit a small evil act to prevent a greater evil?

Another good one is from the DS9 episode "Children of Time" that again was a very difficult moral decision, it was choice with negative consequences for both options. The crew of the Defiant had to choose between themselves and getting home or the lives of a colony that wouldn't exist if they didn't crash land on a planet because of a time warp.

Dear Doctor from ENT is a bad moral dilemma, it made Phlox and Archer look like callous psychopaths and frankly I thought it wasn't much of a moral dilemma. The solution was obvious, give the Valakians the cure and ask them to treat the Menk better.

Star Trek Insurrection was also a bad moral dilemma, because it takes an idea that could have an interesting moral ambiguous situation and turns it into a very black and white situation, where the heroes are entirely noble and the villains are one dimensional cartoon characters. A black and white situation is not a moral dilemma because the choice seems obvious, so there is no real dilemma. Plus the situation in Star Trek: Insurrection only came off as black and white because the screen writers structured it that way, you can come up with good arguments for both sides and argue the Baku are somewhat selfish, but the screen writers didn't want to go there, so the moral dilemma just seems weak.

 

[Christopher]

Voyager had some good moral-dilemma stories in its first couple of seasons, the best ones being "Tuvix" and "Death Wish." I particularly like "Tuvix" because -- while the setup is scientifically ridiculous -- it's a great example of a true science fiction story, because the story literally could not be told if not for the speculative concept at its core, and yet it's a story that's fundamentally about people and ideas rather than just technology. And it's a wrenching moral dilemma, because there really is no right or easy answer.

Worst? I'd say TNG: "Homeward," because the Enterprise crew was on completely the wrong side in that one. Nikolai was painted as wrong, but he was actually in the right -- the Prime Directive doesn't just mean "Don't interfere because the little primitives are too fragile and we're too cowardly to take any responsibility," it means "Don't make imperious, unilateral decisions about other cultures' fate, because it's arrogant to assume you know what's best for them." But that's exactly what they were doing by assuming the culture was better off dead than contacted. And the script artificially stacked the deck by having a character be so incapable of adapting to new knowledge that he killed himself. That's unrealistic. Plenty of human cultures have been exposed to more advanced technology and unfamiliar ideas and adapted to them quite handily. The reason for the Prime Directive isn't that simple exposure to new ideas will destroy a society; the reason for it is that imposing your own views on them in the belief that you know better is damaging, that they have the ability and the right to make decisions for themselves and it's imperative to respect that rather than treating them like inferiors the way "Homeward" did.

True, it was "Pen Pals" that first introduced the insane and contradictory notion that the Prime Directive requires letting species die for fear of doing them harm, but at least it questioned that notion and essentially rejected it in the end. "Homeward," on the other hand, uncritically embraced it and the condescending, dangerous assumptions that underlay it.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I nominate The City on the Edge of Forever for best moral dilemma: Edith must die so that millions can live and so that Time can be restored.

 

[Sandoval]

That dilemma Tom Paris faces in Caretaker.

Does he have it with rice? With vegetables? With pasta? Bolian style?

Decisions decisions...

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Best: In the Pale Moonlight and Tuvix (even though I hated the way it came out, it was an excellent dilemma.)

Worst: There were an aggravatingly high number of them in VOY and ENT, take your pick.

Dear Doctor from ENT is a bad moral dilemma, it made Phlox and Archer look like callous psychopaths and frankly I thought it wasn't much of a moral dilemma. The solution was obvious, give the Valakians the cure and ask them to treat the Menk better.

Oh yeah, that one really rankled me. But my take on it is this: evolution allows species to survive when they are adapted to their environment. The Menk happened to have qualities that were sympathetic to aliens from the Federation who happened to fly by, and because of those qualities, they could get what they need in order to survive.

That very fact validates that they should survive. The Enterprise was a new element in their environment that they were "adapted to." There's no good or bad to survival of the fittest; there is just the fact of survival or extinction. (If I've gotten the two parties mixed up, just switch them, I can't remember which was the underdog, it's been a long time since I saw that ep.)

 

[You_Will_Fail]

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. But Picard acted like a complete and utter ass, the way he was carrying on, you'd think the people living on the planet had originated there and they were planning to wipe out an entire civilization or something.
The whole moral "dilemma" in that movie is the absolute worst part and I wholeheartedly disagreed on the stance the crew took.

 

[Anwar]

The problem with "Homeward" was that not intervening with the Boraalans DID have some reasoning, but the episode used the WRONG reasons for doing so:

It should have been a logistical/economic problem rather than just the PD.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I nominate The City on the Edge of Forever for best moral dilemma: Edith must die so that millions can live and so that Time can be restored.

To quote my non-Trekkie sister when she saw it: "That's stupid. Why didn't they just take her to the future with them? Same result."

She was right. It wasn't "let Edith die to save the future", it was "let Edith die to placate the Time Donut.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Any time paradoxes where an entire village has to vanish via never having existed in order to restore the temporal status quo. I always find these completely unsettling which I think makes it a good moral dilemma because you really have to wrestle with it.

"Dear Doctor" really typified how imperious the hands off ideology can be.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I nominate The City on the Edge of Forever for best moral dilemma: Edith must die so that millions can live and so that Time can be restored.

To quote my non-Trekkie sister when she saw it: "That's stupid. Why didn't they just take her to the future with them? Same result."

She was right. It wasn't "let Edith die to save the future", it was "let Edith die to placate the Time Donut.

This has come up before, in this thread, where my opinion was and still is:

She needed an obituary for Spock's reading of the paper to occur. Too many witnesses to the accident to fake it; they needed her body there.

Spock didn't get enough details, so there was no way to prepare. The exact moment came as a surprise.

Whether she lives or dies determines the course of history, and there is no practical way to fake her death to divert into the correct timeline.

 

[Anwar]

But if her major role in history was the peace movement that SHE founded and led (and clearly hadn't started yet), then simply removing her from the timestream would've had the same effect. The Guardian protected Kirk and Spock from timeline alterations, so her disappearance being different from how the obituary says she died wouldn't mean anything since the Guardian would still "alteration proof" their memories even if the newspaper article changed when they checked it a second time.

All they had to do was show her their evidence, explain their origins to her and tell her there was another way out that didn't involve her dying. They didn't have to get things exactly the same as they were before, just enough to cancel out her Peace movement.

But then again, maybe this is just Farscape's "If you get things close enough to the way they were, time will iron out any other problems" stance messing with my perception.

I also never understood why in "Private Little War" they just didn't take away all the advanced weapons the Klingons gave the other Tribes and destroy their production facilities (a non-industrialized world couldn't make a factory on its own). Was it because the Klingons would just come back and do it all over again?

 

[7thsealord]

But if her major role in history was the peace movement that SHE founded and led (and clearly hadn't started yet), then simply removing her from the timestream would've had the same effect. The Guardian protected Kirk and Spock from timeline alterations, so her disappearance being different from how the obituary says she died wouldn't mean anything since the Guardian would still "alteration proof" their memories even if the newspaper article changed when they checked it a second time.

All they had to do was show her their evidence, explain their origins to her and tell her there was another way out that didn't involve her dying. They didn't have to get things exactly the same as they were before, just enough to cancel out her Peace movement.

A valid point. All I can think of in response is wondering what her "mysterious disappearance" as distinct from her confirmed death might have done to history. You never know.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Like I said, there was no way to plan for abducting her. When the moment came by surprise, Kirk and Spock had to choose whether to go with what the timeline was supposed to be, or to risk altering it further. Furthermore, as someone else in the thread I mentioned said, what if the Guardian wouldn't transport her to the future - I mean, why would it? She belonged to a different time.

And it would be abducting her, by the way. She wouldn't have a choice - if the Guardian would take her (and how do we know it would, again?).

Here's what I said in that thread about the hypothetical scenario of her disappearance:

^ I disagree.

In the first place, there were two histories read on Spock's tricorder, one in which Edith had an obituary in the newspaper, the other in which her meeting with the President was printed in the paper. Within the parameters of the story, no third alternative was available that might restore time.

In the second place, upthread, some posters were appealing to the butterfly effect with respect to the bum. By the parameters of the story, we know that the bum's death by phaser disintegration had no impact on the shape of time. But also by the parameters of the story, evidently the same cannot be said for Edith, who has a much higher profile.

For all we know, her disappearance could have triggered all sorts of unintended consequences that could have changed time, which is to be expected according to the butterfly effect. For example, a former bum frequently seen with her might have been accused and arrested for her murder, whereas in the Federation's timeline, he was to have made a significant contribution after having been reformed by her.

 

[Winterwind]

^ I agree that Edith had to die, not disappear. And I don't think the Guardian would have take her out of her time.

 

[jayrath]

Whoever said that the Guardian would let Kirk pick people to bring back? It looked to me like they were all automatically returned, once everything was restored.

What was he supposed to do? Yell, "Please, please strange rock gate on alien planet, let me bring back this woman I love!"

 

[JiNX-01]

Damage: Archer steals a warp core, essentially stranding an alien crew years away from their homeworld. Archer gave them supplies and trellium to shield from the anomalies but pirates preyed on the weak in The Expanse, so even if they were to head home immediately, they were still at serious risk. I'm not saying Archer was wrong. "The needs of the many..."

 

[Christopher]

I also never understood why in "Private Little War" they just didn't take away all the advanced weapons the Klingons gave the other Tribes and destroy their production facilities (a non-industrialized world couldn't make a factory on its own). Was it because the Klingons would just come back and do it all over again?

Yes, sure. It was an analogy for Vietnam, remember. If the US had managed to destroy all the weapons the Soviets were selling to the North Vietnamese, it wouldn't have stopped the Soviets from selling them more. Ultimately the strategy wasn't about the people of Neural themselves; they were just the pawns in a Cold-War long game between the UFP and the Klingons.

Whoever said that the Guardian would let Kirk pick people to bring back? It looked to me like they were all automatically returned, once everything was restored.

What was he supposed to do? Yell, "Please, please strange rock gate on alien planet, let me bring back this woman I love!"

Yup. The Guardian said they'd be returned if they were successful at undoing the alteration. Replacing one alteration with another wouldn't have cut it. And it's not like Kirk & co. had any control over when they were brought back.

Damage: Archer steals a warp core, essentially stranding an alien crew years away from their homeworld. Archer gave them supplies and trellium to shield from the anomalies but pirates preyed on the weak in The Expanse, so even if they were to head home immediately, they were still at serious risk. I'm not saying Archer was wrong. "The needs of the many..."

So are you counting that as a "best," a "worst," or somewhere in between?

 

[sonak]

worst have already been mentioned-"Dear Doctor, "Homeward," and "Insurrection"-

completely one-sided issues that are only made into "dilemmas" through bad writing.

"ITPM" is a great EPISODE, but an easy dilemma since Sisko's actions have such a positive effect.

"Tuvix" is actually a pretty good dilemma.

 

[Deimos Anomaly]

Children of Time is the most FUBAR and also the one with the most disturbing downer ending.

Odo committed heinous mass murder to be with his girlfriend.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

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.

Except the whole it wasn't the federation's planet (making this out right conquest aka what Trek BADGUYS do) thing seeing as they were there before it existed and the whole kidnapping plan thing which is kind of illegal. Not to mention even in the real world government are allowed just to take where your living without giving you something unless you live in a totalitarian dictatorship that is.

Besides the whole the Ba'ku are selfish argument is horses@#T when you remeber the THEY WERE NEVER ASKED AT ALL. Youn can't call somebody selfish if your only negotiation tactic is shove them in the back of a ship and dump them somewhere else. Of course they would be annoyed by that only an idiot or a crook thinks thats okay to do to someone.