Spoilers Captain Archer's Response in Cogenitor

[Oddish]

If Trip didn't think he was doing anything wrong, why did he feel the need to lie about what he was doing?

I think that he understood that the Vissians would not condone his actions. That didn't make them wrong. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, she was defying laws, traditions, culture... were her actions wrong?

As easy as it is to blame the Vissian engineer and his wife, we have every reason to believe that their views on cogenitors are the norm among their culture. It seems unfair to blame them for simply being true to their cultural upbringing.

Their treatment of the cogenitor was so utterly hateful, she killed herself just so that she could bring it to an end. Excuse them for this if you must, but you must also excuse humans who whipped slaves for daring to run away, fought against giving women the right to vote, and threw gay people in the slammer for what they did in the privacy of their own bedrooms: they were acting within the parameters of their culture as well.

 

[Farscape One]

The big difference is those things and changes occured within our own species. No aliens barged in and told us to do anything different.

 

[Oddish]

An interesting perspective. But I'm not giving the engineer and his wife a free pass based on it.

 

[DonIago]

I think that he understood that the Vissians would not condone his actions. That didn't make them wrong. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, she was defying laws, traditions, culture... were her actions wrong?

When did Rosa Parks lie?

Their treatment of the cogenitor was so utterly hateful, she killed herself just so that she could bring it to an end. Excuse them for this if you must, but you must also excuse humans who whipped slaves for daring to run away, fought against giving women the right to vote, and threw gay people in the slammer for what they did in the privacy of their own bedrooms: they were acting within the parameters of their culture as well.

I'm not excusing anyone, I'm saying that they're victims of the culture in which they grew up.

How many homophobes are homophobes because they grew up in a society that taught them to be?

 

[Oddish]

How many homophobes are homophobes because they grew up in a society that taught them to be?

Many. But, that does not give them the right to inflict harm on gay people.

When did Rosa Parks lie?

She broke other rules.

 

[DonIago]

Many. But, that does not give them the right to inflict harm on gay people.

Of course not. I haven't been waving away bad attitudes or actions, I've been pointing out that the perpetrators are victims of bad culture as well.

She broke other rules.

Which has nothing to do with my original point. To reiterate: Trip lied about his actions. Whether the actions themselves were morally correct or not is beside the point.

 

[Oddish]

Trip lied. I get it. But the chief engineer and his wife, once they had the cogenitor back in their clutches, treated her so dreadfully that she was driven to kill herself to escape from them. I hope they never get to come within 500 meters of another cogenitor, and they have to settle for going to the local pound and adopting the Vissian equivalent of a Welsh corgi. It's still far less than they deserve.

 

[DonIago]

That's a pretty good oversimplification of the situation.

 

[Oddish]

One man's oversimplification is another man's distillation.

 

[Hopeful Romantic]

Here's an examination on the assorted guilty parties. It doesn't say who was at fault, but encourages you to think. https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/a-question-of-guilt-trek-style.305613/

Oddish, the wording of the examination is not unbiased, but clearly slants the presentation of the situation in favor of Trip and the Cogenitor, and against the Vissians and their culture, by, from my read, judging the Vissians--and condemning from as early as the third paragraph--by holding them to human moral standards. As an objective study, it appears to be intrinsically flawed.

 

[Oddish]

Possibly. I attempted to clearly state what each party had done, including Trip. But I freely admit to having my own opinions on the subject. Unintended bias is still bias. In any case, given the results of the poll, most people still blame Trip. So even if I was deliberately trying to slant the truth, I obviously wasn't very successful at it.

 

[Guy Gardener]

When did Rosa Parks lie?

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I've looked every now and then to see is Amber is telling a joke or if this is truthfully what really happened. That the NCCAP rigged Rosa Parks' red letter bus trip, because they wanted to Boycott the buses, and needed a flashpoint.

It's a better story.

But you can't manipulate 20 thousand blue collar workers into walking to work and back for a year, by admitting to them that you duped a racist bus driver, and tricked some dumb cops into arresting you, to intentionally start a race war, and expect them to be happy about it.

It annoyed me when the Doctor Who story focusing on Rosa, put her as a leader in the NCCAP, friends in conference with Martin Luther King, the night before she sat on the bus but did not connect the dots, that it was a fix.

 

[DonIago]

Even assuming Parks' bus trip was planned...and I don't know enough about the facts of the matter to comment on that one way or another...I'd only care if she didn't acknowledge it having been planned.

The whole point is that it's one thing to do what you believe to be moral, and it's another thing to lie to people in pursuit of your potentially moral goals, especially when those people include your superior officers. Whether or not Trip's other actions were moral, he should have faced consequences for his disrespect for the chain of command.

What Trip did was far more akin to a S31 action than a Starfleet one.

 

[Oddish]

The whole point is that it's one thing to do what you believe to be moral, and it's another thing to lie to people in pursuit of your potentially moral goals, especially when those people include your superior officers. Whether or not Trip's other actions were moral, he should have faced consequences for his disrespect for the chain of command.

Nobody is denying that Trip's actions were ill-advised, or that even if he did the right thing he went about it in a highly questionable manner. The position I hold firmly to is that he is less responsible for Charles's death than the people whose cruel, oppressive treatment actually drove her to suicide.

 

[Farscape One]

A suicide that would never have happened had Trip not started meddling. Also, at least one more child will not be born because of this.

Another thing to consider... we don't know if the child they would have had would also have been a cogenitor. Since they are really rare, this would also adversely affect their populating ability. In their case, literally every child is important.

 

[DonIago]

Indeed. If Trip had airlifted educational materials to the cogenitors en masse and they had all evolved along the same path Charles exhibited, it might have doomed the Vissians to extinction...presumably including the cogenitors themselves.

The self-righteousness exhibited by Trip in this episode is breathtaking.

 

[Oddish]

Indeed. If Trip had airlifted educational materials to the cogenitors en masse and they had all evolved along the same path Charles exhibited, it might have doomed the Vissians to extinction...presumably including the cogenitors themselves.

Depends on the Vissians' willingness to adapt.

The cogenitors were as intelligent as any member of their species, and could appreciate the simple fact that they could not stay with one couple, nor could they be a major part of their children's lives. Once pregnancy occured, they would need to move on; that is a demand of their biology. But that doesn't mean they can't be given names or education, doesn't mean they can't eat an ice cream sundae or go climb a mountain: such things don't affect the cogenitor's ability to facilitate conception. And with some negotiations, I think a new normal would eventually have come into being.

 

[DonIago]

Since we don't know anything about the Vissians' culture, we have no idea how the current circumstances may have evolved, or why, or whether there'd be significant resistance to educating the cogenitors, and if so, on what grounds.

Just some of the reasons Trip shouldn't have taken it upon himself to play missionary.

 

[Farscape One]

Agreed. Trip should never have gotten involved.

I do also completely agree that the cogenitors should have been treated far better. I just feel it wasn't Trip's place to be the one to alter that, particularly with a brand new first contact.

T'Pol warned Trip of this exact same thing in the pilot, when he was going off at the mother who was weaning her kid off that air. Nearly two years after that, and it still didn't register to him.

(I love Trip. His heart is definitely in the right place, and he is a smart man. He's simply impulsive, and that undercuts his character more than anything. I like that they did that with him, actually... it made his character more real.)

 

[DonIago]

Oh yeah, by most measures of morality that I'm familiar with, the way the cogenitors are treated was, to put it mildly, unfortunate. Assuming that what we learned during this episode was an accurate reflection of the broader situation.