"Compare and contrast"

[Guy Gardener]

In the pilot Neelix said that Janeway's story was commonly told by many other ships which had been brought forth for raping by the Caretaker. But the true matter is that probably that Ransom didn't have the balls to force the issue with the Caretaker or wait him out because it is his character to hide from conflict.

I'm not sure why you want to know about Chakotay's rank? The only time the Indian really got demoted was in Resolutions where they both became civilians after a fashion and she still wouldn't root him despite being the last man on the planet.

You really should give battle star a chance. The seat of your pants will thank you.

 

[Destructor]

(Disclaimer: I've never seen any form of BSG.)

The time you spent writing that could have been spent WATCHING BSG.

 

[JanewayRulz!]

Chakotay wasn't demoted in rank as such but he was removed as XO in season 6's "Equinox II" when he disagreed with Janeway's decision to threaten a crewman from Equinox with death by leaving him in the cargo bay with one of the aliens he and his Captain would like to kill to convert to "rocket fuel".

Tuvok nearly met the same fate in the same ep.

B'Elanna was threatened with demotion and Tuvok threatened with disappointment in season 1's "Prime Factors" but as far as I know, Janeway never shot a crewman dead for disobeying her, nor airlocked a prisoner after he "confessed" to her. (Both happened in BSG, but both were not committed by the same female authority figure.)

I agree that you should give BSG a try. Be aware, that after watching the miniseries in first run, I thought, "Okay, but sounds like Voyager all over again. "A lost ship looking for Earth."

Then a year (?) later I watched "33", the premiere of season 1 and I thought WHOA!!!!!!!"

 

[Guy Gardener]

Cepstrum thinks Stargate it too raunchy and lascivious according to comments made in another thread. You might as well tell a Muslim how delicious pork is... BSG would just be offensive filth because of a couple minutes of sex in most episodes. It takes all kinds. .

 

[DevilEyes]

I agree that Ransom/Cain makes more sense as a comparison, because "Equinox" is in many ways proto-"Pegasus": our heroes, on the search for home (Earth/mythical Earth) who believed that they are alone (and the audience believed that, too, throughout the show), suddenly meet another Starfleet/Colonial ship. At first everyone is happy, celebrations are all around - until some dark truths are uncovered about the other ship, whose crew has committed terrible crimes. The other ship and its crew and commander are like a dark mirror to our heroes, showing what they could have become in such circumstances, but did not because they had made fundamentally different moral choices and decided to preserve and continue to abide by the civilized moral code, while the other crew had thrown it out of the window in the name of survival. There is a conflict that (almost) leads to a war between the two human ships. In the end, the resolution comes from the other ship's commander's death, and the integration of its crew into our heroes' ship/fleet. (Well, a small part of the crew, in Equinox's case.) Of course, there are also big differences, such as, Ransom did not have a higher rank than Janeway, and Equinox was not a stronger ship than Voyager; and Pegasus and Galactica fought against the common enemy.

In a VOY/BSG comparison, Janeway is both Adama and Roslin, and can be compared with both of them. Chakotay is not Roslin. He is Janeway's XO, direct subordinate, and by no means an equal (at best, he is Tigh to Janeway's Adama, however weird this sounds considering the differences in personality). Even when he expresses a different opinion he caves in quickly. Adama and Roslin are equals and they are both leaders - one military, the other civilian; officially, Adama has to follow President Roslin's orders, even though he could, realistically, refuse and Roslin would be in trouble without the military support (though she proved to be resourceful and up to the fight when this happened at the end of season 1/beginning of season 2). Janeway/Chakotay relationship could have been more alike to Adama/Roslin if the Maquis hadn't integrated into the Starfleet crew so thoroughly and quickly, and if Chakotay had remained more of Janeway's equal as their leader, rather than just her friend and yes man.

However, a compare and contrast of Chakotay and Roslin regarding their relationship to Janeway/Adama in this particular case is maybe fitting (since Roslin didn't really have much real power in these episodes, due to Cain's dismissive attitude and fleet's civilian government in general - the only influence she really had was through her friendship and professional relationship with Adama) and certainly interesting, since they played opposite roles: Chakotay was trying to temper Janeway's extreme reactions and to stop her from resorting to murder, while Roslin was the one who advised Adama to assassinate Cain, while Adama himself ended up refraining from it in the end. The irony of it all is that Roslin could have been regarded as the voice of the common sense as much as Chakotay was.

I think Cain is more moral. She abided by her own code, meanwhile Ransom tied his moral compass into a bow.

I don't think that the question 'who is more moral, Ransom or Cain' can have a clear answer. It comes down to the question "Who is more moral, a person who knows that what they're doing is wrong but they do it anyway, or a person who abides by their moral code but their moral code is very wrong to begin with?" So if a person is convinced that what they are doing is right, does that make them 'moral'? Is Luther Sloan more moral than Benjamin Sisko?

Cain's moral code included such notions as that that civilian lives are expendable compared to the military needs, that it's OK to kill a subordinate who refuses orders on the spot without any warning, that gang rape and torture are acceptable means of 'interrogation', that it's OK to leave a bunch of human civilians to die so your ship can get better technology, that it's also OK to threaten and blackmail 'useful' civilians that you'll shoot their families, and that's OK to actually kill random civilians for that goal. If she had abided by that "moral code" while Colonial government and fleet still existed and while there was anyone around able to arrest her, she would have been court martialled and prosecuted for war crimes.

Basically, you're saying that Cain is more moral because she never even realized that what she was doing was criminal and horribly wrong and kept justifying her actions to herself, unlike Ransom, who actually came to the realization that he had done awful and criminal things that can't really be justified. So, basically, anyone who is too deluded and keeps justifying their actions to themselves (Dukat on DS9, for instance) is more moral than someone who repents and changes their minds.

If Cain was more moral because she believed what she was doing was right and never changed her mind, then Adolf Hitler was also more moral than some soldier or clerk who didn't like the Third Reich policy and felt guilty over being a part of that machinery, but were too scared to refuse orders or didn't know what to do. By contrast, any officer, soldier, guard, clerk... who was a real believer in national-socialism and believed that Jews had to be destroyed as a pest, was 'more moral' as they were abiding by their own moral code.

(Note: Godwin's law cannot be evoked against me because of the habit of Trek writers and castmembers of invoking Nazis for comparison.)

I agree that you should give BSG a try. Be aware, that after watching the miniseries in first run, I thought, "Okay, but sounds like Voyager all over again. "A lost ship looking for Earth."

Then a year (?) later I watched "33", the premiere of season 1 and I thought WHOA!!!!!!!"

Actually, that was old BSG all over again... (the only survivors of the genocide of human race, looking for the mythical Earth)... except MUCH, MUCH, MUCH better done.

I recently re-watched BSG season 1 and was thinking that, in many ways, Ron Moore was doing what he would have wanted to do on VOY if he had been allowed to: ongoing storylines dealing with the damage to the ship; the lack of resources such as water, food, and fuel; the crew suffering from exhaustion and lack of sleep; issues of how to deal with problematic criminal elements (the prisoners on Astral Queen); internal strife within the fleet, etc.

 

[JanewayRulz!]

"Compare and Contrast" was the assignment, and people have shown some very interesting insights in their responses.

In my defense, I'm not suggesting someone is the Voy version of Janeway or the BSG version of Cain. What I am wondering is "from where they started, how did they end up here".

We know nothing of Ransom's early life, or the forces that formed the man who would hide in a gas giant to avoid detection. We see how he responded to the trials and tribulations of the DQ, and draw parallels with the other Starfleet ship we know and (?) love who followed a similarly starcrossed path. But even that comparison is difficult since their ships were so different in capabilities and in the psyche's of the other men/women who crewed them.

Cain was not on a starship that was more passive (scientific) than combative. SHE was on the freaking Flagship of the Colonial Fleet. In Trek terms, she was Picard on the Enterprise, not Ransom on the puny Equinox or even Janeway on the more stalwart Voyager.

Cain had resources, she had firepower, she had the ability and the will to strike back... and STRIKE she did. She struck at the Cylons, at the lover turned spy, and just as viciously at the man who had invited her home to see the wife and kiddies for some down time before the Cylon bombs fell.

Why did she do that?

Was it simply because she didn't have Roslin telling her it was time to "stop fighting and start having babies?"

Or was it something more?

Janeway was faced with a question at the end of Caretaker, what would her ship & crew be/what would it do in the DQ?

Like Adama, she strove to give her crew a purpose... to be one crew, a STARFLEET crew who's first mission was to find a way home, but while they were doing that they would explore new worlds and new civilizations, boldy going where no-one in the Federation had gone before.

Why did she do it?

What earthly reason did she have to believe she would ever see Earth in her or "her daughter's" (if she had one) lifetime?

What was different about these two women who had achieved so much in their short lives, that sent them down such variant paths?

In my reasoning, in my "fanwank", it comes down to something very basic. It was how they saw themselves as they grew up.

Cain was a survivor of the war, and yet she was a failure. She failed her father, she failed her sister. She became an orphan of the war and grew up without the unconditional/supportive love of 1 much less two parents who reassured her at every turn that not only was she worthwhile but that she had a place to turn to for validation.

Janeway, unlike Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres from Voyager, unlike Lee Adama & Kara Thrace from BSG, unlike Sidney Bristow from "Alias", unlike Jarod AND Miss Parker from "The Pretender", grew up in a household where both parents loved her and both supported and pushed her to be everthing she dreamed she could be. Did she have doubts about them? What child doesn't, but even those doubts were eventually assuaged by a doting father when she was but an Ensign on the rise.

She excelled, and she fell in love, and she was challenged early in her ADULTHOOD by tragedy that nearly liked her, and yet she survived. And she adapted, and she excelled, and she fell in love again... and through it all she had not only her new lover encouraging her, she still had her Mother and her Sister who channeled a wellspring of resolve in to that woman who became a Starfleet Captain, giving her the ability to be more than just a Captain, but to be a leader.

Giving her the ability not only to see the war like Adama, but to see beyond the war, like Roslin..."With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in...."

Janeway didn't command the Flagship, but she didn't need to either. ANY ship she stood on was a Flagship because she made it so.

Was she perfect?

Oh no, even Janeway didn't have enough hubris to believe that, but even in the darkest moments of her insanity, she never resorted to the thuggery that Cain exhibited, much less tolerated.

Cain couldn't care for her own wounds much less..." to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan,", she was too busy making widows and widowers and orphans in her own ranks to care about any one else.

ADMIRAL Cain had the pips/arrowpoints on her collar to outrank that Intrepid class Starship Captain, and yet, it was that lowly Captain and her little ship that pledged themselves "to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." by destroying the greatest threat the Alpha quadrant had ever seen. The BORG Queen.

I sometimes wonder what it would have been like, if Cain had been the fifth Cylon and not Ellen Tigh. It would have explained so much, and yet... it would have denied even more. That we are more than our genetic programming, we are the people we were nurtured to be.

Or, as the case may be, who we were not to be.

"Thank-you, Admiral Janeway."

 

[Guy Gardener]

It's possible that Cain allowed/decreed the toaster raping because she felt that she had had toastersex with the 6 in question through a large enough cloud of lies that after the fact she discovered that she was a rape victim because she consented to having sex with not the person who levelled the act (like when twins share a girlfriend.). After that it's quid pro quo and they had enough momentum after that that the mid level fellahs believed that that's what Sharon and any other toaster deserved too... Gotta ask, would these same guys rape the male Cylons, or would they bring in women or bears to do it, or is there a double standard? Is it part of the will breaking process or are the jailers just in it for the sex?

Starbuck chose to drown her Cylon in a Bucket of water over and over again rather than sexually objectifying him, not that she wasn't lead to believe that the two of them had children later on because Leonas has the best mind games way better than a bucket full of water.

I suppose that Admiral Janeway is almost like Admiral Cain except that she immediately buckled and capitulated to her younger-self's steel and determination. What's the point of designing an adversary who is incapable of generating conflict?

I've been watching a lot of the West Wing lately and Allison Janey's CJ Craig is just fabulous on all fronts from her mind right down to her shoes. Strong too. I like'em big. but consider this, if Katheyn Janeway and Nicole Janeway both fled the set in terror after reading the pilot, well Janey almost sounds like Janeway enough that there's almost no room to bother that Alison Janey could have been playing the part of Captain Allison Janey.

Cool?

 

[JanewayRulz!]

Certainly its possible, but does it make her right?

If she wanted to punish Gina, she could have airlocked her, Roslin sure knew how to do that.

If that was too easy a death, she could have hung her, shot her, strangled her... and done it personally to vent her anger.

But she didn't do that, she did something vile and evil on so many levels that it really was unforgiveable.

Recall what she said to Thorne..."and since its so adept at mimicking human feeling, I'm assuming its software is vulnerable to them as well, so pain, yes of course... degradation... fear... shame. I want you to really test its limits. Be as creative as you feel you need to be."

What strikes me is the multiple use if "it" in referring to her former lover. The obvious distancing from her betrayer. But that line, "I'm assuming its software is vulnerable to them as well..." tells me that the professional Military woman has crossed a line. She's taking this betrayal personally, and she's meting out the punishment personally. Standing there, letting Gina hear her give Thorne the order to have her subjugated was itself Cain's effort to attack that vulnerable programming.

What Cain was really doing, however, was trying to strike out any human feeling she had allowed into her own heart. it was her own programming that she was angry with, a nd degrading Gina was her attempt to degrade that part of herself.

Coming BACK to see a bloodied Gina sitting silently on the floor of the Brig after a session with Thorne was a perfect example of how effective she was at doing that. Her lover is staring at her, unapologectic, not begging for mercy or forgiveness, turning Cain's heart more cylonesque than anything the cylons could have hoped for with her new inhumanity. As Gina stares at her, Cain calmly orders her XO to shoot the families of any selectee (not human) that doesn't comply with her order.

Cain was no longer human. She achieved her goal. No one could ever take advantage of that vulnerable part of her "programming".

Janeway was betrayed in Equinox. Like Cain, she lost people to the treachery of Ransom et al at the end of part 1 when he stole the shield generator and left Voyager vulnerable to alien attack.

And she went to a place Janeway rarely goes, a type of madness that blinded not only her morality but her insight into human behaviour. Chak saw it, and tried to stop her from allowing Lessing to die in that cargo bay. He knew the young man wouldn't betray his Captain, wouldn't give in. Janeway didn't.

Tuvok knew she had crossed a line when she was negotiating with the aliens in the cargobay, but he also knew he'd do Voyager no good in lockdown like Chakotay.

Unlike Cain, however, Janeway didn't actively seek to squash all that was human in her soul. In the end she was able to see her actions as wrong, and was able to admit same to Chakotay in their final scene together in EII. "You may have had good reason to stage a little mutiny yourself."

Unlike Cain looking at Gina bloodied and beaten on the floor of the brig, Chakotay could look at Janeway, head bowed and questioninging on the floor of the Bridge... and forgive her.

JANEWAY: Will you look at that. All these years, all these battles, this thing's never fallen down before. (Voyager's commissioning plaque)
CHAKOTAY: Let's put it back up where it belongs.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Oh I agree. Hell hath no fury.

I wish Voyager had no Fury.

That episode is shit.

Imagine I am talking about an actual toaster.

Not a robot.

A simple machine for broiling bread.

A "Oh no, I burnt my Toast!"

B "That's unconscionable! I'm going to rape that toaster until it figures out how to cook bread properly."

It doesn't take much imagination to figure out how a man would rape a toaster.

It takes some drive to do that to a machine.

Protesting too much?

Cylons are people and everyone knew it even if they couldn't admit it out loud.

They were just scared.

I remember when I figured out that Nixon was Humpty Dumpty in that old Movie. Gosh that's clever I thought. All the Presidents Men. That's fricking hilarious! The only way that that registration plaque and those three were going to get along again ever after the bollocks she wrung them through would justly be with the help of some very strong glue.

Reset button. DAMN YOU!

Though if in twenty years time I suspected that my best friend was STILL going to throw me in jail from crimes of my conscience, this is exactly the shit I would keep in my back pocket unresolved to insure that if I am going to jail till I am an old old man, the godnabbit, she will bloody well be in the cell next door.

However.

Consider the BLUNT symbolism... Is it possible that Janeway arranged for the Plaque to fall off so that she could emotionally blackmail everyone into forgiving her for being a *&^% even though the entire theme of that fortnights story telling was that there are some crimes that are unforgivable the moral authority will chase you up a tree for.

If the plaque hadn't fallen, and they hadn't had that tender moment... Would Chuckles have kicked her in the stomach and taken the ship (after Tuvok signed on of course.)?

 

[JanewayRulz!]

They had the tender moment before they noticed it had fallen down. And it came after quite a few tense moments.

Did she pull the plaque down on purpose? No, because even Janeway wouldn't harm her true lover (Voyager) on purpose.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I recall Janeway flying her lover between a set of binary stars in a game of chicken once.

 

[JanewayRulz!]

She flew herself and her two foster daughters through that same binary star because death on their terms was preferable to what the aliens had in mind for them.

 

[Guy Gardener]

How come when you say "foster daughters" I don't think Seven and B'Elanna (Lanni? That's a stretch.), I think Janeway's boobs, and when I say Boobs, I don't think Kathryns breasts, I think Tom and Harry.

 

[JanewayRulz!]

As close as she is to "the boys", I see her relationship with "the girls" to be much stronger.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I see her most closely attached to Harry and Seven. Seven because of all her promise and Harry because he's just so pathetic he might forget to keep breathing.

B'Elanna is an adult (Seven and Harry are retarded. Literally. One had no childhood the other is still a child because the Federation towards the core worlds has padding on all the sharp corners. they were both playing catch up.) who is not looking for a motherfigure, maybe a friend, an equal, but Janeway wasn't offering that to a subordinate.

 

[JanewayRulz!]

B'Elanna is an adult (Seven and Harry are retarded. Literally. One had no childhood the other is still a child because the Federation towards the core worlds has padding on all the sharp corners. they were both playing catch up.) who is not looking for a motherfigure, maybe a friend, an equal, but Janeway wasn't offering that to a subordinate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TZrjuSUuW8

 

[Cepstrum]

Cepstrum thinks Stargate it too raunchy and lascivious according to comments made in another thread. You might as well tell a Muslim how delicious pork is... BSG would just be offensive filth because of a couple minutes of sex in most episodes. It takes all kinds. .

I love Stargate. I actually own a season of Atlantis on DVD. Someone else made the comment that Universe wasn't as fun as the other two, *and* that is pretty dark. But I've never seen it.

As for BSG, I'm highly interested in seeing. I don't see that happening soon, though: I don't have a standard cable package, and if I could spare the money to buy DVDs, I'd first want to complete my meager Trek collection.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I'm sure I double checked that before typing what I typed, but these things happen.

Have you considered renting? I found the second season of Battlestar in my public library almost 6 months before it aired on local TV ( but 2 years after I saw it from torrents) for a staggarring price of 2 dollars for a whole week.