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Did anyone else have a problem with Equinox, part two?

Well, at least whether her actions in Equinox stand on their own or can be considered part of a larger pattern. Having it turn into a discussion of every questionable act she's ever taken would be making the topic rather overly-broad IMO though.

IMO, while Janeways often exhibited the skills needed to serve as a captain, anyone who is willing to commit the actions she committed under albeit extreme duress has no business being in the hot seat. At least not if she's going to be surrounded by people who won't sufficiently call her on her actions.

Really, these scenarios just weakened everyone involved.
 
She was willing to let Icheb be executed for trespassing during a joy ride, but mother henned Tom for acts of terrorism running the boy to freedom out past the limits of the injured parties jurisdiction...

Er, what?

Q Two where Icheb infamously said '"Captain Janeway taught me to respect the laws of other cultures!" as she delivered the boy to a gallows vs 40 days where the cops chased Voyager to get Tom back for a couple weeks because he was breaking bad. Remember how Bush right after 911 said that whoever is harbouring terrorists is as bad as the actual terrorists and would be treated in kind?

And her activity in Devore Space was beyond the pale! Operating an underground rail road in strict defiance of the local laws secreting dread criminals to safe harbour!
And I suppose those running the underground railroad for escaped slaves or those smuggling Jews out of Europe during the Holocaust are also in the wrong? :wtf:

It's a non-interference policy called the Prime Directive not a non-interference policy called the Sometimes Directive. She's supposed to be Switzerland. Kimc, it's good to be Robin hood but the Sherrif was still the legal Authority. Did she do the right thing, sure, did she do the legal thing? No. Could the Devore sue for extradition? Well they would be laughed at, but they could try but here's the rat faced truth about extradition treaties, if you cheat on them, so will everyone else. It's her job not to implicate the federation and drag them into any wars (peacekeeping, disturbance, disaster relief)they (as a civilization) do not have the resources to wage/undertake.

They were already on their way when she found out what happened and who did it. Was she supposed to go back to a planet that explicitly said they were no longer welcome just to teach some crew members a lesson? :wtf:

No. They were in orbit. First they figured out that the transit tech needed the planet (and only that particualr planet) to resonate off and then they discovered that the tech was incompatible with Federation tech. Antineutrinos I think? Seska, B'Elanna and Tuvok defied Janeway, lied to Janeway and stole from friendly if not fair weather allies. It's really a PG version of what Rason did to those space beasties, taking what was told that he was not allowed. They shat on Janeways authority with a secret mutiny and made her appear castrated to the aliens below. Every one involved should have been at the least stripped of rank or handed over tot he local authorities the same as janeway would expect if some one was stealing her technology (Seska again.).

Just how were they supposed to go hundreds of years into the future to return it?

Not return it, just destroy the emitter or even isolate and not use the bugger. For gods sake imagine what would have happened to that galaxy if the Borg got hold of that tech and in all honest truth, they were morons not to pursue it after meeting One. It was dangerous. they didn't understand it and they couldn't look after it or defend it. And the situation is even worse when you understand that obviously Braxton intentionally and wittingly left it in Janeways care to preserve his own timeline that he was treating her like a puppet destroying the possibility of an infinite number of perhaps benevolent alternate futures where the federation reigns better

Clipped wings.

She let them stack the deck.

[Wonderfalls]Fates Bitch bending over for destiny [/Wonderfalls]
They were NOT legally held for cause.

Just because the system of justice in place seems odd, it doesn't mean that it's not legally binding in an odd area of space... Didn't you laugh when Bush accidentally (I need to update my material) that the CIA had secret prisons. they were imprisoned by a legal authority who decided on a fitting duration for the offence committed even if Janeway didn't understand or agree.

It's remarkable that women are still locked up in some backward countries for prostitution.

It was a chance to bring back some Talaxians who had been killed. She didn't buy into the science involved but let him try anyway. What horror! :rolleyes:

And if we gave all the third world nations and Arab states nuclear power stations for their birthdays, we wouldn't be afraid that any of these fine upstanding places would begin making nuclear weapons at some point soon eventually? This episode wasn't a Janeway problem, it completely escaped the writers imagination about how dangerous it was to give a man like Jetrel the secret to ultimate power and galactic (quadrantal?) domination, or his superiors when he he begun implementing what he had learnt on voyager into his general research and development since it would have been criminal for him not to event the transporter a week after his adventure on Voyager.

Saving a few people meant the domination or devastation or hundreds or thousands of planets by a pack of assholes who had already claimed ownership over the talaxians because they couldn't stand up to the Harkonian war machine.

"Distant Origin" was not in Season 7 and how was there a way back to Earth in that one? :wtf:

I was thinking about the end of Planet of the Apes.

The Dinosaurs had transwarp. If they wanted to go to earth. They went to earth. It would only take a few days, maybe hours depending on how comparable their transwarp was to the Borgs, but haven't you seen the DaVinchi code? there are dangerous consequences to proving that any religion is a pack of lies. If people don't like that, iagine how Dinosaurs feel?

You don't think the Pope can deploy ninjas at a moments notice when he feels threatened by logic or reason?

She honoured the truce agreement made with the leader who was killed. it made sense at the time even if there was a poorly conceived episode of revolting holograms to follow...

Not talking about Killing game. Talking about in the flesh. 8472 were given the a tutorial on Borg Nano probes and how it kills 8472 a first frond of the olive branch of peace and community.

Stalin didn't have the Bomb till 1952 I think?

Allies shmellies.

Gods, she let Voyagers technology run amok freehold in the Void because it was easier to ignore the Prime Directive to give away technology to potentially harmful assholes who might go on to decimate billions if not sell that technology to assholes who will go on to destroy Billions or trillions because Janeway couldn't stomach breaking the Prime Directive by killing a few dickheads too stupid not to fall for the same trap as Winney the Pooh.
What? How did she let technology run amok in the void? :wtf:

She created a free society. A community where every one shared technology and resources. Good in principle, but getting them to all agree to a declaration of principles was hardly binding since one of her new chief lieutenants was still killing for resources well into the third act when she had to give him the boot for being a dick. All the ships that escaped the void knew everything about Voyager's technology (and every other ship there.)and they all returned to their homeworlds and implemented that technology on a grand scale unless they were idiots... Thus destabilizing the balance of power in many many many regions of nearby space sewing war and chaos.

Ransom should have put her in the Brig.
Ransom should have had his genocidal ass kicked before kicking himself.

Half way home by season 6, they required 56 of them murdered to get home, another 30 thousand light years. He claimed that a wormhole had helped with a generous distance travelled away from Caretaker's array... Voyager was still within travelling distance of the aliens who worshipped the space beasties. So to get as far as they did, it was unlikely that they had killed more than 3 dozen or the space beasties by the opening credits unless they had a multitude stored for the long haul.

I'm actually wondering if Equinox had been running at fill tilt? please consider that the further they got away from that region of space the harder it would be to find beasties especially if they got bored of being killed every time they tried to get revenge for their thwacked brethren? I'm thinking that Equinox was still at the beginning of this monstrous plan and it was going around in circles filling up it's fuel tank.

Genocide is grossly inaccurate unless I am grossly underestimating how many of those ugly things there actually were.

So he killed, or ordered the killing of less than 50 aliens but janeway ordered by her silence the execution of hundreds of thousands of Borg and a handful of free Borg in Unimatrix zero in the hopes that all the free Borg would go on as a species...

Sounds the same as Ransom but on a much larger scale and it only took a minute and half for Janeway to crack and sell out all the free Borg anyways making her sacrifice of those hundreds of thousand of Borg meaningless.

Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons is just as bad as doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
 
Now that you mention it, the free Borg vessel must have been one of the few left after the carnage that was Endgame.
 
I was shocked years after the fact when I first started noticing that a few people thought that the Borg had been killed to the last man in the final Voyager.

SHOCKED!
 
I feel this thread is heavily biased against Janeway and I think she is being treated unfairly. Don't get me wrong I don't agree with everything she has ever done. The murder of Tuvix and her decisions in Endgame being at the top of the list.

However, with regard to Equinox, she was in an impossible situation. Here was a Starfleet crew and captain who had gone against the highst moral principles of the Federation. They were murdering a sentient species and using their bodies for fuel! They had to be stopped under all circumstances. Voyager had no backup to pull this off so Janeway had to push the boundries of the law in order to prevent a gross injustice (committed in the name of Starfleet!!) from going unpunished.

Was her judgement clouded? Was she overly emotionally involved? Had she lost her objectivity? You betcha. But how could she not? This had nothing to do with being self-righteous and everything with the unspeakable atrocities that Ransom and his crew had committed. Anyone not angered by such behaviour seems to lack a sense of justice and morality in my opinion. Just think of the Nazis after WW2 and how many of them - even mass-murderes got away because the Allies were too concerened about treating everyone lawfully and civily (and I say this as a German btw). Evil must be opposed and when it presents itsself so blatantly as it did in Equinox or WW2 there has to be some kind of proportional response to make clear that such misdeeds are completely and utterly unacceptable.
 
I feel this thread is heavily biased against Janeway and I think she is being treated unfairly. Don't get me wrong I don't agree with everything she has ever done. The murder of Tuvix and her decisions in Endgame being at the top of the list.

Bingo! Although, I do agree with the Tuvix decision. :D

Guy, you sure do have a way of putting a spin on things but I need to pack for my sailing vacation so no time to go round and round this time.

Do behave yourselves while I'm gone. I'll be asking the admins to help out Akiraprise so don't piss any of them off. :)
 
I agree that Equinox -needed- to be stopped. But torturing (and in a worst-case executing) prisoners is something we expect from Khan or (evil) Klingons or Cardassians or other characters we're expected to consider reprehensible, not a Starfleet Captain. The only reason Janeway wasn't court-martialed and quite possibly stripped of her command immediately following those events was because she didn't need to report to anyone and none of her crew had the will (or, possibly, the moral principles themselves) to call her on it.

I can't even imagine the fan outcry if Picard had performed similar actions. His image might never have recovered...and neither should Janeway's.

Doing the best you can under extremely harsh situations isn't the same thing as remaining above reproach. To me, anyone who commits the actions Janeway committed deserves heightened scrutiny regardless of the ultimate outcome of their actions. Though of course the outcome should be -a- factor.

Of course, we have seen groups in Star Trek, and even within the Federation, that value outcome over actions.
 
It's hard not to laugh at the idea of a space-faring people who travel around in vessels bristling with armaments, which they are prepared to use on anyone who provokes them, NOT resorting to torture to learn vital information.
 
I agree that Equinox -needed- to be stopped. But torturing (and in a worst-case executing) prisoners is something we expect from Khan or (evil) Klingons or Cardassians or other characters we're expected to consider reprehensible, not a Starfleet Captain. The only reason Janeway wasn't court-martialed and quite possibly stripped of her command immediately following those events was because she didn't need to report to anyone and none of her crew had the will (or, possibly, the moral principles themselves) to call her on it.

I can't even imagine the fan outcry if Picard had performed similar actions. His image might never have recovered...and neither should Janeway's.

Doing the best you can under extremely harsh situations isn't the same thing as remaining above reproach. To me, anyone who commits the actions Janeway committed deserves heightened scrutiny regardless of the ultimate outcome of their actions. Though of course the outcome should be -a- factor.

Of course, we have seen groups in Star Trek, and even within the Federation, that value outcome over actions.

Was Janeway's decision to use torture in this case morally questionable? I suppose it was. However, she wasn't really comitted to the idea as she did not follow it through properly. Also, it changes nothing about the deep dilemma she was facing. She had to stop the Equinox no matter what the cost. So I doub't she would have faced a court martial over this. Maybe Starfleet Command reprimanded her after she was debriefed back home. However, behind closed doors I'm sure they recognised how much worse it would have been had Equinox gotten away.

In this episode Janeway had to make some tough calls. All in all I think she got through it with minimal ethical compromises and still managed to deliever the required outcome. I'm sure the Admiralty would be inwardly pleased about that.
 
Hey, it's not like we're talking Starbuck waterboarding a cylon here. Janeway was trying to intimidate Lessing into revealing info that would save the ship. Lessing had also participated in the murder of innocent aliens. Quite frankly I'm disappointed that Janeway didn't kick his genocidal ass down one end of the cargo bay then the other....
 
To be fair, Janeway never really tortured anyone in Equinox.
Her little scare tactic to have Noah Lessing talk was for the most part an effective threat.
Unless you would perceive that as psychological torture (then again, he was a participant in committing murder against sentient beings in the first place so he was essentially responsible for creating this 'weakness' or fear).

I suppose she wanted to demonstrate to Noah just how it is when you find yourself being the target.
But above all else, no physical harm came to him in the end.
Yeah, Chakotay interfered and prevented this from going further, however we don't know if Janeway would actually take things as far as allowing Noah to die.
 
Her little scare tactic to have Noah Lessing talk was for the most part an effective threat.

Yes, I think "scare tactic" is a better description of what happened.

Still disappointed about not getting to see an ass-kicking though...
 
Putting someone in a room with creatures that fully intend to kill him seems like a bit more than a "scare tactic" to me. Barring Archer, it's certainly not something we ever saw a Federation captain do previously...at least, not one who we were supposed to look up to.

I find it rather troubling that anyone would think that how "vigorously" we should be allowed to interrogate an already-incarcerated criminal should be dictated by the severity of their crimes, or that it's somehow okay to place criminals in mortal danger as long as they "probably" won't get hurt.

This sounds far more Section 31 than Starfleet to me.
 
I find it rather troubling that anyone would think that how "vigorously" we should be allowed to interrogate an already-incarcerated criminal should be dictated by the severity of their crimes, or that it's somehow okay to place criminals in mortal danger as long as they "probably" won't get hurt.
I would add to this list Deks seemingly proposing that only "physical harm" counts as torture, since whether or not physical harm is done to the prisoner is apparently what matters "above all else."
 
What about the fact that Lessing's actions, along with those of the rest of the Equinox crew, could be considered attempted murder of everyone on Voyager? The courts are very lenient in cases of self-defense, and the police are given much leeway in what they can and can't do or say to people who are suspects of serious crimes (they can lie to them, tell them have evidence the don't have, etc.). This was a matter of life or death to Voyager and its crew, don't forget. What we might not accept in normal situations is often forgiven when we are under duress, and I think Starfleet would see this as one of those times.
 
Putting someone in a room with creatures that fully intend to kill him seems like a bit more than a "scare tactic" to me. Barring Archer, it's certainly not something we ever saw a Federation captain do previously...at least, not one who we were supposed to look up to.

I find it rather troubling that anyone would think that how "vigorously" we should be allowed to interrogate an already-incarcerated criminal should be dictated by the severity of their crimes, or that it's somehow okay to place criminals in mortal danger as long as they "probably" won't get hurt.

This sounds far more Section 31 than Starfleet to me.

Look, Janeway wasn't torturing him because she is a sadist or for any other moral short comming (and as others have deftly pointed out he didn't even come to any harm). She needed answers to put a stop to a heinous crime that was being commited by Starfleet personell. She absolutely had to act. She had do everything she could to prevent Equinox from getting away. Lessing represented a solid opportunity in this context. I don't know what kind of an idealistic world you live in, but in this situation the legal rights of crewman Lessing weighed less than all the lives his crewmates were endangering. Or is it your opinion that Janeway should have risked letting Ransom continue with mass murder in order to protect Lessing's statutory rights?

It was one of those situations where you have a terrorist and a ticking bomb hidden in a major populated area. Do you pamper the terrorist in such a scenario and risk the death of thousands of inocent lives? No, of course not. You torture the guy, simple as that. It's not nice, it's not civil, but the alternative is potential catastrophy.
 
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It was one of those situations where you have a terrorist and a ticking bomb hidden in a major populated area. Do you pamper the terrorist in such a scenario and risk the death of thousands of inocent lives? No, of course not. You torture the guy, simple as that. It's not nice, it's not civil, but the alternative is potential catastrophy.
And it only ever works in entertainment. Torture does not work in the real world. Furthermore, what is the point in having any moral convictions or laws if you're willing to throw them away?
 
What about the fact that Lessing's actions, along with those of the rest of the Equinox crew, could be considered attempted murder of everyone on Voyager? The courts are very lenient in cases of self-defense, and the police are given much leeway in what they can and can't do or say to people who are suspects of serious crimes (they can lie to them, tell them have evidence the don't have, etc.).

This seems to be a fact that is overlooked by the "Janeway tortured that poor Lessing" crowd.

I still say Lessing should have had his ass kicked.
 
I feel this thread is heavily biased against Janeway and I think she is being treated unfairly. Don't get me wrong I don't agree with everything she has ever done. The murder of Tuvix and her decisions in Endgame being at the top of the list.

I love Janeway. It was really just the episode that irked me for some reason. Part of it was the whole Janeway thing. But the other part was how they(meaning Braga and how he wrote Janeway doing this) treated Chakotay. Granted, I really only like him whe he's fawning over Janeway but the fact that Janeway became so self-righteous that she dismissed one of her best friends, it just rubbed me the wrong way.

So in no way is this supposed to be just tagging on Janeway, because she's still my favorite captain. But the episode as a whole was what my intention was, yes, I did mainly use Janeway in my description but that was because I believe she should have been relieved of duty. But I didn't mean for this to just be tagging on Janeway. The episode, not Janeway herself. :)
 
It was one of those situations where you have a terrorist and a ticking bomb hidden in a major populated area. Do you pamper the terrorist in such a scenario and risk the death of thousands of inocent lives? No, of course not. You torture the guy, simple as that. It's not nice, it's not civil, but the alternative is potential catastrophy.
And it only ever works in entertainment. Torture does not work in the real world. Furthermore, what is the point in having any moral convictions or laws if you're willing to throw them away?

So you would do nothing? That is an utterly conceited attitude that reveals a certain indifference towards human life. I am aware that torture is problematic, morally reprehensible and does not necessarily yield reliable information. But it might. And that chance in such situations as a last resort should not be excluded.
 
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