Equinox and Ransom - were they justified in using aliens as fuel?

[T'Girl]

... but would she killed the aliens for fuel ...

Considering how blatantly against it she was in the episode I highly doubt it.

Depends on which of Kathryn's many personalities was home that day.

YES, she did change history, but she also saved lives of the people on her ship.

If that was her aim, then why not travel back to a point in time to prevent Voyager and the other ships from being taken to the Delta Quad? The Caretaker event killed 22 members of Janeway's original crew.

Not necessarily, their intelligence and ability to coordinate could indicate they possessed intellect of a pack of wolves.

... they talked to them through that alien guy ...

The creatures communicated in very basic concepts.

They want the humans to die
They don't believe you would harm your own kind
Give us the Equinox
They insist on destroying the ones who are responsible.
They agree

None of the communications through Ankari were beyond the simply thoughts of a animal.

 

[Guy Gardener]

If that was the limit of their ability to communicate I'd put them on par with a four year old human certainly but not an animal, (double )but we have no reason to believe that civilized beings on par with the Federation would worship idiots as gods.

I mean if the King James bible read like badly spelt chicken scratch because the authors were intellectually retarded monkeys, would anyone respect the primary character in that book?

 

[stj]

The creatures communicated in very basic concepts.

They want the humans to die
They don't believe you would harm your own kind
Give us the Equinox
They insist on destroying the ones who are responsible.
They agree

None of the communications through Ankari were beyond the simply thoughts of a animal.

I've seen children whose thought processes were about as sophisticated, but didn't think they were animals. People with hearing problems don't communicate so well either. There's something really wrong with claiming to really think that the subspace people weren't people. The subspace people just represent what used to be called "savages," technologically primitive peoples. Just sort of reimagine the episode to be set in Africa, with Janeway and Ransom as British officers.

 

[Guy Gardener]

eveyone in the 19th century was bon racist and didn't understand the concept.

Starfleet Officers are supposed to be the polar opposite, how they are built as human beings, and other beings, they don't understand how to be racist, speciest, it's literally like being colour blind and asked to write a dissertation on rainbows... In theory.

ALIEN [on viewscreen]: Disengage your engines and prepare to be boarded.
ICHEB: We should do as he says.
Q2: Why? Just because he has a bigger ship?
ICHEB: Because Captain Janeway has taught us to respect the laws of other cultures.
Q2: I should have known better than to bring you along.
ICHEB: You're going to get us killed!
Q2: Did you expect me to surrender? He might have locked us up for years.
ICHEB: You don't know that.

Isn't Icheb a child?

 

[horatio83]

Ransom obviously committed court-martial worthy crimes and Janeway obviously went too far as well.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Just becuase Ransom was going to be court martialed that's no Guarantee that he would have been found guilty.

Janeway on the other hand could be equally court martialed for the loss of the Equinox, and as the surviving Highest ranking officer involved in the destruction of that Star Ship, she has to be court martialed for the destruction of the Equinox, even though there's like a 99 percent certainty that she would be dissolved of any culpability, she has to be found innocent to avoid stink later on on down the road.

You know except for the fact that Janeway killed that crew on orders of a foreign power.

It wasn't an accident.

It was her job.

That's treason bud.

High Treason because of the Dominion War.

But that's never the less.

 

[R. Star]

According to some people who watched Endgame, Janeway didn't just bloody the Borg's nose, cripple or even decimate the Borg, she eliminated them entirely. After Endgame there is no more Borg, according to some people.

Weird huh?

But think of all those 10s of thousands of worlds which were destined for assimilation in the next few years that Janeway saved who are now free to be complete assholes. All the worlds that would have united in terror against the oncoming Borg are now free to kill each other and plunder the others resources without any more looming constant fear of assimilation.

Imagine the 1960s if America had had the bombs to spare to remove Russia from play as well after Japan was told what for?

Any change to history eventually given enough time effects every atom in the universe.

Didn't we get those same arguements after First Contact? That when Picard and Data killed the Queen, they killed the Collective?

So I know how much weight to give the arguement that future Janeway somehow destroyed the Collective. Really the whole concept of the Queen seems more a liability than an asset to the Collective considering how freaking insane and stupid she can be. The Destiny books did give a good explanation of the concept, better than the shows and movies.

 

[Guy Gardener]

If killing the queen ended the Borg, then sending her back in time is removing her from play as good as killing her, if a universe is going to hold strong with idiots poking sticks at its guts.

And really, shouldn't two Queens mean civil war?

Interplexing beacon my ass.

Unless of course if the Borg of that era hadn't yet assimilated transubspace communication technology yet?

 

[R. Star]

If killing the queen ended the Borg, then sending her back in time is removing her from play as good as killing her, if a universe is going to hold strong with idiots poking sticks at its guts.

And really, shouldn't two Queens mean civil war?

Interplexing beacon my ass.

Unless of course if the Borg of that era hadn't yet assimilated transubspace communication technology yet?

You're trying to apply logic and common sense to concepts like overuse of time travel and the Borg Queen. It never works.

 

[Lord Manitou]

The ethics behind the existence of the Borg is inside someone's mixed drink- like a manhattan or ahigh ball.
Ransoms' ethics-
If the creature is strange and comes from a strange land you don't make a place for it to call home but you kill it. Ransom was just killing something that was ugly and out of range of normal space-time. It was against his grain to form some sort of empathy with the creature. Janeway is well known for her successful cosmopolitan approach to anything under God (Janeway?). She is no more correct than Ransom is. In fact, one is playing-out a more wrongful edict than the other.---- But which one?

 

[Guy Gardener]

I think he would have still killed them even if they were humanoid and possessing a comparable technology and world view to his own.

Every three years the Doctor runs out of buffer space and has to graft onto his program another living hologram as equally sentient as he is like it/him/her were a bowl of his morning wheeties.

Dito with the Doctor on the Equinox maybe?

 

[Disruptor]

I would've ended the two parter with the Equinox getting home and Ransom turning himself in.

The debate being Ransom was willing to sacrifice himself and sentient lifeforms for his crew to get home, would Janeway do the same? Then we get the answer in ENDGAME, which is "yes".

So was the Equinox a reference to that old horror movie about the devil, the 4 teens in the woods, and that book?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Well obviously...

An equinox occurs twice a year (around 20 March and 22 September), when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth's equator. The term equinox can also be used in a broader sense, meaning the date when such a passage happens. The name "equinox" is derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night), because around the equinox, the night and day have approximately equal length.

...but you already knew that.

 

[Timewalker]

To answer the OP's question: HELL, NO!!! They were NOT justified in using sentient, self-aware PEOPLE as fuel! Not any more than using sentient, self-aware WHALES is justified today. I truly hope the Cetacean Bill of Rights goes through. Of course that means we'll have to stop dumping crap into the oceans and clean up the mess we've already made there, but maybe it'll make US grow up as a species!

Probably a good idea, given the supposed intelligence and sentience of whales is highly debatable, to stay on the topic of the episode. One debate at a time, and I'm sure there's room for a thread on that topic in the miscellaneous forum.

I was making an analogy.

BTW, I must be color-blind, because I don't see any moderator's font decorating your username.

To answer the OP's question: HELL, NO!!! They were NOT justified in using sentient, self-aware PEOPLE as fuel!

But would your objection remain if the lovely, harmless, gentle creatures were just that, creatures? A beast of the fields.

You mean, would I render a herd of cows for fuel? I can't claim to be vegan, as I do enjoy cheeseburgers, chicken, and fish. But while those are animals that are either domesticated for the purpose of providing food or are non-intelligent wild animals, there are still ethics involved.

 

[Guy Gardener]

If whales were overly well rounded intelligent "beings" then when the Probe said "should we continue exterminating humanity and the rest of the Federation?" the Whales which Kirk just brought back to the future should have replied "Execute every last motherfucking one of them!"

 

[Turd Ferguson]

I would've ended the two parter with the Equinox getting home and Ransom turning himself in.

The debate being Ransom was willing to sacrifice himself and sentient lifeforms for his crew to get home, would Janeway do the same? Then we get the answer in ENDGAME, which is "yes".

So was the Equinox a reference to that old horror movie about the devil, the 4 teens in the woods, and that book?

Admiral Janeway didn't really sacrifice herself to get Voyager home. In fact, she sacrificed everybody except for herself. Sure, she died infecting the Borg Queen with that virus, except, now she's cancelled out the future where she would go back in time to infect the Borg Queen with said virus and Admiral (Captain) Janeway gets to live out her life barking orders at Jean-Luc without having to ever worry about going back in time to help her younger self get home quicker.

On the other hand, all the other people in the future Admiral Janeway came from are all erased from existence, as far as we know. Maybe Miral Paris went from being an upstanding Starfleet ensign to hanging out with the Andorian Mining Consortium and dies in a spice mining accident, without the advice from Tuvok or Captain Janeway. Doctor "Joe" may not even get married now. The thing is, we don't know. Captain Ransom was guilty of murdering a small fraction of a race to get his crew home. Admiral Janeway was guilty of murdering an entire TIMELINE to get her crew home.

 

[R. Star]

To answer the OP's question: HELL, NO!!! They were NOT justified in using sentient, self-aware PEOPLE as fuel! Not any more than using sentient, self-aware WHALES is justified today. I truly hope the Cetacean Bill of Rights goes through. Of course that means we'll have to stop dumping crap into the oceans and clean up the mess we've already made there, but maybe it'll make US grow up as a species!

Probably a good idea, given the supposed intelligence and sentience of whales is highly debatable, to stay on the topic of the episode. One debate at a time, and I'm sure there's room for a thread on that topic in the miscellaneous forum.

I was making an analogy.

BTW, I must be color-blind, because I don't see any moderator's font decorating your username.

Yes, and I pointed out the flaw in that analogy being it was debatable at best.

And yeah, I'm not a moderator... just a guy with enough sense to suggest keeping this thread on the topic of discussing Ransom and Voyager instead of whales.

Heaven forbid you listen to a voice of reason if their name isn't in a fancy color(not font).

 

[Guy Gardener]

Reason is the enemy.

The conversation always finds it's way back to point without any bugger choosing to enlist as a threadnazi.

And Turd... Never for a second believe that come 2403 that Kathryn Janeway isn't going to be wracked with regret, and argue with herself until she accepts that if she cuts another two years off the journey that she can save Joe Carey and half a dozen more crewmen and frankly if Admiral Janeway could have gone back in time just one more year, then she could have saved what remained of Equinox's crew and stopped them from harvesting those space beasites...

If what Ransom what done was really that bad, she could have stopped him before he started, but 20 years after the fact, the Equinox was a whiff of a footnote no more atrocious in retrospect than that time Kim caught glowing Space herpes.

Hell she could have commandeered Equinox in the DQ 6 months before Voyager arrived and then shadowed her old ship saving crew and faking historically recorded deaths to maintain consistency to the timeline until she feels it's all above board, and it's time to reveal her presence which would probably be the end of season 5 when Voyager and Equinox were supposed to collide anyway.

But you're all forgetting the economic scandal with the Ferengi.

Janeway was probably involved and they were hours away from naming her as a conspirator which would have landed her in an Auckland press gang paying back society for being a privileged criminal ass.

If Janeway had fowled up her future, and will continue to make such a similar mistake where she has to chose between prison and time travel, well, certainly she's going to chose time travel every time rather than facing the consequences of her actions.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

If Janeway had fowled up her future, and will continue to make such a similar mistake where she has to chose between prison and time travel, well, certainly she's going to chose time travel every time rather than facing the consequences of her actions.

"Captain Janeway, why did you violate the Prime Directive and destroy the Array, effectively altering the balance of power between the Kazon-Ogla and the Ocampa? And let the record show the Captain is restrained and surrounded by temporal shielding..."

 

[stj]

Arguing that Janeway went too far means 1)you think she should not have pursued Equinox and 2)you think Lessing deserved protection from the relatives of his victims, even at the expense of killing more of the subspace people.

The only way these propositions are justifiable is if you think the subspace people do not have rights that humans need to respect. The subspace people were people. That was clearly showed. They were also showed to be what more bigoted times openly called "savages." Attacking Janeway is attacking her for not acknowledging the greater value of supposedly civilized peoples versus savages.

The really ugly part is that everyone actually knows on some level that's what we're talking about. Because if they really believed that the subspace people really were animals, then Ransom was a fool for not telling Janeway about the process, and Janeway was a fool for not using it too.