“Equinox” is one of my favorite episodes for a variety of reasons, but mainly because it creates a “mirror” ship against which we can measure both Voyager and her crew. It also shows how important it is to have a captain who attempts to maintain an ethical and honorable attitude no matter how dire or desperate the situation might be.
Everyone concedes the fact that Ransom committed murder by luring the little subspace beasties into normal space, allowing them to die, and then using their bodies to fuel his ship. This crime, alone, is enough to condemn him to court martial and removal from command, IMHO. However, this is just one of a long list of crimes that Ransom commits during the episode. Before we can compare Janeway’s actions to Ransom’s, it’s important to create a detailed “rap sheet” of his offenses. There may be more, but this is a good start.
1. Cold-blooded murder of sentient beings (the reason doesn’t matter—murder is murder).
2. Bold-faced lies to Janeway and the Voyager crew about why the beasties are attacking his ship (and we know that the truth is a Starfleet officer’s “First Duty”), including lying about why the engineering section is “off limits.”
3. Refusal to submit to the direction of a superior officer (insubordination) when Janeway orders him to abandon his ship.
4. Theft of the shield emitter that had been designed by Voyager’s crew to protect both ships from attack.
5. Refusal to come to the aid of Voyager while it was under attack (a serious offense, since they are required to respond to distress calls, even from enemy ships).
6. Plotting to destroy a Starfleet ship by obtaining its command codes and hampering its ability to defend itself.
7. Attempted murder of Seven of Nine by the EMH (whose ethical subroutines had been altered).
8. Attempted murder of Voyager’s entire crew by making them vulnerable to attack.
9. Failure to adhere to Starfleet and Federation policies regarding interaction with alien races.
Now let’s deal with Ransom’s motivation. The Equinox was in bad shape. Its crew was starving to death; the ship was nearly dead in space. In such a serious situation, what is a
Starfleet officer supposed to do? To defend Ransom’s actions, one must accept the premise that “the end justifies the means” is both logical and ethical, which it is not. If it’s a choice between survival by murder or death by starvation, a Starfleet officer wouldn’t hesitate to accept the “honorable” death, because the lives of the aliens are just as valuable as that of the crew. By choosing to murder the little beasties, Ransom and his crew have, in essence, stopped being a Starfleet crew and have started living by the indefensible policy of “live and let die.” They have sacrificed any rights they might have had as Starfleet officers.
We must also remember that Janeway has no idea whether or not Voyager will survive this situation. We, as jaded Star Trek fans, know from the opening scenes that Voyager is going to sail off at the end, but Janeway hasn’t read the script. All she knows is that the survival of her ship and crew depends upon her. She also feels more than a little guilty about all that has transpired, because she trusted Ransom and believed that he was still an honorable Starfleet captain (which, of course, he was not). She’s been made a fool in a duplicity that may result in the loss of her ship and the death of 147 people. Naturally, she’s going to be pissed off.
As if that isn’t enough, the episode also lets us see the importance of good leadership by putting the two captains in an almost direct comparison. Ransom disables the EMH’s ethical subroutines and has him begin to lobotomize Seven of Nine in order to allow them to continue to use their grisly power drive (which Seven has encoded). Janeway drops the shields from around the cargo bay to subject Lessing to attack, hoping to force him into revealing Equinox’s tactical status. What is Ransom’s motivation? He wants to be able to continue to murder and exploit the beasties while he leaves Voyager vulnerable to attack. What is Janeway’s motivation? She wants to stop Ransom and end the attacks. However, neither Seven or Lessing suffer permanent damage.
We can look at how the two crews react to their captain's actions, however. Ransom’s crew might feel a little bad about Seven, but they shrug it off as another concession to expediency. They are so far from their “moral center” that they no longer see any other lives as equivalent to their own—not even the loves of other humans, much less the poor beasties. This is the direct result of Ransom’s unethical and immoral leadership. Janeway, on the other hand, is confronted by her first officer and tactical officer when she tries to “cross the line.” They realize that her actions are fueled by righteous indignation and stop her (even though it would only be poetic justice for Lessing to die from an alien attack). Janeway manages to find an equitable solution to the problem she and the beasties share. While it might seem cruel to target fellow humans as she does, we have to remember that they are not just criminals, but traitors, as well.
Ultimately, Janeway manages to avoid making any big blunders, but she’s hardly perfect, which is just another point in her favor, IMHO. I like that she has come so close to forgetting her ethics and morals, because otherwise she would really be an insufferable goodie-two-shoes. She realizes how easy it is to “cross the line” and is grateful to Chakotay for his efforts to help her. Contrary to what someone said, she does apologize to him on the bridge when she admits that she almost went too far. Trust me, that is more than many commanding officers would ever admit. We can only assume that they discussed the situation in greater detail at a later date.
I really enjoyed Diane Duane’s novelization of this episode. She does a great job of examining many of the issues that this fascinating episode addresses.
If any of you are still reading this, all of it is MHO, of course.
) and putting her own health at risk for the sake of her crew is not at all "stooping to Ransom's level".
