How Would You Have Handled Contact With The Vidiians?

[M.A.C.O.]

That includes First Contact, which includes members of your crew having their organs harvested and distributed to someone else.

Yes the Vidiians are a tragic species. However, the Phage had caused a 2,500 year blight on the entire Vidiian population. Billions of lives. For the Vidiians to have survived as a civilization, they would've have to raid, harvest and murder hundreds of billions, if not trillions of other people to survive across the millennia.

Janeway let the first two Vidiians she encountered go, and with the exception of "Life Signs", every subsequent encounter with the Vidiians turned hostile.


So what would you do as a Captain of a starship?

Meeting an enemy with all deliberate force is the Romulan way, but in this situation, I think it would be warranted for Federation officers to appropriate it.

 

[φ of π]

I'd give them cloning technology.

 

[Refuge]

The Vidiians pretty much showed their true colors when they attacked Neelix and later with the scientist in 'Faces'. It was even creepy in Deadlock the way they systematically went about 'harvesting'. As Captain, Janeway had every right to use any kind of force necessary to fend them off.

Danara was decent enough.. but even she had to accept the direction her people had chosen.

It was like Voyager just quietly went on their way, knowing what the Vidiians had done and were still doing. That old prime directive comes in handy when you don't want to take on the fight on behalf of other civilizations. Perhaps holographic technology like what helped Danara could have helped them..

 

[somebuddyX]

I would probably do exactly what Janeway did, except put a few more holes in Vidiian ships.

 

[JasonJ]

I never understood how and why they couldn't have just cloned replacement organs... I mean, we can do that now; surely the Federation has that technology... if the Vidiians did not, we could have and should have shared it. Don't steal Telaxian lungs, just grow a new pair of Vidiian ones.

 

[Tracy Trek]

If you think about it. They practically had cloning technology anyway. The organs they stole from other races had to be modified (I'm assuming on the genetic level) to work and not be rejected by the Vidiians who received them. The first Vidiians they encountered who stole Neelix's lungs, they gave up the information that allowed the Dr. to modify the lung that Kes donated to Neelix.

 

[DonIago]

Perhaps the phage would tear through cloned organs so quickly as to render them effectively useless?

Put another way, given the Vidiian's advanced state of medical tech, it seems unlikely that cloning wouldn't have occurred to them.

 

[Refuge]

Perhaps the phage would tear through cloned organs so quickly as to render them effectively useless?

Put another way, given the Vidiian's advanced state of medical tech, it seems unlikely that cloning wouldn't have occurred to them.

Did they do something with the harvested (organic) organs to stop them from being affected by the Phage?

 

[M.A.C.O.]

Did they do something with the harvested (organic) organs to stop them from being affected by the Phage?

No. After a few hours/days/weeks the harvested organs would break down and or become effected by the phage as well.

The Vidiian harvest was never ending.

 

[Refuge]

No. After a few hours/days/weeks the harvested organs would break down and or become effected by the phage as well.

The Vidiian harvest was never ending.

It certainly made what might have been a race we could've felt sympathy for.. repulsive.

 

[DonIago]

I'm not entirely sure how you mean "repulsive" in this context.

 

[Akiraprise]

I'd have gotten the hell out of there ASAP. There wasn't much a lone starship could do other than to make itself scarce to survive. But I'd have given them a bloody nose on the way out for stealing Neelix's lungs.

 

[Refuge]

I'm not entirely sure how you mean "repulsive" in this context.

All that harvesting and how patch-work they looked. It was hard to feel much pity for them.

 

[DonIago]

So...they don't deserve pity because they're ugly, which is only because of the kind of medical emergency most of us probably can't even imagine?

 

[Refuge]

They deserved pity because they were ravaged by the Phage but their methods of fixing that.. and their hideous look made them repellent.

 

[DonIago]

So they would have been less repellent if they were being ravaged by the Phage and engaging in the same methods, but were easy on the eyes?

 

[Refuge]

That creepy scientist who stole Durst's face just about made be hurl. I can't help it. However they are still ethically disgusting in the first place.

 

[Prax]

So they would have been less repellent if they were being ravaged by the Phage and engaging in the same methods, but were easy on the eyes?

Yes, it's harder to sympathize with people who look so disgusting. And their looks are only topped by their deeds.

 

[LJones41]

No. After a few hours/days/weeks the harvested organs would break down and or become effected by the phage as well.

The Vidiian harvest was never ending.

Wasn't it revealed in late Season 5 that a think tank found a cure to the phage for theVidiians?

 

[DonIago]

I didn't realize that compassion should be limited to the beautiful...

Frankly I'm dubious that our own civilization would maintain it's already rather dubious, IMO, moral high ground if we were faced with such a pandemic.

The Think Tank did claim they'd cured the phage, though we were never given corroborating evidence one way or another.