How Would You Have Handled Contact With The Vidiians?

I can see the vidians getting to the point of genocode. They seemed to have no moral issue with killing someone to harvest their organs. They even have people who's job it is to find organs to harvest for someone. I have no doubt that of they thought it would help they would harvest every last man, woman and child of an entire species

 

Denara was a minority opinion and a moot force on her own ship, in Resolutions (the one with Janeway and Chak as castaways). For all we know, she was part of that whole lie of betrayal that came to threaten every single life on the Federation ship - and all the fresh planets in their database that the Vidiians had yet to discover. Yes, that is a distinct possibility. That we as viewers were offered more of Pel's perspective allowed us to sympathize with her, of course, and I'll admit she was probably earnest in her gratitude and admiration for the Doc - but there is most definitely a chance the whole thing was a front calculated to appeal to others' sympathy when one actually holds them in contempt. (But I do realize that cynicism is sometimes just as foolish as naivete).

Aside from that, the Fed is now dealing with the Vidiians collectively - who, for whatever personal opinions, collectively have become a hostile force. I would say sympathy for individuals here is unmerited and undeserved. I realize it is moral to "love your enemy" - to remember their "humanity" - but what about when that love enables the eradication of your entire philosophy and all who hold it, at the hands of predators wielding philosophical blunt instruments? How is it moral to lay down one's own life to feed a predator? It is not. The simple fact remains that collectively, Vidiians are killers. They have collectively rationalized mass murder to preserve themselves. Individual morality is moot - not by us, but by the Vidiians themselves. It is also moral not to "cast your pearls before the swine, only to be trampled to death for your trouble".

Would humanity fare any better? I have no doubt that there are plenty on this planet who would vampire innocents to prolong their miserable existence. There are also plenty who would choose not to surrender their higher being for a temporary stay of inevitable execution.

Objectification of intelligent life is ultimately a self-correcting problem. One wonders what price the Think Tank exacted from the Vidiians for curing the Phage. Their consitution or crown? Their recipe for goulash? An unending supply of virgin blood? Whatever the price - you know they paid it in full. Willingly. To a man.

 

Never underestimate the value of a good goulash recipe!

While it may not have been shown with regards to the Vidiians, I prefer to resist the urge to paint any species with a monolithic brush (the Borg notwithstanding (smrk)), and consquently prefer to assume that Voyager simply had the bad luck to encounter the (more) hostile Vidiians (and why wouldn't those more hostile ones tend to be the ones farther out from their home territory?), rather than assume that they are indeed all like that.

That doesn't free them from the moral implications of what they've become as a race, but I'm cynical enough in general that I try to embrace a kernel of optimism where I can.

Of course, if I were in Voyager's shoes I'd make every effort to avoid their territory, though I might ask my medical staff to at least see whether they might be able to make any headway on the phage. Probably a futile exercise, but it can't hurt to try.

As evidenced, I really feel TPTB dropped the ball on the Vidiians much as they did with the Kazon, in that by and large both species were depicted as unremittingly hostile, to the point of irrationality in some cases. I would much rather have seen the Vidiians portrayed as a species that, yes, in many cases had lost their way, but also had a significant number that were at least trying to find other ways to save themselves.

 

Them and the Sona had a lot in common. I wonder...

 

Sometimes I think Janeway made decisions based on the complication of what would happen, if for example she had two Vidiians in the brig for whatever number of light years away from their home, and, towards her own. Too hard basket. They saw her taking the high moral ground as such and by giving Neelix a usable Ocampa lung it was all neat and tidy for them to be freed. But you are right there was no goodwill exchanged toward Voyager because of it. In some ways that just highlights the lack of empathy and mindset of the Vidiians. I believe they would have pursued Voyager no matter what Janeway had done. The Klingon tissue and other Alpha quadrant genetic 'goodies' onboard they could harvest, just too tempting.

 

Thinking about this more, I wish we'd had an episode...perhaps a conclusion to the Vidiian arc, where Our Heroes met a (more) reasonable group of them, perhaps a group who saved Our Heroes from some other problem, and in exchange Our Heroes were willing to provide the Vidiians with genetic material of the entire crew.

If you want to make this more disturbing, let's say the Vidiians intended to use this material to clone the crew rather than directly harvesting them.

 

Be interesting if the Vidiians had pursued the Demon planet Voyager and crew..

 

While you may prefer to resist the urge to paint any species with a single brush, in order to discuss the show you have to take its premise; and Star Trek posits that in order to reach spacefaring capabilities, a planet typically undergoes a unification of a superceding global culture. This permits Trek's hour storytelling using aliens often as allegories for our own failings extrapolated into the future; rather than depicting actual alien societies, in all their subcultural or individiul variegations, the fiction actually depicts ourselves here and now. This stems from Trek's theatrical morality play beginnings. In such a case, it is perfectly reasonable to accept the Vidiians - or any Trek race - at face value for the purposes of storytelling. Yes, they could have delved into more diversity but that would have soaked the entire hour and told an entirely different story - about aliens and characters, and not really about us. Razzle dazzle.

Of course reality is messier. This is not reality. Accepting for the suspension of disbeleif alien homogeniety of purpose, that the Vidiian global culture has by and large accepted the practice of using their starships for poaching intelligent beings for their body parts, one can hardly be faulted for "painting" Vidiians as an unmitigated threat. Just as not all contractors on the Death Star may have been at all interested in galactic politics. Some of them probably just wanted to earn a living, go home and watch the holo. But they were not innocent; because they were willing participants in the benefits of non-representational, authoritarian usurpation - and they were not acting to take responsibility for their society - they were going along for the ride. And that's what they did. Straight to Hades.

The simple fact is that we never saw a single instance of a Vidiian bucking the trend in any significant way when it came to control of a vastly powerful starship. It was not individuals the Voyager crew had to contend with. It was the starships and secret subterranean prison hospitals. While there may be a few scattered moral Vidiians, they are irrelevant forces in their own society, let alone burden anyone else with the onus of sifting them out - in a firefight.

While some agree that in general, it may have been interesting to see Trek's aliens as something more than a homogenous bunch - one can suspend disbelief long enough to pay attention to the basic play without getting hung up on verisimilitude, gritty shakycam reality a la BSG, or the tedious cynical complexity that pervades popular episodic television these days. People get enough of that from actual reality, kthx. This has nothing to do with critical reasoning capabilities nor racial attitudes. For some, TV is an entertainment - not an oracle. Nor is it a college course in politically-correct tokenism, to vainly display how condescendingly tolerant we, of all people, are. People all-so often gloss over basic principles (aware or not) to focus criticism on cherry-picked nuances. To that argument I have a two word suggestion: Stargate: Universe.

 

So I watched The Phage yesterday. It's a really good episode! Everyone does a good job. I especially like the Vidiian servant and the way he says "They(Neelix' lungs)..are part of him now..."

I really like Janeway's speech at the end. And I rolled my eyes when she said "From what we can tell, your medical technology is far superior to our own."

C'mon Janeway. Don't say that!

Oh, and the episode ends with the EMH hhaving a nice moment with Kes. He says "You've given me a lot to think about."

 

That was a pretty good read. When you compare the morals and alien depictions from previous Star Trek series and movies, with Voyager and what will be Discovery soon, it's not hard to imagine that maybe modern aliens will challenge our heroes (naturally flawed) with today's filter. Star Trek is in its element when it depicts an alien culture as if it were a 'native' one from Earth, say in 'Tattoo'. No doubt Discovery will have aliens that seem like they are representing 21st Century minorities and current politics.

To me the Vidiians crossed the line of killing for organs and the fact that their victims were intelligent is meant to make it worse. 'Equinox' where Ransom slaughters what becomes defined as sentient beings, just non-humanoid.. basically for fuel, is a small insight into a handful of humans, coming from a 'Vidiian' like perspective. Except the alien critters are dehumanized, form and all to make it less uncomfortable viewing. I mean a Federation Captain doing that? Not good.

 

Yes indeed their medical technology was pretty advanced Nice reminder of how decent Kes was too.

 

Their weapon device was a bit like what was used on Picard in GAMBIT on TNG

 

Always thought they should have had an episode post-phage where we see them trying to rebuild their civilization and trying to repent but then having to deal with the consequences of all the pain they caused to others to survive.