Most morally questionable act by a protagonist?

We've seen characters do many things we may not agree with, but which moment evoked the biggest "What the hell??" or "That's not right!" reaction from you? Obviously, I'm only talking about moments from the "good guys" which the show portrays as the "right" thing to do.

I've included what I think are the most notable moments, though other people may have their own, which is why I've included the "Other" option. I'll assume everyone here is Trek-savvy enough to know the contexts of each of these.

My personal choice is Janeway in "Equinox, Part 2". Mostly because she seemed perfectly willing to let the aliens kill Lessing and it was Chakotay rather than her who put a stop to it. If I were Chakotay, I would've thrown her in the brig and assumed command right then and there.

 

It has to be Sisko conning the Romulans into entering the Dominion war, resulting in thousand of Romulan lives being lost.

 

Riker's murder of Yuta in "The Vengeance Factor". He was in communication with the ship, and could have had her beamed to the brig any of several times when she was weakened by his stuns and had to take a moment to regroup. But instead he keeps ramping up his weapon until he disintegrates her!

 

Didn't Archer torture a prisoner?

 

What Sisko did to get them in the war was very morally problematic, but I don't think that getting them in the war in the first place was wrong. That's like saying that, if you were in the position to try to bring USA into the World War Two, you shouldn't have done it because there would be many American lives lost, nevermind that the opposite might mean the Nazis winning the war.

I voted for what Sisko did in "For the Uniform", because the stakes there were much lower.

 

Tie between Janeway murdering Tuvix and Riker murdering the clones.

 

I voted for when the Enterprise refused to help save those people that Worf's brother managed to smuggle on to the ship's holodeck (forget the episode). I'd however vote for the below too if it had been multiple choice.

 

Oh yes, I hated that. Although they eventually did save them, as far as I remember. But up to that point, I was so annoyed with Picard, that was the worst possible example of rigid, absurd, stupid interpretation of the Prime Directive.

 

They saved them, but only after Worf's adoptee brother had forced them to do something besides stand back and watch.

 

Other: Admiral Janeway time travelling to the past and changed 20-odd years of history.

 

Janeway murdering Tuvix still sticks out in my head, even though I haven't seen that damn episode in ages.

 

Sisko poisoning an entire planet just to catch one guy, killing probably thousands of innocent civilians in the process (there was no way everyone escaped in time). Seriously, how he got away with that and NO punishment is just absurd.

 

While I find all of the acts morally questionable, the one that I find to be the worst is Sisko poisoning the planet. I had always sympathized with the Maquis position in regards to the Cardassians, but Sisko's actions made me consider that they might have had a point about the Federation as well. I think the only reason Sisko didn't face a court-martial over that was because of his position with the Bajorans. (Bajor would never join the Federation if their Emissary got drummed out of Starfleet in disgrace.)

Honorable mention goes to Janeway's interrogation of Lessing. I was glad Chakotay stood up to her, and I was disappointed in Tuvok for backing down.

 

Janeway killing Tuvix was a definite WTF morally ambiguous moment.

 

Ransom murdering numerous sapient hyperspace beings to render the corpses into fuel, in Equinox. And, yes, Ransom was equally the protagonist of Equinox, which was designed for parallels between the two captains.

Chakotay and Tuvok being cool with Ransom continuing his killing spree was contemptible too.

Janeway's personal worst was threatening to turn over a teenage girl to state security of a tyrannical regime (in The Chute.)

 

Gul Skrain Dukat's alliance with the Dominion. He basically sold out his people and the entire AQ for his own glory, true there is the argument that Cardassia had become a third rate power after the worthless Klingons had invaded and that the people were staving in the streets of Prime but still the man should have known what the Dominion was about.
Plus his actions forced Sisko's hand with the Romulans.

Goddamn Traitor

 

I voted for Tuvix.

I would add as a category, Kirk deciding that a bunch of happy people on a planet was bad, and that their happiness needed to be destroyed. ("Paradise" "Archons" "Apple" and others I can't think of OTTOMH.

 

ThorDamar, I understand that, as a Cardassian, you have a different outlook on things, but Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was written and produced by Terran Humans for a predominantly Terran audience, and as such, its protagonists were people from Federation Starfleet and their allies from Bajoran Militia who constituted the personel of Terok Nor after it fell into their hands. Therefore, the Cardassians and Gul Skrain Dukat in particular were never considered protagonists of the show. Some would even use the word antagonist.

 

Janeway's murder of Tuvix was done for selfish personal reasons and therefore for me trumps Sisko and Garak getting up to no good in defense of the Federation.

But how many more Romulan lives would have been lost if they'd stupidly decided to remain neutral while the Dominion prepared to attack them?

Anyway, I'm in the school of thought that Vreenak had his enemies in the Senate who 1) knew very well what happened on DS9 (either they had direct intel or they deduced the general situation - I cannot fathom Romulans being so dense that they wouldn't have any inkling of what happened) and 2) were happy to keep their mouths shut because they had the same opinion as Sisko and Garak.

The Rommies join the winning side late enough in the game that they don't get mussed too badly vs their dimwitted allies, and will use this information against the Federation in good time. Works out nicely for them, huh? So typical of Romulans.

 

I don't know about the killing of thousands. For one thing, we don't know how many settlers there were (we've seen colonies of a few dozen or so), the Maquis are more than space-capable, and importantly, nothing of a death toll is mentioned on screen, which is very crucial to Trek storytelling as a whole. Keep in mind that earlier in the episode, Eddington escaped Sisko b/c Sisko was forced to save a Cardassian ship, so Sisko killing civilians to catch one man would be very inconsistent within the episode.

Rather, I think polluting the entire planet, and the later confession that Sisko never waited for Starfleet approval to bomb the planet, are both much more solidly controversial than the hypothetical situation of Sisko killing thousands with no inference. We have concrete proof of the first two, no proof of the third. That's why for the past ten years, points of debate with episode in the fandom focus on the first two points as opposed to any supposed civilian deaths.