"...one crew, a Starfleet crew." Really...WHY?
- Thread starter Gotham Central
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It's a Karma Houdini. They commit genocide on innocent aliens without any remorse, and in the end they get to go home and live happily ever after without any negative consequences.
It's also why I don't like "Pale Moonlight" that much, Sisko's character should have been different after doing something like that. Writers' fumbled, bad.
It's also why I don't like "Pale Moonlight" that much, Sisko's character should have been different after doing something like that. Writers' fumbled, bad.
And... what if they depict the murderers as being apprehended and imprisoned for the rest of their lives?
I would argue that Sisko was a different man after "In the Pale Moonlight," but that the change was subtle.
I doubt the victimized survivors of their genocide would think kindly to that. "Ah, your people killed almost all of us out of pure selfishness and amorality. No bother, you go and do whatever you want with them, we don't care if you just put them in a cell and nothing else."
And besides, you were one of the ones arguing that locking up the Maquis wasn't an efficient solution. So why bother locking up the Equinox crew when it's just as inefficient?
Not really, he became an awful hypocrite actually. All that blather about how the dream will never die in "Far Beyond the Stars" and then he went and destroyed the dream himself.
That doesn't answer my question: If a work of art depicts a genocidal or mass murderer as being apprehended and imprisoned for the rest of his life, is that work of art depicting genocide as being okay?
For two reasons, neither of which apply to the Equinox crew members:
1. The Maquis made up a third of the crew. The Equinox crewmembers would have been superfluous; Voyager didn't need any Equinox crewmembers so long as it had the Maquis.
2. I don't think what the Maquis did was wrong. I think the Federation was wrong to hand over their homes to the Cardassians. I argue that in doing that, the Federation violated the social compact, thus releasing those Federates living on those worlds from their legal obligations of loyalty to the Federation government and rendering their subsequent rebellion against the new Cardassian would-be rulers and against the Federation perfectly legitimate.
Really? He destroyed the dream? That's an awful extreme position, isn't it? He was an accomplice to murder; he didn't commit genocide. Hardly the right thing to do, but to equate that with mass murder seems disproportionate to me.
And why is it okay to kill a mass murderer or war criminal but not okay to unintentionally kill someone in the course of engaging in a covert operation to gain an ally necessary to defend the entire Alpha Quadrant?
If a work of art has them captured, and then nothing else happens to them nor is their any sort of restitution to the victims, then yes I think they got off easy.
It would've been like Dukat simply being marooned on some random planet no one knows about to live off the rest of his life without anyone coming after him. And no one would care enough to go after him
As for the unintentional murder thing, said mass murderer/war criminal had done things to merit the death penalty whereas said other person didn't.
Sisko got away with too damn much in DS9, and in the end he got a karma houdini of his own by becoming a God.
Funny, people say Archer/Janeway got a Houdini for their actions but nobody brings up Sisko's own houdini acts.
It would've been like Dukat simply being marooned on some random planet no one knows about to live off the rest of his life without anyone coming after him. And no one would care enough to go after him
As for the unintentional murder thing, said mass murderer/war criminal had done things to merit the death penalty whereas said other person didn't.
Sisko got away with too damn much in DS9, and in the end he got a karma houdini of his own by becoming a God.
Funny, people say Archer/Janeway got a Houdini for their actions but nobody brings up Sisko's own houdini acts.
Belanna may have left the Academy after one year but the experience she learned in the Maquiz made her a damn good engineer enough to become Voyager's Chief Engineer.
Chakotay was a officer before he left Starfleet to join the Maquiz,so that they had both starfleet training and were alble to use Starfleet equipment and computers
Chakotay ran his ship like a Starfleet ship, BUT his ship his crew acted on there instincts and when it had to be done.
I think that the friction was forgotten by the later seasons. But when Voyager became a mixed crew ship Chakotay's crew were out numbered plus if they wanted to get home there would have to be a bit of give and take on both sides ,in the end they all got home-minus the ones who got killed when Voyager/Maquiz Ship was scopped up from the Badlands and desposited in the Delta Quadrant and also the ones who got killed during the transit back to Earth
Chakotay was a officer before he left Starfleet to join the Maquiz,so that they had both starfleet training and were alble to use Starfleet equipment and computers
Chakotay ran his ship like a Starfleet ship, BUT his ship his crew acted on there instincts and when it had to be done.
I think that the friction was forgotten by the later seasons. But when Voyager became a mixed crew ship Chakotay's crew were out numbered plus if they wanted to get home there would have to be a bit of give and take on both sides ,in the end they all got home-minus the ones who got killed when Voyager/Maquiz Ship was scopped up from the Badlands and desposited in the Delta Quadrant and also the ones who got killed during the transit back to Earth
But there were people on the ship (ie Lt Carey) who were fully trained in the SF systems and what-not.
What would have made a more interesting dynamic would have been the obviously smarter Torres forced to take the lead from the more regulation orientated Carey...
Though we have seen in other series that Civilian Federation Tech works on much the same level as SF tech...
Source?
But they were maquis, being outnumbered is pretty much their status quo...
Where is your source that he didn't? Chakotay's problem probably wasn't with Starfleet per say, but with Federation Policy. Now Starfleet enforced that policy, but that isn't to say that even Starfleet agreed with it 100%. Even Admiral Nechayve understood the Maquis position.
You are all assuming that Chakotay was forced to abide by Starfleet regulations, but the truth is we don't know that, and the decision to become a Starfleet crew could have just as easily have been his as anyone else's.
There really is no direct proof of anything related to Trek, only interpretation.
Brit
I didn't ask if they got off easy, I asked if you think that a work of art that depicts them as being imprisoned for the rest of their lives for their crimes is saying that committing that crime is okay by not depicting something worse than life imprisonment as happening to them.
Personally, that sounds like a fine punishment for Dukat to me -- especially since Dukat's ego is such that it would probably drive him mad that no one cared enough to go after him.
Mass murder merits the death penalty? Really?
And to think, I thought part of the point of Star Trek was that they'd renounced the death penalty.
I for one never had a problem with seeing Janeway and Archer commit morally ambiguous acts.
Yes, because then we just see them in their jail cell going "Nyah-Nyah! I killed a few species but all that happened to me is that I'm in a jail cell! Can't do nothing to me now!"
Sometimes you just have to go for Karmic Death.
I have to wonder why you're so against genocidal, heartless maniacs being killed off.
That's karmic death, he'd kill himself in that case. I'm talking about a horrible character who does evil things and then nothing really bad happens to him in the end.
Yes.
Which is why Karmic Death exists as a storytelling device.
Would you have less problem if it was Sisko or Kirk pulling such acts? Because those two get a pass for everything.
Well, there's the episode where Chakotay punches someone and calls it the Maquis way...
I think that's an absurd interpretation. What if the intent of the story is to advocate the use of life imprisonment for mass murderers and genocidal monsters rather than death while still condemning mass murder and genocide?
I'm against the death penalty, mostly. If someone has to die in the course of undertaking a mission to defend the state during a time of war, then that is sometimes acceptable. But in general, I'd rather that stories feature mass murderers be captured and imprisoned; I believe in the social compact, in the necessity of the state to protect life and punish evil-doers, and I prefer to see stories in which the state mets out the punishment that I believe murderers deserve.
I strongly disagree with the idea that life imprisonment equals nothing really bad happening to them.
From the POV of storytelling, the only captain that I have a problem with doing something morally ambiguous (under most circumstances) is Picard, and that's because his commitment to a higher morality is so much a part of his character that I think it would be out of character to see him doing such things. (The exception to this is when he's dealing with the Borg -- the Borg are Picard's moral blind spot, in my view.)
So, no, I had no more of a problem with Janeway torturing the Equinox crewmembers or Archer stranding the Illyrians than I did with Sisko tricking the Romulans into joining the war.
Now, from a moral POV, I don't think that their morally ambiguous acts are always justified. But that's not because of who they are, but because of the circumstances surrounding their choices. I feel that Janeway was immoral by torturing the Equinox crew, but I feel that Archer was justified in stranding the Illyrians because the clock was running out on saving Earth from the Xindi. I believe that Sisko was justified in doing what he had to do to trick the Romulans into joining the war, but I think that he made a deeply immoral decision by sending Rugal to live with Kotan on Cardassia instead of allowing him to stay with his adopted Bajoran family.
And it's fair enough to say that you think a character ought to be killed off, but that doesn't mean that any story that doesn't kill off a character such as you describe is actually depicting mass murder/genocide as being okay.
If Chakotay ran his ship like a Starfleet one, Tuvok wouldn't have needed to whip part of his crew in shape and explain Starfleet rules & regulations to them in "Learning Curve" or th fact that they said flat out "they'd do their part on the ship but wanted nothing to do with Starfleet rules."
He could have been making the opposite point: that the Maquis way *doesn't* work, since all it does is lead to crewmembers beating the crap out of each other when they get mad. It could simply have been a bit of sarcasm on Chakotay's part.
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