Public perception of Star Trek?

[Kemaiku]

Sisko poisoned an entire planet of Federation colonists with a deadly toxin and Worf and Kira just sat there and went along with it.

And Kirk almost immediately takes a more cautious approach once he reached Kronos, standing down from firing the torpedoes.

Where as OldKirk ordered General Order 24 more than once, fully intending to have the Enterprise wipe out an entirely planet's surface whether he was on the ship to take responsibility or not. Killing millions of people who had no say in the issue at all.

NuKirk backing down from killing one man years earlier in his life gives him a clearer head and better sense of moral judgement than his prime universe counterpart.

Or maybe the Klingons planted a mind warping toupee on OldKirk early in the five year mission. Who knows.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Not every little detail has to be explained, nor is there a need to provide extensive "context" for every decision.

 

[AdmiralShran]

Where as OldKirk ordered General Order 24 more than once, fully intending to have the Enterprise wipe out an entirely planet's surface whether he was on the ship to take responsibility or not. Killing millions of people who had no say in the issue at all.

Kirk only gives it once that I recall - while they hold his ship hostage in their crazy genocidal wargame. It appears a lot of people are killed on these planets every day. They are habituated to mass murdering their own people and have been doing so for 500 years. General Order 24 is a perfectly fine application in this case - the interests of the Federation far outweigh some hostile non-Federation people who mass murder their people. Honestly though, this episode mostly exists to give a lesson in avoiding thinking of war as tidy, routine, or clean - General Order 24 is meant to raise the stakes to planet-wide level as Federation Personelle have absolutely not need or cause to respect their treaty.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

On the contrary, the Federation is involved in a war with the dominion. They don't need a rogue terrorist colony with WMDs causing trouble. General Order 24 still exists and Sisko is no more wrong to show the Maquis they're behavior won't be tolerated than Section 31 is to try to exterminate the changlings.

Both of these cases are people/species engaged in open hostilities against the Federation during wartime. I love Odo and I'm just as much of a fan of Bashir fighting Sloan to get the cure for Odo, but I don't believe either Sisko or Section 31 are wrong in this case.

We're going to have to agree to disagree when you're justifying poisoning planets and committing genocide. Good luck with that.

 

[AdmiralShran]

We're going to have to agree to disagree when you're justifying poisoning planets and committing genocide. Good luck with that.

Total war is serious business.

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[Locutus of Bored]

Total war is serious business.

Your argument, on the other hand, is not worth taking seriously.

 

[AdmiralShran]

Your argument, on the other hand, is not worth taking seriously.

If Section 31 were evil they would have killed Bashir long before he got to Sloan. They knew Bashir would never give the cure to the founders. Sorry, whereas it's nice to sit back and say it's all entertainment, the dominion causes tens of millions of Federation deaths and poses a long-term serious threat to all Alpha Quadrant powers. Section 31 is completely right to take the actions it does.

 

[M'Sharak]

@AdmiralShran You've got your quote attributions mixed up. I didn't say that.

Since I don't think AdmiralShran is able to edit his posts yet, I've corrected the attribution.

 

[AdmiralShran]

Since I don't think AdmiralShran is able to edit his posts yet, I've corrected the attribution.

I've been looking for an edit... I guess you have so much time before you can edit then?

 

[Franklin]

If Section 31 were evil they would have killed Bashir long before he got to Sloan. They knew Bashir would never give the cure to the founders. Sorry, whereas it's nice to sit back and say it's all entertainment, the dominion causes tens of millions of Federation deaths and poses a long-term serious threat to all Alpha Quadrant powers. Section 31 is completely right to take the actions it does.

If they thought there was any chance at all Bashir would talk, even a 1/25 of one percent chance, he'd have been toast.

So, you're problem with Marcus is he wants to start a war, but once the war is started, then anything goes. Is that right?

 

[M'Sharak]

I've been looking for an edit... I guess you have so much time before you can edit then?

I'm not sure where the threshold is on this new software, but I've seen a couple of other freshly-registered people comment that they were unable to do edits. You shouldn't have to do without it for too long, though; on the old software, it was something like two weeks & 28 posts.

 

[AdmiralShran]

If they thought there was any chance at all Bashir would talk, even a 1/25 of one percent chance, he'd have been toast.

So, you're problem with Marcus is he wants to start a war, but once the war is started, then anything goes. Is that right?

Depends. I don't think Kirk's extreme threats towards the "Taste of Armageddon" planet were unjustified.

Bashir does talk, a lot, about Section 31. My assumption is they'd just make him look crazy or something if he ever went too far against them. Then again, Bashir is also a regular so they can't just kill him no matter what he does.

I haven't been given any reasons Admiral Marcus thinks he should start a war with the Klingons. That's why Section 31 is kind of farcical in STID. It makes no sense for them to go out of their way to start a war unless you're locked into an American government conspiracy allegory in which case it makes sense. This is one reason STID is bad - it sacrifices internal logic for the political allegory which isn't even a good political allegory.

 

[Paradise City]

You may have done a better job describing him than I did, up to the point you then say you saw none of that in him. I meant no moral compass as in being convicted enough to a cause to do whatever it takes to win or preserve it. Any means justifies the ends. He does have morality in the sense that he believes the cause for which he compromises his morals is moral. He sacrifices his morals for the greater morality of the cause (if that makes sense). His take on "the needs of the many..." if you will.

He has no moral compass. His perverse Ted Bundy like joy in destroying the Enterprise is a case in point. He's a loony-toon. There's no real life equivalent in contemporary terms which is why the Marcus figure is so weak. Real monsters whom are a scourge on our political system aren't firebreathing caricatures, they're credible and thus drive close to the bone. Through some inexplicable reason the writers wasted the opportunity to create such a character. It frustrates me because the JJ coterie can write properly villainy if they put their mind to it.

 

[BillJ]

Depends. I don't think Kirk's extreme threats towards the "Taste of Armageddon" planet were unjustified.

One of my favorite episodes and it shows the Federation and Starfleet have no problem forcing their morality and rules on other worlds. Fox is there to force a treaty port on the area whether they want one or not. They sent him aboard a ship capable of leveling a planet. A not so subtle hint the Feds weren't going to take no for an answer.

The thing I love about TOS? We aren't perfect and we are learning our way. Kirk didn't start out amicable and understanding of the Gorn and what happened of Cestus III. He wanted revenge for the destruction of the colony.

That is where the Abrams movies seem the most TOS like to me. Kirk is human and makes huge mistakes before he figures things out. He orders the destruction of the Horta before putting it all together.

At the end of the day, I like my heroes to be flawed to a certain degree. Which is why I've tuned out much of the Berman series the further we move away from them.

 

[BillJ]

He has no moral compass. His perverse Ted Bundy like joy in destroying the Enterprise is a case in point. He's a loony-toon. There's no real life equivalent in contemporary terms which is why the Marcus figure is so weak. Real monsters whom are a scourge on our political system aren't firebreathing caricatures, they're credible and thus drive close to the bone. Through some inexplicable reason the writers wasted the opportunity to create such a character. It frustrates me because the JJ coterie can write properly villainy if they put their mind to it.

I'd say Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are both in the Marcus mode. Fire breathing caricatures are becoming more and more mainstream every day here in the US.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

I haven't been given any reasons Admiral Marcus thinks he should start a war with the Klingons.

Dude, seriously? You're harshing my mellow, man.
http://www.trekbbs.com/threads/public-perception-of-star-trek.277876/page-7#post-11437039
http://www.trekbbs.com/threads/public-perception-of-star-trek.277876/page-7#post-11437082

 

[Franklin]

I haven't been given any reasons Admiral Marcus thinks he should start a war with the Klingons. That's why Section 31 is kind of farcical in STID. It makes no sense for them to go out of their way to start a war unless you're locked into an American government conspiracy allegory in which case it makes sense. This is one reason STID is bad - it sacrifices internal logic for the political allegory which isn't even a good political allegory.

Here's your reason direct from the horse's mouth. This is what Marcus told Kirk when Kirk came to tell him Harrison was on Kronos. It was just before he revealed to Kirk what Section 31 is and why it was created by Starfleet:

"All out war with the Klingons is inevitable, Mr. Kirk. If you ask me, it's already begun. Since we first learned of their existence, the Klingon Empire has conquered and occupied two planets that we know of and fired on our ships a half dozen times. They are coming our way."

In his mind, all out war was just an escalation of already existing hostilities between the Klingon Empire and the Federation, formal or not. Not everyone in Starfleet may have held that opinion, but enough did to support and get authorization for the Vengeance to be built. And since it was almost certainly black budget, if most in Starfleet who knew about it knew only one thing, they knew it wasn't being built as a ship of peace. He also knew he wouldn't get the Federation government to vote for a preemptive war, so he needed a pretense to justify one, however small. In his mind, he's preventing the day when Klingon cruisers show up out of nowhere in Earth orbit. Who knows if he's right or not? But the model of the Vengeance sitting on his desk shows that the ship is known to exist, so at least most of why it's being built must be aboveboard and others fear the Klingons and their aggression, too.

The only true secret he was keeping was that John Harrison is Khan.

He doesn't need a conspiracy of Starfleet officers and Federation Council members to start a war, only a pretense. Public opinion and necessity would take care of the rest. Khan's flight and Kirk's pursuit provided him the pretense for war. It was dropped right into his lap because Kirk came to him with the plan to get Khan, not the other way around. But when Kirk felt a sudden pang of justice and changed his plan, then figured things out ("Well, shit, you talked to him."), it became imperative for Marcus to destroy the Enterprise and its crew to cover up what he did to Khan, then spin that into an incident that could get him his war.

 

[AdmiralShran]

the Klingon Empire has conquered and occupied two planets that we know of and fired on our ships a half dozen times. They are coming our way.

I guess they weren't Federation planets. The Federation has never come across to me as an organization that needed help justifying a war when they needed to go to war. It's not like they have a bunch of communists running their media spreading disloyalty or cultural relativism or something. :-)

 

[CorporalClegg]

Wut?

 

[Franklin]

Wut?

What he said.

I think that those who are stuck on the idea that STID is an allegory for 9/11 are not correct. If anything STID is an allegory for the Cold War in the 1950s and into the early 1970s, where anyone who lived through all or part of that time could say there were moments when it seemed war was inevitable, and some in the U.S. military did come up with preemptive war plans. It may be stretching the comparison a bit, but in a way, the creation of the Vengeance is not much different than the creation of the Strategic Air Command, which, coincidentally, was first led by Curtis Lemay. Those bombers could be defensive or offensive weapons.

If those who advocated "getting it over with" with the Soviets, or if one side did have a pretense to create a "hot" war and the two countries did come to blows, who knows what the world would be like now. But considering the war would be nuclear, the answer is probably, "Not good." Kirk is sometimes referred to as a Cold War liberal. A JFK type. In this movie, he's the cooler head that prevails. He doesn't like the Klingons any more than Marcus does, but he knows war is not the answer to how to deal with them.

In the prime universe, art imitated life in TUC with the peaceful end of the Federation-Klingon cold war (or at least the beginning of the end). Who knows, since Marcus was foiled and the Federation and Starfleet probably chastened by the event, there could be the same peaceful ending to the hostile Federation-Klingon Empire relationship decades later in the JJVerse.