Spoilers Screen Rant: Star Trek: Discovery just commited war crimes

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Discovery' started by CardassianAssassin, Sep 28, 2017.

  1. Agony_Boothb

    Agony_Boothb Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 3, 2009
    Location:
    Melbourne, Australia
    People need to stop carrying on as though 90's trek was the apex of virtue. It wasn't. Let's use Deep Space Nine as an example. Captain Sisko basically allowed two men to be murdered so he could manipulate a sovereign power into going to war. He also used biological weapons on civilian targets. I can understand Sisko getting away with the first example but the second should have seen him fronting a court martial. For the Uniform is a horrible episode because Sisko is depicted out of character as a petty man who will resort to using biological weapons of mass destruction over a personal vendetta. His actions are totally unbecoming a starfleet officer and his crew just go along with it. If people want to cast stones at 'atrocious writing' and morally questionable actions by starfleet officers, how about they cast them at 90's trek first?
     
    Unimatrix Q and Longinus like this.
  2. OpenMaw

    OpenMaw Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    May 26, 2013
    Location:
    Everett, Washington
    No.

    As others have stated, this was an active battlefield. The Klingons demonstrated repeatedly they were not trust worthy on any level, and, what seems to be forgotten is the starbase and nearby colonies that were now open to attack.
     
  3. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Aug 26, 2003
    Tricking the enemy is certainly one of those bits that has been generically dropped from the list of war no-nos. Our heroes have no objections whatsoever to flying a false flag or wearing a false uniform, and doing so and getting caught does not affect their odds of getting killed in any discernible manner. And our villains always pretend to be on missions of mercy (even if actual red crosses have gone out of fashion), yet when caught they ever face any music about that particular thing.

    It's easy to see how this thing could go out of fashion. Trickery is only banned out of fear of counter-trickery, not because of ethical considerations, and folks on Earth have agreed on a certain level of trickery at which they are happy to wage war against each other. That's after millennia of experimentation, though, and it's not over yet. Are submarines war crimes? A century ago we decided they are not, because the resulting balance was acceptable to everybody who had a say. Are ICBMs? Not yet. But gases and poisons are. Kalashnikovs aren't. Land mines just became. Etc.

    So Trek does well to keep the discussion going. Atrocious writing has always been the most effective sort!

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  4. BigDaveX

    BigDaveX Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Jun 1, 2016
    The article in the OP seems to be holding up the original plan that Georgiou and Burnham came up with - using a worker bee to deliver the warhead, but requiring whoever delivers it to sacrifice their lives - as the "noble option." But if we apply the ethical standards of modern-day warfare to both scenarios, then the article is decrying booby-trapping a corpse... in favour of carrying out a suicide bombing on a ship which has ceased active hostilities.
     
    Noname Given, Philip Guyott and Tosk like this.
  5. EyalM

    EyalM Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Jun 14, 2007
    Location:
    Haifa
    The banning of some practices\tactics or weapons have nothing to do with trickery. Most laws are there to defend non combatants and civilians. That is why gases and poisons are prohibited, since they hurt indiscriminately (not that is stopping many countries today). Disguising yourself as medical personal is prohibited not because it's trickery, but because it can lead to real medical personal being hurt. That is why mines are acceptable in some places (land), but not others (sea, where they can drift and hurt civilians).
     
    Longinus likes this.
  6. Wulfsa

    Wulfsa Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Feb 21, 2017
    Location:
    Austria
    I dont think it was a war crime, it was just a good idea to kick t´kottonmouths ass on the battlefield...

    Opportunities multiply as they are seized. - Sun Tzu
     
    KirkusOveractus likes this.
  7. Serveaux

    Serveaux Fleet Admiral Premium Member

    Joined:
    Dec 30, 2013
    Location:
    Among the sellers.
    Yeah, that's why the Klingons were the bad guys.

    Come on, it's not that difficult.

    Seriously, people, this shit"s good enough? :shrug:
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2017
    BillJ and jaime like this.
  8. Long Syntax

    Long Syntax Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Apr 22, 2015
    It gave me a laugh reading through "war crimes" arguments. Silliness.
     
  9. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Aug 26, 2003
    Well, no. Soldiers couldn't give half a shit about civilians, which is why carpet-bombing of worthy targets is still perfectly okay. Rules of war exist only to stop others from doing unto you what you weren't quick enough to do to them first, and to manage escalation.

    No. Gases and poisons are prohibited because they are not good weapons. Nukes are not prohibited because, while they are much worse in dishing out indiscriminate damage, they are good weapons. Gases don't kill soldiers and stop armies with sufficient efficiency and cruelty. Tactical nukes do.

    More specifically, it can lead to your medical personnel being hurt. Killing all the medics of the opponent would be a great thing, because he would then drown in not-quite-dead corpses. But medics are soft targets (you could arm them to the teeth and have them drive around in tanks, but they still stop and debus at the most inopportune places and spend lots of time motionless next to a lot of other motionless people), so there's inherent advantage to declaring them off limits on both sides. And, consequently, immense advantage to exploiting them for trickery. And, consequently, immense risk of getting caught on such things.

    Again, this is limited to where they can hurt the ones writing the rules. Land mines are bad for civilians (if used in areas where there are civilians - many a border/frontier minefield is devoid of civilians), but great for soldiers (who have tricks for dodging and means of protected passage). Sea mines only hurt people at sea, and as a first approximation, there are no people at sea. But there are expensive warships at sea, which is the reason for the ban on sea mines. That, and the fact that the usual halfhearted mine-clearing methods applicable on land that provide safe passage for troops while leaving civilians one-limbed aren't applicable at sea.

    The actual legal texts usually include lots of lies about the motivations, and they make for an amusing read for the morbidly oriented. They pertain to a specific state of international balance of forces, of weapons technology and of doctrine, though. Expect no stability or predictability there, then.

    Kirk is a soldier. There are certain windows of context that allow us to peer through at him and see a hero. Those windows move, though. We can keep on moving to compensate, but Kirk no longer moves on screen. It's fortunate that the writers knew not to take his heroism too seriously, though, as "Errand of Mercy" where he rants and raves about his right to wage war nicely disabuses the audience of such ideas. Perhaps the modern Trek heroes ought to get ridiculed for their moral values preemptively, too? That is, even before their moral values grow grossly outdated.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
    Agony_Boothb likes this.
  10. Serveaux

    Serveaux Fleet Admiral Premium Member

    Joined:
    Dec 30, 2013
    Location:
    Among the sellers.
    It should be noted, today, that any poster who suggested this week that current international laws concerning war crimes are not of active concern as guiding principles for Starfleet in the 23rd century was mistaken.

    Michael Burnham explicitly states their importance in "Context Is For Kings." The writers go so far as to indicate that they've been added to since our time.

    So, yeah, the crew of Shenzhou committed a war crime.
     
  11. GeekUSACarl

    GeekUSACarl The Last Starfighter Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Dec 2, 2016
    Location:
    Phoenix Arizona
    Yeah and it looked real badass too.
     
  12. Tuskin38

    Tuskin38 Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2011
    They did commit a warcrime, but the writers might not have known it was one.
    I think this is something we just need to ignore and handwave away.
     
    Mad Jack Wolfe, BillJ and Serveaux like this.
  13. BigDaveX

    BigDaveX Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Jun 1, 2016
    And that very same scene also indirectly explains why Starfleet and indeed any other military force would have hardly bat an eyelid at the whole thing: context. For one thing, a captain's first responsibility is to his or her crew, and it's hard to blame Georgiou for not wanting to take the risk that when he had finished collecting the corpses, T'Kuvma would either slaughter the survivors or take them prisoner. And for another, T'Kuvma had lured the Federation into an ambush, then attacked the admiral's flagship under a flag of truce, so he kinda lost the moral high ground by default.

    Assuming Georgiou had survived the mission, odds are Starfleet would have called a hearing into her actions... and then either acquitted her, given her a slap on the wrist, or somehow found a way to lay the blame for the whole thing on Burnham.

    As an aside, I wonder how people would have reacted if the episode had taken the VOY/ENT solution to the problem in having Georgiou and Burnham argue the moral cases for the "suicide bombing" and "sabotaging a corpse" plans respectively... before having Saru come up with a technobabble solution to let the two beam aboard the Klingon flagship with no trouble.
     
  14. Spider

    Spider Dirty Old Man Premium Member

    Joined:
    May 23, 2004
    Location:
    Lost in time
    Have you noticed where you're posting? ;)
     
    Mad Jack Wolfe likes this.
  15. XCV330

    XCV330 Premium Member

    Joined:
    Sep 24, 2017
    Location:
    XCV330
    Technically the photon thingy wasn't actually IN the Klingon body, it was just nearby in the tractor beam.

    "If it's in the beam, you MUST redeem"
    -Space Johnny Cochran
     
  16. XCV330

    XCV330 Premium Member

    Joined:
    Sep 24, 2017
    Location:
    XCV330
    I am starting to get a hypthesis though.
    Returning a body in Broken Bow put humans in contact with the Klingons which resulted in all sorts of trouble
    Returning bodies to the ship at the Battle of Binary Stars resulted in the destruction of the primary ship.
    Maybe after a few of these incidents the Klingons just decided "you know what, bodies are just empty shells and taking care of them is a tactical weakness. We're not doing complicated funeral rites anymore."
     
  17. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jan 30, 2001
    Location:
    America, Fuck Yeah!!!
    Makes me wonder why Saru, the second officer, wasn't also charged with a war crime?
     
  18. Serveaux

    Serveaux Fleet Admiral Premium Member

    Joined:
    Dec 30, 2013
    Location:
    Among the sellers.
    This is the most honest answer to this that I've seen.

    Agreed, the writers probably just didn't know what they were doing in this instance. That's really a shame, but it's water under the bridge at this point.
     
    cultcross and Mad Jack Wolfe like this.
  19. Tim Thomason

    Tim Thomason Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    May 27, 2009
    Location:
    USS Protostar
    There were two Geneva conventions noted, the 1928 one (actually 1929), which as I understand it has been replaced by the 1949 convention in OTL, and a fictional 2155 convention. It's very possible that the Klingons, becoming insular and reeling from the viral infection, signed the convention with United Earth, perhaps to prevent either government from weaponizing genetic warfare again.
     
    SpocksOddSocks likes this.
  20. Noname Given

    Noname Given Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    May 22, 2001
    Location:
    Noname Given
    All Miilitaries commit breaches and what would be considered 'War Crimes' all the time in the heat of battle during wars. It's usually the victors who (after the war ends) determine what happened and what level of punishment is appropriate.

    I don't think what they did was all that egregious given the situation nor do I think it falls into the category of really 'mutilating a corpse'. they did cut the body open and plant the warhead inside; or beam the warhead inside the body. They beamed it onto the surface of his body armor/uniform. It was a booby trap, yes.