So, would the Dominion War have been lost with Picard in Sisko's shoes?

Since this is all a matter of preference, there is really not much to discuss, I guess. You prefer the black and white moral code Roddenbury wanted. I quite enjoy the shades of gray in DS9.

 

Fair.

 

Well, he did do the best he could. Garak was counting on the SD Card getting damaged when he exploded Vreenek to convince the Romulans it was real.

The Cardassians and Romulans were not allied with the Federation. The Romulans were currently "neutral" in the Federations favor, and diplomatically were not at war, but they were not allied.

And yes, the Federations CIA Black Ops division AKA Section 31 did come up with the Changeling Virus, meant to exterminate a species that was hell bent on destroying them. Amoral and nihilistic, perhaps, but as they were not able to match them technologically, it was their only way to save the Federation and the galaxy.

 

Because the writers chose to write it so! If they had wanted to write more optimistic story, then there would have been other ways.

You cannot say that Picard could not have found a peaceful and moral solution. Of course he could have, that's what Picard does. Just like 'realistically' James Bond could not dodge all those bullets and survive all those explosions and stop the bad guys every time, but he does, because that's what James Bond does. This is fiction.

 

When you've read the background to the quote in my Sig line, come back so we can talk about how Picard's world was nerfed and how bankrupt and inauthentic Roddenberrys "ideas" were.

 

Star Trek has assumed for a long time every captain must find their no-win scanario. The only way out of it, is to cheat. Sisko's cheat was employed in the Pale Moonlight. Picard would have had to have cheated also, in that situation.

Picard didn't seem all that optimistic when he killed Ensign Lynch.

 

I certainly did not agree with Picard on 'Homeward', it is my absolutely most hated Picard moment, no arguments here. Still, my overall point about how conflicts were resolved in each series stands, and I prefer the (usually) peaceful and moral TNG way.

 

Well, Sisko's cheat involved having innocent third parties murdered. I say he failed. Whatever Picard would have done, it would not have been that. Kirk would not have that either.

Picard indeed went totally psycho in First Contact (not that there was a reasonable way to save the borgified crew members.) But the the narrative there was that Picard was wrong. It is not that the characters cannot ever do bad things, it is about how the story is constructed, whether the narrative justifies their actions or not. If there had been a follow up to the Pale Moonlight where the situation blows up and Sisko has to face what he has done, then it would have been way more satisfying. What we got was basically justifying a cold blooded murder.

 

The needs of the many. Sisko possibly saved trillions of lives. Of course he could live with it. Picard was not in a situation where he had to make that exact choice. Kirk was prepared to violate all manner of Starfleet regulations to follow wherever his moral compass or other appendanges were pointing that day, so I will disagree with you there. Admiral Anderson followed his Starfleet ethos and got most of his task force destroyed and at least one of his captains eaten.

 

For fuck's sake, this not about breaking some regulations, this is about murdering people! Sure, Kirk certainly broke rules, and so did Picard when it was needed. This is not about that. Kirk tried to save Kruge's life after Kruge had killed his son! If you think he would have some innocent third parties murdered you're out of your mind. And 'needs of the many' can only morally apply if it is 'the few' who themselves accept the sacrifice, like Spock did. You cannot go deciding that for the other people, or you might just as well start murdering people in order to harvest their organs to save more lives!

And again, this is fiction. The writers chose to write story where murder was justified. They could have written a story where said murder would have led to a catastrophe (by Romulans finding out and deciding to help the Dominion instead) or one where Sisko ends up saving Vreenak, thus gaining his trust, thus leading Vreenak eventually steering the Romulans to help the Federation.

 

There was no way that Vreenak could have ever been trusted. Admiral Ross understood this also. Cretak would only be useful up to a point, but would eventually turn on them when the situation no longer favored supporting the Federation, and so he had on some level supported Sec31's actions regarding him. Romulans had had centuries of conniving and untrustworthiness to show that the only way to get their help was to out-manipulate them, and it seems reasonable that for number of lives saved (Bashir's augment group had already run the scenarios), those few collateral losses were justifiable, if unsavory. To me, anyway.

 

Right. So you prefer a story where the hero murders foreign diplomats where I prefer one where the hero builds trust with them. You prefer a story where an old enemy is always untrustworthy, whereas I prefer one where we see that common ground can be found and enemies can become allies (like happened with the Klingons.)

 

The self same Klingons who then briefly went to war against the Federation again, during DS9.

I prefer a good story. Much of TNG was, when it wasn't trying to fart rainbows. I like the optomism of Star Trek. That's why I like it, but it got, for me, to be arrogant and unappealing by TNG. It's why for all its datedness, TOS's universe seems more realistic than TNG's. The show was trying to depict humanity into some post-humanity morality (oddly without really changing the species) bolstered by a post-scarcity economy. It was putting children on exploration ships. Much of it was overblown, a little was stupid. DS9 was the cure for TNG's hubris.

 

To be fair, perhaps I shouldn't have involved that episode. Writers are only human too, and they have to write their scripts against tight deadlines. You'll find such 'dark' spots in the characterisation of any major star trek character, definitely in any captain. In Picard's case, it's certainly not structural (or, as you call it, the 'overall narrative')- and in the end of the day, it's only fiction anyway, so it's not as if we have to call him to stand trial for what he did.

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Not entirely sure about that. Sisko is outraged when he first learns Vreenak is murdered - it certainly wasn't his intention. Then Garak tells him that "That's why you came to me, isn't it, Captain? Because you knew I could do those things that you weren't capable of doing."- after which Sisko accepts it -- grudgingly. We never learn for certain if Sisko actually thought that, or that he just "accepts" what happened.

If anything, one of the clearest messages of that episode is that it is very dangerous to start making tiny steps from what you inherently know is "right"- before you know it those steps have become much larger than you anticipated and you're in over your head. Sisko says so himself repeatedly in the episode.

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And who wrote that? The same people made the main character to commit a murderous conspiracy, that's who!

Whilst your comparison of TOS and TNG have some merit, DS9 certainly was not getting back to TOS. Both TOS and TNG have generally optimistic outlook and strong moral centre, both of which were in many ways abandoned in DS9.

 

I think you're missing the point here, they weren't innocent. Vreenek was from the Pro Romulus faction in the senate, he did not care how many humans died in their war. Cretak was certainly not innocent.
Did either of them deserve to be murdered in cold-blood, in order to win the war? I'd say no. But innocent they were not.

 

What the fuck? It was not their war! They put the interests of their own people first (as they perceived it), which may be callous, but at least they did not murder any outsiders! They were innocent for the conflict at hand.

 

They allowed the Dominion to use romulan space to stage attacks. They were complicit. The Federation would have been well within its rights to attack the Romulans.

 

That Dominion ships passed through Romulan space does not make the Romulans complicit, I'm pretty sure the Romulans didn't invite them.

 

Belgium could not allow French or British troops on their soil for any reason. Had the countries crossed into Belgium, they would either have had to attack or else Germany could have regarded it as a treaty violation. So yes, unless the Romulans opposed the Dominion, the Federation could have acted.