...Cpt. Georgious violated the Geneva convention as well (mining the corpses of enemy soldiers before their retrieval)...
I don't remember if you were in the larger discussion of that event vis a vis war crime (though I assume you were): do you not put any weight to the fact that the portion of the Geneva Convention describing war crimes relating to messing with dead bodies specifically is related to its potential 'effects on civilians and non-combatants' and also specifically excludes actions against military targets?
...Condeming leaving someone behind for torture and death REALLY shouldn't be one of those cases where one has to argue about wether or not to condemn it...
In a civilised society something like that should be self-evident.
But as others have pointed out there are many, many debatable elements to this situation. It isn't just a cut and dried "leave to be tortured and killed" or "not". Lorca isn't just about to get beamed to safety where saving Mudd would be a given - there is torture, collaboration, potential traitors, military secrets, a war, an unsure escape plan, etc. etc.
...At the same time, the material is so one-note that it is maddening...
I don't see how you can describe Lorca as one-note. Surely the intense debate over his character should be proof that it isn't one-note: is he a hero, an anti-hero, a villain, an asshole, a pragmatist, a war criminal, remorseful, etc.? Doesn't sound one note to me. Now Landry, she was rather one-note.
And I agree with you, except in one instance. Star Trek. I think Star Trek should strive to show us things can be done the right way...Everyone's mileage may vary.
I agree, that showing how you can strive to do things the right way is a good thing. In this case, I think it is very clear from the debate that what is the "right thing" is uncertain.
One thing I would definitely recommend avoiding is having the characters always accomplish "the right thing" every time - it gets boring. Sometimes TNG and VOY fell into this. But that is a different issue.
That bothered me as well. Even when presented with scientific evidence for what was going on with the tardigrade, he still persisted in using it without even considering other options. I chalk that up more to his inexperience as a leader and, to be fair, his role as a "prey species" almost biologically and physiologically disqualifies him for command. You need a kind of aggression to be perceived as an effective leader. TOS' "The Enemy Within" showed that - when the hyper-aggressive caveman Kirk split off, nice, sensitive, thoughtful Kirk could barely function in the Center Seat. He recognized that both were needed to survive and to be Captain. Saru simply doesn't have that side. He's all-thoughtful, which is totally fine, but he should never be made to sit in the Chair. That, coupled with his inexperience almost screwed the pooch for all of them. Reading a list of names of the greatest captains who ever lived didn't help him at all, obviously, unless he spent the entire night going through their dockets to see everything they did to make them "great" in the first place. I don't think he had that kind of time.
I think the evidence on the Tardigrade was a little less black and white. Burnham and the doctor thought the Tardigrade might be sentient, but didn't have proof. What they could prove was a degradation in its health due to use of the spore drive. In a case where its sentience was certain, there is no way that Saru would have made the same choice. But since it wasn't yet known, in the balance Saru was willing to take a risk and, as he said, was willing to suffer the repercussions of his decision should it come to that. And afterward, he realized that he had probably made the wrong choice, and had pushed the boundary in the case of extreme need. That is why he apologized to Burnham and why didn't need to listen to the computer's assessment of his performance - he realized that he messed up and knows not to do that in the future. His whole story isn't one of a character making the correct decision, but making a hard one and learning from the results. Not every captain is expected to be perfect, let alone first officers. This is part of the story of Saru developing the traits, the decision-making that will make him an effective captain. And even if aggression were an neccessary component of being a good captain, I don't think you can say that Saru doesn't have any: in his recent interactions with Burnham he clearly showed dominance in making his orders and carrying them out. Just because he is a prey species, doesn't mean he can never fight back, or learn to fight back.
I think his action were motivated by his desire to save Lorca. What happened to Georgiou clouded his judgement. He was not going to lose another captain. He was certainly in the wrong, but I can understand where he was coming from.
Though this would have worked better if we had not heard in the last episode how Saru kinda despises Lorca...
I think it works better since we know he kinda despises Lorca. What is better dramatically: doing his duty to save his captain who he really likes, or doing his duty to save his captain even though he doesn't like him?
...Sorry, but again, I don't really consider that setup and execution very thoughtful or mature myself. It was a pat story to say something that should be obvious = Torture is a bad thing.
They didn't even try to go into the aspect that information obtained through torture is often unreliable and hard to verify (yes, Picard makes a pat speech - which is how TNG usually handles these subjects - but a more mature approach would be to...
First, I would take people (including the current President of the US) to this day debating the morality and usefulness of torture as prime proof that 'torture is a bad thing' is not obvious (at least not to everyone) and that creating a powerful dramatic presentation of it is not immature, unthoughtful, or unimportant (however you are characterizing "Chain of Command").
Second, the point of the episode wasn't to cover the unreliability of torture, but to cover other aspects of it - the self-justification, the demonizing or dehumanization required, etc. Not every aspect of every topic can be completely covered in a dramatic presentation that also has to set up a plot and tell a compelling story - they can be covered in academic papers. This also addresses the criticism about sending in the three-person team: there is some leeway that must be given to these shows because they don't all have the time and money to show a full spec ops team on the mission; for the purposes of getting the story on the screen, the Enterprise characters were considered the correct choices for the mission - the Cardassians even chose the wave technology specifically to get Picard suckered in. Complaining about our cast being sent on the mission is like complaining that something exciting happens and the Enterprise is the ship that is nearby that can help - of course it is or the mission would happen to some other ship and we wouldn't have it in this show.
Nemesis, too. Ain't that the fucking truth...
); but the Federation in this era is fight for it's continued existence, and is LOSING - so yeah - Starfleet is not above doing what they feel it will take to survive.
