You would rather they potter along at subspeed, miss meeting Degra and have Earth blown to bits by the Xindi weapon. When one is at war, one does not 'act nice.'
We could've had the First Asian Female Captain, but no....
- Thread starter Kamen Rider Blade
- Start date
This is a too-familiar and wholly illogical, evasive attempt to rationalize a bad story choice.
It's a made-up story.
The writers can set it up any way they like. Story choices reflect values.
If the themes of the story express poor values, it's not because of any decisions the characters are "forced to make" for some higher purpose. It is a failure of the writers.
Period, full stop.
How is it a failure, exactly? This universe is under no obligation to give us morally palatable or even acceptable options. Should a fictional universe follow different rules?
You've got implicit assumptions operating here, I think, so let's make them explicit. Why can't Archer be put in a position where committing piracy is the most moral option available?
You've got implicit assumptions operating here, I think, so let's make them explicit. Why can't Archer be put in a position where committing piracy is the most moral option available?
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Archer with a disabled ship in the middle of the Delphic Expanse was his Kobyashi Maru. The writers COULD have given him easy options but they didn't. The show was trying to portray a situation desperate enough that humans would still have to rely on their lower natures to get some things done. Otherwise, they might be, as the alien entity in Contact statated be, "Too good to do good"
To put it another way, the needs of a species outweigh the needs of a small survey ship from another species.
To put it another way, the needs of a species outweigh the needs of a small survey ship from another species.
What's the problem with the story logic? You didn't actually criticize the logic; you criticized the values.
I agree that the writers can do anything they like. They liked putting Archer in that position. What's the problem with them doing that?
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I would rather not seen a story about justifying war crimes in Star Trek. Especially during the time it was aired. If a message was needed then, it was not that, it was 'even in desperate times we must uphold our values.' This sort of 'hard men making hard choices' shit is something I utterly despise, especially in Star Trek.
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That's not what that phrase means... and I'm sensing a pattern here.Hey you're the one who introduced being funny in the definitionQuote you " characteristics one expects from a hero, but carried to a hilariously excessive degree"
And here's the funny thing: when Archer threatened to suffocate the alien captain inside the airlock in order to get his cooperation there were lots of posters on this board who shit a blue streak about it and kept criticizing Archer as a monster for forgetting his Starfleet ideals and almost turning into a murderer. I don't remember too many of us letting Archer OR the writers off the hook for that act so I don't know where this newfangled storywriting purity is coming from within the Trek universe.
Both sides got lambasted for that episode's choices and whether or not you agreed with Archer's decision that doesn't let anyone off the hook for a series lead threatening to murder somebody in cold blood just to get the information he needed. Every Trek character has a choice, as do the writers.
What they really need is one of those "I made a hard choice for the greater good" story to play it straight, and then drop the bomb halfway through that the choice turned out to be completely unnecessary and the "hard man in a difficult situation" committed an atrocity because he didn't know what the hell was going on and hadn't taken enough time to find out.
Honestly, it's not even an issue with war crimes in the modern context. For instance: a Federation starship finds a cloaked Klingon vessel near Federation space and evidence suggests the Klingon ship is fitted out for espionage. He destroys the ship to keep it from delivering its intelligence back to the empire, thus preventing a major invasion of a nearby colony (whose defenses he happens to know are weak). He justifies his preemptive attack to Michal especially, saying that she was basically right at the Binary Stars and that the Vulcan Hello really is the best way to go... until it turns out the Klingon ship wasn't fitted out for espionage at all, that what he thought was a surveillance vessel was actually a colonization ship and the vessel he destroyed was full of civilians looking for a place to live. The only reason they were cloaked is because they had no weapons to defend themselves and were trying to sneak away without being fired on.
Now, is it a reasonable assumption that a vessel belonging to a warrior race probably has a purely military purpose? That's a rather good question for Star Trek, but it's not a good question for Starfleet. "Context is for Kings" was the slogan for a manipulative psychopath who thought himself the future King of the Universe; such an episode would probably be titled "Long Lived the Kings."
I'd watch that. But episodic TV typically won't let the main characters make this kind of error, unless we're heading into Breaking Bad territory, presumably out of the fear of undermining them (There's a reason Ellison's original "City on the Edge of Forever" ending didn't happen.)
DS9s "Things Past" came close to this, although past Odo wasn't really seeing the choice as hard.
DS9s "Things Past" came close to this, although past Odo wasn't really seeing the choice as hard.
As Sisko said its easy to be a saint in Paradise or from one's armchair
Starfleets ideals such as blowing a planet to bits as Kirk would have done in TOS
Sure, quote an another war criminal...
Does not make his statement erroneous
It's the sort of justification war criminals tell themselves.
You've got to try to follow the original argument, okay?
Speaking of non-arguments, this is one.
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