stj said:
MAQUIS: Your people abandoned ours to the tender mercies of the Cardassians. FLEETERS: If you didn't like living in the DMZ, why did you go to war instead of just moving out?
FLEETERS: Our ship, our rules. MAQUIS: Partly our ship too, now. If we never took Fleet training or Fleet oaths or signed up to be part of Starfleet, howcum we have to do everything the same as you? Plus which, has it dawned on you that maybe we're better at surviving in hostile space than you?
FLEETERS: We're professional service people, and we think like them. MAQUIS: We're mostly civilians, and we think like civilians. We only ended up in our Fleet because we saw a pressing need.
FLEETERS: We like to explore. MAQUIS: We're not really into that. Can we take a straighter route home?
Comments on each hypothetical exchange---
The Federation has the same right to dispose of colony worlds in a peace treaty that France had to cede Alsace-Lorraine to Prussia or Mexico had to cede California etc. to the US. Or were the Maquis inspired by the glorious British struggle to liberate the sheep herds of the Falklands/Malvinas?
The Starfleet way on a Starfleet ship is the only option. The idea that some space is more hostile than others makes no sense---perhaps some planets were meant, except that would have nothing to do with the ship in space? The notion that being cool outlaws makes you street smarter is a really tired cliche. It is especially stupid when there are no streets in space!
When the Maquis started a fleet, they became professional service people too.
And finally, there is no reason to think that the Maquis would be anything but ambivalent about heading straignt back into jail. Paris was open about his lack of desires to return to Earth. Chakotay was always ready to quit.
Which brings up the obvious possibility that the Maquis, by definition a bunch who had burned their bridges behind them, were really imported into Voyager so that the crew wouldn't be a bunch of people down all the time because they were suddenly ripped away from their ordinary lives.
The premiere introduced two main cast characters, Kes and Neelix, who are just along for the ride. The only Starfleet characters who have happy personal lives they miss were Janeway, Tuvok and Kim. Sure enough, they weren't always happy campers. Except the Vulcan Tuvok wouldn't be a downer and the captain has to keep a stiff upper lip.
Getting lectured about emotional truth by people who can't see something that obvious but prefer nonsense about Maquis/Starfleet conflict does get rather tiresome.
The stuff about saints in paradise suggests that the real objections are to humanitarianism. To start with, I don't see how anyone could confuse the Voyager characters with saints in the first place. To continue, I don't see how being mean suckers is going to make the trip any shorter. And to finish, the idea that technological doesn't affect a society's mores is astoundingly ignorant.
The topic is how the show might have been improved, not silly cliches that would have made it much, much worse.
