VOY: Repentance

[drewder]

My problem with the death penalty has less to do with the criminals and more to do with the executioners. I wouldn't wish that job on anyone killing a person, regardless of how justified it is, damages the soul in a very real, very invisible way. That person will live with that action for the rest of their life. They might not even know themselves how it affected them.

[Nealithi]

Lots to touch on here. First is Chuck's reply concerning understanding a point of view. He said it well on a comment of Spock's in a Taste of Armageddon. "I understand." 'I am glad you approve.' "I do not approve, I said I understand."

You get a serial killer, bomber, or school shooter. You want them gone. Not locked away with warm blankets and three square meals a day. Ended, once and for all. If a dog ripped out a child's throat the answer is not lock it in a cage for the rest of it's life. It gets put down.

I get that. The emotion, the sense that you are somehow rewarding, a killer.

All that said, Project Innocence. How many convictions overturned? How many executed have they found were innocent? Our country is based on the concept that we would see nine criminals go free, than to convict and punish an innocent man. We cannot have a proper system to determine truly beyond a reasonable doubt on so many of these crimes and reach a death penalty, while we have politics and prejudice in the system itself.

_____________________________________________________________________

To the episode itself. I feel that Neelix got the short straw here. Couldn't Paris or even Tuvok placed the call that got traced? The concept was to work the local judicial system by its own rules to save a life. So Neelix once again placed the crew in jeopardy, well hello Gilligan. The good story about repentance was watered down by the other parts of the episode. The only thing about this is, I don't think they could have told a compelling story on such a topic, In the allotted time. It is just too big a deal for such a short episode.

[CrypticMirror]

. So then you take a situation where someone shoots someone for pleasure in the middle of a crowd, there's never mistake from anyone that he's guilty;

Fifty years later, forensic tests on the killer's corpse found they were under an extreme hallucinogen. Fifteen people, including members of the victim's family, were later convicted of running the drug ring and spiking drinks. One confessed to their hope that the killer would get the blame in order to help them inherit. chung-chung

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

. So then you take a situation where someone shoots someone for pleasure in the middle of a crowd, there's never mistake from anyone that he's guilty;

Fifty years later, forensic tests on the killer's corpse found they were under an extreme hallucinogen. Fifteen people, including members of the victim's family, were later convicted of running the drug ring and spiking drinks. One confessed to their hope that the killer would get the blame in order to help them inherit. chung-chung

Yep it's just a big onion that keeps peeling. Still though you can maintain agency with the perpetrator and it's still not over yet.

[9ansean]

I don't know why exactly, but sometime about the way Neelix handled learning that prisoner he tried to help betrayed his trust with quiet dignity surprised me. Maybe because dignity is a word rarely associated without Neelix. During there last conversation where he's either given a new offer or just told we really are friends (I don't remember exactly), I would have been inclined to at least give the guy a parting fuck you. Not only does Neelix clearly not buy it, he doesn't need to say I don't buy. He just keeps looking disappointed and quietly walks away. Somehow I wouldn't have expected that from him.

Aside from that and Seven's Atonement issues there's not a lot about this episode that stood out for me. However, I'm not keen on Chuck's argument about needing say something new about a topic that already been argued for years and will no don't continue to be controversial for years to come.

Because really what arguments about anything issue haven't been made SOMEWHERE and SOMETIME before. Even if it's an old familiar song to me, it's sure to be new to somebody else. As far back as the book of Ecclesiastes it's been said history keeps repeating itself and there's nothing new under the sun. So what feels old is really more a matter of one's one familiarity. Not EVERYONE has seen ever iconic movie or tv show about capital punishment. If they have, there's surely some other topic they haven't seen dramatized multiple times. Maybe not even once.

Frankly I don't care if the message is has been told before so as much whether it's well delivered. While it's true that an ill-founded isn't going be saved be a good production and a well founded message isn't going to helped a bad production, it's rare that you find any messages that going to feel TOTALLY new. What's important isn't whether they have anything new to say. What's important is they found a new way to say it.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I don't know why exactly, but sometime about the way Neelix handled learning that prisoner he tried to help betrayed his trust with quiet dignity surprised me. Maybe because dignity is a word rarely associated without Neelix. During there last conversation where he's either given a new offer or just told we really are friends (I don't remember exactly), I would have been inclined to at least give the guy a parting fuck you. Not only does Neelix clearly not buy it, he doesn't need to say I don't buy. He just keeps looking disappointed and quietly walks away. Somehow I wouldn't have expected that from him.

While I agree that this is a rare magnum opus for Neelix's honesty, it's actually the sole type of situation that you can expect him to turn out in the show. He does it to his friend, but goes so far as to outwit him as a smuggler. With Tuvac he basically had to be humbled into the ground, but he turns around and judos it and leaves Tuvac flat on his back by the time he leaves the ship.

[CharlesPhipps]

Part of the issue with the "Death Penalty" episodes is their arguments are something that I feel actually obscures the actual problem because they're fundamentally not talking about the same thing as the reality. It's sort of like all the "racism" episodes where someone learns a valuable lesson about not hating green people and that it's all about growing as a person.

When, in reality, the biggest problems of racism are not individual problems but the system being designed to fuck over tens of thousands of people at a time via unfair laws, voter suppression, economic woes, and racial profiling.

Which, in simple terms, means, "It doesn't fucking matter if you're racist or one guy. The law is racist."

The thing about the death penalty episode here is it's all about, "Is it right to kill these obviously guilty individuals?" When that's not the argument, at least for me. The argument for me on the Death Penalty is so many people have been sent to death row for police malfeasance, biased juries, unequal application of the law, and making "examples."

They address mental illness here as the source of the dealth penalty (adding to the stereotype of "all mentally ill people are violent" when they're more likely to be victims of violence) but not drugs. They have the guy MAGICALLY cured by his doctor fixing his brain but not actually the RL fact of people who turned their life around in prison because they actually have been affected by prison reforming them. You know, what spme people want it to do.

Basically, "Repentance" has a lot to say but nothing USEFUL to say.

[Nealithi]

Part of the issue with the "Death Penalty" episodes is their arguments are something that I feel actually obscures the actual problem because they're fundamentally not talking about the same thing as the reality. It's sort of like all the "racism" episodes where someone learns a valuable lesson about not hating green people and that it's all about growing as a person.

When, in reality, the biggest problems of racism are not individual problems but the system being designed to fuck over tens of thousands of people at a time via unfair laws, voter suppression, economic woes, and racial profiling.

Which, in simple terms, means, "It doesn't fucking matter if you're racist or one guy. The law is racist."

The thing about the death penalty episode here is it's all about, "Is it right to kill these obviously guilty individuals?" When that's not the argument, at least for me. The argument for me on the Death Penalty is so many people have been sent to death row for police malfeasance, biased juries, unequal application of the law, and making "examples."

They address mental illness here as the source of the dealth penalty (adding to the stereotype of "all mentally ill people are violent" when they're more likely to be victims of violence) but not drugs. They have the guy MAGICALLY cured by his doctor fixing his brain but not actually the RL fact of people who turned their life around in prison because they actually have been affected by prison reforming them. You know, what spme people want it to do.

Basically, "Repentance" has a lot to say but nothing USEFUL to say.

Basically, you feel the guy Neelix was talking to should have been the focus, because he claimed he was a minority and his crime was actually non-violent?

[TGLS]

The argument for me on the Death Penalty is so many people have been sent to death row for police malfeasance, biased juries, unequal application of the law, and making "examples."

What, like the one on Disco?

[CharlesPhipps]

Basically, you feel the guy Neelix was talking to should have been the focus, because he claimed he was a minority and his crime was actually non-violent?

My response is going to sound insane. I think a better way to frame the "death penalty" message episode would have been to adapt one of the worst episodes of Star Trek in "A Matter of Perspective" (one that was oddly remade as Tom Paris) but neither of those episodes worked because it was a member of the main cast being accused of murder.

If I were rewriting this episode, the short version how I would have done it is they acquire the Death Penalty candidate on his way to execution and then throw in all sorts of irregularities. The evidence isn't great, there's problems of racial (species) profiling, the man was in a compromised state of mind at the time of the murder, and there might even be a case of self-defense (hell, even just an accident in the heat of the moment). Nothing that 100% says he's innocent but a lot of things that add up together that he could have been railroaded and even if he was guilty, did not receive his due in court.

And then after all of these hundreds of little things are brought together and presented to the court of the alien planet--at least enough for a retrial--the guy is executed anyway.

Because the system isn't about innocent or guilty. It's about setting an example.

That's how I'd do it.

Mind you - I just argued that this is why "Tribunal" was a great episode but even that isn't a great death penalty episode because Miles gets off--the system works even when it's railroading him.