Janeway vs. Ransom?

[Yukaphile]

Was watching "Equinox," and I found it a bit distressing that SF Debris seemed more upset with Janeway than Ransom. Granted, she's willing to let civilizations die over the Prime Directive, but that's a case of inaction rather than directly getting your hands dirty with mass murder, and these ARE, need I remind you, intelligent lifeforms. And he cited "The Siege of AR-558." You know me. I'm the kind of person who refuses to accept harsh conditions justify atrocities. Rape, murder, these are conscious decisions human beings remain in control of and can choose not to do. We're not slaves to our impulses. As haughty and arrogant as Janeway was, and as much of a hypocrite as she was later proven to be in Part 2, I think she was right to wanna punish Ransom over that. Would be more convincing if she wouldn't let civilizations die herself, however.

[clearspira]

Was watching "Equinox," and I found it a bit distressing that SF Debris seemed more upset with Janeway than Ransom. Granted, she's willing to let civilizations die over the Prime Directive, but that's a case of inaction rather than directly getting your hands dirty with mass murder, and these ARE, need I remind you, intelligent lifeforms. And he cited "The Siege of AR-558." You know me. I'm the kind of person who refuses to accept harsh conditions justify atrocities. Rape, murder, these are conscious decisions human beings remain in control of and can choose not to do. We're not slaves to our impulses. As haughty and arrogant as Janeway was, and as much of a hypocrite as she was later proven to be in Part 2, I think she was right to wanna punish Ransom over that. Would be more convincing if she wouldn't let civilizations die herself, however.

''You know me. I'm the kind of person who refuses to accept harsh conditions justify atrocities. Rape, murder, these are conscious decisions human beings remain in control of and can choose not to do. We're not slaves to our impulses.''

That's because you've never been genuinely starving in a survival situation with your friends dying all around you. You've never had those starving and dying people look to you for leadership. Its very easy to sit in an armchair sipping coffee and pass judgement on the desperate.

[Madner Kami]

''You know me. I'm the kind of person who refuses to accept harsh conditions justify atrocities. Rape, murder, these are conscious decisions human beings remain in control of and can choose not to do. We're not slaves to our impulses.''

That's because you've never been genuinely starving in a survival situation with your friends dying all around you. You've never had those starving and dying people look to you for leadership. Its very easy to sit in an armchair sipping coffee and pass judgement on the desperate.

That is coming from the same person that would happily brainwash everyone who disagrees with him and who condemns entire nations for what a few of their forefathers did in an extreme and dehumanizing situation. Not really thinking things through and preaching black-and-white morals while disregarding circumstance is kind of his schtick, if you ask me.

As for Ransom versus Janeway. Ransom was straight out fucked from the get go. Flying basically a glorified shuttle, there was just flat out no hope to ever come back to home and yet they tried. This is commendable. His downfall is not giving up on this goal, when it was not tangible to reach it without compromising his entire moral orientation. Even given their inferior situation in Equinox, compared to the already limited Voyager, they should have had enough bargaining chips to get themselves into a situation where they can live a happy life with any of the major civilizations of the Delta Quadrant. Instead they opted to catch a clearly sapient lifeform and torture it to death to get ahead a few more lightyears. Repeatedly. This is an atrocity and he needs to stand trial for that action.

On the other hand, we have Janeway. Who does basically the exact same thing when she deals with the Borg and who, argueably, does similar or other minor atrocities at other times. But she does not have the excuse of flying Equinox. She gets a crew of 150 people and a true Starship.

I know who is worse. Especially considering that one regrets his actions and chooses to pay his life as penance in the end and in so doing, gives those who followed him over the moral event horizon a chance to redeem themselves, while the other is made an Admiral for her actions.

[Yukaphile]

"Dehumanizing" is just fancy code for "lost control of themselves." The worst things people do, they still have autonomous control of themselves. And they didn't do it because of some nebulous brain disorder, but because in many cases, it's as George Carlin said, it was fun, "just a bunch of bad guys looking for a good time." I can sympathize with long suffering forcing you to make hard choices. I can't sympathize with you escalating that to inflict the most brutal inhumanities possible on unarmed innocents. And that people still seems to wanna treat the innocents as criminals and treat those actually committing said crimes as somehow victims of brain trauma just astounds me. They have that reversed. Are people really so stupid? And I'll ask you this. If "brainwashing" makes someone legitimately happy and that person has their best interest at heart, and just provides them a very rich and meaningful existence, is that so wrong? It takes away their free will, but free will sucks. People do horrible things of their own volition.

I feel as if Ransom's crew should have been let off easy. Janeway deciding to drag them into his punishment was going too far. I wanna set that straight. It's like what Nick Locarndo did in "The First Duty" where he took all the blame, and Starfleet Command accepted that. But then, this is what Janeway does all along, makes a "moral decision" that either goes against or follows the rules, because she has an "I know best attitude," and while many of those don't line up with basic human decency, this kind of does, but this again ties back to what I said above, about escalating things to inflict your anger or pain on others who have nothing to do with it - like in Part 2 where she tried to murder an unarmed person.

Bottom line is, I think it would have been best if she had put Ransom into confinement to quarters like she'd done with Suder, and then let his crew become part of Voyager. Or hell, even given him to those aliens for punishment. And then... you have two ships. That's a worthy asset. The big problem here is Janeway is very inconsistent, so in a vacuum, I agree with her decision to wanna make sure Ransom faces justice - not taking into account the times she's done similar to what he has. But again, she takes it too far by wanting to involve his crew. And I do agree with what SF Debris said about how she backed him into a corner. It's even more ludicrous given she absorbs his crew into Voyager in the end anyway, so... what the hell? This is what I dislike about her lashing out, what I condemn in others here and in the past as well, in war and in peacetime, and that you still don't get about me. That hurting others simply as a means of stress relief, like a man hitting the bar and coming home to beat and rape his wife, is something I CAN'T CONDONE. Which is what Janeway does.

[Mindworm]

Was watching "Equinox," and I found it a bit distressing that SF Debris seemed more upset with Janeway than Ransom. Granted, she's willing to let civilizations die over the Prime Directive, but that's a case of inaction rather than directly getting your hands dirty with mass murder, and these ARE, need I remind you, intelligent lifeforms. And he cited "The Siege of AR-558." You know me. I'm the kind of person who refuses to accept harsh conditions justify atrocities. Rape, murder, these are conscious decisions human beings remain in control of and can choose not to do. We're not slaves to our impulses. As haughty and arrogant as Janeway was, and as much of a hypocrite as she was later proven to be in Part 2, I think she was right to wanna punish Ransom over that. Would be more convincing if she wouldn't let civilizations die herself, however.

Was watching the review last night, on a Voyager binge at the moment, and I would say it's more a case that Chuck is upset that while both do horrible things that should be condemned, the writers portray Janeway as the good guy solely because she is the point of view character. All the bad stuff she did, all the questionable decisions all the downright evil stuff, that's all portrayed as the right and proper and above all moral thing to do because she is the designated hero of the series. No justifications made, no nuance or anything to show that they thought the whole thing through (hell, even the stuff she does which contradicts the "reasoning" behind the other stuff she does, e.g. allying with the Borg after having a whole episode dedicated to the idea of "alliance with Delta quadrant species is wrong").

Yes there is a certain amount of analysis going on in the review, which if looked at in the right light and imo with a good bit of squinting, could be considered justificaiton of Ransom, it's more along the lines of "Ransom was in this really horrible place, with everything falling apart and him failing to keep shit together. You can see why he took the easy, wrong and flat out evil choice". It's not really a justification, more of an understanding.

And Chuck is not annoyed over Janeway's wanting to punish Ransom, he's annoyed that she takes it so far that Ransom becomes her White Whale. Oh, and her wanting to punish him has definitely got a fair chunk of Janeway realising "I've done so much evil in the world how can I wash it off?" and then transferring her failings onto Ransom.

[Yukaphile]

It's also that Janeway is inconsistent. On that I agree. You could fill a whole book with how inconsistently written she is. I mean, while Picard stood by and let a whole planet die in Season 7, at least he had the decency to try and offer a heartfelt speech, and he felt grateful they'd saved them. Yet, is that so far removed from how extreme Janeway got under the writers' approach? At least he was softened more. She was so uptight and cold when she said the robots should die because it's natural that how are any average viewers supposed to care about her? They really needed better writers. It's the same approach in "Flesh and Blood." Present her as a bigot, bend over backwards to justify her in the script.

[Riedquat]

That's because you've never been genuinely starving in a survival situation with your friends dying all around you. You've never had those starving and dying people look to you for leadership. Its very easy to sit in an armchair sipping coffee and pass judgement on the desperate.

That just says that many of us would be no better, not that some behaviour even under harsh circumstances still doesn't justify condemnation.

I'll need to rewatch the review (and preferably the episode since I don't think I've ever seen it, although sometimes things blur between which ones I've seen and Chuck hasn't reviewed and vice-versa) but IIRC it left me with the impression that Ransom had crossed the line.

[Yukaphile]

I'm speaking not of making hard choices under long suffering, but escalating that to inflict massive suffering equal to or greater than your own upon helpless and unarmed innocents often completely irrelevant to your own problems. That's what I was referring to.

Oh yeah, definitely. I feel as if Ransom should have been confined to quarters as Janeway intended, but forcing that upon his crew? Please. Especially since at the conclusion, she didn't do that anyway. But then, that's the Magic Reset Button.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

It's been a while since I watched the review, but I agree with mindworm. I think Chuck's reaction has more to do with Janeway being cast as the hero in most cases. We're expected to treat Ransom and characters like him as wrong, so it can be off-putting when Janeway gets sanctimonious and preachy despite her hands being dirty.

If it were intentional on the part of the writers, it'd be pretty great, but sadly they seemed to be pretty clueless about how the characters came across.

[Yukaphile]

Well, Moore's comment was spot on.