J!! wrote: ↑Fri May 19, 2017 12:30 am
I actually come down on Janeway's side in the Tuvix thing. Yes, she executed an innocent man. And in doing so, she saved the lives of
two innocent men.
2>1
It's not that, it's that she lost two crew members and had a chance of recovering them by ending the life of a stranger. Neelix is simply a crew member, we can leave him at that since he's ultimately (and immanently) disposable, but Tuvok is member of Star Fleet and a Fed citizen. If he can be recovered then they have to owe it to him to get him back.
Tuvix is nothing beyond possibly being better for Voyager than Tuvok in some utilitarian ways that don't make up for trading someone for someone else that has only existed for a few days. It's less comparable to organ harvesting than a wife going into labour and the husband being told by the doctor something;'s gone wrong and only one can live. He has to pick: Does he pick the wife he knows and has loved for years and years or the child mainly still just a possibility in his mind that he hasn't connected with much, and then only through his wife and her stomach?
It's a shit situation to be in, but I can understand a man in that position going with his wife, just as I can see Voyager's crew wanting Tuvok and Neelix back rather than someone they just met.
The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑Fri May 19, 2017 3:21 am
None of that addresses the fact that 8472 attacked Voyager without provocation (unless "being in the vicinity of a Borg ship" constitutes provocation).
I will acknowledge that Janeway took actions which could have facilitated genocide, though her intentions were more likely to prevent genocide than to cause it.
However, I do not feel that it is fair to blame her for every subsequent assimilation by the Borg. Those losses all had multiple causes, and there is no way to know how things would have gone, or if they would have been better, in an alternate universe where Janeway did not help the Borg against 8472. Moreover, I am wary of the implication that anyone who threatens the Borg should automatically gain carte blanche.
The sticky matter is the Borg are an existential threat to everyone in the galaxy. It's a matter of when, not if they threaten everyone. With that said any dealings that strengthen the Borg increase the threat to Federation which all those other assimilated species highlight. Helping the Borg is simply not in the Federations national interest - it would be better for the Fed Voyager never get home than help the Borg. Hell, it would be better if Voyager was fully assimilated than help them.
The fundamental trouble is with the premise of the episodes themselves. They had to present 8472 as a worse threat than the Borg and they really failed to do that because both are equally bad. It would have been better for Voyager to try to contact the Fed, inform them of a new player in the game against the Borg and regardless of if they could, try to play on off against the other, especially when Voyager was able to create effective weapons against 8472 while the Borg are notoriously hard to fight due to their adaptability.
I think Voyager completely bungled the Borg. First Contact didn't help with the precedence it established (assimilation and humanizing the Borg), but that's comparable to the engines of an aircraft breaking down not being the worst problem it faced when the pilot's reaction to the crisis was to invert the plane and land it upside-down.
MaxWylde wrote: ↑Mon May 22, 2017 4:15 am
This is the kind of thing that Horatio Hornblower, upon whose stories Star Trek is loosely based on, about a lone ship with a captain who represents Great Britain and her interests because they're so far out of range of conventional communications that he has to be the embodiment of the nation he's serving in order to do his duty to King and Country, would not have done. He would not have helped out some indigenous group of people in a far away island fend off Asiatic pirates because of some worry they'd be exploited or worse, because that ship does not belong to him, but to His Majesty King George III. Unless such pirates were in some sort of league with the French and represented a direct threat to Britain and her interests in the Pacific, it's not in Hornblower's right or duty to render any sort of assistance in this regard.
That's because the RN, like any national military arm, had a clear aim and intent and made that clear to their ship commanders. The RN's focus was very very aggressive in outlook and instilled an outlook in its captains to keep their actions consistent with English/British policy.
It's why a captain could very well do no wrong by attacking, because it showed everyone that you do not fuck with Britain. If a local native group pisses a captain off, they get attacked, if pirates do something, they get attacked, if another European nations captain does something, they get attacked too. That extended even to frivolous matters, such as failing to acknowledge English rule over the ocean by firing their salute cannon first out of difference to the English monarch as Sovereign of the Seas. Failure would fall onto the lap of the captain who didn't win, but those that were successful would be backed.
This continued on for some time, as can be seen in the opening of the Suez Canal:
Although L'Aigle was officially the first vessel through the canal, HMS Newport, captained by George Nares, passed through it first. On the night before the canal was due to open, Captain Nares navigated his vessel, in total darkness and without lights, through the mass of waiting ships until it was in front of L'Aigle. When dawn broke, the French were horrified to find that the Royal Navy was first in line and that it would be impossible to pass them. Nares received both an official reprimand and an unofficial vote of thanks from the Admiralty for his actions in promoting British interests and for demonstrating such superb seamanship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal#Inauguration_(17_November_1869)
This is why the Navy Board, and Britain as a whole, supported Graham Moore when he went to inspect some Spanish frigates carrying New World gold off Cadiz, was rebuked, and promptly attacked without a declaration of war issued by Britain. This resulted in one frigate blowing up killing most of the crew and returning government officials onboard. Despite what you'd expect, he was praised given the other three frigates were captured and the windfall of treasure was a good boost to Moore which made it a success in British eyes striking a blow against Spanish defiance and French Continental hegemony during the Peace of Amiens, even if it official contributed to Spain siding again with France.
because that ship does not belong to him, but to His Majesty King George III.
It's also worth noting that when officers in the RN received their commission they were reminded that they answered directly to the Naval Board and not the Monarch, something which stood in contrast to the writing an Army officer received on commission which made it clear he answered to the Monarch.
In many ways, the RN was run more like a company than as what we commonly see as a military arm, something which was appropriate given its primary aim of protecting national trade that also allowed it to become unusually efficient in how it handled its logistics once the company mindset began to take over in the early-mid 17th Century.
MaxWylde wrote: ↑Mon May 22, 2017 4:15 am
The problem with this Prime Directive defence is that it's rather gooey. The Prime Directive itself is gooey. On the one hand, it's stated that Starfleet personnel are not allowed to interfere directly or even indirectly in the affairs of worlds deemed too primitive to understand the concept of alien star-faring races, or expose them to knowledge of such people, ostensibly. But, we've seen that Starfleet is willing to do just that, such as in A Private Little War, to prevent that world in the subject episode from becoming a Klingon satellite state.
The trouble is it's completely idealistic compared to something like the above English/British mindset which kept national interest in mind. Yes, that made the RN into assholes, but it also meant that whenever someone could do something nice that didn't directly impact national interest they could. The PD makes good acts bad when taken too literally.
It's been awhile since I saw it, but in "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky", Kirk has zero reason from the later PD outlook or national interest to interfere to stop the meteor from crashing into the planet killing off two civilizations. He tries and succeeds though because what alternative is there? They'll both die and death isn't in the interest of those people and it's no harm to the Federation if he helps. It's a bad enough issue to warrant interference, same with "Pen Pals".
I'd like to think we can all agree that such existential crisis' are in keeping with the spirit of the PD, which is too balance others interests alongside the Federations, and not with Riker's "It's not our place to interfere with natural selection" talk.
cdrood wrote: ↑Tue Sep 10, 2019 6:31 pmBoth involve primitive worlds crew members visited in the past and both involved Klingons. I'll include Organia, as well, since everyone thought it was primitive. Essentially, in the "disputed territory", the Prime Directive simply doesn't apply. Essentially, since the Klingons can move in at will, there's little point in the Federation invoking the PD since the people will be learning about space travel, anyway. Presumably, the planet in APLW was deemed insignificant from a strategic standpoint, which is why young Kirk RECOMMENDED adhering to what is normally Federation law.
That then goes into the sticky fact that the Federation is the only nation that adheres to the PD. If it's not the Klingons it'll the Romulans, Ferengi, Cardassians, everyone else won't.
Hell, I could see it in Klingons to create private armies ala the Conquistadors who then go out to conquer less advanced worlds for the fun of it, matching their tech and few of numbers against hordes of primitive fodder. Such would be glorious fighting to the Klingons. Once finished off and subdued, then it would be passed off to the Empire with the surviving Klingons becoming important officials governing the world, that is unless they then just move on to another world for more glory.
The private aspects of Klingon warrior culture are vastly under-explored in Trek. Heck, I could even see that being the "in" for Klingon warriors to justify doing non-warrior things: Conquering an entire world is certain cause to enjoy the fruits of it and what economic benefits might come to them individually by trading what comes from it. It's the very reason why Medieval aristocracy involved themselves in the economy as they sneered at it as their beloved land produced excess which could then be traded off at fairs for extra profit.
Not only that but if you look at an episode like "Phage", it really doesn't fit with Janeway's character for her to be so unsympathetic either, so that's a twofer. I always thought that episode would've been stronger if you took the cold open of "Alliances", slapped it on the front and took out her decision to let the two Vidiians go. The acting there when she's struggling with the decision is marvellous enough to allow for either interpretation. We get them bargaining and Janeway immediately takes them to the medbay. A little ambiguity was all that was needed. Maybe she would've killed them to save Neelix.
