Comment on Janeway’s “Tuvix” Decision Divides ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ Cast: “It Kind Of Hurt Her Character”
AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It certainly didn’t live up to Federation ideals.
But then again Sisko should be a war criminal for using Biogenic weapons.
If you want to see someone do the ethically correct thing 10/10, Jean Luc is your captain.
There are a lot of instances where the Enterprise crew wanted to do the ethical thing, and Picard stops it or tries to. For example, when Dr. Crusher wanted to help when that planet population was addicted to drugs, and Picard wouldn’t let her do that or communicate anything to them.
Also, Data once found humans frozen in space, and when he helped them, Picard was annoyed; it wasn’t even a Prime Directive issue!
The biogenic stuff is so funny for some reason… The absolute absurdity of Sisko bio nuking a planet to get one terrorist
Jean Luc IS my captain
Even Picard broke the PD multiple times. If we are basing ethics on that then he’s no better.
Every captain in starfleet seems to treat it more like the Prime Suggestion.
“I only bend the Prime Directive”
In fairness, Picard is extremely upfront and honest that he has broken the Prime Directive and doesn’t regret it in the slightest. Separately, he also said that while rules are a good thing, rules cannot be universally absolute.
Janeway straight up said to another captain that she’s never broken the Prime Directive in her life, despite clearly doing it a bunch of times. She’s in denial.
That’s my only real issue with her is her comment to the Nova class captain about it.
However, I give her the benefit of the doubt here because she’s clearly trying to encourage him that they don’t need to abandon their morality. If she tells him that she’s done it half a dozen times or so then he might be more likely to assume that’s the standard.
Now we all know in hindsight that he’d already committed an atrocity and wanted assurance from Janeway that he wasn’t alone in his decisions to prioritize crew over other sapient beings, but she was simply seeing the younger version of herself in him and attempting to assure him that he doesn’t have to give up hope and sink to those depths.
Voyager has more of a problem with character writing consistency than it does an issue with Janeway specifically, IMO.
Needs of the many (2 people live) over needs of the few/one (cya tuvix)
I mean, that logic was only ever applied by the Vulcans as a personal choice/sacrifice, not something to be enforced by the barrel of a… er… phaser.
Spock sacrificed himself, it wasn’t done forcibly against his will. Kirk didn’t order the execution of one man so that others could live.
I don’t think we should take a slogan as an absolute moral lesson, you can justify all kinds of evil with it.
E.g. your organs could save dozens of lives. Would it be right to pin you down, kill you, and remove them, so that others can live? Surely one life lost is a worthy price to pay? The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, after all.
Ethics are a lot more complex than a catchy slogan.
Yeah but it wasn’t a random uninvolved person, it was essentially an industrial accident that needed unwinding and it just so happened the involved people were trapped in the gears of the machine. Somebody was getting smushed
AuroraBorealis@pawb.social 9 months ago
The whole theme of the show is the battle of the ideals which work great in the alpha quadrant vs the reality of their situation
AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That actually makes Sisko sound so much worse.
c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yeah, he was largely operating in safe space and still made some unethical decisions.
Janeway was willing to make the hard calls that would best serve her ship and it’s future, having your cook and your third in command get fused isn’t exactly going to result in a functioning chain of command.
Plus since the operation could be reversed, you could argue that Tuvok and Neelix aren’t actually dead, merely suspended animation like storing people in a transporter buffer. You’re still killing Tuvix, but sacrificing one to save two is “the needs of the many” in it’s most simplistic form even without the added weight of hundreds of lives depending on Tuvok’s leadership and tactical skills.
I never once considered Janeway to be out of line given her circumstances. The crew always comes first even at the cost of her own humanity and ethics. She’s a good captain, willing to make the call that ends lives and live with it so that others may not have to endure those decisions and consequences. She didn’t ask anyone else to do that for her.
feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yeah fuck Tuvix, and the Philosophy 101 bullshit. Two people were the victim of an orchid-related machine malfunction. Plus, I don’t hear people making the same argument about Jeff Goldblum in The Fly.
Zorque@kbin.social 9 months ago
I mean, DS9 was almost as much in the boonies as Voyager. Assistance was limited, and there were limitations on what he could do, as he was only running the station at the behest of the Bajoran government, not as a true representative of the Federation.
It also introduced facets of war, even before it became a full blown thing in the later seasons. He wasn't always on the side of the angels... because there are no angels in war. War only ever makes demons.
It doesn't excuse his actions, but it doesn't make them truly inexcusable either. They both operated in much more of a grey area than either of the two previous series.
Odinkirk@lemmygrad.ml 9 months ago
If you abandon your principles when things get hard then they’re not principles; they’re hobbies.
stembolts@programming.dev 9 months ago
True. Then you are removed and replaced by someone who does what you won’t.
It’s tricky. I think its also important to weigh in that a lot of these captains and folks in executive position spent their entire working life to get to X position. It must be hard to walk away from a life goal, which I assume is what pushes them to, “do what needs to be done.” The lingering question remaining, “Did it really need to he done?”