80 Votes in Poll
Well ransom and his crew became renegades and were committing attrocities, especially as representatives of the federation, so she and voyager's crew had a duty to do whatever they could to stop them. They also attacked voyager and left them to the wolves, so what possible reason would there be not to attack the equinox?
@WoundedDefector Janeway may have gone a little crazy, but she didn't turn into Ransom who gave up starfleet morals to get his crew home. In terms of crewman Lessing, I compare that to Sisko and Eddington in For the Uniform where Eddington says you're bluffing and Sisko responds by having Worf fire on the planet. If I remember correctly, Lessing says the same thing as Eddington and Janeway responds in a similar way to Sisko.
@Michael Benucci that makes sense.
She didn’t cross the line as much as Ransom (or Sisko) did, but the interrogation of Lessing definitely crossed the line. However, the main problem w/Janeway’s storyline in Part II was sloppy execution.
What Sisko did in “For the Uniform” was a pretty major war crime. There should’ve been some major reprecussions for what he did in that episode.
Yeah , Sisko was a little over invested in Eddington . Before he fired on that planet though , he did call for evacuation .
Maybe but how much time did he give them? evacuating a planetary settlement is no small task. even if we assume it's a small recently colonied world there where proably a few thousand people. even if we assume only a few hundred people, evacuating a few hundred people, isn't easy, especially when the biggest ships you have likely aren't much bigger then a runabout. Yeah Sisko put those peoples lives in danger. And all because he had a grudge.
@Captain Jonathan Glover yes. For all the reasons already mentionned by @Michael Benucci. There is very few to add, all is said.
Even if you are "on the same side" (Federation in this case), if a "fellow" crew/team is comitting war crimes, attrocities or this kind of evil behaviour, it is your duty to do whatever needs to be done to stop them, WHATEVER it takes.
There is a reason why there are not so many Starfleet Captains : They have to make unsupervised decisions, sometimes in extreme conditions, under extreme constraints, without any help.
I am not in favour of torture. In this episode, Janeway in my opinion did not cross the line (even if she went close).
Here's the thing though, eddington and the maquis were waging war on the federation and cardassians. They had just recently attacked a federation ships, acquired biological weapons, and had used them against cardassian settlements (probably without giving them any opportunity to evacuate).
It was a tough and controversial decision (so I also understand completely and respect it if someone has a different opinion and perspective), but in my opinion, sisko took bold action and decided to act decisively to try and put an end as quickly as possible to eddington and the maquis' longstanding genocide, murder, terror, and destruction.
Eddington raised the stakes tremendously based on his actions with biological weapons, and sisko had an obligation to stop the maquis, even if that involved maquis casualties. The result was a good one though, since it allowed sisko to capture eddington very quickly, which probably saved many other lives.
I'm sympathetic to what the maquis were fighting for, and I don't condone many of the actions of some cardassians (although they also had a legitimate claim to some planets they felt were in their territory), but the maquis crossed the line, their actions were unacceptable, there were consequences to their actions, and they needed to be stopped.
Of course, the federation should've never abandoned them and made the kind of treaty they did with the cardassians in the first place.
@Caliban1969 I don't really think what janeway did necessarily amounted to torture either (although it was a harsh interrogation tactic). We don't actually know for sure that she would've let the aliens kill lessing, but we know that she agreed to let the aliens have equinox's crew, because I guess she decided that the aliens were entitled to seek retribution and punishment for what the equinox's crew did to their species, especially given the fact that they were in in the Delta quadrant and wouldn't have had many other options available to them to go through a normal extradition process. So in that context, I don't think it would've been too terrible even if she had allowed the aliens to kill lessing, since it's what he would've deserved.
Let's say for example, equinox's crew had visited an alien planet and committed atrocities there, they would be subject to the justice system and any punishment that the planet had for their crimes, and their punishment might've been execution, so I don't think the situation in the Delta quadrant was very different, except that it happened in space and not on a planet.
@Michael Benucci Are you saying that you agree with both Sisko and Janeway's methods or only Sisko?
I can understand how both their actions could be justified. It depends which specific things we're talking about, but yes, given the circumstances they were in in the delta quadrant, and the fact that the aliens are entitled to seek justice and punishment for ransom's crew for their crimes, I think her decisions were justifiable in that context.
@Michael Benucci I don’t think the ethnic cleansing committed by the Maquis justifies the ethnic cleansing committed by Sisko. While the goal was just, the method wasn’t.
I don’t think Janeway’s interrogation of Lessing ever turned into torture, but that’s only b/c of the actions of Chakotay. An interrogation that could’ve resulted in the death of Lessing is an interrogation that went too far. My impression was that she let the aliens have the crew of the Equinox b/c the aliens wanted the crew of Equinox or the crew of Voyager & the latter was unacceptable.
What do you think?