Star Trek: Armada III begins with the first stirrings of the Dominion War and allows players to take command of five unique factions, the United Federation of Planets, the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Star Empire, the Cardassian Union/Dominion Alliance, and the Borg Collective. Explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly go where no one has gone before.
"We'd found our salvation! How could we ignore it?"
"By adhering to the oath you took as Starfleet officers to seek out life, not to destroy it!"
"It's easy to cling to principles when you're standing on a ship with its bulkheads intact, manned by a crew that's not starving!"
"It's never easy. But if we turn our back on our principles, we stop being human. I'm putting an end to your experiments, and you are hereby relieved of your command. You and your crew will be confined to quarters."
"Please show them leniency. They were only following my orders."
"Their mistake."
Great episode, but overly idealistic, holier-than-thou message coming from Janeway. Sorry, but Tuvok killed hundreds of those dumb spider things in VOY "Gravity" to survive. He never got reprimanded for it. Why can't Ransom sacrifice a few animalistic aliens in a desperate bid to try to get his crew home? I mean, they're drawn to the Ankari summoning relic like bugs to a bug zapper; no different in brainpower than squid or fish -- food humans eat routinely. Is it a reasonable thing to have to say: "I'm sorry that we needed to survive."?
My opinion: Janeway just wanted to lord over Ransom because she felt threatened by the prospect of another Starfleet officer of equal rank telling her she might be wrong (hence her quick, and improper use of Regulation 191, Article 14: "In a combat situation involving more than one ship, command falls to the vessel with tactical superiority ... should there not be a higher ranking officer present". She could have worked with him instead. If the alien experiments bothered her, she could have said to Ransom: "Captain, I understand that you did whatever you could to save your crew, but you don't need to harvest these aliens anymore. Let's work together to find a better solution to this...we have two ships and two crews now. We should try to find a better way." Just think if she had been more diplomatic instead of viciously persecutory. Ultimately, Ransom ran because Janeway had no sympathy, she was looking for every excuse to throw him in the brig.
The hypocrisy of Janeway's position is that I think Ransom was exactly right -- if Voyager's crew hadn't had copious amounts of plot armor and had realistically faced the horrors that Equinox faced (encountered the Krowtonnan Guard, lost half the crew, and had a small ill-equipped starship with less-than-stellar warp capability, damaged or non-existent holodecks, limited weaponry), I'm pretty sure (if Year of Hell is any indication) a desperate Janeway would have been doing everything in her power to save her crew, including using alien guts for improving warp power if need be. Janeway took advantage of and exploited aliens plenty of times (not to mention allowed Neelix to harvest basically whatever he wanted for his kitchen), and occasionally resorted to tactics utilizing the "ends justify the means" mentality, so why is this different?
It has always been a problem to reconcile Starfleet's protection of life with humanity's historical reliance on meat and exploitation of animals, but we know that the Federation both allows cultivation of livestock AND tolerates species of carnivores, so, again, it's hard for me to accept that these aliens, who show very limited cerebral development anyway, should be treated as fully-fledged, sentient life-forms when they show very little, if any signs of higher functioning and civilized development. As far as I'm concerned, they're just transdimensional fish. In my judgment, Janeway was wrong and should have been subject to a court martial upon her return for her role in destroying Equinox and the death of Rudy Ransom.
Thank you... I thought I was the only one thinking She was once again on the wrong side here.
i never did really like janeway
I wouldn't say Janeway was on the WRONG side per se, but she definitely rushed to a moral judgement and put herself on too high a horse. The Equinox was far less suited to travelling across the Delta Quadrant than Voyager, and had faced challenges and suffered losses unlike anything experienced by Voyager. These circumstances should have been taken into account when passing judgement. However, I can't bring myself to defend the Equinox crew beyond that.
I can excuse the use of the first alien's body as a fuel source - its death had been an accident - but what followed was the periodic capture and slaughter of members of what was established to be an intelligent species. I have litle doubt that had the Equinox made it home Ransom and his crew would have faced severe consequences for that, too.
Furthermore, the crew of the Equinox were involved in a cover-up of their experiments, kidnapped and tortured Seven of Nine, violated the Doctor's program, sabotaged Voyager and placed Voyager's crew in mortal danger. The conduct of Rudy Ransom and his crew had very much come to reflect an attitude of the ends justifying the means, no matter how questionable those means may be. Hell, First Officer Burke's behaviour can only be described as sociopathic.
While I agree that Janeway's response to the situation was deeply flawed and moralistic, the fundamental difference between her and Ransom is that in every situation, no matter how bleak or dangerous, she always strove to take the high road wherever possible. Ransom fell into the trap of setting his principles aside and taking the easy path, looking the other way and disregarding the consequences even as his decisions became increasingly brutal. And he wasn't going to stop.
"it's hard for me to accept that these aliens, who show very limited cerebral development anyway, should be treated as fully-fledged, sentient life-forms when they show very little, if any signs of higher functioning and civilized development. As far as I'm concerned, they're just transdimensional fish."
Whut??? Not only those aliens did attack Equinox in persistent and organized fashion, they adjusted their tactics to fight Voyager. And Janeway literately communicated with them and thus a deal was struck to give up Equinox in exchange for safety. How did you arrive to the conclusion they were mere fish?
Janeway was right to go after Ransom's butt. Not only he did betray everything Federation stands for, he endangered her ship as well (big time). Even if she did help or/and, worse, understand Ransom she might be court martialed back on Earth for her compliance with what basically was a methodical genocide.
But it is a moot point as Equinox was done for. This ship would never return. It might if it heed the warning of Krowtonnan Guard, go a bit slower, but still go. But they decided to harvest alien species for fuel who, surprise, surprise, took offence with that. When Janeway found Equinox the latter was on the verge of destruction. Because of Rudy Ransom crimes Voyager was almost lost as well. There was no need for her to be polite to a murderer, her ship gave her upper rank over him and she had to figure out how to fix this situation before aliens will get their revenge on both crews.
And, finally, Ransom finally realized what he had done and finds small redemption.
Equinox is one of the best episodes of VOY if not of all of ST.
Totally agree with you, it's another episode that I personally dislike... I ended up rooting for Captain Ramsom (John Savage played his part brilliantly by the way). It is really strange that the writers should choose this kind of behavior for Janeway, it didn't help her character in any way, quite the opposite really.