Did Captain Janeway do the morally right or morally wrong thing refusing to let Seven of Nine return to The Collective?
It was totally fine. Borg implants or not, she was still human. She also didn’t have a choice about becoming Borg at such a young age. When her connection was cut with the collective, she basically became a child again making her Janeway’s responsibility. (That was close to Janeway’s logic I believe, and I agree with it. It was a human decision for another human who was incapable of making decisions.)
The biggest thing is that Seven has already signed a contract with UPN, so she was kinda stuck for a few episodes anyway. Janeway knew this, so after thinking about it over a 50 gallon drum of coffee and a few packs of menthol Kools, she decided to just run with it and make it dramatic. (The Borg attorneys failed to overturn the terms of the contract even after several weeks of absolutely phenomenal work.)
Set aside the predictability. Would you say the same goes for “Day of Honor” when Seven is willing to give herself up?
I watched through Day of Honor a couple of times today, but it was kinda choppy for me since I had to work.
I just want to clarify “give herself up” in that you mean she is willing to become part of the Voyager “collective” and puts aside her need to return to the Borg?
If my above assumption is correct, then yes. She is growing exponentially personality wise, but there are significant challenges in doing so.
Personally, I have been around engineers my entire life. Some people I know could rattle on for hours over something like p vs np even if they just learned about it a few hours ago. Put that same person in a complex social environment and they are absolutely clueless. It’s similar to Seven.
Assuming I didn’t know anything about her timeline after Day of Honor, my guess would have been it would take years for her to learn how to operate in a complex structure like we are accustomed to. Janeway seems bright enough to understand that as well. So yeah, it would be a very long time before she could make the kinds of decisions we take for granted and Janeway would have to do that for her like a parent.
Fast forward a bit to Picard, you can see how long it took for her character to develop into something that didn’t resemble a robot. (I am willfully excluding some later episodes of Voyager that were kind of odd, btw.)
There are conditions like being certifiable insane. That certainly applies if someones brain isn’t working alright or got messed with. And makes it morally right to make decisions on their behalf. At least decisions in their interest. Because they themselves are unable to act in their own interest.
I think this answer is mostly right in the case of Seven and VOY.
However, on a more general societal note, this can be problematic, as two people may have different definitions of insane (for instance, challenging certain societal beliefs that aren’t necessarily actually related to sanity may falsely be construed as insanity), and as a result, a rational person is stripped of their agency. I think several conditions need to be established for what defines someone as insane. I think if at least one of these is true, it can be called insanity:
- An inclination for self-harm
- An inclination to harm others
Sure. You need to be qualified to do that. A doctor can do that for the short term. And then a judge and a court has to make such decisions. I think in the real world they’re the only ones allowed to do that, to adults at least. And it involves lots of paperwork, hearing experts and so on. But also in real life, captains get some extra rights and duties, if they’re far out there, on their own. They can definitely lock up unruly people or make difficult decisions that need to be made on the spot. For everyone else, not so much. However, I think there are some exceptions. I’m not a native english speaker so I don’t know the exact legal term… But next to self-defense, there are other laws concerning emergencies, justifiable emergency, necessity as justification, good samaritan law…? I don’t know how we call that. But I’m pretty sure I could stop someone harming themselves, against their will. In dire circumstances. It wouldn’t be fun though, and the last resort to avert serious damage. It’s certainly problematic. And I think it has to meet objective standards. It can’t be construed, or it won’t apply. It’s complicated. And on the other side we also have failure to provide assistance where I live, which I’m not sure if it’s a law in the States.
Kinda feel like Captain Janeway made the most wrong calls. This one, not necessarily. Tuvix, on the other hand…
