Much has been written – most of it by me, I think – of the redolent optimism and lofty ethics of Star Trek, and how healthy and nurturing this paradigm is for everyone who comes in contact with it. I’ve upheld the Trek ethos as perhaps the ultimate exemplar of humanism, and the standard to which we should aspire as a species.
But, of course, not all Trek is so shiny; and there is unquestionable value in holding up the other side of the spectrum to emphasize the sheer altitude of Trek’s moral aspirations. At our best, we are worthy of the universe; at our worst, we’re not worthy of the perch we already have.
This best-of/worst-of dichotomy is all a-tangle with Trek’s penchant for serving up moral dilemma on a hot platter. We are minded of Captain Kirk’s agonizing choice between saving the life of Edith Keeler, whom he deeply loves, and allowing Earth history to proceed along its Nazi-free, Federation-enabling course – one life vs. billions. We remember Kodos, Governor of Tarsus IV – who, when faced with a food shortage threatening to doom all 8,000 of the colonists in his charge, orders the deaths of half of them, that the other half might live... a decision that left him a monster in history’s eyes. There’s Kirk’s decision to play Superpower Bingo with the Klingons over the fate of Neural, where the primitive inhabitants are pitted against each other, with Federation military support. All these choices had ugly consequences – and none of them were easy.
This point was driven home to me recently when Trek went where it had never gone before, into the darkness of a main character – a Starfleet officer! - committing a rage murder and getting away with it, and his commanding officer looking the other way. I posted my revulsion over this in a social media Trek forum, and was soberly presented with that same spectrum: some fans similarly repelled by the episode’s abandonment of even the most basic human decency, others gleefully (and even disdainfully) excusing it.
More on that in another post. For now, I thought it might be an informative exercise to seek out the most morally onerous events in the Trek continuum and consider each – again, if only to solidly underscore the preciousness of the exceedingly strong character and values of our heroes at their best.
I confined myself to what are to me the top five such incidents, omitting from consideration those episodes not concerning main characters. I have ordered them by ascending turpitude, from the most understandable to the most egregious.
See what you think...
“Dear Doctor” / Enterprise, S1E13
Enterprise comes across a distressed alien spacecraft, one without warp drive, and are introduced to a new species – the Valakians – who are sick and getting sicker. Returning them to their homeworld and meeting with their leadership, Captain Archer learns that the disease that is killing the Valakians he rescued is running rampant, and that it threatens them with extinction. Though they are technologically competent, a cure for the disease is beyond them.
Dr. Phlox has more powerful resources at his disposal, and coming up with a remedy for the pain experienced by the stricken Valakians is easily achieved. But Archer, understanding that Enterprise has much more powerful medical resources and a doctor with inter-species research experience, is insistent that Phlox pursue a cure.
It is further discovered that there is a second humanoid species on the planet – the Menk – who are less evolved and sophisticated and seem to be a subordinate caste in the planetary society, which troubles the Enterprise crew but doesn’t bother Phlox, who sees the relationship as symbiotic. The greater issue for Phlox is that he doesn’t think he or Archer have any business interfering with the natural order of these people: if nature has selected the Valakians for extinction and the Menk for ascendence, so be it.
Archer and Phlox go round and round over this, as the latter continues his genetic research. Phlox has found a genetic cure, but allowing it to be used violates his personal ethics; Archer believes he is morally obligated to save the Valakians if at all possible. In a final confrontation, Phlox reveals that he has the cure, and faces Archer with the possibility that his interference could keep the Menk in submission for thousands of years more.
The next morning, Phlox confronts his own brush with dishonesty – that he had seriously considered betraying his responsibility to his captain – and finds that Archer has taken his words to heart and decided not to offer the Valakians the cure. He laments that there is not yet any “directive” - a prime one, we foresee – to discouraging him from “playing God out here”.
The Valakians are given the process for creating Phlox’s pain remedy, with Archer’s hope that they can find a cure on their own. Archer and Phlox do not mention that they have already found one.
Both Archer and Phlox, in the end, have gone against their own beliefs in what is right.
“Damage” / Enterprise, S3E19
Badly damaged in a confrontation with Xindi ships, with whom Earth is nominally at war, Enterprise NX-01 is badly damaged, and Archer is their prisoner under interrogation. When he is returned to the ship, he finds that 14 of his crew are dead and the ship’s warp drive is irreparable without a new warp coil.
Adrift, the Enterprise comes across an Illyrian ship that has also suffered damage, from gravimetric energy in the Delphic Expanse. Stranded in space, years from safe harbor without warp drive, Archer tries to barter with the Illyrian captain for their warp coil. He is not successful.
When a member of the Xindi council gets a message to Archer that he wants to meet face-to-face to discuss evidence in Archer’s possession of time travelers interfering in Xindi culture, Archer realizes that evidence could bring relief in the Earth-Xindi conflict, and it is essential that the meeting happen. But he can’t get there to meet with the Xindi councilmember; his ship won’t go.
His solution is to attack the Illyrian ship and steal its warp coil, an egregious violation of the spirit of Enterprise’s mission – to say nothing of being morally onerous under any circumstances. T’Pol objects in the strongest possible terms (for a Vulcan) - the Illyrian crew will be stranded in deep space for three years, as the Enterprise would have been. Archer’s rationalization for his action is that it represents the lesser of two evils – the needs of the many, etc.
“In the Pale Moonlight” / Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, S6E19
Interstellar politics are turned upside down when the Dominion of the Gamma Quadrant goes to war, in alliance with the Cardassians, against the Federation and Klingon Empire.
This doesn’t go well for the Federation, and Captain Ben Sisko of Deep Space Nine conspires with the Cardassian agent aboard his station, Garak, to draw the Romulan Star Empire into the fray on the side of the Federation. Increasing the conflict, rather than de-escalating it, is Sisko’s solution to the devastation the Federation is suffering. A Second World War analogy resonates with Sisko’s thinking: yes, the war is terrible, and pulling another interstellar player into the mix is at first glance a distinctly anti-humanist choice.
Per Garak’s scheme, which Sisko facilitates, a Romulan senator is lured to the station by false evidence that the Dominion is planning to attack the Romulan homeworld. When the senator’s shuttle unexplainedly explodes heading for home, the Romulans are satisfied that he was assassinated to prevent him from making the Romulan leadership aware of the Dominion plot. The Romulans declare war on the Dominion and enter the conflict on the side of the Federation, as Sisko had plotted.
“You’ll get what you want, a war between the Romulans and the Dominion,” Garak reminds him when Sisko lashes out in anger at the Romulan’s death, which Sisko had not sanctioned. “And if your conscience is bothering you, you should soothe it with the knowledge that you may have just saved the entire Alpha Quadrant, and all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal, and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don’t know about you, but I’d call that a bargain.”
Sisko gets it all out his system in a personal log entry:
“So I lied, I cheated, I bribed men to cover the crimes of other men,” he says. “I am an accessory to murder. But most damning thing of all, I think I can live with it. And if I had to do it all over again, I would. Garak was right about one thing. A guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant, so I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.”
He then erases the personal log.
“The Most Toys” / Star Trek: The Next Generation, S3E22
The android Commander Data is kidnapped in such a way that the crew of the Enterprise believes he has been destroyed in a shuttle explosion. This deception was contrived by his kidnapper Kivas Fajo, an illicit collector of extremely rare treasures – which he considers Data to be.
Aboard Fajo’s ship, Data joins a collection of rarities that include everything from the Mona Lisa to a Roger Maris baseball card. Fajo will require that he sit in a chair in his gallery, performing on demand for his guests. Data refuses.
As Picard and company piece together what really happened and begin searching for their missing officer, Fajo coerces Data into cooperating by threatening to kill one his underlings, a terrified woman named Varria (who is there against her will). But Varria wants out as much as Data does, and the two hatch a plan.
As they prepare to escape, Data witnesses instances of Fajo’s sociopathic cruelty to everyone around him. When the moment comes for he and Varria to commandeer an escape shuttle, Fajo discovers them, and kills Varria in the most agonizing manner available to him. Data retrieves the weapon used and declares that he cannot allow what Fajo is doing to continue. He aims the weapon at Fajo.
At that instant, he is beamed back aboard the Enterprise. O’Brien tells Riker, who is awaiting Data’s arrival, that a weapon is in transit with Data and that it is in a state of discharge. Rikers tells O’Brien to disable it, and Data materializes, pointing the weapon at empty air. Realizing what has happened, he hands it to Riker.
Riker asks why the weapon was being fired. Data deflects the question, not disclosing that he was in the act of killing Fajo: “Perhaps something occurred during transport, Commander.”
“Under the Cloak of War” / Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, S2E8
Klingon Ambassador Dak’Rah, once a general in the Federation-Klingon conflict, comes aboard Pike’s Enterprise as a peace envoy, a campaign that Starfleet is supporting. But Dak’Rah - known as the Butcher of J’Gal, notorious as a brutal warrior who killed his own officers in the battle on J’Gal for attacking civilians – doesn't get a warm reception from M’Benga and Chapel, who were present on J’Gal as field hospital personnel during the battle.
Dak’Rah extends a hand of peace to M’Benga, seeing that he remains traumatized by the events of J’Gal, but M’Benga is unreceptive. The two engage in a ritual combat exercise at Dak’Rah’s suggestion, hoping that M’Benga will then purge some of his hostility (M’Benga is a highly-skilled fighter himself).
M’Benga makes Dak’Rah aware that he knows that it was in fact Dak’Rah who ordered the civilian attacks – and that it was he himself who killed Dak’Rah’s officers: he, M’Benga, is the true Butcher of J’Gal, for which he loathes himself.
That self-loathing surges to the fore when Dak’Rah visits him once again in private, hoping to persuade him to join his campaign for peace. M’Benga repeatedly instructs Dak’Rah to leave him alone, expressing his disgust that the Klingon general had the gall to claim M’Benga’s killings as his own. A fight breaks out, and M’Benga stabs Dak’Rah in the heart.
The killing is ruled self-defense, as M’Benga claims it was, and Chapel backs his story. Pike clearly has doubts, but pursues the matter no further.
Wow. Okay, lots to unpack here.
Starting at the top, we can see in Archer and Phlox two men who are each genuinely striving to do the right thing in a complex and challenging situation. Each is viewing the situation through his own cultural lens, generating opposing views of the “right” thing to do.
On the one hand, curing the Valakians will eliminate generations of suffering and death; on the other, it may condemn the Menk to permanent second-class status. After all, Phlox argues, what if aliens had visited Earth in the Upper Paleolithic and given the Neanderthals some genetic advantage, ensuring their survival and dominance over homo sapiens?
Phlox does not stand firm in his conviction that it is wrong to interfere with the natural order; he eventually confesses to Archer that he does indeed have a cure for the Valakians.
Archer likewise backs off his conviction that curing them is the right thing to do, reversing his decision to help, on the basis of a hypothetical – Phlox's Neanderthal argument.
Neither of them chooses the course of action that reflects their best moral choice; each rejects the guidance of his own conscience. The story leaves us with some poignant reflections on the complexities of the Prime Directive to come, but the dark shadow of faithlessness to one’s own principles is now cast over both – and the Valakians will likely die out very painfully. Morally onerous.
Archer displays less moral fortitude in the incident with the Illyrians. In his conflict with Phlox, he at least wrestled with his conscience; in attacking another ship to steal their warp core and stranding them in space for years, he simply chalks it up to the Greater Good, there’s a war on and all, and does not appear to be nearly as troubled by his decision as T’Pol is.
We’re as troubled as T’Pol; Archer’s actions don’t even remotely reflect the ethos we have come to expect of starship commanders.
And neither do Sisko’s. His self-incrimination is spot-on: he lied, he cheated, he is an accessory to murder. His justification – that fewer people will die under the conditions he has engineered through his sins than would have died if he had not acted – is no different in principle than the rationalization put forth by Kodos on Tarsus IV.
The only thing keeping Sisko from the top of this list is the fact that it was Garak, not he, that stooped to murder; he didn’t even know it was part of the plan.
That moves Data ahead of him on the egregiousness scale. The emotionless android witnesses horrors at Fajo’s hand, and the unhinged danger that the psychopathic collector radiates clearly justifies his containment; but Data had made the decision to kill him in cold blood, and was barely stopped in time. It was over; Fajo was subdued, Data’s prisoner, unarmed and powerless. To kill him rather than simply restrain him was morally indefensible.
Both the moral and emotional calculus of Data’s actions are inscrutable here. The latter is about our emotions, not Data’s (he has none, and tells Fajo so in the final scene); we are appalled at Fajo’s murderous temper and are stricken with the loss of Varria, whose abuse was made very clear. And there is simply no moral justification at all: Data’s “I cannot permit this to continue” is a judgment, to be sure, but one that merely requires restraining Fajo – not gunning him down.
By pulling the trigger, Data was crossing a line that not even Archer or Sisko had crossed.
But it is Joseph M’Benga, Pike’s chief medical officer, who tops the morally egregious list – and Pike is not far behind him.
The story is meant to convey the sheer horror of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which both M’Benga and Chapel are still experiencing in the aftermath of their war experience. And it is conveyed in spades: no one would come out of such an experience undamaged.
And this is an implied justification: that it is understandable that M’Benga rebuffed Dak’Rah and would not accept either his reform or peace effort. Understandable? Perhaps. Hard to accept in a man of M’Benga’s training, station, and supposed moral commitment, but understandable.
It certainly does not justify plunging a knife into his chest.
Then there’s Dak’Rah’s refusal to leave M’Benga alone. That’s a serious reach: “I stabbed him in the heart, Captain, because I told him to go away and, well, he wouldn’t!” All M’Benga had to do was say, “Security to Sickbay!” Problem solved.
And there’s M’Benga’s claim – supported by Chapel – that it was self-defense. To believe this, we would have to believe that Dak’Rah, who was there in the first place in pursuit of peace, and who had endured the doubt and disdain of almost everyone around him for months as he walked in enemy territory to advance that peace with nothing to gain, would suddenly snap and attempt to kill M’Benga just because he wouldn’t sign on?
Even Pike didn’t buy that: “I can’t believe he would do something like this.”
And let’s go all the way and assume Dak’Rah did attack M’Benga; that M’Benga, who was feeling murderous rage to begin with, held it together, but Dak’Rah, who had invested deeply in a mission of healing and peace, lost his temper and went into his own murderous rage because M’Benga called him a war criminal – an accusation he’d surely been hearing daily for years.
Let’s assume that’s what happened. Dak’Rah attacks M’Benga - a fighter as skilled as himself – and M’Benga is so concerned that Dak’Rah will kill him that he has to be killed first. Wouldn’t it have been enough to wound him?
No, he had to die, as M’Benga makes clear in his conversation with Pike later.
“Rah was living a lie. I saw his true face,” is M’Benga’s justification. “What if I told you he murdered children? Not his men. He did it. What if I started the fight then? Would that be so bad?”
Yes, that would be so bad. That would be unspeakably egregious, and Pike makes a half-hearted swipe at objecting:
“Even if he had secrets, there’s due process. That’s why we have tribunals.”
“The Diplomatic Corps knew who he was, and they still let him represent the Federation,” M’Benga counters. Dak’Rah has gotten off the hook in his eyes.
“The Federation believes everyone deserves a second chance,” Pike replies. And he’s right. That’s why we love the Federation.
“What about justice? What about the victims?” M’Benga persists. “Doesn’t everyone deserve to pay for their actions? I happen to know there are some things in this world that don’t deserve forgiveness.”
That’s the argument Pike’s chief medical officer offers to explain himself. He is justice. He is the avenger of the J’Gal dead. By his reasoning, what he has done is just. How many times in history have we heard that one?
M’Benga - judge, jury, executioner. And Pike is complicit; he lets it go, when it’s clear that M’Benga has crossed line after line, and at the very least, he himself needs to reach a full understanding of what has happened, if only so that he can know whether he can ever fully trust his officer.
This stands in stark contrast to Worf and Picard, a century later, when the former unnecessarily kills his Klingon rival Duras, who has murdered K'Ehleyr, the mother of Worf’s child. Under Klingon law, Worf’s action is legal and even an act of honor; the Klingons are okay with it, and so is Starfleet Command.
Picard is not. He dresses Worf down severely and formally reprimands him.
There is no ambiguity in this case; nor is it a matter of legality. It comes down to core values and principles. And Picard stands firmly on both, while insisting that Worf has not, admonishing him for it.
But in M’Benga’s exchange with Pike, we have a different dynamic:
Per Starfleet, it’s okay to succumb to murderous rage if you have PTSD.
Per Starfleet, if you witness a war criminal committing crimes, it’s okay to carry out justice personally, rather than through channels.
Per Starfleet, if someone attacks you, and you’re armed and they’re not, it’s okay to kill them rather than subdue them.
Per Starfleet, if someone under your command kills someone and calls it self-defense and you suspect there is more to it, and the officer who did it even gives you reason after reason why the dead person deserved it, it’s okay to let it go if you’ve known each other too long to count.
That’s dark. Dark. M’Benga wins the Dark Trek sweepstakes.
All of this matters, and it matters a great deal. What sets Trek apart from its peers as more than just entertainment is the value system it has upheld for almost 60 years now. We’ve not only come to expect it; we’ve inculcated it, making it a part of our own DNA. We love this mythology because it asks us to be more than we’ve been. It asks us to reach higher, and to expect more of those who are sharing the journey with us. It gives us something of tremendous importance to aspire to.
Until it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, it collapses into mere entertainment; and in the process, we find ourselves asking – having seen a glimpse of our best selves in Trek’s exhilarating vision – how we could ever have found our own darkness so entertaining in the first place.
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