Some people needs killin’
Some people are going to laugh at me, but I am going to confess, anyway. I watch Star Trek: Voyager here in Japan. I’ve never been a Trekkie, but I did enjoy the original series when I was a kid. There’s not a terribly big selection of American shows here in Japan, so I watch some shows here I wouldn’t normally watch if I was in the US. Voyager is one of them.
If I had to describe it, I’d say it’s Star Trek for women. The captain is a woman, and the stories tend to have some kind of emotion-exploring theme (the episode where the captain fell in love with a hologram was particularly laughable). It’s quite silly, but I can sit through it, unlike shows like Charmed or LAX.
Anyway, the other day they were doing an anti-death penalty episode. There were some violent murderers on their way to execution, and their ship got damaged or something, so Voyager took the crew and prisoners aboard. Many among Voyager’s crew expressed misgivings about delivering the murderers to the executioner.
At one point, the doctor (who happens to be a hologram–I’ll never understand how he’s able to pick up physical objects, by the way) says, “Killing is wrong. No matter who’s doing it.” I just had to laugh, because Voyager routinely fires on hostile ships. Are we really to believe that no one ever dies as a result of that? Does the doctor really believe that it is wrong to kill in self-defense? I wonder if he would object to a security officer killing a hostage taker. Once we admit that there are cases where the state (or governing authority) is permitted to kill, we have to debate when killing is justified. It is no longer possible to say that it is always wrong.
To be truly consistent, abolitionists who argue that it is always wrong to kill must also object to killing in self-defense and killing aggressors to save the lives of victims. That’s just silly, though, because this world ain’t perfect, and some people just needs killin’.
) since I saw it.
Great food for thought, Casey.
On Star Trek… I have never been a Trekkie, mainly because it’s so emo, and there’s always this “trying too hard to be politically correct” theme running throughout.
C’mon, get some fights on, do some nasty things. Sure, it’s un-Christian of me to expect so, but it’s a show and I want to see some lasers traded. Uh, yea, that’s my flesh talking out loud.