Judge Shepard hands down his ruling: Guilty, Death by Execution

[aboleyn24]

Sheppard used their nature against them. These men had decided to hand over innocents to the aggressors to protect themselves. Where have I seen that before? Oh, yeah. Nazi Germany.

The Wraith were going to kill/experiment on the Balarians. Jervis and his men were going to not just turn their backs and let it happen but were going to hand them over willingly.

Sheppard laid out his plan, and the village leader agreed. He DID NOT force those men to do anything. The leader left the keys and walked away. Jervis could have easily taken his family to the mines or hidden in the woods or done any number of things including telling the Wraith where the mines were and not gone in.

Did Sheppard knowingly kill those men? Yes. Was there another choice? I don't know. But don't make them out to be innocent victims in this. They were collaborating with Wraith.



Lured? I didn't see Sheppard "luring" anyone. He bet on their cowardice and fear, and he was right. Trying to save their families? Saving their families would have consisted of protecting them by hiding from the Wraith, escaping somehow, not handing over people to be executed.

I totally agree with this post. Those men still had a choice. Yes, they were being manipulated, but they still could have made a different decision than leading the Wraith to a place where a bunch of sick refugees were waiting helplessly. Sheppard seems to be taking the major heat for a plan that others willingly agreed too.

How often have we seen humans walk away from dealing with the Wraith? They usually wind up dead even if they give them what they want so I think those men would have died any way even if the cave were not rigged to blow up. I suppose we will never know though.

[keeperofthehive]

Well, this was morally sticky, wasn't it?

Consider:

Spoiler:

The Wraith Queen is both literally and figuratively the mother of her hive, so this is what makes her unstoppable: her children are hungry and threatened. This also contributes to the Wraith mentality of " My hive and my hive alone" as Gabriel put it for us. The most dangerous creature imaginable, as they say: a mother whose offspring are threatened.

The ideal human position (i repeat: the ideal) given by human philosophies is to embrace and include all humans as family. However, on a realistic and practical level we feel more responsible to our biological relatives, then our community, then our countrymen, etc. , than to those we perceive as "outsiders."

If we had to choose between the lives of our own children and strangers, what would we do? (There was no way to know if the Wraith would keep their promise or not; some do and some don't, so that is not a legitimate arguement.)

The correctness (and even effectiveness) of Jarvis' position can be argued at length, but does it really qualify as criminal?

[fumblesmcstupid]

I think that a bunch of men who have no problem turning over refugees to the Wraith get what they deserve.

Is Sheppard and the leader guy going to loose sleep over what they did? Yes! Why? Because they are both men who try to look out for everyone. In this case they chose to look at the bigger picture. 10 or 15 men in exchange for 600 or so people escaping to live another day.

The need of the many out weigh the need of the few.

What did Jervis ask the leader "Is this going to mess with your conscience?" or something to that effect. The leader said "let me deal with it " or something to that effect. (No DVR or photographic memory)

If you look at Sheppard and the Leaders faces after the mine went KABOOM you can see what that plan cost them both!

Remember in Sateda what happened to the village that turned over Ronon? The Wraith killed them all.

The Wriath don't keep their word...EVER!

Todd is a Wraith that was made to be a sympathetic character in Common Ground "oh poor guy" we felt sorry for him at first because he was helping Sheppard escape.

"All bets are off"

Teyla in "Michael" "They are Wraith"

Yes I get a kick out of Todd! am I going to cry if they kill him?? Uh no!

The Wraith are the "Bad Guys"

Wraith Worshipers are bad!!

Any one who makes a deal with the Wraith are stupid and naive.

Hello "Allies" anyone? We got what we deserved. We were stupid enough to make a deal with the Wraith and they stabbed us in the back.... before we could stab "Them" in the back!

You guys can boo hoo all you want over the lives of those men in the mine. They were scum, crap you scrape off you shoe!

Two good men A leader and A soldier will second guess their decision for the rest of their lives.

[Detox]

Morality is culturally based and more importantly, it is a luxury in the Pegasus Galaxy.

What Sheppard did may be immoral, but it's definitely not a black and white issue. It is most certainly a gray area.

[Brain_Child]

You guys are all "glass is half empty" people.

Sheppard killed a dozen or so men. yep, he did, no doubt about it

Sheppard saved almost 700 hundred people, yep, he did that too.

if you think about the fact that he saved hundreds of lives, and not that he killed a mere few, you can begin to see it was the best option. Other methods would not have guaranteed the saving of 700 lives.

[bluealien]

What is starting to really disturb me is how many people think it was cool how Sheppard murdered those villagers in the explosion - villagers who were only doing what they thought was right to protect their families. I am really disturbed by this. We're those rogue villagers right? I cannot say - I believe they acted out of fear, not out of hatred. I just cannot believe that Sheppard just murdered them....


das

They went to the cave intent on handing over other innocent villagers to the Wraith who would have killed them, that makes them murderers in my eyes, so they made their own choice. If they had not taken the bait to sacrifice innocent villagers they wouldnt have gotten blown up.

[MathiasE]

Morally their decision was not correct, but strategically it was most likely the only way to ensure that everyone got out ok, the villagers can only be thankful that the people from the expedition were strong enough to actually even concider killing 10-20 people to save 700 rather than trying to make deals with the wraith which would have most likely gone very wrong.

Personally i'd say that the moment they had handed over all the hoffan-infected people the rest would be culled since they would be a "pure" food source.

Edit: as for the next episode, isn't that pretty much a clipshow? Never gave much thought into those episodes since 3/4 of them is stuff you've already seen.

[MCH]

I'm not disagreeing with what anyone else has written here. Just bringing out a point no one else has mentioned.

Teyla and Ronon both went along with this plan without raising a single objection that I recall. So Sheppard came up with the idea and he pulled the trigger, but Teyla and Ronon have to live with that on their conscience just as much as he does.

Maybe

Spoiler:

next week epsiode is the pay off for Shepherd decision and Teyla and Ronan acceptance of it.

OK not a good decision but the situation was fast moving

Spoiler:

as a soldier he can only make a decision right or wrong on the information he had before him.

That's part of SGA problem they just seem to react to a situation and have to make it up as they go along.

In a way what happened with Shepherd weather he is right or wrong in what he did prefectly illustraes the so called "fog of war" he didn't know the whole picture involving the villagers and the Wraith.

One other thing. I'm just want to point out 3 things

Spoiler:

It's was not ok for the decision Shepherd had to make.

But how wrong is it, if the Wraith had just nuked the whole planet? They didn't cos they need somthing off the planet

Or how wrong was the villagers action, the betrayal/double cross business they did it to save their people?

Tricky call for actions of everyone in this episode, survivual of all and that at the end of the day is what drives us all. The need to feed and the need to survive other need to feed will make people take morially ambiguous decisions.

I also think that when an episode engenders this amount of discussion on the right or wrong of a situation, that's good because it makes us look at other's action. It also reminds off of past action that have happened here eg World War 2.

MCH

EDIT the word AMBIGUITY if you break it down Ambi and GUITY. The last part reminds me of the word guilty.-I'm dyslexic so that just my personal takae on this word.

[Heaven]

forgive me if I'm wrong cause I haven't had a chance to watch the ep yet
but from what I understand the ones who died basically betrayed the others.
well in most human cultures treason is punishable by death.

[The6thRace]

I will gladly concede the point that Sheppards decision was more right then wrong. There didn't seem to be another option at the time, besides possibly self-sacrifice. He himself could have went to the wraith posing as a villager and lured them to the cave. But since there were half a dozen men available who were frightened enough by the wraith to want to save their families by turning in some strangers they had just taken in, the situation could be resolved a different way.

Those guys weren't entirely true criminals, they were just scared people in a bad situation that the wraith put them in. I'm sure they had families and people they also wanted to protect. Even though they were naive enough to start turning the refugees over to the wraith, we still cannot possibly brand them as 'traitors'. If anything, they were more loyal then anyone, wanting to protect the village and people they've known all their life - families, friends.

Without discrimination, Sheppard used them and put them in a situation where they would not possibly survive, a mine filled with C4. The action resulted in saving the lives of 600 people. But you also condemned people who didn't entirely deserve to die, despite some people here thinking they are outright traitors.

[The6thRace]

I will gladly concede the point that Sheppards decision was more right then wrong. There didn't seem to be another option at the time, besides possibly self-sacrifice. He himself could have went to the wraith posing as a villager and lured them to the cave. But since there were half a dozen men available who were frightened enough by the wraith to want to save their families by turning in some strangers they had just taken in, the situation could be resolved a different way.

Those guys weren't entirely true criminals, they were just scared people in a bad situation that the wraith put them in. I'm sure they had families and people they also wanted to protect. Even though they were naive enough to start turning the refugees over to the wraith, we still cannot possibly brand them as 'traitors'. If anything, they were more loyal then anyone, wanting to protect the village and people they've known all their life - families, friends - by any means necessary. What makes them unlike Sheppard, who simply chose to sacrifice a different group of people?

Without discrimination, Sheppard used them and put them in a situation where they would not possibly survive, a mine filled with C4. The action resulted in saving the lives of 600 people. But you also condemned people who didn't entirely deserve to die, despite some people here thinking they are outright traitors.

[Nitegate]

this episode makes me like John Sheppard even more, those guys had it coming, they were working with the wraith, sounds like wraith human worshipors who betrayed their village.

[JackHarkness_Hot]

IMO, I didn't like it but Sheppard convinced the leader of the village to fall through with the plan and there was no other choice, he had to draw attention from the gate.

So I can see why he did it but it doesn't mean I support it in anyway. Hopefully, this will somehow scar Sheppard in later episodes like having flashbacks of this incident and he learns something out of it.

[MCH]

this episode makes me like John Sheppard even more, those guys had it coming, they were working with the wraith, sounds like wraith human worshipors who betrayed their village.

There is much that in hindsight appears wrong on both sides, but in the heat of battle Atlantis where reacting to the gravity of the situation between the Wraith and the Villagers and Atlantis was in the middle of this.

Atlantis had to act as the Outsider would not have been there if Atlantis had not requested the people of that planet to take them in originally. Therefor asfar as Shepherd was concerned he had to act as Atlantis original request for santatury caused the Wraith to come here in the first place.

As I have said before

One man's hero is another man's terrorist.

MCH

[JackHarkness_Hot]

As I have said before

One man's hero is another man's terrorist.

That's deep stuff and imo, how appropriate to the real life situation in the Middle-East.

It's something Weir (if she was still on SGA) would debate with Sheppard I reckon.