Debate and Switch: Difference between revisions

* The protagonists are put into the morally gray situation, then another consideration makes it much more black-and-white. The decision is made on that consideration, with the original considerations becoming moot. No Third Option necessary, just a Second Question.

* ''[[Death Note (Manga)|Death Note]]'' poses the question: does [[Utopia Justifies the Means|utopia justify the means]] if you plan on ending all crime by killing all criminals? Said question is rendered moot by the fact that the perpetrator, [[Magnificent Bastard]] Light Yagami, [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope|develops from an arrogant sore loser]] into a [[Villain Protagonist]] with a [[A God Am I|god complex]] who kills all who oppose him. L, though, is [[Black and Grey Morality|only slightly better]], opposing "Kira" not out of a sense of duty or justice, but because ''he's'' an arrogant sore loser as well, and finds fighting crime and solving complex mysteries a hobby. This was arguably for the better; who cares about morality debates when you've got [[Gambit Pileup|Xanatos Roulettes piling up like no other]]?

** In the manga L did act out of a sense of justice. The episode when he promises to himself to not let Kira get away with the murder of FBI operatives is the clearest illustration, but it was cut out from TV series. Also, ''Death Note'' was never really about whether [[Utopia Justifies the Means]], but about the corruption by power, although the point was somewhat muddled in adaptations.

*** A lot of the morality debate is cut from the manga, and {{spoiler|the final debate between Light and Near}} is cut down to its bare minimum, including Light expressing his belief that he's not only getting rid of the criminals, but creating a society where people are free to do good. Near similarly believes Kira's forcing his own views onto others under threat of death, "neither peaceful nor just," and asks everyone else what they think about it, to which they respond with tacit approval. While there is considerably more examination of the ramifications of Kira's new world order in the manga, the authors ultimately leave it up to the reader to decide, but note that Light was corrupted by having the power to kill at will.

* One episode of ''The Daughter Of 20 Faces'' deals with how the protagonists are supposed to be sympathetic when they're major thieves. The main character befriends a lonely little girl, who happens to be the daughter of the head of security for a museum holding the object the protagonists want to steal. In doing so, she learns how to sneak past the security guards and that ''Gasp'' stealing a priceless object from the museum could cause big trouble for the kindly security chief and his innocent daughter. Chiko's huge [[Kick the Dog|betrayal of her new friend]] is softened by the revelation that the little girl was actually evil at the end of the episode, and everything she said about her father was probably a lie.

* In the 2009 ''[[Star Trek (Film)|Star Trek]]'' movie, {{spoiler|Kirk offers assistance to the about-to-be-crushed-by-a-black-hole Romulan ship, whose crew committed genocide by destroying Vulcan}}. Spock objects to this. Before any actual debate could happen, Nero, the ship's captain, tells Kirk to go screw himself, thus giving Kirk all the moral cover he needs to hasten their inevitable destruction. Kirk even says to Spock that offering them a chance for survival is the logical choice. <ref>Which it is, because it means they capture the criminals ''and'' get their hands on the ''Narada'''s juicy and powerful future-technology.</ref>

* [[The Contender]]: So, will Laine win the Vice Presidency despite the furore of controversy surrounding her? Will she prove to the world that the bending of the truth and exposure of someone's shady moral history should never be used for political gain and need not necessarily ruin your chances of a high-powered career? {{spoiler|never mind, the girl in the photos wasn't actually her after all. Oh, and her main rival's a backstabbing liar.}} Crisis averted.

* Some see the whole movie of ''Fighting the Odds: The Marilyn Gambrell Story'' as this. The problem with this movie is that it brings up a lot of issues without actually talking about them. Particularly the complicated socio-economic background of most of the kids.

** A husband played by John Ritter cuts his unfaithful wife open and kills her fetus, claiming he was [[Insanity Defense|enraged]] by the thought of her having her lover's child. The trial is not so clear-cut because killing a fetus isn't murder unless there's proof that it took a breath outside the womb. As he's on the stand, {{spoiler|Cabot presents him with evidence the fetus actually belonged to him and he killed his own child, prompting him to admit the baby cried before he killed it.}} Notably the episode ends before {{spoiler|the verdict is read; the viewer is meant to assume his insanity defense was rejected solely on the basis of the murder charge being provable.}}

** In another episode, a prostitute accidentally gives birth prematurely at five months. Despite doctor's warnings that the child will be severely mentally handicapped and will have health problems her whole life, the woman decides to keep her baby (it's implied she doesn't fully understand the consequences being born so early will have for her child). In the end, she runs off, giving power of attorney to Olivia. {{spoiler|Olivia gets a call from the hospital before the closing credits; the baby's heart has failed. Olivia could choose to save the baby, but the baby would require lifelong hospitalisation and would have to be kept on a respirator 24/7 -- or Olivia could choose to let the baby's heart fail, which could be interpreted as more merciful. The episode ends after Olivia was presented with the choice, showing her conflicted...though notably, the baby doesn't appear or get referenced in any later episodes, meaning Olivia either decided to let her die, or they tried saving her and she died anyway.}}

** Notably averted in "Death Wish", when a Q is forcibly prevented from committing suicide. Despite Trek's history of [[Take a Third Option|third options]] as well as this trope, in the end Janeway rules that preventing his suicide is wrong and he promptly eats poison.

* In the ''[[Star Trek the Next Generation (TV)|Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' episode "Haven", the episode begins with Deanna Troi facing an arranged marriage. The episode is one extended debate over personal choice vs. cultural expectation which is soundly side-stepped by the plague ship mentioned almost in passing at the beginning of the episode suddenly having aboard it the woman Troi's husband-to-be has dreamed of all his life (literally).

** The episode "The Beast Below" sets up an interesting moral dilemma by revealing that {{spoiler|the entire future-city of London is kept alive by a star whale, which must be tortured regularly in order to keep it from escaping. This brings up the moral issue of whether to free the whale, dooming the city, or continue torturing the whale. However, the issue is avoided when... it's revealed the whale wanted to help them anyway and it stays of its own accord because it couldn't bear watching children cry! Phew!}}

* ''[[Star Trek Enterprise (TV)|Star Trek Enterprise]]'' had an episode where the switch was an even ''bigger'' moral decision. Initially it's about whether to interfere in the natural arrangement of a pre-warp society (a stone-age species is kept in benign slavery by a more advanced one), but then it suddenly turns out that the disease that's been spreading among the dominant species (and for which the crew was helping to find a cure) is a "natural development" of their evolution (which may well "solve" the problem of the stone-age species' subjugation by killing their caretakers). So naturally, the crew decide to give them relief of the symptoms rather than a cure, in a proto-development of the [[Alien Non Interference Clause|Prime Directive]] (its most appalling application in the entire history of the series, which is ironic as it was intended as a justification for it). And then people wondered why the ''[[Star Trek (Franchise)|Star Trek]]'' franchise took a breather.

* In an episode of ''[[The 4400]]'', one of the returnees has the ability to heal genetic defects ''in utero.'' It is later revealed that this returnee is a Rwandan war criminal and the rest of the episode debates whether his ability to heal should preclude him from getting sent back to Rwanda to pay for his crimes. It is later resolved by revealing {{spoiler|that every genetic defect he fixes is taken into his own DNA, making him sicker. Either way, this man is assured a death sentence; it becomes a choice of whether he dies quickly via execution or slowly, but helping others along the way.}}

* A fifth-season episode of ''[[Babylon Five|Babylon 5]]'' has to do with Doctor Franklin learning that one of the (minor) alien species, the Hyach, once had a "sub"-species that they exterminated (along with all halfbreeds) before becoming an interstellar society, and then hid all evidence of the genocide from outsiders. It turns out that the Hyach have a species-wide congenital condition which will eventually destroy them as it becomes more common through their "closed" breeding population -- and the extinct cousin species had the genes to neutralize that congenital defect, making crossbreeding "mandatory" for them. The Hyach ambassador wants Franklin to help find a solution because they can't figure it out, and he's one of humanity's foremost xenobiologists (and [[Humans Are Special|therefore one of the foremost xenobiologists in the galaxy, since most of the other races don't care enough about outsiders to study their biologies]]). When faced with the question of helping the Hyach, or letting the whole species reap what it has sown through the genocide and subsequent cover-up, Franklin ultimately decides to leave the Hyach to their own fate. (Again, the individuals who carried out the actual genocide were mostly ''long dead'' by then, so the Doctor decided that naturally their descendants deserve to die for being born to such evil ancestors. Gah.) Although he didn't exactly refuse help he just said he couldn't do anything by himself and only could if they covered it up and got help from the full Alliance.

** "Scrambled": a woman is charged with [[Felony Murder]] after she hires an ex-cop to break into a fertility clinic and destroy her eggs and he kills a worker who walked in on him. The case hinges on whether or not one's own eggs can be legally the property of someone else, for the purposes of establishing the predicate felony. Except during the break-in {{spoiler|the cop destroyed another couple's eggs too, but they didn't initially come forward to report the 'loss' for other reasons.}}

** Happens three times in "Progeny", another abortion episode. The killer uses the "preservation of life" justification of killing the abortion doctor to save a woman's unborn fetus. McCoy first points out that since the doctor's intended patient was really the killer's partner and her scheduled abortion was a ruse to lure the doctor out that her fetus was never in jeopardy. He then digs up evidence the defendant's motive was revenge against abortion doctors after he failed to prevent the woman carrying his child from getting an abortion. The defendant's spiritual advisor, an anti-abortion advocate who insists on making a jury debate the value of the "preservation of life" argument, claims he was the defendant's co-conspirator, having provided the gun and transportation for him to kill the doctor. On the stand, he claims the justification defense but McCoy asks him why, if he believes its morally right to kill abortion doctors, did he not just pull the trigger himself instead of giving the gun to the killer? The answer was that no matter how much he decried abortion, he still knew it was wrong to kill anyone, thus he did not believe in his own defense.

** Clark in Season 9 was faced with the difficult question of what to do about the Kandorian refugees: should they try to pass as normal humans and live regular lives or acquire their rightful Kryptonian powers? Being normal left them vulnerable to paranoid humans who had no qualms about killing them off but under Major Zod's leadership, the empowered Kandorians were destined to conquer Earth. Clark gives them [[Take a Third Option|a third option]]: {{spoiler|shaking their faith in Zod and using the Book of Rao to send them to another plane of existence where they can make a new start}}.

*** Well, they're still hulking metal monstrosities. Also, it's it would seem that the fact about uploaded human minds never becomes public knowledge, and it's quite possible that the only ones to know will be dead before the war breaks out.

**** In BSG there was a pretty clear distinction between the "skin jobs" which were physically, biologically, psychologically, and basically in every other possible way human other than their mystical reincarnation abilities; and the "hulking metal monstrosities" which even the skin jobs kept as mindless slaves. There's really no reason the word "Cylon" would be used for both, unless it's in the same way that "Colonial" can be used for anything from a person to a starship - but then again, I don't remember any debates in the show over whether it was fair to let the Vipers be "forced into combat" by their human pilots!

* ''[[JAG]]'' had a soldier in Iraq charged with killing an unarmed, surrendering insurgent on camera. {{spoiler|Lt. Vukovic examines the crime scene and finds the insurgent was actually trying to detonate a hidden cache of explosives.}}

* ''[[The District]]'' had a white plainclothes officer shoot and kill a black armed undercover cop after he chased off some punks trying to rob him. The officer claims the undercover pointed his gun at him but the strong suggestion that race played a factor in his judgement call (and 2 previous unrelated incidents where a white cop mistakenly shot a black cop under similar circumstances) leaves many in doubt about his story. {{spoiler|Until the police locate one of the youths the undercover chased off, who confirms that he pointed his gun before getting shot and everyone agrees they need to train officers to identify themselves sooner during tense situations.}}

** Rebecca defends a childhood friend, an off-duty cop who shot an armed stranger he believed was going to rob a convenience store. She digs up dirt on the victim including a murder charge that was [[Off On a Technicality|dropped on a technicality]]. {{spoiler|The murder victim in that case was an old friend of the defendant's: he killed the suspect out of revenge, then planted a gun on him to make it look like a robbery.}}

** Jimmy defends an old school buddy who was being sued after he outed an HIV-positive subordinate of his out of fear he might infect other co-workers. {{spoiler|During their conversations, the defendant reveals that he was a homophobe who was glad that the employee's hostile working conditions prompted him to resign.}}

* Rather similarly, the first plot of ''[[Tales of Symphonia (Video Game)|Tales of Symphonia]]'' is that the Chosen must {{spoiler|sacrifice herself}} in order to save the world. {{spoiler|The rest of the cast decide that sacrificing their friend and saving everyone else is the right thing to do, but ''then'' they learn that it would actually only save their world for some time - and that it's going to make another world suffer in the way they've been suffering up until now. Now the debate is whether to save one world at the cost of the other. Then they decide to [[Take a Third Option|find a way to save both worlds without sacrificing anyone]].}}

* A near perfect example of the debate and switch can be found early on in ''[[Dragon Age]]''. After the hero and his/her party {{spoiler|defeat the legions of undead in the village of Redcliffe, they storm the castle to find that the son of the local noble has been possessed by a demon. The hero is told that there are only two ways of dealing with the magically powerful and demon-possessed child: kill the child and end the horror, or kill the child's mother in a ritual of evil dark magic that will allow you to permanently remove the demon with no harm to the boy. Upon being told this, the hero can ask "is there no other way?" to which the people who just told you that you have to kill someone reply "well, I suppose you can take a little side trip across the lake to the tower of wizards where you can find someone who can help you remove the demon without killing mother or child with no strings attached," thereby rendering the previous choices completely pointless}} This is only an example to the player, as the third option carries a significant risk of making things much worse, but if it did end badly, the game would be [[Unwinnable]]. It also depends on the mages surviving their own quest line.

== Western Animation ==