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Genocide Dilemma: Difference between revisions
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(Import from TV Tropes TVT:Main.GenocideDilemma 2012-07-01, editor history TVTH:Main.GenocideDilemma, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license) |
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'''The Doctor''': [[If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him|But if I kill... wipe out a whole intelligent life form, then I become like them. I'd be no better than the Daleks.]] |''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'', "Genesis of the Daleks"}}
We all know the drill. It's [[The Federation]] versus [[The Empire]], and the [[Heroes]] stop the Empire's new superweapon just in time for [[The Cavalry]] to defeat the [[Mooks]]. Now good has triumphed, how do you mop up the resistance? If the heroes are lucky, the Empire will be led by a [[Self-Disposing Villain]] or an [[Evil Overlord]] with a [[Zero Percent Approval Rating]] who can be [[Sealed Evil in A Can|imprisoned]] in the [[Tailor
But what if the driving force behind the forces of evil is not a single [[Big Bad|Evil Overlord]], but a [[Planet of Hats]] whose hat happens to be [[Always Chaotic Evil]]? You can't very well arrest and try every inhabitant. And it will doubtlessly include children, who, if you did try them, would be acquitted because [[Children Are Innocent]]. But as long as enough remain to propagate the species, they will remain a threat.
Alice [[Forgot I Could Fly|suddenly remembers]] that she still has the [[Handy Remote Control]] of that [[Wave Motion Gun]] her buddies just captured. The only question is, will the victors [[Final Solution|choose to use it and end the threat to the galaxy once and for all]], running the risk of crossing the [[Moral Event Horizon]] themselves (although they and their allies might be [[Would Be Rude to Say Genocide|reluctant to admit it]]), or [[
If the [[Always Chaotic Evil]] race is permitted to survive, it's a [[Curiosity Is a Crapshoot|crapshoot]] whether they do a [[Heel Face Turn]] and become valued, if not always reliable, allies, or rise again to repeat the story in a sequel, possibly wiping out millions of [[Space Amish]] and other innocents in the process. If the [[Always Chaotic Evil]] race is exterminated, it's common either for [[Last of His Kind|one]] or a few to survive and become the [[Underdogs Never Lose|underdog]], resulting in a [[Genocide Backfire]], or else that the [[Call It Karma|Karmic effects]] doom [[The Federation]] to become [[The Atoner]], or a [[Complete Monster]] in the eyes of history.
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Occasionally, some other villain may [[Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work|conveniently exterminate the threat]], who then has far less problems associated with killing him off.
In the modern world, killing enemies other than in the heat of combat or after a trial is considered a war crime, and animals and plants are protected by law in most places from deliberate extinction, but in the past this was not the case. Obviously, any serious discussion of genocide in the modern world is likely to run afoul of [[
See also [[Final Solution]] and this trope's supertrope, [[He Who Fights Monsters]]. Contrast [[Would Be Rude to Say Genocide]]. When the characters don't show this at all during a war, it might be a [[Guilt Free Extermination War]].
{{examples
== Anime & Manga ==
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* ''[[Ender's Game]]'' and its sequels apply this in one way or another to every nonhuman species in the setting. {{spoiler|''None'' of them intended to start hostilities with humanity, and in only one case (when fighting a seemingly sentient virus that wipes out almost every life form it infects) is genocide portrayed as justified. With each species encountered, humanity is more reluctant to kill fellow rational beings, and the final species in ''Children of the Mind'' is dealt with in a completely nonviolent manner.}}
* The Taxxons in ''[[Animorphs (Literature)|Animorphs]]'' are driven by [[Horror Hunger|unceasing hunger]], to the point that if one of them is injured, the others will ''eat its entrails''. They voluntarily joined up with the resident [[Puppeteer Parasite|mind-controlling parasites]] in the (unsuccessful) hopes that this would keep them from killing everything in sight. The issue of whether they need to die {{spoiler|is ultimately sidestepped through a species-wide [[Metamorphosis]]}}.
** A variant: the Hork-Bajir are a peaceful species, but to weaken them as a tool for the Yeerks Alloran decided to genocide them with a Quantum Virus, earning a [[What the Hell, Hero?]] from his own species.
* The ''[[Star Wars]]'' [[New Jedi Order]] series has the Alpha Red virus, which could kill the Yuuzhan Vong and their biotech, but Vergere destroys it because even the Vong have the right to exist, and the good guys would be monsters if they wiped them out. [[Retcon|Or maybe she didn't have complex and noble motives, she was just an]] [[Department of Redundancy Department|evil Sith villain]]. And then they recreate it, but it doesn't go too well.
** Before the Vong, there were the Yevetha, whom Leia wanted to strand on their homeworld and set up an interdiction field for about the next million years. After the Vong, we have the Lost Tribe of the Sith, where Ben even ''says'' [[Would Be Rude to Say Genocide|it's not genocide, it's just destroying the Sith]]. [[Light Is Not Good]] indeed.
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