… and is viewed doing their bidding, committing acts of war agains the US, even laughing and having a great time. Upon him re-entering the country, we would just put him back in the White House, no questions asked (or answered)… right?
After all, it’s how this is played out on TV and movies.
I ask this because I’m re-watching Lost and there’s Jack, playing football with the Others. He goes back to the camp after a series of unfortunate incidents (sub blowing up, Juliette not giving him any, Sawyer bagging Kate (again!)) and pretty much just re-assumes his place as Rightful Leader… even after admitting “yeah, I pretty much sold all of y’all out so I could board a sub and get the freak outta here.” There’s some dissension and the group of survivors does split, but not because people say “we can’t trust this fucker”.
Then there’s Star Trek: TNG. Picard gets captured by the Borg, assimilated, and performs acts of warfare against the Federation. He gets rescued by his plucky band of brothers and just goes back to commanding the Enterprise, instead of being retired as being unfit for duty (which he truly is) and given as unimportant a job as one can have. Naw, even though he’s been modified by advanced alien technology which caused him to betray his own species, we’ll let him keep his warship. :rolleyes:
What other examples of this incredibly lame plot device are out there, so I can be sure to miss them?
Sisko (whose wife was killed by the Borg) was still pissed at him, so apparently some people in the Federation agree. But in the same episode he also tells them how to stop the Borg and saves humanity, so you gotta figure its kinda a wash.
And the Star Trek universe is chalk full of evil mind-controlling aliens, if they sacked every officer who went all evil after getting mind-controlled, they’d end up having to give Spot command of the Enterprise.
If you want to include comics books, how about in the current Marvel continuity, making Norman Osborne, a murdering psycho, head of SHIELD just because he happened to be the one who shot the Skrull queen during the Invasion story arc?
I mean, say for instance that IRL, Dog the Bounty Hunter, a convicted murderer, had gone over to Afghanistan a few years back and managed to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. Would he have got a big reward and some publicity and book deals? Sure. Would we have made him head of the FBI for it?
I don’t THINK so.
Well to be fair, he was director of the Thunderbolts program at the time, and Tony Stark was clearly unfit for duty, as well as being the key to the Skrulls being able to compromise SHIELD security. So he had a great photo-op, and it seemed like a good promotion for him.