Alloran

[estrid]

the way i see it is alloran go screwed. like he didnt do the things he did to be a mallicious person. the way he was seeing it was kill a few, save a million type thing, which is what the animorphs did pretty much the whole series. if he managed to stop the invasion of the hork bajir, they woulda had a huge advantage over the yeerks. but it was the wrong way to go about it. he shoulda just listened to aldrea the 1rst time she called them about it.

and with him wanting to kill those yeerks in the andalite chronicles, think of it this way. there were what, lets say 2,000 yeerks there? that would have been 2,000 less hosts and 2,000 more free ppl (aliens whatever) had alloran succeeded.

moral of the story, alloran didnt deserve being visser 3

[morfowt]

um...yeah but no one deserves to be the host of visser three...

[XenomorphLV426]

Although the use of the bioweapon on the Hork-Bajir was very unethical.

How do you figure?   ???

[Chad32]

I've been thinking more about this. The reason I hate the idea is because we're talking about a planet, and not a small country like when we bombed Japan.

But in the big picture, you could say the planets are like countries, and the galaxy is the world. It's an extreme measure, but if wiping out a large part of a small country makes it easier to protect the entire world, and doing it is the lesser of two evil options, then perhaps it is justified.

Alloran did screw up by not bringing enough soldiers, but at that point he had two choices. He took the lesser of two evils. I think I see that now. If it had gone right, the Yeerks likely would have lost and the Arn may have been able to restart the Hork-Bajir race.

On another note, there was no reason to try to wipe out Earth. There were definitely other choices. I stand firm about that.

[XenomorphLV426]

Was Alloran the guy in charge of how many troops to bring to the HB world though?  He seemed more likean actual frontline captain or something at that stage in his career, not like he was the general calling the shots on a large scale.

[Chad32]

Was Alloran the guy in charge of how many troops to bring to the HB world though?  He seemed more likean actual frontline captain or something at that stage in his career, not like he was the general calling the shots on a large scale.

He was a Prince. Actually, I don't know how many troops a Prince can command. I don't really have an answer.

[RYTX]

I don't think he gets to decide how many troops go where.
I'd be amazed if he'd taken it on himself to personally see to Seerow's daughter, I'm betting it was a call by the higher ups

[XenomorphLV426]

Yeah.  He always seemed more like the hands-on War Prince, rather than the General standing on his spaceship looking at a map and ordering people around.  I don't think he was like in charge of the strategic military stuff.  Probably why he chose to go over the law, believing they didn't know what was actually happening on the ground well enough to make a decision.

[voodooqueen126]

presumably they just gave Alloran a few spare soldiers and said "Good Luck" rather than him selecting the number of troops.
A few people have been saying that since the Hork-Bajir were not  a natural species, it made it easier to kill the horks... that is significant, but more significant is this: the Hork-bajir are not very bright and it makes it easier to dehumanise them (or regard them as unsentient), if you were on a dinghy with a down syndrome kid which could only support one you might be more tempted to kill and eat that child or tip them overboard then you would if your companion was Einstein.
and yes there is a difference between killing 6 million people who are better than you (like Hitler did) for the lulz than killing an unintelligent species (with no contribution to make to anything) to save thousands of other sentient species despite the many justifications. Alloran still (and barring having a bio-weapon against Yeerks, I would definitly have done the same thing) deserved his karmic punishment (failing to save the hork-bajir and committing genocide resulting in his own enslavement to Esplin).
should Alloran be in a ramonite box or a bio-stasis chamber whilst he waits for Esplin at the pool, something that immobilises him at the same time it prevents him morphing, but still wouldn't prevent him from getting hungry/breathing etc?

[Azguard]

Well, I think we forget one important point in this.

Were the Andalites even thinking of other galactic races, or were they actually thinking of themselves? Anywhere from "oh crap, this will look really bad on our resumes" to "dang it, we might not be able to contain this infestation after all". Granted, Alloran might have, but did the Andalite race (or maybe more so their government) even care about these other races? The seem so ****y and self-assured, that I think in their minds, the bio weapon and the quarantine was more for their benefit than anyone elses.

so then the thing is not whether it was moral or not at all in the Andalite's eyes. It was more like "how do we get ourselves out of this ditch that will give us the biggest advantage?" In this perspective, wiping out the Hork Bajir and the Huumans don't seem so wrong.

[anijen21]

I have a theory about Alloran as a character that I'll definitely post once it's a little bit more fleshed out.

But right now I want to ask you guys this:

Did Alloran actually release the Quantum Virus?

[AniDragon]

That's a very good point. I believe it was implied that it was created as a percaution, or a trump card. Though I'm thinking he probably would have released it eventually as a last resort, I don't think he was planning on doing it any time soon.

So yeah, the virus was actually released by accident, by the fault of Aldrea and Dak. But would Alloran have released it himself eventually? Now that's a question to ponder.

Actually, if Alloran wouldn't have, I think the Arn would. They'd destroy the Hork-Bajir to hopefully drive the Yeerks off of their world, and then re-create them so they can sustain the trees to sustain the planet, possibly with a failsafe to keep them form getting infested again. (Like they did to themselves, with the bloodvessel that would burst if they get infested)

[Alic]

*shrug*

Gotta do whatcha gotta do.
I might have done it.

[voodooqueen126]

I definitly would've, though I would've saught to exterminate the Yeerks first... Good point that Aldrea and Dak actually released the virus rather than Alloran, perhaps this is why he went free at the end.
But was Alloran (during Esplin's infestation) infested in a bio-stasis chamber or a ramonite box?

[MoppingBear]

whether or not doing it to the hork bajir was ethical, doing it to earth was not.  the andalites didnt even try to save us.  they were contacted repeatedly and told what was happening on earth, and refused to help.  their first response is "quarantine" as opposed to alloran, who used it as a last resort.

also, there were 6 billion people on earth, and the impression i got from reading the series, especially visser, was that most planets have sentient species members numbering in the millions, though we dont know the number of other sentient races, its logically different from wiping out a few million hork bajir.