Chain of Command revisited

Picard's presence on the covert mission is explained more than any of them. It's said he's the only active Starfleet officer experienced with the theta-band carrier wave nonsense, they'd been detecting on Celtris III, that'll be used to deliver the metagenic weapon. There were like 2 others, both out of service.

It's why the Cardies used it as a lure. It's not weak writing imho, if they're intentionally targeting him from intel, with something they figured out only he knew about, & designed a trap for him personally, so Starfleet would have no one else to call up for it, the goal being to grill him over the defense plans for Minos Korva, (where they were planning their incursion)

Him being there was because he's suspiciously the only expert, Crusher because of her medical expertise, which would be handy if bioweapons are in play & Worf for just being good tactically, & that they both are already on hand, under Picard... but why Picard? because he was the target. It was always going to be Picard, whatever the ploy.

Now, why Nechayez couldn't see that it was an obvious trap, that suspiciously targeted one guy in the whole damn fleet, is a good question. I envision two explanations. #1, she's an idiot, who's bloody dumber than Kennelly when it comes to Cardassians... OR the more likely #2, she knew it would be a trap, & sent Picard anyway, knowing he was never coming back, but considered it a necessary evil, on the off chance there WAS a bioweapon in play. Either way, both Picard & Jellico are proven better strategists than her any day of the week.

 

True, I forgot about that. It was a trap designed to get him, specifically.

Even so, if that theta band carrier wave has any potential for military application, I'd find it very hard to believe that Picard would be the only active member in a massive organization such as Starfleet that had any experience with it (even if it was only in conducting experiments with it), and not even recent experience at that, and if it didn't have any potential, really, it would have been immediately obvious it was a trap.

 

It's arguably a stretch, I'll grant you, but it's possible that it was a technology that no one had ever considered for military application. It really was just a subspace carrier wave on a new type of frequency or what-have-you. It's general radiation sciencey type stuff that no one was all that interested in, but it might be plausible for use in this one specific circumstance of it potentially being usable to carry metagenic material for a bioweapon, a bioweapon which also has fallen out of relevance, having been universally condemned.

So, think of it as a tech no one ever thought to use in concert with a weapon, & a weapon no one has been looking into enough anymore to realize this tech (in theory) could potentially be useable with it, which there's no real evidence to prove it even WAS. They never actually find a bioweapon. The whole thing was a bluff. They just had to make it seem believable enough to sufficiently frighten Starfleet into committing a border treaty violation.

This whole thing is Nechayev's fault for being such a dupe... & if I were Picard, I'd never forgive her ass for throwing me to the wolves under pretty shady circumstances, that are clearly targeting me. She knew this was more than likely BS, but because there's an off chance it might not be, she sent him to die

Edit: Also, if you ever actually wanted to think of Nechayev as a badmiral, this is your window, because we later find out during Descent 1 & 2, that she has a particular grudge against Picard for letting Hugh The Borg go free, prior to Chain of Command. Clearly, she doesn't care for Picard after that event in season 5. So, when something came up where she could let him dangle, hanging him out to dry, she does it.

 

^Doesn't this kind of assume that the orders originated with Nechayev instead of coming from someone even higher up in the command structure?

Based purely on the show (the novels complicate the matter), I don't think Nechayev's at all a badmiral, she's just very forcused on business and not very personable, at least with Picard. We see at least a couple of times where she does soften toward him, especially when she sees that he's trying to improve his relations with her as well. As for Hugh, I don't think that qualifies as "a particular grudge", but rather as something where there's probably a lot of people who disagree with Picard's handling of the situation, and they're not wrong to feel that way. The idea that she intentionally set Picard up, especially based on her feelings about how he handled Hugh, feel like a very fringe theory to me.

 

I don't necessarily agree with it either. I was just pointing out the suspicious conditions, that could be used if someone wanted to accuse her of ill intentions toward Picard. I'm sure a LOT of people don't like Picard for the Hugh thing, or even the Wolf 359 thing, or a lot of things where he was a boyscout, & made life difficult for people out there because of his morality.

Plus, it wouldn't necessarily have to be a deliberate setup on her part, just a set of conditions that arose naturally, where she doesn't necessarily have the guy's back, to his major detriment. It might just be a circumstance where someone malicious wouldn't advocate for safeguarding a guy they take issue with, & he finds himself in bad situations where he's endangered because of it.

It's also true she might not be top dog on this Celtris III plan, but she sure is taking lead on it hard.

 

There. Are. FOUR. Officers!
Three, sir.

 

Re: Picard being the only expert - then frelling brief a commando on the subject and send them.

And still being uncomfortably reminded of that last boss of mine by this discussion . We weren't so much resistant to his new ways, as we were surprised his new ways were so stupid. I was a graphic illustrator, with 30-plus years of being such in the company, and that's all I did. So he comes into my cubicle and tells me one of the managers at another entire location in a different state has asked for help because his admin is out, and he has me call up some clerical work in Excel. I say, "This is clerical work." "He smirks and says, "We're part of a team here."
Okay, I'm the team member who draws stuff, and I have no frackin clue how to use Excel. So instead of saying "oh" and finding someone else, he gives me a 10-minute crash course and leaves me to it.
Meanwhile some ad art the Florida office is bugging me for isn't getting done.

 

It seems Starfleet is desperately short-staffed when it comes to specialized infiltration units. After all, why send the DS9 senior staff to disguise as Klingons and infiltrate in the Klingon military HQ, no less?

Or send regular TNG or DS9 officers (again: no specialists) to double in infiltrating smuggler gangs occasionally?

 

I mean sure... realistically, but, possibly there wasn't enough time between discovering the emissions & the negotiations or it's an involved science type thing that might require solid hands-on experience. It's thin, but it ain't nothing lol

Also, if you are in the Nechayev hater camp, maybe she just didn't like Picard & if someone's gotta go get tossed into a meat grinder why not let it be him?

Am I remembering right that the smuggler infiltration from TNG was in Gambit 1&2, and in that case they were operating of their own free will, off the books so to speak?

 

Don't know, possibly. It has been a long time since I saw the episode myself. Even if they were, though, the odds were higher than just rounding up some smuggling gang.

And I also seem to remember an episode where O'brien tried to infiltrate the Orion Syndicate.

 

Yeah, really. It's too bad that we only saw the Hazard Team in a couple of video games... the Enterprise definitely could have used a group like that. Even MACO's would have been handy.

Even if Picard had to go, why not have him escorted by trained and heavily armed commandos?

A proper military commander gets his people to maximum combat readiness. Many of Jellico's decisions, while they might have been beneficial over a two or three month timetable, were disastrous in the short term. Had Enterprise had to actually fight when the hastily thrown together Delta Shift was on duty, I doubt that would have worked out well.

That or it's a TV show, and doesn't bother with subtlety.

Yeah, really. And Sisko took it on himself to engage in geopolitical deception on an interstellar scale, even though he was a shipbuilder and station commander.

 

Maximum drama.