[Praetor]

Agreed with that line of thinking, Cary, particularly this:

Cary L. Brown wrote:

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This is why I refuse to accept the Reliant as a "Cruiser" (or "light cruiser") but rather think it's a Frigate. It's best suited to serve the role of a frigate, in modern naval terms.

So why use that, instead of a cruiser or a science vessel, to support Genesis?

Well, the cruisers are the "Glory hogs" of the fleet. When the Enterprise, or the Farragut for that matter, get deployed someplace... people pay attention. But send a frigate someplace, and it's pretty well ignored, most likely.

Genesis required security... and that security was supposed to stay relatively nearby (close enough to be on-call if any bad guys showed up). So a short-range(ish) ship with lots of weapons would be ideal on that basis.

And, of course, all we saw Reliant doing was identifying "likely targets"... not doing the final, in-depth surveying that would likely have occurred. Consider how poor Reliant's sensors really were... barely registering anything on their scans, when in fact there was a large group of people. The Enterprise has been able, in the past, to identify a single person with no trouble. And Grissom, in the same situation, would likely have been able to tell what Khan had for breakfast the day before.

We seem to be on the same page, then.

I wonder... was Grissom also assigned to Genesis already, but just wasn't on-station at Regula? They DID say that "everyone was on-leave"... maybe they'd gone on-leave by being ferried someplace by Grissom?

That's a very interesting idea. I don't see why not, personally.