Why was Robert Hooks Replaced with Brock Peters in TVH

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies I-X' started by Workbee, Sep 10, 2013.

  1. The Old Mixer

    The Old Mixer Mih ssim, mih ssim, nam, daed si Xim. Moderator

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    In the real world, the U.S. president is the commander-in-chief of all of the military, and under him are joint chiefs of the various branches. To use that as a parallel, one would have to assume that there are other military brances than Starfleet....
     
  2. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    The crux here is the line "Cartwright is supposed to be his replacement." That's based on external information and assumptions; it's never stated onscreen that Cartwright has replaced Morrow. So all you have to do is disregard that assumption. Cartwright was an admiral who worked under Morrow, and then worked under Bill Smillie (as he's known in the novels) when Smillie replaced Morrow. As I see it, the progression of Starfleet heads goes from Robert Comsol (who signed the Talos IV orders in "The Menagerie") to Nogura to Morrow to Smillie, though there could've been someone else between those last two.
     
  3. Mr. Laser Beam

    Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    But all of the admirals we have been discussing have been specifically stated to be Starfleet.

    Me, I'm going with the assumption that titles like "Commander, Starfleet" and "Chief of Starfleet Operations" and "C-in-C" are all just different ways of saying the same thing: the top admiral in Starfleet. It's just semantics, that's all.
     
  4. The Old Mixer

    The Old Mixer Mih ssim, mih ssim, nam, daed si Xim. Moderator

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    ^"Chief of Starfleet Operations" in clearly a lower position, as Kirk held it at the beginning of TMP, and answered to Nogura.
     
  5. Mr. Laser Beam

    Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    ^ Hmm. Well that's what I get for going by a real-world example (IIRC, the top Admiral in the US Navy is the Chief of Naval Operations).
     
  6. Captain Clark Terrell

    Captain Clark Terrell Commodore Commodore

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    I've another theory that hasn't come up yet. Perhaps the position of Commander Starfleet requires special appointment or election? Maybe Morrow's term was up after 2285, and Cartwright was slated to replace him. It's not unlike serving as president of a medical staff or as department chair in an academic setting. These positions aren't always held by the most experienced or most skilled person, but by whomever meets the basic qualifications of the position and wants the job. The chair of biology at my undergraduate alma mater is an associate professor. There are several full professors in the same department who are much more well known in their fields, but they work for her as far as the department's hierarchy is concerned.

    --Sran
     
  7. Praetor

    Praetor Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Maybe in Starfleet, your other Admirals elect you to be their leader? That could work.
     
  8. Captain Clark Terrell

    Captain Clark Terrell Commodore Commodore

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    Or the UFP President appoints someone of his or her choosing. We don't know when Hiram Roth took office. Perhaps Cartwright was his guy rather than Morrow, so the change was made in 2286.

    --Sran
     
  9. Praetor

    Praetor Vice Admiral Admiral

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    So more or less like the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs? Now that makes sense.
     
  10. The Old Mixer

    The Old Mixer Mih ssim, mih ssim, nam, daed si Xim. Moderator

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    I imagine it's a subordinate position amongst many departments that answer to the head of Starfleet. Sort of like the CIA has deputy directors in charge of operations and intelligence. There were likely other positions parallel to Kirk's overseeing aspects of Starfleet other than operations.
     
  11. WarpFactorZ

    WarpFactorZ Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Maybe Admiral Marcus should have been Admiral Nogura instead. They could have still cast Peter Weller, to be consistent with the choice for Khan Noonian Singh. :confused:
     
  12. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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    Both choices for Khan, neither of which are Punjabi.
     
  13. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Although, to be fair, many Sikhs are not Punjabi. It's a religion, not an ethnicity, so there are Sikhs of many races. And "Khan Noonien Singh" is not specifically a Punjabi name; Khan is of Mongolian origin and is generally used as a surname in Muslim populations throughout south and central Asia, while Noonien is evidently a Chinese name. And it stands to reason that genetically engineered Augments might defy conventional ethnic classification.
     
  14. The Old Mixer

    The Old Mixer Mih ssim, mih ssim, nam, daed si Xim. Moderator

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    Indeed, if the augment juice could turn Klingons into smooth-headed pseudo-humans, human racial/ethnic/regional traits would be fair game....
     
  15. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^I'm thinking more that if you wanted to engineer superior humans, and weren't a racist like the "eugenicists" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, you'd draw traits from a variety of donors and encourage interbreeding of dissimilar populations. So logically a lot of the resultant Augments would be bi- or multiracial.
     
  16. The Old Mixer

    The Old Mixer Mih ssim, mih ssim, nam, daed si Xim. Moderator

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    Whatever's in the secret sauce, it would still be homogenizing people.
     
  17. WarpFactorZ

    WarpFactorZ Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    So why is their leader bleach white? Perhaps the eugenics / augment program got its start in the late 30s?
     
  18. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    No, that's not how it works. Homogenizing is the absolute worst thing you want to do if your goal is to increase the vigor and adaptability of the species. This is why all the racist eugenics programs of the 19th-20th century failed -- because they were doing it backward. Their bigotry blinded them to the simple biological principle that the vitality of a species depends on a large, diverse gene pool, that a limited and homogeneous one is a recipe for extinction.

    And I think you're making the mistaken assumption that the process by which Augment DNA altered Klingon DNA was the same one that was used to create the Augments in the first place. I don't think that's likely. The Klingons used their own genetic engineering methods to inject Augment DNA into Klingon test subjects in order to imbue them with Augment traits, accidentally giving them human cosmetic traits as well. The Augment DNA then jumped to a Levodian flu strain (along, perhaps, with some genes from whatever retrovirus the Klingons would've been using to transmit the Augment genes) and became airborne.

    Whatever methods were used to create the Augments in the first place would've been something different, presumbly a germ-line alteration, manipulating the genes of embryos before implantation. Indeed, we saw Arik Soong doing this with the embryos he recovered from Cold Station 12. There's no "secret sauce," there's just coding, essentially -- mixing and matching the genes in the chromosomes of embryonic cells. And the donors for those genes, as well as for the original gametes, would've probably been selected from a variety of different ethnicities, in keeping with what we saw in "Space Seed" and ENT. So any given Augment, Khan included, could be of multiracial parentage and multicultural upbringing. Thus there's no reason one of them couldn't be a Caucasian Sikh with a name that's a hybrid of three different cultures.


    White is one of the races, so it would be included too. But he's got a Caucasian appearance, a Sikh religious affiliation, a Chinese middle name, a very unusual first name of Central Asian origin, and a Mexican accent (in one version -- perhaps as "Harrison" he adopted a new accent as a disguise). That's a lot of diversity in one package.

    (Of course this is an accident. Khan was a product of two unfortunate 1960s TV practices toward Asian cultures -- homogenizing them into a jumbled mass and casting white actors in Asian roles. But fortunately it can be rationalized in a way that fits what we know about the ethnic diversity of Sikhs and that of Khan's people.)
     
  19. Nerys Myk

    Nerys Myk A Spock and a smile Premium Member

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    Well, he did play Buckaroo Banzai. :p
     
  20. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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    The point I was making is if someone hires a Mexican to play a Sikh, then casting an Englishman is no different. Some people have a weird double-standard about Khan's casting. I'm well aware that Sikhs are not an ethnicity, even if the vast majority of them are Punjubi or of the Punjab diaspora.