How did you get past NuKirk's rise to command?
- Thread starter HigHurtenflurst
- Start date
I've stated my reasons numerous times as to why I consider nuKirk, nuSpock, nuUhura, and nuMcCoy to be unprofessional.
Conceded. At least for my part, because it will be an agree to disagree point for me. Are they unprofessional? Yes, in places. There are places where they all show decorum and professionalism that I would expect from Starfleet officers.
I just think there is more to them than how professional or unprofessional they act, especially given the variety of professionalism we have seen across the years in various Trek shows. nuTrek does not feel any better or any worse than what has come before, IMHO.
I just think there is more to them than how professional or unprofessional they act, especially given the variety of professionalism we have seen across the years in various Trek shows. nuTrek does not feel any better or any worse than what has come before, IMHO.
WNMHGB was not an origin story. It was the second pilot for a TV show which had very little change or continuity between episodes. Any personal growth was reset by the start of the next episode.
This says it all. There are no "origin" episodes to compare the Abrams films to. We have no real idea of what Kirk and the rest of the big seven were like prior to TOS. We have "The Cage" with a more emotional Spock, which actually fits what we see in the Abrams films.
If Spock could go through that type of evolution between the first pilot and TOS proper, then I imagine all of the characters could change over the course of a decade. Are any of us the same people we were a decade ago? I don't think Kirk's habit of disrespecting authority and challenging the rulebook was something that just blossomed one day after taking command of the Enterprise. Just because TOS notes he was serious doesn't mean he was some automaton where authority was concerned.
Just look at the charge sheet they built up in just Star Trek III: The Search for Spock alone...
Just look at Spock in "The Menagerie". Kidnapping, hijacking and falsifying orders are hardly professional.
That was after decades of service where they went by the rules. Sometimes an act involving saving Captain Pike or the Earth is forgiven.
Its like my lecturer at Uni who told us all to f#@$ off. He was back the next week. I'm sure if that was his first week in he would have been given the boot.
It was the first episode where we saw Kirk. We are told what kind of individual he was in his Academy years.
As for "no personal growth"... uh-uh. You cannot tell me the main characters are exactly the same in "Turnabout Intruder" as they were in "Where No Man Has Gone Before."
But there isn't a decade between nuKirk's first Frat Boy action and his most recent. There isn't a decade between nuUhura's first "boyfriend moment" on duty and her most recent (if there had been, I'd be even more disgusted with them than I am now). And Original Spock was still showing his emotions in the early episodes of TOS. What do you think inspired the "Shouting Spock" thread we had here some years ago? It wasn't all based on his actions in "The Cage/Menagerie".
Indeed so, because Kirk was a hard worker to be the best that he can be. Clearly, since he was an instructor at the Academy, he made good progress. But, we still see a cavalier attitude that underlies his general belief towards rules and regulations when it comes to what he thinks is right.
nuKirk is fascinating because he has an arrogance about him and challenges authority because things have been easy for him, in that he has never been challenged. I just find him endlessly interesting from a character perspective
Not sure a real military organization would be so lenient no matter what the length of service. Spock has a history of hijacking the ship. He did it in "Amok Time" as well and in "This Side of Paradise" was the point man in a mutiny. Spock's transgressions are a little more serious that dropping the f bomb. Spock's also been know to assault a superior officer. ("Amok Time" "This Side of Paradise")
If saving Pike gets Spock a pass, then saving the Earth ( and the Federation) should give Kirk a pass too.
Kirk seems to be very lax in security matters. His ship as mentioned was hijacked by Spock on two occasions. Other hijackers include Khan, Norman, Space Hippies, the Scalosians, Sybok and a group of children. (probably some others I've forgot). A real military organization might look askance as such a record, in spite of the positive outcomes.
He's also used Starfleet resources to follow a personal agenda ("The Conscience of the King" "Obsession") and disobeyed direct orders from a superior officer ("Amok Time" again). He makes a habit of showing disrespect towards Federation officials. (Barris, Fox, Helford, Ferris). Though they might deserve that, it's still unprofessional. Kirk is prone to taking unnecessary risks, often taking part dangerous missions or physically engaging opponents placing himself in harms way needlessly. A true professional knows how and when to delegate. So Carol Marcus had a point when she said Kirk was no boy scout.
The reality is Kirk, Spock and the rest ( both Prime and New) are characters in a drama. Acting "professionally" just doesn't promote "the drama". So they will acting in ways that would get them cashiered out in the real world. Be it leaving their posts for a heart to heart, goading a fellow officer into fight, bucking the system or hijacking the ship.
I can remember quite a few times when by-the-book Picard's and Janeway's ship were taken over. I was even thinking Picard should dump Data when he was subjected so much to outside forces. Its very difficult to play by strict Starfleet rules when you have the Q or Trelane or even the holosuite who can take over the ship at any time. At least in Picard's time they seemed to understand that in unknown space the rules don't always fit. When his ship was taken over by the Mycroft Holmes Geordi inadvertently created in the holosuite, did Starfleet talk of taking his ship from him? Or demoting Geordi?
Looks like in TOS time it was the style of the Captains to beam down to planets themselves. Tracey and Merrick were also in landing parties. They didn't 'delegate' either. I also saw Janeway and Sisko and Archer also participate in landing parties. They weren't cashiered out for not 'delegating' and taking too may risks.
What were the instructions in the Starfleet manual to do when your crew mutinied when they were under the influence of spores? If that happened in the current Navy I'm sure the captain and first officer would be let of on fighting charges. If an officer were about to die on a ship on a non-urgent mission I'm sure the Navy ship would be re-routed to a hospital base or a helicopter bought in. Or would the current Navy let them die like Kirk refused to let happen to Spock in Amok Time?
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Still wasn't an origin story, which was the point.
Plus, what we saw in WNMHGB was all just a bunch of prototypes for the series proper. That goes for the sets, costumes, characters, story, music, FX, literally everything shown. Some of it held over for the series, but some of it didn't. The Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and Sulu we saw there weren't precisely the same characters in the main series. That was most true for Spock and Sulu. The least changed character was Scotty, but he was hardly a fleshed out character at all, having only a few lines. The same applied to Sulu, but there were more obvious differences.
Point being, Kirk wasn't necessarily the same in every detail, either.
There is an origin novel for Kirk, Diane Carey's Best Destiny, which Orci and Kurtzman have cited as an influence. It portrays the 17-year-old Kirk as a disaffected rebel-without-a-cause who needs to go through danger, loss, and a bonding experience with his distant father before he commits to becoming the dedicated officer we know.
Carey says in her introduction that she and her co-plotter Greg Brodeur were inspired by the life of Ulysses Grant, who was apparently kind of a feckless loser before the Civil War and thus, in their view, had something to prove. Their thinking was that if he'd been successful from the start, he might not have been as driven when he ended up in a position to make a difference in the war.
To be fair, in both cases those "personal" agendas were about concern for the lives of other people. He was right that Karidian was actually a mass murderer who'd eluded justice for decades (and that someone was killing to protect him, though it wasn't who he thought), and he was right that the cloud creature was a deadly threat that needed to be stopped before it killed even more people. So his motives weren't exactly selfish.
But there were just as many times when Data was the only one immune to the outside force affecting the rest of the crew. IDIC in action -- one being's strengths balance another's weaknesses.
There'd be an investigation, but if it could be proved that the crew hadn't been responsible for their actions, I think they'd be cleared.
The current US Navy isn't a good analogy, because it has instant communication and rapid travel and a global extent, and thus can physically reach any ship within a matter of hours. TOS worked more on the model of the 18th- or 19th-century British Navy, when a ship out on patrol or engaged in exploration could be weeks or months away from a friendly port or a relief vessel. In those contexts, the captain and crew were entirely on their own and entirely responsible for their own choices, their own discipline.
Of course he was right, he's the hero. (He was also wrong because it was Lenore doing the killing.) Imagine if Karidian was just an actor and he diverted the ship for no reason.
It would help if the officer was a little more forthcoming instead of being closed up tight as an Aldebaran shellmouth and didn't issue orders that countermanded his CO.CommishSleer said:
Even so, the point was that it wasn't "personal" in the sense that he was trying to get back at the guy who stole his girlfriend or keyed his car. It wasn't personal like his rivalry with Finnegan, say. He was trying to bring a mass murderer to justice and stop a new series of murders. He had a personal stake in it, yes, but it wasn't a selfish or petty goal, because it was about protecting other people.
Not saying it was a bad thing. Just that he diverted Starfleet resources. He could have gotten hold of the legal authorities and let them handle it. Instead he took matters into his own hands. Arranged for the Karidian Company to be stranded and changed the Enterprise's course to "rescue" them so he could play detective. In the process he placed Riley and himself at risk ( playing in Lenore's hands! Making her job easier.) It's typical behavior for fictional heroes. Be they cops, lawyers or Starfleet officers.
^Again, though, it's a mistake to think about it in present-day terms, where authorities are always within reach. We're talking about events happening on the frontier, on far-flung interstellar colonies in an era when travel between worlds was supposed to take weeks or months. In such a context, a Starfleet captain might very well be the highest legitimate authority figure available. This is part of the originally defined premise for TOS -- the Enterprise's mission, according to the series proposal, included law enforcement and support for colonies and vessels on the otherwise lawless frontier. So you're wrong -- in that frontier context, Kirk was the legitimate authority.
