Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt?
- Thread starter enterprisecvn65
- Start date
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
Both patterns are used both in and out of Trek. There is no such thing as a trope that's unique to a single franchise. Yes, plenty of cop movies have the boss as a by-the-book obstructionist, but just as many cop movies have the cop discovering that the captain or the police chief or the mayor or a city councillor is the villain or is working with the villain. And there are certainly examples in Trek of the by-the-book admiral saying no to the rule-bending captain, like Morrow in The Search for Spock.
Both patterns are used both in and out of Trek. There is no such thing as a trope that's unique to a single franchise. Yes, plenty of cop movies have the boss as a by-the-book obstructionist, but just as many cop movies have the cop discovering that the captain or the police chief or the mayor or a city councillor is the villain or is working with the villain. And there are certainly examples in Trek of the by-the-book admiral saying no to the rule-bending captain, like Morrow in The Search for Spock.
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
Calm down.
--Sran
Calm down.
--Sran
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
I wasn't responding to you directly. Indeed, most of the people that you go off on like this aren't. There is no vendetta with your name on it. I just wanted to comment on your observation, and make one of my own. That's all.
Calm down here, too.
I wasn't responding to you directly. Indeed, most of the people that you go off on like this aren't. There is no vendetta with your name on it. I just wanted to comment on your observation, and make one of my own. That's all.
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
Good point. In general, though, the superiors have to be corrupt or obstructionist because nobody wants to see the heroes butting heads with people less powerful than them. Then they just look like bullies.
And they have to butt heads with someone or you don't have any drama.
Says the guy who has spent most of afternoon having Spock and McCoy argue with each other!
Good point. In general, though, the superiors have to be corrupt or obstructionist because nobody wants to see the heroes butting heads with people less powerful than them. Then they just look like bullies.
And they have to butt heads with someone or you don't have any drama.
Says the guy who has spent most of afternoon having Spock and McCoy argue with each other!
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
The boss of almost every main character on TV is portrayed as a jerk.
The boss of almost every main character on TV is portrayed as a jerk.
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
Oh, there are some really nice TV bosses out there. General Hammond on Stargate SG-1 comes to mind. And of course Oscar Goldman on the bionic shows. And Pete Thornton on MacGyver. The boss who's the hero's best friend is as much a recurring trope as the adversarial boss. (In which case it's often the boss's bosses who are the obstructionists and villains, e.g. Senator Kinsey on Stargate.)
Oh, there are some really nice TV bosses out there. General Hammond on Stargate SG-1 comes to mind. And of course Oscar Goldman on the bionic shows. And Pete Thornton on MacGyver. The boss who's the hero's best friend is as much a recurring trope as the adversarial boss. (In which case it's often the boss's bosses who are the obstructionists and villains, e.g. Senator Kinsey on Stargate.)
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
Completely calm. Guy wants to give a snarky and stupid answer that can apply to almost every question on here, then I'll be sure to thank them and let them know how much I appreciate his insightful input.
Don't make me the bad guy here. I start a thread with a legit question and someone gives a smartass answer and another jumps on me about age gap about discrimination in relationships because of a short quip and then says "Oh it wasn't directed at YOU."
Sorry if I don't just ignore it.
Completely calm. Guy wants to give a snarky and stupid answer that can apply to almost every question on here, then I'll be sure to thank them and let them know how much I appreciate his insightful input.
Don't make me the bad guy here. I start a thread with a legit question and someone gives a smartass answer and another jumps on me about age gap about discrimination in relationships because of a short quip and then says "Oh it wasn't directed at YOU."
Sorry if I don't just ignore it.
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
Then in the future maybe you may want to parse your response with something to make it clear you're not snapping back at me.
I say a few words about Hanson in jest and you respond with a two paragraph lecture about how Hanson said it, why it isn't wrong to feel that way and how my "beliefs" based off a few word quip are narrow and small-minded and then throw in Maggie Gyllanhall, Julia Ormond and Harrison Ford as real life examples to counter what you seem to feel I was saying.
Kind of hard to see it as a "general" response otherwise.
I think the phrase "calm down" would be applicable to your response.
Then in the future maybe you may want to parse your response with something to make it clear you're not snapping back at me.
I say a few words about Hanson in jest and you respond with a two paragraph lecture about how Hanson said it, why it isn't wrong to feel that way and how my "beliefs" based off a few word quip are narrow and small-minded and then throw in Maggie Gyllanhall, Julia Ormond and Harrison Ford as real life examples to counter what you seem to feel I was saying.
Kind of hard to see it as a "general" response otherwise.
I think the phrase "calm down" would be applicable to your response.
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
What makes you think anyone's trying to vilify you?
No one here is attempting to impugn your integrity or malign you in any way--at least none that I can see. If anything, your belligerence in response to even the slightest provocation--a term I use loosely, as no one has said or done anything that may construed as such--has done more to open you to criticism by other posters than anything anyone else has said or done to you since you started posting here.
Please understand that I don't mean to be critical of you (I don't actually know you) so much as the way you've chosen to deal with posters whose opinions differ from your own. This forum is visited on a daily basis by people living all over the world, many of whom may have a different view of Star Trek and the people, places and events that make up that universe. Taking every disagreement with another poster personally will only serve to diminish one's experience posting here.
--Sran
What makes you think anyone's trying to vilify you?
No one here is attempting to impugn your integrity or malign you in any way--at least none that I can see. If anything, your belligerence in response to even the slightest provocation--a term I use loosely, as no one has said or done anything that may construed as such--has done more to open you to criticism by other posters than anything anyone else has said or done to you since you started posting here.
Please understand that I don't mean to be critical of you (I don't actually know you) so much as the way you've chosen to deal with posters whose opinions differ from your own. This forum is visited on a daily basis by people living all over the world, many of whom may have a different view of Star Trek and the people, places and events that make up that universe. Taking every disagreement with another poster personally will only serve to diminish one's experience posting here.
--Sran
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
The "Evil Admiral" trope is just the Star Trek version of "Evil Bureaucrat" which exists everywhere else.
Or we sometimes get the "friendly boss is temporarily removed and replaced by a jerk." I guess the Trek example of this would be Captain Jellico.
The "Evil Admiral" trope is just the Star Trek version of "Evil Bureaucrat" which exists everywhere else.
Or we sometimes get the "friendly boss is temporarily removed and replaced by a jerk." I guess the Trek example of this would be Captain Jellico.
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
And then there are the initially obstructionist superiors who later come around and become allies. There are a bunch of those in recent genre TV -- Captain Renard on Grimm, Captain Irving on Sleepy Hollow, Captain Essen on Gotham.
And then there are the initially obstructionist superiors who later come around and become allies. There are a bunch of those in recent genre TV -- Captain Renard on Grimm, Captain Irving on Sleepy Hollow, Captain Essen on Gotham.
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
General Hammond is definitely a rarity but the best example of who a superior officer should be. ANd in Stargate's case, he didnt fit in the trope you mentioned -- while friendly with the crew, it was more like a father, and usually off duty. ANd on at least 1 occasion, he denied "our team" an action they "needed" to do -- not because he was a jerk, for "legitimate reasons.
I think it takes a lot of thought, however, to develop that kind of character into a compelling and/or action oriented show.
Which is why we rarely saw it in Star Trek
General Hammond is definitely a rarity but the best example of who a superior officer should be. ANd in Stargate's case, he didnt fit in the trope you mentioned -- while friendly with the crew, it was more like a father, and usually off duty. ANd on at least 1 occasion, he denied "our team" an action they "needed" to do -- not because he was a jerk, for "legitimate reasons.
I think it takes a lot of thought, however, to develop that kind of character into a compelling and/or action oriented show.
Which is why we rarely saw it in Star Trek
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
^I think the reason we didn't see it in ST is because ST wasn't structured that way. The regular characters were out in space, away from their home base, so there was no regular superior officer they reported to, just guest stars. The premise just didn't support developing a recurring superior officer. On those occasions where we did get recurring superiors -- Alynna Nechayev, William Ross, Maxwell Forrest -- we did tend to see them fleshed out into more sympathetic and multifaceted characters, even if they started out adversarial like Nechayev. That's just the nature of storytelling. A one-shot guest character needs to play a single specific role, generally as a catalyst of conflict, and doesn't have room to be given more dimensions. But a recurring character needs to become more than a one-note stereotype or a walking trope; and someone that the heroes work with/for on a regular basis generally needs to be someone they can work with comfortably, someone who will generally allow them to do their jobs. Even Ambassador Soval gradually became less adversarial to Archer and more sympathetic as a character. There are only so many times you can show a character being obstructionist and hostile before it gets boring.
^I think the reason we didn't see it in ST is because ST wasn't structured that way. The regular characters were out in space, away from their home base, so there was no regular superior officer they reported to, just guest stars. The premise just didn't support developing a recurring superior officer. On those occasions where we did get recurring superiors -- Alynna Nechayev, William Ross, Maxwell Forrest -- we did tend to see them fleshed out into more sympathetic and multifaceted characters, even if they started out adversarial like Nechayev. That's just the nature of storytelling. A one-shot guest character needs to play a single specific role, generally as a catalyst of conflict, and doesn't have room to be given more dimensions. But a recurring character needs to become more than a one-note stereotype or a walking trope; and someone that the heroes work with/for on a regular basis generally needs to be someone they can work with comfortably, someone who will generally allow them to do their jobs. Even Ambassador Soval gradually became less adversarial to Archer and more sympathetic as a character. There are only so many times you can show a character being obstructionist and hostile before it gets boring.
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
The interesting thing about General Hammond is that the character was originally conceived as the stereotypical hard-nosed, by the book authoritative military officer you usually see on TV. It was actor Don Davis who insisted on making him more reasonable and drew on the best aspects of superior officers he served under when he himself served in the military. So the General Hammond we've come to know and like is as much a creation of Don Davis as he is the Stargate writers'.
Although, that didn't really happen until after Admiral Forrest was written out of the show.
The interesting thing about General Hammond is that the character was originally conceived as the stereotypical hard-nosed, by the book authoritative military officer you usually see on TV. It was actor Don Davis who insisted on making him more reasonable and drew on the best aspects of superior officers he served under when he himself served in the military. So the General Hammond we've come to know and like is as much a creation of Don Davis as he is the Stargate writers'.
Although, that didn't really happen until after Admiral Forrest was written out of the show.
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
Yup. One mustn't underestimate the impact of an actor on shaping a regular or recurring character's development. Adversarial characters often become more sympathetic when the audience reacts well to them.
An example of this was John Pyper-Ferguson's Pete Hutter on The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. In the pilot, Pete was an irredeemable villain and was apparently killed, but the producers liked Pyper-Ferguson's portrayal so much that they brought him back, saying he was merely wounded. Over the course of the show's single season, he became less of a slimy sociopath and more of a lovable rogue, even becoming Brisco's reluctant ally in the concluding 2-parter. And they rewrote his history there, saying that Pete was guilty of every crime except murder -- ignoring the fact that in the pilot, Pete was the instigator of the prisoner escape in which Brisco's father was killed, making him an accomplice to that murder and giving Brisco every reason to hate him as much as the rest of John Bly's gang. But the actor was so much fun that the writers just glossed that over.
Of course, sometimes making an antagonistic boss more sympathetic can be a mistake. Anyone remember the '70s live-action Spider-Man TV series with Nicholas Hammond? The only comics character it used regularly other than Peter Parker was J. Jonah Jameson, played by Robert F. Simon, and it pretty much bungled the character by making him a gruff but avuncular boss, a pussycat next to the real JJJ. Sure, Jonah in the comics has sympathetic qualities -- he actually emerged as the hero of my own Spider-Man novel, Drowned in Thunder -- but you have to dig pretty deep to find them. Simon's Jonah was more like Lou Grant. (Ironically, given that Ed Asner would later play Jonah on the '90s animated Spidey series.)
Yup. One mustn't underestimate the impact of an actor on shaping a regular or recurring character's development. Adversarial characters often become more sympathetic when the audience reacts well to them.
An example of this was John Pyper-Ferguson's Pete Hutter on The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. In the pilot, Pete was an irredeemable villain and was apparently killed, but the producers liked Pyper-Ferguson's portrayal so much that they brought him back, saying he was merely wounded. Over the course of the show's single season, he became less of a slimy sociopath and more of a lovable rogue, even becoming Brisco's reluctant ally in the concluding 2-parter. And they rewrote his history there, saying that Pete was guilty of every crime except murder -- ignoring the fact that in the pilot, Pete was the instigator of the prisoner escape in which Brisco's father was killed, making him an accomplice to that murder and giving Brisco every reason to hate him as much as the rest of John Bly's gang. But the actor was so much fun that the writers just glossed that over.
Of course, sometimes making an antagonistic boss more sympathetic can be a mistake. Anyone remember the '70s live-action Spider-Man TV series with Nicholas Hammond? The only comics character it used regularly other than Peter Parker was J. Jonah Jameson, played by Robert F. Simon, and it pretty much bungled the character by making him a gruff but avuncular boss, a pussycat next to the real JJJ. Sure, Jonah in the comics has sympathetic qualities -- he actually emerged as the hero of my own Spider-Man novel, Drowned in Thunder -- but you have to dig pretty deep to find them. Simon's Jonah was more like Lou Grant. (Ironically, given that Ed Asner would later play Jonah on the '90s animated Spidey series.)
Sure, but there were hints of it earlier on, like in "Cease Fire," where Soval admitted at the end that Archer had not been "overly meddlesome."
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
This is actually ultra realistic.
As most lead characters fall under exceptionally idealistic(Picard) or very much "I know better" (Kirk).
In reality anyone in a Admiral position has to do five things.
1) Except that people below em are less experienced, and get use to facing conflicting judgements.
2) Understand that they have only a partial view of the situation and have to be impartial(not picking favorites among captains).
3) Understand that they have to account for internal political issues, and that captains shouldn't and can't account for them.
4) Understand that they are an extension of the power of the federation. (Everything they do reflates the federation).
In short Adimirals have to be very detached, they don't represent themselves, they don't have all the information needed, and they have to deal with alot of conflicting info.
This is actually ultra realistic.
As most lead characters fall under exceptionally idealistic(Picard) or very much "I know better" (Kirk).
In reality anyone in a Admiral position has to do five things.
1) Except that people below em are less experienced, and get use to facing conflicting judgements.
2) Understand that they have only a partial view of the situation and have to be impartial(not picking favorites among captains).
3) Understand that they have to account for internal political issues, and that captains shouldn't and can't account for them.
4) Understand that they are an extension of the power of the federation. (Everything they do reflates the federation).
In short Adimirals have to be very detached, they don't represent themselves, they don't have all the information needed, and they have to deal with alot of conflicting info.
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
Kirk fits the definition of a Sociopathic hero.
I actually thinks its a more interesting dynamic for him, in contrast to Spock who has another of empathy issues.
Kirk was one of the biggest jerk Admiral's I've seen.
The first time we see him with his new promotion he uses it to throw his weight around (some might say literally) to oust a highly capable officer out of command simply because he wanted a ship again. He could have gone along to advise and observe Decker, command the mission and oversee first contact with V'Ger with the authority of Starfleet behind him, he didn't have to assume command of the ship.
The one thing that annoys me are fans who complain about Nechayev and call her a bitch, even though all she did was issue Picard a few orders they didn't like--which is her job, given what was at stake.
You know....you're right. Kirk did throw his weight around to get Decker unfairly removed. I guess that makes him fair game too.
Although Bones did call him out on it in the meeting after the wormhole incident.
Kirk did kind of acknowledge it too later in the film when Decker made a suggestion and Kirk got pissed and Decker pointed out it was his job to offer alternatives. Kirk then paused and said "You're right" like he realized he'd been treating Decker like crap all along.
Kirk fits the definition of a Sociopathic hero.
I actually thinks its a more interesting dynamic for him, in contrast to Spock who has another of empathy issues.
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
True, Hammond was a nice guy, but like you said any time somebody came to boss him around they were obstructionists.
Adventure stories rely on the hero acting alone, if he could just call in the army to back him up there would be less jeopardy and less tension. So there has to be some jerk coming in giving orders "Do this stupid or callous thing!" to force the hero to go off on his own.
I know it's tempting to look for in-universe rational explanations for everything, especially in the Trek universe because we want it to stand up as a single unified internally consistent fantasy. Sometimes the answer is just "Because that's how storytelling works".
True, Hammond was a nice guy, but like you said any time somebody came to boss him around they were obstructionists.
Adventure stories rely on the hero acting alone, if he could just call in the army to back him up there would be less jeopardy and less tension. So there has to be some jerk coming in giving orders "Do this stupid or callous thing!" to force the hero to go off on his own.
I know it's tempting to look for in-universe rational explanations for everything, especially in the Trek universe because we want it to stand up as a single unified internally consistent fantasy. Sometimes the answer is just "Because that's how storytelling works".
Re: Why are Starfleet Admirals often portrayed as jerks and/or corrupt
^Yup. It's the same reason most Federation diplomats are so, err, undiplomatic.
^Yup. It's the same reason most Federation diplomats are so, err, undiplomatic.
Similar threads
