In early drafts of the script, it was established that Will Decker had made his name as first officer of the USS Boston.
Why The Huge Gap Between TMP & WOK?
- Thread starter DeepSpaceYorks
- Start date
In early drafts of the script, it was established that Will Decker had made his name as first officer of the USS Boston.
And all that to end up as... something bizarre.
Riley didn't get his spot on the Enterprise because Kirk felt guilty. Kirk didn't even know that Riley was on Tarsus IV until it was pointed out to him. It was just coincidence that Riley happened to be serving on the same ship.Nepotism survives to the 23rd centuryAlso guilt, if I remember the novelization correctly. Both of which seem to play a large role in a lot of Kirk's crew selections (see Riley, Finney).
Ben Finney, you could maybe make a case for guilt affecting Kirk's judgement. But once he was there, Kirk treated him no better or worse than any other crewman.
His command experience was scheduled to arrive on Tuesday.
Was the ship shaped like a guitar?
I still say Harriman got a bum rap. He had a ton of good ideas that could've worked if he'd had a properly equipped ship. And when it finally became clear that he was out of his depth, he did the wisest, most responsible thing possible: He set his ego aside and took advantage of the experienced officers he had with him.
I think that was at least somewhat deserved. Harriman could've easily delayed the photo op with the press until after the Tuesday when all of his equipment was arriving.
You're assuming Harriman had that authority in the first place. Everyone answers to someone. This was a PR move, so it's more than likely it was Starfleet's PR department set it up and the date was set in stone months earlier for whatever reason - maybe it was the only day Kirk would commit. Maybe it was the CnC's grandsons birthday and he wanted to watch the new Enterprise launch. Maybe it was a Saturday of a dead news cycle and the Tellerite elections were starting the next week so they couldn't wait another week or they wouldn't get the much desired press. Who knows? I don't think it's very likely Harriman had anything to do with it though.
The launch was just as simple flight test. There was no reason to believe that it would be a problem.
One unlamented former captain asked "How can you have a yellow alert in spacedock?"
For all we know, there was another CO in charge during the construction, and Janeway and Picard replaced them for the ship's actual voyages.
Indeed, there would've had to be. After all, a ship needs test flights and shakedowns before it's approved for actual missions. Someone needs to be in command for those.
I agree. IIRC, the novel actually features a passage in which Kirk--within the privacy of his own thoughts--observes that Harriman's willingness to ask for help is a sign that he'll be a good captain once he gains more experience.
You know, you're most likely right.
Well, that's only a draft script and still doesn't preclude my theory of Decker serving aboard Enterprise even if it was only for 6 months (I personally like to think it was a year possibly two).
In fact, on the topic of Decker's Command experience, the whole "You don't know these new designs" story element in the film is a little different in "In Thy Image." In that version they both end up demonstrating knowledge that the other lacks. Decker points out the phasers were cut off, but Kirk reminds Decker that, unlike the light cruisers he's used to, the Enterprise cannot maneuver nearly as fast. I always rather liked that. It helped demonstrate that, yes, Kirk doesn't know the new stuff, but he does know stuff from experience. It actually bums me out we've never really had a good dueling Captain/First Officer relationship like that. A good generation gap, etc...
I prefer it if he wasn't an Enterprise officer, because there has to be more to Starfleet than just the Enterprise. It can't be that only Enterprise personnel ever achieve anything and every other ship is just there to get destroyed. There must be other ships whose officers achieve success and establish their worth. It shouldn't all be centered on just one ship.
It's possible but in that case they'd be stories about those ships too.
Why? There isn't room to tell stories about every interesting thing that goes on. Say you watch a TV show about a pair of homicide detectives at a New York City precinct. Are you supposed to assume that it's the only precinct in the entire country that ever has homicides? Of course not. You know there has to be a lot more stuff happening elsewhere, but a given show can only focus on one set of characters. Was the 4077th the only MASH unit in Korea? No. Was WKRP the only radio station in Cincinnati? No. Are Las Vegas, New York, and Miami the only cities with CSI units? Of course not. (Though in reality, New York has CSU instead of CSI.) Unless the core characters are explicitly the first or only people doing a given thing -- like Tony and Doug in The Time Tunnel or Archer's crew in Enterprise -- it's safe to assume that what you're seeing is just a cross-section of the larger whole.
But there's the literature. It's not limited, is it? Why can't a writer tell stories about the USS Lester Del Rey for example, contemporaneous to Enterprise, and having interesting adventures in the Alpha Quadrant?
