(Or whoever intros the Twilight Zone...)
The age of the antihero
- Thread starter Refuge
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What about General Order no. 6?
If all life aboard a Federation starship had perished, the ship would self-destruct within twenty-four hours to protect other ships from potential hazards within.
That is along similar lines, imo.
We've seen a couple of ships where all life has perished and they didn't self-destruct.
But you're not repeating yourself now. You keep changing positions every time someone points out that your previous position makes no sense. The only thing you've been consistent about is "Discovery has bad writing!" but you can't seem to decide WHY it's bad.
WE know the dilithium processor just happened to be the one missing component the Klingons needed to get their ship moving, by what has to be the most ironic coincidence in the history of Star Trek. SARU, however, had no way of knowing that this one component out of literally billions of parts would prove (theoretically) valuable to T'Kuvma's band of merry men. Had he known that, he would have simply unplugged it and taken it with him.
Of course they had time. What they didn't have was any reason to do it in the first place. It's not as if scuttling the Shenzhou would have kept the Ship of the Dead out of the war permanently; at most, it would have added four days to Kol's repair time and drained some of the sexual tension between L'Rell and Voq.
Those aren't contradictory. The system had fallen behind enemy lines and Starfleet would have to re-take that sector before recovery of the Shenzhou would be possible. If they had any reason to believe there was anything of military value on the Shenzhou, they would have sent a ship behind enemy lines to either demolish the ship or recover those valuable assets.
The dilithium processor, however, had no military value to speak of. This is mainly due to the fact that the Klingons manufacture their OWN dilithium processors, which means none of their military vessels would need to scavenge Shenzhou at all. T'kuvma's ship is a special case, because his people are not technically part of the military.
Well, no, it was left floating around because it had gotten shot full of holes and was no longer capable of sustaining life. 50 years of Trek precedent tells us that when Starfleet vessels get this badly damaged, they usually just get left behind fully intact:
Did the crew of the Shenzhou have more reason to self destruct than the crews of any of these vessels? If so, what reason was that?
Why do you keep ignoring all the cases where this EXACT SAME THING happens in almost identical circumstances and instead focus on the cases where the circumstances are completely different?
They had no reason to scuttle the ship. As far as they knew, it wasn't going anywhere.
"You give the enemy nothing" is not Starfleet procedure.
"You get the hell out of there and let someone else come back and recover your ship at some other time" is Starfleet procedure.
And it's wrong.
No it is not wrong.
Because the dilithium processor turned out to be irrelevant. If Kol had arrived just two days earlier, he would have simply given them a spare part and and it wouldn't have mattered at all.
Shenzhou's leftover parts have great CIVILIAN value to someone stranded in deep space on the brink of starvation. But its value to the Klingon MILITARY remains nonexistent.
The Klingons could have just as easily looted the ship's supply of toilet paper, but I don't see how that's a compelling reason to blow it up.
It's wrong. "Leave the enemy nothing" isn't a sentiment Starfleet stands behind. There is a truly amazing amount of shit they leave behind on and off the battlefield and not once in all of Trek history has it EVER mattered.
Ironically, it wound up not mattering with the Shenzhou either. Saru's assumption that there was nothing of value was proven correct, as Kol's return rendered the salvaged engine component totally irrelevant.
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I'm guessing we have a different sense of military and Starfleet 'smarts'. I hope you are not taking this personally because I am not. There is a basic set of intelligence one uses in war situations. If it hurts you none to destroy something the enemy could use then why not destroy it? So what if you are wrong and the enemy was denied toilet paper. You destroyed Starfleet property for nothing. Gosh how sad. BUT if you destroy it and it denies any opportunity for the enemy to advance then you did the right and intelligent thing. I ask you what advantage was there to keep the Shenzhou intact?
I'm guessing we have different EXPERIENCES with military logistics in the real world in that one of us doesn't actually have any.
I am telling you, firsthand, from experience, THAT IS NOT A REAL THING. Even retreating soldiers, on abandoning their position, DO NOT go out of their way to disable or destroy abandoned equipment unless they are specifically ordered to by their commanding officers.
And even in that case, the order to DISABLE that equipment, not to demolish it completely. The quickest and most reliable way to disable a vehicle (that I'm familiar with) is a .50 through the engine block. You don't need to vaporize the entire vehicle, you don't need to put it through a shredder, you sure as hell don't wire the entire thing with C4 and blow it to smithereens. Just take an M-107 to it and pop a nice big hole through the top of the block, one and done. I also know a quartermaster who served in Grenada who tells me the most reliable way to disable an Abrams MBT is to pour cement into the air intake, at which point the entire vehicle is just a glorified brick.
None of which is necessary if your vehicle is ALREADY DISABLED. When a humvee goes over a roadside bomb or a landmine or has its radiator blown out, they get the hell OUT of it, at which point it becomes somebody else's problem.
No one in any military anywhere in the world gives half a shit about ISIS fighters scavenging spare tires, seat cushions, spark plugs or radiator hoses from wrecked vehicles. If you're fighting an enemy whose logistical situation involves a significant amount of dumpster diving -- and somehow haven't BEATEN him yet -- then, my friend, it is time to step back and re-think your life choices.
Eventual recovery, salvage and refit, resulting in a fully functional Federation starship for less than the cost of a totally new vessel. In the event the ship is too badly damaged to be restored, the salvage value of the raw materials could be applied to new starships.
Destroying the ship gains Starfleet nothing, since the Klingons cannot use it against them. It is, on the other hand, a waste of material that could still be valuable. "Waste not want not" is a sentiment Starfleet DOES stand behind.
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... except for the salvage value of a very expensive starship. Those things aint cheap.
Assuming Shenzhou has a mass of, say, 25,000 tons and a significant amount of that mass is actually steel and titanium (it's not, but let's pretend) in today's prices, that would be $26 million worth of titanium and $5 million worth of steel. And that's before you consider the more valuable components used in computer hardware, gravity plates, shield generators, warp coils, impulse engines, phaser banks, etc. Call it a 100 million Federation credits for the old jalopy, and for a society that's mastered replicator technology, they'll probably get every penny back when they go to recycle it.
The ship has a great deal of economic value (which is why I mentioned the Ferengi, remember?). But military value, not so much. The Klingons are warriors, not merchants.
I do too, with an emphasis on "I think." If you hadn't insisted on lumping Burnham (and apparently everyone else?) in with him from the beginning, and then further zeroed in on her as if she were the Scum of the Galaxy™, we might have agreed considerably more in this thread than we have. (Or perhaps not. I still would have advocated for Lorca to be given the benefit of at least some doubt in at least some matters, as I have in the other thread where we've been discussing him.)
With respect to the opening two-parter, they mostly did everything more or less "right" by traditionally-portrayed Starfleet hero standards, or tried to. But these standards turned out to be ill-suited and inadequate to the situation. T'Kuvma played them like a fiddle, and won, even in death.
If Starfleet weren't more reluctant and less ruthless warriors than the Klingons, they might have avoided this loss—or then again, they still might not have—but in either case, they wouldn't be Starfleet. Being what they are, there was no way to win. If winning came at the sacrifice of their principles, they'd still lose. Again, a no-win scenario. That seems to be a central theme of the story, to me. Not an accident due to careless writers not thinking things through.
Think about it. The characteristics you have expressed the greatest misgivings about with regard to Burnham and Lorca are the very ones you are now complaining are lacking in Starfleet's tactical mindset! Burnham wanted to blow T'Kuvma away before he ever got the chance to summon the other Klingons in the first place. She wasn't willing to sacrifice her captain and crew to uphold Starfleet principles. That's why she mutinied. It's also why she later killed T'Kuvma. Nothing was gained by either action. But something was lost.
Lorca was so intent on denying the enemy any assets that he blew up his own ship and crew. That's the sort of scorched-earth thinking that might well be effective in winning a war at all costs...but that's just it: there's a cost. It ultimately does as much damage to your own side as to your opponent. Or even more. Your victory is at once also your defeat.
Now you may of course be thinking there should by all rights be a sensible middle ground to be found somewhere in there. And that's a big part of what this show has been about thus far: Starfleet struggling to find that balance, and stumbling along the way, but continuing to try. In being forced to fight this external war with the Klingons, they are also having to fight an internal one centered around their own conflicted nature, and confront the inherent contradictions in it. They are not without fault, not in the least. But their faults define them as much as do their strengths. And sometimes, even, the two are one and the same.
That was a quarantine procedure with particular respect to contagion. And also had to be specifically invoked by the commanding officer beforehand, it wasn't automatic, not even under general quarantine conditions. And obviously it wouldn't be possible if the self-destruct mechanism were rendered inoperable. And it might not even have been issued yet at this point.
...tech which the Shenzhou did not have. Nor did they have Lorca there to order the battlefield scorched and salted anyway.
-MMoM
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From where did you develop this sense? It isn't reflected in real war, nor in Trek. According to your sensibilities, it appears the only "smart" military is the Romulans. Were you a Trek viewer prior to Discovery? Did you think Starfleet was dumb all this time? This is a yes or no question, by the way.
And we’ve seen the Klingon Sarcophagus ship being allowed to "drift" unharmed for six whole months by both opposing forces even though it most definitely has sensitive and war-winning technology aboard.
Because? Bad writing.
