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The age of the antihero

Interestingly, no one cries about the stupidity of the Klingons for not vaporizing any of their own ships that Voq scavenged, even though it was equally likely (unlikely) that some Starfleet stragglers would have been left for 6 months and end up repairing one of their own ships with Klingon parts.

If by no one you mean everyone who thinks there are huge plot holes to this whole scenario then yeah, "no one".

Because it has been pointed out many times in this and other threads that both sides acted incredibly stupidly by leaving their own ships/tech/intelligence to the enemy while at the same time not go searching the enemies ships/tech/intelligence. For six whole months. Frankly neither Starfleet or the Klingons look very interested in winning this war.
 
Well, the Klingons having a disorganised and confused command structure can't be a plot hole, since it's a plot point.
 
If by no one you mean everyone who thinks there are huge plot holes to this whole scenario then yeah, "no one".

Because it has been pointed out many times in this and other threads that both sides acted incredibly stupidly by leaving their own ships/tech/intelligence to the enemy while at the same time not go searching the enemies ships/tech/intelligence. For six whole months. Frankly neither Starfleet or the Klingons look very interested in winning this war.
Nope.
 
Did the Klingons know that T'Kuvma got whacked, and the coffin ship blown up? They united behind him and his cause, then he sent them to Kronos. Then what happened? Did they return for orders, or to learn from T'Kuvma what he had in mind for a strategy?

If they just went out as pirates looking for targets to raid, Starfleet should be able to whoop them. The whole war must consist of occasional ship to ship battles, because there are 8,000 dead in 6 months(mentioned in ep3), then in episode 5? 6? They raise the number to 10,000.
 
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In a manner of speaking. Certainly not "fully." And if trying to take it was likely to cause it to blow up, that itself could be a reason why (1) they wouldn't try to take it, and (2) they wouldn't worry about someone else coming along to take it. (Not that I think they'd do either anyway. Just running with you for a minute here.)

I can't remember anything in the dialogue which determines whether or not it was fully functioning, just that it was going to be difficult to extract due to crystal residue.
 
You keep saying that, but you don't seem to ever be able to make a case.

But my question stands anyway. Looks like it's your fault that we drifted off of anti-heroes and onto plotholes, whether real or imagined. It makes sense if the only real topic here is saying bad things about STD, by whatever means necessary.

I think it was my fault. From what I remember, the original point had to do with the implication that several characters may have valued telescopes over SOP or even common sense, such as disabling functional power powers whether during evacuation or while recovering things from abandoned vessels. As a plot hole involve characters lacking common sense, then this should be considered as such. At the same time, irrational behavior may also be considered one of the characteristics of the modern antihero.
 
I think it was my fault. From what I remember, the original point had to do with the implication that several characters may have valued telescopes over SOP or even common sense, such as disabling functional power powers whether during evacuation or while recovering things from abandoned vessels. As a plot hole involve characters lacking common sense, then this should be considered as such. At the same time, irrational behavior may also be considered one of the characteristics of the modern antihero.
You make fair comment.
 
At the same time, irrational behavior may also be considered one of the characteristics of the modern human.
Fixed it for you.

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Put aside logic. Do what feels right.

(That was like the dumbest thing a Vulcan could say :( )
 
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Put aside logic. Do what feels right.

(That was like the dumbest thing a Vulcan could say :( )
But for a half-Vulcan who spent his life overcompensating by being extra-Vulcan, giving his younger self that advice was perfect. It was the culmination of Spock's lifelong journey.

I teared up.
 
In TNG: "The Pegasus" Starfleet was prepared to destroy its equipment to prevent it from falling into enemy hands:

PRESSMAN: . . . The warbird was then ordered to locate the rest of the ship, if possible, and retrieve it.
[. . .]
PICARD: What are our orders?
PRESSMAN: To find the ship before the Romulans do. Salvage it if possible, destroy it if necessary.​
And I literally just quoted the part where Riker suggests they destroy the asteroid to keep the Romulans from capturing it and Pressman reiterates that their primary objective is to RECOVER the Pegasus, with destruction only being a last resort.

This for a state of the art technology that is one of starfleet's most sensitive and potentially explosive military secrets.

Is an enemy's insight into Starfleet's military secrets the only valid reason?
Apparently, yes.

Well, evidently, the Shenzhou's dilithium processing unit "makes Klingon ship go."
Lots of things can make a ship go, but none of them are "secrets." Behold the dialog from Dead Stop:

ARCHER: We can give them either three warp coils, five deuterium injectors or two hundred litres of warp plasma.
TUCKER: I wouldn't recommend giving up any hardware we can't replace.
ARCHER: Plasma?
TUCKER: I think we can spare it.​

That's what I'm contemplating: did the Shenzhou meet the right conditions for initiating its auto-destruct sequence?
No.

Was there a good reason not to initiate it?
Yes. Standard procedure is evidently to leave the ship behind to be recovered at a later time. Now that hostilities with the Klingons are simmering down, it's entirely possible that Shenzhou might wind up being repaired and pressed back into service after all.
 
Did the Klingons know that T'Kuvma got whacked, and the coffin ship blown up? They united behind him and his cause, then he sent them to Kronos. Then what happened? Did they return for orders, or to learn from T'Kuvma what he had in mind for a strategy?
No, and no. T'Kuvma rallied them to unite together for war, but he wasn't actually their "leader" as such. It's just as likely that his cultists sent word of his death and their being disabled via subspace and the great houses responded with "Well... sucks to be you!"

IOW, the ship of the dead is in the same position Enterprise was in right after it got it's butt whupped in Azati Prime. Stranded in space with no one to help them, and the rest of the fleet basically leaving them to their own devices until Kol decided that maybe they might have something useful after all.

If they just went out as pirates looking for targets to raid, Starfleet should be able to whoop them. The whole war must consist of occasional ship to ship battles, because there are 8,000 dead in 6 months(mentioned in ep3), then in episode 5? 6? They raise the number to 10,000.
Basically. The Klingons probably spend much of the war actually avoiding Starfleet while conducting fast and violent raids on otherwise undefended Federation worlds. This would explain why Discovery's spore drive is able to turn the tide so effectively: since Discovery can pop up anywhere at a moment's notice, NOTHING is vulnerable, and the Klingons never manage to hit an undefended target without Discovery suddenly showing up and firing on them with no warning at all. It's also, probably, why the cloaking device makes a difference in the opposite direction: for the first time, it gives them the capacity to actually ambush Starfleet positions just as effectively as they could attack civilian installations. We have heard of them ambushing other Starfleet ships in the past (the Buran, and Lorca's shuttle) but they have trouble pulling this off on a large scale. Only the cloaking device allows them to do this.

All signs point to the Klingons fighting an asymmetric war against the Federation, possibly suggesting that their technology and weaponry is actually inferior in most respects.
 
In TNG: "The Pegasus" Starfleet was prepared to destroy its equipment to prevent it from falling into enemy hands:

PRESSMAN: . . . The warbird was then ordered to locate the rest of the ship, if possible, and retrieve it.
[. . .]
PICARD: What are our orders?
PRESSMAN: To find the ship before the Romulans do. Salvage it if possible, destroy it if necessary.​



Is an enemy's insight into Starfleet's military secrets the only valid reason?



Well, evidently, the Shenzhou's dilithium processing unit "makes Klingon ship go." :lol:



That's what I'm contemplating: did the Shenzhou meet the right conditions for initiating its auto-destruct sequence? Was there a good reason not to initiate it?

If anyone has any more points to make, keep making them.

To find the ship before the Romulans do. Salvage it if possible, destroy it if necessary.

The Shenzhou fits two scenarios. The possibility of destroying her to prevent the enemy from salvaging usable parts could have been made before she was abandoned and after. She did have a usable part - the dilithium processing unit. That in itself should have been rendered useless or removed by Starfleet. If it were a case of too many usable parts being left behind... destroy if necessary.

did the Shenzhou meet the right conditions for initiating its auto-destruct sequence? Was there a good reason not to initiate it?

Did she meet the conditions? Probably - salvage or destroy. However who is to know if Saru and other officers had the sequences required like the Admiral did on the Europa. Saru could have or he could have used another method.

The last part of your question is where the devil is. Was there a good reason not to initiate it?

To answer 'yes' to this means that there were indeed resources worth keeping 'afloat'. If that was the mindset then it is an acknowledgement that something you know to be valuable is left for the enemy to take advantage of as well. Unless a successful salvage could be made before enemy interference then destroy would be necessary.
 
This is not a demand, but could you please show me either by dialogue or script or scene a clarification of how the telescope and when the telescope was retrieved? Otherwise one infers, right? Except there are arguments here that suggest that inferences that are not just one way, are correct and others are not.
There are inferences that make sense based on what was shown, and inferences that don't. If you choose to infer something nonsensical that the show didn't specify as happening, just because it also didn't explicitly specify it didn't happen, of course you can do that, but that's on you, especially where one could just as readily choose to infer something else that both makes more sense in itself and fits better with what was shown. I could posit that Burnham from the future violated the Temporal Prime Directive and travelled back in time to get the telescope and send it to her younger self! The show didn't say it didn't happen, after all. But that's completely baseless and needless. There's simply no reason to infer such a thing from what we saw.

You just said the Klingons don't scavenge and then gave the pertinent examples of them scavenging.
You said:
Clearly given half a chance the Klingons showed they would salvage whatever they could from Starfleet vessels, no matter what type.
That's not accurate to what was shown. What was shown is that two individual Klingons eventually undertook a reluctant and extraordinary effort to salvage one particular component from one particular Starfleet wreck because they were desperate. It was not portrayed as something typical of Klingons that they would usually do just because they could, or that they were employing as some larger organized strategy for gaining advantage from Starfleet tech. There was no specific reason to expect it to happen, from the Shenzhou crew's point of view, and thus no reason to go to the extra effort of destroying her wreck in expectation of it happening. Likewise, we the audience had no reason to expect that it would be standard operating procedure for Starfleet to destroy a hopelessly disabled ship upon abandoning it just in case someone might try to scavenge it, based on previous portrayals. (I'm not saying it doesn't sound like a sensible enough idea to me, but to my recollection it hadn't ever been depicted or mentioned before.)

This is the relevant dialogue from TMP:

KIRK: Mister Scott, be prepared to execute Starfleet order two zero zero five.
[. . .]
SCOTT: Aye sir.
ROSS: Why has the Captain ordered self-destruct, sir?
SCOTT: I would say, lass, because he thinks, he hopes, that when we go up ...we'll take the intruder with us.
ROSS: Will we?
SCOTT: When that much matter and anti-matter are brought together, oh yes, we will, indeed.​

Ross' question shows that Starfleet Order 2005 stands for initiating a self-destruct sequence.
Correct.

Scotty's explanation does not contradict its aforementioned definition, despite another possible use.

It seems the confusion comes from Memory Alpha including "(Star Trek: The Motion Picture)" right after "allowed them to prevent their ship or crew from falling into enemy hands." In reality, it was simply providing the origin for the words "Starfleet order two zero zero five" and "when that much matter and anti-matter are brought together."

This is confirmed by StarTrek.com's database entry for "auto-destruct":

Computer program aboard starships for destruction of the vessel, should the ship be captured or controlled by an enemy. Time until auto destruct is sixty seconds.

On Galaxy-class starships, for example, activation of the program requires verbal orders and handprint verification from the two most senior command officers of the ship.

Auto destruct's most infamous use occured in 2285, when Admiral Kirk destroyed Enterprise in order to prevent her from falling into enemy hands.​

At least we confirmed something. :cool:
No. YOU might want to disregard references to destroying Starfleet vessels orders in other Trek but others don't have to.
Unless I am mistaken and someone can point out an example that hasn't yet been raised, we have never seen auto-destruct employed prophylactically as a preventative measure against the mere potential of exploitation in the absence of there having already affirmatively been a confirmed attempt by a hostile force to gain control of the vessel in question, or one actively in progress. That is why citing this definition as evidence that the Shenzhou would have been destroyed is misleading.

The only real example here is the Stargazer. You just wouldn't want to use it to support the notion that Starfleet is A-OK with leaving partially intact Starships abandoned in space. In "The Battle" it's made clear that Picard went through a rigorous court martial. He was charged with a crime! What was the crime? A Captain losing their Starship. He was acquitted, though. So he must have had no other option, and not found negligent in his duties as captain.
It should be noted that such a court-martial was said to be a standard procedure whenever a ship is lost under any circumstances—as it is in most real navies—and can't be taken as direct indication that Picard was presumed to have done anything wrong by not destroying her (whatever any novels say). By the same token, in STIV, Kirk was specifically charged with "willful destruction of Federation property" for having blown up the Enterprise in STIII, even though the Klingons were trying to take her over and exploit sensitive information in her databanks at the very moment he did so. Of course, this charge was ultimately dropped due to mitigating circumstances. So that argument's a wash.

The fact that the Ferengi seized the vessel adds all the weight needed to show why leaving ships around is a bad idea.
Who said it wasn't a bad idea? That doesn't alter that it's something Starfleet has been known to do occasionally, even a century after DSC. And what's more, in DSC there was a reason why they weren't able to get back and salvage the wreck: the Klingons had them otherwise occupied elsewhere. I don't think the idea was ever supposed to be that Starfleet is "A-OK with" leaving it all out there permanently. As @zar said, given the circumstances, it's not at all surprising that it would take longer than six months for any salvage operations to be carried out.

The whole war must consist of occasional ship to ship battles, because there are 8,000 dead in 6 months(mentioned in ep3), then in episode 5? 6? They raise the number to 10,000.
Those figures could mean in upwards of forty ships lost with all hands, or far more with fewer! In "The Cage" the Enterprise had a crew of just over 200, and most vessels would be smaller. (Heck, loss of ships due to this war could potentially even be the very reason why crew complements doubled between then and the Farragut's loss as mentioned in "Obsession" [TOS]!)

-MMoM:D
 
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To find the ship before the Romulans do. Salvage it if possible, destroy it if necessary.

The Shenzhou fits two scenarios. The possibility of destroying her to prevent the enemy from salvaging usable parts could have been made before she was abandoned and after. She did have a usable part - the dilithium processing unit. That in itself should have been rendered useless or removed by Starfleet. If it were a case of too many usable parts being left behind... destroy if necessary.
They are not the same scenarios. The Pegasus (like the Glenn) had something a lot less mundane than a dilithium processor (let alone one that, in the condition it was in, couldn't be removed without significant risk of it blowing up anyway), which the Romulans were already known to be undertaking an organized effort to locate and acquire—an effort which it was moreover directly implied they would not have been expected to undertake if it weren't for that.

-MMoM:D
 
There are inferences that make sense based on what was shown, and inferences that don't. If you choose to infer something nonsensical that the show didn't specify as happening, just because it also didn't explicitly specify it didn't happen, of course you can do that, but that's on you, especially where one could just as readily choose to infer something else that both makes more sense in itself and fits better with what was shown. I could posit that Burnham from the future violated the Temporal Prime Directive and travelled back in time to get the telescope and send it to her younger self! The show didn't say it didn't happen, after all. But that's completely baseless and needless. There's simply no reason to infer such a thing from what we saw.

That's not accurate to what was shown. What was shown is that two individual Klingons eventually undertook a reluctant and extraordinary effort to salvage one particular component from one particular Starfleet wreck because they were desperate. It was not portrayed as something typical of Klingons that they would usually do just because they could, or that they were employing as some larger organized strategy for gaining advantage from Starfleet tech. There was no specific reason to expect it to happen, from the Shenzhou crew's point of view, and thus no reason to go to the extra effort of destroying her wreck in expectation of it happening. Likewise, we the audience had no reason to expect that it would be standard operating procedure for Starfleet to destroy a hopelessly disabled ship upon abandoning it just in case someone might try to scavenge it, based on previous portrayals. (I'm not saying it doesn't sound like a sensible enough idea to me, but to my recollection it hadn't ever been depicted or mentioned before.)


Unless I am mistaken and someone can point out an example that hasn't yet been raised, we have never seen auto-destruct employed prophylactically as a preventative measure against the mere potential of exploitation in the absence of there having already affirmatively been a confirmed attempt by a hostile force to gain control of the vessel in question, or one actively in progress. That is why citing this definition as evidence that the Shenzhou would have been destroyed is misleading.

-MMoM:D

"There are inferences that make sense based on what was shown, and inferences that don't. If you choose to infer something nonsensical that the show didn't specify as happening, just because it also didn't explicitly specify it didn't happen, of course you can do that, but that's on you, especially where one could just as readily choose to infer something else that both makes more sense in itself and fits better with what was shown. I could posit that Burnham from the future violated the Temporal Prime Directive and travelled back in time to get the telescope and send it to her younger self! The show didn't say it didn't happen, after all. But that's completely baseless and needless. There's simply no reason to infer such a thing from what we saw."

You could "posit Burnham from the future violated the Temporal Prime Directive and travelled back in time to get the telescope and send it to her younger self", but aren't you providing an example that is purposely unreasonable? I know the show gave us Mudd and his time repeats and we have spore drive jumps with Discovery, but do we have a reasonable belief that Michael can and would do this? I think you've gone the temporal straw man there ;)

In debating the inferences about scuttling the Shenzhou (or not) and the order of play and priority regards the telescope, it is not 'nonsensical' to expect - sense. There is sense to someone else's belongings not being a priority over professionals in a war situation securing or destroying their ship. Ships DO get scuttled it is a word with precise meaning for a reason used in the history of vessels in war situations.

"What was shown is that two individual Klingons eventually undertook a reluctant and extraordinary effort to salvage one particular component from one particular Starfleet wreck because they were desperate."

Like it or not that IS the point. It is war both sides will cross lines and do desperate things. They will salvage another vessel, they will beam aboard another vessel and get into hand to hand combat. They will booby trap bodies. The one part that was taken from the Shenzhou could be a deal breaker or not. It only takes one mistake.

"Unless I am mistaken and someone can point out an example that hasn't yet been raised, we have never seen auto-destruct employed prophylactically as a preventative measure against the mere potential of exploitation in the absence of there having already affirmatively been a confirmed attempt by a hostile force to gain control of the vessel in question, or one actively in progress. That is why citing this definition as evidence that the Shenzhou would have been destroyed is misleading."

Sorry Mim I don't understand what that word play was all about, lol. Do go back (for clarity). Fireproof provided a series of screen shots of various flawed captains in future Trek. Yet examples of future captains and Starfleet's use of auto-destruct were kind of being... er... well, let's just say they didn't fit. In my opinion if you are going to use past Trek and most of it being in the future timeline, you have to be prepared for others to do the same.
 
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