Self-fulfilling prophecy?
The age of the antihero
- Thread starter Refuge
- Start date
Fine. So what in "Enterprise" gives us the impression that self destruct to avoid capture is or has ever been standard procedure? Because I can think of at least four cases where Enterprise WAS, in fact, captured by hostile forces and no self-destruct mechanism was ever activated.
I'm also a bit curious why no one thinks it's a plot hole that the Glenn didn't self destruct as soon as its spore drive malfunctioned. You would think that if ANY ship had that as a procedure it would be the most advanced prototype of a revolutionary new drive system, yes? But the self-destruct mechanism doesn't prevent the Klingons from boarding it and scavenging its technology; RIPPER does that, by eating all the Klingons who try to board it.
Disabled starships being abandoned by their crews is a common trope in science fiction in general and Star Trek in particular. If you're going to insist that they SHOULD have destroyed the ship, you would have to demonstrate that they had a reason to do so consistent with what they knew at the time they evacuated.
Which you simply cannot do. Any attempt to justify that position MUST rely purely on hindsight. This is the reason we are having this discussion about the Shenzhou and not any of the other dozen Federation or Klingon vessels left behind in the same debris field. No one here is complaining about the failure to scuttle the T'Plana'hath or the Kerala, and then only because we happen to know the Klingons didn't salvage anything from them.
There are lots of things they did that were not overly smart or at least disastrously ignorant. Failing to fire on T'Kuvma's ship before he could light the beacon was one of them. Trying to open a dialog with all of the Klingon houses rallying was another. And accidentally playing directly into his rhetoric with the line "We come in peace" is yet another. But all of those are situations created by Starfleet not actually knowing the situation and acting in a way consistent with their own procedures and ethics. That all of these actions turned out to be self-defeating doesn't make them stupid or incompetent.
Characters in fiction should not be expected to have perfect knowledge of all possible outcomes.
Ba dum tsh!
That's not needed. Just disable devices that the enemy can be used!
And since when is following emotion part of SOP?
Of course, not! There's always a possibility for a ship to remain adrift and receive no help in times of war.
It's also reasonable to expect those supply chains to break down!
Exactly! All of the excuses I've seen so far--from hippie explorers to being passionate towards a dead commander--are not based on SOP or whatever you imagine but lack of common sense, which results in a plot hole.
That's right. A plot hole is also something created by characters who lack common sense.
Why not? There are episodes showing that they can disable or blow up their ships.
That makes absolutely no sense at all. I'll let you figure out why.
That's exactly what it was: "convenient to the circumstances of the plot."
Also, all sorts of weird characters, from humans raised by Vulcans who now barely display anything about such a background, to doctors who should have done thorough checks on former POWs but for some reason didn't see any of those scar tissues all around their major organs, to captains who go by the book one minute and then the opposite in another, and more.
I can't see Starfleet using booby traps... They probably are considered even more unethical in that time, than they already are today. There are 4 options, in order of desirability:
a) Tow the ship home
b) strip the ship of all value, destroy remaining hulk
c) destroy the ship
-
or d) abandon the ship indefinitely
a) Tow the ship home
b) strip the ship of all value, destroy remaining hulk
c) destroy the ship
-
or d) abandon the ship indefinitely
That's not standard procedure either.
Not without any direct evidence that this is likely to happen. And that before we talk about evidence that it would happen in this specific case.
Exactly what? Sabotaging the processor would have made no difference. That's the main reason why it's not standard procedure to sabotage or booby trap abandoned ships: 99% of the time, it DOESN'T make a difference, and is an unnecessary risk to the crew themselves.
And since by that definition there is no "common sense" reason to expect the Klingons to find themselves in the incredibly odd position of being completely abandoned by their own government after the very first action in a war they themselves helped to start, this is not a plot hole.
There are none showing that they have ever booby trapped or sabotaged their own ships.
It makes sense. The Klingons SHOULD have had access to their own supplies. No one had any reason to expect they wouldn't.
You don't plan for things you have no reason to believe will ever happen. That would be idiotic.
Yes. It's a plot contrivance, not a hole. In fact, it's literally the OPPOSITE of a plot hole: it's a coincidence derived from one character acting in a specific way that just happens to work out in the favor of another character for different reasons. It's like King Schultz in "Django Unchained" deciding to shoot Candy in the chest instead of shake his hand. You COULD even say that's a lack of common sense by Schultz, since he has to know (and obviously does) that the very next thing that's going to happen is that Candy's men are going to riddle him with bullets. But Schultz does it anyway, because that's who he is, that's what his character is, and if he doesn't shoot Candy, Django won't have his chance to have his heroic gunplay scene and eventual retribution.
Just like in this case: if Voq and his people hadn't been abandoned by the Klingons, AND if L'Rell hadn't found a dilithium processor on the Shenzhou, then L'Rell wouldn't have had an excuse to "abandon" Voq on the Shenzhou when Kol showed up, and Voq would be DEAD, instead of running around on Discovery in a human-shaped meat suit right now.
It's a fortunate coincidence for Voq, but its implications for the war as a whole are almost nonexistent.
Yet they were okay booby trapping the Klingon dead.
Perhaps Georgiu could be persuaded but Saru would not.
Wait a sec. Why not? I'm not sure what an "anti-anti-hero" would be, exactly, but it sounds like it might be interesting, at least some of the time.
Personally, I prefer to call them hoagies or subs, instead of heroes.
Are you sure you're not just hungry?
Of course, it is, and for reasons shown in this plot hole.
That makes absolutely no sense at all. I'll let you figure out why.
Of course, it does. Look at what happened.
Crews can remain adrift for many reasons. Someone who lacks common sense, though, will consider only one. That's why it's a plot hole.
Or never shown.
It turns out they didn't, so your assumption was wrong. That's why organizations trained for war widen their expectations. Not doing so would be idiotic.
Exactly: the plot contrivance in this case involves characters lacking common sense. They think that no one will bother retrieving functional devices that they left behind because the latter should have enough supplies of their own. It's either that or they're "hippie explorers" who prefer passion over reason. Thus, we have a plot hole created by characters lacking common sense.
The problem in this case is that the crew never considered the possibility that devices and equipment that they had left behind could be used by the enemy for various reasons. That's why they didn't bother to remove, disable, or booby trap them, and that's odd in a franchise where it has been shown that even sections of ships have been disabled, and remotely.
That's why it's a plot hole: they didn't follow common sense. Instead, they followed their passions and instead retrieved a telescope (and a will, or did that come from solicitors?), which ironically ended up with the mutineer.
But what makes this plot hole even worse is ironically an additional point that you raised: the recovery of the telescope is a plot contrivance meant to develop melodrama between Michael and the dead captain, and the result was not only abrupt but awkward.
Finally, how is this connected to the topic? The point was probably meant to depict Michael as some sort of antihero, i.e., a mutineer and yet trusted by the commander whom she betrayed. But hardly anything about either point, let alone her upbringing (raised by a Vulcan), is shown in the rest of the episodes, including the current one.
This is a poorly written series.
No, Ralfy, it is not. I would once again go through the many examples PROVING that it is not, but I believe you will just ignore it just like you did last time.
It makes perfect sense. You don't plans for things you have no reason to believe will ever happen. That would be idiotic.
What happened was, it didn't make any difference. Kol's recovery of the cloaking device was neither aided nor hindered by their lack of a dilithium processor. His recovery of the SHIP actually aided Starfleet in the long run.
Are you only looking at some of what happened or all of it?
"Common sense" would assume that the Klingons would have abandoned ship just like the crew of the Shenzhou. If they weren't going to abandon ship, they were going to be rescued and rejoin the fight immediately. That NEITHER of those things would happen is not something the crew of the Shenzhou should have anticipated.
Things that never happen are never shown.
There's no "common sense" reason to expect something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. That's the definition of "common sense": you anticipate the NORMAL way things should go and plan accordingly.
You were directly asked how the crew of the Shenzhou would have known that the Ship of the Dead would have any particular need for the Dilithium Processor six months after the battle. This is the only question you need to answer for your complaint to begin to make sense.
You keep bringing up erroneous points and I keep correcting you. Maybe you should stop making mistakes?
