Until the ship came down, and then flew over the 'Village'.
Oof. Every time someone reminds me of some horrible plot point I forgot about S1 of Discovery, it all comes flooding back. What a disaster.
The Omega Glory...
- Thread starter Riker'sMailbox
- Start date
Oof. Every time someone reminds me of some horrible plot point I forgot about S1 of Discovery, it all comes flooding back. What a disaster.
The proper way of doing it would be to mix those 5 well known names in with another 6-10 unknown names..... that way, the entire history and scope of Starfleet isn't that those are the ONLY top captains EVER..... while also seeding possible future stories and references based on those names.....
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Inadmissaible!! Because i like TOS and i don't like DSC! Immaterial!!!
Agreed, Tracey's crime was he was afraid of death, and his obsession to live lead him to some dark territories which he couldn't climb out of.
No..no...no...Captain Tracy was actually Dr. Vangelder (who'd gone insane after the treatment he received on the Tantalus Colony) and no one in Starfleet noticed he'd killed and replaced the original Ron Tracy,
It's just different strokes for different folks. Really not a big deal and totally expected.
...That sequence, filmed the way it was because of obvious technical limitations, always struck me as serendipitous for the producers. When Kirk and Spock materialize, there's nobody around. When they're through sparklin', though, the place is suddenly jam-packed with extras. It's almost as if all these primitive village folks sprung into existence out of thin air just after the arrival of our heroes...
The automatic doors were deliberate. This most probably was not. Both count as hints, though.
Doesn't sound believable. If anything, Tracey appeared to have a death wish, sticking with the doomed villagers like that. If he felt he needed to live, he would have had much easier ways to accomplish that than fight genocidal hordes.
Timo Saloniemi
I think Tracey lost his mind when his crew all died! That plus his obsession about the people on Omega IV being near to immortal! A man like him, having spent years in the Starfleet wouldn't just turn renegade without a hell of a push and with living forever he could justify the loss of his ship by bringing that gift to the galaxy!
JB
JB
The thing is, turning renegade was an action dictated by Starfleet regulations: according to Kirk, those directly told Tracey to commit suicide if the alternative was to make an impact.
At the time of choosing, Tracey chose to stand by the Kohms, apparently not so much to secure his own existence (as there's that contradiction there) but because there'd be no harm done dying in defense of his ideals. When it turned out Tracey would be "rescued" after all, though, Tracey could at most hope to buy his freedom with the secret of eternal life, and even then might be better off just eliminating the "rescuers" who would otherwise bring him to justice.
Basically, a light shade of grey on our semi-tragic villain. And another of those delightful "what if it were our hero Kirk instead?" moments. Would Kirk have committed the expected suicide? Would he have run to the hills, living as a hermit while the Yangs finished off the last of the Kohms? Would Kirk have found a way to put an end to the whole war with a fistfight, a kiss and a speech? Would any one of these three have made for a good adventure?
Timo Saloniemi
At the time of choosing, Tracey chose to stand by the Kohms, apparently not so much to secure his own existence (as there's that contradiction there) but because there'd be no harm done dying in defense of his ideals. When it turned out Tracey would be "rescued" after all, though, Tracey could at most hope to buy his freedom with the secret of eternal life, and even then might be better off just eliminating the "rescuers" who would otherwise bring him to justice.
Basically, a light shade of grey on our semi-tragic villain. And another of those delightful "what if it were our hero Kirk instead?" moments. Would Kirk have committed the expected suicide? Would he have run to the hills, living as a hermit while the Yangs finished off the last of the Kohms? Would Kirk have found a way to put an end to the whole war with a fistfight, a kiss and a speech? Would any one of these three have made for a good adventure?
Timo Saloniemi
Good call, JB! That is supported by an excerpt from the Lost Scenes book, which I have now acquired and already treasure (it's fantastic), in which Tracey muses absentmindedly about losing his command. I think the deaths of his crew affected him in much the same way that they affected Decker, at least in terms of the loss of sanity.
That his judgment would be clouded when he started massacring the natives seems clear. Is he lacking in faculties when he confronts Kirk, though? At that point, he's pretty much out of options.
It's sort of intriguing that Kirk essentially stumbles on the Exeter, the dialogue revealing that he has not been searching for the vessel but also that nobody else has, either. Six months without contact counts as "I hadn't heard of any trouble" in the terms of the TOS Starfleet.
When could Tracey realistically expect help to arrive, then? In a year? In five years? His ship could apparently only be spotted if another ship approached the specific planet. Her patrol area seemed to encompass enough space and operational liberty that Starfleet would have no precise idea of where to start looking, if and when they got around to that. Might be he would first be met by Captain Picard instead, much like Kirk only checked out on the Horizon and the Archon a full century after the fact.
Of course, he wouldn't expect to be alive then. He thought the local longevity was a "secret" he would have to study first. So the possibility of having to face the consequences of his decisions must have looked remote to him, until Kirk did that unlikely stumbling bit.
(Which is also an interesting question. What drew Kirk to Omega IV specifically, if he had no idea he would find Tracey's ship there? If this was Tracey's patrol area half a year previously, was it now Kirk's? But if so, why wasn't he on a lookout for Tracey? What does "patrol" constitute? Is Omega IV special from a distance, perhaps because of residue from the old war? Does it have features of interest that nobody bothers to mention after the adventure gets rolling? Once again, a half-baked setup leaves open venues of speculation.)
Timo Saloniemi
It's sort of intriguing that Kirk essentially stumbles on the Exeter, the dialogue revealing that he has not been searching for the vessel but also that nobody else has, either. Six months without contact counts as "I hadn't heard of any trouble" in the terms of the TOS Starfleet.
When could Tracey realistically expect help to arrive, then? In a year? In five years? His ship could apparently only be spotted if another ship approached the specific planet. Her patrol area seemed to encompass enough space and operational liberty that Starfleet would have no precise idea of where to start looking, if and when they got around to that. Might be he would first be met by Captain Picard instead, much like Kirk only checked out on the Horizon and the Archon a full century after the fact.
Of course, he wouldn't expect to be alive then. He thought the local longevity was a "secret" he would have to study first. So the possibility of having to face the consequences of his decisions must have looked remote to him, until Kirk did that unlikely stumbling bit.
(Which is also an interesting question. What drew Kirk to Omega IV specifically, if he had no idea he would find Tracey's ship there? If this was Tracey's patrol area half a year previously, was it now Kirk's? But if so, why wasn't he on a lookout for Tracey? What does "patrol" constitute? Is Omega IV special from a distance, perhaps because of residue from the old war? Does it have features of interest that nobody bothers to mention after the adventure gets rolling? Once again, a half-baked setup leaves open venues of speculation.)
Timo Saloniemi
Matt Decker sacrificed himself to the planet killer in response to the loss of his crew whilst Ron Tracey became unhinged by his crew's demise and tried to make it right by giving the galaxy the gift of immortality! Captain Robert M.Merrick decided to accept the hospitality of the Proconsul on planet 892 IV and the fringe benefits that were included although he too told Kirk he felt the death of his crew and hoped he would feel it less with Kirk's!
JB
The best way to do it, would be to not do that particular bit at all. I expect a newly minted Ensign thrust in command to be unsure of himself, not a Starfleet first officer who has served for at least a decade.
It was the epitome of the tail wagging the dog.
Also the seeming focal point of an upcoming major war. The 23rd century version of the Prime Directive was smart enough to give way to reality when the situation called for it. Someone was going to upend the apple cart on Organia, the Federation saw to it that they try first.
This was sort of the point, though - Saru would be a Merlin of sorts, living his life all backward by starting out as the bravest of the brave and ending up as the most timid of Starfleet officers currently serving.
I can accept that Pike would be a noteworthy captain even though we never ever heard of him doing anything remarkable. After all, we already did hear he was noteworthy, back in "The Menagerie", even if we never learned why. And now we get more of him.
Archer gets free points for being The First, of course. But why involve April? At that point of the Trek timeline, nobody thought USS Enterprise was anything special, so April must have earned his reputation either before or after his brief first command of Kirk's eventual ship.
The same, unfortunately, holds true for Pike. And he's an obvious nobody in "The Cage", so his years of glory would appear to coincide with early TOS. Back in the 2250s, he has no right to be a hero lest he "soil" the reputation of his ship and make it implausible that Kirk would never get called on his role as "the next Pike".
They always find workarounds, in "Para Bellum" just as much as in the TOS episodes. The thing is, though, war is not a prerequisite for such action even in TOS. If anything, "the Prime Directive requires us not to reveal our identity or mission to these natives" is an exceptional point worth bringing up in a discussion in "Bread and Circuses", suggesting it virtually never applies in Kirk's regular adventures.
Timo Saloniemi
Archer? Archer who?
It's great that Robert April is accepted by fandom as the first Captain of the USS Enterprise even if he only appeared in the cartoon series once in 1974!
JB
I guess it would have been better if they had added some previously unknown name to Trek lore on the list. Maybe even a famous female captain?
Who (besides hard core Star Trek fans like us) had EVER heard of Captain Robert April before? Again, aside from TAS - April HAD NEVER been mentioned in any filmed Star Trek series or film. To any casual/new viewer he WAS a 'new name'.
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