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Who is the better captain Picard or Jellico

Who is the better Captain


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Geordie definitely thought it was unreasonable which is why he asked Riker to talk some sense into the man. Why doubt Geordie when he's already the suck it up and work hard type? He doesn't even overestimate how long jobs will take like Scotty
 
Geordi only thought the time table was unreasonable, which is something Jellico has no control over. It's not unreasonable if there's a reason

It was his job to bridge that gap and effectively work with them especially if they ended up at war under him. He just throws out unreasonable orders without putting in a word or two to get the crew confident in him. They certainly gave him a chance to correct that with Troi giving him advice.
They are choosing to withhold their confidence in him from the get go. They decide to not be accepting, right off. No " confidence building" words of any kind would be sufficient to change the minds of a group who already decided that this man shouldn't be in charge there, & shouldn't ask for any changes, despite the upcoming crisis, & his total right to do so. The top ranked officer (Riker) set that tone before Jellico even came aboard

Get the order right. He is unwelcome first. They walked around that ceremony like it was a funeral or a sentencing. His command posture might very well have been a reaction to that. When the social odds are against you, you rely on rank.

Make no bones about it. That crew set the tone, & he just reset it so he could function without having to apologize for being in charge all the time, & they just didn't feel too happy about it
 
It was his job to bridge that gap and effectively work with them especially if they ended up at war under him.
No. It. Was. Not.

The Captain of a ship has two jobs: make decisions and issue orders based on those decisions. Period. It is not his job to bridge any gaps because that's the job of his Executive Officer/First Officer/First Lieutenant/First Mate. If said officer refuses to do that, he's the one not doing his job.
He just throws out unreasonable orders without putting in a word or two to get the crew confident in him.

I'm done arguing "reasonable" with snowflakes. As long as the orders weren't illegal, the crew was obliged to follow them. Period. They can think the orders are unreasonable as all hell. If they're what the captain wants, they're what the captain gets, and it's the XO's job to see that it happens. It has worked that way for thousands of years, with nice captains, stern captains, strict captains and asshole captains, and no one has suggested the concept be changed just because they think the captain is mean.

They certainly gave him a chance to correct that with Troi giving him advice.

That was nice of them. It was also meaningless, and he is well within his rights to tell Troi to stuff her advice. He was The Captain.
 
As we see in "All Good Things..." the first person Picard meets when he takes command of Enterprise is Tasha and she's very respectful of everything he says. She even spurs the crew when they delay their response to his crazy order during his speech. I bet Jellico would have preferred that to the greeting he got by Riker.
 
No one is saying Jellico wasn't 'within his rights' to act the way he did, merely that his behaviour wasn't an example of good captainship.
 
That was nice of them. It was also meaningless, and he is well within his rights to tell Troi to stuff her advice. He was The Captain.
Troi was actually doing her job, although not entirely outside the chain of command, as the ships counselor she was responsible for the crews mental well-being.
Truthfully, her speech should have gone to Riker as the XO.
 
No one is saying Jellico wasn't 'within his rights' to act the way he did, merely that his behaviour wasn't an example of good captainship.
It does seem that some people are laying all of the blame for the matter at Jellico's feet while taking no issue with Riker's insubordination, though.
 
It does seem that some people are laying all of the blame for the matter at Jellico's feet while taking no issue with Riker's insubordination, though.
Nah, Riker was a dick here too. His initial delay with the crew rotation was valid. If all the department heads think it is a shit idea, it probably is a shit idea, and it is XO's job to tell that to the Captain. And I think Jellico should have at least listened what the worries of the department heads were, before deciding whether it was really worth it. But Riker took all this personally, and behaved like a pouty teenager.

It would be really interesting to know how the writers actually meant these characters to come across in this episode. Either intentionally or accidentally they managed to create a many-layered situation that has elicited a lot of debate for decades.
 
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I like to think Riker wished he has maintained his rank of captain after BOBW, for situations like this. Sure, he would've been reassigned but at least he would stand equal to Jellico.

Jellico's "Robert Baratheon" attitude of "I'm the Captain/King, I get what I want" would've been checked. I haven't watched the episode in years, correct me if I'm wrong, but did Nechayev and Jellico let the crew of the ENT know they were on the cusb of full blown war with the Cardassian Union? I seem to recall the actual parameters of their mission were "hush hush"/need to know by everyone the rank of captain and above.
 
I haven't watched the episode in years, correct me if I'm wrong, but did Nechayev and Jellico let the crew of the ENT know they were on the cusb of full blown war with the Cardassian Union? I seem to recall the actual parameters of their mission were "hush hush"/need to know by everyone the rank of captain and above.
No, they knew that. They didn't know what Picard's mission was.
 
It would be really interesting to know how the writers actually meant these characters to come across in this episode. Either intentionally or accidentally they managed to create a many-layered situation that has elicited a lot of debate for decades.
I'm willing to admit that because of their naivety, I suspect they just assumed everyone should be on the side of Riker, & because of that, they were a bit lazy about how they presented it, being relative novices about military protocol. If I'm wrong about that, then they had a much more profoundly thoughtful writing team than I ever gave them credit for, because the end result is a nuanced exchange that really forces you to examine your own biases about who the people are to pull for.

To his credit, Frakes, in many episodes, deliberately chooses to play Riker's lines in a much less flattering light than I suspect the original scripts intended. Another actor playing that scene differently, without the eye rolls, the chest puffing, the growling, the posturing, barking, machismo could deliver his lines in a much more sympathetic way. When Riker is a dick, it's mostly because Frakes wants to play him that way (& I think it's a good choice too) because I've seen original scripts, & it doesn't read that way often

No one is saying Jellico wasn't 'within his rights' to act the way he did, merely that his behaviour wasn't an example of good captainship.
The unfairness in what people suggest is that in some way Jellico is a poor captain, based on this singular instance of working with strangers, because he is expecting too much, & not being polite enough about his expectations, even though no one but him knows exactly what SHOULD be expected, enough to say he is outside good measure for his expectations

And furthermore, what no one who holds that view ever examines about the social dynamic is that Jellico is the REactor, & the crew is the stimulus. It is their immediate objection to him (Because he isn't Picard, or in lieu of that, Riker) that fuels his almost immediate laying down of the law, for the mission's sake. Riker & subsequently everyone serving under him, might never get told "Get it done" if the very 1st thing he'd ordered... hadn't gotten done... deliberately, & if everyone on board weren't grousing about some guy getting Picard's ship, about being told to do things by that guy, that might not even be that terrible, & were it Picard telling them, they'd just do it without complaint, regardless of how polite he was or wasn't about it. Everyone on board, set the ship's social meter to "Red Alert" when this dude got put there. They are the catalyst for why things didn't go smoothly, & Jellico reacted in a way I myself might react, if I was coming into an assignment where I thought people wouldn't respect my authority because they resent me
 
One thing that doesn't sit well with me in that episode is Beverly whoring herself just to get transported to the place of the mission. I can't believe that the mission was asking that of her!! It's so undignified!
 
Geordie definitely thought it was unreasonable which is why he asked Riker to talk some sense into the man. Why doubt Geordie when he's already the suck it up and work hard type? He doesn't even overestimate how long jobs will take like Scotty

Scotty's line is a throwaway bit of idle comedy relief self-parody for cheap laughs. ST IV has not aged well. IV was the nadir for Kirk's era, not V or VI. VI, which was still blighted by the cod comedy, still managed to turn things around.

Or Scotty made his boast because he was always sublime at what he did and could get away with the opposite of humbled humility. That works better than passing all of IV-VI as throwaway when each of them has areas of depth and interest.
 
The Captain of a ship has two jobs: make decisions and issue orders based on those decisions. Period.

So why did the great captains in these stories bother inspiring their crews going out on a limb all the time for them? Extra credit? They could just give the order and they're off the hook. Isn't this part of getting the job done, which is what Starfleet was looking for? Given what we saw of Starfleet academy I don't think they would expect captains to simply give orders with no situational awareness of the state of the crew.

At the end of the day we saw the crew having little confidence in him and Riker confronting him about completely giving up on Picard. Jellico would probably a good captain in other situations but there are smarter moves to make there than he displayed in this episode. For instance defiance against leaving a former captain to die should have been expected if he had read anything about Riker's past.

Geordie knew they were close to war all the time and still had issues with the orders, to me that says something
 
Now I found this debate on YouTube chats
Which one is better picard got to know who his crew and earn there respect. Jellico did not earn their respect and the enterprise crew would probably want to tell him shut up, but he got results and mange to get picard release and save a system from being invaded. Although no one was sad to see him go at the end. And of course be more respectful than the people on YouTube were to each other.

Edit: now that I think about it, I should have just ask if jellico was a good captain.
Edit: so if any new person posting you can just post if jellico was a good captain.

Jellico was a good Captain but he didn't fit in the 24th century. He belonged on another series, just like Chain of Command.
 
So why did the great captains in these stories bother inspiring their crews going out on a limb all the time for them? Extra credit?

There's a time for inspirational speeches, like on the battle line on D-Day at H-Hour. The time for inspirational speeches is not in the rear echelon when all you're trying to do is get basic shit organized. Expecting the Captain to be Tony Robbins all the time is fucking stupid.

They could just give the order and they're off the hook.

Yeah. Exactly. Now you're getting it.

Isn't this part of getting the job done, which is what Starfleet was looking for?

Starfleet picked him to get the job done. If they were worried that his method of getting it done was incompatible with the crew he was being given they would either have chosen a different captain for them or a different crew for him. They didn't, likely because they expected the crew to respect the chain of command.

Given what we saw of Starfleet academy I don't think they would expect captains to simply give orders with no situational awareness of the state of the crew.

If that's true, then the instructors at Starfleet Academy have the foresight of a blind turtle, because there could be hundreds of situations where a captain would have to take command without foreknowledge of the crew's state, and if the crew's only problem is that it's feeling emotional, he has every right to not give a shit.

At the end of the day we saw the crew having little confidence in him and Riker confronting him about completely giving up on Picard. Jellico would probably a good captain in other situations but there are smarter moves to make there than he displayed in this episode. For instance defiance against leaving a former captain to die should have been expected if he had read anything about Riker's past.
Expected, yes. Tolerated, no. Ultimately it's Riker's responsibility to suck it up and serve his new captain, and make sure the rest of the crew does the same.
Geordie knew they were close to war all the time and still had issues with the orders, to me that says something

To me it says the guy with two and a half pips is second-guessing the guy with four full ones. The guy with four full ones wins.
 
Get the order right. He is unwelcome first. They walked around that ceremony like it was a funeral or a sentencing. His command posture might very well have been a reaction to that. When the social odds are against you, you rely on rank.

Make no bones about it. That crew set the tone, & he just reset it so he could function without having to apologize for being in charge all the time, & they just didn't feel too happy about it

I think that is exaggerating the events of the episode. The initial tone is that they are unsure of him and maybe Riker is annoyed about it. Nothing he can't overcome.

Then the issue becomes that the changes he orders will create problems and Riker is very slow to inform him. At first not even Riker knows that he doesn't want to discuss any of the issues, just like he doesn't know Jellico expected to be informed about the probe. Both communication issues which probably could have been avoided by a single sentence from Jellico. There's no suggestion the department heads simply rejected it because they're lazy or disliked the new captain. And after he makes his perspective clear, it gets done.

Even then with all that it's not even as adversarial as this thread makes it seem, no one is disobeying orders, until Riker takes a stand about Picard.

There's a time for inspirational speeches, like on the battle line on D-Day at H-Hour. The time for inspirational speeches is not in the rear echelon when all you're trying to do is get basic shit organized. Expecting the Captain to be Tony Robbins all the time is fucking stupid.

Doesn't take an inspirational speech just basic people skills. Getting basic shit organized is a stretch - the former captain just probably got killed and they were about to be at war, it was definitely a situation that called for it.
 
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