Worst command decisions by Captain James T. Kirk

I really wish there was a way to make Kirk look less silly, and Khan smarter, in Space Seed. That keeps it out of my personal top 10.

 

Not really the first nor last time Kirk would end up looking silly with regards to visitors to his ship though...

 

He really has a sense of false security when on board, doesn't he?

 

The entity that sneaked on board was influencing him to act rashly.

 

...Indeed, the episode is remarkable in not showing our heroes behaving "as themselves" at all. The teaser already features them blindly believing in a nonexistent colony, apparently; they are being led on a leash, till the last liberating laugh.

The crisis sorta deepens in mid-episode, with McCoy on full Nazi mode, Kirk ordering insane actions, Spock nodding and ushering them on, and the others just flaying around without thinking. There's a bit more coherence to their actions towards the end, but Kirk wandering to the middle of a posse of Klingons with a "Stab me!" post-it on his back is not yet part of that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I thought it was a feature of the episode that Kirk's actions at first seem not that bad but then seem to cross the line,
All the while we get a cutaway to the blinking alien.

I mean who can blame Kirk for wanting to punch a Klingon in the head.

 

The tactics of entering the room were fine. The guards were at the door. The Starfleet crew had phasers.

Interestingly, I don't think Kirk acts irrationally at all in the episode. He and Sulu seem to be completely unaffected.

 

Kirk sends Riley down to the engineering decks to keep Riley in the dark about the entire Karidian affair and we assume to keep him safe, too. I think Kirk was more worried about what Riley would do to Karidian versus the reverse, even though everyone involved in the affair was being murdered. How does Lenore find Riley alone in the Engine Room in the first place if Kirk's intent is to keep him safe from assassination? Another bad command decision from Kirk.

 

More to the point, if the intent was to keep Riley safe, why was there no Security involvement?

 

So maybe, behind the scenes, Kirk was monitoring the father, but not the daughter because he never suspected her.

Oh, and if Riley sees the security, then he will suspect something is up.

 

Ah, right, I forgot about that part. Though still, putting someone in Engineering by themselves seems likely to engender suspicion all by itself.

 

true, it did. Riley was wondering what he did wrong. But this could explain why kirk was still unsure. He is monitoring the father, and could not explain how he managed to cause trouble.

 

If Kirk was monitoring (using 23rd Century Tech!) Karidian, and Riley was almost killed and add in the phaser overload in his quarters, then why didn't Kirk suspect someone else was doing the killing? No, he double downs on Karidian. So, this is yet another mistake by Kirk not to correct his first mistake...(where have we heard that one, before? ).

So, where are the security cameras? Hell, we have cameras on our door bells, now.

 

Definitely Kirk is making mistakes here, and Spock is pointing that out to him. But, no one is suspecting the daughter. It's almost inconceivable.

Cameras are not needed. Kirk could have the computer monitor the opening of the door. Or he could have someone watching the door. I'm just suggesting this because if we don't assume this, then Kirk is really both dumb and reckless. We have to give him some credit, and try to minimize his mistakes.

 

Why do you think that a person that old being a murderer is almost inconceivable?

How old was Charlie Evans in "Charlie X"? He was said to be seventeen several times. and he caused the Antares to explode, killing twenty persons.

And what about yeoman Third Class Tina Lawton, said to be Charlie's age, and thus probably younger than Leonore Karidian? She was serving aboard a starship with the power to destroy all life on the surface of an entire planet. And Starfleet had a general order to do, General Order 24. Did she have a plan to lead a mutiny and stop Kirk if he ordered General Order 24 on a planet with intelligent inhabitants? Probably not. She might regret serving about the instrument of an inhabited planet's destruction, but probably not enough to try to stop the captain if he gave such an order.

So Kirk & co. should have known from experience that people Leonore's age were capable of killing, either sanctioned by their society or against the rules of their society.

 

Kirk made no bad command decisions. If all those redshirts were better at their jobs they would still be alive.

Jason

 

It has nothing to do with age. It's just a situational thing. First of all, Kirk, Spock and McCoy have no reason to think that the daughter has any possible way of knowing of her father's past sins. So, there is no motive for her to do it. Had they suspected she knew, then suddenly a strong motive would be there, and then she might be a suspect. That's the biggest reason. But, then there is personal bias. Kirk is at first using her as a tool to get to the father. He has initially biased himself from the start that she is not a suspect. Actually, the thought never enters his mind. Then later he finds her attractive which adds to the bias. Add to that her stunning beauty and who will naturally think of her as a murderer. Maybe a viewer of the episode would suspect her because it is a "who done it" and it is natural to start suspecting everyone, especially the unlikely people. But, you have to place yourself in the shoes of the characters to understand how Kirk got blindsided.

 

Kodos was thought to be dead long ago. No one saved the DNA evidence. Even if they did save it, do you think many samples are spread across the inhabited galaxy so that it will be available to Kirk whenever he needs instant fast access to it? (they did try voice recognition)

Security cameras should of course be in use everywhere on the ship and be recorded for study later, but the show never incorporated that common sense idea from the beginning. Even in The Menagerie, we are told that detailed video records are not normally available. Hence, we are forced to think that Kirk at least had the common sense idea to put special surveillance on Kodos/Karidian. But, because of his bias and "weakness" and inability to imagine that the guy's daughter could have learned the secret, he does not put surveillance on his daughter. He probably already feels guilty about using her, and feels reluctance to push it so far as to video her like a creep.

 

Whether Karidian was Kodos never seems to have been a relevant question: Kirk didn't think Kodos could be brought to face any sort of consequences no matter what. His only practical option appeared to be personal revenge, or, as the captain himself put it, "If I had gotten everything I wanted, you might not walk out of this room alive".

But Kirk didn't get the bit that would either push him to murder, or allow him to lawfully gun down a criminal. And that's highly unlikely to have been the Karidian/Kodos connection, because Kirk was already 100% certain about it (so nothing further said or done on that subject could have moved Kirk from restraint to slaying), and because we never learn that Kodos or anybody else in Trek would be an outlaw to be killed at sight (so getting legal proof of Karidian being Kodos should not result in the legal taking of a life within that room). Kirk instead probably was looking for an excuse to do harm, such as Kodos trying to make a run for it, or Kodos really laying it thick with insults and dismissals, and that's what he failed to get. Although even had he gotten it, he probably wouldn't have acted on it anyway.

So we don't need to sweat the identity question much, when the heroes don't, either. The only one to think that Kodos might come to some sort of personal harm if revealed is his utterly insane daughter - and her own fate reveals what happens to insane serial killers. They will "receive the best of care"! (Perhaps that's what Kirk would have been counting on, too, if he decided to behead Karidian Sr with his bare hands?)

Timo Saloniemi