War & Peace: Pike, Lorca, and Georgiou as Captains

[Lord Garth]

Pike being kept out of the Klingon War retroactively makes Star Trek: Insurrection make sense. Back in 1998, I was wondering "Why aren't they making this about the Dominion War?" At the time, I thought it would tonally fit as a follow up to First Contact. Yes, I know the real reason why: those who hadn't seen DS9 wouldn't have known who the Dominion are (even though they could've reintroduced them for the movie audience), but that's not where I'm going with this. So continuing along...

If Cornwell didn't want someone as good-natured as Pike in the Klingon War, probably wondering if he'd be able to do what it takes to get his hands dirty, then I can see someone like Ross not wanting Picard, who'd be even worse, involved in the Dominion War.

It gives an added wrinkle to Star Trek: First Contact too. Maybe there was more to it than just not wanting Picard involved because he was previously assimilated. Maybe, after "I, Borg", they realized that Picard will always do the moral thing no matter what, even at the cost of survival.

During war, Starfleet seems to favor captains like Lorca and Sisko instead of Pike and Picard. Then, when they're at peace, Pike and Picard become their favorites again.

Captain Georgiou, from what little we saw, seems more like Janeway. She straddles the line between idealism and pragmatism. She could probably command well in both environments.

 

[BillJ]

Yes, I know the real reason why: those who hadn't seen DS9 wouldn't have known who the Dominion are (even though they could've reintroduced them for the movie audience), but that's not where I'm going with this.

Actually, according to Piller's book, Patrick Stewart wanted something lighter after First Contact. Which is why the Heart of Darkness treatment ended up getting ditched.

 

[Sarachan]

If that's the case, it points to the idea that Starfleet is really run long term, overall, by bad people. Evil can pretend to be good as much as it needs to for its own purposes, but good can only pretend to be evil for a limited time before morality is compromised, corruption sets in, and it is no longer pretending.

 

[XCV330]

If that's the case, it points to the idea that Starfleet is really run long term, overall, by bad people. Evil can pretend to be good as much as it needs to for its own purposes, but good can only pretend to be evil for a limited time before morality is compromised, corruption sets in, and it is no longer pretending.

Define "bad" or evil for that matter.

Until Lorca was revealed to be someone from another universe who REALLY did not share any of the UFP's values, he was a flawed, manipulative, but very effective officer. I suspect Prime Lorca, if he's ever presented in anything more than his novel appearance. will be similar. That Lorca was capable of doing some truly awful stuff, aren't we all, but he kept it in check for the most part, even after personal loss.

I would agree that Starfleet probably doesn't attract your average UFP citizen. Conditions are not always comfortable, life expectancy is surely much lower, you have to wear the same thing every day and your personal life options are limited to coworkers.

 

[Timo]

I rather doubt people who find Pike or Picard too idealistic to their tastes would worry about the idealistic abstraction of Klingons or Romulans perhaps having redeeming features. If there's a war on, those two are the best possible opponents: they can only ever be stopped by force, and even then there's no chance of going overkill because even the very worst the Feds can do will fail to completely negate the enemy.

It would take a twisted mind to think of a scenario where Pike or Picard would act against UFP interests in face of the ruthless opponents - a mind like Pike's or Picard's, and thus by definition a mind unlike those of the folks in charge.

Would Pike be likely to have a "soft touch"? We only ever saw one other true DSC-era skipper, and Lorca wasn't supposed to be a good yardstick for anything. Georgiou was already a goner (but she was the sort to rig corpses to explode!) and nothing was learned about the attitudes of other COs towards the Klingons or towards the waging of war. Kirk was not yet shown (although he's supposed to have earned a warrior reputation at some point, so no doubt in this very war).

What we actually saw of Pike doesn't suggest he would tend to err on the side of unwarranted caution: it took some effort to talk him out of firing at the Red Sphere, say. So where would he have gotten a dubious reputation? Supposedly there had been a long peace overall before Burnham's War, so Pike's attitudes would not have faced any practical tests.

In another timeline, the one called Kelvinverse, there was another long peace, and Pike there was a warmonger, making drafting speeches about how Starfleet had gone soft and needed daredevils at the helm of the "peacekeeping armada". Would that Pike have grown up differently from the one in DSC/TOS? Why? (It's not that different a timeline - he seems to have been the only one in that timeline affected by the loss of the Kelvin, and even he appeared to have forgotten all about that dissertation he once wrote.)

Timo Saloniemi