Worst command decisions by Captain James T. Kirk

I didn't think Kodos was meant to be seen as a monster. As he protested if the supply ships hadn't arrived sooner than expected Kodos wouldn't have looked so bad.
While I don't really understand why there were only 9 witnesses. I think perhaps Kodos had been newly appointed from another colony and maybe the first colonists to be sacrificed might have been his closest colleagues (maybe those who opposed his plans).
Then maybe the people who carried out his plan were sacrificed at the end when the colony ships arrived.

 

Wholly sidestepping writer intent, which never amounted to much and never was intended or required to, we should look at what was actually said, and decide how to best mutilate that to provide a logical conclusion.

The "eyewitness" issue is by far the easiest shot to take there. Let's review pertinent statements:

So the nine are survivors, and stand out by virtue of being able to identify Kodos.

Does this mean there are other eyewitnesses who are unable to identify Kodos? Any survivors would naturally come in two sorts: those who survived by being elsewhere when bad things happened, and those who survived despite being right there. The latter sort could be eyewitnesses to the massacre, and relevant to court proceedings; the former would be irrelevant bystanders.

So, does being eyewitness (in general, or in being one of the nine) mean being able to tell what Kodos looked like? But that's nonsense - there are pictures of what Kodos looked like, and the human eye can do no better than pictures (and will generally do much, much worse). The nine need to be a more knowledgeable bunch, with access to more than the fallible input of their eyes. And it's simple for them to be that: they could be the nine who know who Kodos was.

There was a "coup" on the colony. So "Governor Kodos" could be a coupster whose nom de guerre tells the authorities nothing and whose real, original identity is uncertain. But nine people who traveled to the colony on the same ship with the mystery man who then became Kodos would be valuable sources of information indeed, when the time came to "identify Kodos". There would be records on the passengers of the putative ship, but then there would be these actual eyewitnesses...

(In this model, the "no positive identification" bit would be the computer saying that nobody could positively, that is, absolutely, ever identify who this Kodos guy was, which is a premise acceptable to today's audiences, and not that the authorities couldn't positively say the corpse was Kodos, which is an unacceptable premise.)

Now, the other alternative is that of the eyewitnesses establishing Kodos' specific guilt on giving the illegal and murderous orders. But this is not what gets established in the dialogue. Nowhere in the episode is eyewitnessing associated with the ability to prove that the massacres happened (there's no shortage of proof that they did take place, AFAWK), or with the ability to prove that Kodos did it (he freely admits to this in a public speech!). Furthermore, the computer is aware of the eyewitnesses being eyewitnesses - so eliminating them now, decades later, would serve little purpose as regards the above two points, on which they either must have been questioned, or then flagged as valid providers of incrimination on demand, therefore as good as having already provided that incrimination!

OTOH, if the nine and the mystery man were shipmates, then it would be plausible for the nine not to volunteer information initially, lest they incriminate a friend or a family member - perhaps Kodos was somebody trusted or recommended by Kirk's dad, say? True or not, Lenore might suspect the nine of holding back key knowledge that would connect the pasts of the two fictional identities Kodos and Karidian and lead the authorities to the true identity of the man behind both.

That the testimonies of the nine would be necessary to get Kodos convicted doesn't sound plausible, as Kirk doesn't think this would be an option: instead, he makes a personal threat on Karidian's life, something rather unthinkable if an official alternative existed, and then fails to pursue that, again unthinkable if there were official obligations. If the fate of Kodos hangs on Kirk's testimony, these facts make no sense be Kirk vindictive (he'd then give the testimony and let Kodos hang) or merciful/afraid/protective (he'd then not make death threats). And it certainly makes no sense for Kirk not to dictate an official witness statement ASAP, totally preempting the murderer's efforts!

If, OTOH, the testimony is irrelevant as regards the sentence of Kodos, and only matters in whether Karidian can be established to be Kodos, then Kirk is correct not to jump to conclusions; Lenore is correct to be protective of her father's new identity and secret past; and the death threat is understandable if we make the additional assumption that the sentence already passed on Kodos (or awaiting him if it is discovered he's alive and pretending to be Karidian) is one of letting him walk. The conclusion of the episode establishes that murderous madmen (madwomen) do walk, to the mental asylum and back, and Kirk might not be comfortable with that newfangled thing yet, although he'll learn better by the time of "Dagger of the Mind".

But never mind these thousand-word treatises. Ultimately, this episode isn't particularly problematic as long as no writer makes a misguided effort to "explain" or "excuse" it. The whole Kodos thing is a McGuffin and openly treated as such - it doesn't seem to matter to our heroes, who don't make even a halfhearted attempt at "unraveling the mystery of the identity" or "making the villain face justice", even when at least Kirk obviously feels strongly about it all. As per the rules of the episode, the crimes of Kodos either cannot be nailed on Karidian no matter what, or won't carry a consequence worth all the hassle - and it takes a deranged mind to think otherwise. In the end, even Karidian himself appears to concur, condemning his daughter's efforts as utterly counterproductive...

Timo Saloniemi

 

I was going to say never checking to see how Khan and his followers were on the planet they left them on. Maybe if he had and they were recused the Wrath of Khan would not have happened? Though, that is an amazing movie so would want it to happen...

 

I never saw the greatness of Wrath to be honest! Khan and Kirk never meet, Shatner wears the first of his curly black syrups which look...silly and the space battle is far too colourful and long!
JB

 

...

 

Yep, that's the funny bit in the film!
JB

 

They would have scanned the system on approach and seen that a planet had exploded, and that this was not the same planet. The idea that they get confused about what planet they are on (CetiAlpha 5/6) is absolutely ridiculous.

 

It's a good thing Trek was never ridiculous in any other episode or film...

 

That was on Starfleet. The Enterprise may have never been in that sector again during Kirk's command. We see in the episode that Kirk recorded log entries on finding Khan and his attempt to take over the ship. Plus, after the incident, Kirk is missing a crewmen (Marla McGivers) that he would have to account for.

I would also imagine any tribunal would be recorded.

 

Shatner hamming it up.

 

I'd pay real money to see Karidian bluster about "fake news!".

 

Yeah he would.

 

Welcome to Star Trek?

 

M take is Captain Terrell was bored with his assignment, and didn't access the records, and didn't scan the system outside the "goldilocks zone," and had no idea what was going on around him.

 

If they'd been aiming for CA5 and ended up on CA6 after 5 exploded we could just about claim that Terrall was lazy or incompetent and simply told his helmsman to head for the fifth planet... which would be unlikely, but just about possible.
But ending up on 5 when aiming for 6 is what we get on-screen.

 

Maybe less a case of head towards a known Ceti Alpha Six, and more head toward any planet that just happens to be in the star's inhabitable zone, and wasn't known to have life.

CA5 was a known life bearing planet and so Terrell dismissed it, without examining the planet's records beyond that fact.

CA6 wasn't a known life bearing planet, it was in the inhabitable zone, so Terrell head toward (supposedly) CA6. If it wasn't in the exact orbit that was previously surveyed ... so what.

Why bother looking at the rest of the system?

Terrell didn't care, he just wanted the assignment over with. That much was extremely clear from the movie.

I've never bought in to the idea that Kirk-Starfleet-Federation kept secret the fact that Kirk set up a impromptu prison colony on CA5.

 

Yes, Terrell should have landed on CA7 if CA6 was blown up, unless CA5's orbit changed so much that CA5 and CA7 switched orbits, then CA5 became CA7 and landing on CA6 becomes landing on CA5.

 

Had Spock been Reliant’s science officer, it would have taken him about ten seconds of scanning to conclude that something wasn’t quite right in the Ceti Alpha system. And apparently unlike Chekov and Kyle, Spock would have remembered that Enterprise left Khan and his people on CA5 fifteen years earlier. And no doubt this fact would have been known by the Genesis project staff and Federation personnel tasked with selecting the test site, and certainly Captain Terrell would have been in the loop as well.

I love TWOK, but this has always been a huge flaw in the story.

 

The planet that exploded was actually Ceti Alpha IV, but when Joachim handed Khan the PADD with readouts of the destruction, Khan was accidentally holding it upside-down and misread it. He kept on repeating the number wrong for the next 14 years and no one wanted to correct him. His was a superior intellect, you know.

 

I don't have much trouble believing that Khan's party being on Ceti Alpha V wasn't generally known. Just as Earth's authorities didn't want to reveal to a war-torn populace that 70-80 supermen had survived and were unaccounted for, I can believe that Starfleet didn't want to let it be known that Khan was rediscovered. It's pretty obvious that Terrell was never told. Whether through bureaucratic inefficiency or paranoid secrecy, I don't know.

The thing I don't get is how so many people think that Kirk was acting outside his authority in choosing to put Khan on Ceti Alpha V. Making decisions like that was totally in his authority as Captain.