Worst command decisions by Captain James T. Kirk

Well it would have been a court martial for McGivers and a course at a re-education centre for Khan's goons! Plus Kirk probably knew they'd eventually escape and start a revolution inside the Federation somehow so it was best to let them linger on a virgin planet out in space where it would be at least three hundred years before they became a threat to Starfleet Command!
JB

 

What motivation would Kirk have for checking up on the castaways, though? They were dropped off with the very purpose of not having to worry about them any longer. Did Kirk check on Harry Mudd to see if the scoundrel really was attending his therapy sessions? Did Kirk make rounds on the Malurian system every January to see whether it was still missing? It just wouldn't have been Kirk's task to worry about things he had already dealt with.

Yes, Spock in "Space Seed" muses that it might be interesting to revisit the place at some point, and he and Kirk then chuckle at the very idea - neither of them is actually planning on doing it, not the least because both are likely to be dead of old age by the time specified, a century on!

Except not. People probably think that star systems are a set of concentric rings with a big marble or three at the center and smaller marbles riding on the rings. But in space, there are no such rings: telling whether a planet is V or VI or XXI or II just isn't possible at a glance. Except, you know, if you have a booklet saying that VI is the desert one.

If Venus suddenly went missing, who would notice? Certainly not anybody flying a Starfleet starship. Those don't have to mind any other planets besides the one they are aiming at; they would zero in on Earth if that was their goal, and Venus be damned. Even if Earth were a few million miles to the left of where it should be, because all that would take to correct would be a light tap on the engine controls.

Anyway, we know that Kirk never actually scans systems before or even after entering. The first warning to him of all the planets in a system having been eaten by a space monster is the rubble scraping the paint off his ship, deep (former) insystem...

Marooning of folks used to be a pseudo-humane way of killing them back in the days of sail. Generally, nobody would arrive within the brief remaining lifetime of the castaway, who would be lucky indeed to have fresh water to drink, or the right balance of animal life around him so that he'd be on the top rather than the bottom of the food chain. The exceptions, the ones who lived to tell the story, were those dropped off at well-known replenishment islands because those making the drop could not be bothered to go anywhere else.

Castaways in Trek have it much worse: the planets are farther apart, the making of signal bonfires much more difficult, and while there's some space traffic, we learn right off the bat that nobody will pick up the Columbia "survivors" for two decades from a planet where well-provisioned humans might expect to survive for perhaps two years! Khan was supposed to die on that planet; whether any of his kids would survive to make grandkids was uncertain at best; and the odds of somebody stumbling onto the place were only going to decrease with time, Kirk supposedly marooning the superman in the very same region of space where the hilarious hijinks of the episode generally took place - an area formerly studied but now long abandoned by Earth/Federation spacecraft.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Anyone with a starship that has sensors would notice. And it would be immediately obvious. There dont need to be "concentric rings". You could tell all the planets apart very easily. There would be no mistaking Jupiter for Saturn or Earth for Mars. They have mapped these systems, and there is no way they could be going to a planet they already know the location, orbit and distance of and not notice that it had blown up and no longer intact in it's known position. How did you think they navigate to particular planets? To say nothing of the immense planetary debris that they couldn't have missed either. There is no way this could have happened.

 

The flaw to me is in Khan and Chekov recognizing each other at all. Let's say the Khan incident is one of those things kept under wraps, and Kirk and crew decide not to have revealed the 'colony' in official logs. Well, if Chekhov arrives later on the Enterprise, he doesn't ever know anything about Khan or Ceti Alpha 5... ammend the dialogue so that Khan instead recognises the Starfleet insignia on Pavel and Clark's spacesuits, and says "Do you know a Captain Kirk?" "Admiral Kirk? Yes, it was on his orders we were sent here." "AD-miral Kirk?", and the rest just carries on as per.

 

Usually you hear below decks explanations for Chekov. He was there but like hundreds of crew members who were there on the ship, we didnt know him at that point. So that doesn't bother me too much.

We are supposed to believe they are intensely, deep scanning this planet to see if it meets the conditions outlined for being a candidate for the Genesis Project, and they dont notice that this is the wrong planet?

They didnt scan the star system on approach, missed the enormous planetary debris field of the destroyed CA6 (which is where they were going) and instead just whizz right by and think CA5 is CA6? Impossible.

 

Given the variety of cosmic anomalies we've been exposed to in the Trekverse, I don't know that anything really qualifies as 'impossible'.

It might, however, seem 'highly unlikely'.

IIRC the novelization basically posits that the E's trip to drop Khan off was under wraps (which I can buy), and that the data that tipped off the Genesis folks that CA might be a good place to go originated from what was listed as probe records (which may or may not have been a cover for the E's trip there, I don't recall). Reliant did note that what they were seeing didn't match the previous report, but I believe they wrote it off as the probe simply not having captured accurate data for one reason or another. Additionally it's made clear the Reliant crew is basically suffering long-term fatigue from the tedium of their mission and...well, one thing leads to another.
This may not reflect that well on Captain Terrell et al., but I don't think we're going to find a solution to this issue that does. Mistakes were made.

TL;DR "This may not have been exactly the planet we were expecting, but it's close enough to merit a look since we're in the neighborhood anyway and this mission is already driving us crazy."

 

I came up with a theory about what happened to Ceti Alpha VI a couple of years ago, which I detailed in this thread.

Basically, the explosion of Ceti Alpha VI was big enough to disrupt the orbit of Ceti Alpha V slightly, but not big enough to scatter all its planetary debris to escape velocity. Large parts of Ceti Alpha VI were drawn back in by the gravity and formed a loose cloud of remains close to the old size of the planet. If the Reliant wasn't scanning Ceti Alpha VI specifically, but just looking for its rough placement in the system, it might've looked like the planet was normal at first glance.

 

CA6 was their destination. Even if Federation sensors cant discriminate a slowly coalescing debris field from the intact planet (when even our equipment easily could), they would certainly have seen it when they arrived and saw that the planet had been destroyed. They would certainly not have mistaken CA5 for 6.

 

I think Chekov was the Science Officer. That may explain the mistake...

 

Only if specifically scanning. And we know starships don't do that - c.f. Kirk always getting surprised while already insystem.

Which is the very reason our sidekicks would go to the planet that looked like CA VI to them.

Not very well, or else there would be no need to send the Reliant. At best, they know there's a desert planet in the system, and the sidekicks are to get the dirt on that, and that only.

Why would they go to a "location"? They are going to a planet. And if they do scan the system, they go to the right planet (the one that looks like CA VI), and orbits be damned. If they don't scan, well, eventually they do terminal homing. Which then takes them to the right planet, or in this case, the wrong one.

That's the thing, now isn't it? How do you think they do it? By punching in a set of coordinates, flying there on automatic, and then looking around to see if they got to the right place?

Extremely primitive spacecraft (say, ours) might do that. And would end up destroyed or lost, in the Trek environment. Trek spacecraft scan. But not the entire universe - only that which is needed for terminal guidance. If there's a choice between a set of coordinates and the place where the target actually is, the latter gets chosen. Should there be commentary on the two not being identical? Only if this is a rare occurrence, I guess. And there's no reason to think it would be.

Why not? What's debris to them? No set of Trek heroes ever shows interest towards debris, unless it is somehow relevant to their mission. (See this movie, say: suddenly the fact that the Regula system has its own superdense nebula becomes relevant, while previously there was no mention of this.) The Reliant need not mind debris, or coordinates - she's a starship, capable of going where she must wholly regardless of debris or orbital mechanics.

Just like an automobile gets to places wholly regardless of coordinates or topological data, really. If you have a navigator in your car, you nevertheless do terminal homing in the end - and if the red brick house you are looking for is fifty meters to the left of what the navigator tells you, you utterly ignore the navigator. And the pile of rubble that is't a red brick house (any longer).

Except it happens all the time, both in Trek and ITRW. And in the general case, there's no harm - planets shift orbit willy-nilly, or data is faulty, but starships cope.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Timo

They would be "specifically scanning". That's what navigation is. They are going to a location. The known location of the already charted CA6. That's what navigation is. They are going to use those sensors to scan the system on approach to the most up to date information on it's present position. If Mars had been blown up, and you are looking for Mars you wont confuse Earth for it. Instead, right in the orbital plane where they know Mars should be there will instead be a debris field with a total mass very similar to Mars with the other very different planets still intact.

Planets are an immense distance apart, have different masses, orbital speeds, volumes, densities, axial tilts, different rates of rotations, atmospheric densities and pressures. There are dozens and dozens of metrics that can easily distinguish any two planets. You just arent going to confuse one for the other. Earth is tens of millions of miles closer to the parent star, far larger mass, much thicker, denser atmosphere, etc. They would say, "well theres Earth, but Mars has been destroyed".

Happens all the time? I know. Needs of the plot do trump things like this frequently. We call that suspension of disbelief. But it's still BS.

 

Suppose your automobile GPS is directing you to 1313 13th street and you are told the destination is a red brick house but when you get there you see a pile of rubble with many red bricks and beside it at 1311 and at 1315 13th street there are red brick houses. Are you going to assume that 1311 or 1315 13th street is your destination or are you going to wonder what happened and suspect that possibly the destination house has been destroyed?

You claim that planets being out of position happens all the time in Trek and in the real world.

In the real world planets don't shift orbit willy-nilly, and data recorded by starships should be precise. Finding a planet a few million miles out of its calculated position would be a big deal. Of course a starship can easily cope with reaching a planet a few million miles out of its calculated position. But considering all the problems that Kirk's Enterprise had with menaces that destroyed planets, finding a system with a planet out of position should have rang alarm bells both literal and figurative.

The most plausible explanation for the fate of Ceti Alpha VI I can think of was that some sort of planet destroying menace worked on it for a period until it exploded as part of the menace's procedure, and then the menace went to another planet in the system to work on. So apparently it takes the menace at least 15 years to get a planet ready to explode, which seems reasonable.

So finding a planet at least a few million miles out of its calculated position should have automatically caused them to scan the rest of the system for anomalies, and eventually discover that one of the planets was missing, which should have caused them to send an emergency message to Starfleet Command saying that it was possible that there was another planet destroying menace on the loose. So the movie would then have become a "The Changeling"/"the Doomsday Machine"/"The Immunity Syndrome" type of story as the Reliant sought to find whatever destroyed Ceti Alpha VI.

 

IIRC, in "To Reign in Hell", Spock speculates that it might have been a rogue micro black hole that caused Ceti Alpha VI to go boom.

Given the crazy things we've seen in the franchise though, who knows...

 

Of course. They can scan the entire system on approach and see the locations of the star itself, all its planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, any ships that might be in the area, etc. Immediately, some things wrong. CA6 is gone and an immense debris field of similar mass and composition is in the orbital plane where the planet was previously identified to orbit.

Navigation requires continuous 360 degree situational awareness. Detection of ships, debris, particles, asteroids, etc that might cross your flight path require 24/7/365 scanning. To rendezvous with a particular planet that's travelling around its star at 10s of thousands of KPH you have to make very precise scans and calculations to adjust your speed and course (slight adjustments in pitch, yaw, etc) to reach it and enter orbit.

You will not confuse Earth for Venus or Neptune for Uranus. Not going to happen.

 

"Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova, and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?" - Han Solo to Luke Skywalker

 

But where is that location?

In space, you need reference points, of which the most practial is the destination itself. That is readily available to you through scanning. And when you establish the location of your location by scanning it, scanning for anything else would be an absurd waste of time.

What sort of an alternative are you thinking of? A galactic GPS of some sort? This would be literally astronomically less precise a tool for establishing the location of a location in a distant star system than on-the-spot scans. Dead reckoning? Same thing. Nobody lands an aircraft on a runway on GPS or dead reckoning. Terminal homing is the only way to go, after GPS or dead reckoning takes you into the general vicinity. And Ceti Alpha won't have local aids to terminal homing analogous to, say, ADS-B.

That is navigation. Go where your instruments take you, and then disregard those instruments and trust that which is actually there. Because there is no profit in going "Uh, that runway is a mile to the east of where it ought to be", and especially not in "We'll land in the right spot anyway, those runway lights be damned"!

Except here our sidekicks don't know what CA VI looks like, save for it being a desert - establishing the specifics is their very mission.

Just think it through (and ignore for now the fact that the writers did not, because that's not what they get paid for). Space basically by definition is full of "lifeless worlds". So our sidekicks must be looking for something relatively specific and special, or they would have found it already. But their maps and records don't tell them whether CA VI would be right for them. They just hint that the place is worth checking out. So the very premise is that the planet is an unknown quantity and an interchangeable element. Just like basically every uninhabited planet in Star Trek. So naturally starships would operate in a fashion that copes with this issue. Just like we see the Reliant doing.

That's just it, the mistake people seem to make - that planets would have addresses attached.

They do not. They can be identified by their "fingerprint", or their position can be guesstimated. But a planet going missing will provide neither fingerprint nor position - it will merely remove those. So for really finding the location, see above.

Well, in Trek, we have never gotten any indication that a planet would be in position. If the heroes could trust them to be, why don't they warp directly to orbit (a thing technologically perfectly possible, as seen many times) instead of doing this "We are here"/"Great, so let's go there" standard orbit dance?

As for the real world, we're yet to satisfactorily tackle even the three-body problem. The one thing agreed upon about celestial mechanics is that they are chaotic: we have no bloody idea where Jupiter might be a few million years from now, and any harebrained theory of where it used to be is no better or worse than any other. Trek just takes that to the logical conclusion and suggests that change is standard even in shorter timescales.

We might think so. Kirk didn't, though. An encounter with a mobile planet did not alter his approach to, well, approach. And "The Changeling" is telling in establishing that the heroes can perform "long range scans" to see whether there's life in a star system - but they don't. Not until prompted by something concrete like a distress call.

If the two scenarios the heroes may face involve those where the map can be relied on and those where it cannot, the response to both ought to be the same - the one appropriate for the latter. Our problem isn't that our heroes (wisely) distrust their maps, because distrust is exactly what Kirk's adventures ought to teach him. Instead, it is that they do not perform extensive preemptive scans for unexpected things wherever they go. Instead, they perform reactive scans. Which is only a problem for us, not them: they come out of their adventures alive by doing them their way.

Excuses for Starfleet doctrine are readily available (besides the demonstrated success of that doctrine): there's way too much to scan in the "unexpected things" category, there's way too much space to point the sensors to unless you already have a point target, there's way too little time to worry about these things.

I'm not quite following. What's plausible about that? That is, why's it better than the planet just blowing up all of a sudden?

Starfleet can't assume that planets being in slightly wrong places would be indicative of the DDM scenario: there is no commonality there, as the DDM never moved any planets that we'd know of. OTOH, and this is the crux of the whole issue with Ceti Alpha, you can't spot a planet not being there unless you scan for that planet specifically. The lack of a planet doesn't manifest unless you turn your sensors directly at the very spot and find nothing. So if our heroes scanned for CA VI and found nothing, they would start searching - and they would then find CA VI (which really was CA V). After which they would be doubly unlikely to scan for missing planets!

Timo Saloniemi

 

I'm curious...why are other posters assuming that there would be a debris field? Because Khan said CA6 exploded? We don't even know his basis for making that claim. We can at least assume he had no reason to lie to Terrell and Chekov, but we have no idea what Khan observed.

For instance, if the DDM had been responsible for CA6's demise, there likely wouldn't be much debris at all. If someone red matter-bombed CA6, there might not be any debris to speak of.

In the end, we simply don't know what happened or what the results would be, beyond what we directly observed and Khan's potentially spurious claim.

 

The script may say it was within his authority, but the idea that a victim and principal witness in a criminal case could have any involvement in the prosecution or disposal of that case is absurd. It would mean automatic recusal in any credible justice system today. Imagine if a district attorney's office was taken over by terrorists and the DA was tied up, beaten and threatened with death. The case would be handed off to another jurisdiction to prosecute, for reasons I hope would be obvious.

Exactly, it's a question of navigation to a known, mapped destination.

Put into scale, the next-closest house would be maybe a quarter-hour's drive away. The closest orbits in our solar system are those of Mercury and Venus, averaging about (round numbers) 30 million miles apart, or 4000 Venus diameters. Let's give a benefit of doubt and say at their closest approach Ceti Alpha 5 and 6 are 2500 diameters apart. Say the house in the example is on a square lot 50 feet per side. Twenty-five hundred of those house lots end-to-end is 125,000 feet, or over 23 miles. Maybe the planetary distances are even closer than that, yeah, but the idea that the planets' positions were so close that one could be mistaken for the other through navigational error strains belief. And that's not even considering the fact that both are moving around the star and may be on opposite sides of the solar system at a given time, which would also have to be a navigation factor. However one tweaks the distances, in any reasonable analogy to terrestrial locations the error would be one of miles, not feet. If the GPS can't put you within miles of your destination, it's not worth a damn. As was, apparently, Reliant's navigation in TWOK.

 

If a planet explodes in the galaxy, and there's nobody around to see, does it leave debris?