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Is Kirk really to blame for the events in 'The Wrath of Khan'?

The degree to which the crew "went along with it" would depend on how much they knew.

1) Everybody would know that Khan had come aboard and had tried to take over the ship but had been defeated somehow.

2) Those seen at the Briefing Room scene would know Khan had survived and had been banished to Ceti Alpha V.

3) Those on the Bridge would know the ship had sailed to Ceti Alpha V for whatever purpose.

4) Those at the Transporter Room would know Khan had survived and was beamed down to the planet below, possibly but not necessarily identified for them as Ceti Alpha V.

5) Assorted others, from Quartermaster's on, would know something relating to colonization of a planet, possiby Ceti Alpha V, was going on.

We're simply speaking about the sum total of sets 2 and 4. Everybody else would be speculating at best, as regards Khan's fate.

As for the differences between veneration of Khan and Hitler, the Augment and Nazi ideologies have their similarities but also differences. In the context of the former, we hear of no assigning of blame for the woes of the world to those of lesser breed: non-Augments are cattle, but not to be hated or blamed or disposed of. The idea of the superior breed is distanced from ideas of hereditary greatness, too: there's no great nation with a great history from which the Augments would claim to derive their superiority. They aren't even particularly attached to Earth in their later appearances, or distrusting or dismissive of nonhumans.

However, the actual rites of veneration seem no different: Kirk does praise an Augment individual in a fashion that to other Trek characters from other contexts looks exactly like somebody today praising Hitler. Although of course we never get any indication that Kirk would have particularly liked the other Augment leaders of the day, just like a Hitler fan need not feel enthusiastic about Stalin or Churchill. Yet he doesn't actually condemn selective breeding or genetic augmentation, either, which is already enough to get him stoned to death by a mob in any other context.

Timo Saloniemi
 
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Kirk's mistake was not having the planet declared off-limits. Did he even report to Starfleet what had happened?

That being said, Kirk's decision to maroon Khan on Ceti Alpha V set off the chain of events that ended up saving Earth in The Voyage Home. So it's hard to be too upset with his actions.
 
What would we expect? Big headlines yelling "Eugenics Wars STILL Over! Read All About It On P. 68!"?

Timo Saloniemi
 
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Kirk's mistake was not having the planet declared off-limits. Did he even report to Starfleet what had happened?
:rolleyes: For God's sake, will this question never die? Uhura recorded the damn hearing. It was an official hearing, they were in their dress uniforms, and one of his crew members left the ship permanently. Of course Kirk reported it to Starfleet.

Here's the beginning of the scene once again:
(The senior staff are in dress uniform again.)
UHURA: Record tapes engaged and ready, Captain.
KIRK: This hearing is now in session. Under the authority vested in me by Starfleet Command, I declare all charges and specifications in this matter have been dropped.
MCCOY: Jim. Agreed you have the authority...
Asking if Kirk reported the events of "Space Seed" to Starfleet is like asking if McCoy is a doctor or if Spock is half-Vulcan. It's right there in the damn scene.
 
:rolleyes: For God's sake, will this question never die? Uhura recorded the damn hearing. It was an official hearing, they were in their dress uniforms, and one of his crew members left the ship permanently. Of course Kirk reported it to Starfleet.

Which is fine and well. It just means that Kirk lies to characters when claiming that he would not report on them. Say, in "Metamorphosis", where he at the very least has to file a false report on events that Scotty from his POV has been making official logs on, but presumably doesn't because he thinks reporting to his bosses as ordered trumps promises made to random bystanders.

That Kirk can retract his logs is not in question. That Kirk can dictate false ones is not in question, either. Yet that he does the latter is something we see and hear often enough; that he would retract a log is pure speculation. It's just that we have little reason to think that he would not retract his logs when convenient, when he already agrees to hold things secret from his superiors and mangles the truth to convenient shapes for all sorts of reasons.

Timo Saloniemi
 
It's just that we have little reason to think that he would not retract his logs when convenient, when he already agrees to hold things secret from his superiors and mangles the truth to convenient shapes for all sorts of reasons.
Kirk bending the truth in his logs is the exception, not the rule. It's something that he only does under extraordinary circumstances and for excellent reasons. It's not something that he does just to make things easier for himself.

The only references to Kirk making a falsehood in his logs that I can recall are:

1) In WNMHGB, where he notes that Mitchell and Dehner both died in the line of duty (and you could make the argument that they both died as a result of injuries sustained when the Enterprise crossed the barrier). That was Kirk's last gesture of respect to a man who had been his best friend: Giving him an honorable ending in his service record.

2) In "Metamorphosis," Kirk agrees not to tell anyone that he met the long-lost Zephram Cochrane. Again, that's a gesture of respect to a great man, so that he can live out the rest of his life in peace. The only questionable thing there is that he would probably unavoidably have to lie about the full circumstances of the Commissioner Nancy Hedford's death, unless he said something really vague like: "Commissioner Hedford, who was suffering from Sukaro's disease, passed away over the course of our journey back to the Enterprise."

A Kirk who lies or falsifies records just for convenience's sake is certainly not the honorable guy whose adventures I watched every week. Hell, in "The Conscience of the King," Kirk is genuinely conflicted because he realizes that his old friend Thomas Leighton diverted the Enterprise from its scheduled course under false pretenses.
KIRK: You mean to tell me you've called me three light years off my course just to accuse an actor of being Kodos?
LEIGHTON: He is Kodos. I'm sure of it.
KIRK: You said you discovered a new food concentrate. What am I supposed to put in my log, that you lied? That you diverted a starship with false information? You're not only in trouble, you've put me in trouble, too.
LEIGHTON: I did it to trap Kodos!
KIRK: Kodos is dead.
KIRK: He's dead.
LEIGHTON: Then it will be a ghost Martha and I receive in our home tonight. I invited the entire company to a cocktail party. I have to be sure.
KIRK: And I have to get back to my ship and figure out how I'm going to enter all this in my log. Tom. Martha.
Those are not the words of someone who just breaks the rules when they're inconvenient.

Kirk really didn't disobey orders on TOS as much as his popular myth suggests. I tackled that question here a couple of years ago in this thread and I handled the log question here.
 
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1) In WNMHGB, where he notes that Mitchell and Dehner both died in the line of duty (and you could make the argument that they both died as a result of injuries sustained when the Enterprise crossed the barrier). That was Kirk's last gesture of respect to a man who had been his best friend: Giving him an honorable ending in his service record.

2) In "Metamorphosis," Kirk agrees not to tell anyone that he met the long-lost Zephram Cochrane. Again, that's a gesture of respect to a great man, so that he can live out the rest of his life in peace. The only questionable thing there is that he would probably unavoidably have to lie about the full circumstances of the Commissioner Nancy Hedford's death, unless he said something really vague like: "Commissioner Hedford, who was suffering from Sukaro's disease, passed away over the course of our journey back to the Enterprise."

I think these two between themselves cover the Khan case nicely enough. Kirk can lie to cover for a really destructively evil man, as per the first case, and the man need not be his close friend but can also be a figure from history, as per the second case.

This doesn't make him a habitual liar. It just makes him a skilled wielder of that particular weapon, and a man who knows when to make use of his somewhat absurd degree of de facto authority. We can but wonder on his choices of beneficiaries, on his opinions on the pros and cons of those characters, and on the consequences of his efforts. As far as we can tell, nothing particularly bad came out of hiding the truth of Mitchell's demise. But Hedford is still possessed by a monster, and Khan got his rematch.

Timo Saloniemi
 
I think these two between themselves cover the Khan case nicely enough. Kirk can lie to cover for a really destructively evil man, as per the first case, and the man need not be his close friend but can also be a figure from history, as per the second case.
Wow, way to totally misunderstand both my point and the point of WNMHGB. Kudos.
 
Wow, way to totally misunderstand both my point and the point of WNMHGB. Kudos.

Well, that is the real point of how "WNMHGB" concludes - that Kirk goes easy on a horrible monster because they used to do barbecue together in ye olden days. Whitewashing it as something more noble is just covering up for the fact that Kirk is negligent in his duty: he should expose the Deity Formerly Known as Gary Mitchell to his superiors in full, so that a repeat of the dreadful events can be avoided in the future.

Kirk is a bad guy when acting on Hollywood sentiments there. He himself faces the galactic barrier several times in later episodes; who knows how many others would come to grief if not fully made aware of what the barrier does to decent folks like Mitchell?

Sure, Kirk probably was forced to write a detailed account on how many terajoules of phaser rifle output Gary Mitchell ate for breakfast and then just burped derisively, in addition to his misleading log entry. But the beef of the adventure is that Mitchell stopped being a dutiful and dependable Starfleet officer, and became a thoroughly evil monster instead - "in performance of duty" is a filthy lie Kirk isn't really entitled to make.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Well, that is the real point of how "WNMHGB" concludes - that Kirk goes easy on a horrible monster because they used to do barbecue together in ye olden days.
No, the point was "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." As Kirk said, Gary Mitchell didn't ask for what happened to him. Mitchell was not in his right mind and not responsible for his actions.
 
There's no reason to assume that wanting to protect the memory of Gary in terms of a statement as to how he died got in the way of Kirk filing a full report on what occurred.

After all, it's not as though doctors get into the gory details when informing next of kin.
 
Sure, Kirk probably was forced to write a detailed account on how many terajoules of phaser rifle output Gary Mitchell ate for breakfast and then just burped derisively, in addition to his misleading log entry. But the beef of the adventure is that Mitchell stopped being a dutiful and dependable Starfleet officer, and became a thoroughly evil monster instead - "in performance of duty" is a filthy lie Kirk isn't really entitled to make.

If we approach this from a "Darth Vader killed your father" point of view, Mitchell's service record can end with his death, then there is a separate entry for this evil entity.
 
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