Commodore Stocker adressing Kirk as "Sir"

Well, it was my roundabout way of saying that Stocker was a pitiful excuse for a ship captain.

He nearly got everyone killed.

 

Also, Stocker ultimately wanted to save everybody by pulling rank on Kirk. At that point, the "Sir" was duly dropped.

But Stocker kept using it even when he clearly saw Kirk's faculties were failing him, only politely suggesting that they leave for SB10.

I wonder what Stocker's real problem was. Did he not know the specs of the starship, so he couldn't order specific breakout and escape maneuvers because those required knowledge of firepower and speed? Or did he just fold in combat, out of lack of experience or lack of character? Him being helpless and clueless could be explained either way.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I always took it as lack of experience.

 

Well, he was there to show how awesome Kirk really was by failing miserably. Just like the redshirt is there to show that there's a real danger for our heroes.

 

Stocker wasn't a pitiful captain, he wasn't any KIND of captain. He had never commanded a starship - that just wasn't his job.

He was an administrator, serving his entire career behind a desk. He had no command experience of any kind.

Now of course, for that very reason, Stocker probably shouldn't have assumed command of the Enterprise, but due to the "aging virus" affecting everyone else, he might have felt he had no choice.

 

That only means that there is something inherently wrong with Star fleet's hierarchical system as it allows incompetents to pull rank on people who know their jobs better than them.
It would be like putting some chief engineer as head of a medical ward or vice versa a chief medical examiner as head of engineering... It makes no sense yet, it's how it's done.

 

You're missing the point. Stocker was not incompetent.

The episode makes it quite clear that he was not, and never was, a starship captain. You can't blame him for being a bad captain because he was never trained as one.

It'd be like picking some random guy off the street and giving them shit for being a bad soldier. Well, if they were never trained as one, you can't expect them to know anything about how to be one...same story here.

Now as I said, Stocker did assume command of the ship when he knew full well he had no training. Maybe he shouldn't have done that. I don't know. (Sulu wasn't affected, was he? I suppose he should have taken command instead.) But the fact remains, Stocker was never trained as a captain, so you can't expect him to know how to be one.

As for how Stocker was allowed to assume command in the first place? Nobody could stop him.

Edit: For his part, Stocker doesn't immediately jump into the center seat. He tries to get Spock to take over first. But since the virus was affecting Spock as well...as I said, Stocker may have felt he had no alternative.

 

The point is that he had no business assuming the role of a starship captain beside it was within his prerogatives to let the next in line take over, so why isn't that what he's done? Just as the captain can tell the first officer to take over with no justification, so could he. If he had any sense that's what he would have done.

 

^ Remember what I just said. Stocker TRIED to hand over command to Spock, but Spock refused.

 

Who was next in line to Spock?

 

Scotty

 

Wasn't Scotty one of the aged ones?

 

Stocker wasn't a bad sort, but badly misjudged that his own skills and abilities wouldn't measure up to the situation. So that's his mistake, but overall it's Starfleet's fault; if they'd followed the example of navies today, or even in 1800, Stocker would have been prohibited from taking command.

 

Yep

 

Correct. Starfleet has struggled with the distinction between line and support officers and unrestricted line officers. If I recall current US Navy regulations Stocker would likely fall under a support officer and not be eligible to take command unless put in to the chain by a superior line officer.

But, that's my lay person's understanding.

 

He was.

IIRC, Sulu is next in line after Scotty. And since Sulu was not affected, he should logically have been the one in command.

 

Actually TOS never clearly established who was 4th in line. In some episodes there were other lieutenant commanders and maybe even full commanders aboard. And possibly some of them were in branches allowing them to command. And naturally lieutenants joined and left the crew more frequently. Thus it was always possible that some more senior lieutenant than Sulu was aboard and ahead of him in line, in those episodes were only Kirk, Spock, and/or scott were in command.

 

Well, then I meant the next one that wasn't aged.

 

Yes, Sulu was definitely more competent than the commodore. For one thing, he wouldn't have flown the Enterprise into the neutral zone.