What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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"An assist?"
There was no Picard. Riker planned and directed the kidnapping of Locutus, directs Crusher and Data to access and retrieve information from Locutus about the Borg's vulnerabilities, then orders him to plant a directive in the Borg group consciousness using Locutus as the conduit. As Data attempts to do so, Locutus finally utters one word, "Sleep," which Data correctly intuits to be a suggestion of the command that should be implanted.
You can call that "an assist from Picard" in order to diminish what Riker and his crew accomplished if you like, but as I already said, you're dancing around what happened in an attempt to make Jellico look like something other than an insecure idiot.
Not Ronnie Cox's fault, but the writers. Trek often ignores the ongoing context of its stories in order to have something happen and people behave in some unlikely way for a single episode, and then just as quickly forgets that one, too.
You sold me on Riker saving the galaxy. But my impression of Jellico has changed over the years (I was squarely on Team Riker at the time it first aired), and I concede that has more to do with Ronnie Cox's performance than Captain Jellico's character as written. Riker, too, is really off when compared with his adherence to chain of command in BoBW.
People,don't fight. Riker and Jellico are both assholes.
Neither deserved to follow in Picard's footsteps the way both behaved.
Yep. To create the conflict in this episode required manipulating characters in ways that made little sense motivationally or in terms of the previous history of the show and the regulars.
Jellico comes onto a ship with a crew that has been for years not only portrayed to the viewers as the best people performing at their peaks but so recognized within continuity by their own superiors in that way - and he immediately begins breaking things, and blaming all the conflict on them for being soft and lazy and insubordinate. At the same time, the audience is asked to go along with the notion that he's somehow terribly, terribly capable as a leader.
It makes no character or story sense for Jellico to behave so cluelessly - but a certain segment of the audience responds to it viscerally as "Tough Guy, woot woot!"
Riker, whose primary day-to-day activity for years has been using his butt to warm the seat to the right hand of the head seat-warmer is suddenly the very best qualified guy on this entire ship full of high achievers for a tricky piloting job. Sorry, not the best - the only choice that even his worst adversary is willing to accept. And his response to being asked to perform this essential mission for the sake of his ship and the Federation is to behave petulantly.
Jellico and Riker are required to bump chests here like fourteen year-old boys in the grip of testosterone-fueled anger who have not yet acquired any skill at climbing down from a problematic confrontation that's not in either of their interests.
Watch, instead, the way that Piller wrote a similar dynamic between Riker and Shelby in BOBW, and how those two characters negotiated that during an emergency.
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If Jellico hadn't insisted on going to a four-shift rotation on the eve of battle, I'd say he was quite competent. You don't create a gargantuan shake-up in the way a ship runs when that ship could be fighting for its life in a few days. You do it when there's a long period of relative inactivity ahead. Jellico should have known that. But, his micromanaging nature couldn't handle the ship not running "just so".
There wasn't even any payoff for the four-shift duty system, was there? No results produced that wouldn't have occurred under Picard's (and presumably most everybody else's) three-shift way of doing things? I can't recall any.
Buffer time.
Not saying it was a bad change, just made at a bad time, and in a bad way.
I meant something actually mentioned in the episodes.
But pretty much all his actions were just him insisting on crap because he wants it and re-structuring the Enterprise during a time of crisis, when it's the worst time to create changes.
When was he competent?
"Competent" is damning with faint praise here, given the characters and situation. I might allow that Jellico was minimally competent, which puts the Enterprise crew all head and shoulders above him.
Starfleet in any century seems to be a place where the unbalanced and those with anger issues rise to command and even the Admiralty and few along the way stop and ask if promoting them to positions of higher authority is such a good idea.
Encounter at Farpoint is better than any of the four TNG movies. There's one for y'all.
I've always loved Encounter at Farpoint. I remember thinking to myself that even if the series hadn't been "picked up" (and I know that's not how it went, but stay with me, kids) that it would have made a great stand-alone movie set in the Star Trek universe.
Humor...it is difficult.
Obviously, it was an unnecessary change at a critical time. However, Riker's response made it substantially more difficult and demonstrated disrespect for the chain of command.
Through most of Chain of Command II. He came up with an effective plan for defeating the Cardassians, he used the skills of his crew, and he saved Minos Corva and even got Picard back without having to sacrifice a system for him. And, he showed that he had no prejudice against androids (Data in red uniform), he expected his bridge crew to dress the part (Troi in blue uniform), he connected with Geordi a bit, and he swallowed his pride for the greater good with Riker.
Yes, he was a jerk. Everything Riker said about him was pretty much dead accurate. But he wasn't completely hopeless.
Riker's job was to help ensure efficient operation of the ship. Creating a fourth shift from scratch and having to rely on it immediately undoubtedly reduced efficiency to levels unsuitable for combat. If Riker hadn't warned Jellico about this, he would have been derelict in his duty.
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