You are the captain #5

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

You are the captain of a TOS-era Starfleet ship. After returning from an away mission, you begin to feel poorly and seek medical treatment from your chief medical officer. Following a battery of tests, your doctor diagnoses you with a common condition that is not contagious, but among its symptoms are a decrease in reaction time, stamina, a slight fever, chills, and fatigue. He advises bed rest and fluids, after which you'll be just fine. Your first officer takes command while you relax in your quarters.

Some time later, you awaken groggy and in pain, lying in a cell in the brig. You are told that you left your room and attacked several crew members, which you don't remember doing. When you check on the ship's systems, you find you are locked out, but a clever work around gets you in, where you find that the ship is heading on a course towards a planet you have never heard of before, in a region of space that nobody has returned alive from.

When you demand to know what is going on, you are restrained and drugged again. The last thought that runs around your head before the lights go out is that the drug they administer to you has, oddly enough, the same side effects as your condition's "symptoms".

As captain, upon waking again (sans delirium), do you cooperate and trust that your crew is doing the right thing, or do you attempt once more to subvert their activities?

 

[Dr Helen Noel]

I love these threads. So first I would do some information gathering: why are we going to that region, why are we off course, who did I attack, can I speak to them (to try to verify what happened), is there any other record of it happening, what medicine are they giving me.

If the answers seem logical (though I’m not sure heading to a deadly part of space could be), then I would wait to try to gather more information before acting while pretending to agree. However, if there is not time to wait then I would try to subvert.

If their answers don’t seem logical then I would subvert immediately.

 

[Danja]

It begs the question of why the crew would drug their Captain?

 

[Dr Helen Noel]

If the answers seem logical (though I’m not sure heading to a deadly part of space could be), then I would wait to try to gather more information before acting while pretending to agree.

Actually, thinking more about this, if I am being made unconscious then waiting runs the risk of not being conscious again before we arrive/die so if there is the smallest doubt about what is happening, I would try and subvert immediately. There would have to be very strong evidence for me not to.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

It begs the question of why the crew would drug their Captain?

In some episodes it gets him a tortured-groin shot, but the thrill, if it ever existed, is long gone.

 

[FredH]

Who is informing me (of anything)? Is it my trusty first officer in temporary command, or some flunky I’ve never seen before? And if I calm down and simply ask, why am I being prevented from learning more, and why are we heading for that area, what answers do I get? If there’s actually a good reason, why wouldn’t my XO answer me?

If he/she won’t, then it’s time for subversion. But maybe they’re right — if so, they should be able to convince me. So it depends how it goes from there.

 

[Oddish]

If this was innocent, they would not immediately restrain and drug me when I asked questions; they would try to explain, and resort to force if and only if I got violent.

This is hinky. Time for mutiny.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I suppose it depends on whether they have time to explain. Often, things that don't make sense at first blush have a reasonable (if convoluted and from a real world POV, contrived) explanation.

 

[Qonundrum]

It begs the question of why the crew would drug their Captain?

Cuz it's Studio 1701-54*, baybeeh!

But in seriousness, based on the number of times Kirk or Picard got taken over by some anomalous being thing, why not?


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[at Quark's]

Assuming I have a Janeway-level of command access to the computer 'Computer, this is the captain speaking. Activate self-destruct sequence ... ' (overriding the need for confirmation by anyone else).

Seriously though, I wouldn't know.

Too many things could be at play here. The crew could be under alien control, I could be under alien control without realising it. Starfleet could have been corrupted, or my crew. No-one might be under alien control or corrupted but this may be a mission where for some reason I cannot begin to guess it's imperative that I'm kept out of the loop.

No way to know whether I should just stand aside or try to interfere unless I have more information, even if that risks upsetting the mission (given the last possible reason).

As captain, upon waking again (sans delirium), do you cooperate and trust that your crew is doing the right thing, or do you attempt once more to subvert their activities?

The way you describe it, he wasn't even actively subverting the crew activities - merely seeking out information (well, except from subverting the crews attempts to let him in on what was happening).

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

It was a failed attempt before it could really get started.

 

[FederationHistorian]

Subvert their activities. The crew does not seem to be informing me of anything, and cannot even explain why I need to be drugged and the ship should be left under the command of my first officer while I’m out.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

From a fourth wall breaking perspective, if their motives do turn out to be good ones and they truly are trying not to harm you (and you're the hero character of the story), all will likely turn out for the best, at least for you, regardless of what you do.