You mean the guy that was fucking around with Tribbles to begin with?
He was an idiot. Her report was correct.
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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You mean the guy that was fucking around with Tribbles to begin with?
He was an idiot. Her report was correct.
When you see the conduct of officers like Edward Larkin is it any wonder some commodores and admirals in that era of Starfleet history go mad and/or become power hungry?
He was under her watch, one does not lose a "Brand New StarShip" & "Cause a Planet-Wide Ecological Disaster" in a few days of becoming a "Brand New Captain" and not suffer severe career consequences.
Regardless of how stupid Larkin's actions were.
He's her responsibility along with the ship.
She could've stopped him much earlier by investigating into what he was doing instead of shoving his work to the side and try to transfer him off the ship.
It is ultimately her responsibility. Her report isn’t incorrect and we only see her answer one question in what was likely a lengthy debriefing.
Because it is a TV show…
While it's true not everyone is the best of the best and there are going to be Captains who aren't rather good, are we really supposed to believe that in twenty years Barclay never once served under a competent Captain, XO, chief engineer or head of whatever other department he might have been assigned to? Picard was his first competent CO after twenty years? That's a bit hard to believe considering one of Barclay's previous assignments was on an Ambassador class starship, which prior to the Galaxy class would have been Starfleet's frontline starships, the ones commanded by the tier one Captains with tier one crews. If Picard really was the only one Barclay served under who believed in dealing with a problematic officer rather than passing them along to be someone else's problem, when prior COs Barclay served under include someone who holds what Starfleet should consider a tier one position, than Starfleet has some very serious leadership problems.
What happened to the Cabot was Edward Larkin's fault. He disobeyed Captain Lucero's direct orders and set into motion the series of events that led to the loss of the ship. Yes, as Captain, Lucero has to own that and it likely will screw her career over, but Edward is to blame all the same.
Yes, it was played off for laughs.
But the consequences are incredibly severe.
You know how the Klingons feel about Tribbles.
You want to know where the "Mighty Tribble Hunts" that were sung about began?
Look no further than that ecological disaster where they send out their vast array of StarShips & KDF Warriors to hunt down all the Tribbles and eradicate them.
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Regarding Barclay...
If I remember correctly, his reviews were more 'satisfactory' than glowing, but with Captain Gleason being the one to speak 'very highly' of Barclay, which Riker said maybe 'he was buttering our bread a little'.
One thing should raise a red flag... if Barclay was in Starfleet for 20 years (there's no onscreen evidence of this when he first appeared, other than the actor's age, but let's go with this for now) and all he had were 'glowing reviews', why would he be only a Lt. j.g. when he came aboard in "Hollow Pursuits"?
I can see him being at the minimum a full Lt., if that were the case. More likely a Lt. Cmdr.
I think Barclay was more in his early 30s... 10 years in the service. I can see, reasonably, someone as an ensign for 3 or 4 years, and still be at Lt. j.g. for the next 5 or 6, if you are just regular and not being stellar.
There is one other possibility... if Barclay's age is a reflection of Schultz's age, he may simply have gone to the Academy at a later point in his life. Say, late 20s. There's a minimum age requirement to be in Starfleet (per "Coming Of Age", at least to take the entrance exam) but no maximum starting age. I think this is more likely the case.
(That's actually something I always felt... there SHOULD be people who enter Starfleet at a later point in life, for whatever reason.)
If I remember correctly, his reviews were more 'satisfactory' than glowing, but with Captain Gleason being the one to speak 'very highly' of Barclay, which Riker said maybe 'he was buttering our bread a little'.
One thing should raise a red flag... if Barclay was in Starfleet for 20 years (there's no onscreen evidence of this when he first appeared, other than the actor's age, but let's go with this for now) and all he had were 'glowing reviews', why would he be only a Lt. j.g. when he came aboard in "Hollow Pursuits"?
I can see him being at the minimum a full Lt., if that were the case. More likely a Lt. Cmdr.
I think Barclay was more in his early 30s... 10 years in the service. I can see, reasonably, someone as an ensign for 3 or 4 years, and still be at Lt. j.g. for the next 5 or 6, if you are just regular and not being stellar.
There is one other possibility... if Barclay's age is a reflection of Schultz's age, he may simply have gone to the Academy at a later point in his life. Say, late 20s. There's a minimum age requirement to be in Starfleet (per "Coming Of Age", at least to take the entrance exam) but no maximum starting age. I think this is more likely the case.
(That's actually something I always felt... there SHOULD be people who enter Starfleet at a later point in life, for whatever reason.)
At some point, you’ll realize how fly-by-the-seat of their pants these shows are. When you do, you’ll sleep better at night.
I know I did…
Some people are "UnLucky". Barclay must have been a extreme case.
It wouldn't surprise me that StarFleet has some "Serious LeaderShip problems".
Remember how the Golden Age of StarFleet had that attitude where Jean-Luc Picard considered military/tactical duties a "Small Part" of their job.
Yet StarFleet loses 39/40 StarShips in it's First Encounter with "The Borg".
That shows you how "Un-Prepared" StarFleet was at that time.
That there was a general "Complacency & Arrogance" of being UnTouchable.
Reality hit them VERY HARD and woke them up.
Showed them their place in the Universe and how weak they really are and how complacent they have become.
True, but when one becomes the Captain of a StarShip, they generally are expected to figure out what their officers are up to and make sure to stop them from doing potentially harmful & risky things.
Even if it means locking a man up for insubordination and confining him to his quarters or the Brig.
It's her job to make sure he doesn't get out of line, which she failed miserably.
Maybe we need to change the setup and formatting so it's "Less Fly-by-the-Seat of their pants".
Having one week for filming isn't enough time for production, we need to give them more time IMO.
Simply isn’t how television production works. Never has been, never will be. They are there to make money, to maximize profits for Paramount’s shareholders.
Technically, it would be up to department heads to review and report on the actions of their staff.
A starship captain doesn’t have time to go around and investigate what each member of the crew is doing on any given day.
But the 26 episode TV structure was a thing of the past.
Most modern Streaming TV shows aren't using that format, we're getting 10-12 episodes mostly with modern Trek.
We need to find a more "Middle Ground" that is just right.
Kind of like "GoldiLocks and the 3 Bears".
26x 45-minute eps covers half a year of weekly TV showings or 2x 13 week seasons.
That's too long and too grueling.
10-12 eps is too short and many fans have complained about the short nature of the modern streaming season.
That's why I'm a big proponent of the Trimester System.
17 eps w/ actual 1-hour of content or 17 weeks of new episodes is that right "Middle Ground".
1 week is for New Years, nothing major happens on that week except for dedicated "New Years / X-mas" programming.
So we don't need to worry about that extra week.
It can give you 2 weeks of Live Studio Shooting, so there is less "Crunch" on the staff.
Factoring in the extra time that a weekly release schedule offers, you have some extra weeks for Pick-Up shots or you can budget for longer shoots.
This creates a 3x TV seasons a year with 17x weeks per Trimester Season.
This allows production to bring out a better quality product while not crunching nearly as hard with the old school 26 episode TV series structure.
Cast. The word is cast.
You simply aren’t getting it. Every extra day of production adds to the cost of the production.
Which is irrelevant to this discussion.
Well, she had literally just arrived on the ship, but putting that aside she did realize Edward was an insubordinate troublemaker and duly reprimanded him and arranged to have him removed off the ship. At this stage he hadn't done anything actionable enough to be confined to quarters or the brig. It was in response to this that he violated orders and did his work on the tribble, at which point the priority became trying to contain the problem with discipling Edward being something which can wait until later. Lucero did nothing wrong with how she handled Edward and indeed there are some fans, such as a clickbait YouTuber moderators don't want to give attention to around here who actually accuse her of being too strict with Edward.
That she lost her first ship within days of taking command is going to screw her career over, likely preventing her from getting another command if not leading to her from discharged from Starfleet. But that doesn't change the fact that it was Edward's fault and there wasn't really anything Lucero could have done differently.
It was her "First StarShip" that she's a Captain of.
The Magee Class is a tiny "Science Ship".
@ 225.5 m in length, it's around the size of the NX-class.
It's literaly 0.5m longer than the NX-class.
It has only 6x decks. NX-class had 7x decks.
There can't be that many Science officers doing seperate experiments.
Something that small, she should be more "Hands On", especially since she was new to the assignment and needed to know what was going on.
There's a lot more that she could've done to prevent it from becoming the disaster that it did become.
Yes I know, & fans want longer seasons with longer episode counts.
You'll get more fan satisfaction if you give them what you want in-reason.
You clearly have never been in a real leadership position. The demands of such a position don’t only come from what is in your immediate eyesight.
It's about preparation and being ready.
Maybe she wasn't "Strict Enough" and didn't do enough investigation into what he was up to.
The fact that he caused that problem was something that was "Prevent-able" since there was time to prevent it from happening.
This is going into the history books as a case where it's going to test "Future Captains" and teach them what they need to do in command when they first get on a ship and to make sure nothing catastrophic happens.
There's a reason why there's a Kobayashi Maru test.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a test based on this exact scenario for future Captains.
I know, but in this case, this specific incident.
It was within her immediate eye-sight, and she let it slip by.
It was a preventable incident.
That was my point though. Yes, people who want to be Captains of a ship... pursue being a Captain of a ship.
Not everyone wants to be a Captain of a ship, and that's ok.
Not at all. It's MUCH more of an individualistic attitude to be obsessed with gaining rank / power. A society like the Federation's would be more concerned with people being in the right spot for them and for the society at large. If Joe is really good at Stellar Cartography, and he's happy to keep doing it, the best place for Joe is doing Stellar Cartography in regards to both Joe personally and the Federation as a whole.
Scotty calls that our directly in TNG "Relics", "Oh, I may be captain by rank; but I never wanted to be anything else but an engineer." That line seems to imply that Scotty, as a Captain, was expected to do more than engineering.
It may have been mistaken for me to specifically say "captain a starship", instead that should be have been a more generalized "be in command". Scotty is an engineer. He doesn't want to manage other engineers. He wants to do engineering.
Likewise, take Kirk. Kirk is really good at being a Captain, and that's what he likes doing. He got promoted to Admiral... and hated it. He just wanted to be a ship Captain, he didn't want to manage a bunch of ship captains.
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