Did Kirk's rather *enthusiastic* execution of Nero bug you?

[F. King Daniel]

This is Star Trek, where Sisko let former enemy spy with no Starfleet training Garak man a bridge station on the Defiant when going to war, and Picard let Wesley fly the Enterprise because he fancied his mother. This is also the same Star Trek where Counselor Troi was somehow the one left to crash-land the Enterprise saucer. A whole bridge of people and they let Troi do it.

 

[zar]

Counselor was only Troi's current job, not her rank. She was Lieutenant Commander, which means she went to the academy and had enough experience to be promoted at least twice. Picard was appalled by the idea of even having Wesley on the bridge, he only became acting ensign after demonstrating his genius and saving the ship. What's Chekov's excuse, is he a genius kid now too?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Counselor was only Troi's current job, not her rank. She was Lieutenant Commander, which means she went to the academy and had enough experience to be promoted at least twice. Picard was appalled by the idea of even having Wesley on the bridge, he only became acting ensign after demonstrating his genius and saving the ship. What's Chekov's excuse, is he a genius kid now too?

Troi was the ships' counselor. Her rank means no more than Dr (commander) Crusher's, Pulaski's, Bashir's or McCoy's.

At no point prior to Generations did we get a single hint Troi could pilot a starship, much less make an emergency landing. Riker, Worf and Data were all on the bridge at the time - do you really think Troi's a better pilot than all of them?

Chekov's a 17 year old assigned as the navigator of the flagship. I think that alone implies he's somewhat gifted.

 

[kkozoriz1]

Chekov's a 17 year old assigned as the navigator of the flagship. I think that alone implies he's somewhat gifted.

I assume than that you think that the officers actually assigned to the transporter are less able than Chekov? He's the navigator, let him navigate. In TOS he also manned the science station. Let him use the sensors.

Also, the idea that they couldn't lock onto Kirk & Sulu because they were falling was silly. When the ship is in orbit it's moving at thousands of miles an hour compared to someone on the surface. Surely they weren't falling that fast.

Kirk to Enterprise!
We're falling without a chute!


Beam us up!


- I'm trying, I can't lock on to your signal.
- Beam us up!


- You're moving too fast.
- Beam us up!

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

At no point prior to Generations did we get a single hint Troi could pilot a starship, much less make an emergency landing. Riker, Worf and Data were all on the bridge at the time - do you really think Troi's a better pilot than all of them?

To make full Commander (which she did in the final season of TNG), Troi had to take a bridge officer's exam. Presumably, the ability to take the helm was part of this.

As for why no one else did: They were too busy.

 

[Dusty Ayres]

The Star Trek solution to this question? Let the Enterprise get sucked through the rift and be there waiting in the past for Nero to show up the first time. Saving Vulcan. Saving Kirk's father. Saving Spock's mother, and possibly even saving Romulus in the process.

Kirk's ship wasn't built to traverse a black hole, and would have been crushed to bits. Nero's was. And even if they did what you wanted, how would they have got back to their own time?

But, hey, the guy who spent the entire film screwing up, hanging for dear life while somebody else saves the day, and getting the crap kicked out of him somehow ends up in the big chair and all is right with the world.

Good plot, all around. Tough shit.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Kirk's ship wasn't built to traverse a black hole, and would have been crushed to bits. Nero's was.

Nero ended up in the black hole by accident, just like Spock did. The Narada could not possibly have been designed for one. Even if you don't believe Countdown.

 

[kkozoriz1]

Where exactly did the idea that Nero's ship was built to survive travel through a black hole come from? Strange ability for a mining ship.

 

[Photoman15]

Oh, that's much better. He's in command but nobody else is capable of ding the job they were trained for so the cadet has to do it?

I'd have to rewatch the scene but leaving the bridge and running through the ship yelling "I can do that, I can do that" was stupid.

Even more funny about that was that Spock had started to walk to exactly the same transporter room like a minute before Chekov left his post, and arrived only after Chekov beamed Kirk and Sulu aboard. You'd think Spock was in a hurry trying to save very important people, but no.

Spock stopped to get a phaser, tricorder and belt. You see him putting them on when he mounts the transporter pad.

 

[zar]

Troi was the ships' counselor. Her rank means no more than Dr (commander) Crusher's, Pulaski's, Bashir's or McCoy's.

That's like saying Picard doesn't know how to do anything other than command the ship. He had to rise through the ranks somehow. As we see in the flashback episodes, he used to be a helmsman on the Stargazer. Likewise, despite the fact that we only see Troi in the role of Counselor doesn't mean it's the only training she has. The fact that she and Crusher carry ranks imply that they, too, earned it somehow.

At no point prior to Generations did we get a single hint Troi could pilot a starship, much less make an emergency landing. Riker, Worf and Data were all on the bridge at the time - do you really think Troi's a better pilot than all of them?

No I don't. Riker is supposedly the best pilot and he should have done it, but I guess he was feeling especially lazy that day. I never said Troi was the best, I said she was qualified. But Chekov's fresh out of the academy here, there's no justification for his sudden Wesley-ish savant abilities that were never part of the character through TOS and 6 movies. It was just thrown in there randomly because the character had absolutely nothing to do the rest of the film.

Chekov's a 17 year old assigned as the navigator of the flagship. I think that alone implies he's somewhat gifted.

I think it implies he entered the academy at an early age and studied navigation.

 

[kkozoriz1]

And smehow managed to be born four years earlier than in the prime universe. That's the really amazing trick.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

As the saying goes, no text can stand up to a hostile reading. OldTrek can be torn to bloody shreds - and has been - on the basis of the kind of nitpicking going on here.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

As the saying goes, no text can survive a hostile reading. OldTrek can be torn to bloody shreds - and has been, time and again - on the basis of the kind of nitpicking going on here.

 

[kkozoriz1]

Echo, echo....

 

[kkozoriz1]

Strangely, Chekov is the only one other than Kirk that we knew the age of. If Sulu or Uhura had been four years younger then there wouldn't have been this easily rectified error.

 

[Dusty Ayres]

Kirk's ship wasn't built to traverse a black hole, and would have been crushed to bits. Nero's was.

Nero ended up in the black hole by accident, just like Spock did. The Narada could not possibly have been designed for one. Even if you don't believe Countdown.

Where exactly did the idea that Nero's ship was built to survive travel through a black hole come from? Strange ability for a mining ship.

The facts are, the ship DID have the ability to traverse a black hole, thanks to the Borg. And Nero could do so. Kirk could not. Therefore, he didn't bother to do so.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

No stranger than repeated, successful time travel in space vessels that were not designed with anything of the kind in mind - and that's been a staple Star Trek conceit since the very first year of the original TV series.

Someone will mutter something about the ships being designed for travel at speeds that must affect time in some relativistic way, which is complete nonsense. The analogy would be successfully driving a Volkswagen beetle across the English Channel.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And yet arresting Nero and his crew is what a Federation officer should do.

Since when? Kirk didn't bother to rescue Khan from the Reliant, he didn't bother arresting Kruge, he didn't even try to capture General Chang when he clearly had an opportunity to do so (hell, neither did Sulu; they were both very much on the same page with a gleeful "Target that explosion and FIRE!")

This may come as a shock but 'putting someone out of his misery' would be murder in this day and age and I'm sure that it remains so in the 23rd century.

Unless you're in the air force, in which case it's "collateral damage."

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Ah but Kirk supposedly did show mercy to Nero (insincere on the part of the writers though it may have been) so I wouldn’t describe him as having maniacal hatred.

I was talking about Nero.

Besides, Kirk's "glee" at destroying the genocidal Romulan lunatic that murdered his father, destroyed the entire Vulcan civilization and very nearly killed HIM on two separate occasions seems rather subdued compared to his vengeful glee at kicking Kruge into a lava flow or putting a torpedo up Chang's ass. The most you can say is that Kirk isn't the type to seek righteous retribution, but he's not one to pass it up if the opportunity presents itself.

Well, the plot device has done his job and bows out? OK but others have suggested less obnoxious ways of doing that that.

Sure. All of which require alot more time to pull off, especially if you want the resolution to be believable and emotionally satisfying. If your audiences want to see the bad guy finally and decisively defeated, you're taking a bit of a risk when you start introducing moral complications like "Sure he's a bad guy, but he should be brought to trial or possibly reformed of his insanity and we should talk to Romulus about making peace some time." You can do that in novels, sometimes even in TV shows. But a movie has to end at some point, you can't leave the situation half resolved and expect people not to be pissed. It's one of the reasons people hated Nemesis; interestingly, it's also one of the things audiences found unsettling about TWOK.

That seems reasonable. What happens in STXI might be in character for our current society sadly (though that's a bit unfair to us), but not theirs.

Are we watching the same Star Trek? It's perfectly in-character for James T. Kirk, especially a young and impulsive Kirk with a much more volatile upbringing. I agree it's out of character for Katheryn Janeway, somewhat out of character for Jean Luc Picard (Riker wouldn't give a damn), kind of out of character for Ben Sisko. Kirk has always been the type to offer mercy to his defeated foe when he could afford to, but when all else fails it's "I... Have had... Enough of... YOU!"

Hmmm, I still haven’t found the right concept. "Compromising its consistent internal values" is probably a bit closer.

Dude, it's a television franchise. It doesn't have consistent moral values, it has RATINGS. I can guarantee you the "Because of it's consistent moral values" is not very high on the list of reasons why people love Star Trek.

How many were quite so actively murderous?

"Klingon commander, this is Admiral James T. Kirk. I'm alive and well on the planet's surface. I know this may come as a pleasant surprise to you, but our ship was the victim of an unfortunate accident. Sorry about your crew, but as they say on Earth, cest la vive."

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Oh, that's much better. He's in command but nobody else is capable of ding the job they were trained for so the cadet has to do it?

I'd have to rewatch the scene but leaving the bridge and running through the ship yelling "I can do that, I can do that" was stupid.

Lol - so the 17-year old with about an hour's experience as an officer is the only man who can command the bridge AND the only man who can work the transporter properly It makes you wonder what the other 400+ officers and crewmen are for...

Shit, what were they EVER for? When any six man landing party always includes at least three members of the bridge crew and two other random officers whose names Kirk can barely remember?