Is Kirk incompetent or just rusty?

[Shikarnov]

This weekend, my wife and I took a break from chores, popped some popcorn, and had a little Trek Marathon consisting of Star Treks II, III, and IV.

And it just seems like blunder after blunder.

First Kirk fails to raise shields when Reliant approaches, in violation of both regulations and his better instinct, and ends up with a bunch of dead crewmen.

Second, after the Klingons decloak, why doesn't he keep firing? The enemy clearly wasn't disabled, and the Enterprise had far less than even a skeleton crew onboard (which is hardly the time for taking gambles in battle). And then when Checkov notes the shields being nonresponsive, does Kirk order evasive action, a retreat, or even an all-out assault? Nope.

Are these the repeated demonstrations of unswerving command ability to which the president later referred? If so, the rest of the fleet must have been filled with grossly incompetent Captains. It pains me to imagine a fleet filled with more Harrimans and Estebans than Kirks and Sulus.

As an aside, it's interesting to think how events might have played out if Kirk did blow Kruge straight to Hell at first sight. Would the Klingons on the surface kill the prisoners immediately? Would they decide surrender is preferable to hanging out on a dying planet? Would they have been able to save Earth in the Enterprise (which is far less easily hidden than a BoP), or without Spock at all?

 

[MacLeod]

Well Kirk did order the defense shields, energised if memory serves.

Would a modern Naval ship goto Battlestations, if approached by another vessel in the same fleet if they couldn't raise her on radio?

Sure he may have violated a regulation, but I suspect most commanders in the same situation wouldn't be expecting to be fired upon.

As for TSFS, and the Klingon BoP. Kirk couldn't be sure what had happened to the USS Grissom, there could have been hostages onboard the BoP.

Scotty says later he wasn't expecting to take the ship into combat,so even with automation the ship might have been sluggish to respond.

 

[NrobbieC]

Just incompetent.

 

[22 Stars]

I think he did the best with the resources available to him. In the case of ST III the better question is why didn't he beam over to the BoP instead of down to Genesis? He could have simply beamed up the people on the planet once he was there and secure the ship by taking John Laroquette by force if necessary.

 

[BillJ]

Just incompetent.

Nothing like someone who doesn't like the character to chime in and skew the results...

In the case of The Wrath of Khan, he was rusty/incompetent. In the case of The Search for Spock, we simply don't know if the torpedoes would've even responded to a second order to fire. His shields quite responding before the Klingons got their first salvo off. The automation system may have simply been fried.

 

[JarodRussell]

Competence of plot.
Complotence.
Plotpetence.

 

[NrobbieC]

Just incompetent.

Nothing like someone who doesn't like the character to chime in and skew the results...

Could be worse, I could be someone who's never seen it and chimes in to critique. As happens fairly often with ENT/VOY.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think he did the best with the resources available to him. In the case of ST III the better question is why didn't he beam over to the BoP instead of down to Genesis? He could have simply beamed up the people on the planet once he was there and secure the ship by taking John Laroquette by force if necessary.

If the Klingon ship had shields up, a transporter beam from the Enterprise wouldn't have made it through.

 

[Shikarnov]

Well Kirk did order the defense shields, energised if memory serves.

Actually, he ordered a Yellow Alert, which triggered a series of protocols that included energizing defense fields (which Saavik announced).

He didn't order shields up until Spock informed him that Reliant was locking weapons.

Would a modern Naval ship goto Battlestations, if approached by another vessel in the same fleet if they couldn't raise her on radio?

I have no idea, but my understanding from friends that serve is that regulations are not so easily discarded in the contemporary military as we see frequently in Star Trek.

Sure he may have violated a regulation, but I suspect most commanders in the same situation wouldn't be expecting to be fired upon.

If it was just Kirk thumbing his nose at the regs, that would be one thing. But you could see that he was wrestling with it, and thought the situation unusual enough to order the Yellow Alert. His instincts were definitely telling him something, or at least they were trying to.

As for TSFS, and the Klingon BoP. Kirk couldn't be sure what had happened to the USS Grissom, there could have been hostages onboard the BoP.

Good point...

Scotty says later he wasn't expecting to take the ship into combat,so even with automation the ship might have been sluggish to respond.

In the case of The Wrath of Khan, he was rusty/incompetent. In the case of The Search for Spock, we simply don't know if the torpedoes would've even responded to a second order to fire. His shields quite responding before the Klingons got their first salvo off. The automation system may have simply been fried.

I suppose it's possible that it could have happened that way. An offscreen remark, Chekov cursing the inability to fire more. Maybe something to that effect is in the novelization?

If the Klingon ship had shields up, a transporter beam from the Enterprise wouldn't have made it through.

Doesn't the transporting-through-shields rule work for both sending and receiving (TNG's The Wounded, notwithstanding)?

 

[sonak]

the Reliant thing with the shields has always bothered me. It's pure plot-induced stupidity. Raising shields is just a precautionary measure, not a rash move, and if it did turn out the Reliant was okay, I think their captain would have understood the move.

 

[C.E. Evans]

If the Klingon ship had shields up, a transporter beam from the Enterprise wouldn't have made it through.

Doesn't the transporting-through-shields rule work for both sending and receiving (TNG's The Wounded, notwithstanding)?

Transporting through shields only works if you know the sensor window frequency of the other vessel's shields.

 

[sbk1234]

I answered he's awesome as ever, but the more I think about it, I think he was still a bit rusty. He had been flying a desk for a while there. Like all things, if you don't practice, you lose some skills. To me, that doesn't make him any less awesome, though. Only more human and realistic as a character.

 

[NrobbieC]

Just incompetent.

Nothing like someone who doesn't like the character to chime in and skew the results...

The same can be said about Kirk fanboys and she-fanboys

 

[Admiral James Kirk]

Just incompetent.

Nothing like someone who doesn't like the character to chime in and skew the results...

How about someone who loves the character and is chiming in just to skew the results in Kirk's favor?

Kirk is epic - Always!

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Epic is winning!

 

[BK613]

Loved the Kirk character in TOS but the Movie version was a shadow of that. So went with Incompetent. (Especially in TWOK, where both Kirk and Khan are vying for sole claim to the label.)

 

[-Brett-]

Just incompetent.

Nothing like someone who doesn't like the character to chime in and skew the results...

Could be worse, I could be someone who's never seen it and chimes in to critique. As happens fairly often with ENT/VOY.

"They don't like it, so they must never have seen it". An interesting excuse.

 

[CoveTom]

Kirk in TSFS is excusable. Kirk in TWOK is not. First, he thumbs his nose at a regulation that he well knows -- and that Saavik reminds him of -- and that is there to protect everyone involved. And for what reason? This isn't contacting V'Ger, where raising shields could be misinterpreted and cause an incident. This is a fellow Federation starship. If nothing is wrong, Terrell will understand why Kirk raised the shields: the regulation says to. If something is wrong, as it turned out to be, Kirk has safeguarded his ship and crew. There was absolutely no point to Kirk flaunting the regulation in this case.

But then, on top of that, Kirk ignores multiple warning signs and persists in keeping the shields down. First, Reliant transmits an explanation for their radio silence, which Spock's sensors determine to be a lie. No response from Kirk. Then Reliant raises her shields, which Spock detects and reports. Again, no response from Kirk. It is not until Reliant is literally locking phasers on the Enterprise that Kirk reacts and orders shields raised. At that point, of course, it is too late.

What Kirk demonstrated there was absolutely gross incompetence.

 

[sonak]

Kirk in TSFS is excusable. Kirk in TWOK is not. First, he thumbs his nose at a regulation that he well knows -- and that Saavik reminds him of -- and that is there to protect everyone involved. And for what reason? This isn't contacting V'Ger, where raising shields could be misinterpreted and cause an incident. This is a fellow Federation starship. If nothing is wrong, Terrell will understand why Kirk raised the shields: the regulation says to. If something is wrong, as it turned out to be, Kirk has safeguarded his ship and crew. There was absolutely no point to Kirk flaunting the regulation in this case.

But then, on top of that, Kirk ignores multiple warning signs and persists in keeping the shields down. First, Reliant transmits an explanation for their radio silence, which Spock's sensors determine to be a lie. No response from Kirk. Then Reliant raises her shields, which Spock detects and reports. Again, no response from Kirk. It is not until Reliant is literally locking phasers on the Enterprise that Kirk reacts and orders shields raised. At that point, of course, it is too late.

What Kirk demonstrated there was absolutely gross incompetence.

yes, this about sums it up. Kirk really demonstrates incompetence here that should have resulted in disciplinary measures taken. His inexplicable refusal to raise shields despite being given sufficient reason to gets people in his crew killed.

What's frustrating is that it's a plot-induced stupid move that's just done to drive home the themes about Kirk's age and rust, and it does so clumsily.

 

[Mr_Homn]

Kirk is not incompetent.

Movie Kirk, however, isn't always the sharpest tool in the shed. Kind of like how Movie Picard is an emotional violent idiot compared to TV Picard. See the pattern?