Kirk's previous ship before Enterprise

I have a question about Kirk's pre-TOS career:

I've heard, but never actually read, that, in Stephen Whitfield & Gene Roddenberry's 1968 book "The Making of Star Trek" that Kirk was supposed to have come from a (non-canon) destroyer-type vessel as his previous assignment before taking command of the Enterprise from Pike. (Can anyone provide a page number for this, please? Thanks, and much appreciated.)

 

It's not exactly non-canon. In WNMHGB Elizabeth Dehner makes reference to Kirk's first command, which is consistent with the reference in the Writer's guide.

And it makes sense that Starfleet would more likely post an officer with previous command experience to one of their top line ships rather than someone unproven.

 

...Although it is also consistent with Kirk not having had any previous commands.

Quite so. OTOH, this requires us to accept that the Enterprise was top line. An expendable sortie to the unknown by an expendable vessel might call for an expendable skipper...

(Alternately, a sortie beyond the rim of the galaxy might place many qualifications on an officer, but foremost of these would be very young age, so that the CO can survive the supposed thirty-year mission in "service strength".)

We know the Enterprise was sent to some tight spots, but that might actually speak against her being top line. We know starship skippers are a rare breed and starships a prestigious category of vessels, but the same used to be true of U-Boot skippers, commanding boats that were decidedly "bottom line".

Timo Saloniemi

 

The reference in TMoST to Kirk's command of a destroyer-equivalent vessel is in a sentence spanning pp. 215-16 (the page breaks right between "first" and "command").

A number of different tie-in works have acknowledged this. Mike W. Barr's "All Those Years Ago..." in DC's first Trek annual depicts it as a Baton Rouge-class ship called the Saladin. Vonda McIntyre's Enterprise: The First Adventure calls it the Lydia Sutherland, which I think is a fusion of the names of two of Horatio Hornblower's commands. Howard Weinstein's "Star-Crossed" in DC's Volume 2 makes it a pre-refit Miranda called the Oxford.

 

It is difficult to determine if the Constitution class is 'Top-of-the-Line' since in the original series we never saw any other Starfleet craft. That always bothered me since to me a fleet consists a number of different types of vessels. Some would be special purpose designs, some newer, some older, some bigger, some smaller. How the Enterprise would fit into that group would be interesting, but in the show we were only told how many ships were 'like her' and only shown those we we me any other Starfleet craft.

By logic you would place only an experienced Captain in command of a top of the line ship- it might be one so powerful it is given dangerous assignments because lesser craft would be destroyed. The missions would be ones where you could send cannon fodder out to do, but why send a ship which would probably never make it? If you want to see what is beyond the edge of the galaxy, send a ship which could get there, discover things and make it back to tell you about it.

 

The subtext throughout the series as well as the material in the Writer's Guide (which reflects the intent of the creators and not contradicted onscreen) is that the Enterprise and her like were indeed Starfleet's best ships.

 

For the same reason real militaries do this sort of stuff: because the better ship might not make it, either, and her loss would be unaffordable. In terms of building resources, money and tactical value, you could probably lose three sailing frigates if it spared you one ship-of-the-line, or in more modern terms, up to three cruisers if that kept one battleship afloat. Starfleet might want to send in three Constitutions before it risked a Federation, too. Or before it sent one of those big ships from the new movies.

Timo Saloniemi

 

A captain who is described as doing a very elite job ("Court Martial"), commanding "a very special vessel and crew," ("Bread and Circuses") who is entrusted with secret diplomatic and intelligence missions, negotiations with heads of governments, representing the Federation at top level ceremonies and so on hardly seems "expendable."

Those skippers almost invariably ranked no higher than lieutenant in TOS terms, though, and would never be given high-level missions like Kirk was, so we're talking about different levels of experience and authority.

And the quote is:

"Kirk rose very rapidly through the ranks and received his first command (the equivalent of a destroyer-class spaceship) while still quite young."​

Agreed. Or if not the absolute top-of-the-line, close to it.

It's not as simple as money and resources, though; every piece of the fleet has its mission and short-changing one part will have repercussions on the other parts. Ships of the line couldn't do their job without frigates to find the enemy:

"Was I to die this moment, 'Want of Frigates' would be found stamped on my heart."
Admiral Nelson, 1798​

 

To be sure, Kirk was but a berated chauffeur on secret diplomatic missions; could be declared expendable solely on the merit of having been chosen for that intelligence mission; negotiated with no head of state by Starfleet order, only by force of circumstance (and typically with weapons drawn on one side or both); and did not feel he would contribute anything to said top level ceremony.

Well, Kirk's ship was previously commanded by a man with Lieutenant braid. And a submarine would quite plausibly perform ferrying of agents, intelligence gathering runs, or gunboat-diplomacy float-bys, not to mention Neutral Zone patrol or colonial supply and police work, at least if other low priority units weren't available. But the analogy is marred by the fact that Kirk operated on the far frontier, suggesting his ship had good endurance and speed - qualities appropriate for certain low priority units, but not (WWII) submarines as such.

True enough, and there would be praise for the frigate captain within the community and without. Doesn't mean frigates would become top line by virtue of that, though.

Timo Saloniemi

 

^^ You like to play devil's advocate. It's clear what was intended in the series.

 

Many a thing was intended - but better continuity (and sometimes better drama) follows from ignoring all the intent that never made it to the screen...

I mean, it's not as if the writers themselves would have respected intent much, if at all. But yes, Kirk's ship type being even one step short of Starfleet's going top rate is contrary to writer intent. It's not contrary to anything else, though, largely thanks to the very fact that it was depicted in splendid isolation, preventing comparisons.

Timo Saloniemi

 

(The Lydia Sutherland, if one was to use the old Franz Joseph standard, would be a Saladin-class.)



I dunno... of those three, I'd be inclined to go for the middle. Seems about the right size for someone who'd just made captain (or perhaps is still just a commander).

Is this poll material, do you think?

 

What's your basis for calling the Sutherland a Saladin-class?

And my preference is for the BR-class Saladin, because Mike Barr's story is my favorite of the three.

 

It's one of my personal favorites too.

Other than being 'a great little cruiser,' Vonda McIntyre really doesn't say what class the Lydia Sutherland is, or what she looked like. The Franz Joseph Star Fleet Technical Manual, the first place the Saladin-class appears, clearly states it's a 'destroyer/scout' ship. The Saladin-class seems to be generally accepted as existing in the Prime Universe (thanks to popping up on monitors in TWOK/TSFS), and is definitely around in the right time period. So, if the nacelle fits...

The Miranda-class has always been a light cruiser, and (while it's not impossible for Kirk to be flying an older ship near the end of service life) the Baton Rouge-class (which, from configuration alone, must be a heavy cruiser) really doesn't look like it'd hold up too well in a fight. So 'destroyer-equivalent' seems unlikely. And why would it have the name Saladin if the Saladin-class is flying around?

 

Well, I'm wary of the "if it's on a monitor, it must be real" argument, because then there'd really have to be a giant rubber ducky somewhere on the Enterprise-D, not to mention all the Dirty Pair and Buckaroo Banzai and other in-jokes in TNG/DS9/VGR graphics. And honestly I was never that big a fan of the FJ stuff. Although I guess the existence of the Kelvin sets a canonical precedent for single-nacelled vessels.

I've seen tech reference calling it a "frigate," which Wikipedia says can overlap with anything from a corvette to a destroyer to a cruiser to a battleship.

"Destroyer-equivalent" doesn't mean a combat vessel, it just means a smaller ship of the sort that would be commanded by a junior officer or novice captain. Although I agree the BR class seems to be larger than that; the references I can find make it nearly as large as a Connie.

Still, we don't actually know that the Enterprise was Kirk's second command. TMoST doesn't specify that. He could've commanded another ship between the "destroyer-equivalent" and the big E.

Mike may have intended it to be an FJ Saladin-class ship, with artist David Ross choosing to go with a Baton Rouge instead. Although maybe not, since an earlier Trek comic Mike wrote for Marvel depicted the Republic, on which Kirk served as an ensign, as a BR-class ship.

 

That's the Baton Rouge-class. And you can thank Rick Sternbach for that one.

Touche.

Well, we never got a really close look at those monitors. Could always do what Tobias Richter did...

Do I sense a 50th Anniversary project starting to take shape? Just kidding. So, splitting the difference:

Winter 2263: 29-year-old Commander Kirk gets his first command, the destroyer-class Lydia Sutherland. Only has her a couple months before the Ghioghe battle. Gets promoted to Captain while in the hospital, takes command of the Saladin. Let's...just forget the rest of that McIntyre novel happened...
Fall 2264: Newly promoted Fleet Admiral Pike calls Captain Kirk of the Saladin up, offers the keys to his ride, and the rest is history...

True. Or it might have been a tangled-rights issue where the FJ-stuff was off-limits (as most everything was for that particular Marvel series). *sigh* Too bad we can't 'remaster' comics.

EDIT: So the first DC series had no rights limits (that we know of), unlike the earlier Marvel series (pretty much limited to what was onscreen in TMP itself or in direct movie tie-in media, if I recall right). OK, got it.

 

^No, the BR-class Saladin was in the first annual of DC's series, which had a license to all of Trek, at least the onscreen stuff.