Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x09 - "Into the Forest I Go"

Riker didn't get court martialled for hiding details about the Pegasus incident and the existence of a Federation cloaking device was actually illegal and a violation of a treaty, so why would Spock be in trouble for hiding the nature of his father's career and even his identity? Some people are very secretive and don't talk about their families very often if at all. Spock performed his Starfleet duties with exemplary skill and had already been decorated numerous times before the second season of TOS.

Why should anyone care who his dad really is so long as he does his job and serves his captain with efficiency and valor?

 

Because operational security aboard a front-line starship. I can't imagine Canadian Forces Military Personnel Command being required/requested to keep a ship's CO in the RCN in the dark about who the parents of each of their senior staff are. Especially in circumstances where orders might require them to support, say, one or more of Global Affairs Canada's objectives.

Granted that the Federation and its Starfleet are somewhat different beasts than either the Canada/Canadian Forces or US/USN relationships...and yet...

 

You’re overthinking it. Drama trumps realism all the time.

 

All the time! How many times have Starfleet Security done their job and prevented a security breach? Starfleet Security is so lax that they create future passwords that can be hacked before they are implemented so that they can be rendered useless, as well as sending the Captain and Chief Engineer to investigate a possible boarding action.

Starfleet Security is generally terrible at its job.

 

Meh. I don't live in Fraggle Rock where you do, apparently. I live here in the real world. Here in America. Where we ordered the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Where slavery built the infrastructure of the nation. Where hard things need doing.

Now you can do the moral math necessary to absolve yourself from bad things you benefit from, and I'm not Lorca's lawyer, but suffice it to say not only do I not agree with you, I don't think he needs forgiving at all.

Do you consider Captain Picard, Kirk or Janeway heroic? Because all three of them have engaged the self destruct mechanism and were prepared to kill their entire crew including small children, babies and toddlers. Is it better because they framed it differently?

 

... would be better served by the Captain doing his fucking homework about the background of his first officer, no? It's not like Spock doctored the records to hide it or, say, lied about their relationship on his application. If Kirk didn't know about Spock's family, it's because he didn't pry into his records to find out. Truth be told, he would have very little reason to actually do so unless there was something in Spock's family background he actually needed to know about.

Which there isn't. Kirk wants to know about Spock, he looks up his service record and his academy grades. If he needs to dig deeper for some reason, well, that information comes to light too.

"Required," no. But of the various military veterans and active duty officers I have known in my life -- including my wife's mother, who was an army quartermaster for 11 years -- I can tell you, the only time an officer's family background ever becomes an issue is either just before or just after that officer gets dishonorably discharged, and usually not even then.

 

I'm gonna stop you right there: it's abundantly clear that Starfleet doesn't believe in passwords. Their computers have been hacked by total strangers, sentient calculators, ancient malware, microbes, lunatics, drunks, animals, occasionally even 8 year old girls. Whenever they need to lock down the computer with a password, Data has to pretty much hack the entire system and take it completely offline so NOBODY can access it.

They're really good at catching phaser beams with their teeth. Is that not part of the job description?

 

QFT.

Lorca's entire driving force is his pursuit of absolution for slaughtering his entire crew on the Buran. It's unlikely there's any absolution to be had, but that won't stop him from trying.

 

Not only that, but we don't know the whole story here. Nobody is jumping all over Admiral Whatshisname for self-destructing the Europa in the BotBS. As a wise man once said "Context is for kings." It's pretty safe to assume that Starfleet looked at the case of the Buran very seriously and determined that there was no other choice and what Lorca did was perhaps the only option available. They may even view what he did as heroic...making an insanely difficult decision when the alternatives would have been easier, but not in the best interest of the broader good. Otherwise, he wouldn't be back in command.

Again, we don't KNOW what happened.

Also- Picard murdered how many people because of Locutus? Or because of his inability to send Hugh back and kill off the entire Borg threat? Didn't matter, though...slap him back in the chair and everything is just fine. And everyone loves Picard because he could deliver a speech about what is "right" and "just" and "blahblahblahblah" better than anyone. Lorca, on the other hand just says "I don't give a damn...just get it done" (like when dealing with the space whale). It's easy for people to like/admire other people based on their ability to bullshit with words (Picard). I prefer leaders who are themselves...honest, no BS...just hit it straight on (Kirk, Lorca, Sisko).

Anyway, basically I'm must saying "give me a break on this one." Star Trek's very fiber is built off exploring these kinds of decisions.

We can only hope that there is an episode in DSC's future that dives into the story behind Gabriel Lorca.

 

And don't forget that Kirk was once ready to lay waste to the entire surface of Eminiar VII and kill untold millions or even billions of that planet's inhabitants by implementing General Order 24, an actual order that was on the Starfleet books during the 2260s. The Federation at some point decided that it should give its starship captains the legal option of destroying the surface of an entire planet should a commanding officer deem that world a threat to their vessel, a spaceship that at most carried a few hundred officers and crew. The Federation once said it was fine to kill untold millions to save hundreds.

Are we sure it's Lorca that's the big problem here or Starfleet and an interstellar government that claims to be a democratic system that values and protects life and freedom yet has a regulation that lets starship commanders commit mass murder?

 

^I still wonder if that General Order 24 business might have simply been a ruse like "The Corbomite Maneuver" and "Condition Green" from "Bread and Circuses" (TOS), etc. It would be a ploy totally in Kirk's style. And considering how often starship captains have lost their shit and turned homicidal or suicidal, it seems like a really irresponsible policy if it's real.

And while I'm not prepared to outright condemn Lorca just yet, I really don't know why some are so ready to excuse him considering his own account of what happened in "Choose Your Pain" (DSC), whether it's entirely accurate or not. He said he deliberately killed his crew for the specific purpose of sparing them from the fate-supposedly-worse-than-death they'd face as Klingon prisoners. Yet he as the captain clearly didn't go down with his ship, and indeed has subsequently survived being taken captive by Klingons at least once. It's all highly questionable at the least. And my impression is that he wasn't honest with Starfleet about it. It really doesn't sound like exactly the same thing as Kirk's "turn[ing] death into a fighting chance to live" in STIII, or Anderson ordering the self-destruction of the already-doomed Europa in order to take out the cleave ship and prevent it from doing the same to any other vessels, to me.

I'm reserving further judgment until we find out more about what actually happened, but my spider sense tells me that Lorca is not entirely on the level and may ultimately fall more on the malevolent (or at least tragic) side of moral ambiguity in the end. Up to now they've kept him very ambiguous, though, and it could still go either way. I find him quite a compelling character in any case.

-MMoM

 

It's becoming clear he's more of a Sloan than a Bashir when it comes to his personal ethics and behavior in the cause of defending the Federation from its enemies. While he may turn out to be more of an "anything goes" person to whom the ends justify the means rather than an outright villain or sociopath in a Starfleet uniform he is a man whose behavior clearly skirts Federation law and Starfleet regulations. He's obviously not a Ron Tracey but he's certainly no Christopher Pike or James Kirk, either, and in the end that is part of what makes him so fascinating and mysterious.

 

So Fez from That 70s Show, is the sexy man on Regular NCIS, and despite being on an army base in Afghanistan last week, he was able to draw a loaded hand gun from under his pillow, fractions of a second after waking from a nap, and scare the bejezzus out a superior officer.

No one is trying to get him fired.

 

Why do people say we don't know what happened with Lorca? We do. He killed his last crew. He perverted his psych tests. He pulled a gun/phaser on an Admiral.

 

I think the presumption people are making is that he could have been lying, or at least not telling the whole truth (perhaps not even to himself), in "Choose Your Pain" (DSC)...which we of course must allow that he could have been, especially if we also believe he lied to pass his psych tests.

He didn't intentionally and knowingly pull that phaser on Cornwell. She startled him in his sleep; it was a reflex. Of course, it's a reaction that does clearly indicate he is troubled and on edge about something, whether it has to do specifically with what happened on the Buran, or with the Klingons, or something else...

-MMoM

 

1. The Klingons killed his crew and he feels responsible.

(Or... )

2. He saved his crew from being rape-eaten for months and years, with sweet release.

(Or... )

3. The self destruct does not care who is on board, and the Captain has the moral authority to sacrifice his or her entire crew with out reason or justification... Until the court martial starts.

 

[MUDD] The tragic tale of the U.S.S.Buran. It was ambushed about a month into the war. The Klingons boarded it and blasted it into smithereens. Only one crewman managed to escape. Gabriel Lorca. Apparently, the honorable captain was too good to go down with his ship.

[LORCA] Mudd's only half right. We were ambushed, and I did escape. But I didn't let my crew die. I blew them up. I knew what awaited them on Qo'noS. Degradation. Torture. Slow, public death. It's the Klingon way to spread terror. Not my crew. Not on my watch.

 

But the CONTEXT is missing. That's not a story. That's a 2-3 sentence summary, shorter than what you'd see on the TV or Netflix guide. For all we know, there was already a horror chamber aboard the ship, and the only way Lorca could pull off the destruct procedure was to not be aboard.

In a case like this, details are everything. And, whether you personally like it or not, it's clear that the details of this case convinced Starfleet that Lorca wasn't guilty...otherwise he would be in the stockade rather than in command of a starship.

So you can complain about it endlessly, but we don't know what happened...we only know the basic fundamental outline of what is sure to be a much deeper and complicated story.

Shall we begin discussing Tom Paris, who was a dishonorable discharge from Starfleet for getting people killed and then falsifying records, and then later was tried and found guilty of treason? Because Lorca was found not guilty for whatever reason ( going back to the whole "we don't know the story" thing that I've been trying to say ) and Paris was tried and convicted on the other hand. If Lorca's or Michael's story is unacceptable, then we surely must open up the discussion of Tom Pars and his story.

Can't hold one accountable as being your reason for disliking one series while a near-identical scenario exists in your favorite series...right down to a convict being conscripted by a captain. Also, for someone who thinks the series is shit, you certainly have an excellent grasp of the dialogue and the specifics. Very interesting, no?

 

Here's the thing that I've noticed-regardless of other characters actions in other series (see my diatribe on Kirk's crimes, as well as your Paris example) DISCO's characters are not likeable and more condemable (Yes-that's a word).

 

Well...it's the "use whatever argument justifies my current opinion, no matter how inconsistent it is with my overall attitude toward things" effect.

It was like all the people complaining about "grimdark and pewpew" when I responded with, "oh, ok then...I suppose you must not like the following:"
TOS Doomsday Machine
TOS WNMHGB
TOS COTEOF
TOS Balance of Terror
TOS Private Little War
TNG Conspiracy
TNG Yesterday's Enterprise
TNG BOTW
TNG Chain of Command
DS9...pretty much all of it, but particularly Pale Moonlight, WOtW, Siege, etc
ENT S3
VOY Year of Hell
Wrath of Khan
Undiscovered Country
First Contact
Nemesis

Many (not all admittedly, but MANY) of the examples above are considered almost universally as some of the BEST of the franchise. Funny how people can build an argument and opinion to service their needs, regardless of the fact that it's completely inconsistent with their attitudes toward other VERY like things.

It's ok...I get it. Not everything is to everyone's tastes...nor will it ever be. But, that said, it's not an excuse to relentlessly (and INCONSISTENTLY) beat on something.