Commodore Stocker adressing Kirk as "Sir"

Why did Stocker keep addressing Kirk as "Sir" despite outranking him

 

There's a traditional naval etiquette for that, between officers. They sometimes address a subordinate as Sir to be polite. You can see it all over The Bounty with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins. Also (if I recall) in the Horatio Hornblower novels by C.S. Forester, that Gene Roddenberry and every guy who read them loved so much.

 

It was a courtesy, to acknowledge that even though Stocker was senior in rank, Kirk was captain of the vessel and Stocker was a passenger.

 

He's a very polite man.

An absolute knob, but a polite one.

 

I miss courtesy.

 

A courtesy to a fellow officer.

 

One of my favourite scenes in Amok Time is the turbolift scene before the Vulcans contact them on the bridge. To this day, I adore and admire McCoy's addressing Spock as 'Sir' here. It shows that despite outward appearances, the duo really do respect each other, and that whole crisis shows to Bones particularly, that Vulcans too, undergo painful times.

 

Stocker respected Kirk. Simple. He may have outranked him but he hadn't achieved what Kirk had as a Starship Commander out there in space, and he knew it!
JB

 

This is actually one of the more interesting aspects of the episode. We see a senior officer unlike any other before or after in TOS. A desk-based officer who has very little command experience. It's an interesting addition to Starfleet history in the TOS universe.

 

"Little command experience"? All we ever hear is that Stocker has never commanded a starship.

Given the TOS implications of that word, Stocker might have commanded dozens of non-starship vessels. But on the rest of his command experience, there's no real data.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Good call. There's also the matter of Stocker wearing red, which could be related. From what we know of TOS out of universe, of course, this could have been a matter of the actor fitting better into the red shirts they had available. But in-universe, his wearing of red could have been Stocker's choice to reflect his origins in operations. Perhaps he was a career engineer at starbases who put in for a vacant command job - at a smaller outpost first, perhaps, then later a starbase - and transitioned into command that way. It's interesting!

 

During TOS, we have no evidence that any Starbase has been attacked, so in affect, they are usually not "tested" in combat situations. Starbases probably attract a certain level of paper pushers like Stocker along with Starship experienced officers like Stone. I hope Starbase 10 benefits from Stocker's starship experience he just learned.

 

What about the perimeter asteroid bases along the Romulan Neutral Zone in star date 1709.2?
JB

 

Well, those had mere Commanders in charge...

(The bigger issue is SB1 being ransacked, to the total loss of 80,000 people, all the way back in 2257!)

Timo Saloniemi

 

The term Kirk used was "field command," which in our day would usually refer to commanding operating forces, rather than an installation or serving in a staff position.

 

Those were Earth Outposts and not Federation Starbases.

Yes, Outposts are under the command of a Commander rank.

Sorry, this is a TOS/TAS category thread and not a DSC category.

 

They were earth bases but that's only because the Federation and Starfleet hadn't been invented yet, Henny!
JB

 

Have to disagree, JB. Based on dialog in the episode, the Command Base was distinctly differentiated from the Outposts, and even reference three times. The Command Base (I assume this morphs into a Starbase in the subsequent episodes) is the point of all command communications with the Enterprise:

 

Great summary, Henoch the Globed.

One wonders why, if "command base" was either so far away or so non-diligent in responding, Kirk felt the need to supply quarter-hour reports.

 

The outposts are Maginot Line batteries, not command bases.