Commodore Wesley confuses me

[HarryM]

For what it's worth I really never thought much about Wesley anyways (besides an underlying annoyance with him), the episode overall is solid. And Wesley does redeem himself in the end by guessing that Enterprise is disabled and it's not a trap.

 

[Timo]

If you want bad writing, we can discuss Spock's dialogue and actions in "That Which Survives"

Seriously, I think that's worth a thread.

I'm game. And yes, I'll be in the "plausible character development, logical choices, good leadership" camp.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CrazyMatt]

I don't know why people are ragging on this episode... it's easily the best from the 2nd half of the second season. Whether he's the Lexington's actual captain or not, Wesley comes off as a very good starship (fleet?) commander, and while he's a bit anal at times (the "Captain Dunsel" comment comes to mind), at least he's not gone crazy like Matt Decker or Ron Tracey.

 

[Marsden]

I think it's a solid episode and posts that accuse it of "bad writing" are painful to see.

 

[Maurice]

It's bad writing because it's not thought out logically. I give D.C. the benefit of the doubt because of the speed at which teleplays are produced, but that doesn't mean the flaws aren't there.

 

[Duncan MacLeod]

It has one of the best Kirk scenes ever, "All I ask is a tall ship", so the Wesley oddness is rather minor.

Well John Masefield's Sea-Fever is a magnificent poem. I'm glad that Star Trek quoted it, otherwise I might never have learned it. And that would be a sad state of affairs indeed.

For anyone interested in reading the whole work:

"Sea-Fever"

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

By John Masefield (1878-1967).

 

[Jerikka Dawn]

I thought this episode was great especially now that I've viewed it after seeing TNG and DS9. I got a real kick out of seeing the crew behave, in light of what we see on TNG, as complete neophytes when it comes to new technology. The funniest part was seeing Scotty lose his shit over the M5 shutting off lights in unoccupied parts of the ship to save power. Who doesn't think that every starship, at least in the 24th century, doesn't have this feature in their computer system?

Daystrom: "You must commit the M5 to handle it's approach, the orbit, and then to analyze data regarding landing party recommendations."

We can almost be certain the E-D's navigation system and mission operations computers do this. There are probably entire subroutines for different away team/mission scenarios that present mission commanders with recommendations upon approach to the planet and inform department heads of important updates.

Kirk: "All it's done is make the required course changes and a few simple turns, Mr. Sulu and Mr. Chekov could have done that with their eyes closed."
Daystrom: "Yes, but you see, the idea is that they didn't have to do it."
Spock: "Captain, I am forced to agree with Dr. Daystrom. With the course information plotted into it, his computer could have brought us here as easily as the navigator."

This is exactly how every TNG era ship works. The CON officer is babysitting cruise control and GPS.

It also made me realize just how far behind TOS tech is from TNG tech and the fact that most of the crew on the TOS Enterprise was needed just to keep the thing moving, while on the TNG Enterprise, while they had a huger crew, it was more about mission specialization with regard to exploration, and probably only a handful of those 1014 people were required to actually run the ship.

It is good that by TNGs time, however, manual overrides were improved (somewhat) and they kept a human crew to actually make the decisions while keeping all of the good advances. I guess it would have been kinda cool in "Booby Trap" to have Picard scoff at the idea of turning the ship over to the computer and maybe reference the M5 incident.