Could Kirk have been punished for not raising shields in TWOK?

[Timo]

I doubt there's historical precedent to that - because if communications with a US military vessel are lost, then there would be an immediate search for her, while a starship may stay out of contact with anybody else for months at a time and never be considered "missing" or otherwise distressed (say, the Yamato in "Contagion").

Incidentally, Memory Alpha lists "Contagion" as an example of the ship automatically raising shields and the Red Alert being declared as a consequence. But this seems to be false: nothing of the sort really happens in that episode.

In contrast, TOS definitely features a couple of eps where our heroes declare "the shields just came up on their own, I guess there's something dangerous ahead". Say, "The Changeling".

Perhaps the auto-shield function was usually disabled on Picard's ship because it would have been the cause of too many diplomatic misunderstandings, and Picard wanted to do diplomacy. More importantly, he could afford to: his superior giant of a ship could take a bit of a beating from an adversary without being aggressive (say, raising combat shields) in return, and thus defuse a situation so that diplomacy could commence.

Are there any actual instances of auto-shields in TNG/DS9/VOY?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Admiral_Young]

I'm guessing the computer does some kind of threat assessment on it's own after initiating a scan then raises the alert level along with the shields. As we have come to know on Star Trek though computers fail all the time.

 

[Commodore_Rook]

You know, an interesting difference between TOS and later Trek incarnations is the amount of initiative other bridge officers take in doing things without being ordered. In TOS, no officer would dream of raising the shields without the Captain's (or first officer's) orders. Contrast this to Voyager. When stuff starts happening, everyone across the bridge just starts... doing stuff, and calling out what they're doing as it happens. 'Taking evasive maneuvers!' 'I'm attempting to initiate an Imaginary Nonsense Pulse in order to override their sensors!' 'Rerouting power from the shuttlecraft bay to photon torpedoes!', et cetera.

I think it's mostly due to the move by later series to an increasingly ensemble-based cast. That's good for the characters and their actors, because it makes them look competent or at least capable for the most part, but it sort of neuters the captain a little bit. Sometimes you'd feel that it wouldn't have even mattered if Janeway were on the bridge. Something you never saw, of course, was someone taking that initiative (acting without explicit orders) and having a negative result. If someone chose to initiate an Imaginary Nonsense Pulse without being commanded to, and it backfired somehow, you'd imagine there would be a severe dressing-down after the fact.

Anyway, just thought that was interesting.

I don't recall a single episode of TOS where the order to raise shields was ever an issue. In fact, Sulu often reported the "Automatic shields just snapped on". (Usually when that little red thing between Sulu and Chekov started blinking). It was only in TWOK that we got those little light dots and "boop boop boop" with the flip of a switch to show shields going up or down.

 

[Anticitizen]

Yes, but they were also given 'new screens' according to TMP. There may be a good reason - technical, diplomatic, or otherwise - as to why they don't snap on immediately.

 

[kkozoriz1]

Ot it may be that the computer didn't perceive a Federation starship as being a danger. Weapon fire from an unidentified source? Raise the shields. Unknown energy from an unknown source? Raise the shields. Fellow ship of the fleet in close range? Give it more leeway or perhaps, based on their experience with M-5, don't let the ship take action when it's other Starfleet ships.

 

[paudemge]

Maybe the Enterprise wasn't, for lack of a better term 'configured' correctly for deep space missions at the time.And there may have been a lot of 'stuff' being messed with
for training purposes, maybe a cadet left Auto Shield button in the off position.

I think we were supposed to know that Kirk was rusty and the old kirk would have been more proactive, but didn't do anything actually wrong.

 

[paudemge]

Maybe the Enterprise wasn't, for lack of a better term 'configured' correctly for deep space missions at the time.And there may have been a lot of 'stuff' being messed with
for training purposes, maybe a cadet left Auto Shield button in the off position.

I think we were supposed to know that Kirk was rusty and the old kirk would have been more proactive, but didn't do anything actually wrong.