Did James Kirk command a ship before the Enterprise ?
- Thread starter Bones1864
- Start date
It's an educated guess. Are we to assume that there are only 12 Constitution-class starships in the fleet, this particular one has heretofore been commanded by a captain (who is then promoted to fleet captain), and yet the guy taking over for him - "the youngest man ever to command a starship" - is not promoted to captain himself?
It seems more likely that he was than that he wasn't.
It is conceivable given the fact he is wearing two stripes that he is a commander in WNMHGB. Not likely, but conceivable.
Or hadn't quite settled on the ranking stripes yet.Because he had lost the previous command?
It seems rather implausible that Starfleet would hand over a "big deal" ship to a newcomer - unless one reasons that Starfleet might wish to send the most expendable captain for this risky mission of deep space exploration. Consider what would have happened if Kirk had succeeded in his first televised assignment: probing beyond the edge of the galaxy. For all we know, he would have kept on going for the next twenty years. A man, woman or other of greater seniority would have attained great senility by the end of such a mission...
Timo Saloniemi
Please don't forget that in those days you joined the Navy at the age of 12 or 13. So Decatur at 25 already had over 12 years of experience behind him when he was assigned to command Constitution.
Just putting things into perspective.
Now you're losing me. Nobody is arguing that Kirk assumed command of Enterprise at less than the rank of Captain. And if he had previously commanded a lesser ship, either he had already attained the rank of Captain, or he commanded that ship at the rank of Commander and was indeed promoted to Captain upon assuming command of the Enterprise. However, there is no onscreen evidence that Enterprise was his first command, nor even that he was the youngest Captain (starship or otherwise) in Starfleet.
Duncan MacLeod said:
Please don't forget that in those days you joined the Navy at the age of 12 or 13. So Decatur at 25 already had over 12 years of experience behind him when he was assigned to command Constitution.
Just putting things into perspective.
No need to point that out in this case. Decatur was appointed midshipman when he was 19.
He only had six years in when handed Constitution.
Hey, I am.
There's no explicit reason to think that Kirk's cuff braid in "Where No Man" did not correlate to the rank of Commander. Indeed, having it do so would have several positive sides:
+ Kirk would be a bit less of a wunderkind.
+ We would have some reassurance that the folks doing Trek realize that rank and position are separate things.
+ We wouldn't have to assume that there were multiple rank braid scheme changes in the 2250s-2260s.
The downsides seem slight:
- Such a big ship to a mere Commander? But we don't know this ship class was Starfleet's biggest - and the Hornblowerish setting might actually indicate a lesser, frigate-style vessel that gets to do more interesting things than the big battlewagons.
- But other ships like her got high-ranking skippers, up to Commodore? Well, if she were a "frigate type", she'd also be a nice means to quick promotion, for grooming the skippers for command of bigger vessels.
- Kirk in the episode is never called Commander, only Captain. But that would hold true quite regardless of his rank.
And incidentally, there is no evidence that Pike handed him the keys to the ship. Indeed, Kirk and Pike last met when the latter was promoted. If this happened before the handover ceremony of the Enterprise, Pike can't have been the one handing her over. OTOH, if Kirk got the ship just before the first aired adventure, there wouldn't have been much time for the two to meet after the handover. Kirk was out there exploring, Pike was back home playing with cadets.
That is, there is no evidence either way: Pike might or mightn't have been the previous commander. Not that this would be pertinent to the subject matter, but the issue did pop up earlier in the thread...
Timo Saloniemi
And next, Timo will expound on his theory that Pike was a lieutenant when he commanded the Enterprise, and the ship herself was a sagging old rust bucket. 
I'm sorry, Timo. But you've been pushing this idea for about as long as I can remember and I'm tired of hearing it.
I'm sorry, Timo. But you've been pushing this idea for about as long as I can remember and I'm tired of hearing it.
Duncan MacLeod said:
And next, Timo will expound on his theory that Pike was a lieutenant when he commanded the Enterprise, and the ship herself was a sagging old rust bucket.
I'm sorry, Timo. But you've been pushing this idea for about as long as I can remember and I'm tired of hearing it.
It is a TNG-era retooling that the Enterprise was launched in 2245. Per the original TMoST it was forty years old by the time of Kirk's five-year mission, and based on what was shown had obviously been refit between Pike's and Kirk's tenure. It frankly adds a bit of color to her past to imagine Enterprise with such a long and storied history, and makes sense that she was an expendable ship being specially refit for a dangerous deep space mission.
Even so, the notion of even an old heavy cruiser being commanded by a lieutenant is a bit of a stretch.
Agreed. Especially in the earlier decades and generations of Starfleet history when you had a much smaller talent pool of command officers to choose from and fewer ships to spare. I doubt a lowly lieutenant would ever get anything like a heavy, top-of-the-line cruiser unless he or she took over temporary command in an emergency or battle.
I cannot believe a top of the line starship would be commanded by anyone below the rank of Captain.
The "Where No Man Has Gone Before" uniform "braids" are more like solid rings, and we didn't see any broken ones on anybody...so I just take it that in the early uniform, they didn't have enough cuff variations to account for all of the ranks that wound up being used on the show. Also, wasn't Mitchell specifically said to be a Lt. Cmdr., but had one solid ring? That would indicate that the scheme does not directly correspond to the later braid scheme.
I can't buy that the Enterprise was supposed to be 40 years old at the time of the 5-year mission because of onscreen evidence/implication. In the flashback portion of "The Menagerie", which is supposed to take place what, 11 years before the episode, they encounter what appear to be people who have been stranded for about 20 years, and one of the officers refers to the Enterprise as one of their "new ships".
I can't buy that the Enterprise was supposed to be 40 years old at the time of the 5-year mission because of onscreen evidence/implication. In the flashback portion of "The Menagerie", which is supposed to take place what, 11 years before the episode, they encounter what appear to be people who have been stranded for about 20 years, and one of the officers refers to the Enterprise as one of their "new ships".
No... the line is --
It doesn't say anything about Enterprise being a new ship. Enterprise might have been an old ship and been refit with the new "time barrier" breaking engines.
Not so. Decatur being promoted to captain over seven senior officers caused some controversy and plenty of grumbling in the young service. One very promising young lieutenant, Andrew Sterett (Decatur's predecessor as CO of Enterprise and victor of the first ship-to-ship fight in the Barbary campaign), resigned over the issue. And he had a valid complaint: Decatur's promotion was explicitly a reward for the Philadelphia mission, not necessarily because he was better suited to commanding a frigate than some of his peers. Unfortunately for Sterret and others, a more effective way of rewarding valor in the form of prestigious decorations was many decades away.
Of course, Cook's career would appear much slower moving: He served almost 11 years as a master (navigation warrant officer) before being commissioned as a lieutenant at 39, then commander at 42 and captain at 44 following his successful voyages.
Although his "hero promotion" was exceptional, in the USN of the Quasi-War through War of 1812 period the average age upon promotion to captain was 33, still young by today's standards, with an average 14 years of service. John Rodgers and William Bainbridge both made CAPT at age 26, in 1799 and 1800 respectively. [Rodgers' was also a "hero promotion" for being first lieutenant of Constellation in her victory over Insurgente, but he was the number two lieutenant in the navy at the time and the grade of commander had been temporarily eliminated, so he was close to being a captain anyway.] But it should be remembered, the USN was only a few years old at the time and the higher leadership structure was still somewhat fluid as officers' capabilities (or weaknesses) were realized and command relationships were established. As the service aged and became more professionally solid, the age for promotion to captain went up.
But the CDRs are clearly exceptions, cruiser command was firmly established as a captain's billet. The last in the example list was during the ship's decommissioning, no doubt to supervise that process at the navy yard. CDR McElduff, CO for only one month, is most likely a temporary arrangement, as in the case of a sudden vacancy. The same is probably true for Joseph Redman, though he held command for over five months. And Redman was a quite senior commander: he made captain July 1, 1940, a little over a month after commanding the cruiser.
Although I personally prefer to stick with TMoST's version of Kirk commanding "the equivalent of a destroyer-size spaceship" before E., there isn't much to go by onscreen, and you could probably make a decent case for 1701 being his first command. He is clearly young for his rank, his classmates in "Court Martial" are still lieutenants. With long exploratory voyages, Kirk may not have had time for another command, but if he served as an XO on a particularly dangerous, demanding or successful cruise he may have been judged to have sufficient experience to move into a cruiser CO's billet as a junior CAPT.
--Justin
I'd say it's pretty obvious from context. Who's taking them back? And why would that officer be so enthusiastic about another ship? Plus, the "Time Warp Factor" terminology used in "The Cage" suggests that it's one of those "new ships" that have "broken the time barrier".
It's quite a sretch to assume that he wasn't talking about the Enterprise, IMO.
And in general, throughout the series, such a big deal is made of "Starships" in the Enterprise's limited class being the best ships available, top of the line...not aging vessels being made defunct by newer, better classes.
I never said he wasn't talking about the Enterprise.
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