Did Kirk command the Enterprise for a while after TMP?

[jackoverfull]

I'm not going by the registry. I don't consider the registry to be sequential

Me neither (not necessarily, anyway, especially considering the huge gaps within the constitution class), but since you mentioned the registry...

Oberth/Grissom follows the early Excelsior design motif. So it would be slightly older than Excelsior but far newer than Enterprise or Reliant

Speculation...
As is most of what you wrote afterwards.

That Constellation was listed as NX in TUC materials shows that it would be slightly newer than Excelsior

Once again: the Defiant in DS9 wasn’t doing tests anymore, yet it retained the NX prefix.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Once again: the Defiant in DS9 wasn’t doing tests anymore, yet it retained the NX prefix.

Wasn't there a big war going on at the time? Maybe Starfleet felt that it didn't really have the time to do a spray paint job on a ship in the backwaters of Federation space.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Why is it such a giant leap for Kirk to return to his rank as Admiral??? He doesn't have the authority to reduce his rank, and once the threat was done, he may have had some assistance in full operations of the Enterprise, but it doesn't mean he drops all of his previous responsibilities as Admiral and go on another 5 year mission.

 

[Damian]

Why is it such a giant leap for Kirk to return to his rank as Admiral??? He doesn't have the authority to reduce his rank, and once the threat was done, he may have had some assistance in full operations of the Enterprise, but it doesn't mean he drops all of his previous responsibilities as Admiral and go on another 5 year mission.

I don't think Kirk took a reduction in rank back to captain just for the one time emergency. I think his intent was to remain captain of the Enterprise. He used the emergency to get Admiral Nogura to give him his command back.

After all, if it was just for that single mission he would have remained an Admiral and be in charge of the mission while Decker remained in command of the ship. Or a more extreme option would have been to take command of the Enterprise for the mission, but remaining an Admiral. Taking a rank reduction to Captain, and forcing a reduction on Decker was not just a one time thing. A forced demotion is pretty significant. Kirk wouldn't have taken that extreme option if he had intended on giving the Enterprise back to him after the emergency passed.

And then owing to his success against V'Ger and the 'disappearance' of Decker, Kirk probably had all the pieces and influence he needed to stay in command.

 

[J.T.B.]

Assuming that TMP is in the same continuity, Kirk finishes his five year assignment, gets booted upstairs, is miserable, moves heaven and earth to get the Enterprise back, apparently takes it out again for some length of time...then lets them boot him upstairs again, making him miserable again.

That is where Star Trek started to lose me. On TOS you were told up front that it was a five year mission, so of course these characters will be together for a while. But really you would expect them all to move on to other assignments at some point. But the longer it goes on the more they have to hew to the idea that the same people keep the same positions for decades. By the time of TNG, instead of putting off the question of how and when the team will break up, they chose to put a big spotlight on it by having Riker turn down command after command. Creating the impression that captain and first officer of the Enterprise are the most important jobs in Starfleet.

I wouldn't agree. Star Fleet is a job. He's in love with the Enterprise.

Yeah... Pride in your vessel is one thing but it started to be almost pathological. More believable to me would be the idea that people had served on other ships during their careers and expect to serve on others still, and understand that they will like some more than others but all serve a purpose, all can be learning experiences and you go where you are needed.

This is purely personal conjecture but Kirk has always struck me as a person of duty. Him saying no to Starfleet over a matter of a promotion strikes me as odd.

Agreed. Grade promotions are not just to be able to boss more people and get better perks. They are an opportunity to benefit the organization by using one's experience and abilities in a position of more responsibility. It is a duty ethically, even if the order can legally be refused.

Kirk in TOS was shown to be the kind of officer who always did his duty and seemed to have a lot to offer if he moved on to the next level. Rejecting promotions and higher responsibility, for the reasons given, is essentially saying "I'm going to only do the kind of work I prefer to do." Which doesn't really sound like OS Kirk, it seems like a contrivance. It also means that the admirals giving Kirk orders would soon be those who were commanders while he was a captain. Which feels odd since we've seen so much of Kirk's experiences, but I guess he's OK with it.

Perhaps, having mulled it all over for years, that's why he tells Picard to never accept a promotion, to stay where he can make a difference.

Implying no one else above that level can make a difference, yeah that was a ridiculous idea. Nelson and Farragut and Togo and Beatty and Jellicoe and Scheer and Spruance and Nimitz, what difference did they ever make after they commanded a ship?!

Probably linking to the US Navy phasing out that rank.

Though the commodore grade had been phased out when TOS was made, as well.

Why is it such a giant leap for Kirk to return to his rank as Admiral??? He doesn't have the authority to reduce his rank, and once the threat was done, he may have had some assistance in full operations of the Enterprise, but it doesn't mean he drops all of his previous responsibilities as Admiral and go on another 5 year mission.

Makes sense to me; if Decker's rank reduction was temporary, Kirk's likely would be too.

 

[fireproof78]

Kirk in TOS was shown to be the kind of officer who always did his duty and seemed to have a lot to offer if he moved on to the next level. Rejecting promotions and higher responsibility, for the reasons given, is essentially saying "I'm going to only do the kind of work I prefer to do." Which doesn't really sound like OS Kirk, it seems like a contrivance. It also means that the admirals giving Kirk orders would soon be those who were commanders while he was a captain. Which feels odd since we've seen so much of Kirk's experiences, but I guess he's OK with it.

The biggest part of this for me is that Kirk being a person of duty would also give more weight to both his relationship to Carol and David in TWOK, as well as his fantasy world in Generations. His whole attitude is one of giving to Starfleet, regardless of his personal feelings on the decision. It's only after the loss of Spock, his best friend, that he decides that Starfleet was making the wrong decision.

 

[BillJ]

Sulu's mission was only 2 years.

Three.

Pedantic, thy name is Star Trek.

 

[BillJ]

Makes sense to me; if Decker's rank reduction was temporary, Kirk's likely would be too.

Who knows? The 'captain' stuff may have all been in Kirk's head and he was officially an Admiral throughout TMP. Uhura says she got the transfer of command orders from Starfleet, nothing about a grade reduction. 'Captain' is the customary title for someone in command, and we know from TOS, that officers above Captain can serve as starship commanders.

 

[jackoverfull]

Wasn't there a big war going on at the time? Maybe Starfleet felt that it didn't really have the time to do a spray paint job on a ship in the backwaters of Federation space.

More speculation. And no, it was before the war. During the war they did “spray paint” the new name on the second Defiant, though.

I don't think Kirk took a reduction in rank back to captain just for the one time emergency. I think his intent was to remain captain of the Enterprise. He used the emergency to get Admiral Nogura to give him his command back.

After all, if it was just for that single mission he would have remained an Admiral and be in charge of the mission while Decker remained in command of the ship. Or a more extreme option would have been to take command of the Enterprise for the mission, but remaining an Admiral. Taking a rank reduction to Captain, and forcing a reduction on Decker was not just a one time thing. A forced demotion is pretty significant. Kirk wouldn't have taken that extreme option if he had intended on giving the Enterprise back to him after the emergency passed.

And then owing to his success against V'Ger and the 'disappearance' of Decker, Kirk probably had all the pieces and influence he needed to stay in command.

According to the movie it was supposed to be temporary. And the whole issue never made much sense to me: we’ve seen admirals in command in other occasions and I would be fine if Kirk got addressed as captain due to tradition, but he and decker actually changed uniforms according to their reduced ranks. Go figure.

 

[yotsuya]

Me neither (not necessarily, anyway, especially considering the huge gaps within the constitution class), but since you mentioned the registry...

Speculation...
As is most of what you wrote afterwards.

Once again: the Defiant in DS9 wasn’t doing tests anymore, yet it retained the NX prefix.

The Defiant was a special case. It was a failed experiment so it never initially went into production until Miles O'Brien fixed the design problems. It became famous and when it was destroyed it was replaced with another ship that was renamed Defiant and given the same registry. We don't know what the fate of the USS Constellation was. It's registry is lower than Excelsior, but the following vessels from that time period have higher registries than the lowest registry Excelsior Class (2800 vs. 2500). We know what happened when Excelsior was fully commissioned, but Defiant was fully commissioned while in service at DS9 and there evidently was no opportunity to repaint the registry so it became famous with the NX registry. But that the information we have indicates engine tests for Constellation, that means it was early in its NX trials.

And my comment about the Oberth Class/Grissom design was not speculation. The warp nacelles are of the same design as the prototype models of the Excelsior. It shares the design features of several of the models that Bill George built. So not speculation at all in that regards. Especially since some of those models appeared on screen.

And nearly everything on this topic is speculation. It is what we do around here. We speculate based on what we do have to answer questions. This entire topic is speculating about what happened post TOS and trying to wind through the timeline and various possibilities. I think the movies imply what happened and I think the official chronology is pretty accurate. Others have a problem with that. there is no proof one way or the other. Hence we speculate based on canon and behind the scenes information. Some people like to stick to TOS and TMP era sources on things like this, but I always include TNG. The last pieces of TOS are all tied to TNG. McCoy, Chekov, Scotty, Kirk, Sarek, and Spock's last timeline appearances are all in TNG (Kirk and Checkov in Generations and the others were all before that in the series). With it esdtablished that Picard captained the Stargazer for 22 years and Pike over 11, it is not unreasonable to see Kirk commanding the Enterprise (1701 & 1701-A combined) for 23 years.

Also, while the registry numbers are not sequential or exactly chronological, they do follow a time pattern. Late 23rd century ships have 4 digit registries over 2000. That goes up to 10000 range when the Ambassador class was around. The 40000 range about halfway from there to TNG, and 70000 late TNG/Voyager. You can estimate the age of the ship from the registry. Hood and Repulse in the first two seasons of TNG are from the first batch of Excelsior Class ships. And given that Starfleet has been been known to change registry numbers (1701-A and the second Defiant in DS9), not all the Excelsior Registry numbers may be accurate. 2 of the Excelsior Class have 2 registry numbers. But the numbers are 14000, 42000, 43000, 44000, 62000, and one at 72000. So quite a range. How that exactly compares to other ship classes isn't clear, but most of these would have been built or assigned new registries between the launch of the Amassador class and the Galaxy class. So the design is old, but these ships probably aren't that old. This fits with the Constitution Class. Class origins with NX-1700 (changed to NCC-1700 by 2266) before 2245. And new ships being built through at least 2285 and possibly later.

So that is over 40 years of starship production. We can argue that with the heavy use of the Excelsior model and stock footage of it that it was even more successful than the Constitution Class and was adaptable to long term use. But with newer ships being built at later dates, the technology on the class probably got upgraded as well as refits for older ships. With a minority as the Ent-B/Lakota sub-class. So we have 40 years for the Constitution Class and 70 or 80 years for the Excelsior Class. And also for the Miranda/Soyuz classes and Oberth Class. In reality the models got recycled and the Constitution Class refit model only ever served as the Enterprise. Though the destroyed Enterprise from Star Trek III did made some appearances so we know at least one ship was active enough to be at Wof 359. So Starfleet keeps old ships around and keeps usable ones in service. All because the production recycles the old models. They used those more than the ones they made for the series. At least until they CG'd them for DS9.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Is it too much of a stretch for Spock to be promoted to Captain of the Enterprise while Kirk goes back to his Admiral duties?

Why is this thread drifting to Deep Space Nine??? There is a section for the Defiant and anything else DS9.

 

[jackoverfull]

Is it too much of a stretch for Spock to be promoted to Captain of the Enterprise while Kirk goes back to his Admiral duties?

Works for me. He surely got promoted between the movies, so why not?

Why is this thread drifting to Deep Space Nine??? There is a section for the Defiant and anything else DS9

Just a similar situation.

yotsuya, sorry, can't say I'm convinced. There is no clear evidence about the original christening of the Constellation.

 

[BillJ]

Is it too much of a stretch for Spock to be promoted to Captain of the Enterprise while Kirk goes back to his Admiral duties?

He was the captain of the Enterprise. Simply seems the Enterprise duties changed. For all we know, she remained a testbed for new technologies for several years between TMP and TWOK before becoming a training ship. She may have never returned to be a deep space explorer/defense ship during those years.

Why is this thread drifting to Deep Space Nine??? There is a section for the Defiant and anything else DS9.

Thread drift happens sometimes, though I think the Defiant is relevant where the starship discussion is concerned.

 

[Pauln6]

Three.

Pedantic, thy name is Star Trek.

My bad, but dear God, what kind of organisation makes people spend 3 years cataloguing gaseous anomalies? And people say Discovery features an inappropriately dystopian version of Starfleet.

 

[BillJ]

My bad, but dear God, what kind of organisation makes people spend 3 years cataloguing gaseous anomalies?

That was probably their primary duty, but I imagine there was defense and exploration duties in the mix as well.

 

[Damian]

Well, I'll be the first to admit that my perceptions of the time period between TMP and TWOK are colored by the fact that I'm an avid Star Trek novel reader. There have been numerous novels that take place between the 2 films that show Kirk commanding the Enterprise for a number of years, perhaps not a specific 5YM, but at least for an indeterminate amount of time. Some of them were exploration related, but a number were mission specific. For instance the "New Earth" series where the Enterprise was sent to help colonists settle a new world in a dangerous sector of space. In that case Kirk's prior experience as chief of Starfleet Operations played a role in that mission. You might say the same about "Ex Machina". So a number of the post-TMP novels, you could argue, draw on Kirk's experience as an Admiral in his missions. They wouldn't necessarily be a 5YM redux. Many times he was sent on special missions in the novels owing to his experience.

And one reason I really liked "The Higher Frontier" is it depicts a plausible story for how Kirk was promoted again. He wasn't just being promoted to a desk job. He was promoted partly to become commandant of Starfleet Academy, and he found the idea of guiding and grooming young minds attractive. AND he would also be given special missions that someone with his experience would be perfect for. The Enterprise, under Captain Spock, became his attached ship. For a lot of the time it would serve as a training vessel. And when a mission called for it Kirk would use the Enterprise and select officers as needed to carry out that mission. Spock remained in command of the ship, Kirk of the mission (the novel also explained that not all of Kirk's command crew would be together at all times, Chekov obviously had left for the Reliant--which also makes an appearance in the novel, a rare pre-TWOK mission for the Reliant, and Kirk would call in certain of his officers depending on their skills and what was needed). And Kirk's promotion occurred in the novel in 2280, so about 7 years after TMP (give or take), and about 3 to 4 years pre-TWOK, give or take (so Kirk was admiral and Spock captain for at least a few years before TWOK in that scenario, sort of splitting the difference).

So my opinion of what happened is heavily influenced by that. In fact, I've never read a post-TMP novel that suggested otherwise. TWOK is almost always assumed to be years after TMP and Kirk commanded the ship for an indeterminate period of time after TMP, a few years at least.

Why is this thread drifting to Deep Space Nine??? There is a section for the Defiant and anything else DS9.

I have to admit, they lost me as well on that. But as BillJ noted that's not uncommon I suppose (I'm guilty of thread drift myself sometimes).

 

[STEPhon IT]

My bad, but dear God, what kind of organisation makes people spend 3 years cataloguing gaseous anomalies? And people say Discovery features an inappropriately dystopian version of Starfleet.

Lack of imagination. Probably the writer saw something from NGEO magazine at the time and went with that and moved on. It doesn't appear to be using a vessel that advanced, allegedly, at its full capacity. As for Admiral Kirk, I wonder if one of his duties were to assign ships to explore gaseous anomalies and other space phenomena. I sure the constitution line was ready to go, including the Enterprise, was ready to go out there and engage such mysteries of space.

 

[BillJ]

And one reason I really liked "The Higher Frontier" is it depicts a plausible story for how Kirk was promoted again. He wasn't just being promoted to a desk job. He was promoted partly to become commandant of Starfleet Academy, and he found the idea of guiding and grooming young minds attractive. AND he would also be given special missions that someone with his experience would be perfect for. The Enterprise, under Captain Spock, became his attached ship. For a lot of the time it would serve as a training vessel. And when a mission called for it Kirk would use the Enterprise and select officers as needed to carry out that mission. Spock remained in command of the ship, Kirk of the mission (the novel also explained that not all of Kirk's command crew would be together at all times, Chekov obviously had left for the Reliant--which also makes an appearance in the novel, a rare pre-TWOK mission for the Reliant, and Kirk would call in certain of his officers depending on their skills and what was needed). And Kirk's promotion occurred in the novel in 2280, so about 7 years after TMP (give or take), and about 3 to 4 years pre-TWOK, give or take (so Kirk was admiral and Spock captain for at least a few years before TWOK in that scenario, sort of splitting the difference).

Novels go in that direction because they seem to think it is more interesting than telling stories about Kirk behind a desk. For me, I see no reason Kirk didn't continue as Chief of Starfleet Operations right up to TWOK. And that "we'll give you special missions, just take this promotion" comes from "The Lost Years" series of books, IIRC.

 

[Pauln6]

Lack of imagination. Probably the writer saw something from NGEO magazine at the time and went with that and moved on. It doesn't appear to be using a vessel that advanced, allegedly, at its full capacity. As for Admiral Kirk, I wonder if one of his duties were to assign ships to explore gaseous anomalies and other space phenomena. I sure the constitution line was ready to go, including the Enterprise, was ready to go out there and engage such mysteries of space.

Admittedly, some gaseous anomalies try to eat you, and let the hijinks commence!

 

[BillJ]

As for Admiral Kirk, I wonder if one of his duties were to assign ships to explore gaseous anomalies and other space phenomena. I sure the constitution line was ready to go, including the Enterprise, was ready to go out there and engage such mysteries of space.

He had been back to captain for several years by the time the Excelsior would've launched its mission.