An apt description of the TrekBBS if ever I saw one.
Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread
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An apt description of the TrekBBS if ever I saw one.
Look at "Mudd's Women" and "Dagger of the Mind" -- the Federation is an enlightened society that favors the rehabilitation and reform of criminals over vindictive "punishment." It's not about taking revenge, it's about turning wrongdoers into productive members of society, directing their energies toward something constructive. Building a new civilization on an uninhabited world is a constructive way to redirect the Augments' intelligence, power, and drive, giving them a way to conquer a world without hurting any sentient beings.
And again, one more time, an uninhabited planet is an inescapable prison. It's not like they can build a warp engine out of bamboo and coconuts. They aren't going anywhere. So what is there to be afraid of? They're contained. They're no longer a threat. Any desire to "punish" them beyond that is pure, petty vengeance, and Trek's humanity has grown beyond such things.
That's not the question here. You can disagree with his choice, but my point is that it was within his legitimate purview as a frontier captain to make that choice, and that it's an absurd misreading to think that exiling Khan was some kind of criminal act that he'd get prosecuted for if he didn't cover it up. That is not who James Kirk was. He wouldn't have done that unless he was convinced it was a legitimate and defensible choice, and he wouldn't hide from taking responsibility for a controversial choice.
It has nothing to do with what "counts." How many times have I pointed out in this conversation that there are more important levels for talking about fiction than whether two pieces of continuity are compatible? What I'm saying is that it is easy to reconcile Xavier regaining the use of his legs and then losing them again. The comics figured out a way to do that more than once, which means that it is hardly impossible for you or me or someone else to imagine a way that the equivalent thing could've happened in the movie continuity. It doesn't have to be the exact same events depicted in the comics; I'm just talking about whether you can imagine the general concept of a version of Xavier regaining his mobility through some means and then losing it again. Hell, we actually saw exactly that in Days of Future Past, so I don't understand why fans have so much trouble imagining that it could've happened at some other point in his life in order to reconcile First Class with Origins: Wolverine. This is not about continuity, this is about using your imagination to see possibilities. And this should be a very easy possibility to see, because it has precedents in both the comics and the movies.
And what is wrong with that?? The point is that you have the power to use your own imagination to interpret and analyze fiction. All of this is imaginary to begin with, the product of its creators' imagination, and it's supposed to stimulate your own imagination.
My motto has always been "Don't complain, explain." If you see something in a story that doesn't make sense, don't just whine about it, use it as an opportunity to exercise your own creativity and come up with an explanation. Use your energies for something positive rather than negative.
The only alternative would be to send Khan and his Augments to a Federation prison which they would likely have broken free of in no time and continued their goal to conquer the Federation. And since Khan likely wouldn't have a vendetta against Kirk for a decade and a half's worth of hardship, meaning he'd go straight to conquest rather than waste time plotting and enacting revenge. Really, even with what happened in TWOK, what we saw is definitely the best case scenario for these events.
Who said that a conventional prison sentence would be "vindictive?" Also, would a society founded by would-be tyrants who saw conquering and controlling others be a viable investment for the future? It might work as a prison short-term, but had Ceti Alpha IV not explored and Kahn's little colony been left as was, would anything useful have come out of it or would we have just gotten another kingdom built on might makes right?
I think Wrath of Khan adequately answered that question.
Ignoring the fact that we haven't outgrown all that (per First Contact and plenty of DS9 shows), I must again ask what's petty about a conventional prison sentence, esp. as cases like Harry Mudd show, not everyone can be saved.
I guess my first question would be if this was a decision that Kirk would've been the final authority on, given that they were in the vicinity of a starbase. It's not like Kirk was out of range and couldn't reach anyone higher, like in "Arena" or "Balance of Terror." I have quite a bit of trouble imagining that Starfleet or Federation authorities would not have wanted to at least have a say in this important decision, if not make the final call themselves.
Also, you're making quite the straw man out of the scenario; I never assumed that Kirk would'v covered it up to escape punishment, but because he thought it was the right thing to do. Bending or breaking rules in order to do the right thing is well established in Kirk's character.
Quite a lot. Big difference between artistic differences in two works ostensibly designed to go together and an adaptation that draws on something for inspiration, though.
True, but the movies never did that and were pretty much written as if it had happened only once, even if the timeframe was inconsistent.
Maybe because there's no indication it did?
Yeah?
I guess to me it's a blatant example of "the people making the movies didn't care about matching things up and there's no real logical answer to it" (like how the two Emma Frosts are now assumed to be two different people) and rather then trying to explain the unexplainable, just take the movies as is and enjoy the ones that are good because they are good.
I'd also have to concede that stuff like this weird fan website insisting that all the discrepancies in the movies are because there were multiple time travelers mucking with history and everything with the Pixar Theory in general have kinda exhausted me on fan fixes that depend on unseen things that happened between stuff and have no real basis in anything seen onscreen.
Don't dwell on single words. The point is that TOS consistently shows an emphasis on reforming and rehabilitating criminals. Frontier development as a form of prisoner reform or constructive exile is a practice with a long history, one that -- I repeat -- the writers of "Space Seed" very obviously intended to remind us of by naming the ship Botany Bay. I really don't know why you find this concept so difficult to grasp.
Exactly why it makes no sense to think Kirk wouldn't have reported it to Starfleet. It's something that demands supervision and oversight.
The only reason Khan escaped is because the Reliant crew had no idea he was there. If they'd known there was a penal colony of Augments in the system, they wouldn't have gone in blind. That just reinforces my point that it should have been reported, that Starfleet should have known about it all along and the movie's premise that they didn't was utterly implausible. You can't to say the events of the movie prove me wrong when my whole point is that the events of the movie were badly conceived and illogical in the first place.
Couldn't he? Discovery has now revealed to us that the Harry Mudd of the 2250s was a ruthless, cold-blooded murderer. But by the 2260s, he's a harmless, goofy con artist. I'd call that a pretty successful reform, if not a complete one.
The point is not about this single situation, the point is about the modern fan myth that Kirk was a habitual rulebreaker. People don't understand that interpreting the law was part of a starship captain's responsibility, that he had the right to decide whether and how to apply the regulations.
This has never been about you. Remember how this all started: You said that the Star Trek Chronology "theorized that Kirk broke the rules letting Khan go, so he never reported it." I then replied that I considered the Chronology's interpretation to be ridiculous. That's what I've been addressing all along -- the Chronology's theory. I'm surprised you've forgotten that, given that you were the one who cited the Chronology in the first place.
Again, my whole point is that that's a false myth that's grown up among modern audiences and has no real basis except in The Search for Spock. If you actually watch the original episodes instead of just believing popular memes, you see that Kirk was actually a highly disciplined officer who followed orders diligently even when he didn't want to (e.g. when he acceded to Ferris's order to abandon the search for the Galileo). But since he was a starship captain, he was often the senior authority charged with interpreting the rules and thus had the right to interpret them flexibly -- not as a personal, maverick character trait, but as an intrinsic part of his authority as a frontier captain. Any other capable captain would've exercised similar flexibility, and indeed we saw other captains breaking the rules far more blatantly than Kirk. I'm sure I've already pointed this out.
Who cares?? Think for yourself!
Look, you don't have to believe Xavier regained and re-lost his ability to walk at some point. I just find it strange that some people out there can't even seem to conceive of it as a possibility, despite the fact that it actually happens in the movies and has happened multiple times in the comics. Whether you believe it or not, it shouldn't be so hard for people to imagine.
I don't even understand the continuity issue with Professor X's walking. Days of Future Past tells us that he took drugs that allowed him to walk. So, I just assume he was taking those drugs in a certain quantity up until after he met Jean Grey.
Well, the problem is that in DoFP, the drug that let him walk also suppressed his telepathy (which is why he had to stop using it), whereas The Last Stand and Origins: Wolverine showed him walking and having telepathy at the same time (though not chewing gum, as far as I could tell).
But like I said, it's easy enough to imagine that he could've found another temporary fix that didn't suppress his telepathy. It's not the huge, insoluble problem that many people act like it is. Certainly not compared to some of the other continuity issues in the films.
I can grasp the concept, I just question why it would be considered a good idea in this case with these specific prisoners. (Also, some stuff in TOS fell by the wayside. The infallible polygraph computer from "Wolf in the Fold" never appears again in stories set afterwards even in court stories where a device would be needed if possible -- e.g. when Riker was accused of murder in "A Matter of Perspective" [TNG] -- and mental illness was still a thing in the post-TOS materials despite the cure from "Whom Gods Destroy.")
I won't say that you're not wrong, but we know it didn't happen for unspecified reasons, leaving us to ask what the best possible answer is (something you and I clearly are not on common ground with).
They also thought it was a completely different planet, for that matter.
Well, even if could be inferred through common sense, the TV show itself makes no mention of the planet being intended for use as a prison planet and one could believe that Kirk was just going to leave Khan to his own devices and trust that there was no way off. Either way, there's nothing to indicate that there wasn't a report filed with Starfleet, just that the Reliant crew knew nothing about Khan and company.
As for the idea that Kirk let Khan go off the books, I double-checked the chronology. The theory was created by TNG/DS9 writer Ron Moore (who had no involvement with the movie) speculating on why it seemed that Starfleet didn't know about things. So, it's just a theory and assumes that Starfleet was in the dark, which, as I've stated quite a few times, was never actually established. It's plausible (given that there were followups to Ceti Alpha V and it would explain why the Reliant crew was in the dark), but we don't know.
Thing is, the only two answers to why Khan was such an unknown and had been abandoned seem to be variations of "Kirk reported it but it fell between the cracks for some reason" or "Kirk did it off the books and never reported it." I personally find the latter makes more sense; it fits Kirk's character as someone who would throw regulations and falsify reports if he saw it as the right thing to do and it's very hard to come up with a good explanation as to why Starfleet would misplace the report, given both the historical importance and dangerousness of the new prisoners. Mileage may vary.
It would give new meaning to the comments in "Mudd's Women" that his treatment was considered uncertain. That said, given what we know of Mudd's records from that episode, the DSC characterization makes no sense to me, so I don't really know what to do with it. (I'm also not sure I'd call him harmless, given his record includes trying to steal a Starfleet vessel and marooning the crew on a far off world and taking crewmembers hostage in his TAS appearance.)
But my larger point is, even if reformation is a goal and a possible one, it's not going to work for everyone, so there has to be conventional systems intact. I also question whether Khan was reformable or not in the first place.
Funny, I think I'm only slightly left of you on this subject, given that I agree that Kirk breaking the rules every day is not the case, but I think that he was not quite the boy scout that you do. Not sure what to do with that, but there it is.
Not quite. Whenever you mention the theory, you make some comment along the lines of "Kirk was never that irresponsible" or "he wouldn't've made a selfish decision like that." My indication of the theory is that "if Kirk broke the rules, he did it because he thought it was right, possibly thinking that he would be overruled on the matter and would rather ensure that what he thought was the right thing to do prevail." If you think that theory doesn't make sense, fine, but address that, not the argument I was never making.
And in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (falsified reports of Mitchell and Dehner's deaths out of respect for the people they had been), "The Doomsday Machine" (redacted details of Decker's death, and I have always wondered if his removing Decker from command as being the captain of the ship in question was his right to do or not), "Amok Time" (disobeyed direct orders for Spock), "A Private Little War" (revealed themselves to Tyree's people against specific orders and gave technology to Neural that they hadn't developed, possibly justified to counteract Klingon meddling -- unless the latter wasn't a Prime Directive violation, per that odd detail in "Angel One" [TNG]), "Metamorphosis" (falsified reports of Commissioner Hedford's death)
As indicated from above, I have and that's where I'm drawing my conclusions. Agreed that Kirk kept the rules more often then not, but the legend of the maverick does have more then a grain of truth to it.
Look, we do know that in the TOS era, the rules were more flexible and that crews had to be able to do that because of the wilder times and all that. In any event, unless the question is whether Kirk should have consulted with the starbase he was original heading to before sentencing Khan, I'm not really sure how important this all is, given that I don't think anyone is arguing that Kirk had latitude with his job in general.
Like I am with the "Kirk and rules" discussion?
Yeah?
Good idea, bad idea -- that's a judgment call. The question is whether it makes sense to believe that Kirk would lie to his superiors about making that call, as if he were somehow committing a crime by doing so. That is wrong. Making those choices is what the captains of frontier starships are supposed to do. If Kirk made a controversial choice, he would report it to Starfleet, stand by it, and defend it before an inquiry if necessary, because he was a man of integrity and professionalism. He would not lie about it and cravenly hide from the consequences.
Whaaaaaaaa???? You're splitting hairs over single words again. Obviously exile to Ceti Alpha V was their sentence for their crimes. And obviously you can't just walk off a planet. Come on.
Then we agree!!! My whole objection has been to the nonsensical idea that Kirk didn't report it. If you're not defending that idea, then what the hell are you arguing with me for?????
I'm done with this. This is a total waste of time.
Guys....guys. This was all explained in "To Reign in Hell". Why Khan wasn't checked on, how the Reliant mistook Ceti Alpha V for VI. It all makes perfect sense now
Funny to be reading about those comments. I'm doing a production order Star Trek rewatch and was up to "Space Seed" last night.
I have to admit, Harry Mudd's depiction in Discovery did bother me a bit. He's a dangerous criminal, and I could certainly see his actions causing someone's death in a passive sense. But I do have a hard time seeing him as a cold-blooded murderer as in directly killing someone himself. It's kind of hard to explain in type except to say I think he would be like 'ewe, I can't kill someone myself'
I think it's worth pointing out that in the second-last loop (which he thinks will be the last loop) and the last loop, Mudd doesn't kill anyone in such a blase fashion-- just Tyler when directly threatened. Which is to say, I think he is so blase about killing in the previous loops because it doesn't "count."
Interesting thought. And I agree. Given it was Mudd's intent to sell Disco and its crew to the Klingons, he'd want the crew alive, make the Klingons pay more for prisoners to interrogate. Plus handing Lorca back to the Klingons is probably in Mudd's eyes exactly what Lorca deserves. Killing him repeatedly in the other loops was just Mudd's way of having his cake and eating it too.
Not so. In the loop where Mudd killed Tyler in an incredibly agonizing and sadistic way, he believed the loops were already finished and that whoever he killed would stay dead. Tyler was only saved because Burnham forced him to make another loop. Mudd intended Tyler's brutal, staggeringly cruel death to be "real."
Besides, I can't believe someone who isn't already a hardened killer or a complete psychopath could shoot down a bunch of people in cold blood and feel nothing. Even if they believed it would be erased and "not count," they'd still feel it in the moment, and that's not something that can be casually done by someone who's never killed before. Too many writers of fiction treat killing as a far more casual and easy thing to do than it is in real life.
I can only cite the episodes when it was shown that he would not follow the rules for the greater good.
Guess my point was more that there's nothing in the episode that contradicts the "Kirk didn't report it" theory. As for the rest, I don't really know what I was thinking at the time.
Thing is, I don't think it is nonsensical, based on what we know from the TV shows. Don't really get why you're so hung up on it, esp. since it is just a theory and the other option is largely based on taking the episode in a vacuum rather then as a piece of a larger whole that it has now become.
Fair enough. IMHO, you have just been repeating yourself, so I don't really feel like I'm walking away with any great revelations on the subject, either.
Guys....guys. This was all explained in "To Reign in Hell". Why Khan wasn't checked on, how the Reliant mistook Ceti Alpha V for VI. It all makes perfect sense now
Was never able to finish the book. How did they explain Khan being an unknown factor?
The only reason Mudd killed Tyler that time was because Tyler made a move against him. It can be argued that this time around Mudd didn't actually intend to kill anyone unless provoked. Presumably he didn't kill Lorca this time around because he knew how valuable a prisoner he'd be to the Klingons.
It was far more than self-defense. He pointedly killed Tyler using a weapon described as incredibly vicious and agonizing. And as I recall, he took glee in doing so.
If you're going to correct me, it would be nice if what you said was actually a correction. (I take your point about Mudd's cruelty.)
^Sorry, I missed your parenthetical.
No way. For real. That was a great book. I don't throw out the word excellent on many books and I LOOOOVED that book. I read it in a few days.
On page 6 of the paperback it noted the details of Khan's exile was classified top secret by Starfleet Command. They did not want it to become common knowledge that a group of genetically enhanced supermen and women were there. And Captain Terrell was on a top secret mission regarding Genesis and Kirk laments that it wasn't the first time Starfleet's left hand didn't know what it's right hand was doing. Meaning the people at Starfleet that sent the Reliant to what they thought was Ceti Alpha VI didn't realize Khan and his group were on V.
And Cox even provides an answer for why Chekov and Kyle didn't speak up...that being that they were also sworn to secrecy and could only divulge on a need to know basis. As they thought they were on VI, and there was no expectation or any reason they would go to V there was no reason for them to break their silence. Of course until it was too late.
The first part I can buy pretty easily. I can see Starfleet Command classifying Khan's location, even his existence. He was extremely dangerous. He was left on a planet with no way off, but on a planet they could survive on. It was a planet on the frontier and they probably didn't want hostile powers (or even ambitious Admirals
) finding Khan. And government bureaucracies definitely have a history of not always sharing information--and not only for nefarious reasons, but sometimes paperwork just gets lost.The 2nd part about Chekov and Kyle is a bit harder to swallow. I would think probably one of them (or both) would have spoken up and said it was probably better to avoid the Ceti Alpha system all together. I think Greg Cox does the best he can on that front. After all, he has to come to the same end point, that the Reliant ended up encountering Khan and Terrell had no idea.
But in the novel Kirk did report his actions about Khan to his superiors. And it makes sense. He did nothing illegal. At worse if they disagreed with Kirk's final decision they could have sent a ship to pick Khan and his crew up.