General Order 4 and 24

[trekfan_1]

Has there been any inclings on what General 4 is? All we know ( I believe ) is that it carries the Death Penalty. Did any of the novels explore it? Is it visting Talos 4 ? Which also carries the Death penalty but not actually spoken to be one and the same as General order 4 if im not mistaken..

I'm guessing this order has been unofficially retconned away/ignored.

As for General order 24 ( Justifiable Genocide) my head cannon speculates that it's a bluff order. A way to give Starfleet some optic teeth against its enemies. Officially recognized as an order to the public and Starfleet but senior officers know it is actually a bluff. Possibly never been carried out. And possibley the order may have been discontinued once the bluff was made aware to all. Just my own speculation .

But more likely, just like General order 4, it's essentially been retconned away/ignored. Perhaps these orders were simply decommissioned after TOS but wouldn't be surprised if it's ignored/doesn't exist for the SNW era or before.

 

[fireproof78]

Has there been any inclings on what General 4 is? All we know ( I believe ) is that it carries the Death Penalty.

Transcript:
MCCOY: That's enough. We know what was said.
KIRK: Enough to convict you of conspiracy with mutineers. And you're so charged. The sentence, death. Mister Lemli.
CHEKOV: Starfleet expressly forbids the death penalty.
KIRK: All my senior officers turning against me?
SULU: The death penalty is forbidden. There's only one exception.
CHEKOV: General Order Four. It has not been violated by any officer on the Enterprise.

~Turnabout Intruder

As for General order 24 ( Justifiable Genocide) my head cannon speculates that it's a bluff order. A way to give Starfleet some optic teeth against its enemies. Officially recognized as an order to the public and Starfleet but senior officers know it is actually a bluff. Possibly never been carried out. And possibley the order may have been discontinued once the bluff was made aware to all. Just my own speculation .

I imagine it's a real order but one only to be used in extreme cases.

 

[The Wormhole]

I suspect when writing Turnabout Intruder they made a mistake and were referring to General Order 7, which was prior then the Federation's only death penalty.

 

[Maurice]

I always assumed General Order 24 is basically what the Enterprise was going to do to Deneva to stop the flying fake vomit from getting off-planet.

 

[Farscape One]

I always assumed General Order 24 is basically what the Enterprise was going to do to Deneva to stop the flying fake vomit from getting off-planet.

There are situations when General Order 24 would be a necessary thing to do. That's a perfect example of a reason, had they not found the weakness of the braincakes.

A scenario like that might actually have happened in the past, prompting the creation of the Order in the first place. Or just Starfleet coming up with various scenarios and solutions and that being one of them, just so it's in the books.

 

[Starflight]

"A Taste of Armageddon" works a lot better IMO if you read GO24 as a bluff Kirk invented on the spot, playing into Anan 7's perception of him as a barbarian.

Officially recognized as an order to the public and Starfleet but senior officers know it is actually a bluff. Possibly never been carried out. And possibley the order may have been discontinued once the bluff was made aware to all. Just my own speculation .

I like this idea! It might even be that "General Order 24" is a pre-arranged code for "I've been captured, do something scary to give me leverage".

 

[XCV330]

24 could be a relic from the Romulan War.. if they do this again Starfleet might have been willing to wipe out their homeworld.. not that anything like that actually happened eventually.. anyway, Starfleet command was willing do destroy Kronos as well, but they didn't evoke General Order 24 at the time.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I could have sworn that FJS's Star Fleet Technical Manual included a list of General Orders. I was mistaken. Maybe it's in some one-shot 'zine that I have lying around. But I definitely recall reading non-canon text of General Order 24; in that version, it came with some rather explicit guidelines, and warnings about the consequences of misuse.

And yes, as @The Wormhole said, the line in "Turnabout Intruder" was almost certainly a typo in the script.

 

[Shawnster]

"A Taste of Armageddon" works a lot better IMO if you read GO24 as a bluff Kirk invented on the spot, playing into Anan 7's perception of him as a barbarian.

I like this idea! It might even be that "General Order 24" is a pre-arranged code for "I've been captured, do something scary to give me leverage".

I've seen this suggested before. This amount of mental gymnastics isn't supported by the episode. In fact, the idea this is a bluff makes Anon 7's revulsion at the idea of such an order a sad joke. He is clearly disgusted by the idea.

No, for this idea to work within the story telling narrative, Kirk would nerd to reveal to Anon 7 and the viewers that it was a bluff.

 

[Starflight]

I assume the writers' intent is that it's real, but the story works better for me if it's a bluff:

Anan considers Kirk a barbarian and tells him that both of them are inescapably biologically hardwired to be killers. Kirk leans into this perception and indicates that he really is a psychotic murderer at heart, as Anan suspects, and will annihilate the planet's cities to save himself.

After destroying the computer, Kirk then insists to Anan that just because we're descended from predators, we don't have to be savages, because we have the capacity to choose a better path. If GO24 was a lie, it backs up his point - of course the Federation don't have a policy of planetary genocide, and of course Kirk's crew wouldn't mindlessly obey it, because the Federation are living proof of the fact that Anan is wrong about biological determinism.

If it is real - and yes, I think the writers intend it to be real - it undercuts Kirk's point and reinforces Anan's, and makes Kirk's otherwise-beautiful speech look a bit hollow. It also makes Scotty look... well, you know.

 

[fireproof78]

Kirk's speech is all about choices.

 

[Maurice]

Per Deneva—there are reasons for having a "glass the planet" order.

Kirk rightly bet that Anan 7, who was so terrified of actual warfare, would blink, even if he couldn't destroy the war computers. When the choices are…

1. Let Kirk and his party go and face potential actual war with Vendikar
2. Guaranteed annihilation

…what other decision could a "civilized" man like Anan make?

Anyway, if it was a bluff, Uhura sure wasn't aware of it, given the way she snapped around and looked at Scotty when he told Anan what was going to happen.

There's also this dialog from the script that didn't make the aired episode:

EXT. ENTERPRISE - ORBITING SHOT - ESTABLISHING

INT. BRIDGE
Scott is sitting silently in the command seat. McCoy stands
by, staring sympathetically at him. There is a long moment
of silence.

McCOY​

Are you going to do it?​

SCOTT​

You heard the captain. The order​

was clear.​

​

McCOY​

They'll die down there.​

​

SCOTT​

Blast you, McCoy! Don't you​

think I know that?​

McCoy stares at him, shakes his head, turns away and stands
there silently, staring at nothing.

The bridge is totally silent.

That sure doesn't read as a bluff.

 

[Starflight]

Per Deneva—there are reasons for having a "glass the planet" order.

I don't think it's portrayed necessarily as a "glass the planet" order:

SCOTT: All cities and installations on Eminiar Seven have been located, identified, and fed into our fire control system.

If it was a Deneva situation, you wouldn't only target densely-populated urban centres and "installations" - that might not be effective in a situation where sterilising an entire planet is deemed necessary due to some kind of infection. What Scotty's planning to do is more like genocidal terrorism, the kind of which it's impossible to imagine a "necessary" justification for.

I'm not disagreeing that the writer intends it to be real and is establishing that the Federation does have a "firebomb every city on the planet" order which people like Scotty will follow without protest, I just find the episode more satisfying if it's a bluff - Kirk scaring Anan with the spectre of what Anan thinks is the inevitable brutality inescapable for all humanoid species, and then pulling the rug from under him by revealing that, no, the Federation are not actually mass murderers, and the Eminians don't need to be either.

To offer another headcanon rationalisation (again, for fun, and against the writers' express intentions): GO24 is real and is intended for Deneba-type situations, but Kirk's invocation of it here is obviously illegal and inapplicable (hence Uhura's "wtf" look), which lets the crew realise that it's a gambit and that they should play along.

 

[Pauln6]

By the book. When communications are being monitored, no uncoded exchanges on an open channel. General Order 24 states: When a commanding officer makes up a general order on the spot, junior officers shall behave as if said order is real on any monitored open channel.

 

[Pauln6]

Per Deneva—there are reasons for having a "glass the planet" order.

Kirk rightly bet that Anan 7, who was so terrified of actual warfare, would blink, even if he couldn't destroy the war computers. When the choices are…

1. Let Kirk and his party go and face potential actual war with Vendikar
2. Guaranteed annihilation

…what other decision could a "civilized" man like Anan make?

Anyway, if it was a bluff, Uhura sure wasn't aware of it, given the way she snapped around and looked at Scotty when he told Anan what was going to happen.

There's also this dialog from the script that didn't make the aired episode:


That sure doesn't read as a bluff.

It certainly makes you sympathise more with Klingon concerns about Federation expansion.