He had no idea about an order and again asked her who's taking Genesis. Later he muses to Spock: "Give up Genesis, she said. What in god's name does that mean? Give it up to who?"
Is Kirk incompetent or just rusty?
- Thread starter Shikarnov
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He had no idea about an order and again asked her who's taking Genesis. Later he muses to Spock: "Give up Genesis, she said. What in god's name does that mean? Give it up to who?"
So, he's just extremely hard of hearing and/or senile, then? How's that an improvement?
Kirk's confusion about who Carol was referring to was because Kirk knew he never gave an order to take Genesis away.
However, the most logical suspect who could convince Carol that Kirk was trying to take Genesis away would be someone who Carol would recognize as a Starfleet officer.
Since logic is Spock's forte, failing to point that out is also a failure of Spock, if it is a failure of Kirk to recognize it.
However, the most logical suspect who could convince Carol that Kirk was trying to take Genesis away would be someone who Carol would recognize as a Starfleet officer.
Since logic is Spock's forte, failing to point that out is also a failure of Spock, if it is a failure of Kirk to recognize it.
Blah blah. The regulation could call for just about anything, the raising of shields being the second-least likely possibility right after "Shoot to kill, NOW!".
What a strange question. Spock just says it's not a good idea for a junior officer to quote regulations to a senior, a sentiment Kirk no doubt shares. It doesn't affect in the slightest whether Kirk will act on the quoted regulation or not. Indeed, from the disciplinary/educational/pissing contest angle, the best possible course of action for Kirk psychologically would be to stay mum, and then show Saavik that he is doing the right thing despite her doubts.
Because he didn't raise the shields. It in no way follows that the regulations would have called for him to raise them. He's chiding himself for not being his usual superior starship captain self, the one who can do much better than regulations require. If he thought he had violated regulations, why not admit to it outright?
And the Reliant was first silent and then messaged about an onboard difficulty. Quite comparable - a fellow vessel in some distress, the severity of which is completely unknown.
If anything, the Lantree and Brattain remained fully operational military threats, whereas the Reliant showed (faked!) signs of not being fully operational.
We saw no signs of an "aggressive posture", nor was the conclusion about them "lying" a foregone one. A starship displaying lifesigns is a threat to prepare against? What next, shoot first and ask questions later?
He got people killed, and was hated for that. Why not speak out against him? Yet even Scotty, who dragged the carcass of one of Kirk's victims to the bridge in an accusatory move, failed to pin charges on him.
So Marcus must be mistaken. There's no indication Kirk believed the first word about that accusation - not even though he knew what Genesis was about. Kirk implicitly trusted Starfleet with Genesis! So Starfleet could not be the enemy no matter what.
In TOS, Kirk and Starfleet always had an extremely fuzzy idea about where each starship was. Even in TNG, the whereabouts of the Yamato being completely unknown for months was an expected state of affairs. So "being the only one in the quadrant" is merely indicative of there being nobody else Starfleet could contact at the time; no doubt dozens of skippers would simply have better things to do than answer calls from HQ. That's how Kirk himself worked, after all.
Which is the very first time Kirk would have a reason to suspect that anything was amiss. And since he trusts Spock, he does begin to think there's something rotten in Denmark there and then.
So M-5 is taking over Genesis now? Only the piling up of assumptions like that would escalate the situation into one warranting the conclusion that the Reliant was about to attack. The individual datapoints amounted to nothing conclusive. And Kirk is not the sort to wear a tin hat.
Neither succeeded, and probably had no chance of succeeding, either.
That one was a flop, too. A threat that never amounted to anything.
Then there'd be nothing Kirk could do. If he were faced with gods, he'd know from long experience that Starfleet regulations would not be of any help.
To the contrary, he would just know how unlikely such an attempt was to succeed.
Timo Saloniemi
Ian Keldon
Fleet Captain
In context it is perfectly clear to anyone not trying to warp the facts to fit strange theories about Starfleet what the regulation referred to.
The Lantree and the Brattain were both emitting automatic distress signals, if memory serves. Reliant was in real time "live" communication, such as it was.
You have that exactly inverted.
In a situation where they are acting oddly (refusing to communicate) and given that Kirk KNOWS that someone is trying to take Genesis against Dr Marcus' will, yes, Reliant WAS a potential threat, and Kirk frakked up by not taking a defensive posture.
Again, your...unique...perspective is interfering with your assessment. Scotty wasn't "accusing" anyone of ANYthing. He was clearly in a state of shock at the time, and was trying to get Peter to Sickbay and wound up on the Bridge. IIRC, the novelization addresses how that happened, but it's been years since I've read it.
There was enough doubt in his mind about the situation that he got orders cut to go investigate, if for no other reason than the signal was being jammed. If he didn't think there was a problem, he would have simply waited to see in Uhura could clear the channels.
Gee, Timo...the director of a Top Secret government project calls you in a panic asking you about someone having orders to seize the research, then is cut off by jamming...absolutely no reason to think something might be wrong, especially when another starship (not supposed to be in the area) shows up unexpectedly, and is acting strangely...
Oh they added up to something conclusive. It was absolutely clear that something strange was going on.
Let's see, the Kelvans, the Scalosians, the Mudd Androids, Khan's people...nope...no one ever succeeds in taking over a starship...nope...doesn't happen...
You can't go the "This sounds familiar, so it must be true, and everything else must be strange and thus false" route. Starfleet regulations aren't something you can predict by looking out of the window - General Order Seven is proof enough already, never mind General Order One.
In Star Trek, shields are not raised in mystery encounters, for whatever reason. Picard sometimes comes up with an explanation, Kirk never does, but the reason must exist nevertheless. Any regulation at odds with these observed facts would be an aberration, the invention of which would require you to come up with an explicit explanation.
No, you do. As far as our heroes could tell, the two TNG ships were in fighting trim, crew or no crew. The ST2 ship was damaged, crew or no crew. (Although both sets of sensor readings could be false, if something sinister indeed was going on. In which case the readings about lifeforms could be false, too.)
So, you do drop the odd insistence that the other ship had an "aggressive posture"?
The other ship appeared to be in distress. Carol Marcus was in distress. If the Reliant is a threat and Marcus is a victim, then by all means, shoot Terrell's ship to bits. But the known facts would equally well support the idea that Marcus the WMD-smith is the threat and Reliant the victim - and would be overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that both are victims here.
...And if you believe that, I've got a super secret unaired copy of Roddenberry's first first ST pilot to sell you.
Don't you realize how totally ridiculous your idea sounds? Aims for sickbay, ends up in bridge? Only a Q prank would result in such an absurdity, and Q wasn't a character in this movie.
If he thought Starfleet were taking Genesis from Marcus, that's what he would have done: he would have waited for the other good guys to sort it out. But the very fact that he goes to investigate suggests he doesn't believe it's an issue involving Starfleet at all.
Gee, Timo...the director of a Top Secret government project calls you in a panic asking you about someone having orders to seize the research, then is cut off by jamming...absolutely no reason to think something might be wrong, especially when another starship (not supposed to be in the area) shows up unexpectedly, and is acting strangely...
Never heard of "B plot"?
There's nothing specific to tie Regula and Reliant together, unless of course Kirk is aware of the apparently secret orders attaching the starship to the research project. And he never suggests anything of the sort - he knows about Genesis, but he isn't actively managing it, nor is he in any sort of regular communication with Carol.
Which means Starfleet ships ought to start shooting at each other? Kirk does not wear a tin hat, I thought that was clear already... Random datapoints forming a pattern in a sick mind are proof of nothing else than the sickness of the mind.
No one has ever succeeded in using a starship against another starship. Now, "nothing" would be subject to that one exception, M-5. But if Kirk counts that in his top five theories for what is going on, it's time for him to retire for good.
Timo Saloniemi
honestly, i believe kirk not raising the shields had to do with ego. maybe he was just about to then savik quoted regulation, spock cut her off and then his ego kicked in. "if i raise shields now, after that conversation, i look like im taking orders from a cadet".
True enough. 
There would have been quite a range of options open to Kirk, it seems. He could have called for yellow or red alert, with or without raising of shields or arming of weapons, as TOS never clearly associates either of the alert states with any specific actions. He could have tried out something, anything, to see how the Reliant would react (say, a course change, or a "Stand by, we're beaming a rescue team over in ten seconds" message). "Waiting and seeing" was a logical thing to do, but it wasn't necessarily a Kirk thing to do...
On the other hand, sitting calmly and doing nothing while the rest of the bridge is on the verge of panic is a Kirk trademark from TOS, too. And the psychological support offered by that calmness might have been needed here more than ever, with plenty of inexperienced people around. Perhaps Kirk wasn't so much being arrogant as mistakenly staying at his "instructor mode" in a situation going well beyond the training cruise specs?
Timo Saloniemi
There would have been quite a range of options open to Kirk, it seems. He could have called for yellow or red alert, with or without raising of shields or arming of weapons, as TOS never clearly associates either of the alert states with any specific actions. He could have tried out something, anything, to see how the Reliant would react (say, a course change, or a "Stand by, we're beaming a rescue team over in ten seconds" message). "Waiting and seeing" was a logical thing to do, but it wasn't necessarily a Kirk thing to do...
On the other hand, sitting calmly and doing nothing while the rest of the bridge is on the verge of panic is a Kirk trademark from TOS, too. And the psychological support offered by that calmness might have been needed here more than ever, with plenty of inexperienced people around. Perhaps Kirk wasn't so much being arrogant as mistakenly staying at his "instructor mode" in a situation going well beyond the training cruise specs?
Timo Saloniemi
Look, you can argue the "in universe" logic all you want. In the real world, the dramatic intent of the scene was to show that Kirk is supposed to raise shields, he doesn't, and he gets his rear handed to him, all in an effort to convey that Kirk was not himself as a build up for him being back to himself by the end of the film.
Hello All, new BBS Cadet here.
Along the lines of this thread (forgive me if it's been covered before!) I had a query.
On Reliant, Joachim was able to detect that the Enterprise had not raised shields, and on Enterprise, Spock picked up the Reliant's shields and phaser lock instantly.
So how did Reliant not detect that Sulu had locked phasers?
Along the lines of this thread (forgive me if it's been covered before!) I had a query.
On Reliant, Joachim was able to detect that the Enterprise had not raised shields, and on Enterprise, Spock picked up the Reliant's shields and phaser lock instantly.
So how did Reliant not detect that Sulu had locked phasers?
Ian Keldon
Fleet Captain
So Saavik is going to cite some totally irrelevant regulation that does not pertain to the situation? Why?
Kirk even acknowledges that the regulation required him to assume a defensive posture when he tells her 'Keep right on quoting regulations'. He is acknowledging that she was right and he screwed up by not immediately raising shields.
Sorry, no. Ships raise shields in all sorts of suspicious situations. Examples numerous.
Ships in "fighting trim" do not send out distress signals. Reliant was "running silent", NOT sending out a distress signal, and had no obvious signs of damage.
It certainly had a suspicious posture, given the situation. It was out of it's patrol area (they didn't expect it to be there), it was near a security research station that sent a distress signal indicating that someone from the Federation was trying to seize their research (as indicated by Marcus), and it wasn't responding to hails.
Aaaaannnd there you go again. Marcus is NOT a "WMD-smith", and there was at that point no reason to shoot at Reliant, but every reason to be cautious.
The turbolifts were not working properly due to battle damage. This is acknowledged by Spock explicitly when Kirk and party return to the ship as they had been taken off line for repairs ("They're inoperative below C deck...")
1) Starfleet is not always the "good guys", as we well know.
2) He has every reason to suspect that someone with the backing of the Federation/Starfleet IS involved, given Marcus' deistress signal.
You're right, there is nothing as far as we know to justify Reliant being near a security research zone. That's why her presence was suspicious. She wasn't supposed to be there.
No one, and I mean no one is suggesting he should have simply started shooting. But prudence (and regulations) dictated that he be cautious and assume an enhanced defensive posture.
Yes, they are, and your theory is prime evidence of that.
Which does not mean that no one has ever taken over a starship. "Hiding in the uniform of the 'enemy'" is the oldest trick in the book.
Ian Keldon
Fleet Captain
True enough.
There would have been quite a range of options open to Kirk, it seems. He could have called for yellow or red alert, with or without raising of shields or arming of weapons, as TOS never clearly associates either of the alert states with any specific actions.
Wrong yet again, Timo.
From "A Taste of Armageddon"
see also
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Yellow_alert
And before you pull the "it's just a wikki" card. MA is meticulously documented from primary source materials and has a strict canon policy, so it's information is reliable.
Or perhaps it is what it is shown to be...Kirk not listening to his instincts, or his officers, and "getting caught with his britches down".
Probably weren't paying attention. None of Khan's people were experienced starship officers, and they made a rookie mistake.
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Again, raising shields is not a provocative or aggressive posture in this situation. This wasn't an unknown entity that might interpret it wrongly, it's a starfleet ship. There's NO downside to raising them, and Timo has not pointed out what it would be, except to say that Kirk would be "paranoid" or "wearing a tinfoil hat" to do so.
Except others have already pointed out the reasons for suspicion and caution at that point due to Reliant's location and Carol Marcus' message.
Starfleet's either military or pretty close to it, and caution is the word in those organizations, and precautionary and defensive measures are commonly taken at even the suggestion of a possible threat. There's just no good reason for Kirk to not raise shields except that the plot needs him to.
It almost would have worked better had the movie not drawn so much attention to Kirk not raising shields. It's almost like the movie is pointing out in neon lights that "Kirk is doing something stupid here, but bear with us."
Except others have already pointed out the reasons for suspicion and caution at that point due to Reliant's location and Carol Marcus' message.
Starfleet's either military or pretty close to it, and caution is the word in those organizations, and precautionary and defensive measures are commonly taken at even the suggestion of a possible threat. There's just no good reason for Kirk to not raise shields except that the plot needs him to.
It almost would have worked better had the movie not drawn so much attention to Kirk not raising shields. It's almost like the movie is pointing out in neon lights that "Kirk is doing something stupid here, but bear with us."
Ian Keldon
Fleet Captain
An analagous situation would be a US navy ship in the Straits of Hormuz during the 80s tanker escorting operation first receiving a distress call from a tanker, then encountering an unknown ship near a secure zone that refuses to make appropriate signal contact and continued to approach.
Joachim probably wasn't paying attention and as Spock pointed out, Kahn was inexperienced. That's probably true of all his crew. As far as Kahn and his crew were concerned, they just easily handed Kirk his ass. Nothing left to do then but claim the trophy.
In STV we see the sensors detect a Klingon BoP and start flashing an alert to one of the bridge screens, but everyone was too busy marveling at the god planet, so I guess it's not as if an experienced bridge crew does much better.
Regarding Kirk's actions, I think he was rusty (and even then, only a little). I recently watched U571 and many of the same trusts assumed by Kirk seem to be the same as those assumed by the U571 crew as the Americans try to board her by raft and later by the German destroyer, before Matthew McConaughey blows up the ship's radio tower. I'm not sure if this is true of real life navies or only Hollywood, but I think it's only natural to let one's guard down a bit if the other ship (or whatever) is perceived to be on your side.
In addition to the above, in theory, there might be passive and active locks, only the latter of which can be detected - and the fact that Sulu's beam wanders all across the hull of the Reliant before hitting that important-looking blue dome might be sign of the former being used, with inferior results.
...Which is one of the many cases that prove that mere "Yellow alert" or "Red alert" tells the crew nothing about whether to raise shields or not. Rather, a top officer has to provide additional information, just as in that episode.
Because I don't know what it would be. But that's neither here nor there, because clearly the downside exists regardless of what I know or don't know. Otherwise, shields would be regularly raised as a precaution, and indeed held up as a rule unless there was a good reason to drop them.
It's possible to speculate till the cows fly home, of course. Possibly shields seriously hinder sensors. Possibly holding up the shields allows the enemy to analyze them. Possibly holding up shields is really hard work, and every second spent holding them up before battle is away from holding them up in battle. Hard to tell. But the fact remains that Kirk generally avoids raising shields, and his ST2 behavior is simply consistent with his earlier and later behavior. Or that of Pike in the new movie, say.
That, and consistency with the rest of Star Trek. Which of course derives from the fact that going in without shields is good for drama as a thing, because it then allows for the raising of the shields to indicate further heightening of tensions. And it avoids the pitfall of keeping shields up all the time, because if that were indicated to be possible, then our heroes would always be invulnerable, which would be disastrous for drama.
...An "unknown" US Navy ship, that is. Readily found in the list of US Navy ships resting on the skipper's table. And flying an "unknown" US flag at that.
Yeah, it's definitely possible that Iranians had captured a Spruance when the skipper wasn't looking. But not very likely.
Modern naval practices really aren't good analogies for all this Horatio Hornblower stuff that is going on in Trek... In the environment of the 19th century, a fighting frigate might indeed fall in pirate hands with our hero skipper being none the wiser. And apparently it again becomes possible in the 23rd century. But the audience would understand that it isn't an everyday occurrence in the future, because it's so absurdly unlikely in the present - so the writers would be going up a steep and high hill in trying to make it look as if our heroes were prepared for such an occurrence.
That's a nice scifi flick, yes. Nothing to do with WWII technology or tactics, though!
The threats encountered by the heroes in that movie are far less probable than those faced by Kirk in ST2. Submarines in WWII could not have sunk other submarines with torpedoes. German fighters could not have attacked surfaced submarines in the Atlantic. German destroyers could not have operated in the Atlantic. And so forth. None of this matters if the movie is treated as its own fictional universe, though, unrelated to WWII. Similarly, ST2 can be treated as existing in vacuum, in which case independent, "real-world" reasoning can be used to condemn or clear Kirk. But in the Trek context, different rules apply...
Timo Saloniemi
In addition to the above, in theory, there might be passive and active locks, only the latter of which can be detected - and the fact that Sulu's beam wanders all across the hull of the Reliant before hitting that important-looking blue dome might be sign of the former being used, with inferior results.
...Which is one of the many cases that prove that mere "Yellow alert" or "Red alert" tells the crew nothing about whether to raise shields or not. Rather, a top officer has to provide additional information, just as in that episode.
Because I don't know what it would be. But that's neither here nor there, because clearly the downside exists regardless of what I know or don't know. Otherwise, shields would be regularly raised as a precaution, and indeed held up as a rule unless there was a good reason to drop them.
It's possible to speculate till the cows fly home, of course. Possibly shields seriously hinder sensors. Possibly holding up the shields allows the enemy to analyze them. Possibly holding up shields is really hard work, and every second spent holding them up before battle is away from holding them up in battle. Hard to tell. But the fact remains that Kirk generally avoids raising shields, and his ST2 behavior is simply consistent with his earlier and later behavior. Or that of Pike in the new movie, say.
That, and consistency with the rest of Star Trek. Which of course derives from the fact that going in without shields is good for drama as a thing, because it then allows for the raising of the shields to indicate further heightening of tensions. And it avoids the pitfall of keeping shields up all the time, because if that were indicated to be possible, then our heroes would always be invulnerable, which would be disastrous for drama.
...An "unknown" US Navy ship, that is. Readily found in the list of US Navy ships resting on the skipper's table. And flying an "unknown" US flag at that.
Yeah, it's definitely possible that Iranians had captured a Spruance when the skipper wasn't looking. But not very likely.
Modern naval practices really aren't good analogies for all this Horatio Hornblower stuff that is going on in Trek... In the environment of the 19th century, a fighting frigate might indeed fall in pirate hands with our hero skipper being none the wiser. And apparently it again becomes possible in the 23rd century. But the audience would understand that it isn't an everyday occurrence in the future, because it's so absurdly unlikely in the present - so the writers would be going up a steep and high hill in trying to make it look as if our heroes were prepared for such an occurrence.
That's a nice scifi flick, yes. Nothing to do with WWII technology or tactics, though!
The threats encountered by the heroes in that movie are far less probable than those faced by Kirk in ST2. Submarines in WWII could not have sunk other submarines with torpedoes. German fighters could not have attacked surfaced submarines in the Atlantic. German destroyers could not have operated in the Atlantic. And so forth. None of this matters if the movie is treated as its own fictional universe, though, unrelated to WWII. Similarly, ST2 can be treated as existing in vacuum, in which case independent, "real-world" reasoning can be used to condemn or clear Kirk. But in the Trek context, different rules apply...
Timo Saloniemi
If a US ship was found by itself away from a deployed battle group or fleet , where it wasn't supposed to be, and was heading straight towards another Navy ship and was not responding to communications, the fact that it was "flying a US flag" wouldn't make the slightest difference.
And your response on the shields thing is that there's probably some kind of never-mentioned, never-seen drawback to using them that would make raising them for five minutes until a threat was either confirmed or resolved totally unacceptable.
Yeah, you're not grasping at straws or anything...
That scenario would have nothing to do with the one you posited, though. Please try to stick to what you start.
See if I care. Shields are not raised "just in case" in Trek - it's not my duty to explain why this undeniable if mysterious fact might be. If anything, it's yours.
Timo Saloniemi
Er, I didn't post the "straights of Hormuz" scenario. Try to pay attention to who posts what.
And no, you don't get to shift the burden of proof on your say so.
