Norrin Radd
Vice Admiral
I'm just saying that it makes no more or less sense than the end of Star Trek IV, at least to my eyes.
Kirk's jump in rank makes sense
- Thread starter awesomeocalypse
- Start date
I'm just saying that it makes no more or less sense than the end of Star Trek IV, at least to my eyes.
Hold it. Who's saying that rank "is meaningless and has no function"? Last I checked the issue was that Kirk ends up with too much rank, not that the rank he ends up with is meaningless.
And really, this is a proxy for another argument. Does Kirk need more experience to be commander of the Enterprise? If so, why, and what sort of experience?
Re: Kirk's jump in rank makes no sense
Really? Got a link to back that up?
'Cause I must have missed the scene where it was established that cadets don't regularly take shipboard positions as a part of their schooling. The notion that Kirk hadn't served on any ships during his 3 years at the Academy is nothing more than an assumption on your part. Logically, an Academy cadet would be required to log a great many hours in space, throughout their schooling.
For all we know Kirk spent a whole semester serving aboard the Farragut under Capt Garrovick, where he got scads of experience, and as a result may have even already received some sort of provisional commission that was to become official upon his graduation. (Say being made a provisional Lieutenant for taking command of the ship, and getting it home safely, after more than a third of the crew was wiped out by that dikironium cloud creature.)
Really? Got a link to back that up?
'Cause I must have missed the scene where it was established that cadets don't regularly take shipboard positions as a part of their schooling. The notion that Kirk hadn't served on any ships during his 3 years at the Academy is nothing more than an assumption on your part. Logically, an Academy cadet would be required to log a great many hours in space, throughout their schooling.
For all we know Kirk spent a whole semester serving aboard the Farragut under Capt Garrovick, where he got scads of experience, and as a result may have even already received some sort of provisional commission that was to become official upon his graduation. (Say being made a provisional Lieutenant for taking command of the ship, and getting it home safely, after more than a third of the crew was wiped out by that dikironium cloud creature.)
Last edited:
Re: Kirk's jump in rank makes no sense
I agree, I think a lot of people can't keep a open mind about stuff like this. just because they didn't see it on the big screen it didn't happen.
They need the documentary version.
I agree, I think a lot of people can't keep a open mind about stuff like this. just because they didn't see it on the big screen it didn't happen.
They need the documentary version.
His jump in rank doesn't "make sense". Realistically, I would have expected a promotion to lieutenant, thus skipping the final academy year and the rank of ensign. Then again, this wasn't a realistic movie... nor was this supposed to be one.
We've only seen about 15 minutes of the three years that Kirk spent in training. And even though we didn't actually get to witness every detail of his education, or overhear it discussed in excruciating detail, we have to accept that he did more than schmooze with Bones, boff babes, and cheat on tests.
Clearly, he knew what he was doing on the orbital skydive on the Narada drilling platform, even though this skill wasn't revealed beforehand. No one talked about it prior to the scene, and we never saw him train for it, however we'd have to be complete idiots to assume that he was a total novice, or that Pike would assign such a crucial task to someone who utterly lacked the experience to actually have some chance of accomplish the mission objectives.
Likewise, while we didn't see Kirk practicing on the Academy firing range, I gotta figure that the attack on the Narada drilling platform probably wasn't the first time he'd ever seen, held, or fired a phaser, even though this experience wasn't revealed previously, nor even hinted at.
Anyone who maintains that Kirk had no experience, simply because his every experience over three years wasn't explicitly depicted on screen, or telegraphed in advance through dialog, has expectations that aren't at all realistic, or even remotely sane.
Clearly, he knew what he was doing on the orbital skydive on the Narada drilling platform, even though this skill wasn't revealed beforehand. No one talked about it prior to the scene, and we never saw him train for it, however we'd have to be complete idiots to assume that he was a total novice, or that Pike would assign such a crucial task to someone who utterly lacked the experience to actually have some chance of accomplish the mission objectives.
Likewise, while we didn't see Kirk practicing on the Academy firing range, I gotta figure that the attack on the Narada drilling platform probably wasn't the first time he'd ever seen, held, or fired a phaser, even though this experience wasn't revealed previously, nor even hinted at.
Anyone who maintains that Kirk had no experience, simply because his every experience over three years wasn't explicitly depicted on screen, or telegraphed in advance through dialog, has expectations that aren't at all realistic, or even remotely sane.
Last edited:
Kirk was already a lieutenant- or would have been if his commissioning hadn't been tied up by the academic suspension.
Huh, where does that come from?
Plus, Kirk graduated as a Lieutenant in TOS, so he might have done that here as well. AFAIK, in this film, the only reason he *hasn't* graduated is because he's on suspension from the Kobayashi Maru incident.
As for nuKirk's experience, or lack thereof: I'm sure he did take a cadet cruise and thus gained *some* experience, but nowhere near enough to be a full Captain. It would take YEARS of starship duty to qualify for that. Even if Kirk fast-tracked through the Academy in only three years, there's no way he could have gotten enough experience to be Captain in only that time. What does he know about running a ship? How to be responsible for an entire crew?
As for nuKirk's experience, or lack thereof: I'm sure he did take a cadet cruise and thus gained *some* experience, but nowhere near enough to be a full Captain. It would take YEARS of starship duty to qualify for that. Even if Kirk fast-tracked through the Academy in only three years, there's no way he could have gotten enough experience to be Captain in only that time. What does he know about running a ship? How to be responsible for an entire crew?
I'm just gonna paraphrase my earlier posts here...
We only saw a tiny fraction of a percent of Kirk's years as a cadet. We cannot say with any certainty just how much ship-board/command experience he may, or may not have.
However... It seems only logical that all cadets would be required to log a certain number of space hours per term, as a part of their overall training. It therefore is entirely possible that Kirk has far more shipboard and/or command experience than you imagine, or which explicitly appeared on-screen.
And simply because he possesses those seemingly reckless qualities that Pike so admires, Kirk probably finds himself in situations that most cadets never encounter, and as such he is presented with more opportunities to shine than his fellow cadets ever get. His "jump right in" style means that he's more likely to take ship-board assignments where the potential for crisis is high, and which most of his fellow classmates tend to avoid for that very reason. The result is that Kirk would probably wind up with far more opportunities to prove himself (and to be heroic) than any of his classmates, and to likewise be rewarded with provisional promotions and the like.
Me too. Frankly, I kind of thought it would be interesting to see the Enterprise with Spock as Captain and Kirk as first officer; something about the way their characters developed makes Spock seem like the more intelligent and competent of the pair with Kirk being a dynamo of youthful energy and heroics...
Oh wait, that's exactly how they were in TOS. Never mind.
Come to think of it, it makes as much sense as Enterprise having a boatload of children in TWOK. At that time Kirk was presiding over a training mission, quite probably the same way Pike was presiding over Enterprise. The only difference in the two scenarios is that Pike is forced to leave the Enterprise by Nero; if Pike had had Nero's prefix code and nailed him in the balls with a phaser blast, I'm sure he would have remained in command over his newly-trained crew long enough to mop the floor with the Narada.
So picture what Wrath of Khan would have become if Khan had successfully forced Kirk to leave the Enterprise. Say, Spock plugs in the prefix code only to find that Khan had changed the combination and at the last minute beams aboard the Reliant with some falsified Genesis data, so Khan leaves Enterprise (so he thinks) dead in space. Now what? Spock takes command of the ship and tries to fight back, or if something happens to Spock, Saavik takes command and uses a portion... no... ALL of her cunning to turn the tables. If, with Spock's help, Saavik is able to intercept Reliant, stop him from using the Genesis device on Earth's doorstep, recover Admiral Kirk and then save her ship from the Genesis wave as it devours half the Kuiper belt, Saavik would probably end up in command of the Enterprise for her trouble. As it stands, her performance in TWOK definitely landed her a fast-rack promotion since the next time we see her she's the chief science officer on Grissom.
As it was, Pike's space-jump plan was brilliant and super-quick thinking. Amazing plan.
No every officer in Starfleet wasn't dead they were busy in the Laurentian sector doing who knows what and thus weren't around to be of any help.
The problem with this particular issue has several somewhat contradictory components.
One--the use of "military ranks" causes many to assume the ranks work as they do today.
Two--what little we've seen of the Academy onscreen (and know of the background of the characters at the Academy onscreen) provides murky glimpses of its workings. I suspect this is quite deliberate, but it leads to arguments like the one going on right now.
Three--a minor component to the argument is the unwillingness of those who want to see a more "realistic" portrayal of rank to accept precedence from prior Trek (complicated by the alternate timeline).
Like warp speed, time travel mechanisms and technology, ranks in Starfleet are, and have been, in service of the story first and consistency second. This is no different. It doesn't mean everyone has to be pleased about it, but it does mean that expecting a more "realistic" rise to Captain by Kirk is, well, at the risk of a bad pun, unrealistic.
The stated goal of the filmmakers was to create a story that portrays how the seven main characters came to be together on the Enterprise as the crew we knew best. That means Captain Kirk (not Lt. or Lt. Cmdr. or whatever), Mr. Spock (not Captain), Lt. Uhura, Dr. McCoy, Chief Engineer Scott (not 2nd or 5th or whatever in the engineering section) and so on. Anyone who thought this film would end with Kirk as anything BUT Captain of the Enterprise should have known better. No matter how interesting the backstory of the Republic or the Farragut or the "stack of books with legs" or...might be to some long-time fans, it would not have been of interest to the general public. So none of that was EVER going to be in the movie.
As to the "too swift rise" to Captain, precedent has already been cited (Treks II-IV). Moreover, the fact is it is entirely unclear exactly how the Academy works. As such, it could well be that the "command track" is established early on, for those with potential, and they graduate (after the Maru test) with a higher rank than non-command path graduates. Think how the services worked 300 years ago and is it really so difficult to imagine that substantial changes could occur 300 years from now? And, in the end, it doesn't matter. The "needs of the story outweigh the needs of satisfying every single expectation of individuals in the audience."
I guarantee that an exceedingly small number of people bothered to question Kirk's "too swift rise" in the movie. They simply expected to see Kirk end up as "captain of the Enterprise"--which is what happened.
Debating the merits of how it happened can be an entertaining diversion, but it is folly to expect how it happened to reflect "reality" all that much. There is no precedent for it before, why should it be different now?
To put it in non-Trek terms--I'm an historian and one of my research fields is historical feature films. I have colleagues who won't watch such films because any "inaccuracy" drives them nuts. However, I have a different attitude towards such films--those "inaccuracies" can lead to very useful discussions (and such films have a profound influence on how the general public interprets history, so I prefer to know about it than pretend it's not worth knowing). If I let every "unrealistic" moment in an historical feature film distract me, I could not watch them. That doesn't mean there aren't any that are too egregious to ignore (I'd hardly be doing my students any favours if I had that attitude) but it does mean I make allowances from time to time in the interest of having an interesting narrative.
To come back to the latest Trek film, that is how I view Kirk's promotion at the end. It allows the filmmakers to do what they want (show Kirk become captain) in a way that is satisfactory to the majority of the audience (i.e. without excessive back story baggage). Could it have been better? Of course (a little blurb saying "two years later" or even "4 years later" would have been how I would have done it). But it is not a "deal breaker" for me as the story doesn't depend on the precise mechanism of how Kirk became captain. It simply shows the journey.
One--the use of "military ranks" causes many to assume the ranks work as they do today.
Two--what little we've seen of the Academy onscreen (and know of the background of the characters at the Academy onscreen) provides murky glimpses of its workings. I suspect this is quite deliberate, but it leads to arguments like the one going on right now.
Three--a minor component to the argument is the unwillingness of those who want to see a more "realistic" portrayal of rank to accept precedence from prior Trek (complicated by the alternate timeline).
Like warp speed, time travel mechanisms and technology, ranks in Starfleet are, and have been, in service of the story first and consistency second. This is no different. It doesn't mean everyone has to be pleased about it, but it does mean that expecting a more "realistic" rise to Captain by Kirk is, well, at the risk of a bad pun, unrealistic.
The stated goal of the filmmakers was to create a story that portrays how the seven main characters came to be together on the Enterprise as the crew we knew best. That means Captain Kirk (not Lt. or Lt. Cmdr. or whatever), Mr. Spock (not Captain), Lt. Uhura, Dr. McCoy, Chief Engineer Scott (not 2nd or 5th or whatever in the engineering section) and so on. Anyone who thought this film would end with Kirk as anything BUT Captain of the Enterprise should have known better. No matter how interesting the backstory of the Republic or the Farragut or the "stack of books with legs" or...might be to some long-time fans, it would not have been of interest to the general public. So none of that was EVER going to be in the movie.
As to the "too swift rise" to Captain, precedent has already been cited (Treks II-IV). Moreover, the fact is it is entirely unclear exactly how the Academy works. As such, it could well be that the "command track" is established early on, for those with potential, and they graduate (after the Maru test) with a higher rank than non-command path graduates. Think how the services worked 300 years ago and is it really so difficult to imagine that substantial changes could occur 300 years from now? And, in the end, it doesn't matter. The "needs of the story outweigh the needs of satisfying every single expectation of individuals in the audience."
I guarantee that an exceedingly small number of people bothered to question Kirk's "too swift rise" in the movie. They simply expected to see Kirk end up as "captain of the Enterprise"--which is what happened.Debating the merits of how it happened can be an entertaining diversion, but it is folly to expect how it happened to reflect "reality" all that much. There is no precedent for it before, why should it be different now?
To put it in non-Trek terms--I'm an historian and one of my research fields is historical feature films. I have colleagues who won't watch such films because any "inaccuracy" drives them nuts. However, I have a different attitude towards such films--those "inaccuracies" can lead to very useful discussions (and such films have a profound influence on how the general public interprets history, so I prefer to know about it than pretend it's not worth knowing). If I let every "unrealistic" moment in an historical feature film distract me, I could not watch them. That doesn't mean there aren't any that are too egregious to ignore (I'd hardly be doing my students any favours if I had that attitude) but it does mean I make allowances from time to time in the interest of having an interesting narrative.
To come back to the latest Trek film, that is how I view Kirk's promotion at the end. It allows the filmmakers to do what they want (show Kirk become captain) in a way that is satisfactory to the majority of the audience (i.e. without excessive back story baggage). Could it have been better? Of course (a little blurb saying "two years later" or even "4 years later" would have been how I would have done it). But it is not a "deal breaker" for me as the story doesn't depend on the precise mechanism of how Kirk became captain. It simply shows the journey.
Rank becomes meaningless if you just give it away left and right, starship troopers style.
Yes, he needs more experience. Why? Because he is a Cadet who has been given command of a starship and several hundred people with it as well.
Well, the way I accepted it is that:
Kirk took command of the Enterprise while on mission, saved the Earth from possible destruction, and the fact that 7-8 Captain's were killed with the fleet that was destroyed in the orbit of Vulcan. Lack of Captains, maybe a recommondation from Commander Spock and Admiral Pike, given the fact that Kirk took the char natually, and Enterprise was without a Captain, so they chose Kirk.
Kirk took command of the Enterprise while on mission, saved the Earth from possible destruction, and the fact that 7-8 Captain's were killed with the fleet that was destroyed in the orbit of Vulcan. Lack of Captains, maybe a recommondation from Commander Spock and Admiral Pike, given the fact that Kirk took the char natually, and Enterprise was without a Captain, so they chose Kirk.
Similar threads
