Pathetic Showing for Starfleet

[candle_86]

Fuck you and Fuck Weslely Crusher...

The level of class and intelligence of some people who defend the sillyness of this film, perfectly captured in six words. Well done.

I was dumbing it down to your level.

How's this.

How can you complain about the rise in rank of a cadet who has proven himself in a crisis situation which save not only Earth, but tons of other federation planets (because Nero wasn't going to stop with just the Earth) when a prepubecent boy gets made the helmsman of the Flagship of the fleet when he hasn't even taken an Academy entrance exam.

Wesley was given a field promotion to Engisn with the stipulation that he attend Star Fleet Acadamey and he was never given the center seat, and never would have been left as acting first officer, even after he saved the ship twice he was still an engisn and still a helmsman, and he got that only after proving he could do it.

Give him a field commision to Lt JG, make him a department head, but captain how stupid

 

[Qonos]

Baleted

 

[Qonos]

Double`

 

[Vaadwaur]

Did I watch the same movie? =p

They sent maybe 40-50 cadets to each ship. The Enterprise's bridge crew had ZERO cadets.

It's very possible those ships were all in space dock for the start/end of their "5 year mission" so they may have only had 75% of their crews. Why not load them up with 4th year cadets?

At the end of the day, Kirk saved Earth. Kirk saved the Federation. Kirk saved his Captain. I think that gives him the Chair.....

A millon times this

Its not hard to understand, but people are still thinking pretty hard about this...

 

[Zeppster]

How many times has the Enterprise been the only ship to respond to some situation? Even when Earth is being attacked. Starfleet has always been pretty pathetic outside of the Enterprise.

 

[cwl]

you know starfleet must are in trouble when all they have left is cadets

 

[TrekLost]

Say this for Starfleet: They still did better than the Klingons, who lost 47 freaking ships to the Narada. Even considering the fact it's a (if you believe Countdown) Borged-up ship from over a century into the future, that is pretty pathetic. You'd think that somebody would have rammed the goddamn thing with a ship or something ala George Kirk.


I can only presume that they will not discuss it with outsiders.

 

[Vader47000]

i just thought it was funny. we have a crisis on Vulcan. well, lets load up the kids and see whats going on.

As opposed to: "Oh the Enterprise is the only ship in the quadrant" again from the other movies. I think the idea they they managed to get that many starships off to an emergency situation during an apparent conflcit is pretty good.

Load up the kids? Um did you see STII, the formerly best movie of the franchise????? They had a trainee crew. Enough said.

RAMA

That is SO not the same thing. The Enterprise in ST2 was an older ship assigned to training duty, not active combat. it was routed to the Regula system to perform a routine check, which turned into something much worse because the situation with Khan was unknown.

Had Starfleet known Khan had taken over the Reliant and was attacking Federation ships and outposts, there's no way they send Enterprise.

 

[T'Paul]

I think that Wil Wheaton should have played Kirk in this movie.

 

[Vader47000]

Another thing that's bugging me ... why were all the cadets gathering in Iowa to take a shuttle to San Francisco? What is that in the 23rd Century, a 10-minute trip?

Or were all those cadets just the people from Iowa? Including McCoy, who's from the South? Wouldn't it have taken McCoy the same amount of time to fly from Atlanta or whereever to San Fran as to Iowa to catch the connecting flight?

And were there any offworlders who were told to land in the midwest first before going to San Fran.

Seems like a huge stretch to put the shipyards in Iowa, just to honor a minor continuity point about Kirk being from Iowa, especially when they are about to step on the majority of the continuity anyway. They already jettisoned the Tarsus IV backstory for Kirk. I don't get it. Did these writers think they were being cute or clever? "Look, it's Iowa. See, we pay attention!"

 

[T'Paul]

Another thing that's bugging me ... why were all the cadets gathering in Iowa to take a shuttle to San Francisco? What is that in the 23rd Century, a 10-minute trip?

Or were all those cadets just the people from Iowa? Including McCoy, who's from the South? Wouldn't it have taken McCoy the same amount of time to fly from Atlanta or whereever to San Fran as to Iowa to catch the connecting flight?

And were there any offworlders who were told to land in the midwest first before going to San Fran.

Seems like a huge stretch to put the shipyards in Iowa, just to honor a minor continuity point about Kirk being from Iowa, especially when they are about to step on the majority of the continuity anyway. They already jettisoned the Tarsus IV backstory for Kirk. I don't get it. Did these writers think they were being cute or clever? "Look, it's Iowa. See, we pay attention!"

Maybe everyone is just dumb as shit in the future and nothing anyone does makes sense?

 

[PKTrekGirl]

Fuck you and Fuck Weslely Crusher...

The level of class and intelligence of some people who defend the sillyness of this film, perfectly captured in six words. Well done.

I was dumbing it down to your level.

How's this.

How can you complain about the rise in rank of a cadet who has proven himself in a crisis situation which save not only Earth, but tons of other federation planets (because Nero wasn't going to stop with just the Earth) when a prepubecent boy gets made the helmsman of the Flagship of the fleet when he hasn't even taken an Academy entrance exam.

Warning for trolling.

Comments to PM.

I'll only warn you once, but I could easily have sent you to Banville tonight. The flame in the earlier post is a non-starter too.

 

[cwl]

Say this for Starfleet: They still did better than the Klingons, who lost 47 freaking ships to the Narada. Even considering the fact it's a (if you believe Countdown) Borged-up ship from over a century into the future, that is pretty pathetic. You'd think that somebody would have rammed the goddamn thing with a ship or something ala George Kirk.


I can only presume that they will not discuss it with outsiders.

I dunno 47 ships vs a whole planet?

 

[Capt. Vulcan]

1. The ships were not filled with only cadets. As people already mentioned the cadets were sent to fill in the ranks aboard each ship since they were undermanned.

2. The mission was a distress signal from Vulcan because of a environmental disaster. It wasn't that big a deal and seemed like a pretty good test for the cadets. Pike seemed bemused by the whole thing, particularly when he found out a cadet was made helmsman and that chekov was only 19.

3. The cadets that were routed to the Enterprise were apparently the top of the class, and even then they were only given important positions because of circumstance. Sulu because the helmsman was ill, Uhuru because she could speak the language, and McCoy because his superior was killed. In the case of McCoy, while he was a 3rd year cadet, he has already finished medical school before entering the academy. We don't know how things were set up on the other ships, it may have been that these cadets were placed to high because of their high ranks in the academy.

4. Pike made Kirk 1st officer out of his own discretion and it doesn't reflect on the federation and it's usual procedures. Pike was obviously an admirer of George Kirk and saw potential in his son, not to mention the fact that he was familiar with his off-the-charts aptitude tests. In this critical life and death situation I don't find it THAT out of the realm of possibility that he would eschew normal procedure and pick someone he thought had the best skill set rather than the next person the chain of command suggests become first officer. For all we know the next five people were douchebags.

5. Why didn't the enterprise already have a full crew? Probably because it wasn't going to be launched for a while. Not only that, but this is the future, and I doubt it needed a full complement of personnel to sit in dock like a modern ship would.

6. Kirk being made captain of the enterprise was a bit of a stretch. Is it certain that the enterprise is the flagship of the federation in this timeline? Besides that Kirk couldn't have been the only person in history to have a meteoric raise in rank due to crisis enduced field commissions. Considering he was instrumental in saving all of earth and possibly the entire federation it doesn't seem that bad that he be allowed to keep his field promotion. I would have guessed Spock the more likely candidate, but then he lost his mind and almost choked his first officer to death before resigning the commission under his own accord.

7. We're trying to judge this universes starfleet based on a very small sample size of events during an extreme crisis situation. Can we really fault starfleet for not reacting properly to a environmental disaster that just happened to turn into a universe threatening future ship hell bent on revenge? We can say after the fact that sending cadets was a bad choice, but then we have the luxury of knowing that Nero was waiting for them rather than some abnormal tectonic plate shift. The federation probably expected the ships to show up, an in a worst case scenario beam aboard injured Vulcans and set up triage stations and rescue teams on the planet.

I don't think it was THAT bad.

 

[Seska]

At the end of the day, Kirk saved Earth. Kirk saved the Federation. Kirk saved his Captain. I think that gives him the Chair.....

DING DING DING.

 

[Thrawn]

Or, hell, maybe it's exactly the opposite problem of what people have been saying; maybe it's not that so many experienced officers were killed, but that a whole bunch of shipbuilding has begun. Maybe Nero's first attack lit a fire underneath Starfleet's construction efforts, and these six were in orbit waiting for full crews with another 20 right behind, and Starfleet Academy grads are in the habit of being promoted to high positions. Maybe in this universe the Academy is only for people deemed awesome enough to be department heads, and graduates often move directly into leadership positions, and all the lowly positions are filled by noncoms or people from other Starfleet training installations.

Who the hell knows. There are a million ways to explain these things.

 

[TrekLost]

I dunno 47 ships vs a whole planet?

Well, the Narada only had to defeat 7 ships to beat in order to take out Vulcan (Nero let the Enterprise live simply because he wanted to). Vulcan itself really wasn't in much of any shape to fight back (I almost had to think about the Star Wars lines about Alderaan being a peaceful planet), and a planet is actually at a disadvantage tactically due to the opponent in space being in the high ground.

But 47 no-doubt highly trained Klingon vessels in what was probably a open battle? That... is saying something.

 

[Jeyl]

At the end of the day, Kirk saved Earth. Kirk saved the Federation. Kirk saved his Captain. I think that gives him the Chair.....

Well, he can have it cause there's no way in heck that I'm going to follow his leadership. I'm transferring to a ship with a crew that I can not only respect, but also a crew who gives respect.

And just to reiterate, Kirk didn't do this alone. What about Spock? He destroyed the drill. No medal there. He lured the Narada away from Earth and rammed the Jellyfish into the Narada ending Nero's threat. No medal there.

 

[chad1701]

Major spoilers to follow ...

One of the things that disappointed me about the new film was the loosey goosey portrayal of Starfleet. What we saw was an organization with a flimsy organizational structure and a total lack of the military-esque discipline we have seen in every other incarnation of the show.

It's one thing to have commanders simply replacing their bridge officers at will. But look at that scene at the Academy that leads to the mission to Vulcan.

First, we get Kirk being totally called out for a disciplinary action in front of the whole academy. WTF. Is there any way this isn't handled privately?

Then, the whole idea that the fleet is away on exercises and can't go to Vulcan. Huh? The whole fleet of ships tasked with exploring the galaxy are all exploring one specific sector of it at the same time? Except for the seven or so ships that happen to be in Earth orbit. But these ships don't have an actual crew and need the friggin' cadets to staff them? WTF? Why would Starfleet keep ships in orbit and no one around to staff them, especially the new flagship of the fleet?

And then six of the ships are wiped out in the first minutes of the battle, killing how many cadets? That should lead to some lawsuits from some angry parents.

Then we get acting captains tossing people off their ship on a whim, which is just bad form.

And on top of that, one of the cadets disobeys orders several times and ends up saving the day. And for this he not only gets to graduate the academy early, but gets to skip the general rank structure to become Captain of the friggin flagship? WTF?

Not to mention that the guy who was actually acting captain of the ship did as much to save Earth, and he just kind of gets passed over, especially after his planet is blown up. His only real lapse is when the other guy goaded him into an outburst. I'd say under the circumstances Spock acted beautifully.

Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.

Nail on the head my friend. And who designed the interior of the enterprise. Looks like it was designed by Apple! The interior of Kirks fathers ship look much more beliveable.

 

[Trekker4747]

Major spoilers to follow ...

One of the things that disappointed me about the new film was the loosey goosey portrayal of Starfleet. What we saw was an organization with a flimsy organizational structure and a total lack of the military-esque discipline we have seen in every other incarnation of the show.

The "original idea" was that rank in Starfleet was more ceremonial than military. Meyer mostly injected the military aspect in it, but Starfleet was never meant to be a strict military organization.

First, we get Kirk being totally called out for a disciplinary action in front of the whole academy. WTF. Is there any way this isn't handled privately?

They were making an example of him. It also could be construed as a "trial" which are open to anyone who wants to watch.

Then, the whole idea that the fleet is away on exercises and can't go to Vulcan. Huh? The whole fleet of ships tasked with exploring the galaxy are all exploring one specific sector of it at the same time?

The hero being the only one nearby is hardly a new concept or one unique to only Trek.

Except for the seven or so ships that happen to be in Earth orbit. But these ships don't have an actual crew and need the friggin' cadets to staff them? WTF? Why would Starfleet keep ships in orbit and no one around to staff them, especially the new flagship of the fleet?

It should be noted cadets go through four years of schooling to do their "jobs" and are just as ready to man the ships as anyone else -if inexperienced practically- it also could be the cadets were supposed to be more spread out across the fleet with experienced crew roations to the new vessels. The Vulcan emergency changed all of that.

And then six of the ships are wiped out in the first minutes of the battle, killing how many cadets?

They didn't know Vulcan was being attacked. They thought it was a "more natural" disaster. The cadets were going there for humanitarian aid. To "fill sandbags and hand out water bottles."

That should lead to some lawsuits from some angry parents.

These "kids" were in the early or mid twenties. Therefor not much under the influence of their parents. It's also possible Starfleet, like our own military (though Starfleet isn't strictly military) is immune from civil action due to loss of life in the course of duty. ALSO it's very unlikely people int he 23rd century sue over trivial matters anymore.

Then we get acting captains tossing people off their ship on a whim, which is just bad form.

Kirk said as much in his "log" to his communicator. Spock likely reasoned that Kirk was more trouble than he was worth and would still be a hassle even int he brig. He kicked him off the ship where the pod's computer told him someone would come scoop him up. (If not someone from the nearby base, someone from outside the planet.)

And on top of that, one of the cadets disobeys orders several times and ends up saving the day.

Jim Kirk. Have you met him?

And for this he not only gets to graduate the academy early,

Krik implied he'd graduate early already to Pike when boarding the recruit shuttle.

but gets to skip the general rank structure to become Captain of the friggin flagship? WTF?

Well, I agree, but again the "rank structure" is more ceremonial than official. Kirk just prooved himself ready is all.

Not to mention that the guy who was actually acting captain of the ship did as much to save Earth, and he just kind of gets passed over, especially after his planet is blown up. His only real lapse is when the other guy goaded him into an outburst. I'd say under the circumstances Spock acted beautifully.

Kirk was more insturmental in everything, firstly in knowing that the incident over Vulcan was a trap and in his thoughs on what Nero was doing and what to do to stop him. Had Spock gotten his way -had Kirk not been able to get back on the Enterprise- Earth would've been destroyed. Earth was only saved because Kirk followed his strong instincts, got Spock to step down, and then acted on his own impulses. It wasn't until after having a "moment" with Sarek did Spock come around and work with Kirk.