So what if Nova Squadron had pulled off that starburst trick?

[Timo]

By that logic I should just stick a bullet in the old revolver and get my friends together for a high stakes game or Russian roulette. I mean why the hell not? I could die at any moment anyway, why not take the risk of blowing by brains out if it can make me some cash.

That depends on where you are living. For the purposes of the above analogy, Starfleet Academy is like, oh, Chechnya in the 1990s: to no great fault of your own, your odds of dying today are about 50%; staying alive is not significantly superior to being dead anyway; and the money could get you a ticket out.

Scale that down to the trivial levels of risk in the SFA case: the odds are the same (what the heck is a psych probe anyway?), but the consequences only dictate your fame, not your sustained heartbeat. One-in-a-million chances is what you have to take to make it in a society with a trillion others vying for your dream job. And if you fail, you have a comfortable life anyway, and can probably write a holobook about the failure to further benefit from it.

And as said, the folks described in the various eps did benefit... Although Starfleet perhaps did not. Finney turned out to be a bad apple through and through, and nuKirk's recklessness amounted to much less than nuSpock's cool bravery.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[enterprisecvn65]

So I hear a lot of the "Lecarno did it because it would show what a brave, bold, out of the box thinker who shows initiative and doesn't follow the rules and is a man of action who gets results damnit.

OK so in theory this makes sense, some of the most famous characters from Dirty Harry to Batman are guys of action who don't follow the rules and get results.

Star Trek has echoed this trope with Kirk, NuKirk, Picard, Riker, etc. having the positions they do because they possess those traits and have shown them in action.

The difference is that when these characters demonstrated these characteristics they were in some kind of serious, often life or death, situation where playing it safe and going by the book would have probably ended in disaster and they had enough of these traits to do what would save them, even if it meant breaking some rules and taking risks.

Lecarno uses his willingness to take risks and break rules not to save lives or prevent a disaster, but to preform some little stunt that was expressly forbidden. It wasn't like if he didn't have his squad do the starburst stunt that people were going to be killed or worlds wiped out, all that would have happened is the audience wouldn't have seen some kind of cool flying trick. Hardly a situation that calls for those traits to be shown. It doesn't even show that he could think quickly and rapidly adapt to unexpected situations, he had obviously been planning and practicing to do this for months, it wasn't like they were doing their demonstration and had a spur of the moment thought and he said "OK squad......starburst on 3".

The characters that were rewarded for these traits were confronted with unexpected and dangerous situations that called for quick thinking and action which justified doing things differently and breaking a rule or two.....Lecarno was just trying to look cool, which does not justify those kind of actions. Totally different scenarios.

It's like the stupid crap Top Gun fed us.....That if you're "The best" it makes it ok to constantly do dangerous and/or forbidden things. Of course this was the same film that wanted us to believe that the Navy's soultion when a pilot is deeply emotionally disturbed is to get him up and flying as soon as possible and actually ship him out to a combat situation and put him right in the middle of the action........Right The military is just DYING to find soldiers or pilots who are having psychological issues and throw them into combat ASAP because their problems will actually make them better fighters and the combat itself will probably cure them of their problems.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

I seem to recall Janeway saying something about all the officers in the likes of Kirk or Sulu would have been drummed out of Starfleet by her time. It was a different era in the 23rd century.

Which is probably why Starfleet went to hell in the 24th century

Not sure. In TOS a black mark for leaving a circuit open that nearly cost them the ship leads Ben Finney to be an Ensign for a decade or more while Kirk becomes his Captain. To some accounts, it was Kirk who go Finney on Enterprise by request.

I'm not sure thats a good example as this was the result of Finney screwing up and almost blowing up a ship, so that might have more to do with it than just having a black mark on record.

 

[Leviathan]

Locarno would have been helmsman on Voyager instead of Paris.

 

[tafkats]

In the prime timeline, Kirk graduated from the Academy with the rank of Lieutenant.

Most likely due to sloppiness on the part of a writer who was thinking about U.S. Army ranks (where new officers are commissioned as lieutenants) instead of Naval ones...

 

[Ithekro]

Technically Locarno was the helmsman of USS Voyager, save they didn't want to pay the writer of that episode to use Locarno every episode of Voyager...so they made Paris and used the same actor with more or less the same background.

 

[Amaris]

From observed effect in Star Trek, they would have a reprimand but also a quiet mark of pride for doing somethng daring. Also a reputation has skilled pilots for pulling that off. If Starfleet needs pilots of that skill level, their reprimands aren't going to stop them from getting positions as helmsman across the fleet, or as pilots for some of those fighter-like ships we see in the Dominion War.

If they manage to do nothing else particularly stupid and regs breaking, the reprimand will probably be quietly ignored most of the time. Only brought up when they do something bad, or if they make a political enemy for promotion to command or department positions. The reprimand being a tool at that point to keep them out of positions for a bit. Wesley won't have these problems due to connections and expericance on USS Enterprise. Service on the flagship does have merits and potenally having a recommendation by Captian Picard is almost more than enough by the time Lt. Commander Crusher is up for the XO or chief engineer of some starship.

Yeah, I figured it would also have been a "reprimand" <wink wink nudge nudge>. People tend to remember successes with fondness, and the details fade into the background, whereas with failure, all of those details serve as damning chains instead.

 

[Avro Arrow]

What did Nova Squadron hope to accomplish by pulling off that whatever it was called starburst at graduation, other than giving the assembled crowd and graduates something to be impressed by and go "Wow, that was f'n cool"

They probably expected commendations for original thinking. Isn't that what Starfleet does for rule-breaking cadets?

In the prime timeline, Kirk graduated from the Academy with the rank of Lieutenant.

Just out of curiosity, where's this from? Kirk was explicitly referred to as having served on the Republic as an ensign.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

In the prime timeline, Kirk graduated from the Academy with the rank of Lieutenant.

Just out of curiosity, where's this from? Kirk was explicitly referred to as having served on the Republic as an ensign.

Kirk's time on the Republic was a cadet cruise. He had the honorary rank of Ensign at that time. (Similar to Wesley Crusher's time on the Ent-D - Wes hadn't yet attended the Academy, yet he had the field rank of Ensign.)

We know this because of "Obsession," where Kirk said that the Farragut's Captain Garrovick was his CO "from the day [he] left the Academy." Kirk was a Lieutenant on the Farragut.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Saavik is also a lieutenant while at the academy.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Kirk's time on the Republic was a cadet cruise. He had the honorary rank of Ensign at that time. (Similar to Wesley Crusher's time on the Ent-D - Wes hadn't yet attended the Academy, yet he had the field rank of Ensign.)

We know this because of "Obsession," where Kirk said that the Farragut's Captain Garrovick was his CO "from the day [he] left the Academy." Kirk was a Lieutenant on the Farragut.

Or we could make the more logical assumption that Garrovick commanded Ensign Kirk on the Republic (whose Captain is never named), took a liking to Kirk, and then took Lt. Kirk with him to the Farragut (the name of the ship is not mentioned in that bit of dialogue from "Obsession").

That simplifies Kirk's backstory and gives him a more realistic career trajectory. But the Okudas had Kirk being both an Ensign and a Lieutenant before even graduating the Academy in the Star Trek Chronology, so now we're stuck with that version.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I suppose Garrovick could have commanded both ships, but that is, IMHO, no more likely than assuming Kirk's time as an Ensign was during his cadet cruise.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Even had they pulled it off and no one got killed, it shouldn't have mattered. A banned maneuver is a banned maneuver. They would have been reprimanded if not outright expelled IRL. In the Trek universe, who the hell knows.

In theory, yes. In practice, that's just not how people think. Every time you get behind the wheel drunk you're risking that you will kill somebody. But you would get a substantially longer sentence if you actually did.

Most blackjack players raise their bets when they've won a few hands in a row, really believing 'The luck is on their side' or something like that, even though the odds of winning the next hand is exactly the same as the odds of winning any other hand. That's just how people think. They judge a risk by its consequences. Give somebody a die and say 'If you roll anything but a 6, I will give you 10 dollars, if you roll a 6, you have to give me 10 dollars', and they roll a 6, most people will think they made a mistake taking the bet, no matter how much the odds were in their favor.

They definitely would have been reprimanded, and been punished, maybe had their flying privileges revoked even. Expelled, held back a year? I doubt it. And in the long run it would have helped their careers.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I suppose Garrovick could have commanded both ships, but that is, IMHO, no more likely than assuming Kirk's time as an Ensign was during his cadet cruise.

I'd probably tend to lean more towards the "Garrovick commanded the Republic" explanation myself, but that's just IMHO.

I know Starfleet isn't completely analogous to the present-day military, but does anyone know if it is possible for an attendee at a present-day military academy to receive their commission prior to graduation?

 

[Ithekro]

The general assumption is that Kirk (and Saavik) had finished the regular courses for the Academy and gained the normal rank of Ensign. Then started advance command courses which lead them to the Kobayashi Maru Test. At some point prior this they were a Lt. jg. Possibly after finishing their first cadet cruise. The they got promoted to Lieutenant just prior to taking the test. This might be normal for command track cadets that are being groomed to be starship captains. I wouldn't put it past Saavik to have been on the fast track to becoming a starship captain (fast is a relative term for the long living Vulcans and Romulans).

 

[Sistrin]

The First Duty was always one of my favorite TNG episodes. I thought it a good message show. My tendency has been to just overlook the obvious question of what Nova Squadron thought the consequence of executing the banned maneuver would be.

Picard sort of addressed that question during the confrontation scene between him and Wesley Crusher. Picard stated he believed Locarno wanted to end his academy career in a blaze of glory, and that if the maneuver had worked Locarno would graduate a living legend. Picard (in context of the story) bypassed any ramifications of preforming the maneuver itself, as if the question of whether any punishment would prevent either Locarno or the members of Nova Squadron from graduating or continuing on as cadets was irrelevant. Judged from that perspective the clear implication is there may have been some form of punishment levied, but not so draconian as to be preventative.

Judged from the perspective of the writers, I agree with much of what has been said here. They had no first hand experience with the consequences of violating either standing orders or a chain of command.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Judged from the perspective of the writers, I agree with much of what has been said here. They had no first hand experience with the consequences of violating either standing orders or a chain of command.

I believe that Ron Moore had a military school background, so I don't think that that's the case.

 

[Ithekro]

American movies have been showing us military mavericks for around three-quarters of a century. At least as far back as World War II were the idea of going against the old rulebook is what keeps you alive and defeats your enemies since the old rulebook to entirely out of date and will get you and your men killed. At least on film.

 

[Sistrin]

I believe that Ron Moore had a military school background, so I don't think that that's the case.

Then he should have known to at least address the question.

Perhaps he did through Picard's omission.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I believe that Ron Moore had a military school background, so I don't think that that's the case.

Then he should have known to at least address the question.

Perhaps he did through Picard's omission.

The drama is usually more important than the military reality.Most military based shows throw the rule book out the window on a regular basis.