"And as I rained blows upon him...."
Some "Court Martial" notes.
- Thread starter Dale Sams
- Start date
"And as I rained blows upon him...."
Kirk's revenge for Scotty not standing up for him to the Klingons in the K-7 Station bar.
"1 to the 4th power", and Jamie's cheesy-weird emotional rollercoaster, and Kirk being prosecuted by his ex, and Stone's inexplicable haste in accusing Kirk in the first place are all secondary and can be forgiven. Even the notion of an "ion pod" can be overlooked.
But the fulcrum that this episode rests on is not the computer. It's Ben Finney. How a clown like Finney could graduate from Starfleet Academy is beyond me. He concocts this whole scheme to discredit Kirk, and sabotages the ship as well?
If the courtroom drama seems cheesy, just remember, this is a depiction of a society where no captain of a starship-of-the-line had ever been put on trial before. (Also a society that, to date, had never had a mutiny occur aboard a starship, either) A society with that kind of record would be significantly different from ours.
Interesting how Kirk has to defend himself against the (altered) flight recorder record, but he has to sign a hardcopy report before his claims come under fire. (I don't remember ever seeing that in TOS again.) Usually, Kirk would simply sign one of those iPad/clipboard thingies.
Am I the only one who finds it improper that Kirk seems to repeatedly horse around with women he meets in professional situations where he should be expected to keep it, um, professional?
Despite all its flaws, "Court Martial" is a charming and entertaining "Kirk vs. Computer" tale, even if the real issue here is how infallible Starfleet ever managed to overlook a would-be mass-murdering terrorist like Finney in the first place.
But the fulcrum that this episode rests on is not the computer. It's Ben Finney. How a clown like Finney could graduate from Starfleet Academy is beyond me. He concocts this whole scheme to discredit Kirk, and sabotages the ship as well?
If the courtroom drama seems cheesy, just remember, this is a depiction of a society where no captain of a starship-of-the-line had ever been put on trial before. (Also a society that, to date, had never had a mutiny occur aboard a starship, either) A society with that kind of record would be significantly different from ours.
Interesting how Kirk has to defend himself against the (altered) flight recorder record, but he has to sign a hardcopy report before his claims come under fire. (I don't remember ever seeing that in TOS again.) Usually, Kirk would simply sign one of those iPad/clipboard thingies.
Am I the only one who finds it improper that Kirk seems to repeatedly horse around with women he meets in professional situations where he should be expected to keep it, um, professional?
Despite all its flaws, "Court Martial" is a charming and entertaining "Kirk vs. Computer" tale, even if the real issue here is how infallible Starfleet ever managed to overlook a would-be mass-murdering terrorist like Finney in the first place.
I hear ya, my tongue was wedged in my cheek, but I still get the feeling there should have been some kind of inquiry after beaming up from Gamma Trianguli 6 sans four of his security guys.
It's also pretty amusing the "Jettison Ion Pod" button is one of the small handful of controls on the arm of his chair.
Kirk bangs the arm of the chair in frustration, accidentally hitting a button. "Oh shit!"
I just figured Kirk's controls are 'mapped' for the occasion.
It's kind of ironic. The show makers didn't know that someday controls in real life would be that dynamic and adaptable, so they did a "real future" thing without knowing it, and hoped we'd never notice.
When they were passing out the luck, Kirk got a massive helping and several other starship captains didn't get any.
^^ Yeah; especially the Captain of the USS Excalibur. And his crew.
And the Intrepid (We can't be dying, it's illogical!), and the Defiant (You're strangling me? You're the punk who gets my coffee!), and don't forget Christopher Pike is another guy fate crapped on. If Spock had just waited a few more weeks before kidnapping Pike, he could have been cured by the spores on Omicron Ceti III. Instead he got dropped off on Talos IV where in two days they'll realize they don't have a compatible battery recharger for the chair that keeps him alive.
Buh-bye.Just goes to show that Starfleet is ruthless towards faulty individuals at lower positions already, and the cream of the cream that get to command big starships all know better than to insist on a trial...
Indeed, the exact position of Intercom also changes from episode to episode.
I trust all the stations have fully reconfigurable "keyboards", which is why the bright primary colors are needed: the one at bottom right is Coolant Loop Alarm/Trip for Scotty, so it has to be red, whereas Uhura dropping her own keycard in the reader will transform the board so that bottom right now reads Quick Cross-Coupling for Lower Deck PA and is green for clarity.
To be fair, none of the cures the spores were credited with were particularly impressive - beyond the immunizing against Berthold rays. The most they did was grow back an appendix, but McCoy in ST4 has pills that grow back kidneys.
Timo Saloniemi
I found it noteworthy that Kirk's former academy class mates in the Starbase club considered him guilty having just heard rumors. But somehow I can't seem to exclude the possibility that the edit of this episode was messed up (i.e. a later bar scene now coming first) and/or that the screenplay was changed last minute.
In the first scene Kirk leaves the Starbase club and almost bumps into Areel Shaw, without recognizing her. During that same scene the Starfleet official and Starship captains are already present, although according to Kirk's later log entry they are supposedly (still) on their way.
But this episode had one of the funnier lines:
Shaw: Areel Shaw. And I'm a friend, too. An old one.
McCoy: All of my old friends look like doctors. All of his look like you.
Bob
In the first scene Kirk leaves the Starbase club and almost bumps into Areel Shaw, without recognizing her. During that same scene the Starfleet official and Starship captains are already present, although according to Kirk's later log entry they are supposedly (still) on their way.
But this episode had one of the funnier lines:
Shaw: Areel Shaw. And I'm a friend, too. An old one.
McCoy: All of my old friends look like doctors. All of his look like you.
Bob
Instead he got dropped off on Talos IV where in two days they'll realize they don't have a compatible battery recharger for the chair that keeps him alive.
It's probably a 23rd Century micro-fusion reactor that will last a lifetime (hey, it's Star Trek and not "Star Trek Academy" where veterans get 20th Century wheel-chairs and where starship captains can actually drive 20th Century automobiles
).Bob
YARN
Fleet Captain
Definitely a thread that carried through to TNG. There is apparently a lot of ambition and jealously in Trek. Spock was always being accused of attempting to take over the ship. Mitchell was obviously harboring some jealously and resentment toward Kirk. Picard has the "nightmare" in threads of having to find out what his life would've been like if he had not been promoted. He was dressed down by Riker for being unfit because he'd never taken any risks (You're a chicken!). Riker gets his turn when a new XO shows up to bump him out of the way.
For a society that is supposed be "above it all," they really play cut-throat at the promotion/hierarchy game in Starfleet.
That explains the yeoman standing behind him with a Brother P-Touch label maker. "Are there two T's in 'jettison'?"
Look more closely at the screencaps. None of the officers in the bar scene have captains' stripes; they all have either a single stripe (lieutenant) or no stripes at all (ensign). Although most likely the costume people just grabbed whatever tunics were available (which is why they have Enterprise insignia) and didn't really have any specific ranks in mind for these characters. But remember that these were old colleagues of Kirk's, perhaps fellow Academy classmates, and Kirk was intended by the show's producers to be the youngest starship captain in the fleet. So it stands to reason that his peers and old friends would not yet be captains themselves.
The officers Kirk referred to in his later log entry were the ones selected to comprise his court-martial board, namely Space Command Representative Lindstrom and Captains Krasnovsky and Chandra, whom we saw in the courtroom scenes but who were definitely not present in the bar scene. So there is no continuity error here.
Umm, doesn't the cap linked above expressly show the actors of Lindstom, Krasnovsky and Chandra? Just before Kirk enters the bar for the first time? They are all wearing their Captain-style dress jackets, too, suggesting the characters are part of the board already (as Captain Kirk never felt an obligation to dress up until he got involved in the trial - nor did Commodore Stone). And the court clerk or bailiff or whomever in the special red jacket is also seen on the foreground.
The way it's edited, there might not be a continuity error - but there definitely is an error in Kirk's assessment of the situation. He believes the members of his court martial board are "proceeding to SB 11" when they are in fact aboard the station already, and have been since before the first stages of the inquest! Somebody appears to be misleading him on this issue...
...Which isn't all that unexpected when everybody quite consistently appears to be opposing him and rigging the game against him.
Timo Saloniemi
The way it's edited, there might not be a continuity error - but there definitely is an error in Kirk's assessment of the situation. He believes the members of his court martial board are "proceeding to SB 11" when they are in fact aboard the station already, and have been since before the first stages of the inquest! Somebody appears to be misleading him on this issue...
...Which isn't all that unexpected when everybody quite consistently appears to be opposing him and rigging the game against him.
Timo Saloniemi
I suggest you watch the episode or the corresponding screencaps (you could have just clicked on the one I provided) again. Here is the scene from the court-martial for comparison: http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x20hd/courtmartialhd173.jpg
In the Starbase club scene Space Command Representative Lindstrom (in his dress uniform) looks up at the young lady in the company of the court reporter (dress uniform), sitting next to him is Captain Chandra (dress uniform). Captain Krasnovsky (blue dress uniform) is walking past the counter in the background.
To say you don't remember seeing them there, is one thing, but to state they were "definitely" not present, suggests you researched the issue. Obviously you did not.
Bob
P.S. Oops...Timo was faster
Look, it was '60s TV. They were on a budget, and they probably just dropped the same extras into the background of the bar scene and hoped nobody would notice. Screens were smaller back then, pictures were fuzzier, and they didn't have HD home video and Internet screencap archives to allow fans to do facial-recognition searches for background extras. Viewers were supposed to pay attention to the people who were in the foreground and actually had lines of dialogue. It wasn't unprecedented for the same extra to show up in two different roles in the same episode (Eddie Paskey did so on a few occasions; for instance, in "City on the Edge of Forever," he appeared as Lt. Leslie as well as the driver of the truck that killed Edith.)
Obviously some sort of "12 Monkeys-like insurance".
