Laudable for the character of Martha Landon, one of the very few times in TOS that a Yeoman was permitted to be more than a glorified secretary.
The Apple
- Thread starter LFT11501
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Not even glorified in most cases.
For those on these boards "in the know", I never picked up on the "its a joke" thing. Perhaps the writing and deliverey were too subtle for me, as a child. I took it literally, and as such, found it odd, and still find it odd, for a commisioned officer to be "fired". This raises a particular point for me here. Despite my age and understanding, do I still watch these episodes today, through the eyes of somebody I no longer really am? There seems to be an inbuilt programming or level of assumption to my viewing, and this whole point on the joke, seems to bear that fault out.
Does any of this ping with any of you, or even make sense?
Does any of this ping with any of you, or even make sense?
There are things we didn't understand when we viewed the shows as a child that we do get when we watch as adults like Kirk continually snogging the girls and looking so unsettled when giving an order which could lead to the deaths of his crew! Even as a youngster though you knew there was a bond between Kirk and Spock in the early episodes which spilled over to McCoy in the later ones!
JB
JB
The Enterprise had no choice but to destroy Vaal--this was NOT a PD situation after Vaal was attacking the ship. But leaving the ex-Feeders with NO explanation of what childbrith will entail was fricking criminal and really hard for me to believe of Bones. Maybe we can say he did some classes off camera
I don't see how anyone can take the You're Fired line literally. Kirk essentially said, "If the ship burns up and you die up there, you're fired."
It's like saying, "If you fly off that motorcycle and break every bone in your body, we're not getting ice cream later." The threatened punishment is trivial and clearly facetious alongside the real danger.
It's like saying, "If you fly off that motorcycle and break every bone in your body, we're not getting ice cream later." The threatened punishment is trivial and clearly facetious alongside the real danger.
I remember this story I heard about a kid getting a cut on his wrist, and walking in the house with blood pooling in his palm. His mom, a Nurse, was sitting on the couch reading a book. Without even really looking up at him, she said "You better not spill any of that on the carpet". Some people have a macabre sense of humor, brought on by the fact that they work in life-or-death jobs.
Naw, no one implements it that way Timo, not ever. I consider that an outlier. We've had long debates over the PD in other threads, and I am not even remotely the only one who doesn't think that is part of the REAL PD.
A Taste of Armageddon--? No noble sacrifice there. I am not going to accept that the PD was enacted between ATA and Return of the Archons! No noble sacrifice there, either, anyway. Heat beams or Landru? Laandru gets it in the neck. And any argle bargle about "living, growing societies" is just that, argle bargle. It's a judgment that would leave endless loopholes in the PD if applied, I regard it as Kirk doing his own ass-pull, AND if you accept it, it WOULD apply as much in the Apple as in RoA. Both societies are under the thumb of a machine and going nowhere as they are. Feds have no right to judge that one way or the other--who are the Feds to say what is good and bad? No, the two machines were destroyed in self-defense, that's all, and General Order 24 was ordered in self-defense with about zip thought given to the PD.
Just about all of Voyager.
The universe is big and bad and the fleet is relatively small, even smaller in TOS times than in TNG. In a few years, with enough encounters, there'd be no Starfleet left if they implemented the PD that way.
"Captain's log, supplemental. The Enterprise has left the Exeter and moved into close planet orbit. Although it appears the infection may strand us here the rest of our lives, I face an even more difficult problem. A growing belief that Captain Tracey has been interfering with the evolution of life on this planet. It seems impossible. A star captain's most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive."
I am just calling BS on Kirk here. Suuuuure you'd do that James me boy, sure. I doubt an officer in the fleet would ever make Captain who'd give up his ship's right of self-defense. Maybe, technically, that is in there, but it isn't done in practice.
Edited to add: such captains who did hew so strictly to the PD would likely be dead captains, so there is a selection process here.
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Kirk may be full of BS, but it's quite unlikely that he would falsely quote the letter of the PD in his official log. Kirk just happens to be a criminal - but manages to hide it from those who'd object (perhaps we're the only ones who get the uncensored versions of his logs?).
The thing is, Kirk himself is at fault for placing himself, his crew and his ship in a jeopardy that calls for self-defense. It is actions that did not need taking that get him into trouble with Vaal and Landru: aborting his mission, running back home, and telling his superiors "I couldn't do it without breaking the PD" would supposedly have been the right way to proceed. It is only Kirk's failure to withdraw immediately that makes the adversaries threaten his assets - and of course the stupidity of those adversaries to just threaten rather than blackmail.
With the Yangs, it's a bit more ambiguous, as ordering the Enterprise to withdraw would always have been an option, out of the dozens open to Sulu, but suicide was the only option open to Kirk and his landing party. And Kirk had his hands full trying to limit the damage done by Tracey, so his own suicide could and probably should have waited till the end credits.
Timo Saloniemi
The thing is, Kirk himself is at fault for placing himself, his crew and his ship in a jeopardy that calls for self-defense. It is actions that did not need taking that get him into trouble with Vaal and Landru: aborting his mission, running back home, and telling his superiors "I couldn't do it without breaking the PD" would supposedly have been the right way to proceed. It is only Kirk's failure to withdraw immediately that makes the adversaries threaten his assets - and of course the stupidity of those adversaries to just threaten rather than blackmail.
With the Yangs, it's a bit more ambiguous, as ordering the Enterprise to withdraw would always have been an option, out of the dozens open to Sulu, but suicide was the only option open to Kirk and his landing party. And Kirk had his hands full trying to limit the damage done by Tracey, so his own suicide could and probably should have waited till the end credits.
Timo Saloniemi
A lot of ppl didn't care for this episode, but it's one of my favorites. Poor Spock took a lot of abuse in this episode - his reactions cracked me up every time.
Probably the most blatant example of Kirk violating the Prime Directive.
I LOLed... thanks.
I can see a landing party being much more expendable in service to the PD, including the captain. But not a ship and a whole ship's crew.
Kirk probably didn't misquote in an official log-- but the mere fact that it IS an official log could suggest that this is CYA (that is a very Timo thought by the way). And I agree that going home seems like the logical action here--the ass-covering action---but does Starfleet really want that, captains who run to mama every time their didies get in a twist, or does it want tough and quick-thinking, intrepid explorers who deal with the situation on a wild and wooly frontier?
Imagine you're the admiralty back home; would you want to make these calls, really, or would you rather have a fait accomplit handed you, sewn up pretty and not ugly of course by your field operatives, the captains, where you have the option of censuring/punishing the captain--which, in most cases, you are not going to do, just give a wink and a nod? If the Federation and Starfleet command really wanted teeth in this, they would routinely send inspection missions some time following the captains' reports. As far as we know they don't do that and frankly don't have the resources to do. But they do retain the option of scapegoating/fully blaming the captain if they don't like what happened, and they can do it all based on the report without any more resource use. This way Starfleet command--admirals too timid in many cases to make the hard calls I bet--can have their cake and eat it too, and again even. They can take credit for what a captain does or punish him if they don't like it, and it costs them nothing extra either way, a nice bonus (so they promote a First Officer and maybe cashier a captain. More likely he gets a desk job or "promoted" to PITA commodore, or reassigned to permanent Mars guard or something else meaningless). But they don't have to take a fall, ever, this way.
And this is a polity. I am assuming there is Fed Council oversight, and political winds shift. In Kirk's time, I don't doubt that Council visits to Starfleet Command to monitor the PD were pretty cordial things with nice parties and little disagreement. It was a time of favoring exploration and conserving resources. Maybe by Picard's time...but I still have my doubts. Especially post-BOBW. Who would ever think ships are sacrificable after that?
I am thinking real-world practice of the law, and the way bureaucracies work--the good old Peter Principle for the admirals. And I just don't believe that captains who would sacrifice their ships for the PD either command the loyalty of their crews, or advance very far. And they probably don't live very long, either.
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<Takes the bows>
(Robin Hood: "Hey! Hey, you!")
The thing is, at that point of the adventure, Kirk doesn't have a pressing need to C his own A yet. OTOH, if he is dictating the log at the conclusion of the adventure (as often seems to be the case), rather than during it, he should probably be doing an even more thorough job. Kirk comes off as a tad hypocritical without appearing heroic or victorious - and to boot, he also drags home Tracey himself, along with the adversary's version of the events.
If not, why does the PD exist? If Starfleet wants results, then what it wants is interference in alien affairs. It will do no good to present dishonest "regulations" to the armchair critics back home when said critics will also be able to observe the actual results obtained...
The issue of checking back on starships and their captains is an intriguing one. Kirk stumbled onto Tracey and the Exeter apparently by accident. He didn't expect to see the starship at that location, suggesting he had no idea where she was supposed to be at the time. OTOH, he did know the Exeter had been in the area six months earlier. Why the overlap with ill-defined assignments? Exactly because Starfleet wants oversight, even if through the haphazard method of chance encounters like this? Kirk similarly stumbled onto the Constellation without intent. OTOH, nobody stumbled on Kirk during that one long-duration adventure, "Paradise Syndrome"... Is Kirk the designated mop-up skipper, perhaps unawares?
Timo Saloniemi
Imagine, these people had lived happy for millennia. Now thanks to Kirk's intervention they're going to die in a few decades. What an improvement!
I'd guess that the PD is applied very differently in the situation of a densely populated civilization of billions, and a people who... did we ever see evidence that in The Apple it was any more than just one small village of people? Maybe there ain't no more!!
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Never mind, he dealt with them more carefully than he did Eminiar 5 ...
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Never mind, he dealt with them more carefully than he did Eminiar 5 ...
There's no question the ending is ruinous for the people of Vaal, but the viewer was never supposed to spend time thinking it through.
How true!
Yes, after watching this episode I was glad to put it out of my mind and my misery. Just think, there may have been a much better TOS episode script collecting dust somewhere that could have supplanted 'The Apple' from ST history. Gawd, I would take any story from Richard Matheson or Theodore Sturgeon over some writer dude named Max Ehrlich's feeble script.
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