Thoughts on "Valiant"?

[Sadara]

In Starfleet's case, I think it would depend on how the Academy is geared toward producing officers versus enlisted so I can't say with any certainty either way. If O'Brien ended up on that ship, I think he'd still put Watters in his place somehow.

That has a lot to do with the ambiguity of how Trek treated enlisted/NCOs. O'Brien in particular. He was alternately portrayed as wearing one pip, two pips, one hollow pip, and then some funky chevron thing for most of DS9. Dialogue referred to him as Ensign, Lt, Chief, Petty Officer, and once as simply "Conn" (although that was Encounter at Farpoint, and he was a throwaway at that point). He was also mentioned as having attended Starfleet Academy, which no enlisted would have done, and served as Tactical Officer aboard the Rutledge. He acts as the Chief Engineer on DS9, which is confusing as a Chief Engineer is usually an officer, not an actual "Chief".

But in regards to putting Watters in his place, as a seasoned CPO he would certainly slap around Watters right up until the point where Watters issued an order, in which case he'd be obliged to obey it, albeit grudgingly. Young officers are supposed to heed the advice given by CPOs.

Eh, we've seen lower ranking Starfleet Officers tell higher ranking ones to go jump in the creek before so I don't see why O'Brien would just go along with whatever Watters said either just because he's enlisted.

In The Doomsday Machine, Kirk flat kicked Commodore Decker off his bridge, Riker outed Admiral Pressman on the whole Federation cloaking device thingy, Picard took on the Admiral in Data's Day who wanted to haul Lal off the ship.

Really you just need someone who is willing to stand up for what's right and sane. Sure they risk their career, but anyone with a conscience can do it.

 

[moriluk]

Curious anything thats not been said.

We all know that The "Captain" Is a wacko.

Any other observations.

I think that Nog got tossed the idiot ball, and holds it till the last 5 minutes, when shoves it at the dieing girl who holds it till the end of the episode.

Just watched it recently. I think you nailed it on the head. I disagree with many of the replies. Nog DID get the 'idiot ball' and dropped it in the last 30 seconds.

I do not know if I would call the captain "wacko" but he definitely lost touch. I do not know ALL of the Starfleet protocols, but I am sure he broke many.

This brings me to my quesion, would they have had time/ablity to download the intel on the vessel in the escape pods? Does this thing happen automatically? Would Starfleet allow escape pods to contain such info?

If not then the entire mission was a failure. This was a very important mission - to get intel on the most dangerous ship of their enemy.

What if no one survived? Then the intel would have definitely been lost thus making the entire mission a complete failure of epic proportions. And don't forget, they lost a valuable ship as well. It seems there are not many of those types (I only know of 2 - the valiant and the defiant)

As for Sisko, he should have pointed out that the mere question "where are you from?" would not send a real Starfleet officer on an emotional bender. This proves that she is either not ready or not qualified for such a mission. SHe should have been relieved of duty on the spot.

ALso, dropping his dads name should have put some sense into some of the cadets. Part of being a good officer (or a good person - at least according to Socrates) is knowing your limits as well as your strengths. Being a good captain involves not going on suicide missions unless there is no other choice.

As the girl at the end gave her opinion that it was 'they' who failed the captain and not the other way around, I disagreed with this until I realized that it was true in the sense that someone should have relieved him of command. This was their failure.

 

[Sadara]

Curious anything thats not been said.

We all know that The "Captain" Is a wacko.

Any other observations.

I think that Nog got tossed the idiot ball, and holds it till the last 5 minutes, when shoves it at the dieing girl who holds it till the end of the episode.

Just watched it recently. I think you nailed it on the head. I disagree with many of the replies. Nog DID get the 'idiot ball' and dropped it in the last 30 seconds.

I do not know if I would call the captain "wacko" but he definitely lost touch. I do not know ALL of the Starfleet protocols, but I am sure he broke many.

This brings me to my quesion, would they have had time/ablity to download the intel on the vessel in the escape pods? Does this thing happen automatically? Would Starfleet allow escape pods to contain such info?

If not then the entire mission was a failure. This was a very important mission - to get intel on the most dangerous ship of their enemy.

What if no one survived? Then the intel would have definitely been lost thus making the entire mission a complete failure of epic proportions. And don't forget, they lost a valuable ship as well. It seems there are not many of those types (I only know of 2 - the valiant and the defiant)

As for Sisko, he should have pointed out that the mere question "where are you from?" would not send a real Starfleet officer on an emotional bender. This proves that she is either not ready or not qualified for such a mission. SHe should have been relieved of duty on the spot.

ALso, dropping his dads name should have put some sense into some of the cadets. Part of being a good officer (or a good person - at least according to Socrates) is knowing your limits as well as your strengths. Being a good captain involves not going on suicide missions unless there is no other choice.

As the girl at the end gave her opinion that it was 'they' who failed the captain and not the other way around, I disagreed with this until I realized that it was true in the sense that someone should have relieved him of command. This was their failure.

Dropping Sisko's name did nothing but make those cadets want to prove themselves more. Jake wanted to make them see reason, but it backfired spectacularly. Part of the reason for this is Jake was speaking to a bunch of kids who have had praise and sunshine blown up their asses for the better part of close to four years. He wasn't talking to rational people with a decent amount of objectivity and life experience.

As for Dorian being relieved on the spot for her emotional reaction to talking about home... I would say that is a bit harsh. I agree with your point about her possibly being too young for such a mission, but she is also on a ship commanded by essentially, a tyrant, albeit one who doesn't realize he's being one. Watters didn't have the leadership skills or experience to deal with an essential aspect of command and believe it or not, that is people skills.

Dorian's homesickness was normal. Bottling it up was not. And Watters handled the whole thing poorly.

 

[Timo]

This brings me to my quesion, would they have had time/ability to download the intel on the vessel in the escape pods? Does this thing happen automatically? Would Starfleet allow escape pods to contain such info?

Once or twice, we saw Kirk specifically order up-to-date records to be loaded to a buoy or courier pod to be jettisoned as the ship prepared to meet an invincible enemy. Also, Kirk often had great trouble contacting his superiors over subspace, what with time delays and possibly being out of range altogether. So back in those days, all the data the ship had gathered would most probably have been lost in an incident like this.

On the other hand, we never really saw comparable scenes in the TNG era. And we never got good examples of data uploading speeds; for all we know, a Records Officer (brevet) heading for the pods could have remembered at the last second to perform his or her duty, punch an isolinear chip into a dataslot, press one of those mysterious LCARS buttons that launches a complex operation with single keypress, pull the chip out one second later, and thus carry all the crucial mission logs in his or her pocket.

The scenario where copies of the logs would automatically go into all the pods just before pod jettison is somewhat less likely, I guess. For the tactical reasons you already mentioned if not for anything else.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[tighr]

Starships could also have what is the modern day equivalent of a "black box" flight recorder, encased in unobtanium or something like that. Just because we've never seen one in canon doesn't mean they don't exist.

There's only be a few instances I can think of where starships have encountered the wreckage of other starships, and they've never tried searching for one, but that doesn't mean we couldn't see one in the future.

 

[WesleysDisciple]

Curious, Captain watter's seems to be one of the most universally hated Chars in star trek.

Even I can kind of sympathize with him, having gotten comfortable in his position, hoping that if he can Survive the mission, starfleet would be wowed enough to give him a permanent comission

(their probaly WERE some people as low rank as lieutenant commanding defiant class ships given how small those are.

 

[Pavonis]

Watters didn't want to go back because he didn't want to give up command and become a lowly ensign. He liked command and didn't want to be given orders.

 

[TheRoyalFamily]

(their probaly WERE some people as low rank as lieutenant commanding defiant class ships given how small those are.

They are small, but they are new, and they are pure warships, with the capabilities of a much larger ship. You wouldn't want anyone under Captain in one of those.

I could certainly see a Lt. captaining one of those century-old Miranda-class ships, though, cataloging gaseous anomalies and the like. Probably wouldn't be the ones going into battle, though (but that would explain how they were meat shields ).

 

[Sadara]

Curious, Captain watter's seems to be one of the most universally hated Chars in star trek.

Even I can kind of sympathize with him, having gotten comfortable in his position, hoping that if he can Survive the mission, starfleet would be wowed enough to give him a permanent comission

(their probaly WERE some people as low rank as lieutenant commanding defiant class ships given how small those are.

He's hated because he's a douchebag. If you don't agree with him you get silenced. If you still don't come around to his way of thinking and kiss his ass then you end up in the brig. He's a dictator and would rightly have been returned to the Academy had the Valiant made it home.

Anyone with an ounce of humility, responsibility, and respect for the service would understand that he should have returned the Valiant to Federation space upon assuming command. He did not have the experience or wisdom necessary to continue the mission.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Heard on Memory alpha that an earlier draft, had Kira along for the ride, instead of nog, but Their was no way the authors could see Kira NOT laughing off, the "Field commisions" and taking command,

As she isn't a Starfleet officer, NCO, or anything the idea that she can just take command of a Starfleet vessel like she has any authority what so ever is kind of idiotic, I mean seriously the freaking cadets commanding the ship actually make more sense than that.

A lot think that "Captain Watter's" Was just not eager to return to being a Cadet.

Considering they were in the middle of a war what makes you think he wouldn't have been promoted top Ensign and sent to a ship that needed crew.

And yet, this episode gives us the precedent that allowed Trek'09 to happen. After saving the day, Kirk should have been granted a commission as a Lt jg, and told to report to the Lexington. Effectively only skipping the Ensign rank, and only because he saved Earth.

Kirk was already a Lieutenant and first officer of the ship, so what your saying is that they should demote him after saving them from destruction and death. And its not even the reward type demotion where it was just to get him back on the Enterprise which he really wanted.

Eh, we've seen lower ranking Starfleet Officers tell higher ranking ones to go jump in the creek before so I don't see why O'Brien would just go along with whatever Watters said either just because he's enlisted.

Depends on how the chain of command works

In The Doomsday Machine, Kirk flat kicked Commodore Decker off his bridge,

On his ship with a crew that backed him

Riker outed Admiral Pressman on the whole Federation cloaking device thingy,

On his ship with a crew that backed him

Picard took on the Admiral in Data's Day who wanted to haul Lal off the ship.

On his ship with a crew that backed him

Really you just need someone who is willing to stand up for what's right and sane. Sure they risk their career, but anyone with a conscience can do it.

True but unless its your ship and your crew which is backing you, they might not listen and will probably throw you in the brig.

(their probaly WERE some people as low rank as lieutenant commanding defiant class ships given how small those are.

They are small, but they are new, and they are pure warships, with the capabilities of a much larger ship. You wouldn't want anyone under Captain in one of those.

Dax and Worf were Lt. Commanders and they were both commanding the Defiant for long periods of time, Hell when Dax was doing it Sisko had been reassigned to working with Ross and wasn't even commanding the ship anymore at that point.

 

[Pavonis]

As she isn't a Starfleet officer, NCO, or anything the idea that she can just take command of a Starfleet vessel like she has any authority what so ever is kind of idiotic, I mean seriously the freaking cadets commanding the ship actually make more sense than that.

Kira may not have been Starfleet, but she wouldn't have taken any guff from Watters and the rest of his crew. She certainly wouldn't fall for Watters' charms the way Nog did. She'd either kick his ass and take the ship from him, or they'd be forced to lock her up, the way they locked up Jake.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

As she isn't a Starfleet officer, NCO, or anything the idea that she can just take command of a Starfleet vessel like she has any authority what so ever is kind of idiotic, I mean seriously the freaking cadets commanding the ship actually make more sense than that.

Kira may not have been Starfleet, but she wouldn't have taken any guff from Watters and the rest of his crew. She certainly wouldn't fall for Watters' charms the way Nog did. She'd either kick his ass and take the ship from him, or they'd be forced to lock her up, the way they locked up Jake.

Well seeing as the odds were the entire crew to her, I think she would have ended up in the brig. Seriously isn't doesn't really matter how badass a person is when it's everyone against them.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Any one of those cadets who lays a finger on Kira or tries to put her in the brig is going to find themself missing key limbs.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

^ Any one of those cadets who lays a finger on Kira or tries to put her in the brig is going to find themself missing key limbs.

They don't need to lay a finger on her they have phasers, intruder control systems that they have the access codes to, and transporters.

 

[TheRoyalFamily]

(their probaly WERE some people as low rank as lieutenant commanding defiant class ships given how small those are.

They are small, but they are new, and they are pure warships, with the capabilities of a much larger ship. You wouldn't want anyone under Captain in one of those.

Dax and Worf were Lt. Commanders and they were both commanding the Defiant for long periods of time, Hell when Dax was doing it Sisko had been reassigned to working with Ross and wasn't even commanding the ship anymore at that point.

Dax and Worf were given command of specific assignments, but Sisko was still the real, assigned captain of the Defiant.

When Sisko was re-assigned to Ross's staff, there was no captain. Dax was in command because she was the number-two officer (it would have been Worf, but he was off having fun with Martok); if Sisko had remained as a staff officer any longer, the Defiant would have gotten a new captain.

 

[Sadara]

So because Jake didn't have a crew to back him up, he should have kept his mouth shut? Jake was absolutely correct in questioning the sheep mentality and sheer lunacy of the crew of that ship and if the Valiant had returned to the Federation, they would have been raked over the coals.

 

[tighr]

And yet, this episode gives us the precedent that allowed Trek'09 to happen. After saving the day, Kirk should have been granted a commission as a Lt jg, and told to report to the Lexington. Effectively only skipping the Ensign rank, and only because he saved Earth.

Kirk was already a Lieutenant and first officer of the ship, so what your saying is that they should demote him after saving them from destruction and death. And its not even the reward type demotion where it was just to get him back on the Enterprise which he really wanted.

Incorrect. Kirk was a third year cadet at the Academy, but presumably had completed a sufficient number of courses for graduation at that time and a subsequent commission in Starfleet (at the rank of Ensign, as commensurate with the graduation of a cadet). His stated goal was graduation in three years, which he would have done if it were not for the Narada incident. This put him on a timetable for promotion to Captain within 4 years of graduation from the Academy. He was promoted directly to Captain directly from Cadet.

Any display screen text in the film listing Kirk as a Lieutenant is counter to the facts of the film.

 

[LobsterAfternoon]

Do we know that nu-Kirk didn't have some college credits, pre-Academy, completed? Perhaps he used the academy as more of an OCS than an undergraduate institution.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Incorrect. Kirk was a third year cadet at the Academy, but presumably had completed a sufficient number of courses for graduation at that time and a subsequent commission in Starfleet (at the rank of Ensign, as commensurate with the graduation of a cadet).

What in the film says he has to graduate at the rank of ensign? Becuase Uhura managed to graduate at Lieutenant.

His stated goal was graduation in three years, which he would have done if it were not for the Narada incident.

If anything the Narada incident would have sped that up since they needed crews for the fleet sent to Vulcan. I just figure Pike ignored the academic suspension thing what with captain's prerogative and all.

This put him on a timetable for promotion to Captain within 4 years of graduation from the Academy. He was promoted directly to Captain directly from Cadet.

Screen still says Lieutenant which makes sense with the whole promoted to first officer thing.

Any display screen text in the film listing Kirk as a Lieutenant is counter to the facts of the film.

Only facts that you assume seems like.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

So because Jake didn't have a crew to back him up, he should have kept his mouth shut? Jake was absolutely correct in questioning the sheep mentality and sheer lunacy of the crew of that ship and if the Valiant had returned to the Federation, they would have been raked over the coals.

Jake ins't a Starfleet officer if he wants to call them on being crazy he can go ahead, I'm just saying expecting O'Brien to just be able to relieve someone and expect it to work when the crew has no reason to go along with him isn't going to work especially since Star Trek has made relieving a captain of command seem harder to do over the years.

Honestly Bashir would have been the best bet for that since he can pull rank like that being the doctor and all.