TMP Senior Staff

[Timo]

Good point! Would Kirk have recommended Sonak for Decker at some past date already when the Admiral had no real hope of wrestling command of the ship to himself?

Basically, the very releasing of the ship from the dockyard was supposedly still some time in the future when the new orders came. We never learn how far in the future, but what Scotty was planning on doing next was not a "mission" of any sort - he wanted to proceed to testing.

It might well be that the ship would not receive any sort of operational crew for months, and while e.g. a commanding officer was already named, the personnel knowing their next assignment was the Enterprise would be off doing useful work. Way off, unable to return to Earth in twelve hours. So the presence of a character aboard the ship could be taken for a sign that he or she would not be part of the eventual crew...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Spock's Barber]

Something occurred to me just this morning about TMP and the command staff.

When trapped in the wormhole, Kirk orders phasers and Chekov complies, but Decker countermands that order in favour of torpedoes, as the phasers were inoperative with the warp drive being off-line.

Why didn’t Chekov suggest torpedoes? Admittedly Decker was on the ball and got in there quickly, but surely Chekov would’ve at least started to mention phasers being useless—or at least know to use torpedoes instead, despite Kirk’s order.

Does that mean the Chekov wasn’t originally intended to serve as Security Chief so, like Kirk, wasn’t aware of the redesigned weapons array? Was he (and possibly Sulu and Uhura) not part of the original relaunch crew, but rather added at the last minute with the launch of the ship ahead of schedule?

Maybe Chekov's bad wig just interfered with the flow of blood to his brain.

 

[LeadHead]

Despite the time in the wormhole seeming to be a long time, it was brief. Decker countermanded fast, leaving Chekov no opportunity to question the order. Combine that with his trust in Kirk, his first reaction would not typically be to question the order. Also, the tactical station might not have a readout on the antimatter imbalance, there could be many causes of the engines making the wormhole. Meaning the phasers were not necessarily offline as far as he knew.

 

[Maurice]

"Wormhole distortion has overloaded the main power systems."

It was clear the engines weren't working, ergo neither were the phasers.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Chekov was used to Kirk accomplishing the impossible, so he assumed that Kirk would be channeling the phaser energy out of his ass.

Or Chekov was just disoriented by the slo-mo and streaky effects....

 

[RogueVasad]

I think it was just Decker reacted faster. Decker might have realized Kirk would resort to Phasers first rather then risk torpedo detonation at that range.

In the novelization Kirk had actually heard of the plan to boost the phaser power but had sent a message explaining why it was a bad idea to the designers. He mad the mistake of assuming they would listen to one of, if not the, most experienced starship commanders available.

 

[Mytran]

Also (if I recall correctly) Decker and Scotty had already begun work on bypassing that stupid "improvement", they just hadn't finished it in time for launch.