Spoilers TOS: The Captain's Oath by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread
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Just finished it, a brilliant book!!
Other captains have been name-dropped throughout Trek lit (particularly in the last 10-20 years), including Enterprise Captain Will Decker in one of @Christopher's Titan novels, in which it was mentioned that the Titan was the Federation/Starfleet's most species-diverse crew since Decker's Enterprise in the early 2270s. Another Titan novel (maybe the same one, now that I think about it) had Captain Riker rattle off names of almost a dozen officers spanning at least a century and a half who broke the Prime Directive at least once (which, if I recall correctly, led to a discussion about the letter of the law versus its spirit). Captain Sulu got name-dropped a lot, since both Tuvok and Admiral Akaar served under him as junior officers, and I seem to recall Scotty telling either Geordi or one of his SCE subordinates (it was either Duffy or Gomez) that he and Sulu learned how to (as well as occasionally how not to) command from Kirk the way Kirk learned from Captain Garrovick, and that the officer he was speaking to learned from Picard/Gold and that one day if they had their own commands, their junior officers would learn from them.
Yeah the novels certainly have mentioned other captains. But we were talking about the shows themselves. TNG/DS9/Voyager really didn't bring up anyone other than Kirk mostly (and Pike once or twice I think).
I mean, in fairness it wasn't like Kirk was name dropped on a weekly basis, but when talking about characters from the 23rd century he was by far the most mentioned.
The Captain's Oath has been really great for me as a slow reader, because of the small episodes and incidents and short stories within the larger tale. I wish one of the movies had tried something like this. I wish one of the Kelvin-timeline movies had tried this. Anyway, having these scenarios short means that as a slow reader I'm not stopping in the middle of long, drawn out scenes that go on for long stretches. I feel like I can relax more with it. I'm glad that they connect together and have a common theme or thread in mind as their focus.
I can see how the time jumps can be confusing, especially the first couple transitions, which are really wild jumps. The transitions where mostly effective for me, I found that if I paid attention to the closing text of one section, it gave a clear anchor for where the narrative was going to shift next, no matter whether it was forward or backward in time.
I liked the visit and stay at the Vega colony, it will mean more the next time I watch the Cage or hear a character say something about getting medical treatment at the Vega colony. Interesting place.
I can see how the time jumps can be confusing, especially the first couple transitions, which are really wild jumps. The transitions where mostly effective for me, I found that if I paid attention to the closing text of one section, it gave a clear anchor for where the narrative was going to shift next, no matter whether it was forward or backward in time.
I liked the visit and stay at the Vega colony, it will mean more the next time I watch the Cage or hear a character say something about getting medical treatment at the Vega colony. Interesting place.
The early establishment of the relationship between McCoy and Kirk was satisfyingly evocative of the 2009 movie's version of their first meeting; having this be TOS prime-timeline's counterpart of that interaction and the emergence of the "Bones" nickname. I enjoy the movie's alternative add-lib, and I enjoyed this as the "proper" way that it might have occurred, based on the whole "sawbones" idea.
Yeah, I tried to make the transitions flow meaningfully, so the progression of ideas would help smooth things over. Glad that worked for you.
I've been wondering for years how to justify them going from Rigel to Vega when Earth is actually closer -- not to mention that we now know there are plenty of other worlds at Rigel itself they could've gone to (why was TOS so obsessed with that name???). I finally had the idea that it was because it had a top-notch Starfleet medical facility. I think I hit upon that because I wanted to address Kirk's bout of Vegan choriomeningitis
As for the spoiler comment, I touch on that point in my website annotations.
Yeah, this book was a bit unique in that respect. As far as an overall storyline there isn't a single one in this novel. I considered it almost an anthology of Kirks development as Captain.
Now there is sometimes a danger in the respect that one story can overwhelm another. We see that sometimes in novels (or even episodes/movies) with dual storylines. But I thought there was a pretty good balance in "The Captain's Oath". The focus was on Kirk, his decision making processes and the people he interacted with, and the things that would make him into the Captain Kirk we would all come to know and love in the original series.
And the various stories within the book I thought were pretty good too. We even got Kirk's first meeting with Koloth. And we got an updated story of Kirk's first mission as Captain of the Enterprise that was consistent with WNMHGB. I'm happy someone finally provided an alternate novel story of that (for years Enterprise: The First Adventure was all we had in novels).
My only complaint was the time jumps--usually I was able to follow but there was once or twice where I got confused by a characters presence in a scene before realizing this part of the story is before or after another part.
I rated it 'above average' though. And I admit I'm a tough customer. There are a few select books I rate as 'excellent' and even if it weren't for the time jumps I'm not sure I would go to 'excellent'. So it wasn't a fatal flaw for me. For me 'excellent' is a flawless book--a book I can't put down and read in far less than my usual 2-3 weeks (Destiny and yes
my perennial favorite "Chain of Attack" are two that really hooked me).But then I guess that's as it should be. As a natural course of things there probably would only be a few 'excellent' and a few 'poor' books (at least one would hope), and more along the middle. Though I probably lean more heavily on 'above average' than 'average'. As for an example of a 'poor' book, well at least IMO the two "Phoenix" novels come to mind. It took me about 5-6 MONTHs to read "Fate of the Phoenix"--far longer than it usually takes me. The only reason I even finished it was just an obsessive need of mine to finish a book I started, no matter how bad. "Price" was only marginally better because it at least had a more coherent storyline, even if it was poor. .....but I digress.
Just finished the incident on Nacmor, almost halfway through the book.
This was a great episodic section, in the style of TOS episodes I didn't think appeared in the novels. At least, I haven't encountered any novels that do the parallel culture idea like that, so far. This is the kind of thing that I wasn't into when I was much younger, taking the idea too literally or seriously. I got the hang of them better when I was able to get the series in season sets. Patterns of Force didn't take off for me, but Bread and Circuses became one of my favorite episodes.
I love how the bridge crew is spending their time listening to the radio dramas and trying to do a cultural analysis. I heard the radio announcers voice as the really deep voice acting for the media programs in Bread and Circuses. The bridge banter is always fun. They waste no time in talking themselves into a landing party mission, just that intriguing little hook.
It's good to see the Sacagawea in top form, with new situations and characters. Without intentionally planning it in my mind, the Sacagawea's interior changed in my mind's eye, from the pre-Vega colony and post-Vega colony sequences. Before Vega, I was seeing the bridge as more classic TOS, but wider. Now she's appearing in my head a bit more like the 80's era movies, although both iterations of the bridge get the more elaborate alcove science station. Gary Mitchell's comments on returning probably triggered that, a new coat of paint, ect. The uniforms I'm seeing as from the Pilot episodes, as Kirk is depicted wearing on the cover.
Really got a kick out of the situation on Nacmor, what a great twist on the idea of invaders from space, and then throw the landing party into the mix. I found Ribaul an intriguingly scary protagonist, reminding me a lot of what fascinated me about Claudius Marcus from Bread and Circuses. The wonder of an imagined idea appears before him as a reality, and he channels his intellect into exploiting it.
I always enjoy discussions about how the Prime Directive applies in new situations. Kirk's landing party members give him good reasons for why they can justify a certain amount of liberty. Gary Mitchell is tugging too far in a certain direction. It's like an episode that goes sour at the very end. There's a harrowing discussion between Gary and Kirk about their obligations to the Directive versus their obligations to people who helped save their lives. It's nice to see what Gary's character can do for Kirk, when Kirk needs to be challenged.
I watched the second Pilot before I started reading, to get a feel for the character of Gary Mitchell, as well as Lee Kelso. Mitchell strikes me as not quite shipshape, and then there's stuff in The Captain's Oath that gets a raised eyebrow from me. This guy scrambles to slide into a closing turbolift, and holds hands with a yeoman when he should have both hands on the wheel while piloting the Enteprise in a dangerous situation. Kirk passed the routine inquiry for his conduct in battle as captain of the Sacagawea, but it didn't escape my notice that Gary Mitchell's role in that battle is a little dodgy. I couldn't help feeling that Mitchell's responsibility for the aftermath of the battle slipped under the radar. Add in his actions on Nacmor, I'm left with a sense that he's always been playing with fire. What's great about the discussion between Kirk and Gary after Nacmor is that Gary seems right in a big-picture sense, but it's marred by his own personal selfish application of the perspective. He can make the big picture argument and stop Kirk in his tracks, and make Kirk re-think the situation, but underneath it was self-serving. In the end, Gary still gets burned.
This was a great episodic section, in the style of TOS episodes I didn't think appeared in the novels. At least, I haven't encountered any novels that do the parallel culture idea like that, so far. This is the kind of thing that I wasn't into when I was much younger, taking the idea too literally or seriously. I got the hang of them better when I was able to get the series in season sets. Patterns of Force didn't take off for me, but Bread and Circuses became one of my favorite episodes.
I love how the bridge crew is spending their time listening to the radio dramas and trying to do a cultural analysis. I heard the radio announcers voice as the really deep voice acting for the media programs in Bread and Circuses. The bridge banter is always fun. They waste no time in talking themselves into a landing party mission, just that intriguing little hook.
It's good to see the Sacagawea in top form, with new situations and characters. Without intentionally planning it in my mind, the Sacagawea's interior changed in my mind's eye, from the pre-Vega colony and post-Vega colony sequences. Before Vega, I was seeing the bridge as more classic TOS, but wider. Now she's appearing in my head a bit more like the 80's era movies, although both iterations of the bridge get the more elaborate alcove science station. Gary Mitchell's comments on returning probably triggered that, a new coat of paint, ect. The uniforms I'm seeing as from the Pilot episodes, as Kirk is depicted wearing on the cover.
Really got a kick out of the situation on Nacmor, what a great twist on the idea of invaders from space, and then throw the landing party into the mix. I found Ribaul an intriguingly scary protagonist, reminding me a lot of what fascinated me about Claudius Marcus from Bread and Circuses. The wonder of an imagined idea appears before him as a reality, and he channels his intellect into exploiting it.
I always enjoy discussions about how the Prime Directive applies in new situations. Kirk's landing party members give him good reasons for why they can justify a certain amount of liberty. Gary Mitchell is tugging too far in a certain direction. It's like an episode that goes sour at the very end. There's a harrowing discussion between Gary and Kirk about their obligations to the Directive versus their obligations to people who helped save their lives. It's nice to see what Gary's character can do for Kirk, when Kirk needs to be challenged.
I watched the second Pilot before I started reading, to get a feel for the character of Gary Mitchell, as well as Lee Kelso. Mitchell strikes me as not quite shipshape, and then there's stuff in The Captain's Oath that gets a raised eyebrow from me. This guy scrambles to slide into a closing turbolift, and holds hands with a yeoman when he should have both hands on the wheel while piloting the Enteprise in a dangerous situation. Kirk passed the routine inquiry for his conduct in battle as captain of the Sacagawea, but it didn't escape my notice that Gary Mitchell's role in that battle is a little dodgy. I couldn't help feeling that Mitchell's responsibility for the aftermath of the battle slipped under the radar. Add in his actions on Nacmor, I'm left with a sense that he's always been playing with fire. What's great about the discussion between Kirk and Gary after Nacmor is that Gary seems right in a big-picture sense, but it's marred by his own personal selfish application of the perspective. He can make the big picture argument and stop Kirk in his tracks, and make Kirk re-think the situation, but underneath it was self-serving. In the end, Gary still gets burned.
Yeah, the PD is interesting. How far do you take it? What's interference.
I was watching Star Trek Into Darkness last night and the Nibiru incident comes to mind. Kirk gets into trouble for violating the PD. What struck me on this viewing, after reading The Captain's Oath and some of the things Christopher has mentioned about PD interpretations in the 23rd century vs. 24th century is that it seems STID takes a more TNG attitude.
Now the Enterprise showing itself to the natives---I think that would qualify as a violation in either situation. That's blatant interference and I'm not sure you could argue with that (though this being a Trek forum I guess I shouldn't assume that
).But the crew's attempts to stop the volcano and save the civilization all together? That was construed in the movie to be interference in and of itself and I'm not sure that jives with the 23rd century view of the PD. Perhaps by TNG it would be (we could argue with the merits of such a policy--but I do think the 24th century interpretation of the PD would see that as a PD violation). But in the 23rd century? If this were the original series and Kirk and co. saved the Nibiru and were NOT observed I'm not sure Starfleet would see that as a violation.
Now, the only out I see maybe is the writers could argue that the Kelvin timeline resulted in a different interpretation of the PD. But just something I noticed a bit more this time when watching STID after the lively debates on this forum about the PD including in Christopher's novel.
Sometimes novels help us view the on screen canon with a different eye. It's not something I really considered in past viewings. Was Kirk saving the Nibiru a violation of the PD in the 23rd century? Very interesting.
The original intended purpose of the Prime Directive was to protect other cultures' freedom to grow and develop naturally. That means you don't conquer them, make them worship you as gods, or arm your favored side in their civil war. It also means you protect them from things that would take away their freedom to develop, like a Klingon occupation, an ancient computer god, or a planetary disaster that would kill them all. Since non-interference was a means toward the end of protecting natural development, rather than an absolute end in itself, that meant that sometimes the Prime Directive required interference in order to deal with other interference or survival threats. The "Pen Pals" notion of "let them die rather than risk damaging them" made for a dramatic ethical debate and all, but it's logically self-contradictory and morally loathsome, and not true to the original intent.
And the PD should also mean that if the natives then become aware of you, it's up to them to decide how they choose to interpret and act on that. The notion of "contamination" is anthropologically ridiculous; all cultures are exposed to outside influences, and far from being damaged by them, they tend to incorporate them into their own cultures and worldviews and use them to serve their own belief systems and goals. (Europe got a ton of stuff from Mideastern and Asian cultures -- decimal numbers, the stirrup, the magnetic compass, the lateen sail, gunpowder, the printing press -- but far from losing its own culture, it co-opted those things to impose its culture forcibly on others.) The key is that they have the freedom to make their own choices about how to use the new information, rather than having some outside power come in and tell them what they're required to believe.
So if the Nibirans started worshipping a sky god that had a saucer and nacelles, fine. As long as the Federation doesn't actively intervene thereafter, then they'll just incorporate that image into whatever belief system they already had. Granted, if a brief contact did expose a culture to new knowledge or ideas that someone among them used to, say, persecute heretics or launch a war of conquest, I can't blame Starfleet for feeling a sense of responsibility for that and thus trying to minimize the chance of that happening. But I doubt that was the case with the Nibirans, since what they saw was just a brief phenomenon that they have no context for interpreting, a meaningless shape that rose from the water and flew off. I don't see them devising much in the way of new ideas based on that. They'd probably just try to interpret it as an avatar of some existing Nibiran deity, or some great sea beast.
And the PD should also mean that if the natives then become aware of you, it's up to them to decide how they choose to interpret and act on that. The notion of "contamination" is anthropologically ridiculous; all cultures are exposed to outside influences, and far from being damaged by them, they tend to incorporate them into their own cultures and worldviews and use them to serve their own belief systems and goals. (Europe got a ton of stuff from Mideastern and Asian cultures -- decimal numbers, the stirrup, the magnetic compass, the lateen sail, gunpowder, the printing press -- but far from losing its own culture, it co-opted those things to impose its culture forcibly on others.) The key is that they have the freedom to make their own choices about how to use the new information, rather than having some outside power come in and tell them what they're required to believe.
So if the Nibirans started worshipping a sky god that had a saucer and nacelles, fine. As long as the Federation doesn't actively intervene thereafter, then they'll just incorporate that image into whatever belief system they already had. Granted, if a brief contact did expose a culture to new knowledge or ideas that someone among them used to, say, persecute heretics or launch a war of conquest, I can't blame Starfleet for feeling a sense of responsibility for that and thus trying to minimize the chance of that happening. But I doubt that was the case with the Nibirans, since what they saw was just a brief phenomenon that they have no context for interpreting, a meaningless shape that rose from the water and flew off. I don't see them devising much in the way of new ideas based on that. They'd probably just try to interpret it as an avatar of some existing Nibiran deity, or some great sea beast.
Damn straight! (I could add the late Gus Grissom's reputed favorite way of expressing vehement agreement, but all that would accomplish would be to display my fluency in "Army creole.")
I can see, though, Starfleet taking some issue with that with Kirk. I believe it was always understood, at least going back to "Bread and Circuses" that a Starfleet Officer took an oath to put their life on the line if necessary, as Spock did.
Now, I'm not saying Starfleet would have thought that ultimately necessary in this case if this were an original series interpretation of the PD. But I can definitely see them calling a board of inquiry on Kirk to decide if his actions are justified. Was revealing themselves to the Nibirans really necessary? And I don't have a problem with Starfleet being a bit put off that the Nibirans saw the Enterprise as a deity of some sort. They'd want to avoid that as much as possible. Now maybe they'd decide as you noted, that things would even out over time. But would they be uncomfortable about that? Yeah, I can see that.
Now of course, Kirk compounded that by lying on his report. That compounded the problem probably a hundred fold. That didn't help. Had Kirk been truthful he could have framed the incident and his rationale in such a way that Starfleet may have understood his rationale. But lying led them to be very skeptical of his motives.
The part about saving the Nibirans to begin with. Yeah, that's really the part that seems a bit more TNG-ish in interpretation. When Pike noted that about their destiny I was thinking more about "Pen Pals" and other TNG episodes (the one with Worf's stepbrother--I can't recall the name off hand) than the original series. And yeah, it was an interesting debate in TNG.
It's one reason I'd love to see a Lost Era book that does a story about WHY the PD's interpretation was changed by the time of TNG. Was there some disastrous mission involving the PD that caused Starfleet to become more reactionary in its interpretation? I never had a problem with the differences in how the PD was viewed since TNG was almost a century later and like any policy or procedure, they evolve over time, sometimes too much one way or another. But was there some incident that made Starfleet tighten up the PD?
At the time STID came out I too was caught up in TNG interpretation. I saw Kirk's violations being twofold, one altering the 'destiny' of the planet to begin with, and two showing the Enterprise. But after discussions here I'm seeing the interpretation in the movie might be off. Though like I noted, I can see Starfleet being concerned and very uncomfortable with the natives seeing the Enterprise in the first place (at the very least launching a full investigation). But for the other, no, that doesn't jive so much (unless it's due to the alternate universe in some way).
I guess maybe I got the wrong impression? When Gary says he got distracted during the battle, watching the Leonov's actions, he let the Sacagawea drift into the line of fire. Maybe I read to much in Gary making choices about allowing for things that distract his concentration, like how he holds hands with the yeoman during potentially dangerous maneuvers in the second pilot. Was Gary experiencing genuine confusion during battle with the cylinder ships, that even Kirk would also have done the same thing in Gary's place? It was a moment that confused me, and I went with my first impression. I don't want to pin it all on poor Gary, I like the character, even with some of his unlikable character traits.
@Damian:
I find the ST novels a helpful augmentation of what is introduced in the television series. A line of dialogue or concept may raise questions, and we can come up with our own answers, but the novels can offer confirmation of our guess or alternative answers. I've found the books help to lock in words that are fleeting when only heard spoken; I have a more solid foundation about things on Vulcan like the kahs-wan test, or the dangerous le-matya after reading novels that return to Vulcan.
The Captain's Oath in some sense feels like a response or answer to complaints that Kirk of the Kelvin-timeline didn't earn his way to command. Some fans watched the 2009 movie and were looking for the answers that TCO is offering us now, and I remember reading a lot of complaints. We didn't see Kirk work up through the ranks, or Kirk should have been shown commanding a more modest starship before Enterprise, or we needed to see Kirk faced with hard decisions that he sometimes might get wrong and learns from. It feels like The Captain's Oath is the story that they were actually wanting. Complementary to what some fans felt was missing.
As far as the Nibiru rescue efforts are concerned, maybe it comes down to not getting caught? When it comes to endangered species, non-interference can come across looking really bad. Saving an endangered species is an act of compassion, shrugging it off with "We can't interfere" is really cold. The Federation and Starfleet are put in situations where they are faced with making this kind of terrible decision. The TNG episode Pen Pals seems cold, because of their hesitancy to help. To use the capabilities of their technology to help save lives.
I'm uncomfortable with the idea that the Prime Directive isn't good at articulating an affirmation in favor of saving lives, while still trying to minimize exposure to concepts of science, the existence of other worlds and the existence of other life forms from other worlds. I don't like the idea that captains can take the PD and interpret it in a way to judge that a species is doomed to destruction, and write that species off.
I think with the Nibiru rescue would have been fine, they failed when they let themselves be seen by the inhabitants.
The other thing I noticed watching STID (and Star Trek [2009] a few weeks ago) was how different the Kirk of the Abramsverse movies was that to Prime-Kirk, esp. after reading The Captain's Oath.
The Kirk of the Star Trek (2009) and STID was much more fly by the seats and not concerned with regulations. Made for a much different character. Kirk-prime of that era would never lie on a report (or even the later movie-era IMO). And Kelvin-Kirk saw regulations as an impediment. That Kirk was successful in many ways (at least according to Pike) due to blind luck. Kirk-prime was successful due to his wisdom, his seeing the bigger picture. Now lady luck was probably involved to at least some extent too, but Kirk-prime didn't rely on luck to get him out of situations.
Now that's not really a criticism of the Abrams movies. That Kirk had a very different upbringing. He had the right tools but apparently didn't have the right people to help him hone those skills like his prime self had.
And both versions of Kirk were brash and confident, at least in how they presented themselves, though one came across as someone who was decisive and wise, the other cocky. Kirk-prime may have had self doubts, but when he made a decision he did it in such a way there was no doubt the decision was made.
At least in Beyond, Kirk seemed more like the Kirk of the prime universe. He was more mature at the very least.
The Kirk of the Star Trek (2009) and STID was much more fly by the seats and not concerned with regulations. Made for a much different character. Kirk-prime of that era would never lie on a report (or even the later movie-era IMO). And Kelvin-Kirk saw regulations as an impediment. That Kirk was successful in many ways (at least according to Pike) due to blind luck. Kirk-prime was successful due to his wisdom, his seeing the bigger picture. Now lady luck was probably involved to at least some extent too, but Kirk-prime didn't rely on luck to get him out of situations.
Now that's not really a criticism of the Abrams movies. That Kirk had a very different upbringing. He had the right tools but apparently didn't have the right people to help him hone those skills like his prime self had.
And both versions of Kirk were brash and confident, at least in how they presented themselves, though one came across as someone who was decisive and wise, the other cocky. Kirk-prime may have had self doubts, but when he made a decision he did it in such a way there was no doubt the decision was made.
At least in Beyond, Kirk seemed more like the Kirk of the prime universe. He was more mature at the very least.
Yeah, that's how I viewed it on watching it last night. At the very least, I think Starfleet would be very concerned about whether that action was truly justified. And Kirk lying about it made it all the worse (though a separate issue--I could see it leading Starfleet to have doubts about whether it was necessary). Could there be incidents where revealing the ship to the natives was unavoidable? I'm sure that argument could be made. But I'm sure Starfleet in the 23rd OR 24th century would want that to be very much the exception (not saying Christopher is arguing otherwise BTW, just my observation). Starfleet Command would have to make the decision on whether saving Spock was worth the risk, but Kirk lying about it sure didn't help.
There does seem to be an unfortunate view that Kirk-prime was some rule-breaking rogue. It's a view that I think the Abrams movies helped seemed to perpetuate, even if that is sort of unfair to say since it's a different timeline.
It's something that really struck me reading both TCO and the My Brother's Keeper's trilogy. That in both stories Kirk rose through the ranks and was deserving of his command. And he was not a rogue. Both took the line about Kirk being a 'stack of books' with legs to heart. I saw it a bit in TCO but more so in MBK that Mitchell was more the fly by the seats of your pants type (MBK was focused on both Kirk and Mitchell--so there was a bit more of Mitchell there). But it seemed to me that Mitchell (and McCoy as well) was the one that helped Kirk loosen up a bit and to start to become the man he was later in the original series. Not to break rules, but to have a more open mind about things.
To prevent the things that actually matter, though -- to protect a culture from being conquered or enslaved or forced to follow a political or belief system other than its own. The notion that even a single tiny exposure to outside information is automatically destructive is ridiculous and dumb. That's not how cultures work. As I literally just said in the passage you quoted, if you expose a culture to a new idea and leave it to its own devices, it will not be "contaminated" or destroyed -- it will take that idea and fold it into whatever it already believes, or else will just reject it if it doesn't fit their existing beliefs.
The myth that any and all exposure to outside ideas is automatically harmful is just a copout -- it's a lie Western civilization tells itself to avoid confronting the fact that its contacts with other cultures were harmful to them because it actively tried to destroy and assimilate them. As I already said, if the indigenous culture has the freedom to choose for itself how it handles the new information, then it can be strengthened by the contact, like how Europe was when it adopted the aforementioned technologies and innovations from Asian cultures. As with everything else, it makes a huge difference who has consent and power in the interaction.
I've considered doing a story like that from time to time, but sometimes I think it was really just the result of the kind of lazy literalism that sets in over time when people only pay attention to the letter of a law and forget the purpose it was formulated to serve. It's the result of seeing non-interference as an end in itself rather than a means to an end.
No, I just meant it to be a "fog of war" situation, so much happening so quickly that there wasn't time to react to everything. If there's any negligence involved, it's strictly mine; I was never entirely satisfied with that beat as a way of getting the ship into the line of fire, but it got the job done, so I never thought of a stronger alternative.
I didn't specifically intend it that way; I was just trying to tell a plausible story for how the Kirk of TOS earned his command, based on the formulation in The Making of Star Trek that he earned a ship of the Enterprise's size and importance after proving himself in command of at least one smaller ship. That's the version of Kirk's backstory I've known for over 40 years, so naturally it loomed larger in my thoughts than a 10-year-old movie. I was aware that telling the story in that way would contrast with the Kelvin version in a way that highlighted its logic problems, but that wasn't my specific purpose, just a side effect.
Yeah, I think it was always the intent to show Kirk's maturation into the captain we know. They gave him a very different childhood and upbringing due to the changed history, but once he entered Starfleet, befriended Spock and McCoy, and began realizing his true potential, it shaped him into the same fully realized personality that we knew from the Prime universe. They could've done a smoother and more effective job conveying that arc, but I think that was always the idea. It's sort of like some of those Elseworlds Superman graphic novels where Kal-El landed on Earth in a different place or time but still ended up becoming pretty much the same Superman, because it was always in his nature.
That may be, but it would still be wise for Starfleet to investigate, perhaps by a Board of Inquiry. Even if they cleared Kirk they could still get useful information to prevent similar situations in the future. And Kirk's lying about it is a huge issue of course (and was addressed in the film). He could have mitigated some of that at least by being honest.
After all, I'm sure it would be Starfleet's preference would be to avoid the natives seem them in the first place if it can be avoided.
Still, it would make for a great story I think. I'm not sure why TNG became more literal minded about it. Sometimes things like that occur because of the story they wanted to tell. The story of Pen Pals would have been quite different had the PD been interpreted differently. And it allowed a pretty good debate about how far does the PD go among the senior officers. The nature of that story may have led to some of the literalism (though I still don't understand it in "Justice"--how would the PD allow an Enterprise civilian of all things be executed for what most would consider a minor rule infraction--and the Edo were aware of other civilizations
).But how many times does a book resolve discontinuities like this (though I don't really consider it a discontinuity per se, since it is almost 100 years later--many policies interpretations are revised over time)? Sometimes it is a stupid or lazy storyline that a writer decides to tackle. Maybe a book can make something like that look good. "To Reign In Hell" is a good example--one issue I had with TWOK was Khan's blind vengeance--I liked the movie mostly but it was something that bugged me. "To Reign...." filled in some of the blanks in such a way that now I can see TWOK differently...ok, in light of the story in the novel I can see some motivation behind Khan's blind rage. It doesn't mean his rage is logical, but I can understand it now. A story about the changing interpretation of the Prime Directive might do something similar.
I'm currently reading the Voyager novel "The Garden" and that too has an interesting discussion about the PD. Chakotay is put off by the Kirse's treatment of native gardeners on their planet (who appear to be native animals with at least rudimentary intelligence used by the Kirse to tend their agriculture but don't appear to be respected). Janeway is explaining to Chakotay the other side of the PD, the wisdom behind it and why there is one in the first place. She explains to him first they don't have a right to interfere with their system. But she goes deeper and explains that they don't understand, that they can't understand their culture enough to make that judgment call for them. That they cannot know their society in depth enough to rule by fiat, no matter how well-intentioned they are.
For all the arguments about the wisdom of the PD, and the discussions here about it, I thought it was a well thought out explanation of the wisdom behind the PD. That the PD is a worthy policy for Starfleet to have. That the default should be NOT to interfere. That interference should have a justification behind it, not just because a captain doesn't like the way someone does things or doesn't think they are moving along far enough or quick enough. That we only interfere when there are no other options. Obviously even by TNG, with it's more stringent look at the PD, agreed with Picard when he 'violated' the PD. So even then, they agreed sometimes it was necessary to interfere.
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