Was Riker incompetent?

[TommyR01D]

The destruction of the Enterprise-D in Generations shows the incompetence of the whole crew (and the writers especially). It's one of the most ludicrous battle sequences of the whole franchise.

As for his overdue promotion, I think that's just an inherent problem for any long-running series. Eventually it becomes infeasible that the same characters would all still be in the same place. It certainly happened with the original crew, after all.

 

[Mojochi]

Riker should of gone off on his own but made it plan he was not acting under starfleet and takeing full responsibility so if caught the federation had some way out of full out war.

I completely agree. This would be some rogue, take the uniform off kind of business I'm talking about here. Riker's been relieved, not reassigned, & therefore is in a unique position of opportunity to strike out & handle the very dilemma he is carrying on about, & he has the know how, the access, & very likely some key support on board to pull it off. I don't doubt for a second that he could recruit Worf to go in on it with him, Worf who was instrumental in the mission that got Picard captured to begin with. (You just know he ain't stomaching that well). Nope, in a way, I'm saying that if you're going to really go against this captain, (Who doesn't seem like he's going to help Picard, even though he does) & save your other captain, then that man's life should mean more than your career too, which means court-martial offenses are now on the table as options. You get a small unit together with Worf, & load up a runabout with as much badassery as you can & you take your shot

 

[locutus101]

We were never told why Worf left his position of ambassador on Chronos. I wonder if there is an answer to that somewhere.

 

[Lance]

The destruction of the Enterprise-D in Generations shows the incompetence of the whole crew (and the writers especially). It's one of the most ludicrous battle sequences of the whole franchise.

I can kind of see what they were trying to do --- the idea was a David and Goliath thing, nobody aboard Enterprise expecting this geriatric old Bird-of-Prey to be able to take them down, the crew brimming with overconfidence and taken by surprise, etc etc --- but the execution of it was poor. I think we needed to see more of the battle, see the Enterprise sets shaking more and more special effects shots of the fast little BOP running circles around the slow-moving Enterprise pummelling it with quick fire while the crew scramble to try and figure out what to do about it. But of course, they didn't do that, they just showed a couple of shots fired and then Riker blowing the Klingons out of space. It all feels so anticlimactic, because it's all over in seconds.... and then the ship blows out a gasket and falls to pieces anyway.

 

[locutus101]

I can kind of see what they were trying to do --- the idea was a David and Goliath thing, nobody aboard Enterprise expecting this geriatric old Bird-of-Prey to be able to take them down, the crew brimming with overconfidence and taken by surprise, etc etc --- but the execution of it was poor. I think we needed to see more of the battle, see the Enterprise sets shaking more and more special effects shots of the fast little BOP running circles around the slow-moving Enterprise pummelling it with quick fire while the crew scramble to try and figure out what to do about it. But of course, they didn't do that, they just showed a couple of shots fired and then Riker blowing the Klingons out of space. It all feels so anticlimactic, because it's all over in seconds.... and then the ship blows out a gasket and falls to pieces anyway.

They wanted to show a spectacular crash and built a story around that.

 

[Lance]

I can kind of see what they were trying to do --- the idea was a David and Goliath thing, nobody aboard Enterprise expecting this geriatric old Bird-of-Prey to be able to take them down, the crew brimming with overconfidence and taken by surprise, etc etc --- but the execution of it was poor. I think we needed to see more of the battle, see the Enterprise sets shaking more and more special effects shots of the fast little BOP running circles around the slow-moving Enterprise pummelling it with quick fire while the crew scramble to try and figure out what to do about it. But of course, they didn't do that, they just showed a couple of shots fired and then Riker blowing the Klingons out of space. It all feels so anticlimactic, because it's all over in seconds.... and then the ship blows out a gasket and falls to pieces anyway.

They wanted to show a spectacular crash and built a story around that.

Yeah exactly. They weren't thinking within the internal story logic of this universe and these characters and how they'd react, they were thinking in "Writer's Room" logic of, 'Wouldn't it be cool to have the ship blow up and the saucer crash land on a planet?', and then working backwards to construct a reason for that to happen.

I think the saucer crashing on a planet's surface would've been a really cool season-ending cliffhanger, as was the original intention. But in the movie it's just spectacle for the sake of spectacle. It looks real cool, but it feels (with benefit of hindsight) really unnecessary, story-wise.

Careful study of the battle scene shows that nothing the crew (or Riker) did was immediately responsible for the destruction of the ship..... in fact, Riker acts quickly and decisively to neutralize the threat as fast as possible. The Enterprise having a coolant leak is presented to us several scenes later as an almost random accident, and if anybody is responsible for that area, it's Geordi, not Riker. All this time fandom has been blaming the wrong guy.