What does J.T. stand for?
- Thread starter Kirby
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Neither the film nor the novelization gave him any name but J.T. The infamously error-laden FASA TNG Officer's Manual alleged the existence of a starship called the Jonathan T. Esteban, implying that was his first name. I find that a little Anglocentric, though. With a name like Esteban, I'd think his first name might be Juan, Jose, Joaquin, Julio, something like that.
We don't know he was like that all the time. His behavior may have been the result of the sensitive nature of the mission he was commanding. It's possible Esteban phoned in every decision because he was ordered to by Morrow or the Federation Council and that to do anything else would have meant getting taken off the assignment.
One of things about TSFS that I missed when I was growing up but have come to understand as an adult is the idea that the Federation was embarrassed by the Genesis situation and was therefore willing to offer up a scapegoat to the Klingons, Romulans, or any other power who objected to their having the Genesis technology. Had Esteban done anything sideways in his exploration of the planet, he may have become that scapegoat. As it were, he was killed, and Kirk took his place before the firing squad because he broke the rules of his own accord.
--Sran
Because the TNG Officer's Manual was a lazy, sloppy book. The ship belonged to the Decker class of "transwarp destroyers," a class which also included a Robert April, Pavel Chekov, Matthew Decker, William Decker [sic], Mandala Flynn, Kelvar Garth, Hieracho Naguro [sic -- egad!], Christopher Pike, Peter Preston (!), Montgomery Scott, Lawrence Stiles, Hikaru Sulu, Clark Terrell, Samara Uhura [sic], and others. The idea was that the ships were named for people who'd given their lives in the line of duty, although the selection was absurdly biased toward characters from the movies (honestly, Peter Preston?).
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation_Officer's_Manual#Federation_ships
^There are several cringe-worthy names on that list. I mean, William Decker? Samara Uhura? And why, exactly, does Lawrence Styles deserve an honor of any kind?
--Sran
--Sran
Perhaps it's time to commission the USS Thelin th'Valrass.
--Sran
--Sran
The "J.T." stands for "Who the hell cares?"
Presumably because he died in the line of duty sometime after the movies, like apparently Chekov, Scotty, Sulu, and Uhura (or some relative of hers) also did. A pretty grim prediction from the manual's writers. (And they misspelled his surname, no doubt confusing him with Stiles from "Balance of Terror.")
Note also that Pike didn't die in the line of duty, he was just severely disabled.
As for Uhura's name, remember that at the time it was not canonically established (indeed, that didn't happen until 2009). Nyota was the most popular fan conjecture for her given name, one endorsed by Nichelle Nichols herself, but it wasn't official, so people were free to come up with other suggestions. "Penda" was also popular for a while.
^But Nyota had been used in other FASA supplements, so if it was supposed to be her, it was bad continuity in-game.
Maybe it led to too many Pendulous jokes.
Like I said, the manual was notoriously shoddy and rushed. One of its most famous blunders was its claim that Betazoids were from the planet Haven.
^Indeed, though that was my also my early misperception upon viewing that episode. Also, they claimed that the Ferengi marauder had a dampener weapon that could completely incapacitate an enemy ship. Apparently they only watched the first act or so of "The Last Outpost".
As for Esteban: We have no idea how much, if any, of a fight the Grissom could have put up. It may not have been armed at all. It was just a small science vessel - even if it did have weapons, there's no way it could have stood up to a Klingon BOP. So really all Esteban could have done was evade.
Janeway was a rare example of a scientist who was also a capable combat commander. You can't expect them all to be that way.
Janeway was a rare example of a scientist who was also a capable combat commander. You can't expect them all to be that way.
Oh, yeah. I remember being really upset at how completely they missed the point of the episode.
(But then, a lot of people tend to assume that the first thing they're told in a story is true, and therefore miss the point when it turns out that it was never meant to be true, just a misunderstanding by the characters. I see that a lot in reviews of the movie Source Code. A lot of critics said the ending cheated by contradicting the rules established earlier on, but the whole point was that those alleged rules were incorrect, that the scientists were misunderstanding the nature of the phenomenon and only the protagonist was in a position to realize the truth.)
The Officer's Manual also completely screwed up the calculation of how much energy would be released by the annihilation of a given quantity of antimatter, but that's the sort of thing only a physics major would notice. I think they claimed that "Arena"-style photon grenades had an antimatter payload of something like a kilogram, or some quantity so excessive that it would be enough to raze a continent rather than just cause a localized explosion. I know, one shouldn't expect too much scientific accuracy from something like this, but still, the math is extremely simple -- E = mc^2 -- so it shouldn't have been that hard to figure out the actual proportions instead of just pulling some random number out of the air.
To give the manual credit, at least they tried to come up with an original uniform for the pre-TNG era, instead of the shirtless TWOK variant that we got. I know that the TV show was on a budget, but in hindsight, the interim uniform would have been a better long-term investment than the man-skirt....
Well, you can't blame them for doing that.
We can safely assume that Grissom was in fact armed, since Kirk wondered if she would fire on them. Presumably he'd know if that class of ship lacked weaponry.
But yeah, you're probably right about this.
As for Esteban, following on from Christopher's suggestions... perhaps his first name is Jesus (hay-SUUS), but he goes by J.T. because he's tired of everyone calling him JEE-zus.
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