My rule of thumb is that if you can make an error make sense, work with it. TNG's "The Battle" has a similar error where Bok beams off the Stargazer after his monologue to Picard, even though he clearly orders the shields to activate at the beginning of it. I just figure that both the Jenolen and the Stargazer were old ships with antiquated shields, or Bok could have simply controlled the shields in some other way.
