Star Trek: The Original Series and The Next Generation

[ooo-baby]

I believe Picard is wrong here:

The crystalline entity lattice killed her son. It needs to be destroyed.

Kirk knows how to deal with these situations:

Kirk is strong, decisive whereas Picard is morally ambiguous.

Though Picard does raise an important dilemma. Why is it okay for ten male snakes to coil themselves around a female snake at the same time to try and mate with her? Why is okay for male dolphins and she-devils to kidnap females and force them to mate with them. Why is it okay for the male dustmite to puncture and rip open the female’s abdomen to inseminate her. All of these actions would get humans’ the death penalty, yet we overlook them as normal in these animal species. Well, humans are classified as animals yet we would not accept as normal a man tearing, breaking off his penis and leaving it in the woman after intercourse to prevent other males from mating with her as many species of spiders do.

 

[TM2-Megatron]

William T. Riker was the real captain and star of Next Gen. He was like James T. Kirk, and he was supposed to take command of the Enterprise here:

because Patrick Stewart wanted out. Picard was planned to be killed off with Riker becoming Captain of the Enterprise.

Riker was essentially their "backup Kirk" in case having a Captain who was an intellectual & diplomat didn't work out.

Since it did work out, Riker was relegated to being the guy who passive aggressively sits on chairs backwards, pervs out on women, and being the dummy to whom things are explained to ensure the audience understands.

 

[The Predaking]

Gene Roddenberry absolutely deserves the credit for Star Trek: The Next Generation. That was his baby. That show was probably closer to his vision than the Original Series.

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There is a really good deep dive into Next generation by Rowan J Coleman that talks all about Gene Roddenberry and the production of the show. While he was heavily involved in the first season, his health started deteriorating after that. By the time of the third season, he wasn't involved at all.

Watch that. You might enjoy it.

 

[The Predaking]

Where are the motion picture movies for these shows? Instead, they are going back to the Original Series characters: Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Sulu, Chekhov, Scotty, Khan, etc. etc. Why is that?

DS9 and Voyager both told complete stories, where as TNG and TOS were mostly one off stories. You can always add more one off stories, but until we get to Wrath of Khan, TOS really didn't have much continuity.

The Dominion is defeated, Bajor joins the Federation, the Pa Wraiths are gone forever, Odo goes home, and almost the entire cast moves on to other places.

Voyager, now that one could have used an episode or two to show a bit of epilogue after they finally made it home. However, they did make it home, so there isn't that much of a story left to tell.

Enterprise could use a film to show the Romulan war, the NX Refit, and maybe a better ending than the holodeck episode. However, it has been a long time now, so I doubt that we will get that.

 

[ooo-baby]

Introducing the greatest Star Trek movie of all time Star Trek The Wrath of Khan:

commanded by the greatest Starfleet captain ever, Admiral James T. Kirk:

Note: Gene Roddenberry was taken off Star Trek after the lackluster performance of Star Trek The Motion Picture.

This is the peak of Kirk’s power reaching the rank of Admiral. He will be demoted in subsequent sequels, which I did not agree with. He deserves the rank of Admiral.

 

[Donocropolis]

Introducing the greatest Star Trek movie of all time Star Trek The Wrath of Khan:

commanded by the greatest Starfleet captain ever, Admiral James T. Kirk:

Note: Gene Roddenberry was taken off Star Trek after the lackluster performance of Star Trek The Motion Picture.

This is the peak of Kirk’s power reaching the rank of Admiral. He will be demoted in subsequent sequels, which I did not agree with. He deserves the rank of Admiral.

But he hated being an Admiral. Demoting him back down to captain was a reward disguised as a punishment, and both Kirk and Star Fleet knew it.

 

[The Predaking]

Yeah, you are kind of missing the point of the ending of Star Trek 4. Spock told him in Star Trek 2 that being an admiral was not suitable for Kirk. It is literally a theme that is touched on for the rest of the franchise, even into Generations where Kirk tells Picard to not retire, and then says "Don't let them Promote you! Because as long as you are in that chair, you can make a difference."

 

[ooo-baby]

“Admiral” Kirk was able to command the Enterprise just fine here:

An Admiral can do and have whatever he wants.

 

[Dekafox]

Not really. An Admiral can have a flagship, but they don't command single ships, they command squadrons or fleets. Assuming an Admiral can do whatever they want is how you end up with all the Badmirals in TNG.

 

[The Predaking]

“Admiral” Kirk was able to command the Enterprise just fine here:

An Admiral can do and have whatever he wants.

You mean after he let his ship get shot up, massive casualties including his friend's nephew, because Kirk didn't follow regulations? And Kirk wasn't commanding the Enterprise at all between TOS and TWOK except for those missions in the films. He was a desk jockey in Space Dock.

 

[Dekafox]

You know, it just hit me. An admiral usually has their own support staff to handle all the various facets of running a fleet, just like a ship captain has their senior officers for department heads. We never learned who was on Kirk's support staff when he was an admiral, did we?

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

You know, it just hit me. An admiral usually has their own support staff to handle all the various facets of running a fleet, just like a ship captain has their senior officers for department heads. We never learned who was on Kirk's support staff when he was an admiral, did we?

Not in audiovisual canon, no.

If memory serves, I believe that "The Lost Years" novels (not to be confused with The Lost Era, which covers events from 2295-2364, including Michael Jan Friedman's Stargazer novels) had Kevin Riley as Kirk's primary aide between the end of the five-year mission and the V'Ger incident.

 

[ooo-baby]

You know, it just hit me. An admiral usually has their own support staff to handle all the various facets of running a fleet, just like a ship captain has their senior officers for department heads. We never learned who was on Kirk's support staff when he was an admiral, did we?

Admiral Kirk did not need a support staff. He was called in as the big gun to face this great threat. Captain Spock handed over command of the Enterprise to Kirk because he knew there was no one better out there, including him.

Even when Kirk was Captain he pretty much did whatever he wanted separate from Starfleet, unlike Picard and the Next Generation crew who had to ask Starfleet for permission just to use the toilet.

Kirk should be Admiral because he doesn’t have the killer instinct, diplomacy and compassion left to do this day in and day out anymore:

Kirk has earned the right to be Admiral and can come in and take command whenever Starfleet is facing cosmic extinction, when they need to call in the best!

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

Not really. An Admiral can have a flagship, but they don't command single ships, they command squadrons or fleets. Assuming an Admiral can do whatever they want is how you end up with all the Badmirals in TNG.

And Starfleet doesn't seem to have had the volume coverage (hence the ongoing "only ship nearby" plot hook) to consider grouping vessels into regular task groups until the Dominion War (if not somewhat before then, the "Bridge Commander" PC game manual claimed that the Galaxy-Class USS Dauntless was "attached to the Second Fleet" after its launch and shakedown (which would have taken place during the second season of TNG), while my former roommate avers that numbered fleets were not mentioned on screen until the War was in full swing during the last two seasons of DS9).

Space ... is big.

 

[Donocropolis]

Even when Kirk was Captain he pretty much did whatever he wanted separate from Starfleet, unlike Picard and the Next Generation crew who had to ask Starfleet for permission just to use the toilet.

People always have that impression of him, but during the original television series, Kirk was always pretty strictly by the book. He really wasn't presented as being a maverick until the films.

 

[ooo-baby]

Kirk broke the Prime Directive at will whenever, wherever and however he wanted:

without consequence or accountability. He did not have to report to anyone. He was a cowboy. Kirk was a badass.

 

[The Predaking]

Admiral Kirk did not need a support staff. He was called in as the big gun to face this great threat. Captain Spock handed over command of the Enterprise to Kirk because he knew there was no one better out there, including him.

Even when Kirk was Captain he pretty much did whatever he wanted separate from Starfleet, unlike Picard and the Next Generation crew who had to ask Starfleet for permission just to use the toilet.

Kirk should be Admiral because he doesn’t have the killer instinct, diplomacy and compassion left to do this day in and day out anymore:

Kirk has earned the right to be Admiral and can come in and take command whenever Starfleet is facing cosmic extinction, when they need to call in the best!

You should go back and watch TOS then. Kirk is very much a by the book, these are the Star Fleet regulations mister and you will do it that way, kind of guy. The only time that he breaks that is when his friends are in dire need, like when Spock had to go back to Vulcan in TOS and when he has to go back and get his friend's body from Genesis. I should also point out that Spock was the one that figured out how to beat Khan in the nebula, and it was Spock that saved them all from dying.


Picard regularly defied Star Fleet as well, but when he did, it was to hold them to a higher standard. He wouldn't turn over Data or Lol, he stopped their Witch Hunt on his ship, he literally went back to Star Fleet HQ and stopped an alien takeover invasion. On top of that, he defied their orders and came back to win the battle of Sector 001 in First Contact. Arguably, he, and his ship, was the reason why they won that battle.


Simply put, Kirk was a womanizing, military man, far from home, commanding a warship that was sent on an exploration mission during the wild west of space. Whereas, Picard is a philosopher explorer, that was commanding a flying city on an exploration mission in a golden age.

 

[ooo-baby]

The Original crew had so much power and independence to make their own decisions:

They pretty much had carte blanche.

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

The Original crew had so much power and independence to make their own decisions:

They pretty much had carte blanche.

This was, apparently, a byproduct of technology. From the Phoenix onwards, subspace communication ability often lagged behind advances in warp propulsion. (One of Jonathan Archer's early missions was to install relays to help mitigate this issue once speeds beyond 27c were feasible for Earth-made vessels.) While we can only speculate as to the exact ratios, the Constitution-class exceeding Warp 7 (on the then-in-use scale, equivalent to 343 times the speed of light) appears to have exacerbated the lag (and we all remember the instances where Enterprise was going well above that, "and don't ask me how she's holding together!"). By 2280 the communication technology appears to have caught up, but a generation or two before that, yes, COs such as Pike, Garth, Kirk, and Tracey would need to have a wide amount of latitude and initiative, as advice from San Francisco would arrive far too late to be any good. The same no doubt was even more true for Archer and Edison's time.

 

[Donocropolis]

This was, apparently, a byproduct of technology. From the Phoenix onwards, subspace communication ability often lagged behind advances in warp propulsion. (One of Jonathan Archer's early missions was to install relays to help mitigate this issue once speeds beyond 27c were feasible for Earth-made vessels.) While we can only speculate as to the exact ratios, the Constitution-class exceeding Warp 7 (on the then-in-use scale, equivalent to 343 times the speed of light) appears to have exacerbated the lag (and we all remember the instances where Enterprise was going well above that, "and don't ask me how she's holding together!"). By 2280 the communication technology appears to have caught up, but a generation or two before that, yes, COs such as Pike, Garth, Kirk, and Tracey would need to have a wide amount of latitude and initiative, as advice from San Francisco would arrive far too late to be any good. The same no doubt was even more true for Archer and Edison's time.

True, I don't have an encyclopedic memory or anything of the show, but it does seem like often times there were discussions of it taking weeks or longer for messages to get to Starfleet Command and back, therefore Kirk had to make his decisions with no guidance from his superiors.