Court Martial

[Silverbullet]

Many of you are devoted fans of Captain Archer. However, I have long wondered if he should have been court martialed for desertion of his post when he went in to the forge with T'Pol to look for her mothe. He had been ordered by Starfleet Command to remain on vulcan to lead the hUman side of the inquiry int to the bombing of the Earth Embassy On vulcan. Even if T'Pol had left he still had Hoshi who spoke flent Vulcan. He disobeyed that order and deserted his post.

also he should be held accountable for the death of the crewman when he allowed an illegal experiment to be made on the Enterprise in the Episode Dadelus (sp). A creman died and it was only because Archer allowed that experiement to be held. so he is responsible for the crewmans death.

What do you think?

Sb

[WarpGirl]

Hmm, I'm no Archer fan. However, I don't think he should be court martialed for going to Vulcan. The other thing deserves a reprimand. I think he deserves a lot of black marks on his record, but not jail.

[Cogito]

I don't know if it's ever been defined in canon what authority Archer actually had. The ranks and command structure seem similar to those on a contemporary navy ship, so it's tempting to suppose he has similar powers. But when you look at all the reckless and downright stupid things he did over the years you have to suppose he has a lot more discretion than a modern ship's captain. Or else he has a huge amount of political clout back home which protects him from the consequences of his folly. Or else he flat-out lies about it and Starfleet Command don't know what sort of things he gets up to.

Personally, I'm inclined towards the second option. Nepotism is the only way I can see somebody so rebellious being entrusted with something so important as Earth's warp prototype. If you have a choice of the best of the best, why would you ever choose somebody who can't even be trusted to follow orders? And then, why would a mere test pilot be assigned to captain the ship? As a test pilot, how much command experience would he have had? How much experience of being in space at all, come to that? He is utterly unqualified for being anything other than the pilot, and also too reckless, arrogant and petulant to ever be trusted with the lives of his crew. In fact it's hard to imagine him qualifying as a command officer of any rank.

Apart from that, I think he makes a great and very likeable captain.

[WarpGirl]

Now everyone knows I'm apt to take things quite literally, but I'm going out on a limb and saying that I think Cogito's last sentence was sarcastic. And as for a point of house keeping, there are 2 Archer threads in the Non-Ship section of these boards so I think maybe we're in the wrong place.

[Cogito]

Turn the question around, then.

Do Trip and T'Pol think that Archer should be court-marshalled?

It must have been galling for somebody with T'Pol's training, intelligence and experience to be placed under the command of somebody like Archer, who seems to personify Vulcan's worst fears about humanity. Time and again she would have seem him ignore her advice, get ship and crew into easily avoided danger, and then utterly fail to learn any lessons from that. I suppose that either she felt she had a duty to stay on board to protect the crew as far as she was able from that recklessness, or she had some other compelling reason to stay on board. And I have a pretty good guess what that compelling reason might be. Or perhaps I should say, who.

[Silverbullet]

The question was should he be courtmartialed for deserting his post and being directly responsible for a crewman's death (damned near T'Pol's death too).

He was ordered to stay inplace on vulcan to lead the inquiry in to the bombing of the Earth embassy. Ordered by Starfleet command. He ignored that order and jaunteed off with T'Pol to loook for her mother. that was desertion of his post and deliberately disobyeing an order from higher command. tboth are court martial offenses and should carry more than a Reprimand as the consquence.

I believe that Archer was not quite the hero he has been depicted as. HIs role in the destruction of the xindi weapon was confined tokilling the killer of the other xinxi who designed the weapon. If anyone was responsible for the wepons destruction it was Hoshi.

I think tis would make a good story of several chapter, the court Martial of Captain Archer.

SB

[Cogito]

The question was should he be courtmartialed for deserting his post and being directly responsible for a crewman's death (damned near T'Pol's death too).

He was ordered to stay inplace on vulcan to lead the inquiry in to the bombing of the Earth embassy. Ordered by Starfleet command. He ignored that order and jaunteed off with T'Pol to loook for her mother. that was desertion of his post and deliberately disobyeing an order from higher command. tboth are court martial offenses and should carry more than a Reprimand as the consquence.

I believe that Archer was not quite the hero he has been depicted as. HIs role in the destruction of the xindi weapon was confined tokilling the killer of the other xinxi who designed the weapon. If anyone was responsible for the wepons destruction it was Hoshi.

I think tis would make a good story of several chapter, the court Martial of Captain Archer.

SB

If we're sticking to what we know from canon then we don't know what Archer's orders were. All we know comes from this log entry:

Enterprise has arrived at Vulcan as ordered. Three days after the bombing of Earth's embassy, the death toll stands at forty three, and I have lost my friend, Admiral Forrest. Vulcan authorities still have no lead on who's responsible.

It's reasonable to suppose that Archer has been ordered to go to Vulcan to find out who / what caused the bombing. Going into The Forge to find T'Pau, the primary suspect based on that planted DNA evidence, would be consistent with those orders. He did lots of things that imo deserved being relieved of his command, and there were quite a few instances where imo his command staff were negligent in not removing him from command on the grounds that he was clearly unfit for command, but this jaunt with T'Pol wasn't one of them.

I would agree, though, that going into The Forge in person rather than sending somebody competent to deal with that, showed either poor judgement in being unable to delegate, or that he didn't consider any of his crew competent to lead that mission. Neither option reflects well on him.

[WarpGirl]

Double High-Five!

[Cogito]

[Rigil Kent]

Court martials all around! T'Pol deserves one for the trellium abuse and the deaths she was directly responsible for at Azati Prime; both she and Trip deserve one for romancing one another in violation of the no-frat regs; Trip deserves one for the Cogenitor mess when he disregarded a direct order from the XO and by doing so, his actions led to the death of a sentient being; Malcolm deserves one for the silly Section 31 mess; Phlox deserves one (even though he's not Starfleet) for not informing the chain of command about T'Pol's addiction and maybe the whole Sim thing; Travis deserves one because he doesn't have enough lines and that's a shame; Hoshi ... hmm ... truthfully, I can't think of a reason why she should get one.

Sorry, but this just seems like more "pile on the Archer hate." Given that it's Trek, you need to look at it that way and remember that the Rule of Drama takes precedence over the Rule of Realism. If you judge officers by our standards today, then every single Starfleet officer we've seen deserves a court martial. And Trek clearly doesn't follow the same rules as reality.

[Alelou]

What Rigil said.

[WarpGirl]

I've always said that Starfleet does not run like the US or British military, those organizations were a starting point for the idea. Therefore, it's perfectly acceptable for any liberties taken with how the system works. So the only thing I would put anyone in prison for on ENT was when the entire crew went along with stealing that warp coil.

That said, would it have been nice to see some consequences played out for everyone's actions. Since Archer did the most questionable actions, lots of stories there.

[Silverbullet]

Cogito, Archer should have stayed on vulcan using Hohsi as his rtranslator. Who should have accompanied T'Pol was Trip. He had been on vulcan was familiar with the rarified atmosphere and the gravity. Also he knew T'Pol's Mother. He was a far better candidate for accompanying T'Pol than Archer.

Again believe that Archer receved order to stay and lead the investigation into the bombing.

SB

[Distracted]

I agree with Rigil 100%. Will wonders never cease?

Hello, my favorite bloodthirsty misogynist. Long time no see.

[Rigil Kent]

Misanthrope, please. I don't hate women ... but humanity in general? Well, that's another story entirely.