WarpGirl wrote:I call it online presence. The gentleman I knew in the KOTOR world was also Ex-military, had no patience for a poorly done arguement, loved writing explosions, battles, and death, and a darn good romance that wasn't all that mushy at all. And proudly declared himself a misanthorpe. In fact he pretty much used the exact same words. But I was not the one to call him a misogynist. Really uncanny, but there's no way it's the same person.
Not me. I have never had a presence in the KOTOR world apart from playing the games.
lfvoy wrote:Rigil Kent wrote: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.
Neither would they be able to keep their jobs in the civilian world, either in the public or private sectors. Not even Travis, who has some initiative problems.
Agreed. But sadly, that's true of all TV shows it seems. Back when I still watched NCIS, I joked that, if the team from the show was a real MCRT, better than 85% of their cases would get thrown out on technicalities - evidence acquisition, intimidating witnesses into confessions, etc.
Silverbullet wrote:Not sure T'Pol deserves anything for the trellium abuse. That did not interfere with her ability to do her duties. She was not affected in any way that stopped her from performng her duties at any time.
She was stoned out of her mind at Azati Prime. It's kind of irrelevant whether anyone could have done better in her position - do you sincerely believe that a modern officer put in an equivalent situation with equivalent results wouldn't have been court-martialed the instant it was discovered they had been on mind-altering substances? Phlox was pretty clear that she had essentially willingly caused herself brain damage (damage to the neural whatsits) so any argument that she did the best she could needs to start at that point. She willingly and deliberately ingested a toxic compound that had detrimental effects on her mental aptitude. She wasn't firing on all cylinders. If she had, could she have saved those people? We don't know. But she wasn't and she didn't, and the buck stops with the commanding officer. At the time, she was Top Dog. Therefore, it's her responsibility.
Cogito wrote:I wish that was so, but from what we saw of T'Pol at that time she was a complete wreck and in no fit state to be XO let alone lead the ship into combat. To be realistic, it would be inconceivable for the chief medical officer not to inform the captain when a senior officer was in that state. It was shameful, and on T'Pol's behalf I still resent the writers doing that to her character. It seems to me they took somebody who should have been the strongest and most reliable character on the ship, and did everything possible to portray her as weak and ineffectual. Grrr!
I happily gloss over all that, because in my mind what we were shown was not the true T'Pol.
Sadly, it seems all too true of her frankly self-destructive character. IMO, of course.
putaro wrote:I'd pin Azati Prime on Archer myself. He had no business going off on a suicide mission and he left T'Pol with a no-win scenario. Blowing up the listening post was a major mistake as well - there were only three Xindi there, he should have beamed down a team of MACOs to take it over. Of course the Xindi would get suspicious when a monitoring station is no longer reporting in.
There's enough blame to go around, but at the time, it was T'Pol who was in the big seat, so it was up to her. You could blame Phlox for not doing his job well enough to determine that she was addicted to the trellium - we'd seen her in sickbay numerous times post-Impulse; how is it that he never noted the elevated levels of the substance in her bloodstream? - or Archer for stupidly getting self-destructive or Tucker for not taking action to remove her from command when she showed hints of instability, but it ultimately comes down to T'Pol's own actions. No one else is responsible for what she did at Azati Prime but her.
Cogito wrote:I'm not sure that Archer was sufficiently rational at that point to consider what situation he was leaving the Enterprise crew in. It seems to me that he could see no way out of the situation and his suicide mission was as much a way to avoid responsibility for that as it was a desperate last attempt to stop the weapon.
While a valid theory, that doesn't give the rest of the crew an excuse for their failures. Starfleet is supposed to be the best of the best, with officers who are expected to take the initiative.
As it was, T'Pol had no plans, no idea what to do, and simply sat there waiting for Archer to succeed or fail, until eventually the ship was discovered. At that point, of course, it was too late to do anything.
Which further pays credence to the notion that the mind-affecting substance she had ingested damaged her cognitive capabilities to the point where she had no business being in command, thus making the deaths of the crewman her fault. A clear-thinking, not brain damaged T'Pol likely would have wanted alternate options and/or plans rather than sitting there, doing nothing.
In fact, the lack of alternate and back-up plans by any member of the crew shows that every single one of them were evidently hammered by Dramatic Incompetence. This is especially true of the armoury officer and the MACO major, both of whom should have been trained in tactics and strategy. Honestly, if it wasn't for stupid bad guys, I have difficulty believing that any Trek crew would survive many engagements.
