From: ph111-bx@violet.berkeley.edu (;;;;7202)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.current
Subject: Re: I'm glad (Relics) SPOILERS (Whatdayadoin Reading this anyway?)
Date: 5 Nov 1992 11:42:03 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: violet.berkeley.edu

In article <1d6vbeINNfn3@agate.berkeley.edu> rmgee@ocf.berkeley.edu
(Randall Gee) writes:
>But we must ask ourselves how did McCoy become admiral?  The admirality is
>not an honor that just anyone can acheive, and McCoy has always been a
>doctor, a healer, not a leader of people.  And also, McCoy is an "active"
>admiral.  Surely, if McCoy had outstayed his welcome, a common occurence
>among those who have faded into obscurity, McCoy would have been forced to
>retire.  He has not, which seems to indicate that he is indeed a "living
>legend."

Conclusions drawn from pure speculation remain just that.  Who knows
what star fleet policy is on aged officers?  And rank isn't so much
an honor given as an award; it's achieved through seniority and good
conduct.  The army alone has something like 500 generals.  If you rise
in the ranks of star fleet for that long, it's the minimum you should
expect.  And again no one ever called him McCoy, or even doctor.

>Now you seem to claim that Spock, when he refers to a captain he once served
>with, is not refering to our James T. Kirk, but to some other captain.
>If I may be so bold, where is your evidence for this?  It is certainly
>not inconceivable that Spock was not refering to Kirk, but to Pike, or
>perhaps another captain ...
[ego tripping fantasy deleted]

You don't seem to get it.  You may *speculate* Spock was referring to
Kirk, but given Spock's long career that is far from certain.  I don't
need to prove Spock spoke of Pike, I only offer it as a plausible
alternative to show there are other possibilities.  As a devoted fan,
it may satisfy you to draw the TOS-TNG connection, but such "history"
must rest on more than dogmatic insistance, otherwise qualify it as
speculation.

>(Besides, you surely are aware of what Kirk gave up to literarly bring Spock
>back from the dead in "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock" and that Spock
>literarly gave up his life for the "Enterprise" and her crew in "Star
>Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn."  Is it too much to presume that Kirk et al
>are not far from Spock's thoughts?)

Maybe 70 years ago, but a lot's happened since then.  And Spock seems
hardly the nostalgic type.

>Hold on here.  Wherefore do I get this burden of proof?  Whence this
>presumption of obscurity?  I am aware of no Star Trek principle that says
>"obscure until proven lengendary."  If anything, there should be a presumption
>of legend for Captain Kirk.  After all, the entire show Star Trek: The Next
>Generation is part of his legacy.  The name "Star Trek," the ship
>"Enterprise," the way that Paramount wove in all those references to
>Star Trek: The Next Generation to the end of Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered
>Country to assert the legitamacy of Star Trek: The Next Generation as a
>successor.  The entire phrase "the Next Generation" implies a previous
>generation which is remembered and whose memory is honored.

Yes the crew often refers to itself as "the Next Generation," about as
often as either TOS or TNG ever uttered the words "star trek."   Paramont
may wish to honor star trek by it's choice of titles, but that has nothing
to do with how the characters and stories *within* the show honor or even
remember events from the TOS period.  Don't confuse the meta level of
Paramont with the episodes themselves.  And as far as "obsure until proven
legendary," would you have the opposite presumption, that every character,
event, etc. is legendary or even significant until shown otherwise?  I'm
beginning to see where your ego tripping fantasies come from.

>You seem to have little trouble in advancing the concept that
>Pike is an Historical character, though he appears in but two episodes of
>Star Trek.  Yet you suddenly insist that I must now prove that Kirk is
>famous, and that if I fail in this task, then we must consign James T. Kirk
>to the ashbin of history.  Certainly if you start with the assumption that
>James T. Kirk has been forgotten, then for any indirect evidence anyone
>applies to the contrary, you can refute by speculating evidence to the
>contrary.  But what is the fun in that?  Why not simply use the ultimate
>speculation:  "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is not in fact a successor
>to "Star Trek" at all!  It is a parrallel universe to "Star Trek" (and we
>have certainly seen some parallel universes to "Star Trek".) in which only
>Spock became a notable person, Scotty was an obscure Engineer who drank a lot
>and somehow hung around long enough to become a Captain, James T.Kirk was a
>career desk jockey, with brief, uneventful periods of field work, and
>nobody else was even born!  Then whenever some annoying bit of physical
>evidence somes up, we can simply speculate another variation of this parallel
>universe.  Then we never have to worry about "Star Trek" interfering with our
>enjoyment of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" again.

You really go off the deep end sometimes.  You present the barest of
speculative circumstancial references to Kirk and conclude from that
he must be viewed in the 24th century as a legendary hero.  As an
apparent obsessive fan you would find this fun, and that's fine as
long as you keep in mind that your speculative fantasy is way beyond
the scope of what TNG has offered.

>If it ever came about that "Star Trek: The Next Generation" ever definitively
>consigned Kirk to obscurity, at best, I would have to suppose that the people
>int the 24th Century were, like too many people of the 20th century, unaware
>of their own history, and that is their loss..  (This was the literary point
>of "Relics.")  At worst, I would have to suppose that "Star Trek: The Next
>Generation" was not real "Star Trek."

Again, no one has ever denied that Kirk was a historical figure.  It's a
matter of degree.  Does the entering TNG academy cadet hold him in as much
reverance as the academy scholor?  It's the status of legendary figure that's
at issue not whether whether the crew has a sense of their own history.  You
don't need to have majored in physics to have heard of Einstein.

>One last thing: you said "Your interpretation of the level of recognition on
>Picard's face at the mention of Kirk is hardly enough to make Kirk a famous
>historical figure."  That is true, but I did not base my assertion that Kirk
>was a famous historical figure on "the level of recognition on Picard's
>face."  I was refuting your assertion that "The Naked Now" implied
>obscurity for Kirk.  Consider this: Riker was reading a history of other
>ships named "Enterprise" and one of the things descibed in it were the
>events depicted in "The Naked Time."  What can we conclude from this?
>The legacy of ships named the "Enterprise" is great enough that a book
>has been written about them, that incidents depicted in "The Naked Time"
>are important enough in the 24th Century to be included in histories.

Books are written on a great many subjects, some quite obsure.  And because
a particular volume has found an (appropriate) place in the Enterprise
library, hardly means it was also a New York Times (or equivalent) best
seller.  And who says the book was written in the 24th century?

>I speculate, then, that the Captain James T. Kirk is an important part
>of the ship's legacy.  I also speculate that the events depicted in
>"Star Trek" were largely important or significant events, either in
>terms of historical impact or in showing us the character of legendary
>figures.  "Star Trek" is the stuff of which legends are made; otherwise,
>that story would not have been filmed.

Any ship's captain would be an important part of that ship's legacy.
Beyond that, speculate away.

>You seem not to have understood what I was trying to say.  True, there were
>Captains of the "Enterprise" before Kirk.  But there were no Captains after
>Kirk.  We know Kirk was the last person to command the "Enterprise."  That was
>in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.  And we know that Kirk was given
>back his command in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and was given a newly
>commissioned ship with the same name and registry number.  They could have
>given him any ship, and they could have named it anything.  But they gave him
>back command of the Enterprise because Kirk and crew were bona-fide heroes
>(that much is stated at the end of StarTrek IV: The Voyage Home.) and
>because Kirk and the Enterprise were inextricably linked in the view of
>history.

Whatever heroic status conferred on Kirk in STIV is hardly transferrable
to the TNG period.  Audie Murphy and John Glenn were once widespread popular
heroes too.  And there already has been a couple of aircraft carriers named
Enterprise.  Who knows how many other namesakes came and went before Kirk
was given command.

>It is not at all common for ships to be commissioned with the same name and
>registry number of recently lost ships.  It is not at all common for and if
>you are going to speculate that in the time of the 24th Century it
>is common, you are going to have to give me some basis for this fact.

Like I said, the name "Enterprise" has been in use as a ship's name at
least since WWII.  And the TOS edition is of the Constitution class, a
ship's name dating to the Revolutionary War.  Kirk is hardly significant
in these name choices.  And if you're going to honor someone you'd think
you might *name* a ship after him, instead doing something anal retentive
like use the same registry number.  It would be like instead of having
an Albert Einstein University, calling it E = MC^2 University.  It
seems more likely a bookkeeping convenience.

>You say that there might be successive "Constellations" and "Intrepids" as
>well.  I doubt that, for the reasons given above, but it would not affect my
>arguement.  It would simply mean that the crew of the "Constellation" and
>the "Intrepid" were heroes as well.

Or the series of ships with those names are significant beyond those
particular crews.

>You may wish for Scotty et al to have faded into obscurity, but the
>reasons you give for asserting this has happened consist of nothing more
>than perceived snubs by the collective crew of the NCC-1701D and a lack
>of fawning.  This seems to be wholly unsatisfactory.
>(By the way, how did the crew of the "Enterprise" react when Abraham Lincoln
>came on board?)

In case you haven't noticed, the entire show revolves around this blaise
crew.  If you want to argue that they don't react because they have no
sense of history, then you're saying it takes a sense of history (maybe
even a scholorly one) to have any clue who Kirk and Scotty were.  If
that's the case, then you've just argued that Kirk et al are not legendary
heroes, otherwise people other historians would have heard of them.

>Some people have no imagination.

Some people confuse imagination with history.