From: clin@eng.umd.edu (Charles Lin)
Subject: Re: Lacarno = Kirk (Spoilers "1st Duty)
Date: Sun, 05 Apr 92 21:18:50 GMT
Organization: College of Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park
Originator: clin@coke.eng.umd.edu


In article <1992Apr5.182703.14439@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, apearlma@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Andrew Pearlman) writes:
>In article <mal6657.702494263@tamsun.tamu.edu> mal6657@tamsun.tamu.edu (Mark A. Lindsay) writes:
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>>	The main difference that I see between Kirk and Locarno is that
>>Locarno had no sense of responsibility.  Yes, Kirk flew by the seat of his
>>pants, but he was always willing to face the consequences of whatever he
>>got into.  Look at Amok Time.  Kirk was willing to throw away his career
>>for his friend, an act that he repeated in STIII.  He knew that he would
>>be throwing away his career, and was willing to do so.  Locarno had
>>no such sense of responsibility.  He wanted to cover his mistake.  Kirk
>>never attempted to cover his tracks.  He was always ready to face the music.
>
>What about the Kobayashi Maru scenario that he reprogrammed in the academy?
>As Picard pointed out, if Locarno had actually been successful, he would
>have thrilled the audience and become a living legend at the academy.
>
>Kirk couldn't deal with the no-win scenario at that time and neither could
>Locarno.
>

    Personally I don't like doing these kinds of comparisons of characters.
We have had only one episode of Locarno (and probably the only one) and
79 episodes of TOS plus 6 movies, etc.

    The difference is that Locarno's gambit cost a life whereas Kirk's
didn't.   I still think his character is an interesting one.  He's having
to weigh throwing away his career vs. admitting his guilt.   It may be just
youth that made him make the decision he did.  If they had worked on this
character a bit more (by spreading the guilt more instead of focusing on
him or by making it appear that Locarno had more concern for Joshua or
even by having him say that something about how people can get hurt
doing these things and citing past incidents when people were nearly
killed, and that Josh knew what he was getting into).

    All in all, I don't think the portrayal was so bad.  I mean, one
easy way to have made things more ambivalent was to have Joshua being
made into some wild person who wanted to horse around a lot.  Just
that change alone would have made everyone look relatively good despite
an attempt to do an illegal maneuver.  But, this would have ruined
all the emotional impact of the show.  It is precisely the moral dilemma
of the pressuring of Josh to do waht he didn't want to that makes
for Wes's qualms.    We really needed some look at the kind of ambition
that drove Nick.  We had some 48 minutes so it's really hard to flesh out
a character in this amount of time.   So, in retrospect, yes, they could
have done more with his charcter (as well as the other two females who
were practically non-existent), but to get the kind of drama they wanted,
the writers were walking a thin line.  If we don't have Nick's coverup,
then everyone shines and no drama.

--
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