Also from that episode, data:. "Mr. Hobson! You will carry out my orders or I will relieve you of duty!". One of my favorite Data lines.. really great moments both Picard's reaction and Data's chain of command issues on the USS Southerland.

@@KnightRaymund Right? The Prime Directive is just pure cowardice, they're just afraid of being guilty.

UNLESS YOU DISGRACED THE UNIFORM!!!

That quote continues with, ”Your actions were appropriate for the circumstances, & I have noted that in your record.”

But that is exactly how a hierarchical chain of command works. The notion instilled by hollywood that everbody in the military can always second guess their orders because they are the good guys - is childish and does not work. And you are only ever promoted when you show that you can follow orders. It is not about being good or bad. It is about a huge apparatus where the individual does not have enough insight to make those decisions and even if so the people giving orders have to keep their authority. If that makes you uncomfortable - just like me - don't stay in the military. OR - if Star Trek command acknowledges that breaking the Prime Directive is alright from time to time - they would just change the directive. What we are shown is just a trope about cool guys always going rogue.

😂. As funny as that concept is, I think Riker was speaking metaphorically. Picard is not just ignoring orders, he’s effectively abandoning his command, going AWOL, stealing a ship and equipment, and ready to actively fight against Starfleet’s side (even if due to corruption). In that moment he’s acting as an individual and not under any authority granted to him as a Captain. By “taking off his uniform”, and going rogue, he also loses the right to give orders to his crew. He can’t have it both ways. Riker is merely pointing this out in a clever way. The scene also shows the consequences of violating the chain of command. If the Captain is going to violate orders and do whatever he wants, then so can anyone else. He’s not really in a position to complain.

The movie, from its title on has the feel of a series of set pieces designed to get us to a oint. That point being Spock. Its a good film in that its enjoyable, but one a newly minted film major might have a field day tearing apart for all its technical flaws.

@@ohauss sooo well put!

@Oliver H Excellent comment! Well said! And thanks for the great Roddenberry quote.

I got the vibe that enforcement of regulations was left up to the captain's discretion, especially on long-term missions. Hence why we see some captains not giving two shits about officers sleeping together as long as the relationship doesn't effect the running of ship operations, while others (though usually only single-episode captains, not our main heroes) will reprimand people for just holding hands during a time when pretty much nothing is happening.

I agree with this view. The Netherlands has something similar as well (a lot of countries have in some manner). Starfleet would know that sometimes orders don't make sense anymore given the quickly changing contexts in space, so they allow some disobedience as long as people make those decisions in good faith.

That bad record-keeping theory, now that's got some merit.

In the tall ships era, which is what a lot of Star Trek writers base their ideas on, despite the existence of subspace radio making things look a lot more like the 20th century (TOS in particular had a lot of Cold War in the background), in that era, when the fastest way to get messages to and from a ship's captain (or an admiral if you've sent a fleet) was to send a fast ship, and the message turnaround had a timescale of weeks to months, local authorities had a lot of autonomy, simply because you often couldn't afford to wait a couple of months for a question about your orders to be sent, received, read, debated, and finally replied to. In the actual situation in Star Trek, when you do have real-time communication with your superiors except under special circumstances (Voyager), you can be expected to check in before violating orders in all but the direst of emergencies, so the leeway for overriding your orders on the grounds that the situation has changed is much less.

It's an interesting question whether Starfleet themselves are aware of The Evil Admiral problem. Of course in Nu Trek TV The Evil Admiral has been replaced by The Douchey Admiral Who Does Have A Good Case.

we need some Palpatine memes for this: ITS TREASON THEN. Commander Riker, execute order 66.

I'm sure it's low-key because he's Klingon. The Federation (Humanity) is beyond the bigotry of the past, but not that of its present.

If anything, Sisko should get a reprimand for sending them on the mission together.

As an unspoken rule, that would give the Federation plausible deniability when being pressured by other governments to do less-than-moral things. If they can rely on their individual captains and crew to "take one for the team" and disobey orders to do the right thing, the Federation as a whole doesn't lose footing on the international stage. "Gee Cardassia, we sure tried to relocate those indiginous populations for you, but goshdarnit, our rambunctious little Enterprise messed it all up again. Sorry!"

See, you made a small but important mistake when you said "... to disobey any order they FEEL would violate human dignity". You will be charged for insubordination and you have to PROVE that your own human dignity or of somebody else was violated. It is a very small back door for a citizen army like the bundeswehr. It can hardly be used outside of human rights violations and they are really rare in germany. I don't want to fill you up with military decrees and reasons for judgements but I can tell you that it is mostly imposible to do in a court case. As a short rule, you can't disobey orders except they are clear human rights violations.

Must be a more recently regarded principle.

@@guywithdacap4713 That sounds rather similar to the US situation. The US military operates under a Law of Armed Conflict which is the regulatory application of the Geneva Conventions. A soldier is obligated to disobey any order that violates the Law of Armed Conflict. But in the same way, he will be charged with insubordination and his defense is to prove that he was given an order that was in violation of the LOAC.

I worry about people having the opposite interpretation of the spiel at the end. I 100% agree with Steve and what he was going for, but if you take "our institutions aren't entitled to our trust and faith" way out of context, I could see people using that kind of reasoning to justify attacking the electoral process and the end result that came about this year.

Yet those SAME people also believe they need to have an arsenal of guns to protect themselves from that exact authority -_-

@@screamingtongue authoritarians thinking they’re rebels is weird as HELL!!

@@trekjudas I know, it's bizarre, but it's the narrative Trump has more or less succeeded in painting for himself, at least among his core followers.

@@corey2232 the same people who fly the blue stripe while bragging about how man cops they'll kill when they come for their guns?

If ever there was a time we needed a Jayne quote, it was for this one.

You can’t change that by gettin’ all… bendy. .. You got the light from the… console to keep you… lift you up… shine like- {starts grabbing at the air} little angels. ~Also Jayne

@@poppyshock "Did he just go crazy and pass out?"-Wash

"Yeah, well if wishes were horses, we'd all be eat'n steak right now!"

To be fair, this is technically Picard *RESPECTING* the chain of command, not defying it. An admiral shouldn't be ordering one of Picard's crew members to do *ANYTHING.* He should be ordering *PICARD* to pass that order down to his subordinate instead, and as long as he doesn't take that step, PIcard is actually just enforcing the proper chain of command.

I was just going to post that specific episode lol :) one of my personal favorite quotes by the man.

@@a-blivvy-yus and he might have tried that, and Picard would have had to lean on it likely being an illegal order.

@@a-blivvy-yus That's a good point.

@@MinesAGuinness Sorry for the late reply. As for why the order was lawful has to do with how West Germany treated the military threat from the Warsaw Pact. All military exercises were treated as if they were the real thing. As a result otherwise criminal actions, so long as an exercise incident report was filed, were treated as acceptable. There was no military tribunal, no effort by any British service personnel, or British government personnel to bypass civilian laws. Had my dad not left his details then it would have been a crime. The incident, and for that matter all similar incidents in Crusader and all other exercises, were always investigated by the GCP (German Civil Police), and had any criminal actions occurred, those responsible would have faced criminal prosecution. Persons affected by military actions occurring during military exercises were, where possible, compensated for their trouble, and where not possible their relatives would be the ones to be compensated. Because of how the West German government ran their country at the time, no laws were broken, because the incident occurred during a military exercise, in accordance with how the government determined what was acceptable. Yes, under other circumstances what my dad did would have been a crime, but under the circumstances no crimes were committed and hence the order and actions carried out in response to them were lawful. The point of the anecdote is to demonstrate that a lawful order can sometimes require you to do things that would ordinarily be unacceptable. A few more examples from military exercises in West Germany. Ordinarily under West German law, it is an offense to enter and damage agricultural areas like wheat fields etc. It's a crime to do so resulting in a criminal prosecution, yet in a military exercise military forces can enter and damage such areas, provided that the rules concerning exercise damage is adhered to. Millions of DM (Deutsche Marks) of damage to agriculture occurred during Crusader. This damage was caused by members from all participating forces. No military personnel involved faced criminal charges despite it normally being a criminal offense. Ordinarily under West German law, military vehicles had to abide by normal laws of the road. In military exercises however, military vehicles had absolute priority on roads. In one incident a German woman attempted to cut across the path of an armoured column in her car. She was unsuccessful, and her vehicle was crushed by a tank, and she was killed as a result. The column did not stop. The GCP investigation theorised that she thought that as she would have ordinarily had priority that the column would stop for her. No members of the column faced criminal or civil proceedings. Note that this incident was observed by members of the GCP at the time it occurred.

However I’d like to add the “special forces elite” self centred warrior culture can burn in whatever hellforge it spawned from and the operations commanders that ordered those civilian murders should be tried in a military tribune and hung for war crimes.

Yes - she was scapegoated! The Klingons were going to start that war no matter what, but if they hadn't been, then her plan might have helped!

I often wonder if something was left out or some kind of editing was done in that season opener because blaming MB is weird when the Klingons were already there and spoiling for a fight.

Same lol, I was saying that so hard in the first episodes of Discovery. The only rationalisation I had was that her going over and killing T'Kuvma was the actual inciting incident they refer to, stretching out the war instead of a brief battle, but that's undermined by T'Kuvma saying that he wanted a big war anyway! But it could be argued the other Houses didn't want to go along with him until a Starfleet officer beams over and shoots him (even though he killed her Captain first). But it's certainly not as cut and dried as people make it out to be. The hater-fans really really keep pushing that button and it's frustrating.

I'm so happy to find others who agree that Burnham was justified in her actions!

@@dreadelectric7745 was she overtly blamed for the war or was she blamed for her mutiny? She may have been blamed by the crew for the captins death also. I know a few mostly random people mention her being at fault but I didn't gather that anyone directly involved thought that.

It is hinted at, that this probably resulted in a genocide. And (potential Spoiler) Burnham just blew her second chance to integrate into the chain of command. At this point, she should just part from the Star Fleet (I don't mean from the show, there are some good stories to be had with the character)

@@SarahAndreaRoycesChannel I would support that. It would give The Disco crew more opportunity to shine if Burnham was given detached service, something The Admiral might well consider.

Physically assaulting a senior officer, usurping command to commandeer a vessel, explicitly violent intentions towards a (then) non-hostile race. I mean, it takes more than good intentions to justify disobeying orders and there's a huge difference between telling an admiral to stuff it and committing armed mutiny against your own captain.

@@pufthemajicdragon he asked whats different, not whats exactly the same.... Spock: steals an admiral and a ship, and violates one of the only capital punishment worthy laws in the federation. He has also "assaulted" several officers in the same manner. Data, disobeyed a direct order and opened fire on the Romulans intending to dissuade them of their conspiracy. Sisco attacked an entire planet of people that he wasn't at war with. Spock advised Kirk to open fire of the Romulan ship even though they were not at war. In the search for Spock Uhura pulls a gun on another officer. Spock (again) is willfully complicit in the hijacking of the Enterprise as his cremated and friends suffer physical and psychological assaults that cause them to act entirely against their established interests. So again, the question is what is the difference between when Burnham committed mutiny vs when the other people committed mutiny?

What bothers me is that people see these two story arcs as conflicting rather than as rather obvious character growth. We all SAW how much Journey's End troubled Picard, and we also have multiple examples of Picard holding on to events and experiences from his past - from Tasha's death to his lifetime on Kataan to his entire side-arc as an archeology enthusiast to all of his borg issues - Picard doesn't let things go. So while it may not be "explicitly" stated in the movie, we know enough of Picard's character to recognize that his regret from Journey's End is a big part of what motivated his "Insurrection".

I'm sure starfleet knew they weren't primitive and definitely not native. I know trek treats the concept of alien biology..... loosely, but it would be blindingly obvious that a group is not native to a planet even to us. The movie actually misses a major issue though, why move a few hundred people from a single settlement when theres literally a couple hundred million square kilometers of uninhabited planet to exploit? If they can walk around their village unseen they can damn well park some ships anywhere else they please and doing in the good stuff. Why even did the So'na bother with starfleet?? They were "banished " by people with zero means to enforce it, they could have moved a few miles away and been fine right? And if stripping the radiation from the planet means the inhabitants will doe then the stuff must nolonger be self replenishing, so they took a seemingly endless resource that could have benefited billions and broke the system to lock away a ship load of the stuff making it now a very finite resource.... Then theres the supposed purpose of healing officers.... how many officers survive well enough that the slow acting effect of the radiation can do its thing but are bad off enough that starfleets already near magical tech can't heal them anyway? Ensign: oh my God! The whole left side of my torso is vaporized!!! Doctor: dont worry, in six to nine months itll be mostly grown back! And firmer than ever I might add! Ensign: sixty nine months!! I won't last that long!

@@DrewLSsix If I recall correctly, the issue was that it took time for the radiation to start affecting the body in significant ways (too long for many of the So'na to survive by standard exposure). What they, and starfleet, wanted was to convert it into a fast-acting, easily administer able treatment, but the only way to do that was with the process that the So'na invented, which would leave the surface of the planet uninhabitable (for unstated reasons). They weren't relocating the Baku so that they could have the planet. The planet was irrelevant, other than the fact that it was located in Federations space, hence the Starfleet involvment. Starfleet insisted on relocating the Baku before they would let the So'na conduct their operations, because it would kill them if they didn't. Starfleet was okay with forced relocation, but they weren't okay with genocide.

"YOU ARE! SIX YEARS OLD! YOU CANNOT HURT ME!"

I have to confess: there were times when I really thought I saw five lights!

It is standard military procedure. If there is an emergency and no clear leader, simply taking the initiative proves you are the most qualified person, at least for the moment. For comparison: In Star Wars: Return of the Jedi supplementary material, the Imperial fleet got absolutely wrecked after the flagship got destroyed, despite having superior numbers. That is how command worked in the Empire: Nobody wanted to be "that guy" who speaks up.

I smell an anarchist in him :D

@@kaitlyn__L Good for him!!! 😁

Love Jayne

Yeah, suspension of disbelief powers are vital when watching star trek.

It may not be a primarily military organization, but that its at least a militia

Fun fact: When the chief of staff of the Air Force appeared on the show, the character was played by the REAL Air Force chief of staff at the time (general Michael E Ryan). Richard Dean Anderson asked him if there were real colonels like O'Neill (who were snarky and sometimes insubordinate). His reply was "Son, yes, we've got Colonels like you and worse." That comment is even funnier when you read the interaction between him and O'Neill (in the episode): kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fM2Ii8SFz9unmZs.html

Am I the only one that actually likes her whole arc? It takes its time to fill out and the typical growing pains of a trek production makes some of it hard to watch but basically she was traumatized as a kid, assumed a ton of guilt and placed unreasonable expectations on herself. She threw herself into Vulcan curriculum and culture to cope and became as Vulcans often are exceptional in many ways. Then she is re exposed to humanity and starts to show something like a normal human personality, until she is triggered in the most literally sense by what must look like a familiar situation and a conflict between her trauma, her re acquired humanity and her adopted logical coping mechanism is a natural result. Season one has her paying for this and ultimately has her acquitted legally and mostly by her peers, but season 2 has her facing the actual root of her problems. Her unreasonable sense of responsibility for everything and everyone around her. The climax can only happen by her letting go of the big picture and just doing her one job. I'm not sure where season 3 is going but it looks like some tension between her new more liberated self and a more external pressure to duty is building up. She probably would have been happy if her life carried on as it had been, but Discovery comes along and now she really can't just let someone else handle things because they are so few already and very outnumbered. I almost read her interactions with the admiral as frustration with the fact theres really nobody she can comfortably turn her burden over to.

@@DrewLSsix Well argued. She's very like Holden from The Expanse, who's also criticised for his Messiah complex.

In story, it was a very clear "we're totally punishing you wink-wink" situation. The federation needed to be seen to be punishing Kirk but they wanted to reward him instead. They did this by giving him what he wanted while making it look like he was being punished.

@@Ohforgodssakethatsme Saving Earth by going time-traveling to fetch some whales buys a lot of leniency, one would think.

@Matthew Gelfer Yeah. "We're going to punish you by only letting you reach the rank of the top 3% instead of the top 1%."

It seems like there are two different dimensions to the sort of insubordination Steve discusses. One is when the protagonist disagrees with the political goal that led to the generation of an order, and the other is when the protagonist doesn't dispute the political goal, but disagrees with how it's to be tactically implemented. Historically speaking, real world military organizations tend to be very unforgiving of deviations from the former, but have frequently tolerated, even encouraged, independent action when it comes to the latter. A good example of this is MacArthur's tenure in Korea. He was given wide latitude on how to carry out the war tactically, even when the Truman administration would have preferred he not do what he was doing. But, when he came into conflict with the political goals of the Truman administration, he got his ass fired in a heartbeat. So, it seems one can question authority, but one need be very careful about which realm of authority one questions. The consequences can be very different.

With Captain America and Picard both gave up their ranks and resigned Cap became Nomad and Picard because the Picard we saw in Star Trek Picard

There's a saying amongst veteran novelists giving advice to aspiring authors; you have to prove you can follow the rules before you can be allowed to break them. I wonder if Starfleet operates the same way, to a certain extent.

They seem to be setting up that conflict with Saru and Michael this season, and I really do hope the nail it.

@@whoiswillo if season 1 and 2 were about her internal sense of duty and her tendency to take on ALL responsibility I think season 3 is seting up some tension between the liberation she found in the lost year after getting some kind of resolution via Spock concerning her issues and the external pressure for duty Discoverys current situation demands. She seemed almost reluctant to take a position again and she admitted that she had all but moved on when Disco showed up. I think she almost resents that she can't just leave her people to starfleet and go live her best life. If things turned out to be happy and stable after the time skip I think she would have had a tearful reunion before taking off and promising to keep in touch.

Seconded.

By the way, this is similar to how the Roman empire was built.

Unfortunately, that was largely at the behest of Jeri Taylor, and also from Paramount execs who wanted to "ensure" TNG ratings by not having too much drama... that worked out great for them, lol. Piller kept trying to push it, and got pushback. Then after he left the show, all vestiges of it disappeared, including having MULTIPLE episodes all about the crew finding the idea of any tension or mutiny completely ludicrous.

That sentence also works if you delete everything between ‘opportunities’ and ‘but’.

How do I know if I’m a “main character” and can therefore break the rules when I feel like it?

Its kind of like our military, but looser. Soldiers dont have to follow an order that is unconstitutional, usually. Star Trek seems to give a lot of headroom for dping the right thing.

@@shadowhenge7118 that's a good way of thinking about it. The Federation put its money where its mouth is WRT having Ethics be so important. They don't just say it's important to them, they outright seem to let their officers refuse any order they deem unethical. I suppose it's a decent defense mechanism against all those evil admirals...

"Who is Star Trek's Worst Evil Admiral?" from 5 months ago :) a rare one to not have "actually" in the title!

In that episode, Data submits himself for disciplinary action, stating to Picard that, ”although the results of my actions proved positive, the ends cannot justify the means.” Picard's response is, ”No they can't. However, the phrase ’I was only following orders’ has been used to justify too many tragedies in our history. Star Fleet doesn't want officers who will blindly follow orders without analyzing the situation. Your actions were appropriate for the circumstances, & I have noted that in your record.”