WKRP

I can't post it but there was a quick cameo on The Carol Burnett Show, search for "Spock's surprise visit to The Carol Burnett Show"

Runaway

I first realized how old he is in Boston Legal and was surprised how young he looks, that's been over a decade now and he still looks pretty fine.

Mike86

So I never even realized but Shatner and Nimoy shared really close birthdays in the same year. Shatner was born March 22nd 1931, and Nimoy was born March 26th 1931. Kinda interesting trivia.

milo bloom

Saw this on Twitter and it really made me think about how interesting that could have been.

Mike86

I’d say that could be an interesting idea for a series, but there are enough Star Trek prequels. Plus I don’t know if it would work now without screwing things up since none of that would be acknowledged in Trek shows that would take place after it.

Josh-da-man

Oh, gods no. No, no no...

They really made the right call with TNG by jumping ahead a century in the timeline and not filling the the show with descendants of the OG crew.

milo bloom

I absolutely love TNG, it’s a desert island series.

But I can also think about all the interesting characters TOS gave us but didn’t do anything with.

Traxan

TIL had ENT gotten a 5th season we would have learned that T'pol had a Romulan father.

https://heavy.com/entertainment/star...ather-romulan/

Josh-da-man

Yeah, that would have a good backstory for T'Pol.

There are tons of unproduced Enterprise stories from the fifth season (and earlier seasons). Some of the them sound like they would have been good (the first contact with the Trills) and some, not so much (the guest appearances by Shatner as Captain Kirk and the Borg Queen origin story).

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki...prise_episodes

I really, really like that Trill story where the Enterprise encounters the Trill:

Awesome.

I do wish that Paramount+ would consider continuing Enterprise; they could maybe do a ten-year time jump, and feature the Romulan War. By that time, they could have fleet on sister ships for the Enterprise... Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavor...

Mike86

Enterprise to me is highly underrated. I really like it quite a bit.

L Everett Scott

I need some help from Starfleet regulations experts and hope this is the thread for that.

I think it was back in '85 or '86 when I was in high school that a substitute teacher had the class play a trivia game. One of her questions was 'Who is the current captain of the Enterprise?' Now keep in mind that The Voyage Home hadn't come out yet.

I got in the first guess and said, 'Spock' and was stunned when the teacher said I was wrong. Someone else said 'Kirk' and the teacher shot him down as well. I think it was a free for all by that point, and my classmates just ran down the members of the Enterprise's crew. I wouldn't be surprised if V'ger or Khan got thrown in somewhere.

The sub finally put us out of our misery by revealing that no one was the captain of the Enterprise at the time. With Star Trek IV not having been released yet, the last time we saw the ship was in The Search for Spock when she was destroyed.

Now, I get the substitute teacher's logic: no ship, therefore, no one can be her captain. But is that really the case?

Before we continue, I just want to ignore for a second the circumstances that could really make this complicated. Namely, that the Enterprise had been decommissioned just prior to her destruction and that Spock was officially deceased in Starfleet's records. To try to keep things simple, let's pretend that the Enterprise was still in service going into The Voyage Home and that another member of the crew repaired the warp drive in The Wrath of Khan.

So had the Enterprise still been officially in service when she was destroyed in Star Trek III and Spock still her captain, would the answer of 'no one was the captain of the ship' be correct?

To my way of thinking, the captain doesn't lose his rank because his ship was destroyed. Even though the Enterprise had been totaled, Spock was still her captain, at least in my mind.

So how about it? What do Starfleet regulations say in this scenario?

story

...You think about that every day, don't you.

L Everett Scott

^ Actually, I had forgotten about this incident until recently. Now I've forgotten what it was that resurrected this memory.

But it's funny how I can still remember details from Star Trek III even though I haven't seen it in decades.

Superman07

Never gave it any thought. I’d think whoever was first officer would assume the role rather than Kirk as Admiral. Once formally decommissioned I’d expect no officers to be affiliated with the ship.

tanman

No ship no captain.

No one would lose rank.

I'm just flabbergasted you had a whole deep and nerdy conversation/debate on who was the captain of the Enterprise in a high school class.

I felt like I had to hide my nerdiness in high school otherwise face ridicule.

It also doesn't help that I use words like flabbergasted....

Count Dooku

How can someone be the anything of a ship that does not exist?

So your position is that a dead person was in command of a starship that didn't exist?

L Everett Scott

^ You saw this part, right?



I realize it's easy to side with the sub and think 'ship go bye-bye so no one is the captain'. But again, I was hoping someone could chime in with how Starfleet would view the matter. I would hope that somewhere in the gazillion games, novels, etc. that this scenario has been addressed.

It wasn't exactly a 'deep conversation/debate' so much as a bunch of kids throwing Star Trek character names at a teacher. It didn't get too deep...no one that I recall named Nurse Chapel or Yeoman Rand.

Josh-da-man

I guess, in order to figure out who the captain was or might have been, would be to look at Naval procedure, which much of Starfleet protocol is based on.

Well... Spock was the captain of the Enterprise in ST2:TWOK. Spock died in that movie, and was officially deceased.

In ST3:TSFS, the Enterprise was either decommissioned or in the process of being decommissioned, its captain was dead, and the ship was stolen and ultimately destroyed. Even though Spock was resurrected in that movie, I don't know if he still would have kept his Starfleet rank and commission -- and I doubt the US Navy has any rules in the books for that one.

Would a stolen and destroyed ship still, technically, have a captain? I suspect that, when it was being decommissioned, it probably still had a commanding officer assigned, probably just some anonymous Starfleet junior officer overseeing the decommissioning. But would he still be the Captain after the Enterprise was destroyed after being stolen?

story

Was it Nurse Chapel, then?

milo bloom

Remember in Wrath of Khan when they get the call from Carol Marcus, Spock tells Kirk that “as a teacher on a training mission, I am content to command.” But he continues that since it’s an actual mission now, Kirk should take command and so he does. Spock then dies and Kirk is left as commanding officer.

Now, in Search for Spock, they’re not officially on a mission but Kirk is the ranking officer of the group and takes full responsibility for what happens and is an active duty officer at the time. When they are charged with all the crimes at the end of The Voyage Home, Kirk is the only one that bears the brunt of the punishment with his demotion to the rank of Captain.

I would argue that Kirk was the Commanding Officer of the Enterprise at the time and that should be the answer.

Count Dooku

In ST3, Kirk and crew hijacked the NCC-1701 Enterprise. Kirk was an Admiral, and everyone onboard deferred to his being in command, but as far as Starfleet was concerned, no one was officially in command, and Kirk was actually committing a crime.

Now if at the end of ST3, the ship had not been destroyed, and Kirk and company had returned to Earth in it, Kirk would not be considered "the captain of the Enterprise" by Starfleet, he would be considered a criminal.

At the outset of ST4, they expect to be put on trial once they return to Earth. It's only due to their heroics saving Earth, that Kirk is forgiven of his crime of stealing the Enterprise in ST3.