Posted on 05/03/2004 1:14:42 PM PDT by presidio9
The esteemed Mr. Eastlund will, no doubt, attempt to spin his argument into one weighing the merits of Star Trek: The Next Generation against those of “classic” Star Trek. This is not an argument about the firepower of NCC-1701 versus that of NCC-1701-D or whether a Shakespearean actor who gave a great portrayal of Charles Xavier is a better actor than the toupee-wearing star of Kingdom of the Spiders. No, the issue at hand is simply whether the character of Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the 24th Century was a better Starfleet captain than the character of Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the 23rd.
Kirk rarely pulled punches and did not engage in flowery prose prior to resolving an argument, so I shall endeavor to emulate his modus operandi. There is one overriding comparison as to why Shatner’s character is the superior officer – James T. Kirk was born in Iowa and became the youngest captain in Starfleet’s history; Jean-Luc Picard is a Frenchman who eats croissants for breakfast.
Jacques Chirac would love Jean-Luc Picard. Captain Picard prefers to debate the enemy. He finds few absolute rules in the universe except the Prime Directive - which states that Starfleet must pursue “non-interference” with pre-warp travel civilizations at all cost, even at the risk of death. Captain Picard tries to find common cause with every freakishly annoying alien species who differs from homo sapiens only in that said alien has a silly prosthetic on his/her/its forehead. Captain Picard would rather “dialogue” than slide the phaser’s setting past “stun” to “kill.” Captain Picard has the entire flotilla of Starfleet at his disposal and yet somehow finds it difficult to beat a third-rate alien species like the Pakleds. In the first season of The Next Generation, Captain Picard wore a Starfleet dress uniform that really was a dress, leading to a comment on his legs from Counselor Troi’s sluttish mother with whom Picard always seemed to avoid establishing first contact. And Picard’s uncanny ability to identify hot alien babes led to Commander Riker hooking up with an extraterrestrial shemale whose species reproduced by inserting their gametes into a husk.
There are multiple reasons why First Contact is the only good Next Generation movie, and all the reasons involve attributes outside of Picard’s character. The Enterprise-E uses its heavy armament to great effect against a Borg cube – and yet one movie later the Enterprise cannot beat the wimpy Sona in battle. Picard finds no redeeming qualities in the Borg, an implacable enemy who will not negotiate and will not stop until the human race is wiped out. Picard kills a crewman infected with Borg nanites lest the unfortunate soul live out his days as part of a biomechanical collective. Picard is wonderful in the movie, unlike the Jean-Luc who lets Kirk die in the awful film Generations, a yawner which also shows Picard losing the Enterprise-D to an eighty year old Klingon ship. This film is the equivalent of a World War II movie in which Charles de Gaulle allows the Nazis to execute George Patton and then lets an unarmed Wright Flyer defeat the 8th Air Force. Picard’s military performance in Generations is beyond pathetic – it is grounds for a courts-martial.
Decades before Picard wore his dress, Kirk was flying solo in the hinterlands of the galaxy. He bluffed his way out of certain death at the hands of a giant ship in The Corobomite Maneuver. Sun Tzu, who advised that the greatest generals win without even engaging in battle, would have smiled upon Kirk. Kirk defeated the Gorn – a heavily muscled lizard-man – with a firelock musket made out of a bamboo tube and homemade black powder. Kirk defeated Nomad with a simple syllogism that pointed out its flaws without resorting to “understanding” the personality of a megalomaniacal robot probe; he defeated the Romulans in the first engagement ever with a cloaked ship; his crew stood fast in a swordfight against better trained Klingons in Day of the Dove. Kirk was one of the few human beings to survive the green-skinned Orion slave girl – but no “whipped” captain was he, for even the guiles of Elaan of Troyius could not keep him from his duty and his ship.
Kirk didn’t let the Prime Directive get in the way of a superior law: the natural law of sentient beings to the right of freedom. Whether it was the mad computer and its attendant creeps in Return of the Archons or the big ugly head in The Apple, Kirk was willing to violate the letter of the law to promote the spirit of the law – and the galaxy and polyester-clad little kids watching Kirk on 1970s Trek re-runs were better for it.
In the movie Free Enterprise, the character Robert, upon being asked by his comic book and Trek-loving girlfriend to stop living in the 24th Century, resolutely stands firm in stating his love for the 23rd – only the classic show, he cries, knowing full well that one of the few hot chicks in the universe who loves sci-fi and geekdom is about to cut his heart out with a dull Klingon bat’leth sword (note: only the dishonorable allow Klingon blades to dull). Robert is like Kirk in the excellent episode The City on the Edge of Forever – willing to lose the woman he loves while knowing that it was necessary. Kirk knew that cruel fate was inherent in existence and accepted it like a man from a Kipling poem; Picard would have attempted to weasel out of bad karma, trying to dialogue Edith Keeler on the merits of fighting the Nazis instead of letting a truck grind her and a possible Nazi victory in World War II into a non-temporal timeline violating pulp.
Kirk is a man. Picard is something we’ll have after postmodernity is finished eradicating the human male. Give me a hard day’s work on a farm in middle America in lieu of effete metrosexual pastry in the morning any time.
BTW, I never really liked Picard. A very wooden character. Janeway, now there was a captain after my heart.
Picard had the chance to destroy the Borg with the 'virus' implanted in Hugh Borg, and, like a typical Frenchie, he wimped out because (sniff!) Hugh had demonstrated individuality (which I'm sure comes as a real comfort to all the people the Borg killed since).
Kirk would have happily strapped a grenade to his ass and sent him on his way.
Oh, sure, if you want to grade on that curve....
Then why didn't he send that borg back with the virus?
I love French food...
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