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He was still a cadet, and still under academic probation.

Right, forgot that...

Do we know how much time passed between Neros destruction and Kirks appoitment?

stitch626 wrote:Do we know how much time passed between Neros destruction and Kirks appoitment?

No, they left that vague. So if the writers do the sequel right, they could explain it away as several years later...

So, Kirk learned how to be a Captain by watching Pike for half a mission, and Spock for PART of a mission. Being a supervisor of any kind is a SKILL. You can be the most naturally gifted and talented leader ever, but you have to learn the skills SOMEWHERE.

stitch626 wrote:Do we know how much time passed between Neros destruction and Kirks appoitment?

We could assume relatively soon afterwards, seeing as Pike was still in a wheelchair...

And still. If he was promoted to Captain right out of the academy, he should have gotten command of a smaller ship whose Captain would get the command the Enterprise. The only thing speaking for him is that he is one of the very few officers who has experience with the ship (which would also only make sense if the Enterprise was a completely new form of federation starship with MAJOR differences in design compared to EVERY other vessel previously built).

Another point (but that's completely connected to his words, not a given storyline):
I think he said that he would only need four years to get his own command (I might be mistaken). If there was at least a few months between Neros death and his promotion to captain (maybe it took that long to repair the Enterprise - after all it took them definetly more than 3 years to build it)... well it yould at least fit partially.

It could be handwaved by taking into account Pike's comment about desperateluy needing able commanders, even though it's still a stretch. I'm still stuck on Pike making Kirk the XO of the intial mission, despite being an AWOL stowaway, much less on academic probation.

Yes, this is certainly the biggest hole in the film and the hardest to wave away, even for someone who loved it as much as I. Kirk was known to have been (at the time) the youngest Captain in the fleet, but the writers made a mockery of this fact.

It was natural that Pike would name Spock acting Captain (he already held the rank of Commander and was presumably XO already) but after Spock you'd have expected the existing chain of command to be followed. (A small comment on this is that McCoy's line about Enterprise having no captain and no first officer to replace him, if it made for a good dramatic line, was unnecessary and illogical in light of the above fact). Ummm, there WAS a chain of command, right? If there was one the crew trampled all over it!

Contrived to say the least to make Kirk the hero he was "meant" to be - a little like taking a good plot on the whole but trying to squeeze cadet Kirk in as a square peg into a round hole.

You know, it's not unheard of. In the modern US Military, an officer can easily have his own command inside 4 years of graduation. He'd average around O-3 or O-4, and be given a company (Army) or a smaller ship (Navy). But not the FRIGGIN' flagship of the Federation.

Mark wrote:You know, it's not unheard of. In the modern US Military, an officer can easily have his own command inside 4 years of graduation. He'd average around O-3 or O-4, and be given a company (Army) or a smaller ship (Navy). But not the FRIGGIN' flagship of the Federation.

I expect it would be unusual for an officer not to have a command straight out of West Point - the difference, as you say, is that a platoon isn't equivalent to an aircraft carrier.