It's "just" another warp capable but uncloaked freighter, we already discovered and blew up something like 4 of those before. Its pretty much irrelevant compared to the cloaked heavy warbird they already have. The really scary news is that they have the manufacturing capacity for cloaked shuttles.
It's biological hardware that can be installed into multiple shuttles, more missiles for the
Beast Biophage.
... Of course, we don't know that, for all we know the Biophage can 'manufacture' biomatter just as easily as it can build shuttles... but when it can steal stuff from just about everything, having a transport full of civies will speed up its progress significantly.
At the end of the day, we DON'T WANT to make it easier for the Biophage, in any way we can...
We could give him a desk job or something.
I'd like to hear what the man has to say for himself before passing final judgment. We heard some reports from very far away, but the person at the scene always has more information. I'm not excusing him, but I'll at least hear him out.
We have to back T'Faer, but I understand O'Hara's point of view. I'm not sure I want him out of Star Fleet completely, but I don't want him continuing to command an Explorer.
This is Star Trek. Justice that needs to be meted out in the dark isn't justice. He disobeyed a direct order, and more importantly he failed. Public Court Martial, public opinion be damned.
(and others. 4 pages of others.)
First up, militarily O'Hara failed epicly. There's no ifs or buts about this: he consigned thousands to their deaths for the lives of 300. You can say he had a blind spot in an urgent situation, or he had willfully ignored the fact that those refugees are sitting on top of a warp drive, or maybe he still have some disbelief on how fast the 'phage can take over ship systems, but at the end of the day, he failed badly because the other ship had warp drives.
(if the other ship had not warped out, he could have saved THOUSANDS. Think about it)
... and, to be honest, even Blue Kirk had done something like this
(attempt unconventional tactics in the face of an enemy). I mean, seriously, orbital bombardment as a negotiation tool? From certain angles, that's an instant demotion matter. So is taunting the Romulan head-of-fleet equivalent while in the most important meeting of Federation-Romulan relations of all time. Or a multitude of other stuff...
The only difference is (a) Blue Kirk has successes, and (b) he has a string of previous successes.
And (c) he did it all in peace-time.
Think about it:
The problem here is that, in more peaceful times O'Hara's actions should be lauded. While the Vulcan's "needs of the many" usually holds true, TOS Kirk usually goes "f* that", goes for the third and very risky option, and tries to have his cake and eat it too.
The main problem here is that the opponent is the Biophage. Otherwise, O'Hara's actions is a very Federation mindset, and should be nurtured... ... ? I donno, but my gut instincts is that we should keep O'Hara around, and treat his punishment (
and there should be punishment, because disobeying superiors/fleet orders must be discouraged, no matter what) with kids gloves.
Our message, with whatever punishment we give out, should say "We're in a war footing, and insubordination is discouraged to the highest order. But upholding the very mindset behind Starfleet, even in the deepest of crisis, is a virtue not matter how we shake it."
Remember, O'Hara's actions are wrong... but his
MINDSET, at the end of the day, is correct.
But one thing for sure. Remember the second reboot Enterprise movie, "Into the Darkness"? We might be falling into that line of very war-like thinking here.
Edit:
"Phaser array three is under-performing, reorient and fire from array five."
... should we also give these bunch of people a stern stare here? Their miss caused the initial infection after all...
