What do they mean by in Starfleet? Start of the academy? Joining the fleet? Shatner was 35. Someone up thread said Kirk gives his age as 32 in an episode. It’s possible he started the academy at 17. If they wanted to he could have started at 5.
At 32 we don’t see him take command do he was doing it for a little while. It was his second command that puts him in his late 20s. Chris Pine was 29. Generally Navy Captains are in their mid to late 40s.
From first serving on a ship.
Regardless of what timelines might be drawn from TOS, the chain of events in the reboot is asinine. It stems from assuming Kirk has a destiny, and sledgehammering circumstances to fit.
In the series, Kirk was notably young, but not incredibly so. It was plausible that he managed to get himself in the captain’s chair quicker than usual through a series of displays of extreme competence.
In the recent movies, though, not only is he younger yet, but his history is uniformly one of incompetence.
Right. Kirk first took command at a very young age through violent and extraordinary circumstances. In TOS it was off stage on the Farraguat. In the movie it was on the Enterprise.
Sure and they ridiculously shoe horned a shit load of events into Kirk’s back story in TOS as plot points in individual episodes. The new Trek was a dumb action movie. But let’s not pretend TOS was Shakespeare. Even in comparison. When I was 8 I thought it was genius. As an adult the flaws are glaring. But I can still enjoy all of its incarnations.
Also, in the series, Kirk didn’t ACT especially young. I know many people have an impression of him as this arrogant hotdog, but if you look at the 60s episodes he comes off as a fairly serious hardass, at least when he’s on the bridge. (I’ll grant that he loosens up a bit when it’s just him, Spock, and McCoy).
Hard to picture new Kirk angrily dressing down a bunch of guys for getting into a brawl with Klingons (i.e. “The Trouble with Tribbles”). New Kirk would be all - “he said the Enterprise was a garbage scow? Let’s go GET the bastard!”
Or more likely new Kirk would be the instigator in the first place.
The fact that it’s Starfleet means that anything goes, but I think it is an interesting question from the perspective of actual current and past Earth militaries.
So, how would the current US Navy approach a situation where an officer cadet on a training cruise is suddenly the senior officer? When he’s assigned a battlefield commission by the Captain of the vessel and that is duly recorded in the logs. Or could that never happen?
From that episode, the cadets in question have an unrealistic assessment of their own capabilities, so they would not have looked kindly on Nog saying “hey, I’m a real ensign, so of course I outrank you.” They probably would not have been happy if Commander Sisko showed up, and likely still balked.
Which shows their incompetence. I mean, they’re on some mission and find themselves without any real officers, the prudent thing would be to, at a minimum, call Starfleet HQ. Now I could maybe see some short term, tight deadline special mission that needed to occur, so they justify to themselves anyway completing that mission before calling HQ or going back to base. But not an extended operation. In fact, there’s probably a regulation for that somewhere that Nog could have quoted (to be ignored).
I don’t think Nog had the authority to overrule them or assume command. I’m not sure if Sisko would have had the authority, though he would have had the sense to call HQ or argue that such contact was their duty. Their command assignment would have to come from the commanding officer that assigned that vessel its mission, their line superior. Or someone higher in authority.
Regulation 3042.6? No Starfleet officer shall engage in zero-gravity sexual relations without a proper harness and elbow pads? Are you quite sure that’s relevant?
Is it possible to intercept subspace transmissions? It’s conceivable that their original mission required “radio” silence.
I thought 3042.6 was disappearing a dead slave girl in a metal bikini from Kirk’s quarters? 
Thus illustrating why the harness and elbow pads are necessary.
That’s a 3024.6.
Worf started out with a red shirt the first season of TNG, and he was some sort of tactics officer or something like that (I don’t recall exactly, mainly he was just the “hey look, a klingon” officer the first year). Then when Lt. Yar got killed he switched to yellow shirt and was made chief of security.
LaForge was also red shirt the first season, before later going yellow and becoming chief engineer.
In no way is that an excuse for something not to make sense. Good fiction (especially science fiction) always has to set up plausible in-universe things to happen. There’s an art to maintaining the suspension of disbelief. This movie fails, and so people look for excuses. Some make up their own, while others look to real life organizations for help.
And, no, at no point in the old Star Trek did they ever do something as stupid as promote an ensign who had only been active for one mission to the role of captain. That is so ludicrous that it breaks some people’s suspension of disbelief. The original timeline was almost always careful to avoid that.
It had to be–that’s the baseline of any good science fiction. And the new movie failed the baseline in this regard.
The only way Kirk’s promotion makes sense is if they were really, really short on captains, perhaps due to them all dying to the Narada in the small interim before the Enterprise arrives. But that’s still a plot hole, as that was not mentioned.
And, what’s more, it diminishes Kirk’s character. He’s no longer a hard working joe who was the fastest to earn his rank. He was just arbitrarily promoted after performing one mission. Remember, even Data earned his rank the old fashioned way, even though he didn’t have to.
Kirk’s captaincy is now the result of nepotism and circumstance rather than him being the best captain in Starfleet. And why? Because the writers thought people were too stupid to accept a Lieutenant Kirk for a single movie.
You can be dismissive all you want–it doesn’t change the fact that the promotion breaks the suspension of disbelief for quite a few people. Saying “it’s just fiction” doesn’t somehow fix that. It’s just avoiding the problem.
As far as I can tell, you take on the color of your highest level job, even if you were originally in another track. Although it must be voluntary to some degree, as Data keeps his gold shirt. My guess is that all his jobs are equal, so he got to choose–that would also explain why Spock was in science blue despite being XO, yet Data was forced into red when became XO. Then again, that could be due to his captain being more anal for regulations that Kirk ever was.
BTW, anyone going to challenge my interpretation of the scene with Spock and Decker, explaining why it’s obvious that Kirk did indeed have the authority to remove Decker from command?
I cannot help but think of mirror, mirror where if you whacked your superior officer, you were promoted.
Hmmmm…
I only saw it because the former Mrs. Plant (v.2.0) was, like I, a Trek fan. She wanted to ogle the young male Vulcan. 
I haven’t seen the other film(s).
Two words. Wesley. Crusher.
Sorry, it’s Star Trek. If your suspension of disbelief isn’t already superhuman you can’t watch it. I just believe that most fanboys look back at their childhood loves with fondness and look past the flaws. I agree there needs to be internal logic to a work. I just don’t see how this one small point stretches star trek’s already shaky internal logic more than a lot of what came before. But you don’t have to like it. Voyager is on DVD.
I’ll admit to replacing certain mental images 
when reading slash fiction as a result of the movie, but yeah most of it sucked.
I thought Kirk was only supposed to be around 21 in the reboot. It’s bad enough that Spock, McCoy, & Scottie all outranked him, but so did Chekov (already an ensign while Kirk’s a cadet).
And had it not been for Borg transwarp corridors in Voyager Harry Kim could’ve spent decades as an ensign. 
That’s another thing; Captain Spock still served as Kirk’s First Officer after Kirk was demoted from Admiral. Scottie was also a captain and Chief of Engineering.