Star Fleet isn't the military. The culture of how they operate is very different. It may seem the same on the surface due to their organizational structure, but there are examples all over ST canon of officers going against their captains' orders when they believed they were making a mistake. All of them could have faced court martial, but once their captains returned to their senses, they just sucked it up and left it out of all reports. Enterprise had at least one mutiny I can recall, probably more, and yet Michael is being called "Star Fleet's first mutineer." She's just the only one who didn't get away with it.
The Discovery case is a lot more extreme and the morality of it is more delicate, but although nobody knows it, Burnham was probably right in her extrapolation from what Sarek told her. I didn't like the idea of firing first, but over time it's occurred to me it's not like they had to shoot to kill.
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fc31 (5365)
7 years ago
When you have admirals and captains and powerful guns on ship, yeah, that is military. All military follows the same principle. What she did is quite different when a first officer sees the captain as unfit for commend and relieve the captain from command duty and take over. What she did she knew would end her in prison whatever the outcome.
I think Lorca uses Michael is because he is a hawk and he wants the glory from a large scale galactic war. He is a brilliant warship captain with strong leadership capabilities.
To him Michael wants that too (maybe not the glory but war itself), willing to disobey orders to start it. That is exactly the kind of people he thinks he could count on to support him.
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