Shaw and Risk - some thoughts
Rewatching Picard S3 and to turns out I have more thoughts about Shaw. Who out there is surprised?
So, much of what follows is actually derived from the many, many Todd Stashwick interviews about Shaw that are all over the internet right now. With some additional insightful commentary from the Shaw Nation Discord server (thanks all y'all).
Here's the thing. In response to all the people who hate Shaw, who think he isn't a "real" Starfleet captain; who think he's a coward (thanks dudebros on the ST Facebook pages); who think he's boring. He's actually none of those things. He's what actual military (and quasi military) leaders look like. Our first introduction to him is him talking about structure and tempo and meter; structure exists so that when you are doing something inherently risky (exploring the final frontier) you have guidelines so that you aren't always relying entirely on your own judgement. Rules and guidelines and procedures exist to keep people safe in an inherently risky environment.
To make a real life comparison, in search operations, coastguard, marine and mountain rescue there are specific conditions under which a rescue will NOT be initiated because the weather or other conditions are too dangerous, exceed the tolerances of the equipment etc. Think back to the beginning of the year when Julian Sands went missing in the San Bernardino Mountains, there were entire days when not only were the helicopter search and rescue teams grounded because of weather, but even the ground team didn't deploy because it was too dangerous (and there were multiple people lost on Mt Baldy at the time). Are they cowards? Of course not, they have procedures and criteria that are laid down by risk management experts that advise whether there is too great a risk to the rescuers. If the risk is too great, they don't go out.
But we're used to fictional universes where those are exactly the kinds of high-stakes situations that make for good drama, and that always end well because our deontological heroes always have to be vindicated.
Presumably Starfleet has exactly those kinds of structures and procedures that govern their operations; so taking a crew of 500 out beyond the edge of Federation space to rescue Bev Crusher from some unknown peril is exactly the kind of thing that Starfleet would have policies for, and those policies would say NO. As they should. We're just used to our Starfleet heroes blithely ignoring those structures, taking the 1% of success chance and of course, succeeding because the writers make it so.
Although it has often struck me that, if we actually were able to count the 'redshirt' (they aren't all redshirts, that's just shorthand for unnamed characters) deaths in Star Trek, the attrition rates for our favorite captains might be surprisingly high, even with writers giving us deus ex machina saves every second week. It's just that they aren't main characters so their deaths are meaningless.
Back to Picard: there is a moment in Episode 2 that struck me at the time, where Seven is really disingenuous. She asks Shaw if he wants to be known as the captain that let two legends die; or the hero who saved them. As his XO she should also have pointed out option 3; that he be known as the captain who led his crew of 500 into a face off against a much more powerful opponent and they all died. Now, why didn't the writers put those words in her mouth?
Added to which, Shaw is an engineer, I think there's a reason the writers made him an engineer. A huge part of his professional life is risk-management, that's much of what engineers do. They are consequentialists. They look at the equipment tolerances, margins of safety, human capacity for error, and then they make rules to allow certain actions to take place (exploring the final frontier) and also keep as many people as possible safe (bringing most of your crew home alive).
And finally, there's all that accumulated trauma from Wolf 359. Shaw lived, undeservedly as far as he is concerned, his job as captain is to make sure everyone else lives. And using Starfleet protocols is one way to make sure that happens, to the best of his ability.
I mean, Shaw is clearly not a coward, he has commendations for bravery in his ready room, he's all in once he makes a decision to commit to a course of action, and he puts himself in the frontline every time he has a (realistic) chance of shielding his crew from harm. The man was willing to die to stop the Changelings from taking the bridge.
And that's the only niggle I have about his last appearance, and his speech about Seven; Shaw is not boring and rules don't necessarily need to be broken because again, the rules exist for a reason, they are generally not arbitrary and, in reality, breaking the rules gets people killed. The only reason rule breakers are celebrated in Star Trek is because it is FICTION. It's how we would like to see the world, not how it is, but it's actually a pretty dangerous way to think.
