Insane admirals in Star Trek (Brought to you by TvTropes)

[Picard]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... aneAdmiral

Star Trek: The Original Series
"The Doomsday Machine" - Commodore Matt Decker is driven mad after watching the titular machine kill his entire crew, and commandeers the Enterprise in a vain attempt to destroy it. When that proves unsuccessful, he commits suicide, flying a shuttlecraft into it.
"The Deadly Years" - With Kirk and the rest of the Enterprise senior staff incapacitated, Commodore Stocker takes command of the Enterprise and orders the ship into the Neutral Zone, against Star Fleet regulations.
"Whom Gods Destroy" - Garth of Izar, a former Starfleet Fleet Captain who develops megalomania and ends up in the asylum on Elba II.
Star Trek VI - Several Federation and Klingon brass conspired to assassinate each other's heads of government.
Even Kirk veered towards this trope in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock — technically he did steal valuable Federation property to go to restricted space in order to complete a pet project, it just happened to be the right thing to do and a rather reasonable pet project.
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Admiral Jameson violated the Prime Directive by providing weapons to both sides in an armed conflict.
Admiral Norah Satie ruthlessly investigated the crew of the Enterprise-D, believing that there was a traitor among them. When her investigation proved fruitless she became rather unhinged.
Admiral Kennely conspired with Cardassians.
Admiral Pressman conducted secret (and illegal) tests involving a Federation cloaking device and lied to other officers about it.
Star Trek: Insurrection - Admiral Dougherty is conspiring with an enemy power to remove an indigenous population from its homeworld in order to gain access to valuable resources.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Admiral Leyton convinced the Federation President to declare martial law on Earth, carefully maneuvering his way into launching a coup.

[Mike DiCenso]

Most of those examples are of ranks other than admiral, or when the characters in question were another rank The two commodores are not admirals, as the rank is between a captain and rear admiral. The same thing with Captain Garth's fleet captain rank.

As to the other examples:


* Admiral Mark Jameson was not an Admiral at the time he gave weapons to both sides in the Mordan IV hostage negotiation, but a commander. He still did some very questionable things while as an admiral aboard the E-D, but that's separate from what is described in the OP and presumably TVTropes' entry.

* Admiral Pressman also the same situation. He conducted the illegal cloaking device tests while as a captain, though his actions later on the E-D count while being an admiral attempting to use his rank to salvage and eventually carry on the project.

So we only have six actual examples, including Jameson and Pressman. It's hardly a that big a trope, especially seeing that they are examples scattered over 14 seasons combined between TNG and DS9 and two movies.
-Mike

[Picard]

Commodore is still a flag rank.

[2046]

Their list is really quite terrible. I mean it's cute and all, but everything is out of context.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... aneAdmiral

Star Trek: The Original Series
"The Doomsday Machine" - Commodore Matt Decker is driven mad after watching the titular machine kill his entire crew, and commandeers the Enterprise in a vain attempt to destroy it. When that proves unsuccessful, he commits suicide, flying a shuttlecraft into it.

Yes, he had a little psychotic break sort of thing.

"The Deadly Years" - With Kirk and the rest of the Enterprise senior staff incapacitated, Commodore Stocker takes command of the Enterprise and orders the ship into the Neutral Zone, against Star Fleet regulations.

He was not insane, just inept. He wanted to take a shortcut through the Neutral Zone in the hopes of getting medical help faster, but then didn't know what to do when the Romulans showed up. No doubt he became Commodore via paper-pushing or somesuch rather than starship command.

"Whom Gods Destroy" - Garth of Izar, a former Starfleet Fleet Captain who develops megalomania and ends up in the asylum on Elba II.

He was nearly killed and then reborn via shapeshifting capability granted by an alien race. Yes he's nuts, but there's no telling what happened to make him so . . . shoot, just going from a solid to a shifter might be sufficient to cause issues for any normal person.

Star Trek VI - Several Federation and Klingon brass conspired to assassinate each other's heads of government.

They were not insane per se, just severely misguided insofar as what they viewed as their national interests. Cold Wars make people a little nutty.

Even Kirk veered towards this trope in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock — technically he did steal valuable Federation property to go to restricted space in order to complete a pet project, it just happened to be the right thing to do and a rather reasonable pet project.

"Pet project" being saving a life.

Star Trek: The Next Generation
Admiral Jameson violated the Prime Directive by providing weapons to both sides in an armed conflict.

Again, not insane, just wrong. He did get a little nutty when it came time to pay the piper insofar as taking both doses of an alien drug . . . after that, any evidence of insanity could be drug-related.

Admiral Norah Satie ruthlessly investigated the crew of the Enterprise-D, believing that there was a traitor among them. When her investigation proved fruitless she became rather unhinged.

She didn't exactly go batcrap insane but she was definitely off her rocker.

Admiral Kennely conspired with Cardassians.

See the ST6 example.

Admiral Pressman conducted secret (and illegal) tests involving a Federation cloaking device and lied to other officers about it.

This is still not insanity, just bad decisions.

Star Trek: Insurrection - Admiral Dougherty is conspiring with an enemy power to remove an indigenous population from its homeworld in order to gain access to valuable resources.

This is not insanity. He just set a course down a slippery slope that led to him authorizing an attack on a Federation starship.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Admiral Leyton convinced the Federation President to declare martial law on Earth, carefully maneuvering his way into launching a coup.

Again, not insanity.

*****

So by my count they provide 10.5 examples. And yet, in the end, we have one starship commander who lost it when his crew died in a horrible fashion and he was the only survivor, forced to listen to their pleas and powerless to do anything about it. That is just the sort of horror that could make anyone temporarily snap. And then there's Norah Satie, who breaks with reality in the midst of her conspiracist fervor.

In addition to Decker, I would add Ronald Tracey, who also lost his crew and turned to the Dark Side of the Phaser.

The rest are either not insane or else were suffering from alien intervention of some kind. Making poor decisions or basing your actions on piss-poor information is itself not insanity, though if you go far enough down that road you can certainly wind up being completely off your rocker (as Satie demonstrates).

With only a 25% success rate (and that's giving them a Commodore instead of an Admiral), I declare the list a failure.

[Mike DiCenso]

In addition to Decker, I would add Ronald Tracey, who also lost his crew and turned to the Dark Side of the Phaser.

Tracy was not an admiral, however. He was a captain. Same thing with Merrick from "Bread and Circuses", who in addition to just being a captain, he wasn't even a Starfleet captain anymore.

Commodore is still a flag rank.

But still not an admiral by any definition provided.
-Mike

[Picard]

To quote page itself:

In fictional military settings, the brass tend to be a bit unstable. Frequently they become so obsessed with their own pet projects that they endanger federation security. Other times their brazenness and/or paranoia almost leads to wars breaking out between rival superpowers. They may be a Conspiracy Theorist with authority investigating the heroes, an Obstructive Bureaucrat making hell for the heroes, or they may be covering up for their own good. They could be a General Ripper obsessed with the enemy, or they could be cowards who fear public exposure of their own wrongdoings.
All this insanity might make their organizations look incompetent, but presumably the Insane Admirals are just the ones we see... 95% of the brass in any given organization are probably decent folk, but spend their time rubber-stamping military contracts and attending state functions, and never do anything 45-minute drama-worthy. Please note this applies only to officers who are at command level, no one below the rank of Naval Captain/Army Colonel/Airforce Group Captain applies here, see The Neidermeyer and Sociopathic Soldier for those.

General Ripper is a major Sub Trope of this.