Skip to main content

star trek - How old was Peter Preston when he entered Starfleet Academy?


In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Admiral Kirk inspecting the Enterprise briefly talks to a young looking person.



KIRK: Ah. And who do we have here?



PRESTON: Midshipman First Class Peter Preston, engineers mate, sir!


KIRK: First training voyage, Mister Preston?


PRESTON: Yes sir!



http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie2.html1


And some versions of the movie have Mr. Scott add that Preston is his sister's youngest child.


When I first saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan I was rather shocked by how small and thus young Preston looked. Since Starfleet is usually more or less based on the modern US Navy and Preston looked too young for the US Navy I thought he should have been too young for Starfleet.


Then I recognized Peter Preston's actor as Ike Eisenmann and did a little "age computation" to deduce that if Preston was as old as Eisenmann he would have been about 18 and old enough to Starfleet. At the present time the minimum age to enter US service academies or enlist in the armed forces is 17. Of course I still thought that Preston looked a bit short and small to enlist or to enter the Academy, but maybe Starfleet, with its push button warfare style, doesn't need officers or men to be as big and strong as modern armed services do.


Valorum's answer to this question: Is it possible to enroll in Starfleet Academy as an adult?2


begins by saying:




There appears to be no minimum or maximum age at which one can enrol in Starfleet Academy. At the lower end, we see Wesley Crusher and Peter Preston entering the Academy at a very young age (15 and 13 respectively) whereas Garak (who seems to be in his 40's) nearly fools Worf into helping him to apply.



Wesley Crusher takes a highly competitive test to enter Starfleet Academy in "Coming of Age" and he does not get the only open slot at the Academy. I have always figured that they were being tested for a special program that could admit younger than usual persons to the Academy if they were very exceptionally talented, and that the Academy entrance standards were not usually that strict. I have wondered if other Star Trek characters like Spock, Alternate Universe Chekov, and Peter Preston also entered the Academy via that hypothetical special entrance program that might allow persons to enter at a younger age than usual.


In the "The Menagerie Part 1" Commodore Mendez said Captain Pike was injured rescuing cadets during a disaster.



MENDEZ: He went in bringing out all those kids that were still alive. Just wanted you gentlemen to be prepared.



http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/16.htm3


When I first saw the episode I assumed that, like cadets in the 20th century armed forces, the cadets would all be 18 and older, older than me, so they hardly seemed like "kids" to me. But if Peter Preston could be in Starfleet age 14, then it is possible that many persons young enough for me to have considered them kids would have been killed and injured during the disaster.



Khan's followers who were killed aboard the Reliant in TWOK looked like they were mostly in their twenties, but Khan's followers in "Space Seed" should have been forty or fifty by then. Did Khan's followers in "Space Seed" look very young for their ages in TWOK? Were Khan's followers in TWOK the children of his followers in "Space Seed", aged under 15 but looking very mature for their ages? Were Khan's followers in TWOK augmented children who escaped from Earth in 1996 with Khan's adult followers?


And then there was the baby in Khan's group in early scripts, who presumably was vaporized in the Reliant.


We saw only a small sample of the presumably hundreds of cadets and trainees on the Enterprise in tWOK. If the youngest looking one, Peter Preston, was over 18, there would be no reason to believe than any of them were under 18. But if Peter Preston was only 14, some of the other cadets and trainees aboard the Enterprise could also have been that young, and possibly younger.


Thus it is certainly possible to imagine that the battles in TWOK could have been between two ships with a significant proportion of kids in their crews.


So my question is: How old was Peter Preston when he entered Starfleet Academy?


Is Valorum correct to say that Peter Preston was 13 when he entered Starfleet Academy? Was he some other age when he entered Stafleet Academy?




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...
1 comment
Read more

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...
Post a Comment
Read more

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...
Post a Comment
Read more

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...
Post a Comment
Read more