#but uhura as the lone voice in the wilderness and the emphasis on everyone else turning their back on him for no known reason

[anghraine]

Yeah, both Deckers' conflations of righteous leadership with throwing self-absorbed tantrums during an existential crisis are one of the things that make me deeply skeptical of the whole idea that Decker got completely unjustifiably screwed over for no valid reason at all. Decker did get screwed over, but unfortunately for his ego, this was in part for some entirely valid reasons in the circumstances that are only further justified by his poor strategic advice and general conduct throughout much of the mission. His advice and behavior superficially look quite different from his brother's, but ... aren't, IMO.

[further long ramble, lol]

Commodore Decker got way more screwed over of the two of them, to begin with, though by sheer misfortune rather than a temporary demotion. And Captain Decker getting displaced without forewarning by a much higher-ranking, famously brilliant tactician with more relevant experience for a critically important mission sucks, sure, but Decker really wasn't the best qualified person for it, and "preventing the deaths of billions of people" is understandably a higher priority for Starfleet than Decker's career. It takes him most of the movie to accept that where he can most contribute to this mission is not and never was from the captain's chair. His tactical judgment would never have gotten them to where they needed to be for Decker to really even matter; it had to be Kirk in that chair, backed by Spock, for Decker to end up in a position to help save the day in a very different style than early TMP Decker could have imagined.

Commodore Decker at least is clearly a broken man by the time we meet him, if one who made a dubious decision earlier, but TMP's Decker isn't broken at all. He's not unstable or traumatized (or evil, lol); he's just caught up in his feelings and prioritizes them above the stakes of the mission (...billions of lives) for a lot of the movie. Really, of the main cast, only Kirk, Uhura, and once he shows up, Spock seem to truly grasp the urgency of the crisis until pretty late in the film.

I think Decker being too hesitant and short-sighted to deal with this crisis and Kirk genuinely being the optimal choice are suggested earlyish in the film, when Uhura insists that Kirk taking over has doubled their chance of survival. We're not told why she thinks Kirk is such an improvement over Decker for this mission, but we don't really need to be; it becomes clear enough.

I feel the point of this whole dynamic is that, broadly, the film wants to create a sense of uncertainty and tension around the outcome of the whole V'ger crisis and particularly what the best tactical approach to it is—Kirk's more daring and high risk-high reward tactics, or Decker's preference for caution and waiting for certainty. At the same time, that more abstract tactical opposition is really an extension of the personal conflict between Decker and Kirk and the question of which of them is truly compromised by ego (both have egos, but at first we don't know whose ego is the real obstacle, until Spock's arrival functionally reveals that it's Decker's). And even that conflict is mostly an illustration of Kirk's profound isolation and unhappiness, reinforced by Spock's desertion for Gol and by having Kirk's motives and fitness doubted by literally everyone around him—except Uhura.

So it's made possible for the audience to be unsure and in suspense about all this, because almost the entire cast is, but the choice of Uhura—frankly the most clear-sighted figure involved—to be the one person who is certain Kirk is the better choice by far for this mission, already offers pretty strong foreshadowing that Kirk is going to be vindicated in the long run. His motives don't have to be 100% selflessly pure for him to be far and away more qualified for this crisis.

Then as the TMP plot progresses, it seems like Decker favors what appears to be the opposite strategy as his brother. The Commodore's approach was short-sighted in an impulsive, obsessive, ultimately suicidal way that jeopardized the lives of a ton of people, while TMP Decker's is short-sighted in a cautious, hesitating, time-consuming way that jeopardizes the lives of billions of people. So it can look like TMP!Decker is "the Kirk" of the film as this more cautious, rationalistic figure opposing a risk-taking superior (and no doubt does feel that way to Decker himself). But in the big-picture sense of what's happening with V'ger, it's actually way more dangerous to delay responding and avoid risks until they have the kind of certainty Decker wants, which is what he keeps pushing Kirk to do (in the snippy Decker family style) even once Spock fixes the systems.

Decker's arc, such as it is, shifts him towards daring risky, uncertain attempts at dealing with V'ger and ultimately towards a cosmically unknown future that's pivotal to victory, but also a kind of suicide in terms of his previous existence. We end with Decker leaping into the unknown, as his brother did (which didn't save the day nearly as dramatically but did provide the crucial information needed to save the day), and with Kirk futilely pleading with him not to do it, just as he did with Matt Decker years earlier. That is, as far as their TMP roles correspond to "The Doomsday Machine," Decker's role does most closely correspond to Commodore Decker's and Kirk's to, well, Kirk's, and it's only the obfuscation of the earlier film that manages to conceal this.

I think it's significant that Kirk's tactical approach, by contrast to Decker's, doesn't really change with Spock's arrival. I've seen it argued that Spock's arrival does nudge him towards less foolhardy and more cautious decisions, but I don't agree; rather, Spock's arrival gives Kirk the tools he needs for his tactics to succeed, but his tactical approach itself doesn't much change and he continues to favor a daring, decisive, and active approach that is clearly what's required as the later film progresses. He just also needed Spock—and lbr, Kirk has never been shy about acknowledging that he needs Spock to do what he does. (Even in TMP, with Spock unavailable, Kirk was sufficiently aware of this to request another Vulcan scientist as science officer before the mission even started, however inferior a replacement literally anyone would have been; Sonak has to be killed off for the disasters of the early mission to happen.)

It's a tangent, but I think Kirk's approach to Spock throughout TMP is also markedly pretty static; the big change in their relationship follows from Spock's big epiphany. The moment Spock appears on the bridge, Kirk is visibly eager to accept and welcome him on their old terms; it's Spock who rebuffs him because of his own cultural hang-ups, and Kirk is frustrated and strained, but markedly less shocked/outraged and more willing to white-knuckle his way through than the others. Spock's other ex-friends, most conspicuously McCoy, doubt Spock's trustworthiness, but Kirk brusquely dismisses their doubts and is thoroughly vindicated when what looked like the foreshadowed betrayal from Spock is revealed to be his attempt to transmit data from V'ger to Kirk at enormous risk to himself. Kirk follows his instincts and jumps into space to be there to catch him (also the correct call, it turns out). When Spock wakes up with his emotions epiphany and gets enough of his brain cells in order to finally reach out to Kirk, Kirk is just as eager and receptive as he was when Spock first stepped onto the bridge, with no hint of recriminations or even hesitation about accepting and reciprocating the gesture. There's no point where Kirk was going to rebuff Spock or handle his relationship with him differently; the change had to come from Spock.

That's the dynamic of the film: it yanks the "Kirk arc" carpet from beneath us and shows the real tension of the film hinging far more on Spock's and Decker's arcs. Kirk is ultimately a pretty static character in the film, I think; it's much more Spock's and Decker's movie in terms of movement, just so weirdly paced that it takes awhile to get there. The later film is mostly Kirk being vindicated over and over and eventually rewarded, while Spock and Decker have their epiphanies about Kirk/Ilia and their places in the universe.

My headcanon, though, is that (Captain) Decker has actually convinced himself in TMP that what's going on is a replay of that situation from TOS, with the current Kirk as (Commodore) Decker and TMP Decker as the righteous young space captain trying to keep this higher-ranking lunatic from throwing their lives away. But the reality is that this situation does require taking major risks and making difficult judgment calls rather than delaying; time is not a luxury they have, and Kirk's calculus that it's better to try and save people, even if they fail, than to dither around doing not much of anything and let them die without even trying, is ... uh, right.

Basically, I think TMP!Decker took the wrong lesson all around from that family history, and is applying it poorly because it's easier on his ego than accepting that someone else might be a better pick for navigating an existential crisis for all of Earth. He learns better and realizes that how he can best serve the mission is very different, but it's underwritten and poorly paced, so I think he's mostly just frustrating in much the same way that Matt was, despite superficially looking for awhile like he's going to be the Kirk of the scenario.

woman-of-many-fandoms replied to this post:

Let's be real though. Decker should have been in charge and the only reason Kirk didn't get himself and everyone under his command killed was because of him. If this was TOS days and Kirk had an admiral try to take over his ship, the audience would clearly know this was the antagonist but we let it slide because we are following Kirks story.

I totally disagree, actually (as is probably obvious from my post). I think Decker is completely temperamentally unqualified for the specific crisis at hand in TMP. For a significant portion of the movie, he doesn't seem to even comprehend the stakes of the crisis for the billions of people on Earth who would have died if Kirk took most of his advice. Apart from updating Kirk on the refits, something other people could do and which is at most temporarily useful, Decker's tactics are cautious and short-sighted at a time when they (and especially Earth!) can't afford either. They had to take the kind of risks Decker opposed (and continued to oppose after Spock fixed the technical problems) to have any chance of stopping V'ger. I think Uhura was absolutely correct when she said that Kirk taking over had doubled their chances of success. Kirk is a tactical genius who is willing to question himself but decisive in a crisis, none of which is true of Decker.

Doesn't help that Decker spends 80% of his screentime caring more about his ego than the mission or the most basic kind of professionalism, but his tactics are the real problem. He'd be fine in other missions, but this was not the one for him.