8. Ego Preventing Safety
Before we leave the confines of Captain Kirk's blunders from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, let's take a few steps back in time, and cover one last questionable decision of his within this fictional universe and film. Namely involving his ego. Remember when the then Admiral Kirk decides he has to confront Captain Decker in engineering, to demote him to rank of Commander prior to the Enterprise leaving to intercept Vejur? Well, just as Kirk approaches Decker and Scotty he's within earshot long enough to hear Decker declare they had a faulty module installed for a very key piece of equipment. So as Decker is about to help finish this key troubleshooting concern on the transporter system, Kirk all but ignores this, even as Decker exclaims he's too busy. It's the few minutes of time that Kirk forces Decker to step aside that allows for Starfleet Headquarters on Earth to attempt beaming some key crew members aboard through the Enterprise's transporter unit that clearly wasn't ready to take passengers. In turn, people died a most morbid death and it was Kirk's ego that felt it was more important to get his command back sooner than later versus letting Decker do his job in finishing repairs on the defective transporter system. Kirk was clearly firing on all cylinders within this movie, eh?