Nothing is cooler than a strong confident woman who puts a powerful man in his place.
Was Admiral Hubris really in the wrong though? She didn't want to help the Romulans because they're a hostile empire, which this show proves by having them act like total assholes to the one guy that tried to help them.
To change the subject to GOOD Star Trek, has anyone noticed that the crazy Admiral trope evolved from legit crazy admirals like Decker, the reverse aging guy on bath salts, and the entire admiralty board in TNG season 1 to frustrated bureaucrats that want to be more hawkish?
-Satie wanted to uncover all possible links to the Romulans and while she went overboard, three episodes later in Mind's Eye, Geordi nearly assassinated a Klingon governor because of Romulan fuckery.
-Maxwell (he fits the trope) was concerned about a Cardassian invasion which happened years later when the Council and the Cardassians drew arbitrary lines in the Badlands to create the DMZ and the proxy war that followed. Cal Hudson is effectively another Benjamin Maxwell.
-Pressman went against the Treaty of Algeron by inventing the phasic cloak because he thought that treaty was stupid. And Picard himself witnessed 6 years of Romulan fuckery first hand, but could say with a straight face that treaty was signed in good faith.
-Leyton wanted a national security state so that he could prepare them for the Dominion War, which was the right idea because a few years later, they did have to fight the Dominion and nearly lost the war.
For contrast, look at a good admiral like Nechayev. In Journey's End, she was the middleman between Picard and the Council and tried to lobby the Council to not resettle the Navajo and she does more or less the same thing in The Maquis with Sisko. The audience calls her Bitchayev for her trouble even though she didn't actually do anything wrong or illegal. Dougherty in Insurrection, despite being an actual crazy Admiral, technically was working under the Federation Council, which is plausible as the Federation is perfectly fine relocating people to make their lives easier. The job of an Admiral is actually very disempowering in Star Trek, which is why Kirk turned into an out-of-touch old man in TMP. A good Admiral is a glorified messenger. A bad one is one who takes initiative and makes command decisions.
Yes, the hawk Admirals did break the law, but they also had foresight. Why? Maxwell said it, "Wait six month until the bureaucrats sitting around reading reports, trying to figure out what to do. They don't know what's going on out here." Which we see in later Rogue Admiral characters because they keep hitting the wall when trying to explain to the Federation Council realpolitick.
