I also vote "disagree". As another poster said, the Duelists are actually better prepared for their roles than the original Wedge Defenders were, and at worst, no worse prepared. Besides, you'd been leading up to this moment since Fanfare for an Exiled Prince, and if you'd suddenly changed paths and said, say, "no, they're just going to spend the summer being middies on Challenger" or something like that, that would have been a cop-out.

Besides, as Gryphon said in Gunboat Diplomacy, he really hadn't expected that almost the first thing Utena did in starship command would be to fight a bare-knuckles, no-holds-barred, knock-down-and-drag-out brawl with a Klingon ship of the line. He had planned on a leisurely jaunt from concert venue to concert venue, and so had everyone else. Just another lesson in how the Universe doesn't act the way you expect it to work, or want it to work.

-Joe-