As a new diver, I am under the impression as well from all the info on here and things I have heard that if you are staying within your NDL then a straight accent to surface is ok, heck even heard the safety stop is optional (again staying inside your NDL), although I do a safety stop everytime if below 25 feet, but if im doing a cesa safety stop isnt much of an option in OOA
That's essentially the difference between recreational and technical diving, but it has some very significant and profound implications.
In short, a recreational diver should always have the option of bailing out to the surface in an emergency and should 1) plan the dive in terms of the depths, times and environment to ensure that option remains and 2) dive well within those limits.
In technical diving, the diver absolutely has to extinguish ANY urge to bail out to the surface and must train, equip and plan the dive in a manner that reflects the reality that problems must be resolved under water and that the resources neccesary to resolve the problem must be present in the team. And beyond that, it's generally prudent to equip yourself so that all the neccesary resources needed to resolve an emergency are present on your person to honor the threat, despite the best laid plans and the best of intent, of separation prior to or during the emergency.
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In terms of the event described in deep descent, IIRC the issue was not depth but rather the significant deco obligation. A prudent technical diver carries a healthy reserve of gas to deal with various scenarios including lost deco gas, etc, but it is still crucial that they pull the trigger and choose to go into that contingency mode while there is still enough time and gas for the contingency plans to work.
As an example, getting mis-oriented on a wreck in poor viz and not being able to find your ascent line, your deco gas (if you were dumb enough to leave it there) or perhaps just being unable to get back to the ascent line and/or gas against a strong current is an easily surviveable event, however you have to recognize when your original plan is fubar, move to a contingency plan and have the gas and equipment to make it work.
In the above example with a strong current preventing a return to an upline and stashed deco gas, to resolve that emergency you'd need the equipment to shoot a bag to create an upline tied ot the wreck (to keep you from drifting off the wreck and thus creating a different emergency on the surface) and you'd need enough back gas to do the longer deco on back gas that would be required. Absent that, you have no good options.
But even with those resources, it can still go badly wrong when you start betting that you can in fact extend your bottom time and get back to the gas/upline on your existing back gas. If it works, you're probably ok, but if not, you've just extended your bottom time and greatly increased your deco obligation at the same time you've just burned much of your gas reserve trying to salvage the original dive plan. The envelope of what is surviveable begins to narrow extremely quickly when dealoing with increased gas usage and increasing deco obligation and that temptation to try to salvage the original plan can be a real killer.
When divers fail to forsee the potential consequences of the decisons they make underwater and push them selves outside the limits of what is surviveable with the resources they have on hand, people start to die or at least get seriously and often permanently injured.
