Lyman,
Yes, my question was rhetorical. I fail to see what the temperature has to do with how the crew handled the last four minutes or so of "flight".
Slats wrote: The captain seemed very slow to act.
Slow to act? The captain did not act at all. He merely dispensed advice, some of it useful (use the rudder rather than the ailerons), some of it not (repeatedly urging that the wings be kept level), and at one point exclaimed despairingly "Damn, that's not possible!" (without specifying what wasn't possible).
I always thought the captain is the guy who's supposed to take over when things go pear-shaped.
Slats is also under the impression that the PNF had better situational awareness than the PF.
This is debatable. When the PNF formally took control from the PF, at 2:11:37.5, instead of pushing the sidestick forward, he held it hard left exactly as the PF had been doing. That's just one example of deficient SA. However, to his credit, the PNF did realize that they were not in an overspeed condition and told the PF smartly to stow the speed brakes that he was deploying at max thrust at FL297. Incidentally, this episode elicited no comment from the captain.
No, Lyman, you could not make this stuff up.