History Headscratchers / StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome

* Most of the crew is wearing the same clothes as they were in the last movie, which makes sense since they weren't able to bring extra clothes. But in the last movie, Scotty was wearing a suede jacket over a gold turtleneck, this being a casual dress uniform for captains and above. But in the beginning of this movie, he's wearing the suede jacket, which he mostly discards except for meeting the aluminum guy, over a white turtleneck and black engineering vest. These are shown to be Starfleet uniforms since he wears them in the following movies, so how did he get the other uniforms? Not to mention that in Star Trek III, the jacket had captain's rank insignia, since he was just promoted, but here the jacket has commander's rank insignia, as does his standard uniform seen at the end. The standard uniform can be explained because in the last movie, he was never seen wearing it after being told of his promotion, so he probably didn't have it changed, but why did the insignia change on the casual uniform?

** One big problem with that whole story arc, from a medical standpoint: How quickly the diagnosis was made. As Kirk & Co. flee the hospital with a revived Chekhov, the doctors remark that the kidney is "fully functional." Using 1986 technology, the only way to know if a kidney is "fully functional" would be to do a blood test that measures kidney function renal function panel, which measures BUN, Creatinine, and estimated GFR, and probably an electrolyte panel as well to see how wonky her electrolytes were. But from the timeline in the movie, the time between when [=McCoy=] gave her the pill and when the doctors remarked the kidney was fully functional was maaaaaaybe 30-45 minutes, if you push it. Best-case scenario in a non-emergent situation, it's going to take at least 20-30 minutes for a nurse to draw the blood, send it to the lab, and for the lab to send a result back to the doctors. So that gives you, at maximum, 13-24 minutes of a fully functional kidney (assuming the kidney took about 1-2 minutes after she took the pill to fully grow/repair itself, and assuming the nurse drew the blood at the latest moment possible). Kidney dialysis for ESRD patients is typically done three times per week, and thus their immediate pre-dialysis labs are going to be pretty wonky; less than 30 minutes of kidney function is not going to be enough time to restore BUN, Creatinine, and electrolyte levels to a point where doctors can definitively say that the kidney is "fully functional."

*** All attempts to read Egyptian hieroglyphics failed until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, allowing translation of Hieratic script by comparing to Greek, and then translation of the hieroglyphics by comparing to Hieratic. If the whale language were alien enough, all the recordings in the world wouldn't help without a metaphor Rosetta Stone to establish common meaning.

[[folder: High-energy photons?]]

* Spock says that they need to collect "high-energy photons" from a nuclear reactor, to re-crystallize the dilithium in the Bird-of-Prey's warp reactor, and calls them a "toxic side effect" of fission reaction. Except that the actual danger from nuclear reactors (and nuclear waste) is not photons, but ionizing radiation.
** Plus, high-energy photons are used to generate lasers, and have nothing to do with nuclear reactors.
** Most likely gamma rays, which are high energy electromagnetic radiation (quantized as photons) and the only thing likely to penetrate that level of shielding. How you collect them though is anyone's guess...

[[folder:How had the probe been communicating with the whales without humans noticing?]]
* How has the probe been arriving to earth to speak to the whales without humans noticing a giant vessel floating above the earth? Before anyone answers that they could have been transmitting from deep-space, the probe may have been able to do this but the whales clearly couldn’t, and the probe clearly didn’t care about hiding itself from humans as it didn't bother in the film.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:how did George and Gracie know what to answer to the Probe?]]

* How has the probe been arriving to earth to speak to the whales without humans noticing a giant vessel floating above the earth? Before anyone answers that they could have been transmitting from deep-space, the probe may have been able to do this but the whales clearly couldn’t, and if the probe clearly didn’t care about hiding itself from humans as it didn't bother in the film.