History Headscratchers / StarTrekVItheUndiscoveredCountry

* When that prison guard shot the shapeshifter and said "No witnesses," how did he know he was shooting the shapeshifter? Or did he not care who he was shooting at and only realized he killed the shapeshifter after it died and just said that to sound badass?

* When that prison guard shot the shapeshifter and said "No witnesses," how did he know he was shooting the shapeshifter? Or did he not care who he was shooting at and only realised he killed the shapeshifter after it died and just said that to sound badass?

*** In-universe ScienceMarchesOn. Build a better cloaking device and someone will build better sensors. In the dozen years following this Starfleet starting making sensors that could detect and extrapolate from exhaust vapours, and someone in (or under contract to) the Klingon and Romulan empires was racing to try and find a way to mask this. As soon as they found that way all those sensor modifications Starfleet came up with were obsolete.

* This movie features a Klingon Bird of Prey prototype that can ''fire while cloaked.'' Yet in ''Trek'' series set 70-80 years after this movie, we never hear anything more about this ability. Being able to attack while invisible grants an ''enormous'' tactical advantage, so the Klingons wouldn't have just abandoned this. Possibly qualifies as a WallBanger.

** Note that we never again see the engine-emission-homing photon torpedo that Scotty jury-rigged to counter this new cloak, either. Another case of ReedRichardsIsUseless.

** Though given what happens in the movie, the prototype was a failure. Expanded Universe information indicates that firing while cloaked took enormous power and the ship couldn't sustain it for long; of course it wasn't intended to need to, but once Starfleet worked out how to easily detect such a ship by its engine emissions it lost its tactical advantage. Later series would make cloaking device/detection technology more of an explicit arms race - any development on one side gives only a brief advantage before the other side catches up, and no cloak is perfect.

** The needs of the many...

** But they do make loads more regular Birds of Prey, so either the Klingons solved the gas emission problem or Kirk and Crew were so mad about being retired they never told Starfleet how to find a cloaked BofP.
*** The gas problem was something only the modified Bird-or-prey had. Its cloak couldn't completely mask the emissions because of the power needed for the weapons, which allowed the ''Enterprise'' to track it with the gas sensor. Regular cloaked ships put nearly all the power to the cloaking device to ensure everything is hidden.
**** Now that makes sense and explains why the Klingons never made anymore of the modified BofP's and why Starfleet never used the same method to find regular BofP's.
* "Don't wait for the translation!" - If Kirk and McCoy don't wait for the translation of your question General Chang how will they know what you asked them?

* Spock forcing his way into Valeris mind was...[[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything Dodgy,]] [[{{Squick}} to say the least.]]

* Spock forcing his way into Valeris mind was...[[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything Dodgy,]] [[{{Squick}} to say the least.]]

* Spock forcing his way into Valeris mind was...[[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything Dodgy, [[{{Squick}} to say the least.]]

** It's a ShoutOut to something said to the [[DirtyCommunists Russian ambassador]] by the [[{{Eagleland}} American ambassador]] during the CubanMissileCrisis. It made as little sense in RealLife as it did in StarTrek.

* "Don't wait for the translation!" - If Kirk and McCoy don't wait for the translation of your question General Chang how will they know what you asked them?

* Chang has a Bird of Prey that can fire while cloaked, and it presents Enterprise and Excelsior with a huge tactical disadvantage. Why did the Klingons only make one prototype like this and forget about it by Picard's time?

*** Actually I considered using Washington but I figured the USA would recover ''faster'' than if New York was hit. DC is smaller and more focused on a single industry, Government, than New York and presumably the US government has contingency plans for losing the capital left over from the ColdWar

** True. But what if, instead of New York City, the city being destroyed is Washington DC? (Forgive the Yankee-centric conversation, by the way!) It wouldn't spell instant death for the nation, but it would be a ''hell'' of a knock nevertheless, one that would take years if not decades to recover from. The same principle applies here. As for your second issue: Presumably even in-universe, ScienceMarchesOn. They probably found a way to either fix the problem or do without.

* Paxis explodes and strips the ozone layer from Qo'noS meaning that the planet has only fifty years of oxygen left. Just how does the loss of one planet, even if it is the capital world, doom the entire Klingon Empire? The Klingon Empire is supposed to be a major interstellar power that's the equal of the Federation, they don't have a load of colony worlds they can get help from or evacuate to? It's rather like saying New York City is destroyed in a freak yachting accident and this means that the rest of the United States of America collapses. Also the whole giving the Klingons sanctuary in Federation space thing is never, to my knowledge, mentioned again. Throughout the next decade of Trek we regularly see the Klingons swanning around Qo'noS shouting their heads off about honour and blood wine.

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