| 1 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 2 | |
| 3 | [[folder: What should Kodos have done in response to the disaster?]] |
| 4 | * In the episode "Conscience of the King", Kodos is naturally denounced as an abomination for what he did on Cygnia Minor. But that was made easy by the mere fact that it turned out killing all those people was unnecessary since the supply ships arrived early enough to save the colony before it ran out of food. But what if they hadn't? Suppose the supply ships didn't arrive early and there really wasn't enough food for the colony to survive unless they removed 4,000 people from it? With that criteria in mind, what was Kodos supposed to do? Let everyone die for the sake of morality? Heck even if that was his plan, chances are the colonists would descend into anarchy and start slaughtering each other for the last scraps of food well before that happened. So what was his alternative? Suppose Kirk was in charge instead of Kodos? What would Kirk have done? It's a shame none of the characters in the episode pondered this question, and didn't really have to since the mere fact that the supply ships arrived early made it moot. |
| 5 | ** It was him using eugenics criteria that really sank him. It is implied he went a bit too quick in culling the population to start with, that he didn't try to keep everyone alive as long as possible but instead leapt straight to Plan: Master Race as soon as things got a bit tricky. He could have tried rationing longer. He could have called for volunteers to go without. He could have done it on a lottery system, but instead he pulled his criteria straight from the Eugenics Wars playbook and that was the final nail in his coffin. He still had options, not great options to be fair, but of them all he opted for the cruelest and worst available. And, ultimately, he could have put it to a vote to see if the colony would prefer to take their chance on starvation versus mass murder, and he didn't. |
| 6 | *** Was it really the cruelest and worst option though? Kodos wasn't using eugenics to create a master race, he was using it in response to a potential extinction-level disaster in order to save as many lives as possible with a limited food supply that wasn't enough for everyone. The idea was that he crunched the numbers and determined the maximum number of people who could survive on their remaining food till the date of the scheduled supply ship delivery using the strictest rationing scheme possible. As for the idea that he acted too quickly, the situation kind of mandated quick action. Every day he failed to act was a day the food would continue to be consumed at an unsustainable rate, meaning he'd have to add more people to the execution list in order to make up for the additional food loss. As for the idea of volunteers or a lottery, the problem there needed to be some way to ensure enough mission-critical people would not be selected. Suppose the colony only has 20 people who can maintain and repair the power grid. What if all 20 people get selected by the lottery? That means the colony would still get wiped out if their power grid suffers any malfunction, or it means they have to take those people off the list, which basically renders the entire lottery system illegitimate and it would need to be scrapped. If one accepts that some people must die for the colony to survive, then it's logical to accept that a system needs to be set up to ensure the people who aren't selected are the ones most qualified to ensure the colony would survive after losing half its workforce. I'm not saying what Kodos did was right, it just seems like it was a desperate choice motivated by cold logic rather than evilness. I could easily imagine a vulcan making the same choice. None of the other characters in the episode ever mentioned a viable alternative to Kodos' plan, which means either there were no other alternatives, or they never bothered to think of any, which leaves them in a poor position to judge what he did when they hadn't looked into the matter. Again, this seems why the writers had to include the part about the supply ships arriving early to render his plan unnecessary. It's like they wanted to make him evil, but accidentally failed to do so by creating a situaiton where he was motivated by pure desperation to save as many people as he could save rather than evilness, and so they had to include the part with the early supply ships so that his evilness would not be in dispute. And that's a shame because they lost a chance for a story with profound ethical and pragmatic questions about what really was the right thing in that situation. As it stands, no one came up with a plan that would have had a greater chance of saving the most lives in the event that the supply ships didn't show up early. I agree it would have been better if the colonists had voted on the plan instead of him just carrying it out as a dictator, but that's simply an issue with the process for the plan, not the plan itself. |
| 7 | *** It's the fact that his solution was one that could be abused to kill off anyone he didn't like and just claim they didn't meet his arbitrary criteria. |
| 8 | [[/folder]] |
| 9 | |
| 10 | [[folder: Making the destruction of war virtual, but not the deaths]] |
| 11 | * In ''A Taste of Armageddon'', Kirk finds a civilization that wages war with computer simulations that spares their cities from harm, but agrees to have its population killed in response to "deaths" produced in the simulation. Why? Why did they create a system that makes the destruction of war virtual, but not the deaths? Why wouldn't they simply create a virtual population to kill off just like they created virtual destruction of their cities? If they've really reached an agreement with their enemies to avoid the physical destruction of war, wouldn't they eventually make an agreement to avoid the physical deaths of war as well? I can't see why they wouldn't reach this logical progression. |
| 12 | ** I'm not sure that it's touched upon in the episode, but the only way that the arrangement that these two warring planets have could make any sort of sense is if these simulated attacks are depleting ''real'' strategic resources and materiel. For example, if a simulated attack hits a factory, that factory has to be deactivated and demolished. If a simulated weapon is fired at the other planet, a corresponding ''real'' weapon has to be decommissioned. There would really be no point to any of these simulated attacks unless they're ''actually'' limiting their opponent's capacity for making ''real'' war. In a way, this whole situation is a twisted, funhouse mirror version of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_theory deterrence theory]], with conventional (unsimulated) warfare being a stand in for the threat nuclear war. The agreement between the two planets requires that real people be killed in these attacks because in any war, people ''are'' a strategic resource. |
| 13 | *** Yes the threat real war does serve as a deterrence to make sure both sides follow the rules of the virtual aspects of their war. So I see no reason why they couldn't apply those rules to their population the same way they apply it to their cities: They create a virtual population and subtract from it based on "deaths". The resources they would be losing would be "real" in their virtually created war, just like their buildings and cities are. The lesson of the episode seemed to be that having a virtual war to replace real war is a bad idea because it would remove motivations for ending it. But to me it seems like a great idea if they had simply taken it to its logical conclusion and made all of the war virtual instead of just one aspect of it. |
| 14 | *** RuleOfDrama. Without the real deaths there is no real threat and no episode. There had to be real consequences. Plus, it helps point out the horrors of war. If it was all virtual, why not let them play their game? |
| 15 | ** The episode largely implies that infrastructure is not damaged—the whole reason Eminiar and Vendikar agreed to this arrangement was to avoid the cultural disruption of warfare—destroyed property, dwellings, monuments, resources, etc. Either side still wanted to win against their opponent, but didn't want to risk their worlds becoming uninhabitable or technologically crippled for centuries. Thus, they accept still killing people as a necessary consequence of war, but conveniently allowed it to be more sanitized and less gruesome; behind disintegration chambers, not lacerated and dismembered/burned/gassed/shot/misted amongst flaming, radioactive rubble. One could even call it a "property over people" policy if you're feeling particularly anti-capitalist or anti-statist; for the low, low price of a few hundred renewable resources (sentient lifeforms) every day or so, you can keep fighting your all-important war, but you won't have to suffer starvation, disease, exposure, or any of the other privations that warfare causes and makes it so noxious to continue forever. |
| 16 | [[/folder]] |
| 17 | |
| 18 | [[folder: Dangerous button placement]] |
| 19 | * In the episode ''Court Martial'', we see the "Jettison Pod" button is right next to the yellow and red alert buttons. Isn't that just a disaster waiting to happen? Why would you place a button that could kill someone right next to other buttons that you might routinely have to use? It's like putting a self-destruct button right next to your doorbell. Out of all much talked about design flaws of the various Enterprise ships, this seems like the worst one. Why would they do this without putting some safeguard in place to prevent the pod button from being pressed by mistake? |
| 20 | ** The alert controls are always alert controls, but the other buttons are programmable function keys. Most of the time pressing them doesn't do anything. It may also be set up so that you have to hold the button down for a couple of seconds before the ejection sequence engages. |
| 21 | *** I don't recall the episode showing him hold the button down for seconds. The premise behind the charges Kirk was facing is that he hit the jettison pod button by mistake while trying to hit the red alert button and accidentally killed Finney. Yet even if that was true, I would argue whoever designed the ship so that the Jettison pod button is right next to the routinely used other buttons would be the actual person responsible. |
| 22 | ** Why would Kirk be responsible for pushing the jettison button anyway? Sure, it would be his decision but it would be more likely that he would give the order for someone else to do it. After all, when the ''Enterprise'' leaves orbit Kirk doesn't push the START button himself; he gives Sulu the instruction and it's he who makes it happen. |
| 23 | ** Because the action could explicitly get Finney killed, and if it's a toss-up between throwing an officer into space and the whole ship being destroyed through inaction, the Captain is naturally going to want to take personal responsibility for that action. For additional reference, both Kirk in ''The Motion Picture'' and Picard in a TNG episode personally take control of their respective transporters due to an emergency situation that had an imminent threat of people being killed, and their unwillingness to have another crewmember shoulder the guilt of failure. (TMP involved an unintentional beam-up to an in-repair transporter system, TNG involved using the transporter to perform a DNA repair process) |
| 24 | [[/folder]] |
| 25 | |
| 26 | [[folder: Questions about the episode "Miri"]] |
| 27 | * This was one of the best episodes in season 1, but a few things stand out. The second half the episode is all about the landing party trying to get their communicators back so they can contact the Enterprise. But wouldn't the crew back on the Enterprise suspect something was wrong after going such a long time with no contact from the landing party and just beam down some more communicators? Also, was there ever any explanation for why the planet looked exactly like Earth, and seemed to be set in the 1960s? It seemed like they just completely forgot about that issue right after bringing it up. Finally, how could the colony have been there for more than 300 years? The original series takes place in the 23rd century. 300 years before that, Earth didn't have the technology to be setting up colonies on other planets. |
| 28 | ** I'll take a shot: 1) Beaming down more communicators wouldn't do any good, because the ship has only the landing party's original landing coordinates to beam to, and the party (most likely) isn't at that exact spot anymore; furthermore, not knowing '''why''' they've lost communication, there's every reason to believe that just beaming down spare comms would only result in the spares getting snatched by hostiles as well, leaving us right back at Square One. 2) They tried to handwave the Earth-like planet by waxing a theory about parallel development, but I always thought they were talking about '''societal''' development (therefore, 1960s); the geological/geographical resemblence to Earth remains unexplained. 3) Probably not a very satisfying answer, but ''Star Trek'' uses an AlternateHistory in which, as early as the 1990s (when Khan and his followers were exiled into space on a sleeper ship) Earth had at least rudimentary space travel. |
| 29 | ** I thought the first warp engine was designed in the 1990s ST cannon. Seems like they were a long way from colonization. |
| 30 | ** First warp drive was in the movie Film/StarTrekFirstContact, I can't remember the year but it was long past TheNineties, you're right. The ship Khan + Co used didn't have warp drive, it was a sleeper ship. |
| 31 | [[/folder]] |
| 32 | |
| 33 | [[folder: The Enterprise crew are galactic traffic cops?]] |
| 34 | * The episode ''Mudd's Women'' starts with the Enterprise pursuing a civilian ship for apparently no reason other then the ship is running from them. Umm, why? What grounds does the Enterprise have to go after civilian ships? Later on, the Captain of the ship, Harry Mudd, is charged with "Galaxy travel without a flight plan, without an identification beam, and failure to answer a starship signal." Okay this brings up a whole host of unanswered questions. First of all, why are any of those things crimes? Why would you need a flight plan for space travel? It's space! There's tons of it. It's not like you're going to run into someone. But if I want to take my private ship out for a cruise, why should I have to submit a flight plan to anyone? And who would get these plans anyway? Why would anyone need an "identification beam" on my privately owned ship? The last one is a real mystery. Why do I have to answer any hails from a starship? If I'm not doing anything illegal and I don't want to talk to anyone, why should I have to? Why should I be obligated to talk to any other ship? Does the right to remain silent not exist in the Federation? But even if those things are crimes, why is the Enterprise out enforcing them in open space on random private ships? According to this episode, the Enterprise is basically a space-faring traffic cop ship with galaxy-wide jurisdiction that has the authority to "pull over" any random civilian ship they encounter for any reason or not reason at all, with no evidence of unlawful activity. And if the ship doesn't respond, the Enterprise is then allowed to pursue them until their engines burn out. I was just totally baffled by this. No Star Trek ship in any other Star Trek series has ever been depicted in this manner. Anyone want to take a stab at answering any of these issues? |
| 35 | ** Sure, I'll go for it. |
| 36 | *** Flight plan: For private vessels, there is an issue of tracking them. As you said, space is vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly vast. If a ship drops of the map, they can end up being lost. Filing a flight plan offers a road map in attempting to locate any ship that hasn't arrived at its expected destination in a timely fashion - not just if they got lost, but to reveal the routes being used by pirates (like the Orions), and so if nothing else, any search ship that detects them a ways off from where they "should" be, they will at least enter the situation on their guard. |
| 37 | *** Identification beam: About the same thing, ID codes ensure that the ships are able to be confirmed as to who and what they are. Other sci-fi utilizes the concept of a computer system Identify Friend/Foe program, TOS aired before such things were needed. ID codes can be reasonably inferred to be considered this same concept, just unrefined because of TechnologyMarchesOn. |
| 38 | *** Small nitpick, but one that I think reinforces your point: Radar-based IFF systems were in experimental use as early as 1939, and by the end of World War II, the 4[[superscript:th]] generation of IFF systems was already in widespread use by the Allies, with the 5[[superscript:th]] well into its development process. As a former US Army Air Forces combat bomber pilot and aircraft accidnet investigator himself, Creator/GeneRoddenberry was no doubt ''very'' familiar with these systems. My guess would be that "identification beam" is a colloquialism for a simple transponder, or something akin to one of those early IFF systems, which worked by modifying and rebroadcasting a ship, ground, or aircraft-based radar signal. Any vessel that ''should'' be broadcasting one of those signals but ''isn't'' would be guaranteed to raise eyebrows. |
| 39 | *** Answering hails: How does a starship know you're not doing anything illegal? By checking your flight plan and ID code and making sure you're who you say you are and where you should be. If those things aren't there, odds are reasonable that either your ship is in distress or you're doing something illegal. At that point, either you respond to the hail or you ignore it and run, creating probable cause to believe you're engaged in illegal activities. Kirk even says that these things are considered menaces to navigation. |
| 40 | *** So Starfleet, the designated peacekeeping force within Federation space, discovers a vessel on their standard patrol that has no flight plan, had no ID, ran instead of answering a hail, giving the impression they were running some form of illegal cargo (which, as we learn, it was - the Venus drug is illegal). Sounds like the FBI finding a criminal in the course of unrelated activities and arresting someone, even if this would normally be a local issue. |
| 41 | *** This is also [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness an early TOS episode,]] where the universe hasn't been firmly established - maybe they settled on later that more local forces handle these things, but at the time of this episode, Starfleet's mission statement hadn't been settled on by the writers. |
| 42 | ** Those are all good explanations. Very impressive. I just found it odd because I was under the impression that open space in Star Trek was a lot less regulated then real life airspace is on Earth, at least within the federation. It's a shame the later episodes never really made a big deal about any of these issues again. I would have liked to see this examined a bit more closely: How open space can be regulated and rules are enforced. |
| 43 | *** It might also be helpful to think of Starfleet more like the [[UsefulNotes/CoastGuard US Coast Guard]], a military branch that routinely carries out law enforcement duties. Identifying, intercepting, and inspecting suspicious cargo vessels is a fairly common part of their national security, coustoms, immigration, and drug interdiction activities. |
| 44 | *** And remember that Mudd was apparently operating in relatively close proximity to a dilithium mine. Open space probably ''is'' less regulated, but dilithium is a major strategic resource. It would be reasonable for Starfleet to police nearby traffic more aggressively. |
| 45 | [[/folder]] |
| 46 | |
| 47 | [[folder: The Enterprise can't land on a planet and has no shuttles?]] |
| 48 | * In ''The Enemy Within'', the plot is about the ship trying to repair their transporters so they can evacuate their landing party stranded on a dangerous planet. But can't they just land the ship on the planet to pick them up? Is the Enterprise not capable of landing on planets? That's really odd if they aren't, seeing as how the original Enterprise in ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' has the ability to land on planets. Also does the Enterprise not have shuttles? The original Enterprise in ''Star Trek Enterprise'' in that series has shuttles too. |
| 49 | ** The question of the shuttles is answered down below. As to Enterprise landing on a planet... no, it cannot. The ship from the earlier series is much smaller than TOS Enterprise and also doesn't have a weird center of gravity (i.e. the elevated, forward-jutting saucer section). Even Voyager, which could land, I think they made the point that this was a new feature. But TOS Enterprise was never intended to have the ability to land (it would have cost too much to show it week after week); that's why they have the transporters in the first place. |
| 50 | *** That seems remarkably inefficient. To have no backup method to recover your landing parties if the transporters ever malfunction or are damaged. |
| 51 | *** The NX-01 cannot land on planets. Maybe you are confusing it with the NX ship on ''Star Trek Beyond'', which CRASH landed. And the back-up for the transporters are the shuttles. Which as noted below do exist, they are forgotten about due to script reasons and real world budget. |
| 52 | [[/folder]] |
| 53 | |
| 54 | [[folder:Wanton Cruelty to Tribbles]] |
| 55 | * Okay ... at the end of "The Trouble with Tribbles", Scotty deals with the tribbles "humanely" (i.e. instead of killing them) by beaming the tribbles into the Klingons' engine room. Klingons being Klingons, don't you think it'd be a bit ''more'' humane to just beam them into space? |
| 56 | ** [[RuleOfFunny Yes]]. |
| 57 | ** Classic: Klingons and Tribbles hate each other for about the same reason Tribbles like humans. Tribbles can induce humans to like them; clearly, Klingons don't take whatever method they use any better than Kirk does. |
| 58 | ** ''Deep Space Nine'': Worf states that Tribbles bring famine and plague. (Which isn't implausible, given their breeding and eating habits.) Speculation: the Tribble plague produced the evolutionary crisis which led to Klingons growing Mars-bar heads. |
| 59 | ** They taste good too. |
| 60 | ** Popplers? |
| 61 | ** The tribbles became far more dangerous after they were injected with the [=DNA=] of Human Augments. That's why they turned from harmless fuzzballs into the Klingon-killing Fuzzballs of the Apocalypse. |
| 62 | *** More likely the Klingons blew up the Tribble home world's atmosphere. |
| 63 | *** ...That was a ''result'' of the above problems, not the cause of anything. |
| 64 | ** Another problem is that this could very easily interpreted by the Klingons as a deliberate, unprovoked attack on one of their vessels. Given the nature of the tribbles, beaming hundreds of them into a battlecruiser's engine room is tantamount to sabotage, at least in the eyes of the Klingons. |
| 65 | *** Sabotage? Hell, they probably interpreted it as either a psychological weapon or a WMD. |
| 66 | *** As a counterargument, the Federation could point out their earlier sabotage of the Quadrotriticale as provocation for an attack, and note that the Enterprise was kind in not actively shooting them down |
| 67 | [[/folder]] |
| 68 | |
| 69 | [[folder:Captain Leeroy Jenkins]] |
| 70 | * It often bugs people when Cap'n Kirk beams down to the planet to investigate weird stuff in person. True, he's the hero of the piece and he's supposed to be Odysseus Main/InSpace. However, in the real world, any naval captain who constantly took such insane risks wouldn't be in command of a ship for long. In real navies, going ashore to investigate weird happenings is what [[Main/RedShirt junior officers]] and [[Main/SpaceMarine Marines]] are for. |
| 71 | ** Dramatic necessity, natch. This one Just Bugged the writers too, so starting with TNG, they compromised and had the first officer lead away teams. But because ENT pre-dates the original series, they got to put Archer in as much danger as they liked. |
| 72 | ** Kirk was just that kind of cowboy. No one ever accused him of an excess of self-restraint, as a lot of pregnant [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe Green Space Babes]] could tell you. |
| 73 | *** Although the popular notion of Kirk as perpetual horndog is wrongheaded too, as [[http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/columns/freshly-rememberd-kirk-drift/ this essay]] explains. |
| 74 | ** Pretty much all Star Trek series are guilty of this. There's a particularly telling scene in Enterprise when Trip, the chief engineer, has to go fix an engineering problem in a conduit that can hold two persons, and he takes the Science Officer, T'Pol, rather than a member of his Engineering staff. Sure, she's smart - but they're ENGINEERS. In other scenes, an Ensign is left in charge of the flagship of Starfleet while the senior officers beam down to investigate something. I've had it put to me that the bridge crew go on away missions so often because they have the most experience but my response to that is that it's not a RoleplayingGame and they're not [=DnD=] adventurers! |
| 75 | *** Then again, Trip would happily use any flimsy excuse to be stuck in a narrow Jeffries tube with T'Pol. |
| 76 | ** In the modern navy, sure, he wouldn't. On the other hand, Captain James Cook did. [[Literature/TheMoteInGodsEye On the gripping hand]], that's probably why he got killed in Hawaii... |
| 77 | ** Star Trek is more like the navies of the 19th century. Read about what Captain Fitzroy and science attaché Darwin got up to during a 5-year mission aboard the Beagle. Yes, that Darwin. |
| 78 | ** What made it really stupid is that he usually took his XO along. |
| 79 | *** Well, said XO is pulling double duty as Chief Science Officer, whose presence would be necessary on most landing parties. Probably Spock is the one who's supposed to be going, but Kirk is a bit too much of an AdrenalineJunkie to stay back aboard. |
| 80 | ** The above were all pointed out by David Gerrold in his 1973 book ''The World Of Star Trek''. He became one of the advisors for TNG and his idea of the "Away Team" (he originally called it a "Contact Team") was one of many of his ideas they used. |
| 81 | *** And then TNG goes on to violate common sense by putting civilians and ''kids'' aboard a ship that goes into insanely dangerous situations on what looks like a weekly basis. At least Kirk only had to worry about trained, qualified adults at risk. |
| 82 | [[/folder]] |
| 83 | |
| 84 | [[folder: Would the coffee have turned evil?]] |
| 85 | * In "The Enemy Within" why ''couldn't'' they beam down a hot pot of coffee? Also as a last resort, why not beam the landing party and keep them suspended in transport until they find a solution. Even if they couldn't figure out what to do, wouldn't it be more humane to have them be in non-existence instead of freezing to death? |
| 86 | ** I'm fairly certain that they hadn't come up with the ''keeping them in the pattern buffer'' technique yet - or at least hadn't perfected it to the point you would get any substantial benefit out of it. As far as I am aware, Scotty is the first man to canonically succeed (after the Jenolan crashes into a Dyson Sphere) and that was a good twenty years later. Further backing this up is the fact that this process ends up killing a RedShirt which would imply a) A fatality rate of 50% and b) Laforge wouldn't have been so amazed that Scotty was able to jury rig up such a device if it was a technique with precedent to it. |
| 87 | *** Yeah, that since the incident was --in-universe-- anywhere between twenty to forty years before the Jenolan crashed. That is more than enough time for there to be equipment advances that would make it even slightly possible. There seems to have been a massive improvement in engineering and equipment in all aspects between TOS and TMP-refit era, so chances are it was something that went from impossible to just about possible in theory but you'd have to be really desperate to try. |
| 88 | *** In an easily overlooked example, ''seven'' people beam up at once at the end of "The City on the Edge of Forever". Assuming only one transporter room, someone must have been held for at least a few minutes before being reconstructed on the other end. |
| 89 | *** "Day of the Dove", a third-season TOS episode, features transporter stasis. Granted, it's still a few years after "The Enemy Within", but the technology is basically the same. Then again, nobody thought to evacuate the landing party via shuttlecraft either, despite the Enterprise having had a shuttlebay since "The Cage". (The "flight deck" as it was called then was in the original script.) |
| 90 | *** The Klingons in "Day of the Dove" are only held in suspension for about a minute. Even in the 24th century, it's considered unsafe to hold anyone in the buffer for more than a few minutes before pattern breakdown starts to occur. The landing party in "The Enemy Within" would have to be suspended in transport for several hours, which is ''definitely'' unsafe. |
| 91 | ** The trouble with transporter problems as seen in TOS is that all malfunctions turn out to have dangerously unpredictable effects [[note]]read: predictably fatal[[/note]] so they might try beaming down hot coffee but it might turn into a cloud of flesh stripping plasma on re-integration. Plus, IIRC, Scotty had the transporter offline as he was testing the hell out of it to try and find out what was wrong and how to fix it. It is very probable that the time taken to put it back online and then take it offline again to begin testing was time they felt the landing party just didn't have. The TOS Enterprise only has one transporter remember. Limited resources with limited time mean they have to take a gamble on something. If they'd beamed down supplies and coffee then people would be on here asking "how come they wasted time by interrupting Scotty's testing to beam down supplies when the landing party were coping by heating rocks". They weren't comfortable, but they were still surviving after all. |
| 92 | ** There's a scene in which Spock explicitly tells Kirk that they tried sending down some sort of heating equipment, which duplicated, and both duplicates were inoperable. Coffee probably wouldn't turn evil but would probably be just as useless. Yes, they tried beaming down helpful inanimate objects, and it didn't work -- there was really no way to help Sulu and co. from orbit. |
| 93 | ** This isn't adequately explained in the episode. Spock said they beamed down "thermal heaters" that doubled and were nonfunctional, but what about tents, huge blankets, large warm boulders, etc? It actually suggests a technological blindness by the famed Starfleet engineers. They can't see a non technical solution. |
| 94 | *** Given the temperatures involved (themselves highly unrealistic, but there it is), blankets and tents wouldn't have helped. The temperature was dropping too low too rapidly, all blankets and tents would do was help preserve warmth generated by the landing parties' bodies, and the cold was stealing that warmth faster than it could be generated or retained. No such thing as perfect insulation. Only something high-tech that actually generated heat where there was none would help, and anything like that apparently would be rendered inoperative by the transporter malfunction. |
| 95 | ** It's possible they themselves said to prioritise fixing the transporter rather than sending down inanimate objects that only would have made minimal improvements (they already have some supplies and are seen wrapping up in blankets, so they already had those). |
| 96 | [[/folder]] |
| 97 | |
| 98 | [[folder:Gary gets clocked]] |
| 99 | * In "Assignment: Earth", Gary is impervious to the Vulcan Neck pinch, yet Roberta can take him out by clocking him on the head? What? |
| 100 | ** One is a nerve attack, which Gary can be trained to withstand and/or genetically engineered to have protection against. The other is a concussion-inducing blunt force demonstration of Sir Isaac Newton's 3rd Law of Motion (combined with Pascal's Law). There is a difference. |
| 101 | [[/folder]] |
| 102 | |
| 103 | [[folder:Kirk's Dark Side Has Amnesia?]] |
| 104 | * At the end of the episode "The Enemy Within", Rand tells Kirk about something his negative half did and he seems surprised. Uh, his positive and negative sides have been joined back together, so shouldn't he have the combined memories of both? |
| 105 | ** Is it possible he was faking surprise? |
| 106 | ** His negative half seemed to have a primitive mind, like an animal or a very young child. Could be that Bad Kirk's capacity for consciousness and memory formation was also affected? |
| 107 | ** Also, Kirk didn't technically exist while his two good-evil clones were running around doing their thing. When the transporter mixed them back together, it had to smash their separate memories together into a single memory covering the same period of time. Since the two patterns would've been so different, they probably just cancelled each other out and left the mental equivalent of static. |
| 108 | *** Also, he may have preferred to block out memories of the worst of his negative half's actions, for obvious reasons. |
| 109 | *** Or, he's trying to be a gentleman and spare Rand's feelings. Even if Kirk ''does'' remember what his negative half did, it doesn't do Rand any good to bring it up outside of a counseling context (and may in fact further intimidate her). She's got to be having second thoughts about serving aboard the ''Enterprise'' (if not Starfleet in general) at this point. |
| 110 | *** Or he was trying to maintain the façade that Evil Kirk was an imposter and not part of him. |
| 111 | *** I'm ashamed of you all. |
| 112 | --> '''Evil Kirk (early in the episode):''' I said gimme the BRANDY!!! |
| 113 | [[/folder]] |
| 114 | |
| 115 | [[folder:The Gorn Had It Coming]] |
| 116 | * So in the TOS episode "Arena," are the writers seriously trying to make us believe there's any moral equivalency between Kirk and the Gorn? Do they actually think the wholesale slaughter of all colonists, including women and children, ''while they're trying to surrender'' and begging for their lives, is a perfectly reasonable and understandable response to people encroaching, knowingly or not, on your territory? Adding this to the fact that the Gorns then lured the ''Enterprise'' to the planet and ambushed them, Kirk was right in trying to destroy them. |
| 117 | ** You have to remember that this show was made in the hippie era with its mantra of "[[IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim killing is wrong, man]]". |
| 118 | *** Actually, no. "Arena" was based, anti-killing principles and Incredibly Advanced Beings intact, on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_%28short_story%29 a short story written by Fredric Brown]] in ''1944''. The show's on-air debut in late '66 coincided with the beginnings of the hippie era, but it had been in development, writing and filming for almost three years before that. (As had the hippie era, for that matter.) |
| 119 | ** Considering how the being who set up the scenario considered a ''Celebrity Deathmatch'' to be a valid way of judging which race is more worthy, it's abundantly clear it was a JerkAss whose judgement had no connection to morality. |
| 120 | *** But it wasn't the being who set up the battle between Kirk and the Gorn captain who suggested that the Gorn had a legitimate grievance--it was Kirk who suggested that maybe the Federation had accidentally encroached on Gorn territory. |
| 121 | *** For the most part, I think the implication is that the Gorn didn't understand humans well enough to know what was going on, and didn't realize they were trying to surrender. They saw an armed outpost of strange furry creatures in their territory, they attacked it, the creatures attacked them right back, so it must be a military incursion. The problem with this is that amazingly faked, fully interactive message the Gorn sent to the Enterprise, which the rest of the episode ignores. If I had to justify it, I'd say the Gorn have computers as advanced as the TNG-era Federation, capable of running complex simulations with just a vague instruction. The Gorn captain may have said something like "computer, lure that alien ship here" and the ship's computer did so by creating a fake message. |
| 122 | *** Kirk is only conceding that there may have been a legitimate grievance behind the conflict, not that the Gorn were justified in their actions on Cestus III. He is taking a diplomatic approach in trying to resolve the conflict at large - after all he's been told that the Gorn ship is seeing (and most likely recording) every word. |
| 123 | *** It could easily be seen as an attempt at ValuesDissonance, with the Gorn trying to protect their space from armed invaders that are seemingly superior to them in many ways. The fake transmission could have easily been assembled from intercepted messages that the colony sent out, and it is possible that the Enterprise was lured to Cestus 3 in hopes of taking out a powerful enemy ship, or at least it's Captain, in a surprise attack in hopes of driving off the invaders. |
| 124 | ** Another possibility is that the Gorn did not understand that children could be considered off-limits to attack. Many reptile species do not have a concept of parental care; the young hatch as miniature adults already equipped to survive on their own. As for ignoring the surrender messages, they were probably just as incomprehensible to the Gorn as "grr hisssss grr grr hisssssss" would be to humans. |
| 125 | ** Yes, all in all it may be a simple case of culture clash rather than ValuesDissonance or hippie attitudes. The Gorn is after all, alien. Not only that, but everything that happened is maybe on the head of the overzealous Gorn captain himself. It's said in some supplementary materials that the Gorn government as a whole is actually very peaceful. And that after the Cestus III incident, the Gorn captain was severely reprimanded for his overzealous handling of the situation. |
| 126 | ** Hmmm... originally written in 1944, hyper-aggressive enemy defeated by intelligence, perseverance, and bravery, but not destroyed as part of a moral plea that killing the defenseless is wrong. Couldn't be either in reference to or influenced by [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/WorldWarII something that was going on at the time]], could it? |
| 127 | *** Unfortunately for that metaphor, the original story ended ''very'' differently. The human won the fight and showed his opponent no mercy, after which the SufficientlyAdvancedAliens kept their word and wiped out an alien fleet, and possibly the entire ''species.'' The "peace and mercy" Aesop was added by the ''Trek'' writers. |
| 128 | [[/folder]] |
| 129 | |
| 130 | [[folder:Anti-Vulcan Discrimination?]] |
| 131 | * I know it was the 60's and all, but every time I watch TOS, I am stunned by the casual bigotry that the human members of the Enterprise crew display towards Spock. The backhanded comments about his Vulcan background and culture are not only constant (I'm looking at you [=McCoy=]), but completely unremarked upon by Kirk, not only the authority figure, but Spock's supposed BFF. I mean seriously WTF? And, if you want to chalk that up to Values Dissonance, fine, but how about the way the Enterprise crew behaves towards T'Pol? Yes, the Vulcan GOVERNMENT has been a bit patronizing towards humanity (for good reason from what I can tell by watching the series), but T'Pol never did anything to them. Why is it okay for the crew members to have an open dislike towards her just because she's Vulcan? Isn't this the humanity of the 22nd century that's evolved past all that? That wouldn't be cool in our backwards 21st century culture. |
| 132 | ** When it comes to [=McCoy=] comments, that's just the way that the Spock-[=McCoy=] friendship expresses itself. In various episodes, [=McCoy=] shows that he truly DOES care about Spock, but to an outsider, their way of interaction implies that they don't like one another. As for T'Pol, the Enterprise crew was meant to be a more 'they're like us' crew than the crews we'd seen before. T'Pol is basically the designated target for the crew, being a Vulcan, who are the ones responsible for 'holding humanity back,' on a ship full of humans. The fact that it's not right is the whole point - it's human behavior that we DO engage in, even today, even when we know it's wrong to do so. |
| 133 | *** Yeah, but if I had an ongoing relationship with a co-worker which involved me referring to them using racial abuse and slang all the time, I don't think I'd get very far with the HR dept by saying 'that's just how we express ourselves, we're friends really'. |
| 134 | *** Kirk was the captain, and he was close friends with both Spock and Bones. If the captain says it's okay, then it's okay. In order for it to become an issue, someone would have to care. There seem to be no other Vulcans on the ''Enterprise,'' so they're not around to object, and maybe the humans just don't care, or don't think it's their place to say anything. |
| 135 | *** Large organizations like the military or big companies just don't work like that, not even today never mind in our enlightened tolerant future. Try going to a modern warship and have the chief medical officer routinely call the single black officer on the ship, who happens to be the first officer, a 'Black-skinned, inhuman freak, etc., etc.' as a term of 'endearment' and see how long it lasts, irrespective of whether he's offended by it or the Captain says 'it's okay'. Firstly no Captain would say that and if they did they would probably end up in an enquiry as well. |
| 136 | *** That's not really a fair comparison. For one thing, Spock ''is'' inhuman. For another, there's hundreds and hundreds of years of black-white relations to be considered in the real world, whereas Vulcans and humans have been living side by side peacefully for centuries (at least until ''Enterprise'' fucked it up, but that doesn't count). And Vulcans in general aren't even capable of ''being'' offended, or at least strive not to be. |
| 137 | *** Spock is, in fact, half human. Much of [=McCoy=]'s disagreement with Spock stems from Spock's rejection of his own humanity. On the occasions when he meets full-blooded Vulcans, [=McCoy=] is properly respectful and polite. For that matter, Spock pulls no punches when it comes to criticizing his human crewmates for their humanity. |
| 138 | *** So if [=McCoy=] met a human whose parents were, say, Moroccan and Maori, who was raised in New Zealand and identified with the Maori culture they grew up in, he'd use anti-Maori insults? |
| 139 | *** But [=McCoy=] isn't Moroccan so it's not his culture that this person would be rejecting. A closer analogy would be if the person was half American and half Maori, and chose to identify with his Maori heritage. |
| 140 | *** Could be that [=McCoy=] has NWordPrivileges with Spock, and Spock has told Kirk that if it's [=McCoy=] then it's okay, since the two have a "give as good as you get" rivalry going. That would explain why Kirk jumps on Stiles so quick despite letting [=McCoy=] get away with it for so long. |
| 141 | *** Different with Stiles, though, because he's not only operating on seething hatred, he alleges that Spock is in cahoots with the Romulans. |
| 142 | *** Watch ''Series/{{MASH}}'' with these questions in mind, especially the later seasons. Count the number of times Klinger is referred to as a "Lebanese ___", or Winchester calling him "swarthy". Or the way the entire senior staff laughs at his ethnic room decorations ("Bottle Fatigue"). There are as many (or more) references to Klinger's nose as there are to Spock's ears. |
| 143 | ** You should try watching Enterprise. Trip and Archer engage in a four-year-long game of "who hates Vulcans the most?" |
| 144 | ** As for your question about T'Pol, Archer and Tucker may have been dicks to her (no one else seemed to have that much of a problem with her being Vulcan) but she was pretty racist herself. Criticizing our omnivorous diet because it goes against Vulcan morality (suddenly they're all vegetarians, a fact which Spock and Tuvok and Saavik and all the others never mentioned) ''in the same scene where she chides Archer and Tucker to stop applying their morality to alien species.'' All that stuff about the smell. Pissing on Hoshi, who never did anything anti-Vulcan to her, unlike Archer and Tucker, and generally being obnoxious all around. |
| 145 | *** A minor nitpick here, but Vulcans have been vegetarians since at least the animated series. It is a plot point in "The Slaver Weapon". |
| 146 | *** Even earlier, in "All Our Yesterdays," it is a plot point that Primitive!Spock eats meat in the past: "I have eaten animal flesh and I’ve enjoyed it." |
| 147 | *** Why stop there? In "The City on the Edge of Forever," Kirk gets the groceries: "Mister Spock, I've brought you some assorted vegetables, baloney and a hard roll for myself." It's pretty clear that Spock was conceived as a vegetarian almost from inception. |
| 148 | *** He is a vegetarian according to ''The Making of Star Trek'' which had Gene Roddenberry's okay on every detail[[note]]mostly so he could get co-writer credit and a share of the royalties -- a typical Gene practice[[/note]]. In fact, it says he keeps his diet to the simplest of vegetable life forms. |
| 149 | * As Uhura nicely noted: "In our century, we've learned not to fear words." |
| 150 | ** This is a fairly likely (and succinct) explanation. Racism, sexism, and so forth are still active in our time and our efforts to refute them are a bit over-loud due to the enthusiasm of the converted. In 2013, I can accuse somebody of being "a sorcerer" and my fellow villagers will '''not''' immediately rush out with torch and pitchfork to burn the person I speak to as a suspected pawn of the Devil: Trek's future society is apparently so free of racism/misogyny/etc. that the old pejorative terms are only used as farce. |
| 151 | *** This has always been my opinion too; it would explain why the women are happy to spend their day wearing miniskirts and thigh high boots, why by the start of the Next Generation men are also allowed to wear skirts if they feel like it, and why Troi and Seven of Nine have no problem wearing those tight bodysuits on a mostly male starship. They simply have a different idea of what discrimination and harassment is in the future and as long as you don't ''genuinely'' believe blacks/women/aliens are inferior and are simply making a joke; no one really much cares. You will see this again later on in the comic relief episodes surrounding Worf and Quark. |
| 152 | *** Except that unless you're telepathic there ''is'' no way to tell whether someone "genuinely" believes it or not... which in the particular context of Spock and [=McCoy=] might explain it, but we see in [=DS9=] that O'Brien at least has some racism towards Cardassians, iirc, and there was that quarter-Romulan crewman in TNG who was apparently considered inherently suspicious by virtue of that fact, so it's not like bigotry has magically disappeared in the Federation. |
| 153 | *** O'Brien is a ''terrible'' example as he fought a war against the Cardassians and lost many friends. The effects of war don't automatically vacate your brain when ''someone else'' signs a treaty - no offense, but only people whose experience of war is limited to Hollywood and video games think that. If you have ever asked a grandfather what they think of the Germans or the Japanese after all of these years have passed, you will probably get a similar response. Note that I am not implying that all veterans cannot let go and become seething balls of unrestrained racism, I'm saying that it is foolish to think that watching a friend get blown to bits in front of you is something that won't leave a mental scar. As for Tarses in ''The Drumhead'', it was less to do with being part Romulan, and more to do with the fact that he lied on his application form and the prosecuting judge turned out to be a paranoid and controlling nutter who saw conspiracies everywhere. |
| 154 | * Whether this justifies it or not is one thing, but I believe a major reason for the verbalized anti-Vulcan attitudes, especially in the original show, is that it's a quasi-natural way to keep bringing up ''that Spock is an alien'' (and an alien who is non-humanlike in personality). Sort of an InformedAbility thing (except that Spock already looks alien). Like if they always started sentences with "Here in the 23rd century..." And after the first few ant-Vulcan insults, it just became standard script-filler. |
| 155 | * You've all utterly missed the point. [=McCoy=] is a humanitarian. This puts him at odds with Spock immediately, because Spock rejects his personal philosophy as "emotional." As a Vulcan, he has been raised in a world where displays of emotion are treated like someone in our world stumbling around town day and night with their shirt hanging open, hefting a liquor bottle in one hand and clutching their crotch with the other. [=McCoy=] is offended that his devotion to caring about those around him is treated this way by Spock, and so he, being proud of his heritage and philosophy, takes every chance he gets to defend them. |
| 156 | ** ... by calling him things like "pointy-eared hobgoblin". Yeah, really making the "emotional" philosophy look good there, doctor. |
| 157 | * It should be pointed out that Spock slings it right back fairly often. Note his vocal disgust every time he's compared to a human in any way, or his constant comments about how humans are irrational, illogical, and uncivilized. In fact, anti-human racism is implied to be a pretty ugly, widespread sentiment among Vulcans. ''Yesteryear'', the only episode of the animated series that is almost universally considered canon, shows Spock being tormented by other Vulcan children for being half human--the 2009 film shows them being even more horribly cruel than they were in ''Yesteryear''. It's taken to absurd extremes in ''Film/StarTrekVTheFinalFrontier'', when Spock's father expressed disappointment in his his minutes-old, newborn son for being too human; which, just... Jesus ''Christ!'' |
| 158 | * Spock and [=McCoy=] are VitriolicBestBuds - we should note that Spock in the first place does not seem to be really offended by [=McCoy=]'s jibes, while reacting to slurs (by other characters, e.g. Evil Kirk in The Enemy Within) which are really ''meant'' as such. Also - [=McCoy=] scores quite a lot of {{Insult Backfire}}s, as [[TheSpock Spock]] is actually ''glad'' to hear that he's "utterly emotionless and governed by logic alone". |
| 159 | * Humans and Vulcans have been friends for at least a century, and with enlightened 23rd century humans, [=McCoy=]'s insults probably are as quaint and purposefully outdated as calling someone a nasty woman a witch is these days i.e. it would be more surprising if someone was being genuine about it. Later series introduced new alien common alien races, and discrimination against them was shown as far less okay, presumably because the Federation hadn't been friends with them so long and a person who tosses around "big-eared parasite" or "crumpled-head psychopath" has a good chance of meaning it. |
| 160 | * It's also implied at least once that Spock ''does'' find [=McCoy=]'s barbs hurtful on some level ("I don't like that! I don't think I ever did, and now I'm sure!"). [=McCoy=] may well be deliberately trying to coax an emotional reaction out of Spock, who claims ''he doesn't possess emotions'' (which is BlatantLies, really) to validate [=McCoy's=] humanist beliefs. Most of the time, it seems that the crew have enough respect for Spock and enough camaraderie that the occasional good-natured barb is just another sign of affection, but [=McCoy=] is relentless enough about that he ''does'' actually get under Spock's skin. . . though Spock validates his own Vulcan beliefs by not letting it bother him except in very rare instances. |
| 161 | ** Another point is that Bones and the crew only make digs at Spock when he takes (comparatively minor) digs at them for the most part. It's like if close friends take somewhat racially charged shots at each other when they get on each other's nerves (as an example, Rush Hour 3's bits) |
| 162 | *** Just to be clear, Spock's racist comments towards the crew are way worse than anyhting they say to him. |
| 163 | * Well, one possibility is the current fad of hyper offense has disappeared in 300 years. As mentioned, Uhura practically says this. Another possibility that might sound crazy is the Vulcans (or Spock specifically) requested to be treated in this manner. In the TNG episode where Wesley is taking Starfleet entrance tests, he encounters an alien with webbed have that he's SUPPOSED to yell at instead of being nice because the guy's entire race thinks politeness is fake. |
| 164 | [[/folder]] |
| 165 | |
| 166 | [[folder:Spock's Got the Timey Wimey Ball]] |
| 167 | * The season 3 episode, "[[Recap/StarTrekS3E23AllOurYesterdays All Our Yesterdays]]", sees Kirk, Bones, and Spock get sent to a planet's past. We learn that everyone wasn't modified (or something) before they were sent through the time travel thing. So if that's the case, why did Spock start acting like an emotional Vulcan? |
| 168 | ** There was some HandWave about temporal potential energy or something, wasn't there? I'm guessing the modifications were to prevent changes like that. |
| 169 | ** Each Vulcan has a faint telepathic connection to all other Vulcans, no matter how distant. When Spock was sent to the 'distant' past, he was connecting with the primitive Vulcans (before they learned to control their emotions) and in response started becoming more primitive himself. |
| 170 | ** Spock's emotionalism and the "modification" they're talking about have nothing to do with each other. The emotionalism is as described; the "modification" Mr. Atoz mentioned is a sort of biological process performed on each person who goes through the time portal, to prevent them from coming back to the present. That's the reason Spock, Kirk, and [=McCoy=] are able to return, and why Zarabeth cannot. |
| 171 | ** As an aside, I find this concept of ''modification'' to actually be one of the more realistic examples of time travel in fiction, as in real life, people even a couple of hundred years ago would have completely different immunities, resistances and tolerances to period food and drink. They say that you shouldn't drink the water in a foreign country, imagine drinking the water in a different time. It may even be adding various antibodies to the body, as otherwise who would go back to a time before antibiotics? |
| 172 | [[/folder]] |
| 173 | |
| 174 | [[folder:Edith Keeler Banned from the Future?]] |
| 175 | * ''City on the Edge of Forever'': in the simplified manner in which time travel and its consequences via the Guardian was presented to the viewers, it should have at least entered Kirk's or Spock's mind some time in the weeks they were there that [[spoiler:perhaps they could have taken her with them instead of letting her die]]. Maybe the Guardian would have been a JerkAss and disallowed it, or maybe it could have been a timeline-altering move, but what Bugs Me is that (unless I missed it) [[IdiotBall the possibility wasn't addressed]], even though Kirk would [[spoiler:ostensibly have been trying to think of some way to avert the tragedy. A perfectly good TearJerker]] ruined by my ability to over-think. Hrmph. |
| 176 | ** Possibly even just her disappearance would cause changes to the future--who can know for sure? How bad would it be for Kirk to save her, then find out that it was necessary for her to actually die, and have to ''take her back to kill her''. |
| 177 | ** We don't see the method by which they get back. One moment they're weeping on the street, the next they're just coming back to the Guardian's planet side of the Guardian. It probably only opened a portal when there was no possibility of the timeline being skewed again. |
| 178 | ** Likewise, the future had already been changed before they left, so, due to the way the Guardian's portal works, they probably couldn't return to their own future until after Edith had died. They had to restore the past to make the portal lead back to the Enterprise. |
| 179 | ** The impression I got was that they never had the chance to really plan. She's killed only seconds after they reunite with [=McCoy=], before they have a chance to do anything. |
| 180 | ** It seems there would have been a lot of things they could have done. Be honest and explain the situation to her? It would be hard to believe but Spock does have that thing rigged up with video of the future of humanity on it, including the German victory. Conceal the truth but try to reason her out of her position? "I know war is bad, but the Nazis have been slaughtering millions of people like animals. Don't we have a moral responsibility to try to stop that?" Spock could show her the concentration camps with his TV thing. Failing that, kidnap her and use the Guardian to dump her in the middle of Outer Mongolia or Sub-Saharan Africa? Or maybe on an uninhabited South Sea island? They could provide her with a few years supply of food and water and fetch her once the war is over. She still might die, but at least she would have a fighting chance. In fact, they wouldn't even need an island. Just keep her locked in a basement for the duration of the war. They could stay in the past for a little while and make sure she was fed and relatively comfortable. She'd despise Kirk, but at least she'd be alive to hate him. |
| 181 | ** Odds are, though, that trying to adjust the timeline to allow her to live would've caused even bigger problems. That's the way such things seem to work. |
| 182 | ** Remember it was NOT Edith's death that changed anything - it was her actions in life had she been saved, which is a different thing. If she had simply vanished from the world that night rather than dying, would it plausibly have kept America out of World War II?! Also worth bearing in mind, a guy stole [=McCoy=]'s phaser off him and then disintegrated himself with it. So no matter what Kirk and Spock did, or the Guardian for that matter, the future they returned to was different to the original one. If such small differences are allowable, why not the manner of her removal from history? |
| 183 | *** Why are small changes allowed? [[SarcasmMode because they are small.]] Small-scale collateral damage vs the end of the world as we know it is not a hard decision. A lot of people also seem to be forgetting the episode ''Tomorrow Is Yesterday'' and the character of Captain John Christopher. Kirk has already had to face the ramifications of removing someone from history and it is rather unbelievable that this experience isn't at least partially influencing him here. |
| 184 | *** Probably only the Guardian even knows that the bum stole [=McCoy's=] phaser and disintegrated himself. Whether or not that guy's death changed the future noticeably, they didn't know. |
| 185 | * The truck driver might have felt remorse about killing her, and that would have an effect. If he doesn't accidentally kill her, he might do other things to alter history. |
| 186 | * Author Allan Asherman, in the book "The 'Star Trek' Compendium", figures that, if Edith Keeler were to learn that she was responsible for millions of deaths, she'd have probably jumped in front of that truck on her own initiative. |
| 187 | * It could be that if Edith disappeared, her mysterious disappearance could have become a ''cause célèbre''(particularly if she was last seen in the company of two unknown drifters who then disappeared...) and drawn ''more'' attention to her pacifist ideals. Thus accelerating the exact same process her survival would have caused. |
| 188 | [[/folder]] |
| 189 | |
| 190 | [[folder:Balok's Puppet... Brr...]] |
| 191 | * Why did they need to have that horrific still image of Balok's puppet in the end credits of the original series? |
| 192 | ** You have a show about fighting space aliens. Your end credits show exciting stills from previous episodes. Puppet!Balok is the most alien, most threatening-looking creature your show has put on air. That's why. |
| 193 | ** Producer Robert Justman was known for being a jokester; the credit accompanying the image of Balok is that of Desilu executive Herb Solow. It was probably funnier at the time. |
| 194 | ** It's actually the "Desilu" name (Lucille Ball's production company) that appears across the head of Balok's puppet in the closing credits (maybe in later episodes it was Solow's). I had always assumed it was an intentional visual joke, in that in other Desilu productions you would been shown Lucille Ball's glamorous cartoon head - the shape of the two heads being roughly similar. |
| 195 | ** Actually, the Balok image is only at the end of the 2nd season credits (which by then credited Paramount rather than Desilu - make if that what you will). The 1st season credits ended with Vina, and the 3rd season with a starscape. |
| 196 | [[/folder]] |
| 197 | |
| 198 | [[folder:Spock's Fabulous Makeup]] |
| 199 | * I just wanna know why Spock cakes his eyeshadow on like that. Oh, honey, you'd better be grateful you've [[strike:almost]] got the bone structure to work that. Seriously, is that supposed to be natural, or do Vulcans consider thick eyeshadow to be a unisex sort of thing? And if it's natural, why isn't it green? |
| 200 | ** Because Spock is half-human, duh, which probably screws up his pigmentation. |
| 201 | ** Seriously? Because they put make-up on him to try and indicate that he was brown-with-green-underneath rather than brown-with-pink-in-some-places. Troubles with the day-to-day make-up jobs were a large part of the reason why there weren't more alien-looking aliens on TOS. Unfortunately, it just came off like he was trying to be illogically Fabulous. |
| 202 | ** Except that he didn't look that way on the black and white television sets many if not most people were still watching the show on when it first came out. (The show was filmed in color, but not everyone could afford pricey color sets.) Lighting, contrast, etc. are all entirely different. Not only does the show have to look good on both types of televisions, there's the issue of makeup artists adjusting their techniques to compensate. The show was recorded on film, and film cameras see flat. Makeup was used around the actors' eyes, chin, nose and cheekbones to create the appearance of a third dimension.[[note]]yes, quoting from ''The Making of Star Trek'' which has a wealth of technical detail. There's a copy at the Internet Archive.[[/note]] |
| 203 | *** Plus the fact that even people watching on color TV at that time were not seeing what you are today with the digitally "remastered" episodes on your HDTV. |
| 204 | *** Here's the problem with the Vulcans; despite all their protests to the contrary, they operate on a brand of twisted logic that makes sense only to them. A few examples would include the Pon Farr ceremony where the men are forced to fight with axes and the women are forced to stand around whilst they are dished out like property (and yes ''property'' is the term T'Pau uses in ''Amok Time'') or the whole Katra ritual in ''Search For Spock'' that looks like some kind of garish Vegas stage production, or T'Pol being given a standard-issue asset-enhancing catsuit by her government. Personally, I can absolutely believe there was a male eyeshadow fashion on Vulcan for a couple of years in the 23rd century that they justified to themselves as being logical somehow. |
| 205 | *** Maybe Spock wore eyeshadow in an attempt to look "more Vulcan?" |
| 206 | *** Hell, it was the style for both sexes in ancient Egypt, so why not? |
| 207 | *** That explanation is probably ''the'' most logical: it was the style in Egypt because it helped them deal with the glare from the sun, it being a desert country. And Vulcan is a desert ''planet''. Since simple measures taken to deal with the environment (e.g., the reason clothes exist at all) become cultural, it makes perfect sense that Vulcans would wear eye makeup as a matter of course even off world. Habit, tradition, and not feeling right without it. |
| 208 | [[/folder]] |
| 209 | |
| 210 | [[folder:Thanks for the Memories, Uhura]] |
| 211 | * In "The Changeling" Uhura has her entire memory erased by the space probe Nomad. She is then simply re-educated and this event is never referenced again. What about her family? What about her life? She's just lost everything she ever was and they just re-instruct her on her abc's and send her back to work? Not even a letter home to her parents to let them know that their daughter is effectively dead? |
| 212 | ** [[ValuesDissonance Eh, she's a woman.]] [[RefugeInAudacity As long as she keeps her baby-making equipment, nothing of value was lost.]] |
| 213 | ** She might have just been hit with aphasia rather than amnesia (which would kinda make sense: Nomad was probably lots more interested in deep-scanning her technical skills than her personal experiences). So Uhura might've had all her memories intact, but she had to be retaught how to speak, read, write and so on so that she could express them again. She seemed exactly like her old self in later episodes and the movies, so however they did it, they did completely restore her. |
| 214 | ** The earlier draft of the script, as well as the later novelization by James Blish, specifies this. |
| 215 | ** Notice how quickly she was reeducated. She was all better by the next episode, as I recall. Pretty good, considering she was starting from scratch (i.e., kindergarten) and it presumably took about twenty years for her to acquire her education the first time. |
| 216 | *** At one point in reeducating her, Chapel becomes flustered because Uhura is speaking to her in Swahili rather than English. Given the illogic of teaching her a language that no one else on the ship speaks while in the middle of a crisis, odds are that the aphasia theory is dead on and Swahili was simply relearned before English was. |
| 217 | ** If Uhura kept any kind of diary that would help as well. Also, given that Spock has interacted with Uhura often (and heard all of her stories of family, home, etc.) and has a flawless memory, he could have assisted the process with a mind meld and either restored Uhura's memories directly or jumpstarted the process by which her mind would do so naturally. Restoring a highly-trained Starfleet specialist to her full mental faculties benefits the entire ship and, ultimately, the fleet (not to mention Uhura's loved ones). The personal violation a mind meld potentially represents is therefore a logical course of action. The needs of the many... |
| 218 | *** Spock may be able to initiate telepathic contact ''without'' a meld. He refers to a "Vulcan mind ''probe''" several times; maybe that is more about information. And given he connected with Nomad, a ''robot'' (and in the films, with a pregnant whale) the meld cannot be just a sexual-type intimacy. |
| 219 | [[/folder]] |
| 220 | |
| 221 | [[folder:This Universe Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us]] |
| 222 | * In the TOS episode, The Alternative Factor, why was it necessary to trap both Lazaruses in the corridor between universes? Wouldn't destroying the ship and keeping the insane one prisoner have been sufficient? What happens if someone else develops the technology? Even if it was necessary, why did Kirk actually tell Spock and 2 security guards to "stay back" while he struggled to toss insane Lazarus into the portal? Wouldn't four guys have made the whole thing easier? Better yet, why not just stun him and throw him in? |
| 223 | ** IIRC is was to lure Evil Lazarus into the corridor, the only reason he would enter there is because he knew his hated double was there. |
| 224 | [[/folder]] |
| 225 | |
| 226 | [[folder:Why No Yeomen Men?]] |
| 227 | * Is there some reason all of Kirk's yeomen are female? He had quite a few over the course of the series, so you'd think at least ''one'' would be a guy, wouldn't you? |
| 228 | ** You are asking why ''Kirk'' would hire as many women as possible? |
| 229 | ** In "[[StarTrekS1E10TheCorbomiteManeuver The Corbomite Maneuver]]", Kirk is visibly annoyed by Rand's constant hovering, griping about the "headquarters genius" who assigned him a female yeoman. [=McCoy=] asks him if it's because Kirk doesn't trust himself with female yeomen around, to which he replies he already has a female to worry about, and her name is the Enterprise. |
| 230 | *** Counterpoint: The ''Enterprise'' does not have a vagina. |
| 231 | *** It's called the shuttle bay. :-P |
| 232 | *** That's a womb. |
| 233 | *** Ships on Earth are referred to as female. Ask any sailor. It makes sense that this would carry over to starships. |
| 234 | ** The guys just didn't like the uniform. |
| 235 | ** There is a male yeoman in "The Cage". |
| 236 | ** Then there are Yeomans Burke and Samno from ''The Undiscovered Country''. |
| 237 | ** The simple answer is that Gene Roddenberry just thought the idea of a female yeoman was A) good evidence for how far humanity had come in this future and B) good Fanservice. The female yeoman idea goes all the way back to his first pilot with Pike's yeoman Colt. |
| 238 | [[/folder]] |
| 239 | |
| 240 | [[folder:Youngest Doctorate Ever?]] |
| 241 | * In "Where No Man Has Gone Before", Dr. Dehner's profile says that she's twenty-one. Are you ''kidding'' me? She has a doctorate ''at twenty-one''? What is she, a child prodigy? And although Sally Kellerman was around twenty-eight at time, she ''looked'' like she was in her thirties. |
| 242 | ** Why ''shouldn't'' she have been a prodigy? Starfleet, especially in the TOS era, tried to staff the Enterprise with its best and brightest. |
| 243 | ** The current Guinness world record holder for 'youngest university professor' is one Dr. Alia Sabur, age 18. She apparently obtained her doctorate in Materials Science Engineering from Drexel University at age 16. |
| 244 | ** See the folder for Uhura's memory wipe. Using just the resources available aboard the ''Enterprise'' [=McCoy=] and whoever else Kirk delegated to handle the problem, they were able to educate Uhura from preschool to Starfleet Academy graduate status in just under a week; obviously, education technology in the 23rd century is just a ''little'' bit more advanced than what we see today. Granted, Uhura's was a crash program put together as a result of an emergency (and doesn't address her OJT or experience in the position) but under regular conditions there's no reason why someone sufficiently talented couldn't earn a doctorate by twenty-one in the Trek universe (considering that it's also been done in 20th century Real Life). |
| 245 | ** By the same token, Chekov is a lowly ensign but already has a prominent position in the line of command. I've always taken both of these to be yet another subtle clue at how humanity has improved itself in the show's vision of the future: education standards are such that child prodigies seem almost commonplace. |
| 246 | [[/folder]] |
| 247 | |
| 248 | [[folder:Chekov Hates the Letter V?]] |
| 249 | * Kind of a minor question: Why can't Chekov pronounce the letter V? There's three of them in his ''own name,'' and he pronounces them just fine when introducing himself. Then he suddenly loses the ability in every other word. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeekblLkx4g&feature=related Most egregious in the reboot]]. |
| 250 | ** Reaches wall banger status in a minor way when the computer is unable to understand Chekov giving his authorization code because of the "Wictors"... never mind that he's using ''the phonetic alphabet'', which is specifically designed so that each letter sounds different regardless of pronunciation or interference. |
| 251 | ** For whatever reason, Walter Koenig had a really odd idea what a Russian accent sounded like. The scene in the reboot is just a LampshadeHanging / MythologyGag. |
| 252 | *** He's on record as saying he was imitating his Russian/Lithuanian father's accent. |
| 253 | ** To an extent there is a bit of TruthInTelevision though. Russian does not contain the W sound, and Russians who don't bother with right pronunciation would avoid it. But those Russians who did learn this sound tend to forget (at first at least), that the letter V also exists in English, and they replace all Vs with Ws. Still it is strange in the case of Chekov, who daily deals with native English speakers and most likely would correct his mistake once he heard the right version. |
| 254 | *** We don't really know how Chekov spends his off time, but I highly doubt he's the ''only'' Russian on board, so there's a good chance he wouldn't be speaking English 24/7. And even if he were, accents can take many years to fade. |
| 255 | ** [[WildMassGuessing Maybe he has a speech impediment]]? |
| 256 | ** How hard would it be to program the ''Enterprise'' main computer simply to recognize Chekov's voice and accent/speech impediment/whatever? If voiceprint technology is a major part of Starfleet's security protocols, then the computer would recognize that Chekov is speaking and (provided Chekov also gives the proper authorizations) be done with it. Even if Chekov were just recently transferred to the ship (as appears to be the case in the reboot) it's just a matter of telling Computer A to send Computer B the appropriate files. |
| 257 | ** Concerning Chekov's name, being born and raised in Russia, his actual birth name should be "Павел Андреевич Чехов" (at least according to Website/TheOtherWiki), with "Pavel Andreievich Chekov" being just the English transliteration, serving kind of as a pronunciation guide for anyone who can't read Cyrillic letters. The "v" of the Latin alphabet thus doesn't ''actually'' exist in Chekov's name. |
| 258 | *** But the ''sound'' does, so he should be able to pronounce it even though he writes it as в. |
| 259 | * Of course, he could simply be messing with his crewmates. |
| 260 | [[/folder]] |
| 261 | |
| 262 | [[folder: Rejecting Your Heritage is Illogical]] |
| 263 | * In TOS Spock always acts as though he's not half human. Remarks like "Your Earth" and puzzlement over human nature are common occurrences. Clearly he favors his Vulcan heritage over his human side, and there's nothing wrong with that. I have to wonder, though, how absent a parent would his mother had to have been for him to be completely befuddled by humanity? I can't think of any "logical" explanation for this other than he doesn't particularly like his human ancestry and deliberately plays it down at every opportunity. |
| 264 | ** Given that many of the Star Trek movies, not just the reboot, have suggested he faced discrimination by other Vulcans, his own father spoke in disappointment at his birth saying “so Human” in Star Trek 5, he may have compensated and became a little self-loathing of his heritage. There are stories of African Americans who were able to hide their Black ancestry in the 19th and 20th centuries, joining White Supremacists groups and being some of the most hate-filled members. |
| 265 | ** Consider also that Spock's mother was sufficiently different from most other human women in that she'd consider a Vulcan man a desirable long-term partner. Clearly, Amanda Grayson did not conform to the mold, and probably wasn't the best exemplar of human behavior. That doesn't even get into the fact that the rest of the people Spock interacted with from birth up to his entrance into Starfleet Academy were all Vulcans. His social skills, nonverbal communication, and understanding of customs and traditions are all informed by Vulcan influences. While he can understand the human side of his ancestry, it's the Vulcan side he's had more exposure to and feels more comfortable with. |
| 266 | ** There's also the possibility that, given the volatile nature of Vulcan emotion, Spock was concerned that if he indulged his human emotions, he would not be able to restrain himself and he would cause trouble for not just his family, but for those around him. Remember, the inability to control emotions is seen as a mental disorder on Vulcan, and in the past rampant emotionalism nearly destroyed their planet. That's a pretty strong stigma for a child to overcome. |
| 267 | ** In RealLife, most people tend to identify with the culture they grew up in, even if one of their parents comes from a different one. Since Vulcans are not sentimental, Spock was likely to view his human ancestry purely as a matter of biology, and not of culture. He may not have even been to Earth prior to joining Starfleet, as we never see any indication that he has a relationship with Amanda's family. Add in the fact that Vulcan genes appear to be ''very'' dominant, to the extent that Spock's human physiology matches Vulcan norms rather than human ones, and he has every reason to feel detached from humanity and Earth. |
| 268 | ** In David Gerrold's ''The World Of Star Trek'', he said that Spock not liking and playing down his human ancestry is the central pillar of his character. Spock is actively choosing his Vulcan side and loathes his Human side, and that's his main tragedy. It'd be better for his mental health if he just made peace with his mixed heritage (and people have argued that the reason he's so much less... rigid by the movie era is because he has) but he refuses to. It's paradoxical and emotional, but there you go, that's Human/Vulcan nature for you. A combination of his father's disapproval and childhood bullying, and being surrounded by humans in the workplace, probably make him more devoted to his Vulcan side. |
| 269 | ** To connect this to another headscratcher, thinking this unhealthy might be another reason [=McCoy=] pushes so hard regarding Spock's humanity; as a doctor, it would be against his ethical standard to watch a crewman do something detrimental to his mental health without doing something about it. |
| 270 | ** Or it could be that technically, Spock ''isn't'' half human. At least, not when it comes to physiology. After all, every time his physiology is mentioned, it is way closer (if not identical) to Vulcan norm than human. He also seems to be more skilled at telepathy than some of the full-blooded Vulcans (Tuvok, for example), and manages perfect Vulcan control in almost all circumstances (again, better than some full blooded Vulcans - looking at you, T'Pol). Maybe it's just that Vulcan genes are very dominant, and the human part of his genetic code is not expressed, or expressed only partly. So he has a human mother, but physiologically and psychologically, he is not half human. Which would explain a lot of his frustration with his human heritage - if he is physiologically, psychologically, and culturally Vulcan, how annoying would it be to have the human, unexpressed, part of his heritage repeatedly thrown in his face... |
| 271 | [[/folder]] |
| 272 | |
| 273 | [[folder: General Order 24]] |
| 274 | * In both "Whom Gods Destroy" and "A Taste of Armageddon", General Order 24 is referred to; it's an order for a starship to exterminate all life on a given planet. Kirk even gives this order. Doesn't the existence of General Order 24 seem ''extremely'' brutal for Starfleet? |
| 275 | ** Most militaries keep orders for ''every'' possible contingency on hand, even if they don't intend on actually ''using'' them. Case in point: the United States actually had [[http://strategytheory.org/military/us/joint_board/Estimate%20of%20the%20Situation%20-%20Red%20and%20Tentative%20Joint%20Basic%20Plan%20-%20Red.pdf an invasion plan for Canada in the 1930's]] which wasn't declassified until ''1974'' (although it hadn't been updated since 1939). And given the enemies Starfleet has run across just from what we've seen with the ''Enterprise'' (and there are ''twelve'' Constitution-class starships all running the same five-year mission) it makes sense. Honestly, if Kirk were to run across something like [[Series/BabylonFive Z'Ha'Dum]] or [[Film/{{Alien}} LV-426]] what ''else'' would you expect him to do? ("Operation: Annihilate!" actually sets up such a situation and Kirk does entertain GO 24 until an alternate solution is found). As the series itself demonstrates on numerous occasions, a simple quarantine isn't enough for some threats. |
| 276 | ** Deterrence, possibly. The Klingons and the Romulans wouldn't hesitate to exterminate the population of a planet if it served their agenda, so to prevent them for doing so, the Federation has to make it known that Starfleet is willing and able to respond in kind. |
| 277 | ** Possibly the Federation or one of its member-worlds have previously encountered a planet that fell prey to some kind of GrayGoo scenario, and created General Order 24 as a last-ditch counter to such a thing potentially happening on ''their'' watch. |
| 278 | [[/folder]] |
| 279 | |
| 280 | [[folder: Here's to Captain Dunsel]] |
| 281 | * If the M-5 computer in "The Ultimate Computer" could be installed aboard the ''Enterprise'' and eliminate the need for the rest of the crew to even be there (Chekov was bemusedly sitting at his console and simply confirming what the M-5's navigation was doing), why did they have 20 people onboard? Why not go ahead and ''completely'' give the ship over to the M-5? And who the hell designed this thing without an "off" switch? Daystrom had already had four previous failures! |
| 282 | ** The episode itself answers that question: it was a demonstration, and Daystrom's prototypes already have a bad track record (which begs the question of why Starfleet still continues to do business with him). As a precaution, a bare minimum crew is left on board to document the M-5's performance, disable it in case there's a problem, and keep the ''Enterprise'' operational until the full ship's complement can be restored. Unfortunately the prototype [[GoneHorriblyRight worked a little too well...]] |
| 283 | ** Starfleet kept working with Daystrom because of his breakthrough in duotronic circuits, which was as big a deal as us going from the punchcard computer to the vacuum tube, or from that to computer chips. Essentially, Daystrom was the Steve Jobs of the 23rd Century, and even if his most recent products had been a bust, he still had his reputation for the advancements he had made, so he was given the benefit of the doubt. |
| 284 | ** Why only 20? Granted, I can see a number of button-pusher positions being eliminated by the computer (helm, captain, navigation, weapons operators, etc. and the secretarial jobs performed by Rand) but what about the entire engineering complement? What about the medical crew? Laboratory staff? Then there's the support personnel for those positions, redundancy. Was it simply a matter of "only 20 needed for the duration of this experiment"? |
| 285 | *** A crew of 20 was all that was absolutely needed to operate the ship in the event of an M-5 malfunction. Notice that other ships were close at hand, including 4 other ''Constitution''-class starships. The 20 were needed to monitor M-5 to make sure that it was working and, in the event that all Hell broke loose, were there to shut the computer down and keep the ''Enterprise'' from spontaneously combusting until she could be dragged back to spacedock and refitted to normal operations. Scotty was onboard, as well as a couple other engineers, and [=McCoy=] was there for medical (with such a small crew and other ships nearby, you only need the one doctor). No laboratory staff was needed, since there was no research to be done other than on the M-5. Basically, it was a one-time deal with the understanding that, if shit hit the fan, help was nearby anyway, so redundancy was less important that the M-5 trial run. |
| 286 | *** At one point during the test, the Enterprise DID have to assemble a landing party (general survey party) to investigate a planet (Alpha Carinae II). The landing party included an astrobiologist (Phillips) and a geologist. M-5 substitutes Kirk's choice of geologist (Chief Rawlins) with Ensign Carstairs. So it looks as though there was a complement of specialists onboard for these trials (unless it was only a simulated landing party, and no one was actually going to beam down and take rock samples). |
| 287 | ** They thought they ''did'' have [[CutTheJuice an off switch]] -- they tried to use it after the incident with the torpedoed ore freighter, but it didn't work because M-5 outmaneuvered them. |
| 288 | [[/folder]] |
| 289 | |
| 290 | [[folder: Ambassadors Can Violate the Prime Directive?]] |
| 291 | * In "A Taste of Armageddon", Eminar VII sent the ''Enterprise'' a strict coded warning to stay the hell away. Why isn't this the end of the discussion? By ordering Kirk to proceed there anyway, the ambassador is causing him to violate the Prime Directive. |
| 292 | ** Starfleet appears to be ultimately subject to civilian authority, so the ambassador (presumably operating on higher orders himself) is within his authority. Kirk does have the right and the responsibility to question the order under these circumstances, however. |
| 293 | ** The ambassador likely had orders to open negotiations at all costs, or similar phrasing to that effect. Thus, he was willing to ignore anything that got in the way of that goal. Just one of the reasons that Fox was the definition of AssInAmbassador. |
| 294 | ** In ''TOS'' the Prime Directive appears to fully apply only with pre-Warp civilizations who have not had interstellar interference or contact -- while it is not indicated that Eminiar has warp, it ''is'' made clear that they already know that there are other civilizations traveling around space to the point of knowing which Starfleet code indicates quarantine regardless of the circumstances, so ''as the Prime Directive is presented in TOS'', this is not a Prime Directive violation. |
| 295 | [[/folder]] |
| 296 | |
| 297 | [[folder: Commandeering Commodore]] |
| 298 | * Commodore Decker was ''quite obviously'' out of his mind. Why did Spock and [=McCoy=] back down so easily and let him take command of the ''Enterprise''? [=McCoy=] should have insisted on having those psychological evaluations beforehand, at the very least. |
| 299 | ** While Spock would have backed up [=McCoy=] had the doctor pushed the issue (he did so with regard to ''Kirk'' in a similar situation), the case can be made that time was of the essence and that Decker ''did'' have critical intelligence on the Doomsday Machine that would ensure the survival of the ''Enterprise'' and its crew. Declaring him incompetent would have ended any further cooperation from him, resulting in a risk neither Spock nor [=McCoy=] is willing to take. |
| 300 | ** The lack of psychological evaluations is easy to explain. The ship went to red alert right after Decker and [=McCoy=] beamed aboard, and Decker rushed to the bridge before the doctor could get him to sickbay. However, psychological evaluations shouldn't have been necessary to relieve Decker; it was clear enough from the way he was acting that he was unfit for command and [=McCoy=] should have noted that. |
| 301 | [[/folder]] |
| 302 | |
| 303 | [[folder: The Cage]] |
| 304 | * Why was [[spoiler: Vina's true form]] so far from symmetrical? I get that the aliens couldn't rebuild her properly, but since they're symmetrical, and most complex species on Earth and in Star Trek are symmetrical, you'd think they'd at least try to make her look even. Even if she looked like a different species, she might still look sort of okay and would probably be much more comfortable than with problems like a twisted neck and face and a shoulder higher than one ear. It seems like they ''could'' have done it, given their medical abilities and what they did successfully do for her, but not knowing what her species looks like doesn't mean doing a slipshod job. |
| 305 | ** Simple: She was so badly mangled that, to restore her to symmetry, they would have had to perform grafts and the like - which technical knowledge had decayed in their decadent civilization. |
| 306 | ** Simple: The uglier she is the more likely she is to submit to their demands. Don't know about you but I sure as hell would be more suggestible if it meant I could be young and sexy instead of hideously deformed. |
| 307 | *** That doesn't work. She has no way to know she's ugly because she has no other humans for reference. Presumably when the crew of Pike's ship landed for the first time is when they realized she wasn't a normal-looking human and change her (with a illusion) to match. |
| 308 | *** I think you meant to write that THEY (the Talosians) had no way of knowing that she's ugly. But they presumably DID know that she should be at least symmetrical. |
| 309 | ** I've always imagined there was one initial emergency surgery to save her life, and then several frantic surgeries to try to correct the damage they inflicted because they didn't know what the hell they were doing. They might have tried to reconstruct her with some semblance of symmetry, but with all the damaged and excised muscle, fused joints, scar tissue, nerve damage, and tendons reattached by duct tape and prayer, her body simply lacks the capacity for symmetry. |
| 310 | ** When Pike asks "You'll give her back her illusion of beauty?" and the Keeper says "And more," he shows her with an illusion of Pike staying with her. This was rearranged for "The Menagerie" so that we don't see Pike going with her until he actually gets back to the planet, leaving the Keeper's "And more" unexplained. I like to think it means now that they've seen other humans, including females, they can fix her up a bit. |
| 311 | * Why aren't there more "laser" burns from all the other times people tried to fire their weapons? For that matter, if the illusions could cover up a laser blast and a hole burned through the wall, what was the point of one of the aliens trying to sneak in through the wall panel when they thought Pike wasn't looking ([[WatsonianVersusDoylist aside from]] [[Administrivia/DefaultAnswer stupidity to forward the plot]])? |
| 312 | ** The Talosians can cover up the blast damage, but are clearly unable to prevent it. Securing the weapons is prudent because it removes danger of their prisoners devastating the Talosian facility and its staff and not even realizing it. Of course, with the power to alter their prisoners' perceptions, one has to wonder why the hell the Keeper could have let himself get caught. |
| 313 | ** He got caught because, due to Pike's violent thoughts, he couldn't read his mind and was unaware that the seemingly unconscious man was actually poised to strike. As for the question about why the Talosian was trying to grab the phasers, Pike answers that a few seconds later, when he offers to test if the illusions will prevent them from seeing the uppermost 18 inches of alien disintegrate from a point-blank shot. Just because Pike can't see the damage he is causing doesn't mean he isn't tearing the place to shreds, and given the physical weakness that the Talosians demonstrate, it'll be hard enough to clean up the mess he'd already made. |
| 314 | * Why bother with the death penalty for going there? A person can give the illusion that he has been captured and executed, and escape. |
| 315 | ** "A person", if I'm reading the question right, can't create that illusion at all; that's an ability of the Talosians themselves (for whom the law in question doesn't apply). Some species might be able to, but none that are mentioned in TOS up to that point. That said, the Talosians could create the illusion on behalf of a visitor, but only if the Talosians are agreeable to it. |
| 316 | ** Another angle on that question explains why Starfleet was so willing to drop charges against Spock. After Starbase Eleven "received images from Talos Four," it was clear that the quarantine was utterly unenforceable unless [[SelfRestraint the Talosians cooperated]]. Thus, it was pointless to execute Spock, and perhaps even counterproductive if the Talosians were offended by having him punished for helping them help Pike. |
| 317 | * Another thing about ''The Cage'' that bothers me. Pike contemplates settling down on Orion to start a business. The doctor scoffs at the idea and implies that trading in "animal women" and slaves is a major business on Orion. If this is meant to be a joke, Pike doesn't really dismiss it as one, and then one of the illusions his Keeper subjects him to is the famous Orion dancing girl scene. So... is Captain Pike actually fantasizing about/planning on going into sex slave trafficking after retirement? Our hero... |
| 318 | ** The interesting thing about prequels is that they inadvertently retcon oh-so-much without ever intending to. In ''Enterprise'' it is revealed that the Orions are a matriarchal society that enslaves the males but makes out to the rest of the galaxy that it is the other way around in order to lower everyone's guard, which in a weird way actually kind of works as a strategy when you consider that the police are probably going to focus on the hulking master rather than his willowy slave. Now whilst that was a secret back in the 22nd century, how likely is it that it would still be to an experienced starship captain in the 23rd after Captain (later President) Archer no doubt made a log entry about it? It makes Pike sound more like he has an Amazon fantasy. |
| 319 | [[/folder]] |
| 320 | |
| 321 | [[folder: Kodos and witnesses]] |
| 322 | So supposedly when Kodos the Executioner killed 4000 people, there were only 9 known witnesses who ever saw him. Then how in the hell do they have his picture on file? Why would they need any witness to identify him when his picture was in Federation records and his crimes were public record? Even then how did the other 3991 survivors never see him? Surely a colony's senator declaring martial law is not only going to make himself public, but would've been seen long before he took power anyway. Furthermore, he could not be 100% identified from a charred body--sorry, but it's the 23rd century, do they not have DNA testing yet? No ability to check dental records? That's just ignoring the fact that cosmetic surgery is easy and common--if a Klingon can look human, why can't one man change his appearance just slightly to avoid such identification? He didn't alter his appearance in the least (this might make sense if only a few witnesses could ID him, but his photo is in the records!). Plus how would his daughter have ever found out unless his photo was in the records? Come the (BEEP) on here! |
| 323 | * ScienceMarchesOn definitely applies here. It's not a stretch to assume that everyone in the 23rd century has perfect teeth, so dental records probably wouldn't still exist. Aside from that, there was no conclusive means of identifying a body from charred remains in the 1960's, and even today it's difficult. And DNA analysis has only been a thing since TheEighties. The only thing that would work is if Kodos had an identical twin brother upon whom he could pin the blame. Which means that either his brother was complicit in Kodos' crimes (and Kodos killed him to muddy his tracks) or yet another innocent man was killed. |
| 324 | * [[FridgeHorror Or Kodos anticipated this and]] [[InferredHolocaust killed everyone else who had seen his face prior to his attempted]] HeelFaceTurn. |
| 325 | * For the record detail, I always took it this way. Yes, everyone knows what Kodos looks like if they look him up and compare him to the man himself. But what would be the purpose of that? In a galaxy full of war-criminals, what are the odds that someone who's just a face in a file would be present enough in someone's mind to identify him 20 years later? It would be the equivalent of a South African dictator escaping to the U.S. and taking on a new identity. Certainly the authorities would have his picture, but would they make that connection just seeing him on the street?The only people who WOULD be likely to make that connection would be people like Kirk; people who had seen him, in action, giving the order, and thus their face would leave a significant impact on them. Those would be the only people who might see him performing on-stage, realize who he was, and go after him, because there IS a difference in terms of impact between knowing what someone looks like in a photo and actually having known that person. Even Kirk isn't sure at first, and has to double-check to confirm. Someone who only knew the face of Kodos from his photo records would be hard-pressed to make that connection, I would imagine. His daughter was trying to kill all the people who could identify him on sight, probably because she figured the same thing; no one would make that connection without reason to do so, and no one would have reason to suspect her father was Kodos unless they actually recognized him as Kodos, which would be incredibly unlikely. |
| 326 | [[/folder]] |
| 327 | |
| 328 | [[folder: Spock's Estimate of Tribble Populations]] |
| 329 | --->'''Spock:''' One million seven hundred seventy one thousand five hundred sixty one. That's assuming one tribble, multiplying with an average litter of ten, producing a new generation every twelve hours over a period of three days. |
| 330 | * How is any of this reasonable? Dr. [=McCoy=] will soon come in and tell them that he hasn't completed his analysis of the medical characteristics of tribbles yet. And even if Bones told Spock earlier "an average litter of ten every twelve hours", who says the average litter isn't really 10.3 and the average length of a tribble generation is really 11.8 hours? And the tribble population didn't start with one tribble; Cyrano Jones was talking like he had a considerable stock (dozens, lets say) on hand that he was going to sell to the bartender. Furthermore, the tribbles had to work their way ''into'' that storage bin, and who knows how long they've been breeding in there. At best Spock could maybe create an estimate to the nearest thousand, but even that is questionable. |
| 331 | ** An average is just that: a smoothing over of rough data. Spock is working from the information [=McCoy=] provided him and at the scale Spock is talking about the ship is still screwed regardless of minor deviations from the mean. As for getting into the storage bin, there ''was'' a Klingon spy on the station who could have gotten aboard the ship and planted a few tribbles there to sabotage the ''Enterprise'''s mission. Granted, tribbles don't like Klingons but Cyrano could have put a few in a box for him, or he could have used some form of anesthesia to sedate them long enough to get the job done. |
| 332 | ** Spock's not offering a concrete scientific analysis; he's just applying his big Vulcan brain to [[NotSoAboveItAll have the best answer in an impromptu guessing game.]] Remember, they'd just watched tribbles pour out of the storage compartment, Baris says "There must be thousands," Kirk replies "Tens of thousands," then Spock pipes up with his ludicrously precise guess. |
| 333 | ** It's right there in his line: "That's assuming." What he's saying is, "this is an educated guess based on what I believe to be plausible figures." If he had been in possession of the exact numbers, it's reasonable to assume he would have used those instead, and his explanation would instead be something like "given their observed birthrate of an average litter of 10.3, producing a new generation every 11.8 hours over a period of three days." |
| 334 | [[/folder]] |
| 335 | |
| 336 | [[folder: One For Yes, Two For No: Poor, Poor Chris Pike]] |
| 337 | * Really? Hundreds of years of medical progress, and this is the best they can do for poor Christopher Pike? Even with only the tech we've got today, we could have taught him Morse code and allowed him to express complex thoughts, and we're well on our way to allowing paralyzed persons to control computers with their minds without even needing invasive implants. |
| 338 | ** Let's be fair here because this tends to come up a lot: Computer technology today would seem borderline miraculous to someone living back in the sixties and as such to chew out the writers for not giving Pike a Stephen Hawking type chair is just wrong. It is also fair to say that TOS had a budget so small that stretching to a small flashing light genuinely was approaching the best they could do so even if they could envisage something more realistic they probably couldn't have done much better. Of course that does ''not'' excuse the genuine fact that the script writer apparently forgot about the concept of Morse code. |
| 339 | ** How is it "just wrong"? They'd already imagined a talking ship's computer. It's not exactly much of a stretch from that to imagining an interface by which a severely crippled man could input language into the computer to have it read out for him, even if that interface was slow and painstaking (to preserve RuleOfDrama and keep his crippling suitably horrifying for the audience). |
| 340 | ** I was also confused on the lack of Morse code too, or even a shot of someone trying to spell out words with him when ''USS Enterprise'' crew come in and a remark of just going with yes and no questions on screen to save time. |
| 341 | ** Of course it could just be that whatever the injury to him was, it was so debilitating that it is just too much of a strain for him to do anything more complicated than one light for yes and two for no. It does seem to take quite a while for him to even flicker those lights. That might very well ''be'' all he is capable of doing. We don't have enough information to rule it out. Out of universe, yeah it probably was just a 1960s mindset that it didn't even occur to the staff. We tend to forget just how far we've come sometimes. |
| 342 | *** It's been a while since I've seen the episode, but wasn't there a line to the effect that there was no brain damage and he was just as intelligent as ever? |
| 343 | *** Yep there is, and there is no indication in the episode that he suffers any mental impairments, from his reactions he's just as sharp as ever. |
| 344 | *** I presume, especially considering this episode was written in the 1960s, that he had to press a button or a switch to flash the light. Maybe even that was a strain, hence his sometimes long delays before flashing the light a second time. Morse code might simply be too taxing. |
| 345 | ** The actual logical contradiction was demonstrated by the simple fact that Spock was taking him to the telepathic Talosians, who could access his otherwise intact mind just fine. The problem becomes that the Federation also has telepathic species, notably Vulcans (but not Betazoids yet). So at the very least Starfleet could have provided better care by getting him a Vulcan nurse, who would be able to at least assist him in communicating with those around him. |
| 346 | *** Well, Vulcan telepathy really isn't all that. It's by touch only (barring extreme circumstances), and requires a lot of access and effort from both parties. A Vulcan caretaker for Pike couldn't just speak whatever he's currently thinking, they would need to mind-meld with him every time someone wanted something more complex out of him than "yes/no." Plus, what the Talosians can offer Pike is more than just the ability to get thoughts out of his head again, its the ability live under the illusion that there's nothing wrong with his body at all. On Talos IV, Pike can ski the alps, run through green fields, swim the deepest oceans, do anything and everything the Talosians can think of. It's true reprieve from his crippling injuries. |
| 347 | ** It's also important to remember that while medical technology may be advanced, the extent of his injuries are not really known. It's possible that the damage may have made a computer interface impossible, or that his mind has enough damage that he would be incapable of answers more complex than yes and no. Remember that with fantastic technology, comes a whole new set of fantastic ways that it can fail and maim someone. |
| 348 | *** As an aside, if this were true, it would be another case of ''Star Trek'' predicting the future. Modern medical science has become very good at keeping victims of traumatic brain injuries alive. It has ''not'', however, evolved to the point where brain ''functionality'' can reliably be restored. With prompt treatment, people can survive injuries that would have meant certain death even a decade ago, but unfortunately, those survivors are often left with severe disabilities. |
| 349 | ** Heck, did they lose all historical records about Stephen Hawking and his voice synthesizer setup? He seemed to have about the same remaining physical capabilities that Captain Pike did. There's no reason he shouldn't have been able to fully communicate in sentences. |
| 350 | [[/folder]] |
| 351 | |
| 352 | [[folder: What is a savage curtain?]] |
| 353 | * What's the significance of the episode title "The Savage Curtain?" Is it just a metaphor for the line between good and evil? |
| 354 | ** The Excalbian at the end of the episode says that it can't see any difference between good and evil, so to the Excalbian, the difference between savagery and civilization is as insubstantial as a curtain. |
| 355 | ** He's also spoken of putting on a drama, enacted on a stage, and shown to everyone back on the ship so they can "enjoy and profit from the play". So the "curtain" metaphor makes sense in that way, too. |
| 356 | [[/folder]] |
| 357 | |
| 358 | [[folder: Does Janice Lester have Gender Dysphoria?]] |
| 359 | * Janice Lester from the episode ''Turnabout Intruder'' initially seems like your average insane villain of the week who wants to take control of the Enterprise. However almost immediately after she steals Kirk's body she starts to talk about ''suffering the indignity of being a woman'' as well as things like filing her nails or moving in an extremely feminine manner - she doesn't even try to playact. I'm proud to say that I have had a transgendered [what?] since school (and have known the members of several support groups) and trust me when I say that someone who is confused about their gender acts ''exactly'' like this - simultaneously hating and loving aspects of their body as well as (only sometimes I hasten to add) developing a jealous resentment toward the opposite sex. It would also explain why she claims that women cannot become starship captains despite the fact that the Federation is supposedly an utopia of equal rights, she is merely blaming her own lack of skills on her gender, which no doubt wasn't helped by being the girlfriend of the ultra-masculine Captain Kirk. |
| 360 | ** Seems likely--though, in all probability, it was probably by accident. According to George Takei, Creator/GeneRoddenberry was accepting of LGBT people, but he wasn't involved in the third season. Even so, gender dysphoria was not something that was well understood in the 1960s (to put it mildly). I'd guess that she was just intended to be a run-of-the-mill [[TheMentallyDisturbed mad woman]]. |
| 361 | ** More likely the narrative was directed at gender stereotypes which is why you got a transgender feel from it (also please note the term is not transgendered - you wouldn't call someone straighted or heterosexualed). |
| 362 | ** By the dialogue in the episode, and if the rumors about the sexism and harassment that many of the women endured backstage on both this show and TNG are true, this whole episode was meant to prove exactly ''why'' women shouldn't be in command. Even in the body of a strong and healthy man with a state of the art starship at his command, granted all of his friends, all of his privileges, all of his power; she couldn't even stop filing her nails and screaming long enough to achieve anything of any value to her cause whatsoever. I can guarantee that ''women are not allowed to be starship captains'' is as black and white as that sounds. |
| 363 | ** In the context of this production era, yes, the episode definitely had those sexist undertones. On the other hand, if we're to look at the episode as if it were actually taking place in the enlightened far future, it makes a bit more sense that there were definite reasons that Janice Lester did not receive a command of her own, and that she's looking for any excuse other than ''she would not be a good fit for command''- not because she's a woman, but because she's bonkers. Definitely a sexist episode, of course, (what do you expect? It's the 60's!) but this is how I, as a modern viewer, look at it in order to enjoy it without cringing. |
| 364 | ** This may come as a shock to modern Trekkers who have spent most of their lives hearing how progressive Gene Roddenberry was, but yes, he wrote that episode's story himself, specifically to demonstrate why women should not be placed in charge of men. There's a lot of myth about Roddenberry the man, and what motivated him. While it's true that he was a progressive as far as race and sexuality (free love and all forms of it), he was not an advocate for gender equality at all. Much of what we've been told about him was an attempt by those close to him to protect his legacy after his death, such as his widow, Majel Barrett. Now that Barrett has passed on herself, a bit of truth is coming out. According to those who worked with him, Roddenberry didn't trust women, and believed men to be naturally superior in most, if not all, respects. He was also a raging womanizer, who apparently wasn't above making repeated unwanted advances upon women who'd made it clear they weren't interested (both while married to his first wife and later, after he'd married Barrett), and despite the story that he fought to have a woman be second-in-command of the ''Enterprise'', what this really was was a case of nepotism. Barrett, who was his mistress at the time (he had yet to divorce his first wife, but his affair with Barrett was an open secret), demanded a role on the show, and he wrote her in to please her. NBC brass didn't like the idea of him giving his side piece a job, and told him to cast someone else. Instead, he eliminated the role and blamed it, years later, on studio heads telling him a woman in a command role isn't believable. In later life, especially after he was KickedUpstairs, his sexism calmed itself somewhat, enough that he allowed men and women to be portrayed as equals in the film and 80's television era (something he notably did ''not'' do with the original series). In many ways, Roddenberry was indeed a product of his time. That being said, Arthur H. Singer, who wrote the screenplay based on Roddenberry's story for this episode, appears to have attempted to soften the impact of the intended message by making it clear that Janice Lester was as crazy as a shithouse rat, and that it was her temperament that had held her back, not her gender. Note that despite Janice repeatedly stating that women are not allowed to command starships, no character in the episode openly agrees with her, and in fact note other reasons for her lack of command. Not that they openly disagree, either, but they're probably smart enough not to tell a delusional person that she's delusional. That usually escalates the issue, rather than easing it. |
| 365 | ** If it was the intention of that episode to show that women shouldn't be in command then I think it failed (or maybe executive meddling for good muddled the message). Kirk seems obviously sympathetic to the whole women can't command predicament. He outright says it isn't fair and the final line of the episode seems as if its suggesting her madness was brought about by the unfair system. |
| 366 | [[/folder]] |
| 367 | |
| 368 | [[folder:Non-Earth objects in the Squire of Gothos' collection?]] |
| 369 | * If the Squire of Gothos collects old Earth objects, why does he have the alien from the Man Trap in his collection? Obviously a Doylesian explanation is that they needed something to fill a niche and were reusing props, but what in-universe explanation could there be? Everything else in his collection is clearly of Earth origin, and 19th-century Earth at that. |
| 370 | ** Maybe Trelane stumbled upon a Salt Vampire during one of his earlier playtimes, and thought it was just too cool to get rid of even though it didn't really fit the new decor (an in-universe explanation that sort of echoes the real-world one, really). |
| 371 | ** The Salt Vampire is compared to the buffalo in its episode (once covered the plains of its world, now nearly extinct). So it could be an in-joke stand-in for a buffalo. |
| 372 | [[/folder]] |
| 373 | |
| 374 | [[folder: Earth wasn't the first spacefaring species]] |
| 375 | * ...so why do the Enterprise crew feel like they have literally no option for repairs etc when they're trapped in the 1960s in "Tomorrow is Yesterday"? Surely even if Earth isn't there yet, they could travel to other planets for help? |
| 376 | ** "The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that time travel is impossible." |
| 377 | *** AND THEN SHE TIME TRAVELS. THE VULCAN SCIENCE DIRECTORATE BE DAMNED, THIS IS 100 YEARS AFTER SHE TIME TRAVELED. |
| 378 | ** Because it would still be screwing around with the timeline. Any number of antagonist races getting wind of the fact that Earth will be warp-capable and a potential threat in the future, for example, might just make them feel like nipping the problem in the bud with a convenient genocide. Also, putting in for repairs might expose the engineers of those other planets to any number of uptime technologies ''they'' weren't familiar with, even if they understand some of the essentials- and perhaps reverse-engineer them for gain. |
| 379 | * Blish has "Space outside the local group of stars was wholly dominated by the Vegan Tyranny, and you'll recall what happened when we first hit ''them''." Blish had made up the Vegan Tyranny for ''Cities In Flight'' and just put them into his novelization of this episode. Perhaps the writers had invented something similar and the line got cut. |
| 380 | [[/folder]] |
| 381 | |
| 382 | [[folder: Wouldn't beaming Christopher back kill him?]] |
| 383 | * (referring to Captain John Christopher, USAF pilot in "Tomorrow Is Yesterday") The whole reason they beamed him out of there was to save his life as his plane was breaking up. Surely beaming him back the moment after he left would be exposing him to the very same accident that they were saving him from. Why then does the Enterprise disappear with no damage caused by it? |
| 384 | ** This episode throws the TimeyWimeyBall hard against the pavement. The overall explanation is supposedly nothing ever happened. The Enterprise never held Christopher's plane in the tractor beam, so it was never in danger. Who or what are being beamed into the bodies of Christopher and guard is never explained. It seems more like a way to avoid there being alternate timeline versions of them. |
| 385 | [[/folder]] |
| 386 | |
| 387 | [[folder: Everything was "inwented" in Russia]] |
| 388 | * What is up with Chekov's (often quite ridiculous) claims about all kinds of stuff having been invented in Russia? In the context of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar era in which the series was made, this was probably meant to make fun of Soviet propaganda and CulturalPosturing. But shouldn't the people of the 23rd century with their unified world government long have evolved beyond that? |
| 389 | ** That was probably just Chekov's personal quirk. |
| 390 | ** Even with the unified Earth government, regional rivalries or cultural posturing can still exist, perhaps taken (somewhat) less seriously than in the era of nation states. Think EverythingIsBigInTexas - on a global level. And of course, Chekhov is the Enterprise's resident {{cloudcuckoolander}}, which can account for over-the-top nature of his claims. |
| 391 | ** Chekov's claims were a parody of a specific type of CulturalPosturing that the Soviets were infamous for in real life: essentially giving themselves credit for every technological or cultural advancement mankind has ever made. Creator/NicholasMeyer took the joke up to eleven in ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'', when the [[KlingonsLoveShakespeare Klingons took credit for the works of William Shakespeare]]--even claiming that his plays could only truly be appreciated properly InTheOriginalKlingon. In the same film, Spock borrows the joke from Chekov twice: First when he quoted the old Vulcan proverb: "Only [[UsefulNotes/RichardNixon Nixon]] could go to China," and later when he claims to be a descendant of Literature/SherlockHolmes. |
| 392 | *** That Holmes thing is a ShoutOut to long-time fans like Ruth Berman who as far back as '67 were writing scholarly articles comparing the two. |
| 393 | *** That, and Nicholas Meyer being physically incapable making a [[Literature/TheSevenPercentSolution film]] without [[AuthorAppeal working Sherlock Holmes into it]]. |
| 394 | *** Why couldn't Spock be a descendant of Holmes? He's half human. |
| 395 | *** It's implied in [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration future series]] that Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character in-universe, which would make it a bit difficult for Spock to claim any descent from him... |
| 396 | *** If you want to, you could simply say that Amanda and thereby Spock are descended from Doyle. |
| 397 | ** Some {{Fanon}} holds that Chekov is well aware his claims are erroneous, he's just having some fun with his crewmates. Notably, one EU novel has Chekov saying that rollercoasters were invented in Russia (which is true), but no one believes him, despite him insisting that this time he's telling the truth. |
| 398 | ** Pretty sure that he does smirk after one of his "inwented in Russia" claims in "Friday's Child", suggesting that he really is just joking with his crewmates. |
| 399 | ** I've just completed a complete TOS rewatch earlier today, and it turns out that Chekov actually smirks/winks/nudges after doing this on ''several'' occasions. Not all of them, but enough that it is clearly a running joke on the part of the character. For example, in "The Trouble With Tribbles" Chekov only claims that scotch was invented by "a little old lady in Leningrad" after Scotty insults vodka and calls it a weak drink. He is returning a (friendly) insult that somebody else started. So, instead of really claiming credit for many inventions, Chekov is deliberately playing up an old cultural stereotype, sometimes only after somebody else does their own CulturalPosturing, and it has been {{flanderized}} by the fandom as something he does constantly and seriously. |
| 400 | [[/folder]] |
| 401 | |
| 402 | [[folder: Mirror Universe costume change]] |
| 403 | * In 'Mirror, Mirror', when the crew switches places with their alternate selves, why do they end up in their counterparts' clothes? |
| 404 | ** It's possible it was just a mental transfer. |
| 405 | ** Because only their bodies switched dimensions, while their clothes stayed in place. |
| 406 | *** Good thing then that the body dimensions between the alternates were so similar then. Otherwise that opening would have become pretty comedic while attempting to not show nudity. |
| 407 | [[/folder]] |
| 408 | |
| 409 | [[folder: Spock's parentage]] |
| 410 | * How did Kirk not know that his best friend Spock's father was a famous ambassador? Even if Spock never told him due to their estrangement, surely that info would be in Spock's Starfleet record, which Kirk should have seen as Spock's commanding officer. |
| 411 | ** Maybe Kirk didn't realize it was ''that'' Sarek. Maybe Sarek is actually a fairly common name among Vulcans. |
| 412 | ** Kirk had so much on his mind, it didn't occur to him until the very instant he said it. |
| 413 | ** I think at this point, we have to assume that Spock was just ridiculously secretive about his family--and given what we've seen of the family dynamic, it's kind of understandable. Kirk, being a good friend, respected that, and didn't want to pry...until this episode, at least. Lord knows Kirk was blindsided by Spock's [[Film/StarTrekVTheFinalFrontier half-brother]] when he shows up, and I'd be interested to know if Kirk ''ever'' knew about Spock's [[Series/StarTrekDiscovery foster sister]]. Kirk certainly had plenty of his own [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan family baggage]], so you could sort of understand how he might consider a deep-dive into Spock's personnel file to be too big an invasion of his best friend's privacy. [[note]] But I'd bet real money that it's the first thing Bones did after the party at the end of ''Film/StarTrekVTheFinalFrontier''.[[/note]] |
| 414 | * For that matter, why were they not present when their own son returned to his home planet to get married? [in 'Amok Time'] |
| 415 | ** Sarek and Spock's relationship was very rocky and estranged, it's entirely conceivable Sarek came up with some perfectly logical reason not to be there. Alternatively, as a high-profile ambassador, maybe he was legitimately busy on the other side of the Federation. Or maybe close family don't come to Vulcan weddings (we don't see T'Pring's parents, either). |
| 416 | [[/folder]] |
| 417 | |
| 418 | [[folder: Going Back to the Future]] |
| 419 | * After Edith Keeler's death, how did Kirk, Spock and [=McCoy=] get back to the 23nd Century? Did the Guardian of Forever transport them back after the last 30s scene? And if the Guardian could just pull people back, since there's no way they could have made it to the planet it was on in the 1930s, why didn't the Guardian just bring [=McCoy=] back before he changed anything? |
| 420 | ** I'm going into WMG territory here, but maybe the Guardian either marked them somehow or gave them some kind of tracking device (that we were not told about) before they entered the gate. So the Guardian knew where they were, and could pull them back any time, but needed them to find [=McCoy=], who got lost. |
| 421 | ** It seems likely that the Guardian can only pull back someone who is willing and ready to come back, and knows that the Guardian is waiting to bring them back. [=McCoy=] wasn't coherent enough to even understand what the Guardian was before he went through, and so he couldn't be willing to go back until Kirk and Spock met him in the past and told him what was up. |
| 422 | ** In the closing scene, we saw Kirk, Spock, and [=McCoy=] return via the Guardian, followed by Scotty's comment that only a moment had passed for the rest of the landing party. |
| 423 | [[/folder]] |
| 424 | |
| 425 | [[folder:Just use a shuttlecraft!]] |
| 426 | * In the episode "The Enemy Within", the transporter is malfunctioning. And as a result, they can't risk beaming the crew members that are on the planet's surface back up to the Enterprise. Instead of waiting for the transporter to work again, why doesn't Kirk just send a shuttle down to pick them up? Surely, the transporter can't be the only way on or off the ship! |
| 427 | ** Because the writers hadn't thought them up yet. ''The Enemy Within'' was episode 4, the first shuttlecraft appeared in episode 13 ''The Galileo Seven''. To explain it in-universe is tricky, but to not have a single member of the crew suggest using one greatly implies that they hadn't taken delivery of any yet and/or the few that they did have were broken - which when you factor in the devastation wrought in ''Where No Man Has Gone Before'' thanks to the galactic barrier and the strain the ship was under in ''The Corbomite Maneuver'', Scotty probably had to relegate the shuttle repairs far down the list. |
| 428 | ** The model of the ''Enterprise'' had shuttle bay doors on the back from the first pilot, but the shuttle itself hadn't been designed or the props or models built at the time of "The Enemy Within." |
| 429 | *** And just to be clear, those doors ''were'' always intended to be for the shuttlebay, as evidenced by the fact that they are clearly labeled "doors to flight deck" in Matt Jefferies' early [[http://ottens.co.uk/forgottentrek/designing-the-first-enterprise/enterprise-concept-art1/ design sketches]] for the ''Enterprise''. |
| 430 | ** They'd been in a recent battle with Klingons or somebody and the only damage was to the shuttles and shuttle bay doors. |
| 431 | ** [[Film/StarTrekGenerations The shuttlecraft won't arrive until Tuesday.]] |
| 432 | [[/folder]] |
| 433 | |
| 434 | [[folder:And the Children Shall Not Be Phasered?]] |
| 435 | * In "And the Children Shall Lead", once it became blatantly obvious that the Triacus children were the (in)direct cause of ''everything'' happening on Triacus and aboard the ''Enterprise'', why did it never occur to Kirk to simply grab a hand phaser and ''stun the lot of them''? They would not have suffered any permanent harm, it would have given Kirk and his crew back control of the ship, and Bones could've kept them sedated until they could be properly dealt with. Ignoring the fact that you probably couldn't show violence toward children on TV in the 60s, a simple hand phaser set to stun would've avoided everything. |
| 436 | ** Where is your proof that a phaser set to stun is harmless against children? So-called ''non-lethal weaponry'' IS frequently lethal as the taser has proved on multiple occasions. There are a whole mass of factors including body mass and development that need to be considered. What if one of those kids had a heart attack? And its not just the censors that are the problem (the laws really have not changed much when it comes to adult on child violence) its the whole image of Kirk as a hero - and heroes do not shoot children. |
| 437 | *** It may not have been heroic, but it would have absolutely been justified. Using lethal force to prevent a heavily-armed warship with the confirmed potential to devastate an entire planet from falling into unknown hands isn't something that any government is going to have a problem with; so stunning children into unconsciousness is, despite the risks, an entirely acceptable option. In fact, not attempting to do so at some point would probably be considered negligence on a commanding officer's part. We know that Starfleet agrees, by the way, because it equips its ships--even its ships with children aboard--with auto-destruct systems. To prevent the ''Enterprise''-D from falling into enemy hands, for example, Starfleet expressly, ''canonically'' gives Picard and Riker the authority to kill every member of its crew--including the children. It wouldn't have been pleasant or heroic, and Kirk might not have felt particularly good about it, but stunning the children, even with the risk of causing them long-term harm or death, warranted serious consideration under the circumstances. |
| 438 | *** This seems like a clear case of ForgotAboutHisPowers, but Starfleet and Kirk aren't the type to just start blasting even with non-lethal weapons when they have no little information about the situation. For all they know, whatever supernatural force is controlling the children will simply change hosts to someone more powerful if its current body is comprimised. It might even kill the children itself on its way out just out of spite, which would hardly be out of character for many of the other supernatural beings the Enterprise has encountered. |
| 439 | *** The kids were controlling or controlled by an outright RealityWarper. No guarantee a phaser on ''overload'' would do anything, much less a stun setting. |
| 440 | *** Okay, but there's almost never any guarantee ''anything'' will work. Ever. Not just when dealing with a RealityWarper, but in almost any everyday situation you can imagine. If Kirk refused to do everything that might not work against a reality warper, he would have ended up doing nothing. |
| 441 | *** Perhaps a sense of violence begetting violence? If Kirk used a weapon, then the entity could possibly decide to simply nuke the crew |
| 442 | [[/folder]] |
| 443 | |
| 444 | [[folder:Suddenly Security Conscious]] |
| 445 | * Starfleet's lax security is so legendary throughout the franchise that when good ideas come along they stick out like a sore thumb. Notably why, with all the dangers involved, is there exactly one episode where they use a passcode prior to beaming someone up? |
| 446 | ** On a related note why is something as useful as the subcutaneous transponder only used once when you consider how many times communicators were confiscated or destroyed? |
| 447 | ** Perhaps because the majorities of the good ideas are not stuff that is standard procedure but only done when necessary and the Enterprise is usually caught off guard by the problem of the week. |
| 448 | [[/folder]] |
| 449 | |
| 450 | [[folder:Intrepidation]] |
| 451 | * Here's a minor thing I always wonder about. In "The Immunity Syndrome," we learn of a destroyed Starfleet ship called the U.S.S. ''Intrepid,'' which has an all Vulcan crew. An all Vulcan crew, and yet it shares the name of several U.S. navy ships. I suppose it's better than giving it an egregiously Earth-centric named like ''Yorktown,'' but why doesn't it have a Vulcan name like the 24th century Vulcan-crewed Starfleet vessel ''T'Kumbra'' (or, implicitly ''[=ShiKahr=]'')? Perhaps it wasn't commissioned for that explicit purpose and no one thought it necessary (or logical) to rename it, but it broadly speaks to a humanocentric bias inherent in Starfleet. |
| 452 | ** Yeah, the idea that the Intrepid is just some random ship that happens to have an all-Vulcan crew is far more likely than a ship implicitly designed for the purpose. In my opinion, the AlternateCharacterInterpretation of the Federation being a communist humans-only dystopia is still the best answer for the obvious human bias. |
| 453 | *** How is the "communist" part salient to this point? |
| 454 | *** If whoever wrote this thinks that the Federation is like North Korea, Mao's China or Soviet Russia than it is ''salient.'' |
| 455 | *** That's not an answer. That's an evasion. |
| 456 | *** If one finds rigid racial hierarchies in the Federation, that would seem to point towards fascism and not communism. In communism, racial difference is hypothetically treated as working to keep the working class competing with itself instead of recognizing their real enemy. |
| 457 | ** When you watch the episode in some of the many dubs, you see that the name was change (i.e. to ''Intrépido'' in the Spanish dub) which hasn't the same connotation for other cultures unaware of U.S. navy ships naming which we are mostly oblivious unless you’re into military history. Thus, is possible that "Intrepid" was the translation of whatever was the Vulcan word. The real headscratcher considering Vulcan culture is why a Vulcan ship is going to be call "Intrepid" and not "Cautious". |
| 458 | *** Who says the "Intrepid" is named for the US Navy vessel? The Royal Navy has had eight of them, the first being captured from the French in 1747. |
| 459 | *** The same question applies, no? |
| 460 | ** Perhaps because only Vulcans who are intrepid by nature, and not cautious, are onboard? In the same way that we have historically considered prudence or frugality virtues but not named ships after them, perhaps Vulcan names its ships after the slightly more proactive virtues like curiosity and bravery. |
| 461 | |
| 462 | [[/folder]] |
| 463 | |
| 464 | [[folder:Food Cubes]] |
| 465 | * What actually are those plates of colored cubes that they eat? They look like melon but I doubt that is what they are meant to be. |
| 466 | ** After an exhaustive search of the Star Trek wiki, it can be revealed that those colored cubes are known as. . .[[http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Unnamed_food_(23rd_century)#Colored_blocks "colored blocks."]] Apparently, the closest we get to a description of what they actually ''are'' appears as a stage direction in the script for ''Journey to Babel:'' "A table in the f.g. holds exotic drinks, des hers d'oeuvre fineberg. [sic]" [[note]]''Hors d'oeuvre Feinberg'' meaning "You'll think of something, [[http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Irving_A._Feinberg Irving]]."[[/note]]But the kind of food the cubes were actually intended to be seems to be a secret known only to the Desilu props department. If I had to guess, though, I'd say they're probably a salad made of some kind of exotic fruit. |
| 467 | ** That's certainly what they were when I ate them at the Standard Club in Chicago back in the '80s. I don't know why they had them, as this was an apartment hotel for independent seniors at the time, but there they were. Mostly I detected melon, pineapple, kiwi and papaya. |
| 468 | [[/folder]] |
| 469 | |
| 470 | [[folder:We Can't Save a Valuable Ambassador!]] |
| 471 | * In "Journey to Babel", Ambassador Sarek (aka Spock's father) is on his way to the Babel conference when he has a severe heart attack, and the operation to save his life requires a transfusion from Spock. However, when Kirk is injured in an attack, Spock refuses to relinquish command for the surgery, saying that he can't ignore his Starfleet responsibilities for a personal matter. Whether he's right or not is debatable, but here's the thing: whatever his personal connection to Spock, Sarek ''is'' an important ambassador for TheFederation, as his presence is needed at the conference. If Spock won't save his father simply for his own sake, can't he still do so on behalf of the Federation? |
| 472 | ** ''Enterprise'' was being harassed by an unknown hostile vessel, they had a assassin aboard, and Captain Kirk was wounded: this was a bona fide emergency. Spock made the right decision; his place really was on the bridge. You've got to remember that a ship is exponentially more handicapped with each link that is removed from its chain of command. With Kirk out of commission, Spock had to take his place, which meant that ''Enterprise'' was deprived of not only its most experienced and talented officer in the command chair, but also of her best science/intelligence officer manning the sensors. If Scotty had to take Spock's place, ''Enterprise'' would then no longer have Starfleet's best engineer keeping the ship together if they found themselves in a firefight. Spock needs to focus on keeping the ship, its crew, and the ''entire diplomatic party'' alive. Also remember that if there's a battle, then there are going to be wounded, and then the entire medical situation changes. Treating Sarek is ''not'' going to be the top priority in a triage situation. Sarak was stable, so medical teams would focus on people who couldn't wait. If that unknown ship attacked in earnest, then there was a good chance the surgery wouldn't happen regardless of Spock's decision. |
| 473 | [[/folder]] |
| 474 | |
| 475 | [[folder: Starfields on the bridge]] |
| 476 | * On the bridge above the workstations around the walls there are squares displaying starfields. I always assumed they were computer screens/monitors but recently while rewatching the series it got me wondering if they were supposed to be windows and the reason they never changed was a budget one and/or because it was too difficult a special effect to pull off. Similarly, in some early episodes in the transporter room, on the wall opposite the door next to the console is a large painting of a star field and it got me wondering if that was supposed to be a painting or if it was actually meant to be a window. |
| 477 | ** I'm certain that they're meant to be monitors, the images are just too diverse to be anything else. |
| 478 | ** Yes, they were supposed to be monitors. When the bridge set was built, they had planned to have the images displayed on them periodically change the background. What they didn't realize at the time was that union rules—as well as the limitations of the special effects of that era—would have required them to hire a team of specialized projectionists to make it happen. That would've eaten up a big chunk of the budget for a minor background detail, so we ended up with just those static images. |
| 479 | [[/folder]] |
| 480 | |
| 481 | [[folder:Spectre of the Gun]] |
| 482 | * It's clear from the outset that the gang are not really in Tombstone and that this is all the Melkotians' put-up job. So why does Spock say "History CANNOT BE CHANGED" as if he thought they were really back in time? |
| 483 | ** Spock more than likely meant that the Melkotians were intentionally driving things along the lines of the historical record, so even though the town and its people are quite patently fake, they're manipulating events to make sure they get shot at the Corral. |
| 484 | [[/folder]] |
| 485 | |
| 486 | [[folder:Punch Him to Death]] |
| 487 | * In "Where No Man Has Gone Before", Dehner manages to temporarily cancel out Mitchell's powers. She warns Kirk it won't last for long, so he...starts punching Mitchell. Granted, if you punch someone hard enough in the right places, you can kill them, but Kirk clearly isn't doing that. He just goes for the nose-bloodying slugfest before ''finally'' grabbing the rifle that was lying there the whole time, and it's almost too late. Why not go for the rifle immediately? |
| 488 | ** Watsonian: Kirk was still hoping that maybe he could subdue and save his friend's life. Doyalist: the network insisted this second pilot episode end with [[GoodOldFisticuffs a good old bareknuckle fistfight.]] |
| 489 | [[/folder]] |
| 490 | |
| 491 | [[folder:What about the night shift?]] |
| 492 | * Who pilots the ''Enterprise'' when Kirk is asleep? No one can pull continuous 24-hour shifts, so somebody else must be in the captain's chair for at least a few hours. If a computer could do it, then why have a captain and bridge crew at all? Someone needs to write a fanfic about this. |
| 493 | ** In Voyager, I remember Harry mentioning he got the Night Shift at one point to a bunch of ensigns under his command, so I presume there is rotation at various points. It's just being handled by offscreen [=NPCs=]. In an emergency, they probably rouse the proper command staff. |
| 494 | ** Kirk is sometimes seen relieving another officer (usually Spock--who sleeps on a different schedule than humans anyway--or Sulu, sometimes a random unnamed goldshirt officer) when he enters the bridge. |
| 495 | ** There's presumably a night crew--on TNG, Data usually ran the bridge at "night" (since he was an android and didn't need to sleep) with a different set of officers than the usual cast of the show. We explicitly see him end one shift and then later begin another as the bookends to a {{Spotlight}} episode. When he takes over at the end of the episode he relieves Worf. So it appears most of the senior staff are in command at some point while Picard & Riker are off doing something else. Crusher also mentions taking the "night" command shift on occasion because she liked running the ship and wanted to keep the command skills she picked up at the Academy and throughout her career sharp. |
| 496 | ** There are also a few scenes of Sisko or Kira relieving "night" shift personnel from Ops on [=DS9=], so it was probably the same on [=TOS=]. |
| 497 | ** Allow ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' to explain what happens during TNG's night shift: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4ApQrbhQp8 |
| 498 | ** IRL, naval ships (military and civilian) have multiple duty shifts, or "watches," that rotate control and monitoring of the various major ship areas (bridge, lookouts, engineering spaces, etc.) on a continuous basis. Kirk's not always going to be on the bridge, as his duties as Captain have him doing various administrative duties that require the use of his ready room and such. There will always be a line officer maintaining the conn (apparently Spock, Sulu, and Scotty all have conn qualifications, despite Sulu being the only command division officer amongst the three of them) who'll call Kirk up the moment things get weird enough to require his presence. Since the Captain needs to be available whenever necessary, he'll just have to tough it out if a NegativeSpaceWedgie strikes after he's only been asleep for two hours; otherwise, he does not need to hold a fixed watch schedule like the rest of the crew does. |
| 499 | [[/folder]] |
| 500 | |
| 501 | [[folder:24 hour Sick Bay]] |
| 502 | * On the same note, who runs Sick Bay during the "night" shift? Do they have another doctor, or is Bones on call all the time? Maybe that's why he's grumpy so often... |
| 503 | ** Well, what do naval ship/submarine crews do? ''Enterprise'' '''should''' have a full night-shift complement. |
| 504 | ** There's a reason the title is ''Chief'' Medical Officer: [=McCoy=] and Crusher, too) have staff. On TOS, we see [[http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/M%27Benga Dr. M'Benga]] a couple of times and on TNG, we see [[http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Selar Dr. Selar]] a couple of times. |
| 505 | ** Also, Chapel or any other nurse that might be on board is probably perfectly capable of running sickbay under normal conditions; calling in [=McCoy=] or M'Benga only for issues that fall outside of her scope of practice. |
| 506 | [[/folder]] |
| 507 | |
| 508 | [[folder:Dagger of the Mind]] |
| 509 | * With regard to "Dagger of the Mind": why would a penal colony have a shield that prevents Starfleet from beaming someone down? Granted, the shield would be useful to keep ships from beaming prisoners out, but it seems like the ''Enterprise'' should have some sort of override (in case the prisoners took over the colony and were holding the administrators hostage, for example). |
| 510 | ** Which actually happened in "Whom Gods Destroy," making the lack of override an even more glaring problem. |
| 511 | ** How do we know such an override system is possible, and it's not just all-or-nothing? |
| 512 | *** Because Kirk was able to override the ''Reliant'''s shields to attack Khan in ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan''. That could have been a subsequent technological advance, however, made in response to the previous two incidents. |
| 513 | [[/folder]] |
| 514 | |
| 515 | [[folder:Time zones in space]] |
| 516 | * Pretty much all the series make mention of a "night shift", which is always crewed by the junior officers because it's not seen as important...??? How can you have a "night shift" in space? Even if they just call it that because of tradition, why would it be considered less important? What does the WHOLE galaxy sleep on the same schedule reducing the danger 'at night...in space'? |
| 517 | ** When Muslim astronauts first went to the International Space Station, it was decided that their five prayers a day would correspond to a 24-hour day based on where they launched from.[[note]]Islamic law dictates that people who are travelling are only required to pray three times a day, which further eases the complication.[[/note]] Most likely, Starfleet follows a similar example, so all ships are synced to a 24-hour time period based on the time in San Francisco (Starfleet HQ). When night falls at HQ, all SF ships go to night watch. Each respective fleet in the universe (Klingon, Vulcan, Romulan, etc) probably has their own "day" system based on their own planet. If something important happens on the "night" shift, senior officers get called to the bridge. |
| 518 | ** It is canon that other species/planets use their own schedules--Deep Space Nine runs on the 26-hour Bajoran clock, not the 24-hour Earth one. And while night shift may not be crewed by the highest-ranking bridge officers (like Kirk and Spock), it's not being crewed by a bunch of cadets who don't know what they're doing or anything. To once again use one of the later series as proof, the ''Enterprise''-D is run on night shift by senior officers like Data and Beverly Crusher (though of course Data is a special case since he can work literally all the time as an android). |
| 519 | *** And of course, the captain could be woken up in case of emergency, which is possibly what we see happen in some cases. |
| 520 | [[/folder]] |
| 521 | |
| 522 | [[folder:Tomorrow is Yesterday]] |
| 523 | * The first time-travel episode, "Tomorrow Is Yesterday"[[note]]Not counting "The Naked Time", which has a surprise time-travel ending that was originally meant to lead into this episode in a two-parter[[/note]], is perhaps one giant case of Fridge Logic thanks to its TimeyWimeyBall. When the ship is accidentally trapped in TheSixties and an Air Force pilot films them, they're forced to beam him up and then [[HeKnowsTooMuch steal the footage]] from his base. Once they succeed, it's time to return the pilot, not by simply letting him go, but by going back in time a few hours and using the transporter to re-insert him into his own past body. It would be MentalTimeTravel for him except that his memory is apparently reset to that time, an effect that Spock and Kirk assume will occur even though they have little precedent for either time travel or for beam-overriding a person. It's never explained why the ''Enterprise'' doesn't overwrite (or even encounter) its own past self, why the footage had to be stolen if the whole timeline was rewritten to prevent everything, why nobody's memory is changed unless they are beamed, and what philosophical difference is made by beam-merging/over-writing the pilot with a version of himself that has identical memories, apart from conveniently and non-violently eliminating the character from any complications. Oh, and how does the ship's "chronometer" work anyway? Its existence could imply a non-relativistic universe with "absolute" time (and that the ''Enterprise'''s designers somehow foresaw the possibility of time travel). But then, the warp drive also flouts relativity, so that's actually self-consistent. |
| 524 | ** Time travel has never been internally consistent in Star Trek. In this episode it seems, there is ''just one'' of anything, no matter where in time you are. You have one body, one brain, one copy. It makes no sense but there you go. As for the chronometer, with ''Star Trek Enterprise'' and the temporal cold war hindsight, it actually wouldn't suprise me if someone did in fact foresee that this may be a handy tool to have some day. |
| 525 | [[/folder]] |
| 526 | |
| 527 | [[folder:Commodore Stocker]] |
| 528 | * In "The Deadly Years," with Kirk, Spock, and Scotty incapacitated by the radiation aging, Commodore Stocker assumes command--despite, as Spock points out, the fact that Stocker has never commanded a starship. So how the hell did he get promoted to commodore? And on that same note, he claims that he'd be better than "a junior officer with far less experience." How can he say that if he ''has'' no experience? And isn't Sulu experienced enough? After all, he's taken command previously. Someone should've brought this up--or thrown Stocker's own words back at him after the battle where he froze up and couldn't do anything useful. |
| 529 | ** Stocker was promoted to commodore of a starbase, implying a career of rising through rear-echelon administrative positions. His claims were just a haughty way of saying "I have seniority and I outrank you, so I'm in command here". Of course, given that Stocker is not just inexperienced but ''jaw-droppingly incompetent'' (a first-year cadet would've known that taking a shortcut through ''the Romulan Neutral Zone'' was a dumb idea), Starfleet clearly has some personnel policies to review... |
| 530 | ** Okay, but once it became clear that Stocker had no friggin' idea what he was doing, why didn't Sulu or Uhura throw him off the bridge and take charge? |
| 531 | ** Because it's really hard to (legally) take command from a superior officer who doesn't want to give it to you, especially one of flag rank (above Captain). Starfleet officers are expected to be sensible enough to know when they're unfit for command and remove themselves--see, for example, the scene where Spock resigns command after Kirk proves that he's emotionally compromised in [[Film/StarTrek2009 the 2009 film]]. No one has to charge him with anything; he shows himself off the bridge. Stocker, arrogant bastard that he is, ''isn't'' that sensible. |
| 532 | [[/folder]] |
| 533 | |
| 534 | [[folder:Spock's Brain]] |
| 535 | * [[Blog/MarkDoesStuff Mark Oshiro's]] review of the episode just degenerated into a list of this. All valid questions. |
| 536 | -->'''Mark:''' There are just so many strange things done here! A primitive planet with people of the opposite gender split up... sooooooooooooo. How did these people procreate? Ever? Why haven’t they died out? Is there some weird sex shit going on here? Is that the pain and pleasure thing the Morgs referenced to? No, let’s not think of that for now. How did a primitive culture develop futuristic and sexy outfits like the ones the women who lived underground were wearing??? Where did the Great Teacher come from? Did the Ancients who created this civilization do so and then just leave everyone behind? If that thing only lasts temporarily, why aren’t more people using it to help out the society as a whole? [...] What did they plan to do with Spock’s brain in the long haul? If it was running necessary life components on the planet, who was doing that before? Because it seems like the Morgs and the Eymorgs were getting on fairly okay without things like HEATING or AIR CONDITION. What were they eating? Where is the water supposed to be pumped? Do the Morgs just not take showers? Who is going to build all the facilities that the Controller will control? ''Why didn’t anyone think of any of these things?'' |
| 537 | ** Well to suggest answers to these questions... |
| 538 | *** ''Is there some weird sex shit going on here?''. According to Spock the UndergroundCity was originally [[WomenAreDelicate created for the women]] while the men remained on the surface. A social schism occurred (likely because the women were living in luxury while the men were freezing their balls off) with the Eymorg becoming a LadyLand that decided it was in their interest to keep the men subservient. |
| 539 | *** ''How do they procreate?'' The Eymorg abduct the Morg, have sex with them, then return the male children to the surface while raising the females for their own society. They provide the Morgs with food and basic tools so they stay strong, yet primitive and dependent on the Eymorg. |
| 540 | *** ''Is that the pain and pleasure thing the Morgs referenced to?'' The pain refers to the pain-belts the men are forced to wear to ensure their compliance, while the pleasure is sex (see above). |
| 541 | *** ''How did a primitive culture develop futuristic and sexy outfits like the ones the women who lived underground were wearing??? Where did the Great Teacher come from? Did the Ancients who created this civilization do so and then just leave everyone behind?'' The Ancients didn't 'go' anywhere; they degenerated into the Eymorg. An ice age forced them to build an automated UndergroundCity run by the [[WetwareCPU Controller]] that provided all their needs including heat, light, food and sexy clothing. Unfortunately their [[StupidFuturePeople intelligence has atrophied]] after tens of thousands of years in a LotusEaterMachine where all their needs are catered for. It's not explained why the Ancients didn't use their ion drive spacecraft to go to another planet instead, but as the other Class M planets in the system are inhabited perhaps most of them settled there, and those societies also reverted to barbarism due to warfare or environmental cataclysm. |
| 542 | *** ''If [the Teacher] only lasts temporarily, why aren’t more people using it to help out the society as a whole?'' Because Eymorg society is inherently stable and thus has no incentive to change. The original Controller [[KeeperOfForbiddenKnowledge likely encouraged this]] so the Eymorg would have a [[AveMachina vested interest in maintaining the Controller]]. The priestess-leader only uses the Teacher because the Controller was dying and radical action was needed to preserve this way of life. |
| 543 | *** ''If [Spock's Brain] was running necessary life components on the planet, who was doing that before?'' The previous Controller, presumably one of the original Builders of the underground city. This is based on an [[http://technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=2236 old science fiction idea]] that a BrainInAJar would have an indefinite lifespan, in this case ten thousand years. |
| 544 | *** ''What were they eating?'' (SoylentSoy, [[HumanResources Soylent Green]], hydroponically-grown fruit -- take your pick) ''Where is the water supposed to be pumped?'' (Waste heat from the city is funnelled to the surface where it melts ice; the resulting water is pumped down to the city, then filtered and distributed for reactor-cooling and drinking). ''Do the Morgs just not take showers?'' Well I guess they don't until the Eymorg kidnap them. Then the women would insist that they do before BoldlyComing. |
| 545 | * Bones uses The Teacher to get the smarts necessary to reinstall Spock's brain. Unfortunately, it wears off before he's finished, and using it again will kill him. So why didn't they bring down Nurse Chapel or Doctor M'Benga to take over, and have either one already standing by with The Teacher as soon as Bones started faltering? |
| 546 | ** For that matter, they could have just had Scotty use the Teacher -- granted, he's not a doctor, but neither is Kara and that didn't prevent her from using the Teacher to learn how to remove an intact brain and install it into the Controller interface. |
| 547 | * They could have used the transporter beam, but that wouldn't be as dramatic. |
| 548 | * Here's an even bigger one: The episode specifies this episode takes place in the Sigma Draconis star system, which is 18.8 lightyears away. Why didn't Archer's crew visit and report on the energy readings from the ice age planet, why didn't the space-faring civilisation visit the ice age planet, why didn't the Federation have relations with the space-faring planet, etc.? |
| 549 | ** Sigma Draconis very likely was visited in the past, all the info the ''Enterprise'' had on the planets was taken from the library. Planet VI may not have been significantly emitting energy previously, and Planet IV was explicitly described as being at the equivalent of Earth in 2030, i.e. pre-warp (and subject the Prime Directive protections) and just on the cusp of intra-system travel. |
| 550 | [[/folder]] |
| 551 | |
| 552 | [[folder:Just get rid of the chairs]] |
| 553 | * In "The Galileo Seven" Spock's logical approach to the ColdEquation (the shuttle's load must be lightened by "the weight of three grown men") is a major source of conflict, but why not just throw out the chairs? It's not like they're required for safety - when the shuttle crashed, the first thing everyone did was fall off them. |
| 554 | ** Lack of tools and facilities, and the chairs are quite light. |
| 555 | [[/folder]] |
| 556 | |
| 557 | [[folder:Kirk Has Space Syphillis?]] |
| 558 | * In an episode of ''[[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries TOS]]'', citizens of a beyond-Malthusian overpopulated planet kidnap Kirk and get him to pass some dangerous STI along to one of their women to thin out their population. Now how many {{Green Skinned Space Babe}}s has the good captain mentioned this to? None! |
| 559 | ** Possibly he got cured of the disease aboard the Enterprise after the events of the episode? Star Trek medical technology can cure nearly anything that doesn't leave you dead or crippled. |
| 560 | ** It was implied the disease got transmitted through the wound on Kirk's arm which he didn't remember how he got (he was probably injured by his kidnappers). He was previously treated and was only a carrier; Odona received the same treatment at the end of the episode, so they could have their fatal disease and she could live. |
| 561 | ** It also wasn't an STI. It was a type of meningitis. He needn't tell any space babes, green or otherwise. |
| 562 | [[/folder]] |
| 563 | |
| 564 | |
| 565 | [[folder:Brainwashing Fixes Everything]] |
| 566 | * The plot of the [=TOS=] episode "Dagger of the Mind" makes no sense at all. Why was Dr. Adams established as someone who had revolutionized mental health care only to be revealed as a MadScientist? What was his motivation for [[{{Brainwashed}} Brainwashing]] everyone in the penal colony? And why in heaven's name did he think he could get away with ''doing it to a starship captain''? What was his plan? That the ''Enterprise'' crew would get bored waiting for Kirk and just go away? That sounds like a really dumb plan. |
| 567 | ** At one point, Adams ''was'' a well-regarded and benevolent researcher. He just [[JustThinkOfThePotential got too enamored of his new invention's potential]], started [[PlayingWithSyringes using it far beyond ethical limits]], became just as mad as his charges, and [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope jumped off the slippery slope]]. He likely originally intended to brainwash Kirk into reporting nothing unusual, and when it didn't work, just monomaniacally kept trying. |
| 568 | *** My memory is hazy, but are we conflating two characters? I thought the inventor was the one who went mad because his assistant used the mind erasure machine to get him out of the way. |
| 569 | *** Another possibility is that Adams had [[ProfessorGuineaPig undergone experimental treatment with the device]] previously, with results less extreme that the catatonic state he ended up in (from accidental exposure while completely alone) but still enough to warp his judgment and ethics. |
| 570 | * Here's how I understood the events surrounding that ep. Dr. Adams and his assistant both developed the tech together. They started testing it on patients, and it seemed to work. As they used it, Adams became more and more... unhinged at the power he had over the patients. The assistant, Dr. Van Gelder, wanted to report this to Starfleet, but Adams found out and had him brainwashed to stop people from finding it out, using the excuse of an accident. Then, enter Enterprise, who beams up the records, and Van Gelder. The ep plays out as we see and that's that. Why he became unhinged, I don't know. Could be the ol' absolute power stuff. |
| 571 | [[/folder]] |
| 572 | |
| 573 | [[folder:Turbolifts]] |
| 574 | * How do the turbolifts work? We regularly see Kirk enter one and tell it to take him to "Deck Six" (or whatever.) But Deck Six extends the full width of the saucer section, which would mean Kirk having to walk a long way to get to the lift station - unless there are many stations in various places around the deck. Non-canon blueprints show that this is indeed the case. But if there ''are'' many stations, how does the lift know which one to take him to so that he's near the place he wants to go? |
| 575 | ** For this era, at least, the handles may include some degree of lateral control of the lift. |
| 576 | ** This seems to be exactly what the handle does as if you look at the flashing lights through the window they are clearly going both horizontally and vertically at various times. It could also in theory be some kind of safety mechanism whereby if you remove your hand for long enough then it comes to a halt. ''Turbo'' implies that its faster than any contemporary lift would be going after all, maybe the 1960s special effects were not adequately giving us a sense of speed and every show after this just rolled with it being slower than intended. Speaking of turbolifts, its actually rather interesting that they didn't call it a ''turboelevator'' given how American-English now seems to have overtaken all over languages in the Federation. |
| 577 | *** By the 23rd century the United States has seen sense and started using a word with one syllable rather than four. |
| 578 | [[/folder]] |
| 579 | |
| 580 | [[folder:The original hole in the lower forward hull of the Klingon D7]] |
| 581 | * It was most probably designed to be some sort of weapons' port but we never see it used in TOS. The only time we see the Klingon battlecruiser firing onscreen (aside from ''Errand of Mercy's'' remastering) is in ''Elaan of Troyius'' which establishes the iconic green colored disruptor bolts firing from the wing nacelles. Why would they have the disruptor bolt effects coming from the warp nacelles (which didn't look like they had room for a weapons fixture) instead of the forward hull opening as it seems like the ship was designed with just that in mind. Keeping in mind that this was years before the movie era established these as photon torpedo tubes ''and'' that the Klingons also had photon torpedoes. |
| 582 | ** It might have also been intended to be a counterpart to ''Enterprise's'' deflector dish. It takes up a similar central, forward position on the hull. And considering the lack of any obvious weapon emplacements on the ''Enterprise'' model until the movie-era, it doesn't seem that the production staff felt any need to show us those details when it came to ship designs. |
| 583 | [[/folder]] |
| 584 | |
| 585 | [[folder: The strange choices made in All Our Yesterday's]] |
| 586 | * Putting aside all of the inevitable paradoxes with sending your whole civilization back through time, it is clear that everyone besides criminals like Zarabeth got a choice as to where they went. OK... so why would anyone choose to go back to the days of witch burnings? One could even say that staying on your doomed planet in the present would be preferable to living back then. Look at the fear in the eyes of that guy who helps Kirk escape back to the library; he knows that he is in store for an horrific death if caught and yet he chose to live there anyway. Did these people just not do any research on how dangerous, violent, dirty and unequal most of history actually was before they committed to their one-way journey? And then that leads into other questions for me: where did the women choose to go? From what we see this is another TOS world where history is basically a copy of our own, so did modern women in a civilization so advanced that they can command time itself willingly choose to go back to the days of corsets and being chained barefoot and pregnant to the house? Again, death seems preferable. |
| 587 | ** Ever seen the more romantic Jane Austen fangroups? Some people just will not be dissuaded from their vision of the past, no matter how short, brutish, and nasty lives were in those days even when they are given a three hour lecture on it. One need look no further than the amount of people who romanticize the times of the Pilgrims and colonial-revolutionary days even in modern America. Some people will just not be told, and need to make their mistakes. And there will always be people who do understand the hypothetical risks, but are still more than motivated by fear of death to roll the dice no matter what. |
| 588 | [[/folder]] |
| 589 | |
| 590 | [[folder:The Ultimate Assumption]] |
| 591 | * In episode "The Ultimate Computer" once the computer goes crackpot and starts shooting for real at the other ships, killing crewmembers of those ships, the Admiral assumes Kirk went rogue and is doing it himself, not the computer. Why would and Admiral assume that a condecorated captain with decades of service and not the experimental computer in his ship was doing that? Even more, even if he jumps to the conclusion that is Kirk doing it, he also has to assume that the entire bridge from Spock to the ensigns is in it with him (considering that it has been shown that a captain considered mentally unstable can be disobeyed and taken out of command by his subordinates). What is more plausible, that an entire crew of trustworthy officers with many years of service went mad or that the computer they are actually testing is malfunctioning? |
| 592 | ** He probably took the same angle the episode was trying to hammer in -how Kirk was feeling threatened by a machine doing his job. The M-5 was supposed to be pretty much infallible, it had proved itself just a while back with its flawless execution on the first war games drill, and the Admiral was probably well aware of the existence of the shut-down button on the captain's chair. Therefore, even if the M-5 did malfunction and used full-power ammunition, Kirk was supposed to be ultimately in charge of the ship, taking over if necessary. No one could have suspected the lengths the M-5 would go to protect itself, taking control of the Enterprise and outsmarting its crew. Therefore, the Admiral must have thought that either Kirk was negligent of his supervision of a faulty AI at best, or had gone rogue and actively attacking the Federation for daring to supplant him with a computer at worst. |
| 593 | ** Further evidence to support this: in "The Menagerie Pt. 1" Spock hijacks the Enterprise and sends it to Talos IV without Kirk's involvement or knowledge, but still the Commodore on board would have ''Kirk'' (and Spock) sentenced to death as per General Order 7 because "a captain is responsible for everything that occurs in his ship". |
| 594 | ** OP here, I can accept that the Admiral thought Kirk was doing it, the problem is that he then had to also assume the rest of the crew from Spock to the lowest bridge official was also ''into it'', as even if Kirk went rough the rest of the crew is allowed to remove him from chair. He would have to assume that all of the Enterprise crew was into killing their fellow citizens. |
| 595 | * The Admiral seemed to be running the M5 testing project, so he might well have been sort of an M5 kool-aid drinker, not believing that the M5 could have possibly gone this far wrong. His attitude toward Kirk repeatedly suggests he's got some sort of beef with Kirk or grudge against him. Remember, there were only like 20 people left aboard the Enterprise and the officers kept on board were all Kirk's inner circle. The Admiral probably reasoned that Kirk thought the M5 was a threat and so intentionally sabotaged the mission in a spectacular way such that the computer would never be trusted. And it's not exactly rare in Starfleet that some officer and crew goes crazy. Further, the Admiral may have even deliberately set up the test so that Kirk would be deemed unneeded, such as the planetary team. If so, the Admiral may have thought he had inadvertently pushed Kirk over the edge. |
| 596 | [[/folder]] |
| 597 | |
| 598 | [[folder:Death Penalty]] |
| 599 | * In "The Ultimate Computer", Kirk asks the M-5 what's the punishment for murder, and it answers "death". However, it was previously established that the only death penalty warranting offence in the Federation is going to Talos IV, something a computer as advanced as the M-5 must have known. Does that mean there are two different sets of laws, one for people and one for AI? |
| 600 | ** There are different sets of laws for different jurisdictions (another example: according to "I, Mudd", Deneb V has the death penalty for fraud). Given that, the question Kirk asked M-5 is inherently vague, and the answer might actually mean what M-5 (and probably Daystrom on whose mind it was based) believes to be the ''appropriate'' penalty for murder. |
| 601 | [[/folder]] |
| 602 | |
| 603 | [[folder:I shall do neither]] |
| 604 | * Spock's words to T'Pau at the end of "Amok Time" are very concerning. After regaining control of himself and realizing he just had killed Kirk, Spock states that he'll turn himself in at the nearest Starbase. However, it is not clear the authorities will even consider the captain's death a crime, since the whole affair was part of a ritual Kirk agreed to participate in (even if with limited information), and Spock was not in control of himself all along except for the moment he begged T'Pau to forbid Kirk from participating. Furthermore, even if it ''was'' a crime, the penalty would probably be imprisonment, not death, going by the well-established Talos IV tourism disincentive uniqueness. So when T'Pau says "Live long and prosper" and Spock answers "I shall do neither", as in he won't prosper and won't ''live very long'', does that mean he plans on killing himself? |
| 605 | ** Well, Spock can surrender to authorities even if they don't end up convicting him of anything. Surely a first officer killing his captain calls for at least an investigation! Possibly Spock isn't saying he'll be executed or kill himself so much as that he expects to eventually melodramatically die from the grief of his act. |
| 606 | ** Short answer: Spock was being a drama queen. |
| 607 | ** In connection with the above being a drama queen, if we take TNG into account (specifically, Worf's killing of Duras in ritual combat), Starfleet generally takes a dim view of its officers killing people on their own initiative/authority, even if member states or external states don't consider the perpetrator culpable. A full court-martial would have to work out all the details, but between Kirk's decision to disobey orders to divert to Vulcan, and Spock's failure to make appropriate arrangements knowing that his ''pon farr'' is nearly due, culpability is very much up in the air. And as for "live short and lay fallow," so to speak, maybe Spock's emotional trauma was expected to do a number on his longevity, akin to dying of a broken heart, which has some precedent. |
| 608 | [[/folder]] |
| 609 | [[folder: What the hell happened at the end of Is There in Truth No Beauty?]] |
| 610 | * The way this one ended seemed like it left something out. They went from epic battle to "death, or life for both of us" to Spock looking like death warmed over entering sickbay, to Miranda being curiously absent, to her and Kollos about to transport away happily. WTAF? Was there a part that got cut that might make this less abrupt? |
| 611 | ** The editing and dialogue ''do'' make things a bit Gainax-like, but here's a hopefully useful breakdown. |
| 612 | :::Kirk accuses Miranda of using her Vulcan-refined telepathy to induce Spock to fail to put on his visor when un-linking with Kollos; this is motivated, according to him, by her jealousy that Spock is able to connect with Kollos in a way that she wants to but can't. He even goes so far as to accuse her of wanting to physically ''see'' Kollos, that as a role reversal of a human normally driven mad at the sight of a Medusan, she's instead driven to madness to see and experience him despite being blind. She then seeks to mind-meld with Spock in defiance of Kirk's raving (aside from being driven to rage out of fear for Spock, he may intentionally be trying to force Miranda to act where she was previously on-the-fence about it), to help stabilize his mind. They do a two-way active meld; Spock is returned to sanity, and Miranda, having been able to share in the part of Kollos' mind inside Spock, is absolutely blissful in having touched the mind of an entity she loves. |
| 613 | [[/folder]] |
| 614 | |
| 615 | [[folder:Why Did Kirk Lick the Powder?]] |
| 616 | * In the Gorn episode, when Kirk is gathering up some of the white powder he uses to make gunpowder with (combined with sulfur, coal, and diamonds), he at one point licks some off his hand and spits it out. Why? |
| 617 | ** To see what it is. |
| 618 | *** Presumably, it was potassium nitrate. Which actually explains ''why'' Kirk had to taste it to see what it was. Unlike sulfur, potassium nitrate can't be identified by smell. It does, however, have a fairly distinct sharp, salty taste. |
| 619 | [[/folder]] |
| 620 | |
| 621 | [[folder:The Enterprise Incident]] |
| 622 | Kirk and Spock seem to have entirely forgotten that they have already encountered a Romulan ship with a cloaking device. However it is mentioned it was a new cloaking device. |
| 623 | |
| 624 | When Kirk (as a Romulan) "escapes" and beams over to the Romulan flagship he apparently now speaks fluent Romulan. |
| 625 | |
| 626 | [=McCoy=] wasn't in on the plan until he beamed over to the Romulan ship. How did he find out then? There's no way he would have been left unsupervised with either Kirk or Spock. |
| 627 | |
| 628 | Spock seems to know quite a bit about Romulan culture, customs, and even law, given that two season ago they didn't even know what Romulans looked like. Things can be known in those areas without visual contact. And it sounds like spies have been busy in between the episodes. |
| 629 | [[/folder]] |
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/context.php
FollowingContext Headscratchers / StarTrekTheOriginalSeries
Go To
- Show Spoilers
- Night Vision
- Sticky Header
- Wide Load
