Headscratchers / Star Trek S1 E16 "The Galileo Seven"

• This is Spock’s “first command”... but his rank is Commander, and his position is second in command of the Enterprise. How could someone become second command of a premier starship without even leading a mission before? This situation strongly seems to suggest Spock’s rank is honorary instead of earned, perhaps because he’s a token minority. This would tend to explain the shocking level of racist insubordination from the team. I don’t think that was the intention, but it remains a head scratcher. Though, that is kind of T’pol’s situation, isn’t it?
  • You're making an assumption and what "first command" means which I don’t think accurately reflects the context. In context this appears to have been the first time Spock had command of a ship without a more senior officer he was ultimately responsible to. Spock has frequently been left in charge of the entire ship while Kirk is on a planet. He also appeared to be in charge of the landing party at the opening of “The Naked Time” suggesting that the idea that he’d never been in charge of a landing party wasn’t what was meant here. Instead, it appears all that’s meant here is that Spock hasn’t had his own command in the same way that Riker hadn’t had his own command when he was first officer of the Enterprise (he hadn’t had his own ship). So there's no evidence at all that Spock’s rank is any way honorary.
• They are supposed to lighten the shuttlecraft by getting rid of any excess weight in equipment or whatever. What about those chairs? When Meara drops to the floor, could that have been left over from a direction that they did ditch the chairs and were going to sit on the floor for the takeoff? It's been suggested that the chairs were just too light to make all that much difference. Still, this is Spock we're talking about, with all his methodicalness and thoroughness. A quick two-line exchange could have explained it.
  • You really have to wonder what criteria Spock was using to determine what exactly constituted extra weight; because frankly, you could make the same argument about the clothes they were wearing. I know that seems silly, but their clothing—especially their boots—was just extra mass that the shuttle had to lift that wasn't strictly necessary for their survival if the Enterprise happened to spot them in orbit. Their clothes would, however, aid in their survival if they had to land the shuttle back on the planet's surface again. My guess would be that the chairs had a similar purpose: they aren't strictly necessary if they're rescued, but are considered critical safety equipment in the event of a rough landing when they were forced to return to the surface. That argument would probably be a little easier to swallow if they had seat belts...but this is TOS-era Trek, after all.
• The Galileo was out of fuel, and they lifted by draining phaser energy into the shuttlecraft drive system. So, just what is it that Spock dumped and ignited?
  • They sort of explained this. The phaser drain gave the shuttlecraft enough fuel to manage one orbit of the planet. Spock jettisoning that fuel and igniting it lost them even that fuel, and turned a one-orbit flight (~90 minutes) into a suborbital hop, with the trade-off being one highly visible roll of the dice.
• At one point, while Spock and Scotty are repairing the shuttle, McCoy and Mears enter the cabin from the aft compartment to tell Spock something's going on outside. Now, as far as anyone knows, there's no door to the outside from that compartment. How did that work?
  • Possibly a production error, but in this episode, the Galileo had one.