Whatever happened the rocket boots that Spock wore in TFF?

I don't remember any future Trek series or movies using the rocket boots EVER again. Did the writers realize those things were dumb and ignore the whole concept of rocket boots?

 

The rocket boots from Star Trek 5? Didn't they appear as gravity boots in Star Trek 6?

 

They went back to "The Jetsons".

 

There was a Star Trek V? I thought it just skipped from IV to VI. Wait...*recovers repressed memories* damnit!

 

They're in Spock's locker.

 

I think those were simply magnetic boots that stuck to the ground. FC had the same thing.

 

^I think Orac is saying they were the same prop.

 

I wasn't asking if they were the same prop in the first place.

 

All you can do with rocket boots is go straight up. There is not much call for that since it would take you longer to buckle the things on than grab a ladder.

 

Iron Man manages more than "up"

 

Which they aren't, just for the record.

 

That's irrelevant to my post.

 

The rocket boots would have been great in FC, that way Picard, Worf and Lt. Disposible wouldn't have had to clump along the hull, but could have zipped over to the Borg, repeatedly plowing into them at high speed , knocking all of them off the hull before they could adapt to that form of attack.

 

It would have been pretty easy to adapt to. Strengthen magnetic grip on hull, bend like Keanu in Matrix.

 

Rocket boots and rocket gloves reappeared in Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and The Avengers.

 

Nothing particularly dumb about the concept. Star Trek has always had teeny weeny devices that negate gravity, such as the boxes-with-handles we see in TOS. Having the characters wear those is logical. And if they derive propulsion from rocket-like exhaust jets, wearing them in the feet is the obvious choice: a harness with the rockets on the back or the chest would just get the user's limbs roasted, and handheld devices would be tiresome and would reduce the user's ability to use his hands for other things. Standing on a jet flame is the most reasonable thing to do in the circumstances.

However, it should be noted that Spock's ST5:TFF boots only had rockets as an optional extra. They were able to hold Spock and Kirk off the ground in the mountaineering scene, or lift Spock, Kirk and McCoy up the turboshaft, with the gravitics only; the rockets only kicked in when extra thrust was needed. Standard starshipboard gravity boots might forgo the option, but would still be capable of providing controlled flight.

Which is what we do see in the ST:FC spacewalk scene. Jumping across the deflector would be impossible if Picard didn't have propulsion: any thrust vector he could create by kicking off one rim would send him, not to the other rim, but to the depths of space above (that is, camera above, which is towards the bow of the ship). His flightpath is not a straight line, but rather a path involving an upward leg, an assumption of a horizontal orientation, an invisible kick against nothing to generate a properly horizontal vector, and then a horizontal flight unaffected by a burst of gas from below. There's even a slight downward arc in the end to allow him to grab the far rim.

Picard definitely employs some sort of propulsion, then - and since his boots are the only thing we see him manipulating, it's likely to be built in to those. Whether it's just regulated pull toward the starship hull, or more generic thrust in freely chosen directions, it's hard to tell. But mere "pull towards the deflector" would not give that arc, because there'd then also be pull towards other, more massive parts of the ship, such as the saucer to the left of the image...

Timo Saloniemi

 

They are on Deck 75-83, hidden from the rest of the crew. That's why the elevator skips those floors

 

Borg aren't particularly know for their great speed and agility.

 

You do need some sort of gravitational manipulation -- aside from mere rockets -- to explain why Kirk's leg didn't come off when Spock caught him during the mountaineering fall.

 

It was a really bad mistake, even though it passes in mere fractions of a second. Somebody had to tell the set designer to put on deck numbers, and then it would be verified upon completion that it looks correct. Thinking about the number of eyes that looked at those deck numbers WAY outside the dimensions of the ship... it's just uncanny that this slipped through. Even in post production they could have done a little CGI to replace them with numbers that made sense.