When the Kingon ship disables the Enterprise the camera angle is a bit confusing. Was the hit in the impulse engine? the nacelle? some spot in the saucer?
I think it was right over or to the side of the... whatever that is at the aft of the saucer with the blue light.
It would seem Kruge wanted to do his absolute worst this time around, rather than disable; he seemed certain he'd only get one shot, and if that didn't kill Kirk's ship, then Kruge would automatically be dead. So aiming at the engines would make the most sense, I guess. But perhaps the Grissom case actually testifies on the poor accuracy of Kruge's weapons rather than the poor skills of his crew? The subsequent sparkling around the "impulse dome" thing, and the lack of charring anywhere else, sort of suggests that this is indeed where the torp hit: http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tsfshd/tsfshd1051.jpg http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tsfshd/tsfshd1056.jpg We never see the aft topside of the saucer again, so we can pretend there was charring there at the conclusion of all this sparkling... Timo Saloniemi
I know this doesn't answer the question, but one thing that's always bothered me is the amount of damage on the Enterprise's hull isn't consistent with Khan's attacks in ST2. The damage from his volleys is there, but there's way more of it on other areas of the ship that was never hit.
Two main possibilities there: Scotty's impromptu repairs didn't hold and there was damage from the attempt to sail to help the crew of the Reliant (which we don't see aboard Kirk's ship at any point), or they did hold and the ship entered another adventure that involved damage. Both are unsatisfactory in more ways than one. Kirk says they have repaired damage and reassigned people, but why did this happen in deep space when the ship was mobile at the end of the previous movie? Why didn't they first sail home, then repair and reassign? Kirk got to Regula on a joyride he wasn't even supposed to be taking - it can't have been all that far away. The capabilities of the ship don't well match either a scenario of staying still until repaired, or swashbuckling with new adversaries. On the other hand, the fault could be all ST2's. There is damage to the port side of the secondary hull there, as seen in Spock's damage control schematics - but the final scene of setting sail for Ceti Alpha fails to show this damage. OTOH, the starboard side is not seen at the end of the movie, and could have accumulated more damage since last seen (long before the nebula fight); it won't be seen properly again until the ship faces Kruge's BoP, but the "extra" damage is consistently there in earlier ST3 shots as well. Timo Saloniemi
I think there was a comic released around ST3 that explained the extra damage being caused by spars with Klingon ships who were trying to obtain information about Genesis. Oh, and you do see the starboard side when the Enterprise is gliding away from the Reliant right before she blows. Still no damage, though.
Well you did ask about Khan's attack vs STIII. I'm a bit confused, here. There is no visible hull damage on the Enterprise after the klingon hit, but there's some special effect stuff around the impact site, if I remember correctly.
I read somewhere that it was not actually a torpedo that would explode upon impact, but some kind of energy weapon. Hence the massive difference between the unshielded Enterprise being hit in STIII (zappies and minor scorching) and the unshielded Enterprise being hit in STVI (KA-BOOM! through two decks of saucer), as well as the slight differences in the models' firing port and the VFX differences in the weapon bolt itself.
Umm, "Errand of Mercy" depicted the Enterprise hit by "photon torpedo" VFX, after which confusion erupted and our heroes shouted various incomprehensible (and non-scripted) things at each other. Whether any of these related to the nature of the Klingon weapons, it's impossible to tell, really. We saw the diagram on Chekov's console display part of the dots that in the previous movie indicated "shields raised" if all present and "shields down" if all absent. Whether the Enterprise in this movie was unshieded or partially shielded, we can't really tell. Chekov declares the shields "non-responsive" while Joachim said they were "dropping", FWIW. Timo Saloniemi
Kruge's BOP should have shown damage as well from those 2 torpedo hits he took as he was decloaking,if not outright crippled or destroyed. After all his shields would have been down due to the cloak.
We never learned that Klingon ships would have to have their shields down while cloaked. That's really a Romulan thing (extending to the Defiant with her Romulan cloak, and apparently to ships of Romulan sympathizers such as the Duras sisters). That's not to say the shields couldn't have been down. The shields of Kargan's ship in TNG "A Matter of Honor" were definitely down during a cloaked attack, as Riker was able to trick the Klingon into getting beamed off his bridge and to the Enterprise's. But dialogue on what Kruge did with his shields is ambiguous. He did not power up his weapons until after decloaking, but he never mentioned his shields. It would seem he got beamed up to a cloaked vessel a few moments prior, so at that time the shields would have been down. Maltz probably wouldn't have had the guts to raise the shields on his own accord, as such an action might have showed through the leaky cloak. But the brasher Kruge might have risked raising shields - or then risked not raising them. Hard to tell. Timo Saloniemi
Actually in Generations the Duras' old BOP's shields dropped when it cloaked after Data sent that weird pulse thing into it's plasma coils so it looks like they do loose shields when cloaked.
But as I said, that was Romulan sympathizers; ostracized from the Klingon Empire, the Sisters might just as well be relying on Romulan cloaking suppliers. In contrast, we see many a Klingon Klingon vessel survive getting hit while cloaked just fine ("Redemption" is a good example), casting serious doubt on the necessity of dropping shields while under cloak. Timo Saloniemi
In a way this is all moot though, since each time we see one of these ships it could be built to different specs.
Well, they are two completely different situations. Kirk kept shields down until this command to Chekov because he wanted to surprise the Klingons; Khan had shields up and Joachim saw them dropping. I wonder what to make of the displays. They're basically the same graphic (even if ST2 has small bulbs and ST3 has backlit gels), but Khan's shields are indicated by a series of whitish dots, while Chekov's panel flashes with red and green ones. Surely the method of raising shields does not involve them gradually creeping around the ship clockwise, as on Khan's display? But if such a display representation is purely symbolic, then what significance does the exact pattern of dots on Chekov's panel hold? Khan in ST2: http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/twokhd/twokhd0520.jpg Kirk in ST3: http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tsfshd/tsfshd1038.jpg Timo Saloniemi
Perhaps the dots indicate specific shield emitters, and in TSFS some of the emitters work (the green ones), others return an error status of some sort (the red ones) while the rest simply don't respond at all.