TMP wormhole scene--how it should've ended.

Ok, so here we have the USS Enterprise making an ill-advised warp jump, and now, because of engine imbalance, the ship cannot fire its phasers.

It plays out well enough for dramatic purposes that Decker countermands Kirk's order to fire phasers at the looming asteroid, and then explains his actions later.

But, what if the scene were played out like this?


Kirk: Mr. Chekov, stand by on phasers!
Decker: (wild eyed) No! Belay that phaser order!
(Kirk is stunned by Decker's bold second guessing of his order.)

Ok, the scene plays out to its conclusion, and Kirk says he'd like to speak to Decker in his quarters.

Cut to Kirk's quarters:

Kirk: Alright, explanation! Why was my phaser order countermanded?!
Decker: Permission to speak freely ,sir?
Kirk: Granted.
Decker: For starters, the Enterprise redesign increases phaser power by channeling it through the main engines. When they went into anti-matter imbalance, the phasers were automatically cut off.
Kirk: Then you acted--
Decker: I'm not finished, sir.
(Kirk looks at Decker with an "I will only indulge so far" expression)
Decker: Even if the engines were not the problem, we were still traveling at faster than light speed. The phasers would have blown up the bow, and then the asteroid would've finished us off, you idiot!

 

A little better.

 

I'm more inclined to asking just exactly what happened in the wormhole.

They said an asteroid got pulled into the wormhole with them. Scotty said the engine imbalance created the wormhole...but how did destroying the asteroid (I mean as-ter-r-o-oid ) collapse the wormhole? Maybe that wasn't the intended meaning, but it sure looked that way to me.

Were the imbalance and the asteroid separate problems, or two parts of the same problem?

 

Two separate issues, to be clearer they should have flown down the wormhole a couple seconds more after destroying the asteroid.

 

Yes, that would definitely have helped. When the wormhole began, everyone was in a panic about it. Right after that, the asteroid seemed to take center stage. I remember when I first saw this movie (at a drive-in! ), this part confused me a bit. I wasn't one-hundred percent sure what was going on, and coming after the transporter malfunction (and that horrifying scream ), it seemed like good ol' Enterprise was now a place to be avoided if you valued your safety!

 

Yeah, the engine imbalance causes the wormhole, but it plays like the asteroid is somehow caught in the "warp field" which I don't think had been technobabbled into existence as jargon yet.

 

With everything else going on, maybe they could have dumped the asteroid bit altogether?

 

Yes, and to add to the technobabble, inside the warp field, the ship is like a passenger sitting inside a train car. Inside the car (warp field) movement is relative, so if the phasers were operative, they could've been fired and it would've led to the same result as firing the photo torpedoes had. The asteroid is destroyed, and the unstable warp field collapses from the blast, instantaneously returning them to normal space. Since the warp field was unstable, you can take some liberties with its behavior and the behavior of things in it.

At least that explanation works for me.

 

Let's not forget that phasers being the "slower than light" weapons was a TNG-era retcon - there are plenty of instances in the original series of firing phasers at warp or at targets at warp.

 

I think the scene is fine enough as it is, one of the better parts of the film. Although it's odd that this is the only time we see this phenomenon presented as a possible issue.

 

As for the Enterprise exiting the wormhole after destroying the asteroid, maybe the intent was that the Photon Torpedo either destabilised the wormhole or simply knocked the Enterprise back into normal space?

 

That could be, starburst. I had just come to assume over the years that when the ship had created the wormhole, the asteroid had thrown the formula off-balance. The ship has a fixed mass, and the asteroid added to this, sort of as if you were to stand on a scale while holding, say, a bowling ball.

Maybe the faulty warp effect somehow sucked the asteroid in? Spock came aboard to help with the "engine design difficulties" after that, though I don't know how he knew of this problem. Maybe he witnessed it on the sensors of his shuttle en route.

 

Maybe it's all Spock's fault, just like the destruction of Romulus.

 

Ilia states that a small object was pulled into the wormhole, so I suppose it was sucked in from the other end (maybe some sort of trans-Kupier object).

And Spock says that he was monitoring Enterprise's communications with Star Fleet, which is how he knew of their difficulties (although, you'd think that stuff would be encrypted).

 

That was corrected in the Director's Edition. It was always planned, but they ran out of time to finish the effects.

 

That's interesting to know, as I've yet to see that. I'm probably the most behind-the-times fan there is!

 

Why would a photon torpedo move faster than the ship but a phaser not?

But, I always wondered why going to warp "inside the solar system" was a bad thing. I can accept that the engines needed Spock to sing to them or whatever special thing he could do that Scotty couldn't, but what does that have to with being inside a solar system? Or is this just another bad bit of dialogue that we should not listen to.

 

Too many things they could run into and I suppose drag into there warp field....like the rock they almost ran into.

The dialogue, from what I remember, mentions they would slow down to sublight in something like a minute, but would impact the asteroid a few seconds before that.

 

I always assumed it was because the engines haven't ever been tested before, and you ideally want to be out in "deep water" to be safe. They don't bother with that at the end of the film. They just go to warp from Earth orbit, after all.

 

Harold Livingston is intelligent, but not experienced. His dialog indicates two-dimensional thinking.