Requiem for Methuselah (Spoilers)

[Pavonis]

Spoilers are for material that hasn't been released, not stuff that is four decades old.

[plynch]

One of my faves. I just plain like it. For all the reasons mentioned. And the flaws don't bother me, since it's sixties TV. You just roll with it and take the good where you find it.

[Gary7]

What's also kind of pathetic is that... well, I can't believe that the ONLY ryetalyn deposit is in direct vicinity of Flint's mansion. Couldn't they have located a ryetalyn deposit on the other side of the planet, out of his reach? The way Flint describes his robot (M4), it appears to be a single servant ("butler") and guardian. His first one was destroyed by Mr. Spock, and so Flint made another--"Too useful a device to be without, really. I created another", instead of another existing unit of his robot fleet showing up to serve in place of the previous M4. Additionally, with the detected intrusion in the beginning of the episode, you'd expect at least several of these things homing in on the landing party, given the rarity of encroachment. So, Flint clearly doesn't demonstrate the resources to have defensive coverage of the entire planet. If he did, perhaps there would have been an array of robot generation machines strategically placed around the planet, like in TNG's "The Arsenal of Freedom". Anyway... just a rather easy nit-pick of the episode.

[GSchnitzer]

Gary7 wrote:

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What's also kind of pathetic is that... well, I can't believe that the ONLY ryetalyn deposit is in direct vicinity of Flint's mansion. Couldn't they have located a ryetalyn deposit on the other side of the planet, out of his reach? The way Flint describes his robot (M4), it appears to be a single servant ("butler") and guardian. His first one was destroyed by Mr. Spock, and so Flint made another--"Too useful a device to be without, really. I created another", instead of another existing unit of his robot fleet showing up to serve in place of the previous M4. Additionally, with the detected intrusion in the beginning of the episode, you'd expect at least several of these things homing in on the landing party, given the rarity of encroachment. So, Flint clearly doesn't demonstrate the resources to have defensive coverage of the entire planet. If he did, perhaps there would have been an array of robot generation machines strategically placed around the planet, like in TNG's "The Arsenal of Freedom". Anyway... just a rather easy nit-pick of the episode.

"I know who you are. I have monitored your ship since it entered this system."

If he can monitor the ship in orbit, I presume he can monitor his whole planet. If he can shrink down the Enterprise and haul it down from orbit with the push of a button, I presume he could be similarly formidible against a landing party on the other side of the planet.

[Timo]

Yes, it seems Kirk should know he is going to butt heads with this Flint character no matter what.

Trying to skulk around the obstacle is not a particularly good strategy here. Trying to win a pissing contest would be a good strategy if Kirk from the start knew that the planet fell under his apparently very broad jurisdiction as a frontier lawman - as a Federation subject aware of the overall power of the Federation, Flint should consider long term consequences and yield to Kirk's authority, regardless of Flint's powers.

But does Kirk realize Flint is a Federation citizen on a Federation world? Kirk chooses the planet by taking some sensor readings, and indicates no familiarity with it whatsoever: it's just "a small planet in the Omega system" to him.

(Incidentally, would that be the same Omega system where Captain Tracey found a way to live long and prosper? These single-Greek-letter designations are no doubt abbreviations - but in theory, there's nothing to say that this couldn't be the same system as in "Omega Glory", an episode without a stardate. If the Exeter incident has not yet taken place, Kirk could easily overlook the goings-on on planet IV, as he enters the system with rhyetalyn blindfolds on. If said incident is in the past, ditto - and during the incident, Kirk would have had no reason to pay attention to planet III and the one hermit living there, possibly shrouded from cursory sensor scans. )

Timo Saloniemi

[ZapBrannigan]

Timo wrote:

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Incidentally, would that be the same Omega system where Captain Tracey found a way to live long and prosper? These single-Greek-letter designations are no doubt abbreviations - but in theory, there's nothing to say that this couldn't be the same system as in "Omega Glory", an episode without a stardate. If the Exeter incident has not yet taken place, Kirk could easily overlook the goings-on on planet IV, as he enters the system with rhyetalyn blindfolds on. If said incident is in the past, ditto - and during the incident, Kirk would have had no reason to pay attention to planet III and the one hermit living there, possibly shrouded from cursory sensor scans.

Timo Saloniemi

Omega IV and "a small planet in the Omega system" called Holberg 917G. They could absolutely be in the same solar system.

Flint would certainly have ignored the Exeter and Enterprise in "The Omega Glory," and Kirk et al might very well not mention the Yangs and the Combs in "Requiem."

[Forbin]

As to buying a planet, I always imagined the planet belonged to no one in particular to begin with. Flint (Brack?) didn't buy it FROM someone, but paid some fee to some overseeing agency for the right to settle it.

[ssosmcin]

Well, it's safe to assume the series as happening in chronological order for the most part. I tend ignore stardates since they were nonsense back then, so The Omega Glory happened nearly a year before. Even so, there's no reason for Kirk to mention it to Flint. "Oh by the way, we were just a planet or so away last year. Hey, did you have anything to do with them having an American flag and the US Constitution? Hm? What's that Spock? Oh yes, whole crew. Dying. Never mind."

[ZapBrannigan]

ssosmcin wrote:

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Well, it's safe to assume the series as happening in chronological order for the most part. I tend ignore stardates since they were nonsense back then, so The Omega Glory happened nearly a year before. Even so, there's no reason for Kirk to mention it to Flint. "Oh by the way, we were just a planet or so away last year. Hey, did you have anything to do with them having an American flag and the US Constitution? Hm? What's that Spock? Oh yes, whole crew. Dying. Never mind."

That's funny! As I understand it, "The Omega Glory" was originally written before STAR TREK's time setting was settled on, and the story was about humans from Earth who had colonized this distant planet maybe a thousand years prior to the episode. Once they put STAR TREK only 300 years in the future, "The Omega Glory" made a lot less sense / required a flabbergasting coincidence of identical documents.

[Timo]

...Or a time-traveling obsessive patriot from Earth, with copies of important paraphernalia. Sort of like John Gill with a time machine.

Stardate order helps us with, say, the Khan-knows-Chekov issue ("Catspaw" comes before "Space Seed"). Moving "Omega Glory" from its production slot to a later point in the timeline would be beneficial for a very similar reason: Galloway dies on Omega, yet the character is also seen in "Turnabout Intruder". Having "Omega Glory" take place after "Turnabout Intruder" is a fairly obvious solution without major downsides...

Timo Saloniemi

[The Warlord]

Timo wrote:

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...Or a time-traveling obsessive patriot from Earth, with copies of important paraphernalia. Sort of like John Gill with a time machine.

Stardate order helps us with, say, the Khan-knows-Chekov issue ("Catspaw" comes before "Space Seed"). Moving "Omega Glory" from its production slot to a later point in the timeline would be beneficial for a very similar reason: Galloway dies on Omega, yet the character is also seen in "Turnabout Intruder". Having "Omega Glory" take place after "Turnabout Intruder" is a fairly obvious solution without major downsides...

Timo Saloniemi

I always assumed the order of episodes was chronological order, thus Chekhov was on the Enterprise in Space Seed, we just didn't see him. (Which can be said whether or not we place Catspaw before it anyway ..).Anyhow it's interesting to consider the series in this way.

[Timo]

The interesting thing is, at the beginning of "Omega Glory" no reason whatsoever is give for why our heroes approach the planet Omega IV. They find the Exeter in orbit, yes, but it's made clear that this was a surprise, and they definitely weren't looking for her - they didn't even know anything was wrong with her, and didn't believe she would still be in this part of space after having visited the Omega system half a year earlier. "Requiem" in turn ends with the ship setting a course to... Somewhere. We never learn where, we just hear the heading spelled out.

The two episodes could really play back to back: Kirk goes to Omega to find rhyetalyn, has a brief adventure involving Flint, and then decides to have a look around. He then stumbles onto Tracy on the next planet. That wouldn't solve the Galloway problem, because "Requiem" very much has a stardate that places it before "Turnabout Intruder", but it would be an interesting dramatic combination. Kirk's crew has just recovered from a horrible disease, and now they encounter Tracy who has lost his own crew to another horrible disease...

Timo Saloniemi

[Just a Bill]

GSchnitzer wrote:

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If he can shrink down the Enterprise and haul it down from orbit with the push of a button

It's funny how we're discussing the believability of the characters' actions and motivations, when this little suspension-of-disbelief moment, the space-elephant in the room, seems to dwarf all other realism qualms in the episode combined — probably by an order of magnitude. Normally it takes some kind of Sylvia/Korob-style magic to pull off something this outlandish, but apparently Flint is a renaissance-man technical genius who's also a Level 750 Archwizard Deluxe.

Hmm, maybe the Trelane-is-a-Q crowd should consider Flint as their next inductee!

Sorry, just being kinda goofy today.

[Timo]

Of course, odds are that Flint never shrank anything. All that really happened, as far as we can tell, is that Flint jammed communications and then frightened Kirk with a detailed tabletop projection of his ship.

Timo Saloniemi

[Gary7]

GSchnitzer wrote:

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"I know who you are. I have monitored your ship since it entered this system." If he can monitor the ship in orbit, I presume he can monitor his whole planet.

It's one thing to monitor a distant vessel entering your solar system with nothing to hide behind, yet an entirely different matter when it comes to scanning the complex topography of a planetary landscape.

If he can shrink down the Enterprise and haul it down from orbit with the push of a button, I presume he could be similarly formidable against a landing party on the other side of the planet.

Well, that's another terribly unrealistic aspect of the episode. The complexity to essentially teleport a vast starship from orbit into a miniaturized form on the surface is... well, just plain ridiculous. Matter must be conserved--so where does it go, and then return from when the Enterprise is restored? Think of the scale of one human being to the Enterprise. The ship was reduced to no bigger than Kirk's behind. And if Flint has that kind of power, why wouldn't he just miniaturize the landing party and then deal with them on that highly advantageous scale of intimidation (e.g. Giant Apollo in "Who Mourns for Adonais")? Anyway, even accepting the outlandish teleportation and miniaturization ability, I suspect it requires line-of-sight to work.