"...all 72 torpedoes are still in their tubes."

I fail to see how Trek not being a "thriving franchise" at the time TWOK was made has anything to do with whether or not the Ceti Alpha V problem constitutes a plot hole.

 

It's just Abrams Trek being held to a different standard as usual.

 

That's my point. I was trying to establish that I was on the side that the Ceti Alpha V thing was not a plot hole and was no big deal to me in the least.

But the torpedoes, who has them, when they have, what they knew and when they knew it, and how they go back forth, whether they are armed or not... well those things constitute the entirety of the plot of Into Darkness... and I think I am justified into being a bit picky about it.

The script simple. Kirk goes to Kronos and is ordered to fire them all on Harrison. I like the fact that the writers had an A to B to C plot to start their story and there were some good debates between Spock and Kirk, as well as between Scotty and Kirk as to the ethics of using them.

The story gets out of hand once we look into the back story, so much so that that even the simple plot the writers started with doesn't make sense.

 

I personally don't have a problem with the missing Ceti Alpha V planet.
This was obviously a backwater star system that nobody cared about. There are billions of solar systems in the galaxy.
Only the astronomy section could care less if one of their charts is off. Planets probably disappear from their charts on occasion. Perhaps they chalk it up to a probe taking the initial readings of this section of space and not being 'entirely accurate'.

All Terell was interested in was finding a suitable planet not charting space. And you think why would Chekov not remember the significance of the Ceti Alpha system, since Khan knew him? Perhaps Chekov and the rest of the crew weren't told of Khan's exact location. Just that he'd been 'taken care of'. I'm sure after he'd tried to kill everyone, no-one was that concerned about his welfare.

I have more concern about the 72 torpedoes and maybe in 20 years I'll fangirl explain it but it doesn't make sense to me right now. IMO the writers needed to put in an a explanation (technobabble or otherwise) why all 72 torpedoes needed to be used. Perhaps a strafe run to wipe out the entire surface area of the planet to ensure Khan's demise. But then you still had 'innocent' Klingons there.

I just had problems with the whole incident. From Klingons being there, for there being the necessity to use all 72 torpedoes in someone else's territory, to Sulu being able to verbally broadcast his warning to Khan from space to 'an entire planet?'.

Seems to me they just wanted to have Klingons in the movie without a real reason. There was never a stage of mystery where I wondered if the Klingons were 'behind it'.

 

The problem could have been easily avoided had it been Ceti Alpha IV and not VI that exploded.

 

Along similar lines, I've wondered, why send the Enterprise on this mission and then send the Vengeance to destroy the Enterprise for knowing too much, instead of just using the Vengeance for the mission?

 

Never unclear in the film for even a moment.

Why not just accept what the film has to say on the subject?

The Enterprise wasn't expected to end up knowing too much. It was expected to fire its torpedoes at Khan as ordered.

 

I think it was intended (by Marcus) for the Klingons to destroy the disabled Enterprise and for that to be the rallying point for the Federation to go to war.
Then Marcus could lead the Federation in The Vengeance in crushing the Klingons.

I think destroying Khan was secondary to this.

 

Yes, the Enterprise or whomever was lucky enough to get those torpedoes was going to be Marcus' pawn. The catalyst for the war.

 

See, this is the issue I have. The moment you bring up a plot hole from one of the original films, there is explanations and excuses as to why it's okay. However, when an issue is brought up from the Abrams' films, the people who don't like those movies use those issues to show why they don't like the film, why it's terribly written, why its not Star Trek, etc etc. And when the films fans call them out for the double standard, you get the typical response about why the plot hole in the original film is okay, but the plot hole in the Abrams film is just so much worse. If you don't like the films, fine, it's great to have an opinion. But don't sit there and try to act as if there isn't a double standard in how these films are judged. Magic blood gets thrown around here by the films detractors to show just how bad these movies are to them, but they are okay with a torpedo that spontaneously creates life, or a solar system sized spaceship whose name is wrong because the species that built said ship didn't bother to rub some shit off the Voyagers name plate.

 

Ok, I apologize.

The torpedo launchers are on the centreline of the engineering hull, or maybe just below. IIRC there is a large breech on the upper half of the hull (part of the warp core area is breached), and several of Khan's parting shots blast through the shuttlebay (in one side, out the other - I assume they have forcefields holding the air in because we see the shuttlebay again briefly during the evacuation), but I don't think there are any hits to the torpedo launchers.

 

Possibly, but there is dialogue to suggest that Chekov knew Khan had been dropped on CAV:

Chekov: You lie! On Ceti Alpha V there was life! A fair chance to --

Khan: THIS is CETI ALPHA V! ...

One could just chalk it up to Chekov not really remembering the system's name, because he was young, on lower decks, drunk after having a near-death experience, not yet on the show, etc...

 

Or a magical Nexus where almost anything is possible or a ship can fire from light years away and hit Earth with a magic ray.
And yes Beverley bought people back to life in TNG and no-one cares about that now.
Its all science fiction. If we were only seeing proven things then science fiction movies would be very boring.

Sometimes those things can stop you liking a movie but people who are usually worried seriously about those things don't really tend to like science fiction at all like my sister-in-laws IMO.

Generally I believe people don't like Star Wars 1, 2, 3 as much as 4, 5, 6. Not because 1, 2, 3 are less realistic but because things like the acting is terrible or the characters are unsympathetic..

 

No, 72 torpedos would be overkill. This isn't necessarily a failing of STID specifically, but I think that the power of matter/antimatter reactions are often a bit underestimated. It's hard to say for sure what the exact yield of one torpedo is, but in itself antimatter would typically be a few times stronger than a nuclear blast of the same weight. Now imagine carpet bombing somewhere on Earth with 200 nuclear bombs. That would be a massive area of destruction causing an insane nuclear winter if not just completely obliterating life on the planet for a long time. That's the definition of overkill if your target is just one man.

 

To nitpick, the props and sets tell us this did not happen, not quite this way.

The huts down on the hellhole planet are not Botany Bay cargo elements - they are Starfleet containers, with Federation logos all over them. So we don't have to assume Kirk would have gone back to the derelict spacecraft. Rather, we could assume the simpler thing: that Khan, when beaming over his 72 compatriots for his attempt at taking over the starship, also brought along his personal belongings.

It was Khan who cut loose the ancient spacecraft and proceeded with the starship only, not Kirk, so Khan would no doubt have arranged for the transfer of essentials. Not colonization essentials, but starship takeover essentials, such as his book collection, with a genuine Botany Bay collectible strap around them. But Kirk wouldn't have to rely on Khan for colonization gear: his own ship would be amply stacked with it, and he and he only would decide how it gets expended and how this expenditure gets written down in the records. And indeed none of the stuff we see down on the huts is explicitly 1990s colonization gear.

As for Carol Marcus knowing that the torpedoes have warheads, well, there's no reason why she should. She may be aware of the specs, but the alterations would not be in the specs. And beyond that, she has merely looked at the things from the outside, and Scotty confirms this doesn't tell anybody anything.

Whether Alexander Marcus knew... He says half a dozen things to Kirk that are unlikely to be true, simply because he's a hardened liar who would win nothing by telling the truth but hopes to score points with every lie. Is Khan a "war criminal", say? Highly doubtful, as claiming so would be Marcus' best hope for breaking off the dangerous Kirk/Khan relationship. What would Marcus win by sending the 72 sleepers out into space, though? His plans gain nothing from this, while letting Khan believe the sleepers are there but in fact placing them in a vault back on Earth again would work to Marcus' advantage.

What's the alternative? Using just one nuke would probably not kill Khan, because they have no idea where in the vast desert he might be hiding - the sensors don't reach that far out, supposedly, so it would be up to terminal homing, and essentially chance. OTOH, the downside of using 72 nukes is zero: the Klingons will go berserk from even one photon grenade anyway, but 72 nukes won't result in any greater collateral damage than 1, not in that wasteland.

In pure tactical terms, then, nuking the Klingon homeworld with 72 warheads is a smart move for securing a kill and not having to spend extra minutes in the danger zone doing damage assessment. This ain't going to be "surgical" no matter what Kirk does.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Unless the warheads are not scan-shielded like the internal augment-holding compartment.

Ah, yes... the famous Palpatine strategy. Unfortunately it doesn't work here. Marcus' comments to Kirk show that he knows the augments are in the torpedoes. If he didn't know that it wouldn't be expressed in his dialogue. It is really not a question of lying.

You act as if STID exists in a vacuum. It does not. The war criminal reference is based on Khan's backstory from his prior appearances in canon.

 

Scotty couldn't even scan for the fuel these things used for propulsion. Why would the warhead be easier to scan?

Marcus apparently now knows the 72 corpsicles are gone, rather than e.g. blown to bits in one of Khan's terror bombings. It isn't difficult to deduce what happened to them at this point. But there's no plot reason for Marcus to send the bodies anywhere: he doesn't need to placate Khan with them, he doesn't need to destroy them (and never mind this would be the least efficient way imaginable to do that!), and he doesn't even need to blackmail Khan with them any more, now that Khan has done everything Marcus could ever ask of him.

Certainly the statement that the plot hinges on Marcus knowing is false...

In neither "Space Seed" nor ST2:TWoK was there any suggestion that Khan would have been considered a war criminal. Except of course in the sense of him losing a war, which is always a crime according to the winners - but Kirk still idolized this powerful leader and in "Space Seed" clearly stated that he had not committed atrocities worth mentioning.

The war criminal title is either an extremist viewpoint endorsed by Marcus but not by the history writers, or then an outright lie to get Kirk to drop the budding alliance (hopefully before he can get back to civilization and google for the real facts on "Khan Singh").

Or then Marcus had learned facts from Khan that history writers had no access to. But that wouldn't make Khan a war criminal, merely a really bad guy who should have been considered a war criminal but never was.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Presumably because it's outside the scan-shielded portion?

And Marcus deduces this when? As soon as he finds out that Kirk disobeyed orders? Isn't that a bit too obviously convenient? Why didn't he deduce this earlier? And should I assume you're throwing out Khan's statement that Marcus discovered his plan?

He may want to destroy them.

We should not forget that Space Seed and TWOK are not the sum total of previous canon material regarding Khan. There were also comments made about him in an episode of TNG and maybe one of the other spinoffs. Aside from that, Khan says outright in STID that he and his people were condemned as war criminals. Are you suggesting that both Khan and Marcus are lying about this? How does it benefit Khan to lie about this?

 

Khan said " the contents of these cargo bays/pods" which are all primtive, labelled SS Botany Bay.

Or does the Enterprise have small mockups of the cargo bays of every Earth vessel from 1996-2266 on hand for such occasions.

 

Possibly so - but it would be an odd thing to happen. Why would that particular part be outside, when the bulk of the cryotube is not, and when the fuel system is not?

It would be strange to assume that Carol could scan for the warhead when there's no evidence of her doing so. She assumes things about the torpedo, but she naturally would. The assumptions aren't proven correct.

Sure, the torps eventually explode. But we know their innards have been altered. Taking out bodies and shoving in explosives should be more or less equally complex operations, and we don't have evidence that Kirk's ship would be short on explosives!

Khan himself believes the torpedoes are stocked with his comrades when he learns all 72 are aboard. It wouldn't make much sense for him to believe that this is Marcus' doing - why would the Admiral hand back the hostages that way? It's rather Khan's original plan in action, despite the temporary worry that Marcus might have managed to foil it.

In that case, he should. But he doesn't, not if he puts the things back in the torpedoes. That act prevents their destruction as events unfold, and would not have ensured it even had things proceeded as planned.

...And these are limited to indicating that Earth doesn't want more genetic supermen. The "crimes" of Khan are not enumerated or compared, or even mentioned in the passing.

Marcus is saying Khan actually committed the crimes. Khan is saying he was essentially falsely accused. "Space Seed" clearly argues against the former viewpoint, and indicates that history eventually sided with him, clearing his reputation by the time Kirk, Scotty and pals learned about him at school and came to respect him.

Timo Saloniemi