TFF: Where were the Romulans?

Sorry, don't know what you're talking about. If we had a discussion in the past about a shuttle, I don't remember it.

Even a fantasy/sci-fi world like Star Trek has to abide by certain realistic atrributes, or the audience isn't going to take it seriously. And that's why STV fails: the movie is full of unrealistic nonsense.

-So there's an M-Class planet in the center of the galaxy, when even the scientific community back during the film's debut had already accepted that there's actually a black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

-So apparently multiple ships in the past, including the Enterprise and a measly BoP, have managed to reach the center of the galaxy despite the staggeringly long distance and time required to perform this feat, even using Star Trek's warp drive scale.

-A Federation ambassador is being held hostage, and Starfleet's response is to send a malfunctioning ship with a crew of senior citizens to rescue him. Not to mention that the Enterprise in currently in Earth orbit while Nimbus III is located in the Neutral Zone. Where were all of Starfleet's border patrol ships? Wouldn't they have been closer to the action?

-Surprise! Spock has a half-brother, and he's coincidentally the one who kidnapped the ambassadors.

-Almost all of Kirk's 30-year crew turn on him despite what appears to be quite minimal brainwashing on Sybok's part.

-The kidnapping of the ambassadors suddenly becomes a non-event, and instead Kirk decides to take Sybok where he wants to go despite the serious criminal act he has committed.

-The previously mentioned "impenetrable barrier" is nothing of the sort.

-We find that the whole point of Sybok's plan was to get a starship because God asked him to, so instead of simply stealing one, he came up with a convoluted plan to have one come to him (which again, had a high probability of not even happening).

Et cetera. There's a reason why this film is universally hated by Trek fans, and it has nothing to do with subpar VFX or even the overuse of expletives. It's because the film is just utter nonsense.

That's silly. Just saying "well, anything can happen" is a cop-out when one's plan is foolhardy from the get-go. There's a greater probability of failure than success when one takes hostages simply to procure a spacecraft.

Er, still not answering the question of why Sybok needed a military ship.

"One" is of course the audience watching the movie.

Which goes back to my original point: Sybok had no idea who would be coming to rescue the ambassadors, or if they'd even come at all. And if they did, he had no idea what kind of ship they'd have. Just because he asks for a starship doesn't mean he is going to get a starship, especially if the three empires didn't deem their ambassadors even worthy of rescue. Again, Sybok would have been better off just stealing a ship on his own instead of waiting for one to come to him.

That is like nothing of the sort.

I did.

I'm not sure how much clearer I can be about this: Sybok did not need the Enterprise. He didn't need a Federation starship at all. He just needed a vessel with warp drive to take him to the center of the galaxy. There was NOTHING special about the Enterprise that he couldn't have gotten from any other ship from any other person/race/organization/etc. And he certainly didn't have to stage a kidnapping and interstellar incident to acquire one. It all comes back to this film being utter nonsense, get it? So none of the "factors" you state matter, except in the context of the film where in some mad universe this kidnapping plot was in fact a good idea.

 

When you have a ship with warp drive, the event horizon of a black hole is itself not an impenetrable barrier, and we can imagine that anything is on the other side of the EH, at least when we're talking about Star Trek and mythological gods. It's not Hard SF.

And even for hard SF, I think Sgr A* was mysterious enough that it's not unreasonable for a movie to imagine that it's an alien prison for an unimaginably powerful being surrounded by an impenetrable energy barrier.

Maybe unfair to hold a TOS film to a warp scale only really set in TNG.

The President ordered them to stand down.

 

And if the film would have mentioned a black hole, or an event horizon, or that ShaKaRee was located on the other side of either one, at least that would have been better than what was implied: that there was no such thing, and that the planet was indeed at the galactic center (or, more scientifically, the star that ShaKaRee presumably orbited, being a class-M planet and all...which was also never mentioned.) The barrier was never referred to or implied to be a black hole or event horizon.

But it's the same warp drive; the different scale is just a different scale. And it's completely irrelevant anyway, due to the unbelievability factor: According to this film, Kirk's Enterprise-A can reach the center of the galaxy in just under an hour, while Picard's ship would take thousands of years to do the same thing.

Lol.

 

In 1991, the average moviegoer probably didn't know about the SMBH at the center of the galaxy. Heck, astrophysicists weren't entirely certain about the theory at the time. Now we know it's there. It's about the size of the orbit of Uranus, and a few million times more massive than the sun. That's still pretty tiny on galactic scales. The Great Barrier could be anywhere in that neighborhood and still reasonably be described as being "at the center (or heart) of the galaxy."

Why blame TFF for what ships can do in the spin-off? Who even cared about TNG at the time except seriously hardcore Trekkies?

 

But you can't choose those attributes, either. You have to accept the premises of Star Trek, no matter how ridiculous - especially if they were carved in stone well before this movie. You can't turn the premises against the movie.

All of Star Trek is. Nevertheless, it doesn't fail. Or if it does IYHO, what's the point of singling out ST5?

That would be our Milky Way. Their Milky Way has strange energy barriers everywhere - it most definitely is not ours.

Well, not really. There are two ways out, and you have already accepted both if you sign on to the "All of Star Trek isn't automatically drivel" bandwagon.

1) In this episode, our heroes agree that going to the center won't work - so we can safely assume they didn't go there. All we need to accept is they went to Sha Ka Ree. Perhaps Sybok thought it would be somewhere near the center, perhaps he didn't. He was right about the fact that going towards the center would get one to Sha Ka Ree.

2) The heroes already did go there earlier, so there you have it.

The movie spells out that the Federation cares very little about Nimbus III. And previous episodes have demonstrated that there is no starship patrol established at the RNZ: random visits by starships are the way to deal with this long-dormant menace, and it's by sheer chance that one such foils the Romulan plans in "BoT".

And? Surprise! Khan breaks loose just when Kirk is in the ship closest to him. All of Star Trek works on the assumption that things happen...

And? That's the premise - that Sybok is good at what he does.

And? He doesn't really have a choice. And he has just been brainwashed, even if he retains a bit more self-control than most of the others.

And? Invincible foes in previous movies turned out to be very vincible after all. All it takes is proper heroes at the right time in the right place. That's realism for you - many have failed, only some succeed. Hollywood only dictates that the camera tags along with the party that succeeds.

Fans also hate ST:TMP with passion. And ST3. And ST4.

Personally, I think ST2 is drivel, and among the least Trek-like in the whole lot. It's an idiot plot that works against Trek premises and realistic expectations. But it's got good character moments and cool VFX, so it's still entertainment.

But zero probability of success when one tries any other means of procuring a starship. You can't balance apples against oranges.

Such a question does not exist. The question is "What does God need with a starship?", and Sybok is merely His humble servant here. If he questioned God, there would be no quest and no movie. But, consistently with previous evidence (Spock and V'Ger), he does go on the quest and sets the events rolling.

That's not a valid point. Sybok would have known, under well-established Trek premises. You may disagree with him, but you are the one in the wrong, because Sybok is better versed in Trek reality.

You saying so doesn't make it true. Sybok saying a thing does make it either true, or a lie, and we can then argue which. And what Sybok says is the clear thing:

If you want to say he is lying, you are entitled to. But you have to come up with a better argument than "I know better", because you don't. You haven't spent your entire life trying to accomplish this thing.

Timo Saloniemi

 

That's a bit of a stretch - even by Voyager's very low speeds, the Enterprise-D ought to have made the trip in 30-40 years, depending on their position.

As for Sybok's scheme, there's lots of compelling arguments on both sides here. However, no-one has mentioned the fact that his whole plan could have been undone by a ship, any ship with a working transporter - just park it in orbit and beam up the hostages!

 

Indeed. For us humble humans, dividing the galaxy into "manageable chunks" makes a lot of sense, and "center" might well mean the centermost twenty thousand lightyears while "rim" would mean something else.

FWIW, in "Magicks of Megas-Tu", our heroes are on a mission to investigate a phenomenon taking place at the center of the galaxy, and indeed they successfully put the thing on their viewscreen. Nowhere in the episode is it indicated that they would actually be going there...

How would that have undone anything? Starfleet would now have Sybok's agents on board, and would no doubt bring Sybok on board as well, unharmed and ready to spring to further soul-liberating action as soon as his agents freed him.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Day Of The Dove separated out the unfriendlies during transport easily enough

 

Quite so. But thanks to the brainwashing, it would be the friendlies who are Sybok's true henchmen.

Timo Saloniemi

 

So wouldn't you think that a black hole that massive would have destroyed ShaKaRee even if it weren't exactly at the center of the galaxy?

Because TFF was filmed while TNG was already on the air for several years. And I'd argue that "seriously hardcore Trekkies" were hardly the only ones watching TNG.

Wrong. I can choose those attributes because I am the movie's audience. Whatever you personally choose to believe is up to you. But I can decide for myself whether this film is a heaping pile of unrealistic nonsense. And I'd have most of the viewing audience on my side, if box office returns and audience reviews are any indication.

Because this discussion is about STV.

So if in their universe, it's established that humans can walk on the sun, you'd just suspend your disbelief and go with it? Ok then. Sorry if I prefer a little more realism to my sci-fi.

The film established ShaKaRee to be at the center of the galaxy. Not near the center, not around the center, but the center. That's what I'm basing my opinions on.

When did they go to the center of the galaxy before TFF?

Um, how do you know that there weren't patrols? ST VI established that there were.

True, but we already knew who Khan was. My point was that Sybok as Spock's half-brother was a total macguffin that came out of nowhere and did nothing to advance the plot.

Not really. He brainwashed Uhura, Scotty, Chekov and Sulu. He wasn't able to brainwash Kirk, Spock, or McCoy using the same techniques. So that's 4 to 3, not 7 to 0, hardly a basis for saying he's good at what he does.

IIRC, Kirk takes Sybok to ShaKaRee of his own free will.

We're not talking about an invincible foe. We're talking about a spacial phenomena that was described as impenetrable.

Oh please. That's a silly comparison to this film's response.

Ok, I respect your opinion.

That makes no sense.

No, you stated earlier in this discussion that Sybok needed a military ship. I've kept asking you why and you haven't answered the question.

Bull. Sybok isn't a mind reader or able to see into the future. And you have no authority to tell me I'm wrong either, since you have no control over the rules of this universe either. My point is that this film makes no sense from a realistic viewpoint. If the creators of Trek stated that we should view this universe as completely unrealistic, then I wouldn't be arguing about it. But they haven't.

Huh? I never said he was lying. I said that "God" told him he needed a starship, and Sybok decided that this meant staging a hostage situation in order to procure said starship instead of finding said ship by more logical means. The fact that a Federation starship came to Nimbus III was just coincidental, as Sybok could have just used the BoP if that was the only ship that came.

My bad, you're right. I confused the time with the distance. Still, my point stands.

Which goes back to what someone earlier said about Sybok's plan seeming to hedge on said ship not having this capability, which "coincidentally" was what happened ("coincidentally" is, of course, in quotes because that's what the script needed, yet again adding to the sense of this film's unbelievability factor.)

 

Yeah, that's kind of why flying starships into the Great Barrier is not considered a good idea. The energy inside there is generally presumed to be so intense that nothing could survive in there, not a starship and not an M-class planet.

That general presumption turns out to be wrong. It turns out to be an ordinary planetary system and the Barrier itself is an illusion.

Now, Barrier or no Barrier, could an M-class planet really survive orbiting a star orbiting the SMBH at close range? I don't know. For Star Trek terms, I don't think it's too much of a stretch.

I think your problem is that you think you know the center of the galaxy a lot better than you do, and you're peeved that you can't fit TFF into your mental model.

Not several years. YE and BOBW had yet to put the series on the map. TFF hit theaters shortly before "Shades of Grey" aired and demonstrated how pathetic and inconsequential TNG to date had been.

You're being hyperliteral. "At the center of the galaxy" would be a reasonable way to describe the location of system orbiting the SMBH with small radius.

 

But it wasn't an illusion. Kirk stated that ships have tried to penetrate the barrier in the past and suffered consequences for it.

Granted I'm no astrophysicist, but yeah, I think I know what's at the center of the galaxy better than the writers of this film did.

TNG had been airing for at least two years before TFF debuted. It's a foregone conclusion that the same audience watching TNG was also paying theater tickets for TFF.

No, I'm going with what was said in the film, and the film gave every indication that ShaKaRee was dead center.

But what countermeasure could he possibly have had to nullify a transporter beam? It's not like he or the planet had any kind of technology to shield them from beaming.

Ok, fine. That's a valid reason why he'd need a Starfleet vessel. But again, he could have still procured one by better means.

 

Unfortunately, they asked God for His ID and didn't have Klaa around to back them up.

Check yourself.

Sgr A* orbits the SMBH a at a distance of a few light hours. The diameter of our galaxy is about 100,000 light years. To put this in perspective, if you imagine the galaxy as an archery target one meter in diameter, the distance from Sgr A* to the central SMBH is a few nanometers. Most people would still call that the center of the target.

 

Sure. But you will then be saying that Star Trek beyond ST5:TFF is shit, because the things you critique ultimately derive from already established characteristics of the Trek universe.

...But, it should definitely be pointed out here, also about Star Trek in general, because the critique is aimed at the nature of the Star Trek universe rather than at things specific to ST5.

So you really say you have a problem believing in... What exactly? You accept Vulcans and warp drives, and you balk at

1) a Vulcan knowing how politics work in his own universe, and scheming on this basis?
2) said Vulcan's alien telepathic skills having a specific if diverse effect on our heroes and sidekicks?
3) an energy barrier of strange properties existing?
4) ???

The movie actually says the Great Barrier lies at the center of the galaxy; Sha Ka Ree is merely fabled to exist beyond that barrier.

Clearly, the barrier is not a point object, but has some dimension. Therefore, it cannot be at the center of the galaxy in terms of being at the exact spot. So we have full freedom now in choosing how far away from that spot the barrier extends, and how close to Nimbus III it comes.

Oh, come on. TAS "Magics of Megas-Tu". If they didn't go there in that episode (and this can easily be argued), then they probably didn't go there in this movie, either (because this can equally easily be argued).

"BoT" established that there were no patrols on the Romulan Neutral Zone. ST6 never mentioned the Romulan Neutral Zone in any fashion. (ST2 and ST6 both featured an undefined Neutral Zone that somehow involved Klingons, and in ST2, it was not patrolled; in ST2, the RNZ was also mentioned as leaking ale.)

Point not conceded; I found him quite central to the plot, what with him being the main villain and all.

ST4 had the Whale Probe, another unwelcome and previously unmentioned relative (of Earth and mankind)... ST:TMP had V'Ger of the same qualities.

He got Kirk to take him to Sha Ka Ree. He didn't get shot in the stomach by his brother. McCoy never tried to hypospray him to submission. I'd say he enjoyed a 100% success rate here!

Not "IIRC", but "IMHO". Since people brainwashed by Sybok don't turn purple or start speaking Andorian or even smiling insufferably all the time, we can't tell how much influence Kirk was under.

Same difference. V'Ger was impenetrable until penetrated; Khan was superior until pwned. Obstacles in the path of the heroes are always exaggerated simply because it takes heroes to overcome them. (And while that's Hollywood, that's not particularly unrealistic, because Starfleet is a hero organization and some skipper and crew would eventually hero their way to success. We're just somewhat biased in which set of heroes we follow.)

Please try and understand the answer this time, willya? Here goes:

Sybok needed a military ship because God told him he needed one. Sybok didn't argue with God (he was through arguing, period, as an entire world had already turned its back on him). Sybok gave God what He wanted.

If Sybok needed rationalizations, he could either dream up some or ask God for some, and there'd be no problem with that: it's a mighty barrier they are facing, so it takes a mighty ship.

Not valid: in a movie set in our universe, you and I do have access to data that allows us to tell whether the plot to steal the President's poodle and use that to blow up Fort Knox and enslave all of China is realistic or not. In the Trek universe, Sybok is the ultimate authority, and appears to act well within the standard Hollywood constraints of what is plausible for a criminal plot and what is not.

You keep saying that Klingons sending a rescue mission is a likely outcome. That's nonsense - if the heroes and villains alike say it is an unlikely outcome, it is an unlikely outcome, and your whining won't change that. Ditto for the Feds failing to send a rescue mission.

I guess we have to utterly disagree on that. Warp drives and Vulcans, remember? I cannot spare a single positive thought on your insistence that Sybok counting on Klingons being Klingons and Feds being Feds is "unrealistic". And as far as scifi conceits in this movie go, they are far less annoying than in any of the others. Voyager VI returns in the form of a star system -wide infant? Genesis devices? Resurrections? Whalesong and time travel? Compared to all that, an energy barrier imprisoning a powerful alien is just Die Hard 5: The Somewhat Tired and Mundane Rehash.

Good that we can agree on that.

And I say these were the most logical ones imaginable. Isolated spot, cunning infiltration plot with A and B options, plenty of time to prepare and raise a personal army for C and D options if need be, convenient location for the subsequent trip to the Great Barrier, etc, etc.

Yes, any starship would do, Starfleet or Klingon. Securing a Fed one would just be easiest.

But transporters or their absence changed nothing. Whether by transporter or by shuttle, Sybok would get a ride from the surface to the starship, which he could then take over, with the help of his Trojan-horse agents, with a loyal army as hopefully unnecessary backup.

Indeed, the movie makes clear that the transporter-less assault surprises Sybok. He didn't want the associated bloodshed, but he did want to talk with the captain that would conduct the rescue. And he certainly would get to do that if imprisoned by transporter action while his "hostages" were also beamed up and brought to chat with this captain.

Timo Saloniemi

Oh, and P.S.

Actually, no. What he said was that no ship had penetrated the barrier. Since no probe had ever returned, odds are that no ship had ever even tried. No consequences of any sort were ever mentioned.

 

Lol.

Not necessary, as I already said that I'm not a scientist. But I have access to the scientific community and their observations about the galactic center. And that's all I need, really.

No, I'm talking about this movie only. You can't say that in TFF one can get to the center of the universe in an hour, and in TNG it takes decades, by using the exact same means of travel, when both take place in the same "universe." If both scenarios take place in the same universe, then clearly one must be correct per that universe, and one must be incorrect. I choose to believe that TFF is incorrect.

See above.

And generally speaking, no, I have no problem with any of the above points. But you're making the above generalizations while ignoring the context that they're being used in the film.

Let's just randomly take #3. Er, yes, there are weird spatial anomalies in Trek all the time. That has nothing to do with the point I made about this specific barrier in this specific movie, which was that it was no barrier at all despite what was stated about it in the film.

So that would be where, exactly?

Not based on the wording used in the film.

I've never seen a single episode of TAS, so you'll have to forgive my ignorance. And it's never even been firmly established that TAS is canon anyway.

IIRC, in TUC there was talk of dismantling Federation outposts and reassigning ships along the Zone. There was also a chart showing several ship's orders to patrol the Zone.

There was ONE reason and one reason only why Sybok was Spock's half-brother: So that Spock wouldn't shoot him at the pivotal moment when he had his rifle aimed at Sybok. Other than that, his relationship to Spock had no bearing on the story whatsoever. Remove that awkward scene and have Sybok take over the ship by other means, and he could have been just any old religious fanatic with an agenda.

And just as your stomach shot example shows (see above), his success rate was directly proportional to the script making that so, not that he had any realistic chance of that happening.

Kirk seemed pretty much in control to me. But perhaps you and I watched two totally different films.

Irrelevant. The barrier was described as impenetrable, and it wasn't. At all. QED.

I don't think I've been patronizing towards you in this discussion, so I'd appreciate it if you weren't towards me.

Wrong. God never said "I need a military ship." Please point me to the timestamp in TFF where God says that.

He's no authority whatsoever. He's a religious fanatic who was duped by some alien who pretended he was God, and payed the price for it with his life.

When did someone in the film say that the Klingons and Romulans not sending a rescue mission was a likely outcome? And again, enough with the condescension.

You keep using other Trek projects as the basis for your beliefs about this film. I find that to be a poor measurement of judgment, but YMMV.

Yeah, because that's what happens in the film.

And I disagree vehemently with your logic.

That has nothing to do with anything. Yeah, it might be easiest, but again, Sybok had no way of knowing just what ship he'd encounter first, or if anyone would send anything.

What? A ship in orbit with a transporter could beam everyone directly to the brig, and have them all sorted out later once they got back to a starbase. There would have been no need to send a shuttle down or make an assault on the planet's surface at all.

Er, the consequences were that those ships couldn't get through the barrier. Period. But both the Enterprise and a BoP could, without explanation. That was my point.

 

I don't need to, as conventional means only take our heroes to the Great Barrier. Beyond that, we have plenty of ways in which divine beings can reposition a starship as they please.

And stable wormholes didn't exist until they did. Although the first stable wormhole that they found was not stable after all.

Mistakes are only human (even if the destination has a touch of the divine); the more alien the phenomenon, the more realistic the making of a mistake. Why single out the Great Barrier?

See, that's the fallacy - not "exactly". There's nothing exact about the center of the galaxy.

You can draw arbitrary shells around the approximate core of the galactic spiral and then choose which of those defines the "center" as opposed to the, dunno, "disk", and then the "rim" and then the "halo" or whatever terminology you want to use. You can't say "this is the spot that defines the center of the galaxy, and anything a lightyear to the side is off-center", because no such spot even exists.

Based on the very wording. Sybok says that the Barrier lies at the center of the galaxy, and then our heroes say that Sha Ka Ree is fabled to lie behind the Barrier and that the center cannot be reached because of the Barrier.

Well, okay. But TAS is roughly as carefree about travel times and distances as TOS is, and neither as such presents a problem ST5:TFF-wise. All three are at odds with TNG, but that's TNG's problem.

Or an exercise in rationalization for us fans, but only if we want to integrate TNG to the Trek that came before.

That's the Klingon Neutral Zone specifically. What Neutral Zone contains Nimbus III, we don't know, but clearly it is without patrols, and we know that the Romulan Neutral Zone meets that criterion.

If you want to argue that there is a continuity error here, you first have to prove that this is the Klingon Neutral Zone somehow.

And McCoy might never have been an old friend of Kirk's, and Sam would not have been Kirk's brother but some random dude, and Ruth could simply have been a generic pretty girl to amuse him. But there's no fault in people being related - it's called human interest, even in the case of (half-)Vulcans.

Really, that's a particularly weak showing: if you want a barebones action-adventure, be my guest, but you will be hard pressed to show that this would make ST5 a better movie.

Utter bullshit. All the heroes and villains agreed that this is how the Trek universe works. Moreover, it has always worked that way. If you aren't happy with it, you most definitively aren't critiquing ST5, you are declaring Star Trek unworthy as a concept.

Oh gawd. What part of this do you find so damned difficult to comprehend? Sybok is very specific about wanting a starship for God. Starship in TOS and the TOS movies is a military ship, as amply demonstrated. It is a category separate from "lesser vessels" in ST4, and directly associated with the likes of the Enterprise.

And you are better how?

Really, you take it upon yourself to dictate how a (fictional) world works, as if you were the greater god. You aren't entitled to do that - you have no jurisdiction to say that it's unlikely for Starfleet to come to sort out the hostage crisis. You may find it annoying that this is so, but it's a well-established feature of Star Trek, the show you volunteer to watch.

Stop being so childish, then. It's not difficult to be on the level here - just think your questions through and see if there's an easy answer to be obtained. Such as in this very case.

Klaa when receiving the news says the UFP will be sending a ship. Kirk and Admiral Bob agree the Klingons will be coming in angry, and Chekov and Sybok in their pissing contest agree that the Klingons will bombard rather than rescue. It's all there if you bother to watch or read - a second party verifies what the likely modus operandi of the first is, in this particular fictional universe. Only Caithlin Dar believes the Romulans will be doing anything at all, and quite a few things are established about Caithlin Dar...

Well, the solid fact is that this is a Star Trek story. Each and every problem you have with it is a Star Trek problem: alien behavior and politics (and not even of species we wouldn't be thoroughly familiar with already!), existence and odd nature of fictional phenomena, speed and travel time fluctuation...

If you were alone with this opinion on this discussion board, no problem. But you are alone with this opinion in the Trek universe, too! Go back and read what the characters themselves agree on.

...Which would be what Sybok wanted. Except that no captain would wait until starbase, and Sybok could take over the ship at his leisure, using his Trojan forces to open the gates first in the most classical plot turn imaginable.

That Kirk's ship did not have transporters was unfortunate and unexpected for Sybok, but as we see, it was not disastrous.

Agreed. But the dialogue does seem to say that nobody had even tried before - so we don't really need to believe that anything would have changed. The Barrier (or something within) eats probes, but there is no established precedent to it harming or deflecting starships.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I'm pretty much done with this discussion. If you would like to continue it at some future date without the patronizing "childish" comments, let me know. But you've gone too far. I asked you nicely to stop doing that and you ignored me. So I'm done talking to you about this.