Problem I had with "By Any Other Name"

While I think that the very ending of the episode was too "chummy". (it could've used some somber music) when you watch the show in detail there is a lot dealt with.

1) Kirk kneeling over the crewwoman's crushed, dusty remains and the look on his face.

2) The fact that Kirk was responsible for the death of the woman. It was his planned escape attempt that led Rojan to kill her. Rojan himself said he was doing this because it was obvious Kirk would feel the pain and responsibility of losing one of his people more than something happening to hmself. Rojan in fact says that he and Kirk are alike in that respect.

3) Kirk slamming his fist down when McCoy says he saw the Kelvins reduce a bunch of his doctors and nurses to those little cubes "They've reduced the whole crew!!"

 

Well, the Kelvins would be a likely source for any improvements in warp technology, shield technology and advanced materials. That'd be worth some money.

Plus, galactic invasion averted!

 

Yeah, but the miners would be the direct and indirect beneficiaries of the Horta's digging. Kirk and crew, not so much from tech improvements by the Kelvans.

 

The Enterprise is a whole lot faster than before. That's an immediate benefit. But going back to the miners, the Horta did kill 50 men. It's more shocking that they became all chummy at the end given that they were probably a tight-knit community. In Starfleet, you're expected to give your life in the line of duty but it might've been more personal with the miners.

 

Blaming her death on Kirk is really a stretch.

 

It was Kirk's half assed escape attempt that led directly to the killing of Thompson.

There is no indication whatsoever that Rojan had any intention of harming the landing party before then.

 

We could just as well blame the slut for offering herself to crystallization, thus placing her commander in a difficult tactical position. Obviously she deserved what she got.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Undoubtedly. Remember, Kirk didn't exactly surrender her. She stopped next to Kirk, then moved off when Rojan ordered her to get moving. Had she run, Rojan would have paralyzed her instantly or just dissolved her body then and there. Shea didn't exactly get his chance to take any Kelvans apart. Spock was also uncharacteristically useless. The LOST IN SPACE gang could have handled this situation way better......

 

Re: Problem I didn't have with "By Any Other Name"

This is a problem I didn't have with "By A Any Other Name" :

 

Sorry but you're wrong. It was Rojan's crushing of the Yeoman that "lead" to her death, following the escape attempt she was alive and well.

 

Right! Escape attempts don't kill people (unless you step on a land mine)—
people kill people!

Err, maybe that should be, "Kelvans kill people!"

Except the point of the episode is that Kelvans are people by any other name, so therefore...

... never mind.

 

Still wondering just how the Kelvans got THEIR human forms....probably not through their advanced belt-device technology.

 

Are there other 'happy endings' and 'forget the deaths' episodes?

In 'the Children Shall Lead' they beam two guys into space and don't even go back for their bodies or mention them at the end.

 

I'm not saying that Rojan was not also responsible for the death of Thompson.

But IIRC, in time of war, if POWs attempt to escape and they in doing so assault one of their captors (as Kirk and Spock did) then the POWs are subject to reprisals.

Rojan's team was a preinvasion scout team for the Andromedans so to me that would fall under the "state of war" definition.

 

On the other hand, if POWs do not attempt to escape, their own superiors charge them with dereliction of duty and whatnot, and quite possibly shoot them after liberation if the jailers haven't gotten around to it.

Rules of war are really meant to get people killed. There's no "nice" way out. And playing by the rules of the enemy seldom pays off.

Timo Saloniemi

 

"The Apple" is probably the prime offender. Umpteen redshirts are killed brutally, but at the end Kirk is joking about the birds and the bees and teasing Spock about looking like Satan . . . .

 

Galileo Seven is the worst for me, there's like 40 seconds of laughter at a joke that's barely funny, after several crew members died. And it's probably the first occurance of this too.

 

Would it be safe to say, post Kelvin tune-up, that the Enterprise would be the fastest connie in SF at that point in time?

I cannot imagine Kirk having Scotty de-tune a quicker, more efficient Enterprise.

 

Depends on how the extra speed was achieved. Perhaps it's just a matter of feeding more power to the warp coils - so once one would yank the portable Kelvan powerplant out of the loop, all the advantages would be lost?

Certainly it seems that the standard way to make the ship go faster than planned is to disengage the failsafes for doing so. It's not as if the drive itself would be incapable of warp 14 or whatever; it's just something that cannot be safely sustained, with the failure points relating to ship's structure (just as in the extreme case of "Threshold"!) but possibly also to the power arrangements.

Timo Saloniemi