In the movie, it seemed surprising that Spoiler: crash Harrison was able to crash a ship into a city without some sort of defense shield or protective system kicking in to protect the city, considering its importance to the Federation. Is it possible that, during his year or more with Section 31, Harrison used his "superior intellect" to embed computer viruses into various defense systems on Earth, so he could knock those defenses out when needed - like Kirk used the prefix code to knock out the Reliant temporarily in Wrath of Khan? Or, could Admiral Marcus have been planning a sort of military coup using the Vengeance, like Admiral Leyton did in Deep Space Nine, to take more aggressive action against the Klingons - and programmed Section 31 (and the Vengeance) to be able to shut down Earth defenses, when needed?? Could explain why that city seemed to be unable to stop the crash, or protect itself ...
Re: Did Harrison or Marcus have some prefix codes for Earth? (Spoilers I was more surprised that all that they were hanging out next to the moon having a big confrontation without anyone from Earth noticing. And Spock could get a message out to New Vulcan, but he didn't think to call up starfleet for some back-up? I mean, the Earth is right there! Is starfleet closed on Sunday or something?
Re: Did Harrison or Marcus have some prefix codes for Earth? (Spoilers Marcus was head of Starfleet, so......
Re: Did Harrison or Marcus have some prefix codes for Earth? (Spoilers What is it with Trek and its corrupted Admirals?
Re: Did Harrison or Marcus have some prefix codes for Earth? (Spoilers That's the hand wave I've been going with. I was also surprised that the Enterprise was knocked out of warp so close to Earth. Given that they made it there from the neutral zone in about two minutes, where were they going? They were about to overshoot the planet!
Re: Did Harrison or Marcus have some prefix codes for Earth? (Spoilers If only Marcus had shot the Enterprise .00000000001 seconds laterthis never would have happened
Re: Did Harrison or Marcus have some prefix codes for Earth? (Spoilers I kept wondering why Starfleet wasn't sending ships to find out why the hell two Starfleet ships were shooting at each other.
Re: Did Harrison or Marcus have some prefix codes for Earth? (Spoilers Starfleet takes their "only ship in the quadrant" protocol pretty damned seriously.
Re: Did Harrison or Marcus have some prefix codes for Earth? (Spoilers I think this. But then I think back to the Mars defense perimeter in Best of Both Worlds.
Re: Did Harrison or Marcus have some prefix codes for Earth? (Spoilers I thought the same exact thing once I realized they were next to the moon. Maybe Starfleet has revived the old Blue Laws........
Re: Did Harrison or Marcus have some prefix codes for Earth? (Spoilers Meh, this is all a very old Trek trope dating back to TMP. The Enterprise is often the only ship in range of Earth. When its not around, Starfleet clearly has nothing. Hell, this movie is the first time in 46 years we've seen seatbelts (deleted scene in Nemesis not counting). It's going to be a while before we see any kind of proper defences around Earth or Starfleet command.
Re: Did Harrison or Marcus have some prefix codes for Earth? (Spoilers I thought that previous to Kirk going after Harrison that Marcus sent the other ships to certain regions of space to blockade Khan if he tried to escape.
Re: Did Harrison or Marcus have some prefix codes for Earth? (Spoilers We've seen elsewhere in modern Trek that starships are no threat to a defended planet: orbital fortresses can tear fleets apart in no time flat. V'Ger shut down systems of that ilk, apparently; so did the Whale Probe. What the Borg did, we didn't get to see, because the camera was on the E-D. But what could such fortresses achieve here? Two Federation starships are slugging it out. Both are probably sending legit IDs and screaming that they are the good guys and the other guys must be shot at now now now! Even if the fortresses could deliver precision fire, they wouldn't know what to aim at. It is only by the time that both ships are falling and presenting an impact risk that the fortresses should open up, not caring whether they vaporize good or bad guys. And there we do need the "Khan did something to defenses" or "Marcus did something to defenses" or "S31 did something to defenses" argument... Or then it's a feature of futuro-shields: just like in STXI, they offer no protection against kinetic impact, and falling starships can fall right through. Timo Saloniemi
Re: Did Harrison or Marcus have some prefix codes for Earth? (Spoilers Both ships were recognized as blue and not red by Earth Defence?
Re: Did Harrison or Marcus have some prefix codes for Earth? (Spoilers Actually, if they wanted to continue the TWOK homages, they could have had Carol Marcus give Kirk the prefix code for the Vengenace (she's a weapons expert -- she'd likely have worked on Daddy's ship). Then they could have had Adm Marcus say something like "I was never going to spare your gallant crew, Kirk -- but I'll give two last minutes to you and them."