Some "Court Martial" notes.

[Timo]

this is a depiction of a society where no captain of a starship-of-the-line had ever been put on trial before.

Just goes to show that Starfleet is ruthless towards faulty individuals at lower positions already, and the cream of the cream that get to command big starships all know better than to insist on a trial...

I just figured Kirk's controls are 'mapped' for the occasion.

Indeed, the exact position of Intercom also changes from episode to episode.

I trust all the stations have fully reconfigurable "keyboards", which is why the bright primary colors are needed: the one at bottom right is Coolant Loop Alarm/Trip for Scotty, so it has to be red, whereas Uhura dropping her own keycard in the reader will transform the board so that bottom right now reads Quick Cross-Coupling for Lower Deck PA and is green for clarity.

If Spock had just waited a few more weeks before kidnapping Pike, he could have been cured by the spores on Omicron Ceti III.

To be fair, none of the cures the spores were credited with were particularly impressive - beyond the immunizing against Berthold rays. The most they did was grow back an appendix, but McCoy in ST4 has pills that grow back kidneys.

Timo Saloniemi

[Robert Comsol]

I found it noteworthy that Kirk's former academy class mates in the Starbase club considered him guilty having just heard rumors. But somehow I can't seem to exclude the possibility that the edit of this episode was messed up (i.e. a later bar scene now coming first) and/or that the screenplay was changed last minute.

In the first scene Kirk leaves the Starbase club and almost bumps into Areel Shaw, without recognizing her. During that same scene the Starfleet official and Starship captains are already present, although according to Kirk's later log entry they are supposedly (still) on their way.

But this episode had one of the funnier lines:

Shaw: Areel Shaw. And I'm a friend, too. An old one.
McCoy: All of my old friends look like doctors. All of his look like you.

Bob

[Robert Comsol]

ZapBrannigan wrote:

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Instead he got dropped off on Talos IV where in two days they'll realize they don't have a compatible battery recharger for the chair that keeps him alive. Buh-bye.

It's probably a 23rd Century micro-fusion reactor that will last a lifetime (hey, it's Star Trek and not "Star Trek Academy" where veterans get 20th Century wheel-chairs and where starship captains can actually drive 20th Century automobiles ).

Bob

[YARN]

Timo wrote:

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Just goes to show that Starfleet is ruthless towards faulty individuals at lower positions already

Definitely a thread that carried through to TNG. There is apparently a lot of ambition and jealously in Trek. Spock was always being accused of attempting to take over the ship. Mitchell was obviously harboring some jealously and resentment toward Kirk. Picard has the "nightmare" in threads of having to find out what his life would've been like if he had not been promoted. He was dressed down by Riker for being unfit because he'd never taken any risks (You're a chicken!). Riker gets his turn when a new XO shows up to bump him out of the way.

For a society that is supposed be "above it all," they really play cut-throat at the promotion/hierarchy game in Starfleet.

[ssosmcin]

Dale Sams wrote:

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I just figured Kirk's controls are 'mapped' for the occasion.

That explains the yeoman standing behind him with a Brother P-Touch label maker. "Are there two T's in 'jettison'?"

[Christopher]

Robert Comsol wrote:

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I found it noteworthy that Kirk's former academy class mates in the Starbase club considered him guilty having just heard rumors. But somehow I can't seem to exclude the possibility that the edit of this episode was messed up (i.e. a later bar scene now coming first) and/or that the screenplay was changed last minute.

In the first scene Kirk leaves the Starbase club and almost bumps into Areel Shaw, without recognizing her. During that same scene the Starfleet official and Starship captains are already present, although according to Kirk's later log entry they are supposedly (still) on their way.

Look more closely at the screencaps. None of the officers in the bar scene have captains' stripes; they all have either a single stripe (lieutenant) or no stripes at all (ensign). Although most likely the costume people just grabbed whatever tunics were available (which is why they have Enterprise insignia) and didn't really have any specific ranks in mind for these characters. But remember that these were old colleagues of Kirk's, perhaps fellow Academy classmates, and Kirk was intended by the show's producers to be the youngest starship captain in the fleet. So it stands to reason that his peers and old friends would not yet be captains themselves.

The officers Kirk referred to in his later log entry were the ones selected to comprise his court-martial board, namely Space Command Representative Lindstrom and Captains Krasnovsky and Chandra, whom we saw in the courtroom scenes but who were definitely not present in the bar scene. So there is no continuity error here.

[Timo]

Umm, doesn't the cap linked above expressly show the actors of Lindstom, Krasnovsky and Chandra? Just before Kirk enters the bar for the first time? They are all wearing their Captain-style dress jackets, too, suggesting the characters are part of the board already (as Captain Kirk never felt an obligation to dress up until he got involved in the trial - nor did Commodore Stone). And the court clerk or bailiff or whomever in the special red jacket is also seen on the foreground.

The way it's edited, there might not be a continuity error - but there definitely is an error in Kirk's assessment of the situation. He believes the members of his court martial board are "proceeding to SB 11" when they are in fact aboard the station already, and have been since before the first stages of the inquest! Somebody appears to be misleading him on this issue...

...Which isn't all that unexpected when everybody quite consistently appears to be opposing him and rigging the game against him.

Timo Saloniemi

[Robert Comsol]

Christopher wrote:

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The officers Kirk referred to in his later log entry were the ones selected to comprise his court-martial board, namely Space Command Representative Lindstrom and Captains Krasnovsky and Chandra, whom we saw in the courtroom scenes but who were definitely not present in the bar scene. So there is no continuity error here.

I suggest you watch the episode or the corresponding screencaps (you could have just clicked on the one I provided) again. Here is the scene from the court-martial for comparison: http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x...rtialhd173.jpg

In the Starbase club scene Space Command Representative Lindstrom (in his dress uniform) looks up at the young lady in the company of the court reporter (dress uniform), sitting next to him is Captain Chandra (dress uniform). Captain Krasnovsky (blue dress uniform) is walking past the counter in the background.

To say you don't remember seeing them there, is one thing, but to state they were "definitely" not present, suggests you researched the issue. Obviously you did not.

Bob

P.S. Oops...Timo was faster

[Christopher]

Look, it was '60s TV. They were on a budget, and they probably just dropped the same extras into the background of the bar scene and hoped nobody would notice. Screens were smaller back then, pictures were fuzzier, and they didn't have HD home video and Internet screencap archives to allow fans to do facial-recognition searches for background extras. Viewers were supposed to pay attention to the people who were in the foreground and actually had lines of dialogue. It wasn't unprecedented for the same extra to show up in two different roles in the same episode (Eddie Paskey did so on a few occasions; for instance, in "City on the Edge of Forever," he appeared as Lt. Leslie as well as the driver of the truck that killed Edith.)

[Dale Sams]

Christopher wrote:

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Look, it was '60s TV. They were on a budget, and they probably just dropped the same extras into the background of the bar scene and hoped nobody would notice. Screens were smaller back then, pictures were fuzzier, and they didn't have HD home video and Internet screencap archives to allow fans to do facial-recognition searches for background extras. Viewers were supposed to pay attention to the people who were in the foreground and actually had lines of dialogue. It wasn't unprecedented for the same extra to show up in two different roles in the same episode (Eddie Paskey did so on a few occasions; for instance, in "City on the Edge of Forever," he appeared as Lt. Leslie as well as the driver of the truck that killed Edith.)

Obviously some sort of "12 Monkeys-like insurance".

[Sir Rhosis]

Check my review of the script (links below). The scenes are shown out of order from what was written.

Sir Rhosis

[Delta Vega]

Dale Sams wrote:

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Well what the hell did Scotty do to Kirk in "Lights of Zetar" for this log entry?

"When a man of Scotty's years falls in love,
the loneliness of his life is suddenly revealed to him.
His whole heart once throbbed only to the ship 's engines.
He could talk only to the ship.
Now he can see nothing but the woman."

Yeah Kirk should have been discreet there, hell even Scotty gets horny sometimes

[TheThrasson]

For me, nothing beets a wrench lying around the engine room of the most advanced ship in Starfleet.

[Christopher]

TheThrasson wrote:

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For me, nothing beets a wrench lying around the engine room of the most advanced ship in Starfleet.

I don't have a problem with that. New technologies usually coexist alongside old technologies rather than replacing them altogether. We live in the age of nuclear power and computers, but we still use fire and string and buttons and knives, technologies harnessed hundreds of thousands of years ago. No reason to think the same won't be true a paltry quarter-millennium from now.

After all, the laws of physics that make a wrench useful today -- leverage, torque, and the like -- will still be just as valid two hundred or two million years from now.

[Dale Sams]

Christopher wrote:

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I don't have a problem with that. New technologies usually coexist alongside old technologies rather than replacing them altogether. We live in the age of nuclear power and computers, but we still use fire and string and buttons and knives, technologies harnessed hundreds of thousands of years ago. No reason to think the same won't be true a paltry quarter-millennium from now.

After all, the laws of physics that make a wrench useful today -- leverage, torque, and the like -- will still be just as valid two hundred or two million years from now.

As seen on DS9 whenever they use makeshift equipment to get a panel open...etc...which makes me think of a technical TOS question:

Is a hand phaser *really* starfleets go-to-tool when something gets locked down?? Hell of a versatile weapon. Stuns, kills, warms rocks, warms coffee, cuts through panels.