Had Stiles warned the bridge of the coolant leak...
- Thread starter Dale Sams
- Start date
I don't think that would've made "Balance of Terror" better. However, I think it would've made TWOK better and make Kirk a more active participant in the climax of the movie. It would've been better had Kirk ordered all the cadets to fix the engines, one by one until they couldn't anymore. As a last measure, knowing that Spock would be able to last longer, Kirk orders his best friend to his death.
This would've given the ultimate decision to Kirk and made his arc a lot stronger.
It has been stated of recent that a captain cannot marry a man and woman and that it is just a fallacy!
JB
JB
I think that would have been ruinous for Star Trek and for Kirk. And Shatner would have flatly refused to do it in his script notes. That draft wouldn't have made it past Bill's desk.
Heh. There's no reason to think that the skipper of a starship wouldn't have the powers of a justice of peace. What's dubious about it is that Kirk (and later Picard) claims that it's a historical privilege of skippers. But we have to take into account his time perspective: captains marrying people is a phenomenon that did emerge in the late 20th century, mainly because so many passengers were in the mistaken belief that this ought to be possible. Kirk would be right to claim that the practice had existed for centuries, then!
Timo Saloniemi
Considering that captains of ships like the Mayflower have had the power of Justice of the Peace for centuries, as they are the ones who were the primary authority onboard prior to any colonization effort's arrival at their destination, putting such dialog in Kirk's mouth in Balance of Terror for the benefit of 1960s audiences wasn't strange. By that time it was long known that ship captains had such authority. Hell, even authors have ascribed such authority to ship captains, as far back as the 1700s. Tarzan and Jane were married by the ship's captain at the end of the second Tarzan novel back in 1914.
Only problem with my little change of events is that you can't have the bittersweet Kirk-Romulan Commander scene while the audience is still digesting that Kirk told those men to sit there and die.
And even if Angela completely absolves Kirk in the chapel...we can't have that triumphant "Kirrrrrk is a badasssss, a badassssss, yesssess he isssss" music in the last shot.
And even if Angela completely absolves Kirk in the chapel...we can't have that triumphant "Kirrrrrk is a badasssss, a badassssss, yesssess he isssss" music in the last shot.
Ruinous how? How do you know what Shatner would and wouldn't agree to? You know, everyone talks about Shatner being a scene steeling hog, but in two movies in a row he takes second billing as the hero. TMP Decker is the one who comes up with the solution and takes the reward. In TWOK Kirk sits on his thumbs while Scotty feigns an illness and forces Spock to save the ship on his own. Why didn't Kirk go down to Engineering himself to deal with the situation like he's done many times in TOS? Why wouldn't Shatner have a fit over that?
Exactly. It makes Kirk active in solving the problem!
Honestly, the same situation is handled better in "Into Darkness" because Kirk is in engineering and has to make a choice to save the ship. Spock's decision in TWOK isn't very motivated and comes off as "oh, I have to go down there because the script tells me to."
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