Why would they have McCoy ask "Where's Sulu?" in TUC.
- Thread starter enterprisecvn65
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It was a simple nod to the audience, because ST fans--even after hearing Sulu's log report--still expect him to be closely involved with the rest of the gang at some point. The fans would rather see Sulu (no matter how old he was / state of his career in TUC) with the others than off on his own.
Come on that shit was like 10 years before. I'm sure the federation had thrown them many kick ass parties already to thank them.
Based on what?
Nothing really connected these people to the Enterprise, as we later learn. Kirk has to unpack the photo of his son when first stepping into the Captain's Quarters. Spock has been talking diplomacy with Klingons for the past, what, years? Scotty gets a nerdgasm at seeing the warp core at work, an unlikely thing if he really did that for a living. Uhura was giving seminars, Chekov didn't know how the phaser alarms of the ship worked, even Valeris was aboard for the first time.
It seems Starfleet either dusted off an otherwise unused (and perhaps unusable) replica starship for this special mission, or then kicked out every single one of the ship's top officers and replaced those with our heroes...
Timo Saloniemi
For some reason in my head, "Federation" and "Kick-ass parties" don't seem to come together. At least, not from what I've seen*
*Though Jadzia Dax's bachelorette party seemed like a hoot. But then again, she's Jadzia.
Based on the fact it was Kirk, Chekov, Scotty, Uhura and McCoy who arrived at starfleet headquarters together and then a few minutes later they were all aboard the Enterprise with Spock there as well.
Call me crazy but it seems like all these people arriving at a meeting together for they were specifically invited to and then reporting to the Enterprise gives strong evidence the senior staff of the ship was specifically invited.
Of course I could be wrong and it just happened to be a fantastic coincidence that they arrive at the same time and were all like "Hey!!! I'm here for a meeting at the behest of starfleet command......You are too? Really? Man how crazy is that.......It's even crazier when you consider we all serve on the Enterprise together!!!!!" Wow will miracles never cease.
Just a hunch on my part.
Normally I would agree, but come on you can't tell me that after that meeting where Kirk got busted to Captain and the guy thanked them for saving Earth from it's own shortsightness that they didn't bust out the cake, music and all got hammered on Romulan Ale afterwards. I mean if saving the entire planet isn't a good reason to party your ass off, even if you're a military organization, I don't know what is.
It's likely that it was Spock's idea to get the whole crew together. Starfleet may have wanted Kirk for the mission, but Spock was probably the one to suggest bringing the rest of the team in.
That makes no sense. If events taking place after the meeting dictate who is "part of the senior staff", then Sulu certainly shouldn't be considered "missing" - these people should only worry about Valeris not being there!
None of our erstwhile Enterprise heroes admits to knowing why they were invited here. Many imply they didn't expect to be together. So there is no indication they would belong to the exclusive category "people who are part of the E-A senior staff" until after the meeting.
Yeah. He'd sell it in stages: "Send Kirk"; "Send him in the Enterprise"; "Let him have his old team back". At some point Starfleet would predictably decide that enough is enough, so Spock would not find it suspicious that Valeris would be forced into the team as well.
It might be the opposite, though: Starfleet might have asked Spock, their annoying diplomatic meddler in all affairs Klingon, whether he'd agree to the logic of sending Kirk to deal with the Klingons "because he's our Nixon". The idea of course would be to use him to anger the Klingons into shooting first so there could be war. Spock would then "personally vouch for Kirk", especially after Starfleet further bribed him by throwing the rest of the old team in the deal. And of course they would have made sure to burden Spock with their own inside (wo)man as soon as they learned Spock was talking treason with Gorkon, so adding her to the mix would come naturally.
Timo Saloniemi
Well, I suppose there's the thing -- there's a difference between a person holding a party, and an org holding a party. And a person holding a party tends to be much more raucus about it than an org ever will, I think.
So the Federation President personally holding a keggar at his home in honor of Kirk? Bring it on! The president on behalf of the Federation probably won't be nearly as fun, though. Maybe because of Starfleet Accounting.
Fine I surrender. You want to believe that McCoy apparently not realizing Sulu had been Captain of the Excelsior for at least three years and thinking it strange that he wouldn't be able to take time off for some kind of gathering of Enterprise crew and also not apparently realizing Excelsior was probably on a mission, being the newest and most advanced ship in the fleet and all, is completely understandable then I must be reading the situation totally wrong.
I won't laugh at my friend the next time we go to a Celtics game and he, for some reason, just happens to say "Where's Bird?" I'll just go "You mean Larry Bird....he's hasn't been a Celtic for 22 years and he's the GM of the Indiana Pacers now" and we'll enjoy the game.
I always wondered why someone of Sulu's experience and somewhat legendary stature within Starfleet (having served with Kirk for years) would be given a boring assignment like cataloguing gas anamolies. Even if that was his first assignment, it seemed really mundane for a guy like Sulu.
I was more bothered that the gas anomaly mission was three years long!
I think I've seen it suggested before that "cataloging gaseous anomalies" could have been a pretext for sending their biggest, best ship out to patrol the Klingon border with advanced sensors.
If McCoy had just said "Too bad Sulu couldn't make it..." and then have Kirk correct him and say "Captain Sulu...he's busy with commanding the Excelsior." then the whole exchange could have gone through without making anyone look like they were out of touch....on the other hand making McCoy look out of touch might have been what they wanted to enhanse his fallibility in attempting to save Gorkon.
That party would be awesome to see onscreen...
That was probably another "Meyerism", a direct Cold War reference to the International Year of Geophysics. Under the pretense of scientific research, the great powers "studied the oceans" in order to better spy on each other, and did it with massive fleets intended to rub the pretense in the face of the opponent. Here, "research on gaseous anomalies" not only provides an excuse for peeking over the fence, but actually has immediate military applications!
I guess the point was to show that they all were out of touch. Which is okay with the Big Three, but a bit curious as regards the more junior officers...
Timo Saloniemi
