Doomsday Machine not best of TOS
- Thread starter Hatshepsut
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The Doomsday Machine is one of my favorite Star Trek stories, I love space battles bujt beyond that Decker's pain and loss was well played by William Windom. It's sequel of sorts Vendetta would've made for a great movie, I would to have seen the Doomsday Machine mark II on the big screen. I have had the opportunity to see The Doomsday Machine, teh remastered version in a theater, one of our local theaters who was playing classic Doctor Who stories at the time had a problem one night and they put on The Doomsday Machine instead and it looked great on the big screen. The new CGI actually looked pretty good with the old footage, I thought.
Oops, sorry, what I should have said was when the two recent movies use what happened in the TV series in the movies (you know, all of the devastation and such that would happen in episodes) people despise it. And that's the curious thing.
Can you give an example?
^Do I have to? It's pretty obvious.
It's a great episode, but Decker does indeed overdo it at times, IMO (and he's clearly not fit to command anything due to trauma, although he sells very well when he's coherent that he believes he is doing the right thing), but I'm not ready to say that it is clearly superior to "The Immunity Syndrome" or a handful of other episodes. Still, though, it's in the very upper tier of the Original Series.
No, he can't.
Humor me, I have no idea what you are trying to say.
Neither does he.
It's my all-time favorite TOS episode, but I do have to admit that the design of the planet killer is a bit knuckleheaded -- if you can destroy it by ramming a bomb down it's maw, maybe you should, I dunno, provide some kind of mechanism to CLOSE that maw when it's not eating. Leaving a wide-open port that can lead to the thing's destruction seems like a pretty big design flaw. Heck, that thermal exhaust port on the Death Star was only two meters wide. 
Maybe the "Genie" (TM) door opener got jammed a million or so years ago. 
Seriously, we have little idea what that thing experienced since its activation. It may have possessed all sorts of features that were lost by the time Decker arrived on the scene. It could have had a set of hatches that sealed tight when not firing anti-proton beams or injesting planetary chucks looking not unlike a set of nasty "jaws".
Hmm? Eh, I'm just blowing smoke outa' my ass...umptions.
Sincerely,
Bill
Seriously, we have little idea what that thing experienced since its activation. It may have possessed all sorts of features that were lost by the time Decker arrived on the scene. It could have had a set of hatches that sealed tight when not firing anti-proton beams or injesting planetary chucks looking not unlike a set of nasty "jaws".
Hmm? Eh, I'm just blowing smoke outa' my ass...umptions.
Sincerely,
Bill
It's my all-time favorite TOS episode, but I do have to admit that the design of the planet killer is a bit knuckleheaded -- if you can destroy it by ramming a bomb down it's maw, maybe you should, I dunno, provide some kind of mechanism to CLOSE that maw when it's not eating. Leaving a wide-open port that can lead to the thing's destruction seems like a pretty big design flaw. Heck, that thermal exhaust port on the Death Star was only two meters wide.
I think that's a fair point. I'd also somewhat counter it with that anything approaching that maw was most likely to be rendered inert by the beams. I'm wondering what would have happened if the device did suck in the Enterprise? The antimatter was being suppressed, but would there have been a warp engine explosion inside if it got in there? That probably would have been bigger than the impuse engine explosion, right? That may have stopped it then, but it was trying to eat the Enterprise.
My silly notion is that the machine detects what would harm it before bringing it in, that the antimatter dampening would prevent that warp explosion and the Constellation was so damaged that it didn't register as more than some tasty debris and it didn't detect the impulse engine overload because it wasn't in it's programing.
Well, I have two trains of thought on this aspect.It's my all-time favorite TOS episode, but I do have to admit that the design of the planet killer is a bit knuckleheaded -- if you can destroy it by ramming a bomb down it's maw, maybe you should, I dunno, provide some kind of mechanism to CLOSE that maw when it's not eating. Leaving a wide-open port that can lead to the thing's destruction seems like a pretty big design flaw. Heck, that thermal exhaust port on the Death Star was only two meters wide.
1) The original thought behind the design of the Doomsday Machine itself (according to Norman Spinrad) was that it was huge and bristling with weapons. Therefor the final design of the ship reflected the state of the budget, presumably not a lack of imagination.
2) The Doomsday Machine had possibly been roaming between universes for untold millennia. It had been chopping up planets and probably been struck by debris for hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years!
In either case, I had always assumed that the occasional whack from some stray asteroid or section of moon or planet had gummed up it's works. Rather like how the Enterprise survived the galactic amoeba, it came upon it when it was relatively "full" but the Intrepid came upon the thing when it was low in energy and hungry. The Enterprise had more time to assess the situation and react.
Perhaps the multitude of weapons on the Doomsday Machine had been deactivated one at a time from the wild beating it got from the very debris it created. I would have guessed it was supposed to destroy one or two solar systems but it just kept going.
Actually, I like your line of reasoning and agree!Maybe the "Genie" (TM) door opener got jammed a million or so years ago.
Seriously, we have little idea what that thing experienced since its activation. It may have possessed all sorts of features that were lost by the time Decker arrived on the scene. It could have had a set of hatches that sealed tight when not firing anti-proton beams or injesting planetary chucks looking not unlike a set of nasty "jaws".
Hmm? Eh, I'm just blowing smoke outa' my ass...umptions.
Sincerely,
Bill
Could be. Of course, it could be that the explosion of the Constellation was just the straw that broke the camel's back. Who knows how long that thing had been bumping around between planets, moons, and other tasty chunks of matter. Maybe it had already undergone millions of years of damage and Kirk was lucky.
The more I think of it, the more luck played an integral role in Kirk's success!
There are those who believe that Trek actually ended when Gene Coon took over some of the production duties from Gene Roddenberry towards the end of the first season..
To many of them, the ONLY good trek film was TMP... I'm sure there are a few around the forums here..
To many of them, the ONLY good trek film was TMP... I'm sure there are a few around the forums here..
Bah...
The Doomsday Machine is pretty much a fantastic episode.
The Doomsday Machine is pretty much a fantastic episode.
