A Thought About Ceti Alpha VI
- Thread starter JonnyQuest037
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I'd blame Terrell and Chekov over Kirk and even Starfleet.
Except for Mudd had the opportunity somewhere along the line to escape his confinement. The summary justice doesn't bother me, if Starfleet disagreed when Kirk filed his reports, they could've sent someone to pick up either Mudd or Khan and his followers.
That point has been overlooked. If Starfleet disagreed, they could have relocated the Augments. Now Mudd is an other matter, as he is no risk to the Federation and may not have any warrents for his arrests at that time
Mudd broke jail, stole a space cruiser, and falsely sold a patent to an alien species, and that's only the crimes that he committed between "Mudd's Women" and "I, Mudd." I think it's safe to assume that there were warrants out for his arrest. Hell, for all we know, his license to fly a space cruiser was still suspended.
All that is likely true, but is it worth the effort of Starfleet to send a ship to pick up Mudd? Really do not want any of the androids to hijack it
For the longest time--we were told that the idea of self exploding planets was bogus.
About that:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929242.000-tick-tick-boom-the-earth-spits-out-a-moon/
The retcon on the ST:TWOK DVD posits a passing black hole:
http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7984333
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Mystery_Behind_Ceti_Alpha_VI
Not so fast:
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/12/research-suggests-blackhole-or-wormhole.html
So there may be a bit of room to play.
I might suggest a combination.
A rich explosion partially set off by the pulsar we see behind Reliant--that earlier cleared the Ceti system of debris, perhaps?
I will say the "planetary nebula" itself was the remains of Ceti alpha six, mixed in with the mutara nebula--hidden by it. Maybe that wasn't a pulsar at all behind reliant--but the still hot core of Ceti Alpha six.
Mutara was already close by and the debris from the planet hidden within it--and recombined by the torpedo.
I've always liked the Greg Cox "Reign In Hell" explanation that a rogue black hole destroyed Ceti Alpha VI and, in the process, pulled V off its orbit enough to cause the cataclysmic climate changes.
As to why the Reliant thought V was VI, the only explanation is that it was a 6-planet system, and the Reliant approached the first planet on the perimeter of the system (now V) and just assumed that was their assignment.
Of course, the real answer is that it makes no sense.
As to why the Reliant thought V was VI, the only explanation is that it was a 6-planet system, and the Reliant approached the first planet on the perimeter of the system (now V) and just assumed that was their assignment.
Of course, the real answer is that it makes no sense.
It has never been stated, in the film or otherwise, that the Mutara sector was anywhere near the Ceti Alpha system. Indeed, it was kind of obvious from how long it would take Reliant to get back to Regula from Ceti Alpha that they were many light years away.
That's correct. At a standard warp trip (whatever that is), Ceti Alpha is at least 3 days from the Mutara Sector.
For all we know, he did. And 23rd century telescopes would presumably be powerful enough to witness such things as planets exploding.
He didn't need to. The ship's sensors would have done that for him and alerted him to a discrepancy in the number of planets in the system.
More specifically, the Ceti Alpha system is 3 travel days or so from the Regula system. The Mutara Sector (as mentioned in ST3:TSfS and nowhere else) is merely where the latter system is located; for all we know, Ceti Alpha is also located within the Mutara Sector.
If you need a telescope to see a planet exploding, you won't see it happen - after all, you will have to point the telescope there first, and Khan would have no reason to point his telescope there.
Not until the explosion caused his own planet to develop nasty symptoms, that is. But overcast skies might be the first of those symptoms.
We know starship sensors don't scan for such things unless specifically told to, as per "Doomsday Machine". And again this rather naturally flows from the fact that nobody would care. Starships don't have to pay heed to planets that are not target planets, and while random alerts in the 24th century can go off for the weirdest of things (like positronic signals), this doesn't happen in the 23rd yet.
Timo Saloniemi
To nitpick, when Spock in "Space Seed" tells Khan that Ceti Alpha V is a nice place to live in, the Enterprise is still en route to that system and therefore has obtained the knowledge in advance. In advance of the whole scene, too, because Kirk is also in on the specs of CA, and has summoned the very meeting with this knowledge in mind.
Is that because the ship's sensors probe ahead? Or because there's archived knowledge available? The nature of CA V could have been easily established by conventional telescopes back in the 21st century already, as it's not significantly farther from Earth than the location where Khan's sublight ship was found. Realtime data would be lacking from lightspeed telescope observations, but Starfleet wouldn't need realtime to know that CA V is "habitable, although a bit savage, somewhat inhospitable".
Timo Saloniemi
A starship entering a system needs to scan all of the major bodies to determine major and minor gravity wells. Dust and gas need to be reflected away at reasonable impulse speeds. A long departed mini back hole might not be directly detected but it's influence should be inferred.
Gravity wells don't matter: as said, there could be black holes directly on the path, and all the helmsman would need to do is push a bit harder on the throttle (much as Sulu supposedly does in "Tomorrow is Yesterday"). Starships can rather visibly do hundreds of gee, so a puny little planet or star has nothing on them.
Dust and gas in turn gets pushed away automagically. The ship doesn't need to alter course in order to cope; the operator probably isn't even alerted or informed.
To claim that distant planets (present or missing) would have an effect on a starship is much like saying that distant mountains have an effect on an eighteen-wheeler and require course corrections to allow her to be driven safely from town to town. Sure, there's gravitic pull, but the rig wouldn't notice even if she tried. Sure, there may be a bit of an incline, but altering course would be much more trouble than pushing harder on the pedal.
In short, paying attention to celestial mechanics while navigating a starship is pathologically pennywise. It offers no benefits whatsoever.
Timo Saloniemi
Dust and gas in turn gets pushed away automagically. The ship doesn't need to alter course in order to cope; the operator probably isn't even alerted or informed.
To claim that distant planets (present or missing) would have an effect on a starship is much like saying that distant mountains have an effect on an eighteen-wheeler and require course corrections to allow her to be driven safely from town to town. Sure, there's gravitic pull, but the rig wouldn't notice even if she tried. Sure, there may be a bit of an incline, but altering course would be much more trouble than pushing harder on the pedal.
In short, paying attention to celestial mechanics while navigating a starship is pathologically pennywise. It offers no benefits whatsoever.
Timo Saloniemi
The fact of the matter is, Khan knew the planet exploded. Debating about how he knew is just semantics. He knew, period, and there was no reason why he would have made something like that up.
The Reliant's entire mission was to scan for suitable planets for the Genesis experiment. I don't care about "The Doomsday Machine" because that's irrelevant to what we're talking about.
The Reliant was in the Ceti Alpha system. As far as I know, they weren't just looking at a specific planet in that system; they were looking for any planet that was a suitable candidate, and the planet they thought was Ceti Alpha 6 seemed to fit the bill. For all we know they also scanned Ceti Alphas 1 to 4 as well before that.
Now to get back to the original question: The only way I can think of as to why the Reliant's crew thought Ceti Alpha 5 was Ceti Alpha 6 was if both planets were in the exact same orbit around the Ceti Alpha star. Now I'm no scientist, but I'd guess that the odds of that are pretty slim.
I would think they would suppose that if Ceti Alpha V were at least near enough the proper orbit for Ceti Alpha VI then they would suppose they were at VI and that the earlier records were mistaken. After all, mistakes happen, in real life, yes, but the whole movie is full of people making mistakes.
If you're on the scene and the planet is (say) five million miles away from where the records say it should be --- well, what's more plausible? That you're at the wrong planet or that your records of this supremely ignored star system have a glitch nobody's cared enough to correct? (Tricky problem in the Star Trek universe, admittedly, given how much worlds can get tossed around and blown up there.)
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