Killer Asteroid
- Thread starter MAGolding
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Yup. Isn't the Trek-O-Verse so much more enriched because of that?
There are very few episodes of Star Trek that I truly can't stand. This is one of them
This episode doesn't bother me because (like many other eps) the outstanding shipside scenes rescue it. The planet scenes mostly grate except that it was ballsy to kill off a pregnant Miramanee, especially in the 60s.
And neither did the writers. But we can always plug the holes:
The bigger question is why they would wish to divert any asteroids at all. It's not as if it's in the Starfleet Charter or anything. But the place was a scientific mystery (apparently terraformed to Earth specs against all odds, being so unlike Earth to start with), plus it surprisingly hosted humans. The heroes would need pressing reasons to try the diverting, and the investigation was required to provide those.
Not sure what it could have hoped to accomplish after the initial party conducted a perfectly thorough search, at McCoy's insistence and against Spock's logic.
Similarly, sending either the ship or the shuttle to search for Kirk after the diverting failed would appear futile: if the Captain simply is nowhere to be found, searching isn't going to help. Better find out all they can about the strange magic that can thwart their search attempts.
McCoy stalled the operation, Spock burned out the engines to compensate. Although we don't know how close he came to accomplishing the task.
There's no "maximum sublight": if a rock travels at 99% lightspeed, another rock can always travel twice as fast (but it still won't break lightspeed - it's a point-of-view issue).
But we might wish to postulate a local speed limit anyway. Perhaps there's an interstellar medium (be it real dust or fictional subspace goo) that stops the Enterprise from going faster than the rock on impulse engines?
Yet this cannot be the reason Spock thinks they will precede the rock to the planet by just four hours. We see from the visuals that the ship is basically touching the rock and that she's making zero effort at moving faster than it does (she's even pointing her bow towards the rock most of the time); "four hours" must refer to a final sprint Spock somehow feels he's entitled to take.
Why's the rock moving at all? Might be natural causes. Might be part of the terraforming project, with rocks artificially accelerated, to be decelerated at destination by the Obelisk, perhaps ultimately to be dropped to the planet. Might be an attempt by forces unknown to destroy the planet. In any case, it's not supposed to be unique - the heroes speak of this "asteroid alley" where the planet should be constantly bombarded to dust but for some reason isn't.
The story begins with a mystery. It ends with the mystery left mostly unsolved. Which is fun in its own right, I guess.
Timo Saloniemi
The search party would have been present to see Kirk walking around the local village, waited for a opportunity to approach him.
Look there's some implication that the Enterprise was always four hours ahead and that both it and the asteroid are travelling at some maximum speed. Were they travelling together in some bubble - was the Enterprise hitchhiking in some asteroid wake ?
I like the idea that Kirk is suspicious of the planet and thats why he spends so long investigating instead of diverting the asteroid straight away. And maybe the asteroids might be used to protect the experimental planet. Keeping other spacefarers away. Except when things went wrong. After all they said on the planet the asteroids were diverted quite often.
I don't think there's anything wrong with the Enterprise diverting the asteroid and saving a primitive civilisation. Its not TNG yet.
What happened to the people on the planet afterwards. Did the Federation just leave them there as an experiment?
But if the heroes for some reason do assume Kirk would somehow resurface, then there's no pressing timetable there. Spock's plan of going back after two months is fine and well.
If so, then how come Spock can suddenly do a spurt at the very end of the trip and get a four-hour lead on the rock when the visuals very clearly show he has none during the "coasting" part?
Indeed, the skies had darkened "thrice since last harvest" - all without the help of a skilled medicine man! Clearly, Kirok's role was superfluous, and the deflector would have worked just fine on its own. Thankfully, Spock's random button-pushing didn't do any harm to this auto-deflection functionality!
Plenty wrong with diverting something that needs no diverting - Spock could already tell that there was no asteroid damage on this planet that was constantly under asteroid bombardment.
And if Kirk wanted to save the natives, his best course would probably be to beam them up. They beamed down next to a random village, and lo, the planet's one and only deflector obelisk was there! So, no other villages on the planet.
Or then plenty of villages, all with their own deflectors (after all, you'd prefer global coverage let you be blindsided at a key moment), and the death of a single medicine man would do no great harm, especially as his role would only be as a backup and repairman if something did go wrong with the automation once per five centuries or whatnot.
Timo Saloniemi
Do not need many asteroid deflector on the planet,although if there were many of them,should they not be detected from orbital scan?
What if Kirk had fallen off a cliff or slipped into a river or had a heart attack or been captured by natives - a landing party (in disguise) might be able to help him. Dr McCoy should have been left there too just in case.
I wonder how long they'd been monitoring that super-fast asteroid anyway Did the Enterprise just chance encounter it and projected its course when wandering in space? (Was the Enterprise that far out in space that no-one could have come to their aid in 3 months?.) So planets get hit by asteroids everyday so the Enterprise can't spend all its time deflecting asteroids from every planet in the galaxy I understand. However when one super-big asteroid is headed for an inhabited planet would you just assume the planet has a deflector system in place (maybe like future Earth) just because it hadn't been hit yet. And what does it matter if you just deflect it if you've got a big ship with big phasers doing nothing (unless you burn out your engines doing so)
The landing party already searched for Kirk. Unless he was whisked beyond their search range by a vehicle or a teleporter, they would have found him - or then identified the cave or cliff responsible for his disappearance. And if he indeed were kidnapped by advanced people capable of thwarting the search, then a search party loitering in the area would do no good and haste would be unwarranted.
Logs or opening dialogue often suggest the heroes have stumbled onto the current situation fairly recently - else why would they be giving all the expositionary information only now, and not long before the episode started? This episode follows the pattern, with the big news of this planet being Earth despite being physically incapable of being Earth still hot news that Spock comments on. No doubt the ship sensed this mystery planet first, and then scanned for the unusual surroundings as well, discovering the fact it exists at the bullseye of an asteroid shooting gallery etc.
The planet being immune to asteroids is established there already, though, so perhaps our heroes spotted the single approaching calamity first, decided on a faulty and unnecessary plan of action, and only then explored the mystery of the unharmed planet, failing to turn their discoveries into a better plan of action? Admittedly, Spock had very little time to think. But after he had made a mess of it, he would have more time, and could decide on the inaction that McCoy finds so irritating.
The episode is pretty explicit that help is far away. The ship hasn't lost comms, only engines, and yet Spock cannot have a tugship for help in the first two months of the adventure.
Timo Saloniemi
Logs or opening dialogue often suggest the heroes have stumbled onto the current situation fairly recently - else why would they be giving all the expositionary information only now, and not long before the episode started? This episode follows the pattern, with the big news of this planet being Earth despite being physically incapable of being Earth still hot news that Spock comments on. No doubt the ship sensed this mystery planet first, and then scanned for the unusual surroundings as well, discovering the fact it exists at the bullseye of an asteroid shooting gallery etc.
The planet being immune to asteroids is established there already, though, so perhaps our heroes spotted the single approaching calamity first, decided on a faulty and unnecessary plan of action, and only then explored the mystery of the unharmed planet, failing to turn their discoveries into a better plan of action? Admittedly, Spock had very little time to think. But after he had made a mess of it, he would have more time, and could decide on the inaction that McCoy finds so irritating.
The episode is pretty explicit that help is far away. The ship hasn't lost comms, only engines, and yet Spock cannot have a tugship for help in the first two months of the adventure.
Timo Saloniemi
They had less than 30 minutes for the search. So I'm not convinced that they would have been satisfied they'd covered everywhere no matter how many search parties they had - which had to keep out of sight.
What if he was in one of the tents?
I think Spock would have been better off leaving McCoy there - just to avoid the nagging.
What if he was in one of the tents?
I think Spock would have been better off leaving McCoy there - just to avoid the nagging.
Subspace communications need the "subspace" engines perhaps?
This would indeed help explain a great many things...
Leaving McCoy behind might help, again with a great many things. But Spock was willing to devote four hours to a search for Kirk at the end of the two-month run, and the choice of the number of hours appeared to be his and his alone (since we learn of no other reason). Would it have helped if those four hours were at the beginning of the two months instead?
I mean, if Kirk had injured himself, he'd probably be dead after thirty minutes already if he was going to die at all. But there are scenarios where he wouldn't be. If he was kidnapped by 'em injuns, timely extraction would probably be superior to a two-month wait. Etc.
Spock probably didn't think they would find Kirk alive no matter what - he would be the first to believe that his 30-minute search had been sufficiently effective. OTOH, he would also be thinking he would be back in a jiffy, rather than in two months...
Timo Saloniemi
Leaving McCoy behind might help, again with a great many things. But Spock was willing to devote four hours to a search for Kirk at the end of the two-month run, and the choice of the number of hours appeared to be his and his alone (since we learn of no other reason). Would it have helped if those four hours were at the beginning of the two months instead?
I mean, if Kirk had injured himself, he'd probably be dead after thirty minutes already if he was going to die at all. But there are scenarios where he wouldn't be. If he was kidnapped by 'em injuns, timely extraction would probably be superior to a two-month wait. Etc.
Spock probably didn't think they would find Kirk alive no matter what - he would be the first to believe that his 30-minute search had been sufficiently effective. OTOH, he would also be thinking he would be back in a jiffy, rather than in two months...
Timo Saloniemi
The four hour deadline wasn't arbitrary, it was how long they had until the asteroid would hit the planet ("...that asteroid will be four hours behind us all the way.").
Spock couldn't spend four hours at the beginning, because the Enterprise was only powerful enough to divert the asteroid if they left for it within 30 minutes. The closer it comes to the planet, the greater the angle of deflection is needed. And nobody knew at that point that the planet was equipped with a stronger deflector beam.
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But that can't be. We see the ship is a couple of seconds ahead of the asteroid in all the shots during the two-month coasting towards the planet. Or if that distance is supposed to be four hours' worth, then the asteroid must be significantly bigger than the planet!
Also, this can't be, because "all the way" makes no sense - the ship is free-floating next to the rock, so Spock could use mere steering thrusters to gain a lead during those two months, and at the very least his four hours could become four and a half (although that would be piss-poor showing for a mighty spaceship).
Indeed, we get a better minimum estimate from the episode itself already. Spock's ship must retain enough engine power to maneuver the ship to beaming distance of the Obelisk village. Apply that for two months and you are well ahead of the rock - the better, the faster the asteroid is going, because the effort needed to slow down for beaming then is all the more impressive.
If Spock isn't outright lying, then he must be making a command decision not to move ahead of the rock even when he can.
Timo Saloniemi
He will be 4 hours ahead right before impact, with only thrusters?
He claims he will be four hours ahead "all the way". Also, for most of the two months, he makes zero attempt at gaining speed - his ship floats with her bow pointing towards the rock. Neither of these facts is a good fit for the idea that his best efforts would win them a four-hour lead on the rock.
Then again, we have to disregard the "all the way" bit anyway, as Spock's claim is bracketed by establishing shots where the ship is not separated from the rock by four hours, unless we assume the rock moves at about 500 meters per hour.
It's too bad that neither the visuals nor the dialogue make any physical sense, separately or put together.
Timo Saloniemi
Then again, we have to disregard the "all the way" bit anyway, as Spock's claim is bracketed by establishing shots where the ship is not separated from the rock by four hours, unless we assume the rock moves at about 500 meters per hour.
It's too bad that neither the visuals nor the dialogue make any physical sense, separately or put together.
Timo Saloniemi
Please allow for some visual license in the fx shots. They had to be composed for a 4:3 frame and easily understood by "average Joe" people watching "old style, 20th century" TV sets. The ship and the asteroid both had to be in frame, and they both had to be big and plain as day. (Look at how much smaller actor credits have gotten at the top of Act 1 in today's HD shows. Text was bigger in 1968 for a reason.) A similar problem occurs in "The Corbomite Maneuver" when the ship and the cube are too close together and not scaled to match the dialogue.
We can interpret "all the way" as summation of the end result of the trip back to the planet. In other words, "The whole way back to the planet, we will know that the space rock will get there only four hours after we do." It just has to go without saying that Spock got all possible speed out of the crippled Enterprise.
This is still visually contradicted, GROSSLY rather than subtly, by the fact that Spock keeps the butt of his ship pointed at Kirok's planet throughout the journey. The visuals really do their damnedest to establish that Spock isn't lifting a finger to get to the planet early. Which is exactly why McCoy is one-and-a-half steps away from strangling him.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
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