The photon controls meant torpedoes were out, the warp drive meant phasers were out (as per TMP), thus withdrawing was the only option.
What's bizarre about it? If one Federation ship attacks another, it's safe to assume the first ship is no longer crewed by Federation personnel. Kirk's question of who knew gets it across that whoever took over Reliant could not only do that, but also knew enough to essentially cripple a larger, potentially superior ship with little effort. That takes some doing, and is impressive in a very terrifying way.
Who know what they were actually thinking with the frantic rush to get the script finished. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say it was more a case of Meyer trying to “show, don’t tell”, Like having Scotty (inexplicably) bring a dying cadet to the bridge shows audience that crewmembers from the attack. Or changing the shield graphic from it’s TMP “bubble” to the dots slowly lighting sequentially to show the audience that it takes a few seconds after shields are activated for them to be effective, and that Kirks “Raise shields” order came too late. All of these could have been conveyed with dialog, but Film is a visual medium, Generally, it is better to show something than to say it in film. Of course, this is just my guess what Meyer had in mind.
As @Maurice said, it’s dramatic storytelling. We can scrutinize our favorite franchises to death, or we can overlook a few things and realize at the end of the day, it’s enjoyable television/cinema regardless of whether every frame and line of dialogue holds up as if it were real life. Not that these conversations are wrong, but WHY do we do this to our beloved series all the time? Wrath of Khan, and Star Trek as a whole, has its flaws. But it’s damn good
Not in the context of this movie, though: Kirk can fire his phasers just fine without warp drive. As can Khan, at Mutara, it being something of a plot point that Khan's damage repairs were shortsighted in giving him the ability to fight (at impulse) but not to run, while Spock's partial restoring of main, that is, warp power is what saved everybody's bacon in the end. But Joachim isn't obligated to give a complete damage report here: he's a practical man, and knows he has to get Khan to withdraw. So he says as much. Specifically pointing out every reason why they have to withdraw might be helpful, or then not - brevity has value in a hurry. No doubt Khan's ship was pretty badly beaten at that point, including the one thing Joachim doesn't specifically mention despite it being crucial: the ship has no shields (or at least we never learned of Khan restoring those at that point). Moreover, where's the problem? Spock says the hits found their mark. This need not be an issue of any deeper significance - it's just what happened. We don't have to think it somehow surprised our heroes when we see no surprise. And he showed a lot; it's not as if it wouldn't hold together in the end. That impulse would be utterly down is of course not possible, as Khan withdraws at impulse; that it would be slightly down is rather heavily implied, and that it gets restored to full glory is a nice plot point in giving Khan false confidence where what he actually needs is a working warp drive to flee and fight another day. Had Joachim failed to restore impulse, Khan would have won: he wouldn't have fought the empty fight, he would have repaired warp, and he would have been off with the secret of Genesis (plus one round to expend on a planet of his choosing). What's inexplicable about that? Scotty is showing the death to the audience, too. Only he doesn't believe in us Talosians spying on their adventures by eldritch means: his audience is Kirk, the man who killed the lad. ...A decision that sorta backfires in ST3 where the graphic has to be used to display damaged shields, and this means randomly extinguishing a few of the dots, which isn't a convincing way to show the geometry of what's actually going on. Timo Saloniemi
Indeed, virtually every TMP tie-in going back to Roddenberry's novelization said that Kirk had Scotty rig a backup bypass to power the phasers after the wormhole scene, with many also mentioning that he'd been under the impression that he'd vetoed that design choice while he was an admiral, and had been too high in the org chart to know he'd been overruled (presumably to make it seem a little less embarrassing that he didn't know such an important thing about how the ship worked now; he'd heard the modification proposed, and thought he'd put a stop to it).
My bad - “controversial” would have been the better word to use. There was a whole debate a couple years back about Scotty bringing Preston to the bridge, and my intent was to acknowledge there were differing opinions on the internal logic of that scene, not to weigh in one side or another. Interestingly, a completely new graphic was used in ST3. So they could have just as easily made a graphic that more convincingly shows what’s going on. Then again, I suppose that it makes as much sense as the shields forming in a sequential linear fashion like in ST2. In the end, I think both graphics do a good enough job of informing the audience how our hero’s are screwed at each respective moment in the film.
True, and he is highly intelligent. However, many years have passed and he's been stuck on that planet for all that time. He could gotten back up to speed once he got his hands on the Reliant but that's a stretch. Even if he was a quick study, that still doesn't take into account his massive lack of experience. It's a pretty big leap to suggest that he could competently command a star ship with so little lead time and even if you believe that he could, what about his crew? They had even less knowledge and experience than he did. I mean, which member of Khan's group could have functioned as a chief engineer? I think the answer to that is no one. All of that doesn't lessen my enjoyment of the film. It's just the kind of stuff that pops into your head when you've watched something many times. You can't help but start to pick it apart.
Khan had the use of Terrell and Chekov, even with those two Khan and his people were probably highly dependent of the ship's automatic systems. They would have been likely lost if they had to actually run the ship.
According to the novelization, and from it we know earlier iterations of the script included this, Khan and his people used the Eels on Reliant's engineering crew. As such, all they needed there was an overseer to make certain everything ran smoothly.
Not everything that's in a novelization originates from the script. That sounds a lot more like Vonda McIntyre covering what she saw as a plot hole. Heck, about one third of her Search For Spock novelization is all-original material. All the movie says about the Reliant's crew is that they're marooned on Ceti Alpha V.
In any case, everything we learn of the Augments in their other appearances suggests rapid learning skills. Heck, Arik Soong's cronies in ENT were spring chickens who had never been part of any society in their lives; at least Khan's goons (his children?) would have enjoyed a degree of education from the "Space Seed" veterans. If they still couldn't efficiently commandeer a starship, they would obviously have been of an inferior stock compared with the kids who took over that Klingon BoP in ENT. Timo Saloniemi
More than anything else, it seems like a stretch to think that Khan's "crew" could have successfully piloted a starship in so short a time. Okay, they possess the "superior intellect" but what experience do they have regarding starship operations and technical ability? Doesn't he novel of TWOK mention that Reliant's engineering crew was forced to remain aboard after having the eels implanted ? A bit more of technical nit picking here but the Enterprise phaser refit appears to have been discontinued by the time TWOK took place. If not Enterprise would not have been able to return fire with its own warp drive off line. As this was never mentioned again after TMP it would make more sense if Starfleet re evaluated having a ship lose its primary weapons system due to engine damage. I think that there is a reference in the TMP novel that Scotty was implementing a work around for the phasers that could have been incorporated in to all ships. And since the Enterprise refit was a test bed for new tech I wonder if the re route of the phasers was standard for all ships or a test on Enterprise to evaluate the pros and cons of this concept on a fleet wide scale.
This need not be in conflict with TMP. These may be two different situations - it depends on what was meant by “the mains.” In TMP, the phasers were automatically cut off as a safety measure because of the engines imbalance in order to avoid a catastrophic failure. In TWOK, for all we know there was nothing wrong with the warp engines per se, only with the power source to the warp drive. The phasers could still be channeled through the warp drive with no issues - they just wouldn’t have the added “punch” they would normally get from the warp engines because there was no power going to them. Think of it like a hybrid car that depletes its battery and has to rely on its small motor for power. Failures of the power systems, though relatively infrequent, are seen to occur numerous times theoughout the various films and episodes and we’re likely anticipated to sine deree as a result of battle, attack, stress and wear and tear. Designing a primary offensive system in such a way that it would become inoperative during these conditions - and arguably the conditions where offensive systems are most required - is orders of magnitudes more shortsighted than a safety cutoff from engine imbalance which is so rare that IIRC we only see that one time. We might be able to infer that, much like with tires/tyres “balancing” the warp engine only needs to be done one time for new warp nacelle. This is a very different case, and I can see how it could be decided that non-operation of phasers in this condition would be deemed acceptable as balancing would probably be handled by system testing well before the ship goes back into service. In TMP, Scotty seemed to think the engine balancing could have been handled with more time (his assertions that they needed 20 hours for launch likely accounted for that. I don’t think Scotty doubted that Kirk would want warp drive - he just didn’t expect it to be needed until after they cleared the solar system.
It's quite possible that the ship in ST:TMP sailed out with many redundancies and failsafes left ashore or disengaged. Installing those would be a systems integration issue, and quite possibly a time-consuming process that would in fact have formed the bulk of the time that Scotty managed to shave from the completion schedule. That is, if there's difficulty getting the engines to behave in a stable manner, the obvious solution would be to tolerate instability, perhaps by paring down the system and thus eliminating feedback elements. It's not unheard of for ships to sail out operationally with key operational gear down or highly suspect, either. A famous example is the Prince of Wales which sailed to meet the Bismarck with gun turrets that wouldn't turn. Timo Saloniemi
That makes a lot of sense. Perhaps one of these redundancies would have been a bypass system for the phasers that circumvents the warp engines as a failsafe that would cut in immediately upon a failure in the warp systems. Rushing the ship to launch likely required many of these ancilary system integrations to be deferred. As such, care must be taken when drawing conclusions on the limitations of the ship based solely on its performance in TMP.
Yup. A way to fire the phasers with auxiliary power or batteries might have been available with a bit of manual fiddling, because the automation wasn't in place yet; or then physical components were missing from assorted backups; or then the computer was locked on a hypersensitive mother goose mode until shakedown could be completed. But we can probably safely believe that while the new strength of the ship was unknown to Kirk, the actual designers were well aware of the associated new weaknesses and had already taken care of them one way or another - just not in a way that would help the heroes at that particular juncture. Timo Saloniemi