Do like with Farscape, the UT are injected microbes
TOS Science/tech changes
- Thread starter Ronald Held
- Start date
Chrissie's transcripts are not completely without errors. One can submit corrections as directed on her home page [http://www.chakoteya.net/index.html].
I thought UT implants were more 24th century tech? Ferengi had them in Little Green Men, AFAIR.
And "Sub-space frequency three nine" is what's written in the shooting script (dated May 31, 1966).
We actually do, but it's subtle. The script mentions that she "borrows" it and, lo and behold, that's what's suggested in the episode. Here's a link to a screencap from the scene.
This is also in the transcript:
RUTH: Yes. The miners are healthy and fairly young.
MUDD: Later, dear, later. Magda, did you get to your communications man?
MAGDA: The head miner is named Ben Childress. The others are Gossett and Benton.
RUTH: Yes. The miners are healthy and fairly young.
MUDD: Later, dear, later. Magda, did you get to your communications man?
MAGDA: The head miner is named Ben Childress. The others are Gossett and Benton.
Speaking of Metamorphosis:
We know the Enterprise is somewhere in the system, but it is not known how far out. The Enterprise may be dodging some of the other seven thousand asteroids, but she is still 57 minutes out and definitely not in orbit. The communicator's range appears to be at least solar system wide. (By the way, the Companion was blocking their comm's when the Enterprise first arrives in system, so, there probably was a good chance comm's would have worked at that point.)
It seems to be slow going in that system no matter what: Kirk's shuttle was doing warp (the Companion "matched" their speed at warp) but still hadn't gotten any farther out from Epsilon Canaris III than that asteroid belt. Perhaps Epsilon and Gamma Canaris are really close together (but still don't count as a simple binary) and disrupt their environment in weird ways that make spacecraft move slow and thus make it attractive for Kirk to use shuttle rather than tie down his ship.
That the asteroids themselves would be the obstacle that makes shuttles preferable to starships is undermined by Sulu's unfamiliarity with the asteroid belt...
Since dialogue is fairly neutral on the subject, I sorta prefer the model where (at any Trek timepoint) the learning of a language requires the resources of the starship computer or at least a dedicated portable computing unit, or then a commlink to said - but (after ENT) a language already learned is uploaded to an implant that allows our heroes to converse with their alien foils even after the latter confiscate all their doodads.
Timo Saloniemi
That the asteroids themselves would be the obstacle that makes shuttles preferable to starships is undermined by Sulu's unfamiliarity with the asteroid belt...
Since dialogue is fairly neutral on the subject, I sorta prefer the model where (at any Trek timepoint) the learning of a language requires the resources of the starship computer or at least a dedicated portable computing unit, or then a commlink to said - but (after ENT) a language already learned is uploaded to an implant that allows our heroes to converse with their alien foils even after the latter confiscate all their doodads.
Timo Saloniemi
Wouldn't people living in any era be hesitant to get brain implants, due to concerns about cybersecurity? You can have all the assurances in the world about your Glorious Future Utopia, but you'd never really know that your implant wasn't talking to the government, or a hacker in some distant foreign coffee shop.
Not with my brain, you don't.
Not with my brain, you don't.
I always thought that the shuttlecraft Galileo was travelling on a clearly interstellar journey when it was diverted by the companion and taken to another star system.
When the Enterprise reaches the last known position of the Galileo:
And:
When Sulu says the shuttle's trail changed to bearing two ten mark forty, nobody says that the shuttle's path leads to Gamma Canaris, the other tar in the system, or to the nearby star Gamma Canaris. But Spock said that the Galileo was being dragged to Gamma Canaris, so Gamma Canaris is a star that has been named and has a plotted position in space. The only reason why the people on the Enterprise bridge wouldn't jump to the conclusion that a trial leading in the direction to Gamma canaris must mean the shuttle was taken to to Gamma Canaris must be that they were still a number of light years from Gamma Canaris and couldn't be certain that the shuttle was taken that far and no farther.
Therefore, the voyage of the shuttlecraft Galileo to rendezvous with the starship Enterprise was clearly an interstellar voyage, even though the Companion might have dragged them much farther than they expected to go when it took them to Gamma Canaris.
I think it's generally implied the shuttles have low warp capabilities. The nacelles aren't simply decorative. Otherwise, why bother to rendezvous with the Enterprise, which is "four hours away."
NANCY: How soon will we rendezvous with that ship of yours, Captain?
KIRK: In exactly four hours, twenty one minutes, Commissioner.
If the shuttle can only run sub-light, the additional distance the Enterprise would have to cover to meet them at maximum warp would be meaningless. Literally minutes. However, if they are both travelling at warp speed, and it takes four hours to join up, that covers a lot more distance and reduces the time for the Enterprise to reach them on its own by a few hours.
NANCY: How soon will we rendezvous with that ship of yours, Captain?
KIRK: In exactly four hours, twenty one minutes, Commissioner.
If the shuttle can only run sub-light, the additional distance the Enterprise would have to cover to meet them at maximum warp would be meaningless. Literally minutes. However, if they are both travelling at warp speed, and it takes four hours to join up, that covers a lot more distance and reduces the time for the Enterprise to reach them on its own by a few hours.
The thing there is, the rendezvous was always going to happen. Why? If the shuttle could fly from star to star on its own, why mix the starship in this to begin with?
Two basic scenarios would cover this: that they unexpectedly need the medical facilities of the ship even though the trip itself could proceed solely by shuttle, and that the shuttle never could make it to another star on its own. In the latter case, though, why go to warp at all? Why not let the ship pick up the patient directly from the planet?
If the shuttle flies at very low warp, then the speed of the starship is still decisive in every respect. If we want to think that it takes her four hours to reach the shuttle, pretty much regardless of what the shuttle does, we simply need to say the shuttle is limited to warp 2 and the ship can do warp 8 without risk; the two speeds are distinct enough already in Trek lore, the former being essentially standstill compared to the latter. This would probably favor the scenario where the shuttle sortied out because the starship for some reason would be prevented from going full throttle - that is, warp close to Epsilon Canaris is slow as molasses (as so often happens in Trek), and it's better to have the shuttle clear the molasses than the ship.
If the shuttle can do better, with or without molasses, then flying to meet Scotty would help in getting Hedford to sickbay faster. But the question then becomes, why is the shuttle there in the first place, rather than the starship?
If it's molasses in and out both, then it makes sense to send the shuttle, and the ship can do something else altogether while waiting. And perhaps the ship went a bit too far before the shuttle team determined that Hedford needed to be brought to sickbay at once, hence the multi-hour delay even after the shuttle has left the immediate molasses and is already well towards Gamma Canaris (which might be the same direction Scotty is coming from - or then Hedford's destination, from which the shuttle only deviated when McCoy en route decided the Commissioner needed the immediate aid).
Timo Saloniemi
Well, IIRC the TMP novelisation says Starfleet keeps the implant Kirk uses to monitor the destruction of the Klingon ships at the start secret because of public paranoia about such stuff.
Some on this site, and I think it brilliant too, have proposed that the Enterprise is out of action finishing up its M/AM reactor and engine room upgraded (to the Season 2 configuration), so, a shuttlecraft was sent to retrieve Hedford and return to the Enterprise. Scott probably needed more time to make the ship ready, so, the shuttlecraft was its fastest solution. We don't know how long the round trip by shuttlecraft was, nor how long it took the Enterprise to get underway and start the search, we only know that it was pulled off course about 4 hours 20 minutes before the rendezvous.
Another idea is that the Federation was "hiding" the Enterprise far out of the Epsilon Canaris System since they were on the verge of a war, and we learned in S1:ATOA that you don't want to be caught in the crossfire between two warring factions. Maybe both parties would allow a small unarmed shuttlecraft to enter the system, but not a Federation Warship.
I like this explanation. It makes sense without having to get too convoluted.
FWIW, here are some excerpts from Coon’s first draft of “Metamorphosis” dated April 19, 1967. (In this initial version, Scotty was on the shuttle, which was named the Edison, and Sulu was in command of the Enterprise.)
From the Teaser, after the shuttle is grabbed by the Companion:
From Act I, not long after landing on the unknown planetoid:
From Act III, on the bridge:
From the Teaser, after the shuttle is grabbed by the Companion:
From Act I, not long after landing on the unknown planetoid:
From Act III, on the bridge:
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I was probably not the first, but I suggested it originally to cover both the change in Engine Room designs and the uniquely weird situation in Metamorphosis where the senior staff are reduced to using a shuttlecraft to conduct a rescue mission.
I concur with @drt that this explanation is brilliant in its simplicity. The Companion's home star system is stated as being in the "Gamma Canaris" region after all, the nomenclature of which suggests the next system over. I find the much more limited distances involved (astronomically speaking) an easier sell TBH. It also doesn't require a shuttle to fly a multi-light year mission which was presented only as a last ditch, almost insane option back when Kirk first did something similar in The Menagerie.
These are very illuminating, thank you! Clearly someone felt that shuttles travelling at warp speed was not that unusual.
No.The N is reversed to Ͷ.[...]On the other hand, look at this one:
http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/1x13/conscienceoftheking289.jpg
The NCC is right, but the 7 in 1701 is upside-down or something.Strange.
That's a great find. All I have to say about that is that if you reflect the image about the horizontal axis, which amusingly is the MS Paint sub-command "Flip vertical" under "Rotate", or putting it another way negate the image's pixels' row coordinates, it corrects the registry text. How the actual VFX were created on the other hand, I do not know. Said yet another way, it's up-down reflection instead of left-right reflection.On the other hand, look at this one:
http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/1x13/conscienceoftheking289.jpg
The NCC is right, but the 7 in 1701 is upside-down or something.
I believe that the same can be said of the image from "The Alternative Factor," although it's tougher to see because the text is foreshortened.
Yes it's upside down, because the "NCC-1701" was always oriented that way on the port underside of the saucer!
https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/blueprints/ccd-enterprise-sheet-3.jpg
The text on the starboard underside is always shown oriented "normally" which in fact is another way you can tell that the shot was intended to be mirrored
For example, if you were to rotate the picture 180 degrees instead of flipping it vertically, the text would still be mirrored because the letters themselves are flipped horizontally - most noticeable with the "N" and "7"
