The Galileo Seven (no relation to Blake's)

Chekov could've taken lessons from him.

Robert

 

The character Gaetano should have been Court Martialled

 

Instead, he died. {sad trombone}

 

If anything, I'd court martial Spock for this one. He prevented his men from defending themselves when they were under lethal attack.

 

Honestly, they should have just crowded into the shuttlecraft and stayed there in relative safety unless they needed to step outside.

Also, no one ever seems to discuss trying "stun".

 

Which would have been fine until the creatures started pounding on it with rocks...

 

At which point you open the hatch and blast them.

 

Tactically, it's a fatal mistake to let your enemy bottle you up in a vulnerable box that only has an exit large enough for one person (maybe two at the most) to shoot out the door while an unknown number of savages can throw boulders and spears inside.

As for stun? I seem to remember that at least one of the aliens got hit with a phaser on his shield and it had no effect. The creature just threw the shield at them. Unless you're willing to use disintegrate, I don't think it will do much to them.

And I don't think the writers would allow the characters to use a disintegrate setting.

 

Spock was unwilling to kill them.

 

It's the same thing, really.
Don't you think?

 

What about the Prime Directive?
Had that been invented yet?
You know don't let the natives see your advanced weaponry. You'd rather die first etc? Or doesnt it apply to real primitives who are too unsophisticated to understand?
Do spaceman who come to your planet have a right to come blasting you on your own planet to give you a bloody nose to teach you a lesson?

Also why suddenly didn't stun work? The creatures looked humanoid. Sounds like a plot device to me.
Also they said the creatures were occupying every square inch of the planet. Youd think the planet would be full of food then. It looked like a wasteland to me. I'd be thinking they'd be wanting to eat poor Gaetano.

 

And it's better to send guys out into an unknown, murky, misty landscape where the natives know the layout and have the high ground and can assault them from any direction?

And they didn't know the natives could pick up an hammer the ship with boulders until fairly late. That's approaching the problem with 20/20 hindsight.

The script doesn't specify what the phaser settings are. But there's this...



...but the episode shows the beam hitting the outstretched shield, not the creature. So it's unclear what the weapon was set to other than "not a killing dose".

 

Unless the plane is ready to lift off, letting yourself get boxed inside is never a good survival strategy, unless you're planning for a last stand.

Look, the writers were doing their best to re-create the scenario from "Five Came Back."

That means mysterious unseen primitives attacking and whittling the numbers down to create tension and suspense. So, even if they did use stun settings, the writers would say the creatures were too big for it to work. The just couldn't let you see a body. For one, it would break the mystery. For two, it would show how bad the creature masks were. (There are stills somewhere, and they do not look anywhere near as convincing as what your imagination or mine can come up with.)

(Come to think of it. Only five did come back!)

Side note: The search pattern of the Enterprise looking for the shuttlecraft reminds me of an old joke.
The Murasaki(sp?) stellar effect the shuttle was lost in encompasses several star systems. (I don't remember how big an area.) So, they search on the ONE habitable planet in that huge area.

Did you ever hear the one about the drunk looking for his keys? He's looking under a lamp post when someone asks him, "Is that where you dropped them?" "No, I dropped them over there in the gutter... but over here I can see..."

 

The plot device was that the phasers were drained for fuel. After a point, either the phasers were all drained by Scotty, or they were drained by firing them at natives (at high power), and though not mentioned in the episode, then they don't have enough fuel to get off the planet. Strongly implied in the episode was that every drop of fuel mattered.

 

The thing I found fascinating about Latimer's death was how the force of the spear changed him into somebody else before he died!!!
JB

 

Again, something we know in hindsight, because that’s not the case when they first encounter the natives.

 

True, but I assumed that by the time the natives started pounding on the shuttlecraft in your scenario was about the same time it occurred in the episode...at which point, phasers were identified as the fuel alternative. Maybe without the "show of force" from Spock, they would have attacked the shuttlecraft sooner? Or later? Or at all?

 

^^^Mockup by moi


They fully planned to show the creatures. Several shots near the end were cut but we've seen no documentary evidence as to why. We can assume because the makeup didn't hold up, but it's also possible NBC found them too alarming looking for the early evening timeslot. It's all guesswork.

 

The authors of Star Trek: Lost Scenes did something similar. You should check out their work on pages 78 and 79.

 

Yeah... I recall that, but I am traveling and don't have the book at hand.