Question: SE02ep09: Metamorphosis

[CorporalCaptain]

I do realize that you are using the "illusion" excuse in an attempt to muddy and invalidate the details of the episode. But you haven't gone far enough. The "illusion" really should apply to the entire Star Trek series. It would be more logical for you to argue that Spock, Pike, etc never left Talos in "The Cage" episode.

Game. Set. Match. Tournament.

 

[GNDN18]

 

[Timo]

Kirk states they have 2 hours of oxygen left but it is easy to miss if you aren't paying attention. That puts an upper limit on how much the shuttle is trailing the max warp Enterprise while coasting.

No, it doesn't - because the coasting plays no known role in the survival of Kirk.

There is zero indication that Spock would wait for the shuttle to glide to transporter range. For all we know, the shuttle is already well within that range, and possibly tractor range, too, since as said, Spock makes zero reference to anything to the contrary.

There is also zero indication that Kirk needed to wait for any length of time before getting beamed aboard. To the contrary, he has a comm channel to the ship now, but only gets a situation update once the beaming aboard is completed.

The only real wait in that scene is for the security team to arrive to arrest Spock... Which is reason enough for Spock to put certain things on standby.

KIRK: Scotty, reverse engines. Slow us down.

Which is what Kirk wants done when he has just been told that they cannot slow down. So whatever the reversing is supposed to achieve, it is not the standard method for slowing down, because that one already failed.

Basically, Kirk having to call Scotty instead of just having Sulu do the slowing down is analogous to how a seagoing ship might be forced to steer by throttling the engines on two different screws when the rudder fails. It's exceptional, and inefficient, and not really sustainable.

In "The Menagerie", too, Kirk wants the engines "reversed", but his desire there is to prevent the ship from getting underway, from present standstill. It appears that "reversing" there at least means "shutting down" rather than "running in such a way as to make the ship move backward aka decelerate". Or perhaps it means "dropping the anchor" (in subspace?), something the warp coils might be eminently capable of doing, in this weird Trek universe where there appears to be an absolute frame of reference that one can grab a hold of.

You and I have a very different way of interpreting dialogue

There is that, yes. But apparently the writers also have a very different way with the words. Including "reverse".

As for landing party makeups, it might well be there's a requirement for a minimum team, puttting extra significance to those times when Kirk insists on going alone. Who goes into that team might then be less important than having, say, sufficiently many people to carry one or two wounded out of a dangerous situation. Or one to provide firecover when the second calls for medevac beamup for the third, or whatever.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

There is zero indication that Spock would wait for the shuttle to glide to transporter range.

That's untrue. The engines go off when Spock runs the command on tape Abel Seven Baker, then after Kirk comes aboard, the engines come back on. So, we know that the engines have been shut down by the computer when Kirk beams aboard.

Sure, the engines could have come on in the meantime to maneuver the ship to recover the shuttle and/or get in transporter range, that's compatible with what's there, but also there is literally nothing there that indicates that that happened.

So, it's untrue that there is zero indication that Spock would wait for the shuttle to glide to transporter range. What's true is that there is nothing conclusively proving that Spock would wait for the shuttle to glide to transporter range, but moreover there is literally no indication that anything happened other than Spock waiting* for the shuttle to glide to transporter range, which is a very different thing from what you said.

* - Or rather the ship under computer control, as programmed by Spock.

 

[Timo]

I'm not quite seeing that. The engines are off, yes, so the ship doesn't go fetch Kirk. But there truly is no mention of Kirk coasting to the ship's transporter range. Nobody "enters range" or variations thereof to make the beaming possible.

Since there also appears to be no wait involved (Kirk isn't told anything over comms, but he doesn't seem bothered by it), we basically have the following options:

1) The shuttle was already within transporter range, even if falling behind, when stalling.
2) The heroes are dazed by the Talosians and don't behave or react sensibly.
3) ???

In the first case, we have the following options:

1) Transporters have very long range (but other eps suggest one can orbit a planet and still be outside said range!)
2) The chase had the shuttle scraping paint from the fantail of the ship, even when the ship was "pulliing ahead fast" (which means the two spacecraft were crawling, in absolute terms, so that even this "fast separation" would not suffice to separate them in the time allotted)
3) The heroes are dazed etc.
4) ???

Defaulting to the Talosian daze would be in keeping with the spirit of the episode. Otherwise, we need to decide between long range transport and extremely slow absolute speed of chase.

Combining the two would work: if the chase is at a putative shuttle top speed of warp 1.1, and Spock is not trying very hard to escape because the Talosian plan hinges on him getting caught and he is slave to the Talosians, the chase might be brief and intense and never allow the ship to exit transporter range despite doing a constant warp 1.2 or whatever. But "Mendez" and Hanson seem to agree that the ship is making the shuttle eat space dust; neither suspects any dragging of feet.

A fast shuttle would solve nothing much. The faster the chase, the less likely that coasting could have any role in bridging the gap created when Spock forges on but the shuttle does not.

In the end, we still have to choose, because the writers wrote nonsense (not unexpected when they were merely throwing together a framing story, and the nonsense stems from treknology rules). But nonsense is a valid choice in this particular story.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

No, it doesn't - because the coasting plays no known role in the survival of Kirk.

There is zero indication that Spock would wait for the shuttle to glide to transporter range. For all we know, the shuttle is already well within that range, and possibly tractor range, too, since as said, Spock makes zero reference to anything to the contrary.

There is also zero indication that Kirk needed to wait for any length of time before getting beamed aboard. To the contrary, he has a comm channel to the ship now, but only gets a situation update once the beaming aboard is completed.

The only real wait in that scene is for the security team to arrive to arrest Spock... Which is reason enough for Spock to put certain things on standby.

As you point out in the bridge scene, we wait for the security team to arrive to arrest Spock. During that time the computer doesn't indicate it has engaged the tractor beam and we know from "The Way to Eden" that the tractor beam range is greater than the transporter range. So the bridge scene tells us that the shuttle is outside of transporter range of the stopped Enterprise.

Add in the camera cut to the transporter room we have an amount of time where the shuttle has to coast within range of the Enterprise's tractor beams and that cannot exceed 2 hours which is the amount of oxygen left in the shuttle as per the episode.

Which is what Kirk wants done when he has just been told that they cannot slow down. So whatever the reversing is supposed to achieve, it is not the standard method for slowing down, because that one already failed.
...
There is that, yes. But apparently the writers also have a very different way with the words. Including "reverse".

Not sure why you're trying to muddy the waters here. You wrote "this isn't an attempt by Kirk to slow down as such."

Good point. But this isn't an attempt by Kirk to slow down as such.

And I merely pointed out that Kirk is attempting to slow down the ship. Whether it is a standard method doesn't matter as it is apparently one of the methods to slow down.

KIRK: Scotty, reverse engines. Slow us down.​

A fast shuttle would solve nothing much.

Other than staying within 2 hours of the Enterprise at maximum warp.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Not sure why you're trying to muddy the waters here.

Tellarites do not argue for reasons, blssdwlf. They simply argue.