USS Exeter: Why no automated warning?

[MarsWeeps]

So, in the Omega Glory, I have to wonder why the Exeter didn't broadcast an automated warning for approaching ships? Something like "Biohazard, do not board!"

I think it's much better than "If you've come aboard this ship, you're dead men!

I also wonder why the Enterprise couldn't access the Exeter's logs before beaming over. Did they even try?

 

[T'Girl]

Accessing another ship's logs, remotely, might have been beyond them in that time period. Or, them might have tried and failed for some reason. There no indication in the episode that they tried.

The Exeter's ship surgeon should have had the ability to independently active a medical quarantine beacon. Also, to initiate a subspace communication to Starfleet Command, notifying them that he had declared a medical emergency.

 

[Wingsley]

It could be that the Omega IV disease affected the Exeter crew's behavior even more than was evident. The Exeter's CMO could barely sit in the captain's chair to make the log entry. Maybe they were all violently ill or delirious before they figured out what was going on, much as what happened to the crew of the Defiant.

 

[MarsWeeps]

The Exeter's ship surgeon should have had the ability to independently active a medical quarantine beacon. Also, to initiate a subspace communication to Starfleet Command, notifying them that he had declared a medical emergency.

Exactly...there should have been at least a "canned message" that could have been sent with just a push of a button. They were able to contact Tracey and let him know what was happening so surely they had time to send a message to Starfleet.

I wondered what happened to the Exeter afterwards (not counting the fan production) - could they have decontaminated and assigned a new crew? Or maybe they just sent it to burn up in the atmosphere similar to what the Enterprise would eventually see.

 

[Zycho32]

Well, here's what we know of the disease in the episode;

-The Enterprise Landing Party spent an untold amount of time onboard the Exeter trying to work out what went wrong. Probably couldn't have been longer than an hour, if that. During that time and up to the moment where they beamed down to the planet, none of the party exhibited any signs of sickness.

-Once planet-side, it takes a very specific and detailed medical examination to uncover the truth of their infection, after Captain Tracy specified that nothing life-threatening registered on his ship's sensors when they entered the system.

-Said disease never manifests itself while planet-side, even integrating itself harmlessly into the host's system after a specific amount of time, a timetable which wasn't known to the Exeter crew.

-Tracy's comments are vague, but his comment about his crew contacting him with a distress call after they beamed back to the Exeter gives an implication of how the disease behaved once outside of its natural habitat. He doesn't specify how long it was between his crew returning to the ship and when he recieved the distress call.

Using these facts, I surmise that the disease itself had an incubation period which the Enterprise Party managed to stay within while they were on the Exeter, and that once they were on the planet, whatever made the disease dormant went into effect. However, once the incubation period was passed, then the disease reacted with a horrifying speed and efficiency usually only seen with Engineered viruses in science fiction.

 

[Herbert1]

Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Lieutenant Galloway should have beamed over to the U.S.S. Exeter wearing the hazmat suits made of shower curtain from Season One "The Naked Time."

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Why should we take anything Tracey says at face value? We saw what he was like.

 

[Timo]

I also wonder why the Enterprise couldn't access the Exeter's logs before beaming over.

Good question. But if this were possible across a few hundred kilometers, why not across a few hundred lightyears? If the communications channels of the Exeter were open, why didn't Starfleet unravel the mystery of the ship's disappearance simply by calling her from San Francisco and asking her computer/log recorder what had happened?

Quite possibly, then, the ship simply didn't engage in communications any longer. An oversight by the late Comms Officer? The last order from the scheming Captain Tracey that said Comms Officer had the dubious honor of obeying? Or simply standard procedure? It would be quite a disadvantage if a starship's communications could be remotely queried; an enemy could do that, and even if the contents were decrypted or otherwise under lock and key, the mere query would give the enemy tactical advantage.

...there should have been at least a "canned message" that could have been sent with just a push of a button.

Totally automated quarantine beacons are a bit unlikely, considering how much our TOS folks hate giving decisionmaking authority to computers. It could easily be that the Chief Medical Officer told Ensign Pensionless and Lieutenant Deadmeat to prepare the recorder marker and the quarantine beacon, respectively, and both still had these tasks crystal clear in their minds when they collapsed at their stations. At some point, even the pushing of a button would cease to be an option!

Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Lieutenant Galloway should have beamed over to the U.S.S. Exeter wearing the hazmat suits made of shower curtain from Season One "The Naked Time."

What hazmat suits? Spock and Tormolen had no idea there would be any hazardous materials down there - so they were apparently only donning warm clothing!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MarsWeeps]

Why should we take anything Tracey says at face value? We saw what he was like.

That always bothered me. A Starfleet Captain so easily and quickly subverted by the promise of eternal youth.

I'd like to think that the disease had something to do with Tracey's actions and that he wasn't always evil "waiting to happen."

 

[Robert D. Robot]

I always wonder about the concept of a Federation ship with advanced technology sending out an automated warning/distress call if the crew feels that they are all on the way to death or incapacitation.

It seems like this would be a great opportunity for an enemy, an adversary, or simply an opportunistic party to be attracted the the ship and claim it and take the technology. Maybe Starfleet is too trusting of the good intent of everyone who might receive the message.

 

[Timo]

That always bothered me. A Starfleet Captain so easily and quickly subverted by the promise of eternal youth.

I don't know about "quick"... Tracey spent six months down there, facing the genocidal savagery of the Yangs. Eternal youth would have been a relatively minor concern for him when death lurked behind every sunrise!

Tracey only got excited about his fountain-of-youth theory when Kirk arrived, and mainly because Tracey had gotten so attached to the last Kohms remaining on the planet; any excuse to stay and protect them would do, and "They know the secret of longevity!" is a pretty good one...

Going native in six months is not particularly implausible. Especially if you really wake up to every morning expecting to die, without ever seeing a fellow human again.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Patrickivan]

That always bothered me. A Starfleet Captain so easily and quickly subverted by the promise of eternal youth.

I don't know about "quick"... Tracey spent six months down there, facing the genocidal savagery of the Yangs. Eternal youth would have been a relatively minor concern for him when death lurked behind every sunrise!

Tracey only got excited about his fountain-of-youth theory when Kirk arrived, and mainly because Tracey had gotten so attached to the last Kohms remaining on the planet; any excuse to stay and protect them would do, and "They know the secret of longevity!" is a pretty good one...

Going native in six months is not particularly implausible. Especially if you really wake up to every morning expecting to die, without ever seeing a fellow human again.

Timo Saloniemi

Exactly... He was in command of one of their largest and powerful Starships. But no training or testing could screen what happens to a commander who lost his entire crew of over 400... Factor in everything you just said, Timo, and we have a completely plausible situation.

I felt bad for him.

It was a really good episode (until the very end- I can't even watch that ending anymore. Kinda like not being able to watch Spock's Brain anymore)...

 

[MarsWeeps]

Tracey only got excited about his fountain-of-youth theory when Kirk arrived

There is no evidence of exactly "when" he got excited about it. My guess is that it was long before Kirk got there. Tracey knew Starfleet would come looking for him so the idea of eternal youth was probably festering in his brain for quite awhile.

no training or testing could screen what happens to a commander who lost his entire crew of over 400

Any sympathy I may have had for Tracey vanished as soon as he vaporized Lt. Galloway. Nothing that happened to him could justify that. That's why I think the disease scrambled his brains a little.

 

[David cgc]

...there should have been at least a "canned message" that could have been sent with just a push of a button.

Totally automated quarantine beacons are a bit unlikely, considering how much our TOS folks hate giving decisionmaking authority to computers.

There's a bit of a difference between the M5 and an automatic distress call. They seem to have no problem with computer intervention on that scale.

SULU: Captain, shields just snapped on. Something heading in at multiwarp speeds.

 

[Timo]

True enough. But just like Picard doesn't want his ship to hoist the red flag without his permission, Kirk might not want his to hoist the white one. (Yeah, I know red flags weren't really all that common for "no prisoners, fight to death", and the naval flag for parley truce tended to be black rather that white, but you get the idea.)

Systems designed for life-threatening emergencies would be the easiest for the enemy to misuse. Say, triggering a fire alarm is a standard Hollywood way for the villain (or hero) to get an automated system to forget all about its high security duty and force it to do the "humane thing", e.g. open locked doors. There'd be little point in automating a quarantine beacon, and plenty of ways for the enemy (especially an onboard saboteur) to misuse one, so the sending out of communications of that sort may well be made intentionally difficult.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MarsWeeps]

It would have nice to have seen a little blurb at the end describing the fate of the Exeter.

Spock: "I understand that Starfleet will send a team to decontaminate the Exeter and bring her home for refit and a new crew."

Kirk: "Yes, she's a good ship, she deserves nothing less."

Or...

Spock: "I understand that Starfleet will send a team to salvage what they can and then set the auto-destruct so that the Exeter burns up in the atmosphere."

Kirk: "Yes, a sad end for great ship, I hope the Enterprise never meets the same fate."

Spock: "Indeed Captain."

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

A lot of TOS doesn't hang together if you ask basic logical questions about procedures, etc. Best not to demand too much from it in those regards.

 

[MarsWeeps]

A lot of TOS doesn't hang together if you ask basic logical questions about procedures, etc. Best not to demand too much from it in those regards.

True, but I'm always interested in seeing what kind of explanations people can come up with in the context of the show.

There are some good ones considering how unbelievable some of the situations can be. I suppose we shouldn't be too critical because I'm sure the writers of 45 years ago had no clue that Star Trek would some day approach the level of a "religion" where each every thing would be under the scrutiny of their "followers."

 

[ToddPence]

One question about the Exeter is why doesn't Starfleet seem to notice or care that one of its Constitution class ships has been missing for six months. Although Kirk knows that the Exeter had a previous mission to Omega IV, he seems surprised to find the Exeter in orbit there and says he "hasn't heard of any trouble".

 

[MarsWeeps]

One question about the Exeter is why doesn't Starfleet seem to notice or care that one of its Constitution class ships has been missing for six months. Although Kirk knows that the Exeter had a previous mission to Omega IV, he seems surprised to find the Exeter in orbit there and says he "hasn't heard of any trouble".

I think it's sort of implied. Why else would Kirk show up at Omega 4 if the Exeter was already patrolling there?

Plus there was Tracey's line: "I knew someone would come looking for us. I'm just sorry it had to be you, Jim."

I'm thinking that Starfleet told Kirk "Hey, we haven't heard from the Exeter in 6 months, not sure if there's a problem or not but can you go check up on them?"

I also wonder what's considered a normal time for a Starship to be incommunicado with Starfleet. Weeks?...months?