The Genesis Sunrise

[Admiral_Sisko]

This scene has always moved me, as it happens at a pivotal moment in The Search for Spock. Kirk has defeated Kruge, but must still find a way off planet and return Spock to Vulcan. I wonder if the scene is supposed to contain an inherent symbolism, because I've always interpreted this scene as "the world is ending, but there is hope for a brighter future," as evidenced by the sunrise. What do the rest of you think?

 

[Timo]

"Wasn't this the direction of the sunset the last time we looked?"

Timo Saloniemi

 

[22 Stars]

I like it, the matte painting could be better but the music cue is wonderful. Also, what star is that!!

 

[DonIago]

Isn't that what Kirk sees when he's looking down after knocking Kruge off the ledge? I always thought he was looking into the core of the planet...the overhead part would be the other side of the chasm they fell into.

 

[Admiral_Sisko]

Isn't that what Kirk sees when he's looking down after knocking Kruge off the ledge? I always thought he was looking into the core of the planet...the overhead part would be the other side of the chasm they fell into.

No, it's not. The photo I posted is what he sees as he's climbing back up the rock wall next to the ledge where Kruge fell. He's standing as he looks into the distance, and he can see the horizon clearly.

 

[DonIago]

I think based on what I thought was the angle of his head I thought he was looking down, not "out", as it were.

 

[Timo]

The skyline is exactly the same as in that "ice age" image, with the same higher ground close to the camera, but with some new lava flows in the terrain in between.

And there's something weird going on with the planet all right: when Saavik and David settle in a cave after the snowstorm, they witness a slow sunset over this horizon, and when Kirk and friends beam down into a dusky landscape and then wander to the cave and the Klingons there in near-darkness, we supposedly see the sun setting in the same overall direction again. But then, brief moments later, the sun rises again from behind the same horizon! Should we take this as a sign that the planet's surface is massively sinking in that direction? Or that the planet's rotation has been reversed?

Also, the spot at which the sun sinks when David watches is significantly to the right of the spot at which the sun rises when Kirk watches. Even assuming a very small planetoid with a nearby horizon (say, the original Regula rock), that can't be due to mere parallax in camera placement...

Are we perhaps near the poles, looking north or south towards the equator, and the sun wobbles up and down on an acute sinusoidal curve as the planet both rotates and precesses?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MacLeod]

Sunrise/Sunset are a visual cue that TV/movies use.

A sunrise is usually associated with a new beginning.

Sunset is a little different, as it can mean a variety of things depending on the context, it quite often means an ending of some sort.

i.e. in SW: AOTC at the very end we see cthe mass ranks of clone troopers and ships taking off with a sunset in the background added to the music cues it's bascially saying it's all downhill from here.

At the end of the Last crusade we see our herpos riding into the setting sun, which is a way of saying the end.

 

[Kemaiku]

They did say the planets crust was breaking up. I tend to think the core and mantle were never stable, but only in the final death throws of the planet did the crust really break up as well.

Interesting to think that other parts of the planet were probably already under water, completely volcanic landscapes etc, this was one of the last surviving parts of the planet, it's plate could have dipped sharply and brought the star back into view.

 

[Tom]

Wher did the sun even come from? The genesis wave made the planet out of the nebula gases and the Reliant, but did it make the sun too?

 

[TiberiusMaximus]

That's what I want to know!

 

[Kemaiku]

Wher did the sun even come from? The genesis wave made the planet out of the nebula gases and the Reliant, but did it make the sun too?

It's the Regula star, same appearance to the one illuminating Regula 1 earlier in TWoK. The Mutara Nebula and Regula 1 seem to occupy roughly the same part of the goldilocks zone of the system, just a few minutes at full impulse apart (any closer and it may well have ended up the new planets moon).

There was a very lengthy discussion on this in sci-tech recently.

 

[Tom]

Well the nebula was pretty bright so maybe there was a sun nearby.

 

[Kemaiku]

Regula 1 was also very brightly illuminated and as I said they're nearby, so it seems the system has a bright star or it's goldilocks zone is closer to it than Earth is to Sol.

 

[SonicRanger]

Nebulae are usually star-forming areas. The nebula easily could have had at least one star.

Or it was really a protoplanetary nebula around a sun.

 

[Timo]

The "at least one more" idea doesn't explain where the original Regula star would go: all the Genesis action is within spitting distance of Regula the star and Regula the rock, so the Genesis planet ought to have two stars on its sky if another one somehow was created, or emerged when the nebula was dispersed.

The simplest assumption is that we're seeing one and the same star all the time. And quite possibly the Genesis planet is also the Regula rock, simply transformed by Genesis exactly as the designers intended. Not only is the distance right, but the nearby horizon suggests the size is the same as well.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[R. Star]

Nebulae are usually star-forming areas. The nebula easily could have had at least one star.

Or it was really a protoplanetary nebula around a sun.

I had always just figured the Genesis thing accelerated the nebula star creating process and popped out a star. Why not? The rest of it's pretty much technobabble magic too.

 

[Timo]

The two big problems with that have been discussed frequently...

1) The Genesis technology wasn't flexible. It was designed to turn a dead planet into a living one, not to turn a nebula into a star, and even its creators could not "cram another byte into it". It must have been struggling already with being detonated so far away from any planets; it would be rather logical to assume that the Genesis planet only emerged when the effect hit the preexisting planet Regula.

2) New stars don't explain what happened to the old one. A crippled starship won't get far enough at low impulse speed to hide the preexisting star from view.

Here's a bonus one:

3) The planet was a failure, and apparently began to spin out of control and perhaps even break apart when we last saw it. The star didn't show signs of corresponding failure, though; could it be a Genesis product in that case? Granted, Spock didn't explode, either...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DonIago]

With respect to #1, how do we know how flexible the Genesis technology was? We know what it was "designed" to do, but any computer programmer will tell you that just because something's designed to behave a certain way doesn't mean that you'll get the expected results. I'll grant your point that they'd apparently hit some sort of limitation, but perhaps they hit that limitation precisely because they were trying to keep Genesis adaptable.

With regards to point #3, as there've been at least two theories for why the Genesis planet failed (protomatter, the target being a nebula rather than an existing planet), and, as you pointed out, Spock continued to survive, perhaps the failure point would impact a planet but not a star.