Redshirts Of "AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD"...

Should Kirk have double checked that they were still in orbit of Triacus before beaming those two guards in space?

Also, at the end, he sets course for a Starbase instead of going back for the original guards on the planet. Forgetting more redshirts...

 

I can't recall the episode's details, but.....
Surely from a logical point of view the transporter must have some sort of built in sensor to avoid such a thing, even just to avoid beaming someone into a mountain?
This being the case it's just a poorly thought out bit of writing solely to get a moment of pathos in the episode

Or, in universe, it's the transporter chief's fault for transporting "blind".

As for those marooned on the planet they were waiting for Khan to bring the Reliant along and give them a lift.

 

This if any is a frequently asked question. The frequently offered counterpoints:

1) Instruments did not help Sulu at all in establishing that there were no daggers on his path. Why should they help the transporter operator tell that there's no planet below?

2) The starbase was en route to the planet. That's very clear from the mid-episode dialogue: the evil shower curtain entity wanted to get farther away from its lair than the starbase, and almost reached its destination before Kirk regained control. It would make no sense to first go to the planet and then double back to deliver the children to the starbase.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I like this point but were there any illusions or hallucinations when the children were not around? No children were in the transporter room in that scene.

 

This whole episode should have been beamed out into open space.

 

Jeez, it's practically a magical concept anyway. Apparently the kids didn't need to be in the room, since they weren't. Or a kid was in the corridor. Whatever it takes.

Timo, it sounds like you're saying a starbase was going someplace.

 

Maybe Crazy Matt isn't so crazy after all. This episode should be deposited in the disintegration chamber of Eminiar 7.

 

It's a good counter-counterpoint anyway. But the model would seem to pass this test, more or less. Say, we don't see the black kid (Don?) stick around in the Engineering scene where Scotty realizes the ship has gone maverick, gets physical with his underlings and loses. Theoretically he could have remained behind a grille and still maintained line-of-sight or whatever, but still.

I was accounting for stellar drift, yes.

Timo Saloniemi

 

All things considered, I would design a transporter room with a window. In general it seems like a good idea. Maybe it wouldn't have helped in this case if the children were so powerful, but at least there might have been a chance to save those men.

 

Well said. If you have transporter technology, an advancement beyond anything we can dream of doing today, you should have some automated safeguard technology to go with it.

It's preposterous to beam a person down to a planet without taking precise ranging measurements first. The transporter would need some kind of radar to get an exact distance to the destination. Otherwise, a tiny topographical feature, a little dent in the ground, could cause someone to appear in midair, fall and twist his ankle.

 

Unless someone made the children cry. Perhaps Spock could have taken away their marbles, and then glanced out the window.
Also, I said in general. A window in the transporter room could have been useful in other instances. Windows are handy. As Riker said in the TNG episode Brothers "The only way we knew the ship had come out of warp was by looking out the window."

 

Not a bad thing. I read that scene. The only reason it needed a porthole was for a camera effect to go to end credits.

 

^^^Not precisely. The scene starts and ends with Kirk looking out the porthole. At the end the camera pushes past him to go full frame on the stars, then there's a cut to a stock shot of the Enterprise speeding off and vanishing, at which point there's a HOLD on the stars before the fadeout.

 

Thanks, I never read it. Maybe it's the way I'm picturing it, but that sounds awkward. Either there's a jarring switch from one starfield to a noticeably different one (so why zoom in on the window?), or else it looks like the Enterprise is flying by outside the window (so what ship is Kirk on?). It just sounds like a clumsy editing idea.

 

Hell, no! Never leave safety to automation. The machine could prepare the scene for the operation, but the human ought to have the final say on whether to trust the automatics.

And while the "override" button should not be lightly pushed, it shouldn't take undue effort, either. Manipulating the operator into pushing it, unawares, while sleepwalking through the hooting klazons and blinding warning lights, sounds like the simplest possible mind manipulation trick - as opposed to making the guy actively do something exceptional with his hands or his mind.

And we know such measurements are taken, as per dialogue from a few episodes (starting with "The Cage" already). This doesn't always translate into the heroes knowing much about the destination beyond basic topography, but it's there nevertheless.

And the starship would need even more refined instrumentation to stay on course and avoid any daggers floating in interstellar space. And we know the ship can pretty much fly without conscious crew, even when damaged and dipped into Earth's atmosphere, so there's plenty of automation there. It's just that the crew has access to overrides and the kids have access to the crew.

Timo Saloniemi

 

The problem being that the exact same effect can be achieved by having Kirk stare at a starfield on his desk monitor. No need for a porthole. Ellison just wanted one so he could piss on GR's TV show and call it his. And if you've ever read anything Ellison has written about GR, you know that's what he wanted.

 

^^^ Yeah, no. Ellison is just Ellison and he always overwrites his screen direction. His desire for something as simple as a porthole in a first draft script is hardly unreasonable. And Ellison's rants and complaints about The Bird were post-City. You'll need to slingshot around the Sun if you actually want to rewrite history.

 

The living being operators must do a lot of calculations to prevent beaming into solid rock or other obstruction. Why the transporter systems couldn't do the same thing-- yeah, there's no reason for automated precautions to be programmed in, assuming the systems worked. Add in an override button and it wouldn't have made any difference in the end for the security guards; this is also the same show that told us a dozen episodes or so prior to how automation is bad ("The Ultimate Computer").

The dead crewmen would be difficult to find and it's already a "burial in space" so up to that point it could be almost forgiven...

It's still downright creepy thing, materializing them in outer space - which makes sense given the evil of the gorgon angel. The whole bridge crew thinks nothing of any of it afterward is a bit different. The "friendly angel" wasn't control them in any way at that point.

 

I wasn't talking about Kirk going back for the dead crewmen.

First, he beamed out the two guards thinking they were being beamed to the surface. They were to relieve the two guards already ON the surface. When they tried to beam up the two guards being relieved, that's when they discovered they were no longer orbiting the planet because they couldn't locate them.

But there were still those two living guards on the surface. Why didn't Kirk go back to retrieve them? Those redshirts were forgotten.

 

Because Kirk didn't have control of the ship at the time? And by the time he did, the episode was over. They probably went back for the men as the end credits were rolling.