Killer Asteroid

Okay, that's if you take the fx literally. But as you know, the "ship traveling backwards" shot was really just the asteroid rendezvous shot being played in reverse, due to budget and time limitations.

But I can still pull this chestnut out of the fire. Let's consider that the Enterprise was seriously whipped after it's battle with the asteroid. So they used an impulse engine burn to get on course for the planet, barely ahead of the asteroid.

When they finally arrive at the planet, they're going to need another impulse burn to slow down and settle into orbit. If the impulse engines are nearing their last gasp, Spock has to save half of their fuel for slowing down, which means he is not at liberty to just keep accelerating at will. He can get up to a certain speed, whatever half the fuel will give him, and that's it.

Therefore, in the backward footage, the Enterprise is coasting toward the planet at all available speed, during which time the bow can point in any direction they like. They could even do an Apollo-to-the-moon style barbeque roll to distribute the sun's rays evenly on the hull. [I say they would never waste precious maneuvering thruster fuel trying to eek out a few seconds of advantage. The cost-reward analysis is terrible.]

 

Did the phaser burst slow down the asteroid any? Maybe that gave the Enterprise the extra 4 hours.

 

I tend to think that if Kirk is seen gunning down a Klingon, he's not "actually" resurrecting the baddie in a piece of recycled, played-backward VFX, yes.

...This excuse would work better if the same setup didn't reappear in the remastered version.

Indeed. And a much more severe one than the one they have been sustaining until then, to balance out the shorter "burn" time. (Although Spock would probably do the severe burst first, in the forward direction, and then start the slow deceleration during which Scotty could implement repairs on the impulse engine.)

But why turn the ship around for that? Impulse braking, indeed all braking in Trek, is achieved without turning. Heck, we might argue it's achieved without propulsion, perhaps by dropping an anchor of some sort (in subspace?). After all, acceleration in Trek takes time, but braking is instantaneous, and sometimes happens when a ship or craft loses power.

The visuals are still unfortunate in showing no difference in distance to the asteroid between the beginning (when Spock is firing at it) and the end (when Spock is but a day short of returning to the planet). It's pretty damn hard to shake away the visual impression of the rock more or less touching the ship at that "four hours" separation when watching the relatively slowly unfolding hijinks of the landing party down on the planet... I mean, if the ship was in the same frame as the rock, then the planet definitely ought to be in the frame, too, when the deflector beam hits!

Timo Saloniemi

 

If we assume that the asteroid and the Enterprise are travelling close to the speed of light then the distance between them would be approximately the distance from the Sun to Neptune. Pretty hard to get them both in the same FX shot then

 

Asteroid should not be moving faster then a few tens of km/s.

 

That's true, but something's got to give. If the asteroid were traveling at a normal speed for asteroids, and we took a while at warp 9 to reach it, then the asteroid should not reach the planet for hundreds of years or more. The episode has some problems of scale and distance.

Maybe the narrative is a little misleading, and we were only at warp 9 for a second or two. And the asteroid is only the size of Yorurth's moon. Then it starts coming together.

 

Clearly the asteroid extends into subspace, allowing it to travel faster than a traditional asteroid.

 

Does anyone know the maximum sublight speed possible? In VOY it was said to be 1/4 light speed.
Which is still pretty fast for an asteroid and doesn't explain why the Enterprise can only match the asteroid speed exactly.

 

.25c may not be Canon,just fan based?

 

It's not that bad.

 

I'm trying to remember back to my high-school/1st year University physics. In Newtonian space wouldn't an object travel with the same velocity in the same direction without additional fuel.

So the Enterprise set an optimal course for the planet used up the required fuel to get there ahead of the asteroid maybe it kept some fuel in reserve to say be able to beam up the population of the planet to the Enterprise and maintain food and power while waiting for a tug near the planet.
So Spock did a quick calculation in his head and decided that 4 hours ahead would be enough to do what he needed at the planet - a search for Kirk, check out the obelisk, save as many people as he could.
In "Doomsday Machine" they said they'd run out of fuel in a day but they were doing lots of complicated power-hungry maneuvers so I'm thinking if the Enterprise tried to get to the planet sooner by using a heap of power it might have endangered the medium-term survival of everyone on board. They might have say got to the planet in one week but only had enough reserves to survive alone in space for one month more instead of indefinitely.

 

In the end, not hurrying to the planet was a command decision by Spock, one that McCoy seemed to disagree with. So we don't need to sweat rationales for why it would have been "impossible" to fly to the planet in less than two months, or with more than four hours of lead time - we only have to figure out why Spock chose to skip those things.

And we already pretty much know why Spock did it. If his idea about the deflector was right, then hurrying wouldn't help in saving either Kirk or the planet. If it was wrong, the planet would be gone, but Kirk (or his rotting corpse) would be located in four hours easily enough, if he could be located at all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

also why did the Natives speak English?

 

As opposed to every other planet the Enterprise visits whose population also speak English, you mean?

 

Exactly. So why complain about other minor things like the asteroid being too big? Nothing in Star Trek could ever really happen

 

Precisely. In fact, why watch Star Trek at all?

 

Good point. After 45 years, I’m out.









Be sure to see the excellent “Star Trek 50” by the incomparable @spockboy, from whom this clip was stolen.

 

The idea that impulse is limited to .25c comes from the Next Generation tech manual. But it's a rule rather than a limitation of the ships - the idea being to avoid excessive effects from relativistic time dilation, which is very modest at .25c. - it's like 3% difference at that speed.

But ships can certainly beat it. In TMP we see the Enterprise launch and then fly past Saturn before Kirk makes a log entry saying it's 1.8 hours since launch. The minimum possible average speed to meet those criteria is 0.6 c so the Enterprise can do at least this - and that's assuming Saturn is as close as it ever gets to Earth, the Enterprise accelerated instantly to that speed and then maintained it all the way, and Kirk dictated his log the instant they passed Saturn. Any of those could be off considerably, and all would result in a higher speed capability.

 

They fly past Jupiter.