Court Martial: why are Spock and McCoy wasting time?

[Reymet_2]

Re-watched TOS episode "Court Martial" (one of my favorite, in fact) and noticed something that had never noticed before.

Here's the fragment that attracted my attention.

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Spock finds out that someone has edited the computer's memory bank and tells McCoy about it. At 1:00:
McCoy: Well, why are you just sitting there?
Spock: Tansporter room, stand by. We're beaming down.
During this conversation, both McCoy and Spock wear standard duty uniforms.
Then, action moves to the court room at the Starbase. Both the prosecution and defense have time to refrain from motions before (1:42) McCoy and Spock enter the room to inform the court about what they've found out. And we can see that now they are wearing dress uniforms.

So, despite the fact that Kirk's career was about to end, Spock and McCoy somehow find some time to change their uniforms instead of beaming down immediately. And let me point out that this waste of time actually could have cost Kirk his entire career since Cogley had already rested and thus Stone could easily deny Cogley's request.

So, why were Spock and McCoy wasting time by changing their uniforms?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Perhaps because, as officers, court protocol says they will not be heard unless they are properly attired, and they don't want to take any chances.

 

[Reymet_2]

Perhaps because, as officers, court protocol says they will not be heard unless they are properly attired, and they don't want to take any chances.

During the next session (4:02 in the video), which was on Cogley's request held on the Enterprise, Kirk, Spock and McCoy were all wearing standard duty uniforms so no, court protocol doesn't require dress uniforms.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Perhaps it was waived by that point.

 

[Metryq]

It was the new valet circuit in the transporter—the same way Kirk and company changed uniforms in "Mirror, Mirror." Beam down, dress uniform. Beam up, duty uniform. To appear on the ship in dress uniform, they would have to take a shuttlecraft.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

It was the new valet circuit in the transporter—the same way Kirk and company changed uniforms in "Mirror, Mirror." Beam down, dress uniform. Beam up, duty uniform. To appear on the ship in dress uniform, they would have to take a shuttlecraft.

Now that I think of it, it's ironic that Star Trek never exploited this transporter dressing function, but Batman did it every week with the Bat Poles.

Batman was using an impossible machine as part of the joke, but Star Trek was being serious with the transporter. Once viewers buy into the transporter, having it change your clothes is very small extra step. But Batman wanted the laughs, and Star Trek may have feared that routine "quick changes" would be the last straw for maintaining a serious air about the technology.

An odd hybrid, and a failed approach in my view: The Green Hornet. There you had a very serious tone for the show, but a comical production design (the fireplace is an elevator, the garage floor flips the car over). One side of this worked against the other, and the show's plausibility couldn't afford that.

 

[BK613]

Now that I think of it, it's ironic that Star Trek never exploited this transporter dressing function, but Batman did it every week with the Bat Poles.

Yet we do we something like this when Kirk 'dresses' the Ilia probe in TMP.

 

[UssGlenn]

It was the new valet circuit in the transporter—the same way Kirk and company changed uniforms in "Mirror, Mirror." Beam down, dress uniform. Beam up, duty uniform. To appear on the ship in dress uniform, they would have to take a shuttlecraft.

We see this tech in the first episode of Strange New Worlds, congratulations on finding TOS evidence for it.

 

[Ronald Held]

Need to wear dress uniforms in the court, but on the ship, duty uniforms are appropriate?

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Need to wear dress uniforms in the court, but on the ship, duty uniforms are appropriate?

Absolutely. But they're discouraged on casual Fridays.

 

[Reymet_2]

court protocol says they will not be heard unless they are properly attired

They came to talk to Cogley, not to address the court

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Okay, so maybe the transporter operator forgot to turn off the formal dress setting, left over from when they appeared in court.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Okay, so maybe the transporter operator forgot to turn off the formal dress setting, left over from when they appeared in court.

That's quite a timesaving solution. It would almost explain how Kirky switched his top tunic with Charlie X in the turbolift with a portable lift gadget.

I still scratch my head about parallel universes keeping the clothes while switching the bodies during ion storms.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

You could say it's a function of biology, but then the clothes are made of xenylon, also organic. So maybe it's only true of living (not dead and processed) biological organisms.

Imagine, though, clothes that can change form. DIS has programmable matter, so maybe clothes will be made with it too.

 

[UssGlenn]

I still scratch my head about parallel universes keeping the clothes while switching the bodies during ion storms.

It's possible, due to the unique circumstances of the switch, that only their minds switched positions that time. Too bad Sulu wasn't there to show that definitively,

 

[BK613]

It's possible, due to the unique circumstances of the switch, that only their minds switched positions that time. Too bad Sulu wasn't there to show that definitively,

Well, TOS does show in many episodes that there is a non-corporeal humanoid element that can be halved (The Enemy Within), swapped and otherwise moved around (Return to Tomorrow, Turnabout Intruder), fused with another non-corporeal entity (Metamorphosis). Heck, it even has Redjac walking around in a Hengist suit that's dead when vacated.
So just a mind swap in that ep is consistent with a lot of what TOS showed us.

 

[Henoch]

It's possible, due to the unique circumstances of the switch, that only their minds switched positions that time. Too bad Sulu wasn't there to show that definitively,

Their bodies were the same in both universes, and thus, subject to switching. Their uniforms were not the same, so, not subject to switching.

 

[fireproof78]

They came to talk to Cogley, not to address the court

Since Cogley was in court then they would adhere to the uniform requirements of the CO.

 

[BK613]

I assumed that they dressed for the possibility that they'd be called as witnesses to present the new evidence. Cogley went a different route.

 

[Grant]

Continuity error.