Did or did not Kirk notice Spock leave the bridge in TWOK

[F. King Daniel]

Kirk's rusty, not lost in dreamland. The Kirk and Spock friendship is a huge part of the movie, yet Kirk, right after consulting Spock throughout the battle with Khan, fails to notice his absence of his BFF in what might be their last few seconds of life?

A supervolcano could plausibly end life on an alien planet (link). Wrath of Khan is probably the worst film to attempt to battle nitpicks with - from the Reliant miscounting planets at the start, to Marla somehow being the inspiration for Khan's rampage, to the Genesis device somehow turning a nebula into a planet with it's own star, you're barking up the wrong tree. Personally not liking ID is enough.

 

[FormerLurker]

The thing that bugs me the most about the whole 'Reliant miscounting planets' argument is the idea of "Are there six planets or only five?" Really? How about there's twelve, or twenty. That makes the miscount much easier, both to understand, and to explain.

Sorry for the thread drift. I just couldn't not say it anymore.

 

[F. King Daniel]

They thought the fifth planet was the sixth. If there were more planets in the system, they should have counted six from the sun and wound up on Ceti Alpha VII, not V. If only they'd written that one of the inner planets exploded (planets don't randomly explode, but that's yet another nitpick) and they were going for the fourth but found the fifth, and Khan, instead.

 

[J.T.B.]

The thing that bugs me the most about the whole 'Reliant miscounting planets' argument is the idea of "Are there six planets or only five?" Really? How about there's twelve, or twenty. That makes the miscount much easier, both to understand, and to explain.

The planets would be separated by hundreds of thousands of miles, and if you wanted to travel to one, you would have to know where it was going to be when you arrived. It would be kind of like trying to find a building in a city, driving a few blocks beyond the address to a different building and then being surprised that it wasn't the one you were looking for.

 

[Timo]

And counting the planets won't really be that helpful. You don't tell whether the planet in front of you is the fifth or the sixth from the local star by trying to spot the four or five that are even closer, because you're bound to miss some. It's much faster and more accurate to simply look at the planet that's already in your sensor crosshairs and see if it looks like the fifth or the sixth. The ordinal isn't interesting anyway - you don't want a number, you want a planet with specific looks.

"Go for that redhead in the leather jacket there, I know her, your odds are good - see, the sixth from the left?" contains relevant information, but "sixth from the left" is not it. If you happen to be obsessive-compulsive, you might do the count when you approach her, but you'll probably get it wrong because people at the party will move, and at crunch time, you don't choose between five and six, you choose between the redhead in the leather jacket and the blonde in the sweater.

Sure, the Reliant might have an obsessive-compulsive computer onboard doing just such counting, but if it tells the crew "this is not world number six", it's only proper to hit the "mute" button and let some tech worry about running a level five diagnostic on the piece of junk. They wanted a desert, they got a desert. If not for Khan, the mission would have been a success, while going for the "real six" would have meant mission failure.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

Oh, and Genesis turns nebulas into planets and stars? How so? We were told it turns planets into planets, and we know there was a planet there awaiting, complete with its preexisting star (Regula and Regula (?), respectively) - so it seems Genesis just did its expected work, creating basically nothing but the nice jungle.

Heck, it probably didn't even consume the nebula, as the Reliant explosion already clears our view...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[FormerLurker]

You're forgetting about protomatter 'solving certain problems'. This solution probably bumped up the torpedo's programming to include a small sun for its new planet, both made out of nebula matter. Remember, the Genesis wave could only affect matter adjacent to what it was touching immediately to be able to spread, and Regula (the planetoid) was far enough away from the nebula that it took long enough for the Enterprise to reach it that Reliant was able to complete its orbit of Regula and spot them.

 

[Mojochi]

Kirk may have noticed, but it didn't register completely, until he gets the call. I always took it as he's got a good idea that Spock isn't on hand, & may be off working the problem unilaterally, which as the actual captain is within his right. It is after all time for everyone to be pulling out all the stops

After the day is saved miraculously, & Kirk gets the call, it's then that he remembers Spock's disappearance, & that he isn't back at his post yet. That's why he looks back "Whatever became of Spock?"

 

[Spockkirk]

Not sure what to think but that look on Kirk's face is a for sure OH CRAP look

 

[FormerLurker]

"Let them* die!"



*Old threads.