Did Spock die because....

[Christopher]

The biggest problem with this complaint is that if CA-V is the planet in the goldilocks zone, there has to be more than six planets, a lot more. Our system has three gas giants, for god's sake, and our being in the goldilocks zone is a fluke. If the asteroid belt were a planet our system may not even HAVE a goldilocks zone.

We have four gas giants, or rather, two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and two ice giants (Uranus and Neptune). And Jupiter's gravity is what prohibited the asteroids from coalescing into a planet. Which has nothing to do with the existence of a goldilocks zone, since that's a function of distance from the star.

Also, modern exoplanet discoveries have revealed that the configuration of our system is highly atypical. There are many systems that don't have giant planets, or that have them close to the star, or that have a large number of terrestrial planets spaced close together within less than the radius of Earth's orbit, or have any number of other configurations. There are many factors that can influence the maximum radius at which planets form, planets can migrate to narrower or wider orbits, and outer planets can be jettisoned by close encounters with other stars or the like. So there's nothing to rule out the possibility of a 6-planet system with the fifth being in the continuously habitable zone.

The real problem with the idea of Alpha Ceti having a habitable planet is the same one that applies to other stars in Trek like Rigel, Deneb, Omicron Ceti, etc. -- it's the wrong spectral type. It's a type-III red giant on the asymptotic giant branch of the H-R diagram. Whatever continuously habitable zone it had in its main-sequence lifetime would have moved outward as it expanded into a red giant, so any planets in its current CHZ would not have been there long enough for life to form.

(Some have suggested that "Ceti Alpha" should be considered a distinct star from Alpha Ceti/Menkar, accounting for the discrepancies, but I can see no reason why anyone would give that name to a different star, since it would just create confusion. It's hard to see why anyone would invert "Alpha Ceti" either, but I could see it being the result of some kind of linguistic drift or spacer dialect.)

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

phrase it differently,

Kirk says he lost a brother "once" then says he was lucky to get him back. Cutting that one word would fix continuity. But it would not sound like as natural a speech.

In STII, the Reliant not noticing a missing planet in the Ceti Alpha system makes no sense, no matter how you try to explain it away

Vonda McIntyre offered a different handwave in her movie novelizations, but I forget what it was.

In the novel there are something like 20 planets, and Number 5 and Number Six are essentially twins. They beam down the planet that is still there, thinking it is Number 6 that is there, and find that it was really Number 5. They only know it to be that one because Khan is there.

It sort of works. They could have seen a debris field but thought it had not been mapped in the prior survey. There is no evidence Starfleet did not see something explode; they just did not woryy about it much, or enough to check on Khan.

 

[Dr. K.R. Kollman hon.]

1.) Kirk would surely have reported it to Starfleet, and the discovery of Eugenics Wars survivors would've been the historical find of the decade, with countless scholars and historians flocking to Ceti Alpha to interview them, along with whatever penal officials were sent to supervise them and ensure they didn't escape.

2.) And how come Khan's people were mostly twentysomething blonds when they were a more diverse group of adults when they were stranded 15 (or 18) years earlier?

3.) How did they have movie-era props and costume pieces when they were stranded in the TV era?

4.) How does a Genesis Device programmed merely to resurface an existing planetary body have the capability to manufacture an entire planet out of nebular gas? How does a torpedo that small have that much power? And where did Genesis's sun come from?

5.)And why did Scotty bring Peter Preston to the bridge?

6.) And why did the Ceti eel leave Chekov instead of killing him?

7.) And why is the radiation room this little chamber off to the side that doesn't connect in any way to the actual warp reactor in the middle?

1.) Kirk didn't report it to Starfleet. One of the reasons why was to get them off of the map. Kirk didn't want people to know about them.

2.) The only people left after the devastation and Ceti Eels were kids of the original group.

3.) Any of the modern stuff was stolen from the Reliant and its crew.

4.) Depends on how big the nebula was. You know that stars and planets are formed from nebulas, right? And according to the novel, it was part of the Genesis programming to bring a world to life by giving it a sun. Also, Protomatter which is discussed in the next movie.

5.) The turbolifts weren't working right after Khan's attack.

6.) Because its friend died when Terrell killed himself and it didn't want to end up the same way?

7.) It being an isolated chamber in the Engine Room was all we needed to know.

You should really read the novel.

 

[Christopher]

1.) Kirk didn't report it to Starfleet. One of the reasons why was to get them off of the map. Kirk didn't want people to know about them.

Completely nonsensical and counterfactual. Aside from what I said above about Kirk being a lover of history and understanding the profound historic importance of the discovery of the Botany Bay, the hearing scene at the end of "Space Seed" has Uhura explicitly state "Record tapes are engaged and ready, Captain," proving that Kirk wanted the events to be documented.

2.) The only people left after the devastation and Ceti Eels were kids of the original group.

Then they should've been in their mid-teens at most, since there was no indication in "Space Seed" that there were any children on the Botany Bay. Also, the timing doesn't work. The explosion happened only 6 months after the stranding, so no children conceived on the planet would've been born yet. Therefore, the parents must've survived at least long enough to give birth. And is it remotely plausible that infants would survive a disaster and famine that killed all the adults save one? If anything, it would be the other way around. Infant mortality rates were historically extremely high before modern medicine.

3.) Any of the modern stuff was stolen from the Reliant and its crew.

No, it was already there in the survivors' dwellings. As soon as Chekov and Terrell first enter and look around, this shot of a TMP-era sickbay bed monitor is seen:

https://movies.trekcore.com/gallery...th-of-khan-2009/ch03/st2-twok-bluray-0122.jpg

4.) Depends on how big the nebula was. You know that stars and planets are formed from nebulas, right? And according to the novel, it was part of the Genesis programming to bring a world to life by giving it a sun.

Nonsense. It's implausible enough that a 5-foot-long torpedo built by 23rd-century science -- before they even had replicators and holodecks -- would've been magically advanced enough to terraform the entire surface of a planet and create life from lifelessness. It's exponentially more absurd that it would have the power to manufacture an entire planet out of nebular gas, and orders of magnitude more absurd that it could whip up an entire star, which would be hundreds of thousands of times more massive. That's a level of power rivaling the Q.

5.) The turbolifts weren't working right after Khan's attack.

Tell me where it says so in the actual movie. Speculative rationalizations after the fact don't count. The audience shouldn't have to make sense of it afterward, because that's the filmmakers' job.

You should really read the novel.

I read it multiple times four decades ago. I read it before I even saw the movie, as was often the case in my childhood, since we were more of a book-reading family than a moviegoing family. And it's quite clear from the novel that Vonda McIntyre herself had issues with a lot of the implausibilities in the movie and struggled to make sense of them, for instance, correcting the erroneous "Ceti Alpha" to "Alpha Ceti" (though that was "Space Seed"'s error originally). The "subquark physics" she came up to rationalize the absurdity of Genesis was a clever addition, but she could only do so much to handwave the films' problems.

 

[fireproof78]

It sort of works. They could have seen a debris field but thought it had not been mapped in the prior survey. There is no evidence Starfleet did not see something explode; they just did not woryy about it much, or enough to check on Khan.

But, as noted, it's not like stuff in space can't not be seen. An explosion of a planet would be visible from multiple observation points, as well as any new phenomenon documented when they were evaluation for a suitable planet for Genesis.

The amount of time and effort made to find a suitable planetoid for the Gensis project makes such an oversight more stupid looking.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

1.) Kirk didn't report it to Starfleet. One of the reasons why was to get them off of the map. Kirk didn't want people to know about them.

Watch the damn scene. Kirk makes a log entry asking what he's going to do about Khan and McGivers, a total of eight crewmen are present in the briefing room (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, and three security guards), Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty are all in dress uniform, Uhura confirms they're recording the hearing, and then Kirk officially declares when the hearing is in session. Why would he bother doing ANY of that if sending Khan and McGivers to Ceti Alpha V wasn't part of the official ship's record?

Starfleet absolutely, 100% knew that Captain Kirk sent Khan and his people to Ceti Alpha V, and Kirk was obviously within his authority to do so.

 

[Dr. K.R. Kollman hon.]

Nonsense. It's implausible enough that a 5-foot-long torpedo built by 23rd-century science -- before they even had replicators and holodecks -- would've been magically advanced enough to terraform the entire surface of a planet and create life from lifelessness. It's exponentially more absurd that it would have the power to manufacture an entire planet out of nebular gas, and orders of magnitude more absurd that it could whip up an entire star, which would be hundreds of thousands of times more massive. That's a level of power rivaling the Q.

Tell me where it says so in the actual movie. Speculative rationalizations after the fact don't count. The audience shouldn't have to make sense of it afterward, because that's the filmmakers' job.

Yes. It gets explained in Star Trek III. David used Protomatter. He even says in the movie that it might have been decades or never before they got it to work if he didn't use Protomatter. Maybe the Q use Protomatter.

I'm pretty sure the Director said that the turbolifts weren't working right when people asked him about it.

 

[Christopher]

Yes. It gets explained in Star Trek III. David used Protomatter.

A meaningless made-up word for a nonexistent substance is not an explanation, just an excuse. Saying "protomatter did it" is no more credible than saying "A wizard did it."

 

[Dr. K.R. Kollman hon.]

A meaningless made-up word for a nonexistent substance is not an explanation, just an excuse. Saying "protomatter did it" is no more credible than saying "A wizard did it."

The same with Warp Drive.
The same with Phasers.
The same with Transporters.

Anything that happens on Star Trek that doesn't exist in the real world 'is no more credible than saying "A wizard did it."'

So you don't like Star Trek then?

 

[Christopher]

The same with Warp Drive.

Wrong. Warp drive is derived from the equations of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. The reason it's called "warp" is because it's based on the concept of the warping of spacetime that arose from that theory. The idea of using space warps to surpass the speed of light had been a staple of fiction since the 1930s, and the specific mathematics that would allow a warp drive to exist were codified by Miguel Alcubierre in 1994 and have been further refined by physicists over the decades since.

The same with Phasers.

To an extent, as Roddenberry coined the word as an excuse to allow the weapons to do things that would be implausible for lasers. But the things that phasers do are only mildly improbable, not ludicrously impossible. The point is that slapping a made-up word on a completely ridiculous concept does not make it any less ridiculous.

The same with Transporters.

Except that they've provided a fair amount of exploration of what transporters do, how they work, and what their limitations are. And we're talking about whether a made-up word "explains" a fanciful idea. You said protomatter "explained" Genesis. The analogy here would be as if someone had said "Transporters work because of moofricity," and you attempted to claim that that nonsense word "explained" how transporters can do the impossible.

 

[Dr. K.R. Kollman hon.]

"Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic."
- Arthur C. Clarke.

I'm really not going to have an argument with someone who doesn't realize that EVERYTHING on Star Trek, except for Space itself, is made up.

Warp Drive doesn't exist. Phasers don't exist. Transporters don't exist.

And Protomater doesn't exist. You really have no idea if these people contacted JPL and were given a plausible actual theory of how it could be done. Like they did with just about everything else on Star Trek.

You don't think it's plausible? I really don't care.

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

4.) Depends on how big the nebula was. You know that stars and planets are formed from nebulas, right? And according to the novel, it was part of the Genesis programming to bring a world to life by giving it a sun. Also, Protomatter which is discussed in the next movie.

It's exponentially more absurd that it would have the power to manufacture an entire planet out of nebular gas

That's probably why it did not work correctly and came apart as part of the plot of the next movie.

It suddenly hit me that it makes more sense for the Genesis device to make a sun out of nebula than if it did so to an existing planet. But if it was fired on a planet that already had a sun, it would not need to do that.

Therefore, the parents must've survived at least long enough to give birth.

Tell me where it says so in the actual movie.

I am content to accept that Scotty was so upset as to be unreasonable, probably thought Peter Preston was already dead (I thought that on having seen the movie). However, Spock does say later that "they are inoperable below C Deck."

You attempted to claim that that nonsense word "explained" how transporters can do the impossible.

The TNG technical manual gives a close look at the tech of TNG, showing most things on Star Trek working by real science, assuming certain made-up substances exist.

The explanation of Protomater is not needed to how why the Genesis device did not have the intended effect, as simply claiming that it was not used in the way it was designed would have been good enough. Harve Bennett apparently felt that introducing David's use of protomater meant that David had to die to pay for his mistake. David's confession was largely not necessary to the plot in my opinion, and since Harve Bennett though someone had to "die" in exchange for Spock coming back, between the Enterprise and David, both did not have to be lost.

 

[Timby]

5.) The turbolifts weren't working right after Khan's attack.

Tell me where it says so in the actual movie. Speculative rationalizations after the fact don't count. The audience shouldn't have to make sense of it afterward, because that's the filmmakers' job.

Might want to cool your jets, bud, because that's the literal text in the movie. After Kirk & Crew are beamed up from the Genesis Cave, Kirk goes for a turbolift, and Spock says, "They're inoperable below C deck."

Kirk: "That's it?"

Spock: "Best we could do in two hours."

So maybe check things before you start raving about "speculative rationalizations" and audiences having to make sense of something.

 

[BillJ]

1.) Kirk didn't report it to Starfleet. One of the reasons why was to get them off of the map. Kirk didn't want people to know about them.

Forgetting what is in the actual episode in way of hearings with multiple witnesses and log recordings, how does Kirk explain the missing crewperson? McGivers destroys any fantasy people have about Kirk not reporting what had happened. That and the 395 other eyewitness reports of Khan and his followers being on the Enterprise and an eventual detour to Ceti Alpha V.

 

[Morpheus 02]

Never thought I'd see the day.

I am still on page 2 of this thread...but I just HAD to stop and say we'll done. You have just become legendary

 

[Tallguy]

I am still on page 2 of this thread...

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I am still on page 2 of this thread...but I just HAD to stop and say we'll done. You have just become legendary

Thanks!

 

[evilchumlee]

Completely nonsensical and counterfactual. Aside from what I said above about Kirk being a lover of history and understanding the profound historic importance of the discovery of the Botany Bay, the hearing scene at the end of "Space Seed" has Uhura explicitly state "Record tapes are engaged and ready, Captain," proving that Kirk wanted the events to be documented.

He wanted the events to be documented, but that doesn't mean he documented all of the events. Realistically, Kirk was trying to be good to Khan and let them go live on a planet... if Kirk did report where Khan and Co. were left, there is a zero percent chance Starfleet just... left them there. It's almost an absolute certainty that since they were just left alone, Kirk left out the ending.

Then they should've been in their mid-teens at most, since there was no indication in "Space Seed" that there were any children on the Botany Bay. Also, the timing doesn't work. The explosion happened only 6 months after the stranding, so no children conceived on the planet would've been born yet.

They didn't say anything in Space Seed about children, but we know from ENT that a ton of embryo's still existed in the 22nd century. It's not a stretch to think that when Khan took his people off world, they stocked up as many genetically engineered embryo's as possible and once they landed, started to build a new society.

Totally plausible that they don't take as long the gestate, and perhaps even mature faster.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Perhaps a plague killed off all the adults other than Khan, and only the youth were left behind. He made the best of it, and never fell in love with any of them after Marla died.

 

[Ssosmcin]

He wanted the events to be documented, but that doesn't mean he documented all of the events. Realistically, Kirk was trying to be good to Khan and let them go live on a planet... if Kirk did report where Khan and Co. were left, there is a zero percent chance Starfleet just... left them there. It's almost an absolute certainty that since they were just left alone, Kirk left out the ending.

So you're suggesting that Kirk noted in his log that he left Khan, Lieutenant McGivers, and the rest of the "young supermen" from the 20th century on a planet without specifying which one?

Do you really think it's plausible that Starfleet would just shrug their shoulders to say "oh Kirk knows where they are I'm sure he'll check on them?"

Of course Kirk noted in his log exactly where he left Khan. It's not like Khan was an old friend that he wanted to do a favor for. He wasn't going to lie to his superiors just so he can give somebody who tried to kill him a chance to tame a planet in peace.

Starfleet either let Khan fall through the cracks or just didn't care. "Eh we'll come back in a hundred years to see what crop has sprung from the seed Kirk planted."

Perhaps they did send a ship, but it was after Ceti Alpha six exploded, and since they're really really bad at keeping track of planets, either assumed that Ceti Alpha five blew up, or they only picked some particles of pre-animate matter on the sensors.