Enterprise battle damage differences between ST II and III (Long)

OK let me first start of by saying I understand keeping continuity in a movie can be an absolute bitch. You have several different takes of the same scene often put together in the final cut and between these takes people and things can get moved, changed, altered or some other thing that isn't noticed until the film is viewed and then it's too late to reconstruct the set, get all the actors back, find the props and so on. Of course many of those things can be corrected via cgi today, but I understand making a film with absolute flawless continuity is next to impossible and if you look at any movie closely enough you can spot mistakes like this. So I don't get worked up about things like Kirk's flap being in different positions during Spock's death scene or Han Solo's jacket appearing and disappearing as he's about to be frozen.

I also understand that making movies years apart that are only supposed to be days or weeks in movie time can present especially hard problems in this area.

However there has been one major continuity error between ST II and III that has always bugged the living s*** out of me and that is the difference in the amount of battle damage to the Enterprise visible from her battle with the Reliant.

In ST II the Enterprise was clearly hit three separate times. First
when the Reliant initially fired and hit the Enterprise's secondary
hull on the port side in the engineering section. Second when Khan fired a photon torpedo in the same engagement and it hit the bottom of the saucer section on the port rear side near the neck and third when the Enterprise swerved to avoid colliding with Reliant in the nebula and Reliant hit her with phasers on the port side photon torpedo launcher.....That was it. There were no other hits and the Enterprise didn't suffer any residual damage when the genesis torpedo went off as is evidenced by shots of the ship at the end of the film.

Yet suddenly in ST III it looks like the Enterprise was pummeled MUCH more severely then anything we saw in TWOK. First on the port side: The damage to the secondary hull looks considerably larger than it did in TWOK, it also looks like it's been plated over in places. The photon and lower saucer damage look pretty much the same. I can accept the fact the hull damage was maybe made a little bigger for dramatic effect when it entered spacedock and it had to be plated over in places for structural integrity reasons. Or maybe they had removed the damage from the model after TWOK and just didn't replicate it exactly, kind of lazy on the modelworkers part but I can live with it.

BUT......In addition to these changes suddenly the Enterprise has
several NEW damage marks that were not in TWOK and have absolutely no plausible explanation as to where they came from.

On the port side there are damage marks on top of the saucer section in about the same position as the legit lower saucer damage and there also marks on the front of the port warp engine and another one near on the engine near the connector strut.

And it gets even better when you look a the starboard side, a side that WASN'T HIT AT ALL IN TWOK. First on the secondary hull in roughly the same place at the damage on the port side there are SERIOUS battle damage marks both above and below the "Starship USS Enterprise United Federation of Planets" marking. It looks like this side was hit two or three times as much as the damage from the Reliant on the other side. There is also a smaller damage mark on the rear of the starboard
secondary hull and the front of the starboard warp engine.

So in a matter of days (in movie time) the Enterprise has expanded damage from one of the Reliant hits and has at least SIX COMPLETELY NEW BATTLE SCARS. I've heard explanations like "Her condition degraded on the trip home, or she ran across a Klingon or Romulan and had another battle on the trip to earth........all of which is complete BS.

First of all once fires have been put out burn marks do not continue to "spread" like some plague and even if you buy the theory that her actual damage from the Reliant did degrade the hull in some way after the fight was over...How do you explain it degraging parts of the ship hundreds of feet away and/or completely on the other side.

And if she did get into a scrap with an enemy vessel don't you think it would warrant at least a mention in Kirk's log or some other part of the film.

This, for what ever reason, was just poor decision making on someone's part to deliberately add damage to the Enterprise that made absolutely no sense from a continuity or practical standpoint. I don't think there was anyone who thought after
going to see TWOK....gee that film was was great and all but I REALLY wish the Enterprise had been damaged more and showed visible signs of being hit.

This to me is an early, albeit less extreme, example of what George Lucas did to the original Star Wars triology, adding things that were completely pointless and did nothing to enhance the movie. Like actually showing Vader fly out to the Executor at the end of "The Empire Strikes Back"(which totally ruined the pacing of the scene and eliminated one of Vader's best lines in "Bring my shuttle") as if since 1980 we had all been sitting around confused scratching our thick monkey craniums saying "How did Vader get to the Executor...I mean one scene he's leaving Bespin and then the next he's suddenly on the Executor!!!!! How did that happen? We didn't actually see him fly out to the Executor and we can't make simple leaps of logic to connect how he got there. FOR GOD SAKE'S SHOW US HOW THIS TRANSPIRED GEORGE!!!!!!!"

Like I said the Enterprise damage is a less extreme example and didn't really ruin any particular part of the film, unlike Lucas did several times wit his "additions", but it was like the producers said "Yeah people who saw TWOK knows the Enterprise was hit and badly damaged but they probably forgot how damaged she was so let's really drive the point home by putting more scorched marks so they REALLY understand the extent of the damage." Like Spock having to sacrifice himself to repair the Warp Drive wasn't enough of a point to drive home how disabled the Enterprise really was.

Plus from a practical standpoint it was totally unbelievable, aside from the damage just appearing out of nowhere. If the first shots from the Reliant so severely crippled the Enterprise for the rest of the film, then the shots that damaged the starboard side in the same place must have REALLY F'ed the Enterprise since they are roughly 2-3 times the size of the damage on the port side. It's a miracle the Enterprise was able to move at all and didn't have to be towed home with that kind of damage.

The hits on the warp engines are even more ridiculous from a practical standpoint. I've never been aboard a nuclear powered aircraft carrier but I'd be willing to bet that a direct hit on or near one of the ships reactors would pretty much put it out of action for good. Nuclear reactors tend to be pretty delicate things that need every component in place for them to function properly and if those components are damaged or destroyed it's not just a case of bypassing a few things to get it up and running again.

I don't understand the exact physics or structural strength of Warp engines but they seem to be pretty fragile things too that need to have everything working well in just the right place or else they will fail. Seems to me that three direct hits to the warp engines would destroy or damage a lot of critical components that couldn't simply be rewired or bypassed to fix them. Therefore Spock fixing the core that powered the engines would have been pointless since the engines themselves wouldn't have worked anyway.

Don't know why but this always just stood out to me as lazy and stupid on every level. If you wanted to make the damage from Khan more dramatic to the people watching from the lounge in space dock then just enlarge the original damage some, add in a little more detail and call it good. Don't make us totally suspend our disbelief and just assume all this new battle damage appeared out of thin air and we should just accept it.

Of course I guess it didn't matter much since the Enterprise would suffer much more damage before TSFS was done (sniff, sniff. Rest in peace NCC-1701. Still one of the most upsetting moments of my childhood, especially after she'd fought so gallantly against the Reliant and Spock sacrificed himself to save her)

 

Correction. I didn't mean to say I haven't been on board any nuclear powered carriers. I have actually been on board several including Enterprise CVN-65. I meant to say I've never been in the reactor spaces of a nuclear powered carrier. The Navy, for some reason, gets all picky and particular about having access to those places. Guess they don't think civilians running around top secret reactors filled with extremely dangerous nuclear matter is a good idea or something. What a bunch of hard asses.

 

Possibility exists the Enterprise was involved with some other combat situation on her way back to Earth? They had to pick up the Reliant crew then ferry Saavik and David Marcus to the Grissom.

Just count it as some off-screen adventure. Issues #1-8 of DC Comics first run takes place between the two films.

 

Exactly, they had other things to do that didn't happen on screen and the details of those things were covered in length in on-screen captain log's.

Notice the initial attack battle. The Enterprise rocks, then stops after the phaser fire stops. But in engineering with no cut-shots, the ship rumbles more like it's being hit again, two or three more times. Then after that and the cuts to Kirk on the Bridge, it's still like no attack is happening. Notice too the display screens Spocks points to; there are orange lights indicating more hits than the two or three phaser attacks we saw, indicating those rumbles were indeed more attacks/rumbles not scene (both sides of the stardrive section, note).

This is backed up further when the first scene photoon torpedo hits and the ship rumbles after a minute or so of being still. Then no further rumbles (except what looks like an accidental shaking of the camera).

Notice too, to further back this up, the Reliant stops rumbling shortly after the Enterprise stops firing phasers on it.


So, in conclusion, it's obvious the ship was hit more than what we saw.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaVIIoRKBlk

 

Interestingly enough, the damage added for Star Trek III WAS visible on the damage report read out Spock and Kirk look at in Wrath of Khan...it just clearly wasn't visible on the hull.

 

Well first of all I have never been a believer in all this "It was explained in a novel or interview or some other off screen element." Star Wars tries this too all the time. You can get away with it in movies that are based off earlier sources like comic books or novels, so when people argue a Spiderman film was inaccurate about so and so because it was explained differently in the comics I can accept it because Spiderman was a comic long before the films came out.

But when your talking about a series like Star Trek or Star Wars which was a TV or film medium right from the start that argument just doesn't hold water with me. It's the events on TV and/or film that are canon and all the extra stuff like novels, comics, etc... are just things to keep hard core fans entertained and to make a few bucks from the franchise. So if it's not in the film it doesn't count as a legit explanation to me. And even if some battle did happen off screen after the Reliant before the Enterprise made it to Earth shouldn't it have merited at least a mention in the film that apparently the main setting in the film got mixed up in another, obviously seriously, battle between the films. Kind of lazy scriptwriting if that was the case.

I've noticed your points about the damage lights showing more hits than the Reliant seemed to score on screen, but that was simply a continuity error to me. The bridge screen programmers had no specific idea how much the EFX guys were going to show the Enterprise being hit so they designed the display with a general idea of what they were told it should show and it wasn't 100% accurate.

The shaking thing I never really noticed so I can't comment on it one way or the other. But what I can say with 100% certanity is in TWOK the Enterprise was clearly hit three times and in the multiple shots of the ship in subsequent scenes from several different angles there were NEVER any other battle damage marks other than those three. In the shot when the Enterprise backs away from Reliant after Khan has primed Genesis we get a nice slow clear shot of the starboard side for several seconds and it is in pristine condition with zero sign of any damage. There have even been studio models with TWOK battle damage options and the marks are in the three areas shown in the film and nowhere else.

And, ignoring the lack of visible battle scars, assuming the Reliant hit Enterprise more than the three times we saw three of those hits were on the warp engines themselves. Considering how sophisticated warp engines are that an imbalance caused them to fail in TMP I find it extremely hard to believe they would have been functional after 3 direct hits and they could just be "jury rigged" to work after spock fixed the mains connecting them to the core.

So I'm sorry it was a fail any way you look at it. If the Enterprise was hit more than the 3 times we saw, they failed to show any evidence of the further damage at all. If they got in a fight with another ship afterwards and didn't even MENTION it in TSFS that's a major plot point omission that can't just be brushed off with "Oh it was explained in some non canon feature." And if it was just added in deliberately for shock value it was pointless and ridiculous both from a practical and continuity standpoint. Like I said I understand continuity errors happen and are hard to catch, there were years between the 2 films the damage was clearly shown in II and I can't believe it was just some random innocent error the makers of the film made.

Either the Enterprise should have looked in III like she did at the end of II, or some kind or some kind of explanation, however far fetched it may have been, should have been said on screen to justify the new damage. It's like if Two Face had survived "The Dark Knight" and then suddenly his whole face was disfigured in "The Dark Knight Rises" and not a single word is mentioned how it happened. It's just too big a change in too much of a main element of the film to just ignore.

 

Too much for you to ignore maybe. I gnore it just fine.

 

I figured the damage on the nacelles was from torpedo near misses. A torpedo that exploded near the hull or on a different part of the hull and the carbon scoring on the nacelles were from that, rather than a hit on the nacelles. (It be more like a hit near the screws on a nuclear carrier though, not the reactors. The hits to the secondary hull that we saw would basically be cutting it the reactor spaces and cutting the water cooling systems and the wires that feed power to the rest of the ship.)

It is possible the FX guys messed up the fight scenes verse the script. The on screen damage readout might be the correct version of events, and the editing causing the ILM effects guys to only use some of the shots and thus not have enough tiem or money to cause all the damage they script calls for.

 

The extra damage in TSFS falls well within the realm of dramatic licence, IMO. If you look too closely, Trek's continuity doesn't hold up at all. Whether it's those damage control graphics actually being for the original series version of the Enterprise (and showing damage to crew quarters and not engineering systems), or the Enterprise shield graphic showing the Phase II version of the ship, , Khan turning white between SS and WoK and his followers morphing into Aryan youths, Saavik being recast and looking and acting completely different, or Khan wearing a current uniform insignia which supposedly belonged to Marla 15 years ago, the Reliant somehow mis-counting planets... what's a bit of spaceship battle scarring next to all that?

 

For whatever it's worth, DC Comics #8 (the last issue before ST III) had the Enterprise first get pummeled by a stolen Vulcan vessel piloted by Saavik (long story) and then take a mostly-unshielded point-blank range hit from a Romulan plasma torpedo right where that nasty scar is on the starboard engineering hull, which (given what it did to shielded outposts in 'Balance of Terror') certainly would degrade the hull and lead to concerns about the ship's continued structural integrity.

 

Or then the trainee crew botched up the repairs and important machinery blew up when Sulu called for warp two...

Timo Saloniemi

 

The left hand often doesn't know what the right hand is doing when making a movie, so mistakes happen. Likewise a studio puts more emphesis on saving money, so a some scenes may be re-used and not all scens, be it the cast or be it the special effects, are done in order, but rather out of order. This can lead to irregularities.

In this case we have to go by the obvious. The obvious: the read out shows more hits. The sequel movie supports these hits. The ship rumbling from being hit, supports more hits. You can't expect any view of the damage to add up.


If anything, what doesn't make sense after pointing al that out, is Khan's weird choice of moving the Reliant. Obviously the Reliant had to make a quick U-turn around the Enterprise to make those other hits, but the torpedo firing shows he not only went upward but also made a sudden hard right -- it appears he's thinking on more than one axis of direction despite the later comment, just not doing it in an elevator fashion.

 

Well goody for you have a lollypop. I'm sure there are things in your life that annoy you that I wouldn't even give a second thought to. Let's get together sometime and compare notes on these things.

 

Its a thirty-plus year old movie. Best to make peace with it and move on.

 

I'm really not trying to be a dick. This is a Star Trek forum and people are always writing about something or other that they didn't like in some part of the series. I'd never liked the battle damage changes, don't particularly know why, perhaps besides the fact they were pointless I loved the refit Enterprise so much that I hated to see it get even more scarred (Needless to say I didn't remember much of the rest of the film first time I saw it once the Enterprise was destroyed because I was in such shock). Never really discussed it with other trek fans and wanted to share my feelings. Pretty common for a message board.

Made peace with it a long time ago and don't lose any sleep or rock in the fetal position all day going "Why did they add that damage." Just wanted to have a discourse.

If anything was going to make me do these things it would be all the changes to the original Star Wars Triology Thankfully the prequels don't exist in my mind so they aren't even an issue.

 

One thing about those visual damage is that I never got the impression the ship was "limping" or otherwise not-full-operational, as the other aspects of the movie suggested.

 

It didn't seem to be limping so much as being prepped for another mission, perhaps with a smaller crew?

Morrow says the Enterprise will never stand the pounding going to Genesis. Makes one wonder if Starfleet had some idea the Klingons or other less scrupulous forces were hanging around the area?

 

> It didn't seem to be limping so much as being prepped for another mission, perhaps with a smaller crew?

The Woman in Cafeteria seemed to think those were a big deal. But for me it was only a torpedo tube ruined.

Maybe they could have had some blinking in the window and engines (as if failing), or even some smoke (not too much, like NX01 and in Insurrection, but more like how Reliant smoked after the nacelle was severed)

 

Judging by the conversation on the way to Genesis, Enterprise was having difficulty. Scotty mentions she's "got her second wind now". This suggests that the engines are being strained by this warp trip pretty badly. Her automation system, as we find out later, can be overloaded with too many tasks as it wasn't designed for with combat in mind. It couldn't handle raising the shield, charging phasers, loading more torpedoes, as well as its normal engine functions. The shields not raising is basically what did her in. That and probably a lucky shot that manage to take out the main automation center. The crew of five just wouldn't be enough to get her combat worthy in a reasonable amount of time it seems, Not before the Klingons could fire again at least.

 

I've never had a big problem with the ST2 vs. ST3 discrepancy, as "in-between" adventures or repair failures are easy to postulate. But even internally, ST2 offers some interesting possibilities for "minimizing the damage"...

We basically never really see the port side of the vessel after the first encounter with Khan, curiously enough. We can then postulate all sorts of portside damage from the shots we don't see: Khan's first torpedo, but also his second torpedo which is supposed to warn Kirk away from Mutara and seems to pass the ship from port before shaking the ship.

Apart from the blissfully dark funeral scene, there is only a single shot of the port side in the rest of the movie: at the very end, when Kirk sets off to recover the Reliant crew. All we need to ignore, then, is that shot. Or we can assume it's one of 'em flipped shots so common in Star Trek, and will be fixed in a possibly upcoming "remastering"...

Timo Saloniemi