Hey, I never noticed that before....
- Thread starter Warped9
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Heavy duty starship phasers, especially in the films, didn't usually disintegrate ships. Not a single phaser blast disintegrated either ship in the film. They blew off parts, breached hulls and caused catastrophic chain reactions. Unless they were certain of hitting the exact location of the genesis device (and the phaser lock was inoperative) then there was no guarantee of hitting it. There's no guarantee that it wouldn't just be spinning out there in the debris and detonate anyway.
There's also no guarantee that blowing it up with an energy bolt wouldn't do more harm than good since the process had started. So they had less than four minutes to reach a safe distance. Do you spend precious time lobbing shots at it or turn and try to get as far away as you can?
You realize it's made up, right?
There is a subset of fandom who seem to prefer that sort of thing.
I beam aboard and destroy it with my phasers. But then I never had to cheat at the Kobayashi Maru.
I beam aboard and destroy it with my phasers. But then I never had to cheat at the Kobayashi Maru.
Perhaps firing a phaser at it wouldn't have done anything other than blowing it up (much like Data did in Nemesis). The Enterprise being caught in the blast would have defeated the purpose of escaping. Without knowing for sure that was a viable option, flying away is still the best choice when you're down to less than 4 minutes and your warp drive is under repair. Besides, if firing a phaser at it was the solution, David would have said so.
Oh hell yes, of course I do. I'm just speaking from within the context of some stories that seem like pure plot saves the day rather then what would really have happened had events played out without a plot contrivance.
The Genesis Device had its own plot armor, or in this case, plot shields to prevent beaming or disintegration.
KIRK: We'll beam aboard and stop it.
DAVID: You can't!
It may have not been a standard bomb, but I think everyone is overlooking how much energy was contained in the Genesis Device. It's first step upon completing countdown is to explode. All shooting it with a phaser will do is set it off early. You can't phase that much energy into subspace without a lot more planning. The result will be the same for the destruction of the Enterprise, just without a planet forming afterwards. I expect there was way too much energy contained in it to beam it away into energy either. That's way more energy than the transporter is designed to handle.
"What would really happen" is up to the writer.
Yes they could have phasered it or dispersed it like they did with Hengist.I beam aboard and destroy it with my phasers. But then I never had to cheat at the Kobayashi Maru.
Its funny how easily I can not worry about how a 2m high object could terraform a small planet or how Spock could put his soul in McCoy and still talk afterwards but I'm not willing to believe there was no other way of disarming the Genesis device.
I would have done it like this. After they had defeated Khan I would have had a power failure on the Enterprise and Scotty would have said Warp Drive was offline and no power to transporters or weapons for several hours. Once David had announced they couldn't manually disarm the Genesis device Spock would have gone to the engine room and asked Scotty which they could get working first and he would have said the Warp Drive but non-one could survive the radiation long enough even with a suit to bring the engines back on line then Spock would have gone in and saved the day...
I'm afraid that version would impede the sweep and majesty of Horner's opus. It seems a bit talky at a time when we want the music of epic drama.
Yup.
Spock already considered all those options at lightning speed and took the only logical and effective course of action.
Kirk and David discussed all of them while we were watching Spock.
That version of the film was a lot more exciting than the chatty versions everyone else is suggesting.
We can say that once the physio-chemical process was initiated, any breach of the containment during the four minute build-up would have allowed it to escape, and the blast would have destroyed Enterprise anyway. Think about the first few milliseconds after an atomic bomb is detonated, it’s already too late, you’re not putting that genie back in the bottle.
I trust David’s judgement on this, he invented the thing.
I trust David’s judgement on this, he invented the thing.
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Not in 1982.
I'm aware Harve Bennett didn't write in protomatter until the next film, but they did eventually establish that he introduced it into the matrix before the events seen in TWOK. WE didn't learn about it until 1984 but he still had that knowledge as Khan flipped the switch.
Also pretty well aware that they didn't think of half of the BS that I'm spewing in this thread.
It's all a buncha backseat driving to plug what some people think is a plot hole or missed opportunity.
The why doesn't matter. What matters is that, dramatically, there was nothing to be done, leaving it to Spock to make the ultimate sacrifice to save the ship. TNG style technobabble about nonexistent technologies wouldn't have helped the climax of TWOK any and would've detracted from it quite a bit.
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