How many ways...

[Wingsley]

It would not have really been necessary to use a bluescreen or footage of a parachute descending in the air. All you really needed to show was Sulu talking on his communicator in the foreground, his encampment in the background with personnel scrambling in behind him, and a parachute flapping about draped over a rock behind that with the end extending off-camera. If you think about it, TOS got away with "imagination shots" many times. (It wasn't until TOS remastered that we finally got to see the Antares in "Charlie X"). So lavish FX and expensive shots would not have been necessary to pull this off. You don't actually have to see the airdrop in progress, or the capsule on the ground. Just a parachute down nearby in the background.

 

[T'Girl]

Sulu shivering in a silver blanket vs SPFX team dropping a parachute in a snowstorm in front of a bluescreen, hoping it lands in the right place.

Kirk: "Sensors show it's almost down."
Sulu: "Yes, we can see it above us ... getting closer ... OH MY GOD!!!!"
Kirk: "Sulu, Sulu ... come in."

 

[KHAAAN]

Maybe in G7, they should have treated shuttlecrafts as though they were something new, possibly being tried out for the first time as an alternative to beaming.

Yes, but to know to do that, they'd have to know that 40-odd years later people like us would be second-guessing every single plot point and technical detail.

 

[A.V.I.A.F.]

Maybe in G7, they should have treated shuttlecrafts as though they were something new, possibly being tried out for the first time as an alternative to beaming.

Yes, but to know to do that, they'd have to know that 40-odd years later people like us would be second-guessing every single plot point and technical detail.

Again, that IS what we do here.

 

[Christopher]

^Yes, it's what we do here, but it's pretty egocentric to insist that television producers 45 years ago "should have" conformed to our preferences.

 

[Nerys Myk]

^Yes, it's what we do here, but it's pretty egocentric to insist that television producers 45 years ago "should have" conformed to our preferences.

They just dont care about the fans!!!!!

 

[blssdwlf]

What's interesting about this episode is that the writers did think of other ways to get Sulu help (like lowering down hot coffee as a joke - antigrav unit and tractor beam ) so it doesn't sound like that they didn't know or forgot about the other capabilities of the Enterprise. The only thing we have to go on is that the crew focused exclusively on using the transporters for the rescue operation so the only thing we can tell is that the transporters were the only viable option.

 

[Redfern]

I think what is bothering Wingsley is not so much the nature of the peril, but the extreme numbers bandied about. And yes, to people who have some basic understanding of school level science, yes, it is ridiculous.

But love it or loathe it, media sci-fi (as opposed to prose) tends to "up" the danger. Notice how in "Lost in Space" it wasn't simply a storm approaching the crash/camp site, it was (cue dramatic "sting") a "cosmic" storm!!! And while we like to pat ourselves on our collective backs for enjoying a supposedly serious and realistic speculative drama, Trekwas just as guilty of stretching scientific plausibility like so much salt-water taffy. "40 below? Meh, we get those conditions right here on Earth. No, make it 140 below! After all, it's another planet! That sounds much more sci-fi!"

True, Trek may not have had a resident "villain" ducking behind children in abject fear, but the, ahem, "science" in Trek could get just as silly. We're not talking Foundation Trilogy, here, folks.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[A.V.I.A.F.]

^Yes, it's what we do here, but it's pretty egocentric to insist that television producers 45 years ago "should have" conformed to our preferences.

They just dont care about the fans!!!!!

Yes, but that sure changed once they saw how much $$$ the movies and spin-off series were bringing in!

 

[RandyS]

The transporters may have been unreliable in terms of living organisms or machinery, but there is no reason they couldn't have beamed down simple materials that could have been used for shelter and warmth. In addition there is also the option of beaming down materials (if there weren't any already on the surface) that were flammable.

Didn't Spock say something to the effect of "Thermal heaters were beamed down, but they duplicated. The won't operate"?

 

[Warped9]

The transporters may have been unreliable in terms of living organisms or machinery, but there is no reason they couldn't have beamed down simple materials that could have been used for shelter and warmth. In addition there is also the option of beaming down materials (if there weren't any already on the surface) that were flammable.

Didn't Spock say something to the effect of "Thermal heaters were beamed down, but they duplicated. The won't operate"?

But a thermal heater is a mechanism. A blanket isn't mechanical in any way whatsoever. Heavy thermal clothing isn't mechanical either. Hell a pair of gloves and a hat and boots aren't mechanical.

 

[A.V.I.A.F.]

The transporters may have been unreliable in terms of living organisms or machinery, but there is no reason they couldn't have beamed down simple materials that could have been used for shelter and warmth. In addition there is also the option of beaming down materials (if there weren't any already on the surface) that were flammable.

Didn't Spock say something to the effect of "Thermal heaters were beamed down, but they duplicated. The won't operate"?

But a thermal heater is a mechanism. A blanket isn't mechanical in any way whatsoever. Heavy thermal clothing isn't mechanical either. Hell a pair of gloves and a hat and boots aren't mechanical.

True, but they did have those tarps in which they had been wrapping themselves. Perhaps that was the 23rd century equivalent to the Snuggie.

 

[Warped9]

^^ A tarp isn't an insulating materiel. Someone upthread made a good suggestion: Sulu and company should have carved out some holes in the rock face to make small caves for shelter to get out of the wind. That along with some flammable materiel (any local wood?) to make a fire could have gone a long way.

 

[Timo]

Everybody seems to be forgetting that this was an escalating crisis. And rightly so, because the episode was about the split Kirk's inability to cope with an escalating situation; a static threat would not have required any response from Kirk beyond an initial command, which he could have given easily enough, but an evolving crisis was fatal exactly because Kirk's condition was worsening as well.

Simply put, there was no effort to provide safety for the landing party on the surface, because nobody thought things would come to that; the aim was to get the people off the surface only.

The idea of a slowly dropping surface temperature is well written in view of this as well. At first, the landing party was in no danger; then there was discomfort, to which a cup of coffee and a nice tent would have been the proper response; then there was frightening cold, which needed to be countered with a source of heat or then complete space survival gear; and ultimately there would have been a totally unsurvivable situation unless the landing party were clad in functioning spacesuits.

The cup of coffee and the blankets were beamed down, a bit late because of Kirk's indecisiveness. The next step in threat escalation could not be countered with transporter, because the device was down for good and Kirk didn't have his repair priorities straight. Alternative survival means could have been explored at that point, but Kirk had Scotty concentrate on what he had been doing all along, and Spock concentrate on maintaining the Captain's public image.

Of the alternative survival means, the use of the ship's phasers sounds like the one workable method. But those couldn't have been used to create a cave - all they could do is a pit with hot walls, worse for survival than no pit. And hand phasers weren't supposed to have the oomph for cave-digging. So what could have been done with a simple order from Spock (camouflaged as one from the incapacitated Kirk) is firing "heating phasers" at a location close to the landing party and hoping that the party can reach that warm spot somehow.

Might be too much to ask from the landing party, though. And phasers at "heat" would probably kill them all if fired so close to them that the rock would become usefully hot.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lieut. Arex]

^^ A tarp isn't an insulating materiel. Someone upthread made a good suggestion: Sulu and company should have carved out some holes in the rock face to make small caves for shelter to get out of the wind. That along with some flammable materiel (any local wood?) to make a fire could have gone a long way.

Early on, the ship could have used the transporters to excavate a shelter for the landing party. A little phaser fire to fuse the ceiling to minimize the risk of collapse, then heat a rock or two inside and wait it out. Besides, how much trouble could evil duplicated dirt be?

 

[Timo]

Perhaps so. But early on, there was no need to provide the landing party with a shelter. They weren't in any danger, they were just uncomfortable.

If we're talking about prescient alternate methods of protecting the landing party, then brushing off the dirt from Technician Fisher's clothing before beaming would certainly be among the top ten!

We haven't seen the transporter used for excavation work for some reason. Perhaps it's because the other application of the phased matter technology, the phaser beam, is so much better at it? Beaming large quantities of bulk materials might be OK. Beaming things through a lot of bulk material might be OK. But the combination could be inefficient or even downright impossible.

Timo Saloniemi