I always thought that maybe Starfleet had decided that shuttles weren't necessary and that the landing bay was something that was used only ocassionally. After all, they had transporters, and could beam people or supplies anywhere they wanted. A real world analog to this is when the F4 Phantom was first put into service. It had no guns, because it had long range missiles and theoretically could shoot down any enemy from miles away and therefore there was no need for dogfighting abilities. Guess what, if you were lucky to get close enough to an F4 that its missiles were ineffective, the F4 became a very expensive sitting duck, as the military soon found out, and guns were retrofitted onto the F4. I guess the events in this episode and probably others made Starfleet realize that theory is one thing, real life scenarios another, and that it was a mistake not to have shuttles onboard.
Lack of shuttles in "The Enemy Within"
- Thread starter EJA
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But burying yourself into a mass of anything insulting will keep you alive slightly LONGER than a single blankie wrapped around you with your extremeties exposed as Sulu and the gang were. That's the point. The whole situation is illogically handled.
Maybe they should have beamed down Don Rickles.
They should have beamed down the eva suits we saw in the third season episode "The Tholian Web". That should have helped the landing party survive even if the eva suits heating units did not work. I would image the eva suits were made out of some material that would help insulate the body from extreme cold.
As for the shuttlecraft, I remember reading the book "The Making of Star Trek" decades ago that had a passage of a small part of the rough draft of "The Cage" where it is stated that a shuttle lands on the Enterprise and Captain April (later renamed Pike) rebukes a crewman that steps out of the shuttle for firing on an unknown alien species (on some planet) without any sign of provocation from the alien. If anyone still has a copy of that book would you please upload that page for others to see that Gene Roddenberry always had the idea of a shuttlecraft being stored onboard the Enterprise. Gene was just taking advantage of the audience at the time "The Enemy Within" originally aired because the audience did not know about a shuttlecraft until part 1 of the episode "The Menagerie" and also explicitly shown in the episode "The Galileo Seven" during season 1.
Update:
I did a google search and found the passage on Memory Alpha:
Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\
As for the shuttlecraft, I remember reading the book "The Making of Star Trek" decades ago that had a passage of a small part of the rough draft of "The Cage" where it is stated that a shuttle lands on the Enterprise and Captain April (later renamed Pike) rebukes a crewman that steps out of the shuttle for firing on an unknown alien species (on some planet) without any sign of provocation from the alien. If anyone still has a copy of that book would you please upload that page for others to see that Gene Roddenberry always had the idea of a shuttlecraft being stored onboard the Enterprise. Gene was just taking advantage of the audience at the time "The Enemy Within" originally aired because the audience did not know about a shuttlecraft until part 1 of the episode "The Menagerie" and also explicitly shown in the episode "The Galileo Seven" during season 1.
Update:
I did a google search and found the passage on Memory Alpha:
Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\
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Even the bubble wrap suits from the Naked Time would have helped.
Indeed. Although, as you indicate with your winking smilie, those decontamination suits look like they were made out of shower curtain material.
Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
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I don't think that's a quote. I can't find my MOST (Making of Star Trek) right now, but the way that's written sounds like a paraphrase (and the fact that it cites two sources reinforces this). Anyone got a MOST handy?
The paraphrase sums it up rather well. As it includes the quote "Get off my ship, mister.", which is directly from the plot summary in TMOST(I have a copy, and have read the summary many times), I don't think we need to get all anal about how strictly interpreted the source material is.
I was merely wanting a reminder of how the book put it, thank you very much.
Yeah, well, DS9Sega must like that position, or he wouldn't quote posts directly above his. 
Those "Naked Time" suits didn't seem to be for "decontamination" or "isolation", as they distinctly lacked in isolating qualities (they weren't anywhere close to airtight, for one thing!). So they were probably worn against the known cold of that outpost, not against the unknown and unsuspected biohazard.
However, I don't think a thermally isolating suit or spacesuit would really help with extreme cold. The best spacesuits of today can only keep the cold of space away for less than an hour unless their active heating systems are up and running; an unheated spacesuit glove may cause the fingers to freeze solid in a matter of minutes if the outside is at minus 120 (Celsius). Keeping heat out is equally difficult, if not more so, even with active cooling systems running.
Trek materials might of course be better. Then again, Trek materials in general don't appear better than ours, save for the stuff they make starship hulls out of...
What the landing party needed was about half a day's worth of protection against minus 120. Burying them in a ton of blankets would only complicate the digging out of their corpses; inactive (or EEEEEEVIL) spacesuits would probably not help all that much more. The choice might still be between freezing (suit off or open), and freezing-and-suffocating (suit closed and inoperative), with little chance of finding the golden middle road.
Timo Saloniemi
However, I don't think a thermally isolating suit or spacesuit would really help with extreme cold. The best spacesuits of today can only keep the cold of space away for less than an hour unless their active heating systems are up and running; an unheated spacesuit glove may cause the fingers to freeze solid in a matter of minutes if the outside is at minus 120 (Celsius). Keeping heat out is equally difficult, if not more so, even with active cooling systems running.
Trek materials might of course be better. Then again, Trek materials in general don't appear better than ours, save for the stuff they make starship hulls out of...
What the landing party needed was about half a day's worth of protection against minus 120. Burying them in a ton of blankets would only complicate the digging out of their corpses; inactive (or EEEEEEVIL) spacesuits would probably not help all that much more. The choice might still be between freezing (suit off or open), and freezing-and-suffocating (suit closed and inoperative), with little chance of finding the golden middle road.
Timo Saloniemi
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