Launching Galileo - Poor Decision?

[maryh]

Watched "The Galileo Seven" yesterday. Much better than I remembered, very underrated episode. I question whether the decision to investigate the Quasar under the circumstances they were in was a wise one. It seems that they knew how unpredictable quasars are, the area was unexplored, they have a pressing requirement to assist in the delivery of medicine to combat a plague... little to no margin for error. Obviously Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty were in agreement to launch the exploration mission, but I think it was one of their poorer decisions. Sometimes taking a risk is justified and worth the effort,, other times it is fool hearty. Though "Risk is our business", it seems that the time constraints they were under didn't allow for error, nor did it allow enough time for a good exploration anyhow. Agree or not?

Observations

1. One of the many times Uhura being "just a telephone operator" is debunked. She was vital to the success of the mission. She is the one who researched and found the only planet capable of sustaining life. She is responsible for placing them in the right place to rescue the shuttle crew. TOS Uhura was very capable, intelligent and vital to the running of the ship, and was presented as such. She simply was not a main character. When Spock is not there, Kirk turns to her in this episode.

2. The remastered version helped me understand better what was happening in this episode. When I watched this decades ago, I thought Spock jettisoned the fuel just to get them more altitude so they would be seen easier by being higher. With the new remastered version I saw the big bright green plumes of burning fuel emanating from the shuttlecraft for the Enterprise to see. I understand better exactly what Spock did and why it was perhaps less logical than conserving the fuel and maximizing the length of time they could maintain orbit, and possibly be seen. Liked some of the remastered shuttle scenes, the quasar, the planet and orbit remastered scenes. To each his own but in this case the remastering helped me understand things better.

3. Others have expressed dislike of the disrespect with which the shuttle crew treated Spock. I was less offended than I predicted. They are in a dangerous, frustrating situation so I would expect some testiness. The disrespect seems worse than in other episodes, where Kirk is commanding, but this may be because it is usually Spock who is with Kirk, and Spock doesn't get testy in stressful situations. I can even forgive Boma, because he helps rescue Spock. I think the disrespect others feel was shown to Spock in this episode is exaggerated.

 

[Shaw]

1. One of the many times Uhura being "just a telephone operator" is debunked. She was vital to the success of the mission. She is the one who researched and found the only planet capable of sustaining life. She is responsible for placing them in the right place to rescue the shuttle crew. TOS Uhura was very capable, intelligent and vital to the running of the ship, and was presented as such. She simply was not a main character. When Spock is not there, Kirk turns to her in this episode.

Wow... I thought pretty much this exact thing while watching it yesterday. It is funny (and weird) to see it in print a day later.

 

[Shatinator]

On the respect issue, when someone refers to you in the 3rd person to other right in front of you with 'We'll I'm sick of this machine'. That is pretty bad, you think their were moments of more disrespect, please identifly.


-The Shatinator

 

[Nerys Myk]

1. One of the many times Uhura being "just a telephone operator" is debunked. She was vital to the success of the mission. She is the one who researched and found the only planet capable of sustaining life. She is responsible for placing them in the right place to rescue the shuttle crew. TOS Uhura was very capable, intelligent and vital to the running of the ship, and was presented as such. She simply was not a main character. When Spock is not there, Kirk turns to her in this episode.

Sounds a bit out of her field of expertise. But someone had to say the line, so why not Uhura.

 

[maryh]

On the respect issue, when someone refers to you in the 3rd person to other right in front of you with 'We'll I'm sick of this machine'. That is pretty bad, you think their were moments of more disrespect, please identifly.


-The Shatinator

It was disrespectful, I just wasn't THAT offended because of the circumstances, and because the same crewman then rescues Spock which could display that he doesn't really hate and disrespect him, rather he is just as desperate as Spock will soon be.

I beleive there is a follow up novel in which the shuttlecrew, except for Scotty is officially reprimanded. Never read it, but I have heard about it.

 

[maryh]

1. One of the many times Uhura being "just a telephone operator" is debunked. She was vital to the success of the mission. She is the one who researched and found the only planet capable of sustaining life. She is responsible for placing them in the right place to rescue the shuttle crew. TOS Uhura was very capable, intelligent and vital to the running of the ship, and was presented as such. She simply was not a main character. When Spock is not there, Kirk turns to her in this episode.

Sounds a bit out of her field of expertise. But someone had to say the line, so why not Uhura.

Or perhaps she has more expertise and training than some think she has.

 

[Nerys Myk]

1. One of the many times Uhura being "just a telephone operator" is debunked. She was vital to the success of the mission. She is the one who researched and found the only planet capable of sustaining life. She is responsible for placing them in the right place to rescue the shuttle crew. TOS Uhura was very capable, intelligent and vital to the running of the ship, and was presented as such. She simply was not a main character. When Spock is not there, Kirk turns to her in this episode.

Sounds a bit out of her field of expertise. But someone had to say the line, so why not Uhura.

Or perhaps she has more expertise and training than some think she has.

One would think that in an organization like Starfleet and on a ship like the Enterprise there would be a officer who's specific job it was to give the Captain that sort of information. Normally that would be Spock. In Spock absence someone from his department should be at his station doing his job. But TV shows aren't ran in that fashion, so the line goes to an actor already on set and salary rather than to someone they'd have to hire for one line and one scene.

OTOH, we could say Uhura was showing intiative, by thinking of ,accessing and then relaying the information about the planet to Kirk before a Jr Science Officer could. The scene reads that way since Kirk did not ask her too find any class M planets. That Kirk is turning to her as a replacement for Spock seem to be an exaggeration.

 

[Warped9]

2. The remastered version helped me understand better what was happening in this episode. When I watched this decades ago, I thought Spock jettisoned the fuel just to get them more altitude so they would be seen easier by being higher. With the new remastered version I saw the big bright green plumes of burning fuel emanating from the shuttlecraft for the Enterprise to see. I understand better exactly what Spock did and why it was perhaps less logical than conserving the fuel and maximizing the length of time they could maintain orbit, and possibly be seen. Liked some of the remastered shuttle scenes, the quasar, the planet and orbit remastered scenes. To each his own but in this case the remastering helped me understand things better.

I always understood what was going on right from the first time I saw the episode. In the original version there are red plumes coming out the nacelles when Spock jettisons and ignites the fuel. I thought the bright green plumes in TOS-R looked cartoony and silly.

 

[Timo]

...they have a pressing requirement to assist in the delivery of medicine to combat a plague... little to no margin for error.

To be sure, their requirement was not all that pressing. They weren't to deliver the medicine to the end user, they were to deliver it to a waypoint "in time for their transfer" to the end user. The wording would suggest the transfer would not happen any sooner even if the medicine reached the waypoint sooner. So, given that the shuttle could reach any of the four star systems in the vicinity within hours, three days would sound like ample margin for a bit of research.

Of course, Murasaki probably isn't going away any time soon. And since Kirk is likely to be taking the most direct route between well-established points A and B, he might be the first to run through this area of space, but is unlikely to be the last. Kirk could still be justified in running a preliminary scan, something to satisfy his standing orders, something by which Starfleet could judge whether he made the correct decision when moving on with the medical shipment. He has to serve two masters there, and this could be his way of pleasing both.

I think the more pressing questions are technicalities: why use a shuttle, and why load it with your chief engineer and chief medical officer? In the sensor-hostile environment, the shuttle would be a superior tool for surveying the local star systems and their planets, and the CMO might have expertise needed in assessing colonization potential or the health risks of establishing an observation outpost. But the mission seems to be about Murasaki 312 itself, not about the systems. If there was a scheduled survey of the planets, one would assume Kirk would have a pretty good idea of where (if anywhere) Spock had crash-landed...

The disrespect seems worse than in other episodes, where Kirk is commanding, but this may be because it is usually Spock who is with Kirk, and Spock doesn't get testy in stressful situations.

OTOH, on off-ship assignments, Kirk usually commands a bunch of soldiers, plus the occasional pretty clerk. The science part of his team tends to consist of Spock alone. (He has a team of engineers in "The Doomsday Machine", but that team disperses well before there's a crisis.)

When scientists are a major part of Kirk's team, questions of discipline do arise - although with Helen Noel, I guess that goes without saying.

The scene reads that way since Kirk did not ask her too find any class M planets.

OTOH, there has been a noticeable break there: when the camera returns to the bridge, Ferris is in the middle of a rant, cups of coffee are arriving, and people are working in the background, without Kirk giving a single order to any of them. It wouldn't be surprising if he gave a string of orders while the camera was away... And it would be surprising if he didn't.

Kirk does seem to be expecting that report from Uhura. Or at least he hides any surprise commendably well... Uhura might in turn be commended for her timing, as she offers a significant glimmer of hope just when Ferris confronts Kirk with the disquietingly strong argument that the Captain's decision may have been fatally wrong.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captrek]

An excellent episode, one of my favorites and included in my proposed TOS Marathon for good reason, but not without its pickable nits.

My pet peeve: Kirk’s reaction on being told that five people had been beamed aboard from the shuttle. He seems to consider that a successful conclusion of the recovery mission. He doesn’t ask which two were not in the shuttle, what became of them, or whether they might still be on the planet awaiting rescue. The reaction (which is nonverbal, so I’m relying on my own subjective interpretation) seems to say, “Hey, this is Star Trek. It may be early in the series’ run, but I know the drill. I know which two crewmen were not on the shuttle, I know they’re dead, and it doesn’t bother me because I know they’re the type of characters who are supposed to die in this kind of episode.”

As Mary points out, the decision to send the shuttle out is questionable to say the least.

Spock’s assessment of the situation as “plainly hopeless” and that “Whether we die in a decaying orbit or die on the planet’s surface, we shall surely die” does not seem to be a logical conclusion based on the facts available to Spock at the time. Just because there are dangerous ape men near the Galileo’s original landing site doesn’t necessarily mean they occupy the whole planet. If the Galileo lands on the planet again, the second landing site may well be a location where the crew can survive for a while, and perhaps be rescued some time in the future.

Perhaps the episode’s biggest flaw, artistically speaking, is how Ferris is portrayed so unsympathetically. The scenes on the Enterprise are not as effective as the scenes on the planet, and that’s largely because of the way Ferris is portrayed. He has logic on his side, and were Spock there he would certainly agree. I think it would have been more dramatically compelling if Ferris were treated as a sympathetic character and the situation portrayed more as Kirk having to limit the SAR because of the plague victims on New Paris instead of coming across as Kirk having to limit the SAR because of an egotistical jerk pulling rank.

I beleive there is a follow up novel in which the shuttlecrew, except for Scotty is officially reprimanded.

I don’t think Yeoman Mears does anything to deserve a reprimand. Posthumously reprimanding Latimer and Gaetano would be callous and pointless. Boma certainly deserves a reprimand. Possibly McCoy deserves one as well, but his behavior is nowhere near as bad as Boma’s, and it’s hard to envision Kirk, who isn’t exactly a by-the-book Saavik and who can certainly relate considering that he treats Ferris similarly to how McCoy treats Spock, choosing to give that official reprimand to his close friend.

 

[maryh]

Didn't mean to imply she was Spock's replacement formally, rather he looks to her for support in this episode, in way you would do with someone you are familiar with and whose opinion you respect. It seems many WANT to see Uhura as "just a telephone operator" that even when she does other things displaying her competence, diverse functionality, cleverness and essentialness to the mission - it is still dismissed or disregarded. Unless she is a main character, she will be seen as unimportant and subservient no matter what she does.

 

[Timo]

It does feel "wrong" to give Uhura attributes that don't belong to that character - just like it feels "wrong" to give Sulu a dozen different areas of personal interest, a new one for each episode featuring one, without subsequently turning this into a character trait fellow characters would comment on.

That's simply poor writing, at least as long as nobody twists it into interesting character development. Novelists do their damnedest to correct the well-known faults of the Uhura and Sulu characters, the LA Graf especially... The writers of TOS never did. But in retrospect, the faults are not all that bad, and having an inconsistent or faulty character is certainly better than having no character at all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[maryh]

It does feel "wrong" to give Uhura attributes that don't belong to that character - just like it feels "wrong" to give Sulu a dozen different areas of personal interest, a new one for each episode featuring one, without subsequently turning this into a character trait fellow characters would comment on.

That's simply poor writing, at least as long as nobody twists it into interesting character development. Novelists do their damnedest to correct the well-known faults of the Uhura and Sulu characters, the LA Graf especially... The writers of TOS never did. But in retrospect, the faults are not all that bad, and having an inconsistent or faulty character is certainly better than having no character at all.

Timo Saloniemi

Actually I thought Sulu's jumping from hobby to hobby was commented on by Reilly in "Naked Time".

I'm not sure why it is considered a "well-known fault" to give Uhura capabilities and functions beyond those of a telephone operator. We really don't know how she DID find the planet in "Galileo Seven". The sensors are not functioning well, so we assume she did lots of research. She should be competent to do this, and perhaps has the ability to do it faster, more efficiently while using superior judgment when analyzing her findings. I assume that there would be some abilities everyone on the ship would have... the knowledge to navigate, to use the transporter, to use the library computer. Is it so faulty to give Uhura superior abilities at using this device? Obviously Spock is better, but Uhura is a smart, capable, professional woman.

 

[Nerys Myk]

All I'm saying is that there should have been a Science Officer doing that kind of work, not a Communications Officer. I happen to feel that Uhura is very well trained in her area of expertise: operating and maintaining the communications equipment on the ship. She is also crosstrained in other areas and in a pinch can cover those stations. But in a situation like Galileo Seven I would expext her to be concentrating on the communications aspect and not the "science" aspect.

 

[scotpens]

. . . The remastered version helped me understand better what was happening in this episode. When I watched this decades ago, I thought Spock jettisoned the fuel just to get them more altitude so they would be seen easier by being higher. With the new remastered version I saw the big bright green plumes of burning fuel emanating from the shuttlecraft for the Enterprise to see. I understand better exactly what Spock did and why it was perhaps less logical than conserving the fuel and maximizing the length of time they could maintain orbit, and possibly be seen.

I was never in the dark about Spock's motive for jettisoning the fuel. It's made quite clear in the dialogue:

SPOCK: Galileo to Enterprise. Galileo to Enterprise, come in, please. Galileo to Enterprise. Come in, please.
(He ponders for a moment, then flicks a switch labeled “Fuel Jettison”)
SCOTT: Mister Spock!
(There's a jolt as two long plumes of flame streak out from the nacelles)
MEARS: What happened?
SCOTT: He jettisoned the fuel and ignited it.
BOMA: We need that fuel to maintain orbit. Are you out of your mind?
SPOCK: Perhaps, Mister Boma.
MCCOY: How long have we got now, Scotty?
SCOTT: The orbit'll start decaying as soon as the fuel's exhausted. Say six minutes.

[BRIDGE]

SULU: Captain, there's something there on screen, at Taurus Two.
(On the viewscreen, a long trail of yellow crosses the green of the planet)

KIRK: Sensors, a meteorite?
SULU: No. It's holding a lateral line. There it is again. Holding steady, Captain.
KIRK: A hundred and eighty degrees about, Mister Sulu.
Lieutenant Uhura, contact transporter room. All beams ready. Full normal speed.

[SHUTTLECRAFT]

SCOTT: A distress signal? It's like sending up a flare. Mister Spock, that was a good gamble. Perhaps it was worth it.
SPOCK: No one out there to see it.
(The plume of flame fades out)
SCOTT: Orbit decaying, Mister Spock. Ten seconds to atmosphere.

MCCOY: It may be the last action you'll ever take, Mister Spock, but it was all human.
SPOCK: Totally illogical. There was no chance.
MCCOY: That's exactly what I mean.

 

[T'Girl]

Uhura ... She is responsible for placing them in the right place to rescue the shuttle crew. TOS Uhura was very capable, intelligent and vital to the running of the ship

The opinion I've formed about TOS Uhura is that she isn't exactly a communication officer, Uhura is a "general purpose" junior officer who has been assigned to the communications section, we've seen her move around to various positions and initially she was in a command gold uniform. In terms of accessing the information, if Kirk is a good commander (and he appears to be) he would have trained his officers to be proactive, not just reactive. Uhura research the information on her own initiative.

I believe there is a follow up novel in which the shuttlecrew, except for Scotty is officially reprimanded.

The novel was Dreadnought, Scotty brought charges solely against Boma and had him thrown out of Starfleet.

Murasaki 312 was a quasar "like" phenomenon, it was temporary and had already started to dissipate by the end of the episode (it could no longer be seen) . That why the Enterprise didn't just come back later, they had a short time window to investigate. That's why they knew there were four star systems in the area, the phenomenon wasn't originally there.

 

[kkozoriz1]

We saw Uhura at the Helm, albeit reluctently in Balance of Terror. It appears that she had some cross training, otherwise why put her there? If she had some helm training is it not possible that she was also trained on the sensors? As the communications officer she would be looking at the sources of the interference, trying to find a way to punch through. YMMV.

 

[ClawsThatCatch]

I personally do not like this episode because Spock behaves illogically on several accounts without even realizing it.

He says at one point, "Strange. Step by step, I have made the correct and logical decisions. And yet two men have died." Well, the problem is, he didn't make the correct and logical decisions.

The episode shows multiple examples of Spock behaving as if he thought every other individual---even primitive big-foot creatures---were going to respond logically. This is highly illogical! One would imagine after working with humans for so long, he would eventually realize that he has to account for and anticipate the illogic of others. It is illogical expect everyone to act according to logic. (maybe this is why Spock loses games of chess! Before this episode I thought Spock was letting Kirk win, but maybe not!)

And yes, everyone behaves very disrespectfully toward Spock. It's disgraceful. I love McCoy, but he sure can make bad situations worse by encouraging this kind of badmouthing of superior officers.

 

[Captrek]

All I'm saying is that there should have been a Science Officer doing that kind of work, not a Communications Officer. I happen to feel that Uhura is very well trained in her area of expertise: operating and maintaining the communications equipment on the ship. She is also crosstrained in other areas and in a pinch can cover those stations. But in a situation like Galileo Seven I would expext her to be concentrating on the communications aspect and not the "science" aspect.

Did Uhura personally conduct the astronomical survey and find the Type M planet? I think maybe she was just relaying the information to the Captain.

 

[Nerys Myk]

All I'm saying is that there should have been a Science Officer doing that kind of work, not a Communications Officer. I happen to feel that Uhura is very well trained in her area of expertise: operating and maintaining the communications equipment on the ship. She is also crosstrained in other areas and in a pinch can cover those stations. But in a situation like Galileo Seven I would expext her to be concentrating on the communications aspect and not the "science" aspect.

Did Uhura personally conduct the astronomical survey and find the Type M planet? I think maybe she was just relaying the information to the Captain.

Could be, most of her dialog in that episode is relaying information from the search parties to the Captain.