"Long range and untraceable"

[F. King Daniel]

I'd always giggle at Admiral Marcus' "long range and untraceable" line, which was immediately followed by a hologram showing one of the torpedoes - which are spammed in Starfleet signage.

BUT! Watching the intro, I spotted this on Thomas Harewood's screen, when he emails Marcus just prior to blowing himself up. The torpedoes have cloaking devices, which activate by remote after launch!

It seems Section 31 had the plan to attack Kronos well in place before Khan fled and Kirk gave Marcus the opportunity to action it.
I've said it before, but I don't think there's been another Trek crammed with as much background detail as Into Darkness. A lot of thought went into things which would never be spotted until the home release.

 

[T'Girl]

I'd always giggle at Admiral Marcus' "long range and untraceable" line

Since it was the Admiral's plan to have the attack result in a war with the Empire, what purpose would it have serve to have the torpedoes be "untraceable?"

The Admiral would have wanted the Klingons to be able to trace the destruction caused by the torpedoes back to the Federation.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Kirk didn't know that. Had the torpedoes loaded with Augment supermen instead of fuel been used, the cloaks likely wouldn't have worked (fuel consumption being the number one drawback of the technology, according to Spock in "Balance of Terror") and Starfleet would have been blamed, igniting Marcus' war with the Klingons.

 

[Franklin]

Marcus probably didn't intend to use all 72 missiles at once to start his war until he found out Khan's plan and decided to get rid of them. Undoubtedly, production would've continued once the war started too, and being able to use those missiles with a cloaking device during the war would be quite useful.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

I agree that this is contradictory. If you want to start a war, you don't attack from afar with cloaked, untraceable missiles. Unless Marcus' plan was to use all 72 torps to wipe out the surface of Kronos in one volley (i.e. knock em down before they even knew what hit them), it's just another example of bad writing.

 

[Timo]

I doubt the weapons were designed for any specific mission; they'd be a generic Section 31 bells-and-whistles design capable of all sorts of nastiness that might be needed in various special operations. It's just that they were the off-the-shelf weapon of choice for both Khan and Marcus' personal missions:

1) Just the right size to house the corpsicles, while in suitably short supply that if they ever did see use, these very 72 would be sent (Khan would need these qualities no matter what his plan of smuggling them out to the field)

2) With suitable range for the "standoff" strikes against Klingon targets that some foolish young skipper could be lured into performing, before he found out that the standoff range was no protection since his ship no longer had warp drive (Marcus would need these qualities no matter which Klingon target he wanted hit, and no matter under what circumstances)

I would speculate Khan in his S31 expert role was behind the design and construction of the weapons from the very start, and also made damn sure that there would only be a suitable handful of them ever manufactured (or, alternately, that there would be these specific 72 set aside so that they wouldn't be lost when the S31 workshop's time was up). He also cleverly influenced Marcus into developing the plan to use weapons like this to ignite the war, perhaps even offering to go to Qo'noS himself to act as a "legitimate" target.

In any case, "untraceable" would be a lie to get Kirk to perform the assassination mission in the first place - the young fool might be stupid but not suicidal. Heck, no need to have the cloaks sabotaged or omitted in order to get Kirk into trouble - Marcus might simply have slapped a false "Contains a cloaking device" label to the weapons to better betray Kirk.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[fireproof78]

I'd always giggle at Admiral Marcus' "long range and untraceable" line, which was immediately followed by a hologram showing one of the torpedoes - which are spammed in Starfleet signage.

BUT! Watching the intro, I spotted this on Thomas Harewood's screen, when he emails Marcus just prior to blowing himself up. The torpedoes have cloaking devices, which activate by remote after launch!

It seems Section 31 had the plan to attack Kronos well in place before Khan fled and Kirk gave Marcus the opportunity to action it.
I've said it before, but I don't think there's been another Trek crammed with as much background detail as Into Darkness. A lot of thought went into things which would never be spotted until the home release.

I'm in agreement about the level of detail in this film, and hae been impressed with the graphics, among other design aspects.

As for the torpedoes, I think Khan was selling Kirk that they could have their cake and eat it too-Harrsion/Khan would be dead, and no one would be the wiser, at least to Kirk's knowledge.

However, both Khan and Marcus wold know that to launch those missiles was to cross a point of no return and start the war, as Khan explains to Kirk. Marcus wants them launched and Kirk is the patsy to do it.

As for the actual functioning of the missiles, I think Timo is pretty accurate in that they were probably a multipurpose weapon that fit the bill for Marcus plan, and Khan's purpose.

As a brief aside, I think this detail indicates how multi-layered Abrams Trek really is, in terms of world building and specific information. I like the layering and themes in this world, and how things are kept moving from different perspectives. Khan has his plan, Marcus has his plan and Kirk is reacting to the events. Lots of moving parts.

 

[drt]

I agree that this is contradictory. If you want to start a war, you don't attack from afar with cloaked, untraceable missiles. Unless Marcus' plan was to use all 72 torps to wipe out the surface of Kronos in one volley (i.e. knock em down before they even knew what hit them), it's just another example of bad writing.

It's not contradictory: Kirk is the one who wants to kill Khan, but he doesn't want to start a war with the Klingons. So he's told the torpedoes are "long range and untraceable". Marcus does want to start a war using Kirk as a patsy - do make his case for war he just needs Enterprise to be attacked by Klingons on the border of the neutral zone. His plan doesn't even need the torpedoes to hit Kronos at all. I'd even say he has a better case within the Federation if Enterprise is attacked and she hasn't actually bombed Kronos. So if the torpedoes don't reach Kronos because they've run out of fuel (which may be likely because of the cryopods), and the Klingons attack Enterprise, so much the better.

 

[Set Harth]

If you can cloak a torpedo, you can cloak a ship. They should have given Enterprise a cloak.

 

[fireproof78]

If you can cloak a torpedo, you can cloak a ship. They should have given Enterprise a cloak.

That would have been too overt a violation of the treaty with the Romulans. Marcus was trying to start a war with the Klingons, but I don't think we wanted a war with both them and the Romulans at the same time.

If he wanted to be that overt, he would have flown Starfleet vessels over the boarder and back again.

 

[Set Harth]

In 2259 in the Prime timeline that treaty didn't exist yet. Are we to assume there is a similar treaty in effect in the Abramsverse by 2259?

 

[Franklin]

If you can cloak a torpedo, you can cloak a ship. They should have given Enterprise a cloak.

Not necessarily. The energy requirements to cloak an entire ship may still be too high. Otherwise, I'd guess the Vengeance would've had a cloak.

 

[Set Harth]

Do we know for certain that it didn't? The plot didn't seem to call for it to be used.

 

[Franklin]

Do we know for certain that it didn't? The plot didn't seem to call for it to be used.

The plot kind of did, at least in terms of the dramatic moment it would've created if instead of breaking warp and confronting the Enterprise, the Vengeance suddenly de-cloaked in front of them.

Also, we can assume forever what's on and not on the ship. It would make sense to me that if Section 31 had intelligence that the Romulans had a cloaking device, that they'd have a program to try to catch up to them, that to that point was capable of cloaking things like torpedoes (and maybe Archer's dog, for all we know ) but not entire starships, yet.

 

[fireproof78]

Do we know for certain that it didn't? The plot didn't seem to call for it to be used.

It is a bit of an assumption, but even in Prime TOS, the Federation was not developing cloaking tech, and it was considered a game changer when the Romulans had it in "Balance of Terror." "Enterprise Incident" involved Kirk and Spock getting a device to figure out how to defeat it.

In ID, Marcus seems to be more forcused on the Klingons, so either the Romulans are not a factor, for whatever reason. I personally would imagine that Marcus woul not want to provoke them until he was ready. A cloaking device on a ship could do that.

Also, even if they had a ship cloak, why show off all your tricks to your enemy? The missiles are likely one of many weapons designed for the Vengeance.

 

[F. King Daniel]

In 2259 in the Prime timeline that treaty didn't exist yet. Are we to assume there is a similar treaty in effect in the Abramsverse by 2259?

It would seem so. But was that treaty really signed post-TOS in the Primeline, or is that just an assumption from somewhere? Romulans (among others) had cloaking devices in ENT, so I'd expect it to be a treaty dating back to the Earth/Romulan war.

Even if the Vengeance didn't have a cloaking device, it was conceived by J.J. Abrams as "a stealth version of the Enterprise". I suspect it isn't found unless it wants to be.

 

[Enterprise1701]

In 2259 in the Prime timeline that treaty didn't exist yet. Are we to assume there is a similar treaty in effect in the Abramsverse by 2259?

I'm not sure where it is, but Memory Alpha claims that background graphics in Into Darkness say that the Federation had legal cloaking restrictions by 2259. Then in the IDW comic arc The Khitomer Conflict, Section 31 has warships equipped with cloaking devices that are even better than the Romulans'.

 

[Phily B]

Perhaps only Section 31 has cloaking technology and only on a small scale? There are tons of explanations, but the real reason is they don't want to confuse the audience, Trekkers and casuals alike.

 

[Nebusj]

I agree that this is contradictory. If you want to start a war, you don't attack from afar with cloaked, untraceable missiles. Unless Marcus' plan was to use all 72 torps to wipe out the surface of Kronos in one volley (i.e. knock em down before they even knew what hit them), it's just another example of bad writing.

No, I see the sense of it. Suppose we have this scenario:

1. Enterprise, at but not actually past the border, fires the 72 missiles.

2. The missiles cloak, and reach Kronos, doing widespread damage.

Plausible responses, as I see it:

1. The Klingons, not being idiots, would conclude the Enterprise attacked them and retaliate.

2. Admiral Marcus would insist that the Enterprise never entered Klingon space and that there's no evidence of anything launched from Enterprise toward Kronos except maybe nasty looks.

3. Federation public opinion would interpret the explosions on Kronos as being a Praxis-like natural disaster used by the Klingons as pretext to attack and destroy an innocent ship of the line.

Thus the Klingons are roused (fairly, I must say) to war, with an incident that will look to non-warhawks within the Federation as an unprovoked attack. It doesn't guarantee war --- nothing does, if the heads of state are determined not to have one --- but it would be an awfully hard incident to get past.

 

[Set Harth]

The plot kind of did, at least in terms of the dramatic moment it would've created if instead of breaking warp and confronting the Enterprise, the Vengeance suddenly de-cloaked in front of them.

The way it happened in the film seemed dramatic enough.

But was that treaty really signed post-TOS in the Primeline, or is that just an assumption from somewhere?

Memory Alpha claims it was signed in 2311, 160 years after the war, and implies that this was established in TNG's "The Pegasus".