Reading a couple of other threads, it occurs to me once again that the final battles of ST2 and ST6 both involve fairly big contrivances that help the good guys win. In TWOK it was Spock pointing out "two-dimensional thinking," when Kirk the master starship tactician should have automatically been thinking in 3D and already mopping the floor with Reliant. In TUC it was the "tailpipe" thing, which presumes that, in all the years of encounters and problems with cloaked vessels, it never occurred to anyone in the Federation to try to detect the ship's emissions.
To me, the one in TUC is more egregious, to the point of being absurd. Even in the 1950s the British had developed a "sniffer" system for detecting diesel exhaust from a snorkel submarine. But I believe both are examples of Meyer favoring a story approach where things "feel right," even if they don't make complete sense. And he pretty much gets away with it, I think.
To me, the one in TUC is more egregious, to the point of being absurd. Even in the 1950s the British had developed a "sniffer" system for detecting diesel exhaust from a snorkel submarine. But I believe both are examples of Meyer favoring a story approach where things "feel right," even if they don't make complete sense. And he pretty much gets away with it, I think.
