"Shore Leave"...was Ruth Mitchell's blond lab assistant?
- Thread starter Kryton
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Having just watched "Shore Leave" again, it was clear to me that Ruth was a very painful memory for Kirk. When he was asking "How can you be here?" it was with such wistful yearning and amazement that I got the strong impression that Ruth was someone who had died. And later on, after Spock asks if the people Kirk saw had been hallucinations, Kirk says, "One of them clocked me on the jaw. The other...." and grows somber. Spock replies "That sounds like a painful reality," and when Kirk says "Yes," it's clear from his tone and expression that he isn't thinking about Finnegan at that moment.
So whatever happened with Ruth, it's clearly something that Kirk feels a lot of pain about. So it's unlikely that she could be the lab assistant that Kirk and Mitchell talked about so casually. From their dialogue there, it sounds like Kirk considers his near-marriage to be something he was lucky to dodge, not something he regrets losing.
So whatever happened with Ruth, it's clearly something that Kirk feels a lot of pain about. So it's unlikely that she could be the lab assistant that Kirk and Mitchell talked about so casually. From their dialogue there, it sounds like Kirk considers his near-marriage to be something he was lucky to dodge, not something he regrets losing.
Forbin said:
I don't get that - he had to DIE because he cheated on an experiment?!Strange Hollywood thinking.
On TV, crime is supposed to pay. Evil or bad must be punished. Even in cartoons. So you never see Wile E. get the roadrunner, Tom always loses, etc.
I think the failure of the experiment would have been enough. But it's good "drama" to kill off someone, or so it is thought.
I think it would be better drama to keep someone alive and have them face the consequences of their actions, but what do I know?
In this case, it was an easy kill for the story writers, someone about whom people cared only a bit, being new, but something that would be good for giving a major character major pain....But we know that the Planet does costumes. It did for Yeoman Barrow, after all. So where was Ruth's cat o'nine tails?
(Seriously, Christopher's comments about how Kirk viewed his "Ruth" encounter were real eye-openers for me. Perhaps the real Ruth didn't quite die back then, but at the very least she became utterly unavailable. Young Kirk wooing a married woman and getting burned?)
Timo Saloniemi
(Seriously, Christopher's comments about how Kirk viewed his "Ruth" encounter were real eye-openers for me. Perhaps the real Ruth didn't quite die back then, but at the very least she became utterly unavailable. Young Kirk wooing a married woman and getting burned?)
Timo Saloniemi
TBonz said:
Forbin said:
I don't get that - he had to DIE because he cheated on an experiment?!
On TV, crime is supposed to pay. Evil or bad must be punished.
And yet Vic Mackey is still walking around...
Therin of Andor said:
Forbin said:
I don't get that - he had to DIE because he cheated on an experiment?!
Bennett had devised a particular formula (that worked for him). He sees nature (and scriptwriting) as a set of actions/reactions, and balances/counter-balances. Kirk found David again, but Spock died: ST II. David cheated, so had to be punished: ST III. And since Spock was miraculously returned, Kirk must lose even more: a son - and the Enterprise. With ST IV, Kirk is demoted, but regains his ship, and so on.
All well and good (and the reason Jean Gray had to die in the Phoenix Saga, having killed a whole planetfull of people), but killing David sure seems a bit harsh for a "crime" that really had NO direct mortal consequences for anyone! No one died because David hedged the experiment - The crew of the Grissom would have died anyway when the Klingons tried to take the Genesis planet, the crew of the BoP would have died anyway when Kirk fought back...
Wait..Wait
"No one died because David hedged the experiment - The crew of the Grissom would have died anyway when the Klingons tried to take the Genesis planet, the crew of the BoP would have died anyway when Kirk fought back... "
If David had not gotten that ball rolling it would not of swept up members of Reliant and Regula, freed Khan and his elk and killed Spock and lead to 1701 to be retired. Some of the impacts of these results were reversed but some were not, and David is responsible for setting all of this in motion.
-The Shatinator
"No one died because David hedged the experiment - The crew of the Grissom would have died anyway when the Klingons tried to take the Genesis planet, the crew of the BoP would have died anyway when Kirk fought back... "
If David had not gotten that ball rolling it would not of swept up members of Reliant and Regula, freed Khan and his elk and killed Spock and lead to 1701 to be retired. Some of the impacts of these results were reversed but some were not, and David is responsible for setting all of this in motion.
-The Shatinator
Thank you. I was distressed to see so many people missing this. It's practically spelled out in TSFS:
Saavik: "How many have paid the price for your impatience? How many have died? How much damage have you done and what is yet to come?"
If David had followed the rules and been an ethical scientist (and therefore not be a hypocrite to Kirk in TWOK), his friends on Regulaa 1 would still be alive, Reliant wouldn't have picked up Kahn, Spock, Scotty's nephew and those poor saps burning alive in the torpedo room would not have died. Further, the Klingons would not have killed the crew of Grissom and the Enterprise need not have been destroyed.
And this isn't some "wacky way of writing screenplays," it's called following through with your character. By choosing to make David responsible for the protomatter thing, Bennett was compelled to kill him. Not because he "cheated" but because his impatience lead to the deaths of (no shit) over a hundred people (don't know the crew compliment of Grissom). If Bennett did not kill him after that, fans to this day would be picking that apart. "Hey, David caused all that and got away with it. Sloppy writing!"
Anyway, back to the topic. No, Ruth was not the blonde lab assistant. Hell, I'm not convinced it was Carol either. There were other blondes and Kirk fell in love at least 3 times in the series, so it could have been anyone.
Kirk's line of not seeing Ruth in 15 years would make him in his late teens when they had their romance. That would be, I think, too early for her to be the one who Gary Mitchell hooked Kirk up with.
Eh...I don't think the Regula 1 scientists are all that innocent. I'm pretty sure they knew they were using a banned material in constructing Genesis.
Plus, you can't completely blame everything on David for what happened. The Genesis planet happened waaaaay earlier than expected in an uncontrolled environment and not in the way it was intended to work.
They were still messing around with Phase Two. Who knows what developments were going to happen between then and when they were actually ready to use it.
Eh...I don't think the Regula 1 scientists are all that innocent. I'm pretty sure they knew they were using a banned material in constructing Genesis.
Plus, you can't completely blame everything on David for what happened. The Genesis planet happened waaaaay earlier than expected in an uncontrolled environment and not in the way it was intended to work.
They were still messing around with Phase Two. Who knows what developments were going to happen between then and when they were actually ready to use it.
IIRC, in the novelization of ST III, David did go the protomatter route without telling his mother and his colleagues.
I still don't get the moral angle. David got the device working (by using protomatter). The consequence: Khan got a new toy, and that's why lots of people died. But Carol Marcus aspired to do the exact same thing: to get the device working. Surely her crime must be the exact same?
The fact that David used protomatter had no direct bearing on the following events. The fact that protomatter made Genesis unstable had at most a positive side effect on peoples' lives, because it conveniently erased the hot-potato Genesis planet, allowed Kirk to defeat the otherwise superior Kruge in fisticuffs, and helped Spock through growth spurts that restored his healthily green if somewhat sagging cheeks in no time flat.
Given what little information we are given in the movies, it is extremely difficult to understand what could be "unethical" about protomatter. It sounds like an irrational religious taboo to me. "Thou Shalt Not Use Strawberry Flavor Ice Cream For Desserts, Because Strawberry Flavor Is Unethical. So Say We All. But Chokolate Is Fine."
Timo Saloniemi
The fact that David used protomatter had no direct bearing on the following events. The fact that protomatter made Genesis unstable had at most a positive side effect on peoples' lives, because it conveniently erased the hot-potato Genesis planet, allowed Kirk to defeat the otherwise superior Kruge in fisticuffs, and helped Spock through growth spurts that restored his healthily green if somewhat sagging cheeks in no time flat.
Given what little information we are given in the movies, it is extremely difficult to understand what could be "unethical" about protomatter. It sounds like an irrational religious taboo to me. "Thou Shalt Not Use Strawberry Flavor Ice Cream For Desserts, Because Strawberry Flavor Is Unethical. So Say We All. But Chokolate Is Fine."
Timo Saloniemi
Deleted 2
Vice Admiral
^ Indeed, if Genesis had been made without protomatter, the events would have been much the same. Starfleet would still have dispatched a ship to look for a lifeless planet; Ceti Alpha Seex would still have checked out.
Of course, "Protomatter" is nothing more than a maguffin that allowed Bennett to blame David Marcus for the imperfection of the Genesis planet. Any number of other causes could've been invented to rationalize the planet's instability.
So I think it's fair to assume that Bennett wanted to kill off David from the beginning to add drama to a movie that would otherwise have been very straightforward, and came up with the convoluted 'protomatter' explanation to add some kind of dramatic logic to his death.
Which still doesn't explain why Bibi Besch was left out; my guess is that her omission had more to do with payment than penance.
Of course, "Protomatter" is nothing more than a maguffin that allowed Bennett to blame David Marcus for the imperfection of the Genesis planet. Any number of other causes could've been invented to rationalize the planet's instability.
So I think it's fair to assume that Bennett wanted to kill off David from the beginning to add drama to a movie that would otherwise have been very straightforward, and came up with the convoluted 'protomatter' explanation to add some kind of dramatic logic to his death.
Which still doesn't explain why Bibi Besch was left out; my guess is that her omission had more to do with payment than penance.
David lambasted Kirk for cheating on the Kobayashi Maru scenario, and yet he, himself, had cheated by using an unstable material to make a scientific experiment appear to work to already-defined specifications.
No. It was for reasons of script efficiency. Two Marcuses not needed if one would do. And Bennett did not want to kill off Carol at this point - and had every reason to believe that a future movie might include a juicy scene where Carol confronts Kirk over David's death at the hands of Klingons, ie. Kirk's enemy.
Similarly, Bennett dropped Saavik out of ST IV early, because it was redundant to have two Vulcans in 1986 San Francisco, both hiding their ears and eyebrows.
Both of these decisions he defended in Starlog interviews.
That angle I always appreciated about the protomatter thing, the "like father, like son" aspect. Yet Saavik rewards the older Kirk's cheating with an admiring, somewhat leery smile of surprise, but meets that of the younger man with an icy stare.
Might have something to do with the generally different portrayals of the Saaviks... But there's fun symmetry there, first Jim in a hot jungle getting a Vulcan to smile and then David amid arctic wastelands making her angry. Or as close as Vulcans get to such things.
Timo Saloniemi
Kirstie Alley's Saavik, a command trainee, was admiring Kirk for a command decision.
Robin Curtis's Saavik, on a scientific survey, was appalled by the recklessness of David, a scientist.
Robin Curtis's Saavik, on a scientific survey, was appalled by the recklessness of David, a scientist.
Not necessarily. If David had not taken his short cut, it "might have been years - or never" to quote him exactly. That being the case, Reliant might not have been assigned to look for a lifeless planet, Chekov may not have still been there and whomever was assigned might have gone a different route and not have been as impatient as Terrel.
So, Kirk would have finished the training cruise, still felt old, probably retired. The Enterprise would have been decommissioned and a new ship and crew assigned. So even if Kahn was found years later, would have have traveled all the way back to Earth to find Kirk and take on the whole Starfleet?
Or would the Enterprise be "the only ship in the quadrant"?
I guess it should be argued that Khan would only be discovered once Genesis was such a success that Starfleet would send a ship looking for testing grounds, prompting Khan to take over that ship and necessarily to become curious about her mission as well. The step to steal Genesis would then inevitably be taken as well.
David made all that happen in 2285 or so. Carol might have made it happen in 2286, or 2299, or perhaps never. But she certainly gave it her best try, and success would have carried similar consequences. Or possibly worse, because there might not have been Kirk there to serve as a lighting rod to Khan's madness, and to ultimately defeat him. Without a single target, Khan could have been lobbing Genesis bombs left and right to exact his revenge on Starfleet in general...
Timo Saloniemi
David made all that happen in 2285 or so. Carol might have made it happen in 2286, or 2299, or perhaps never. But she certainly gave it her best try, and success would have carried similar consequences. Or possibly worse, because there might not have been Kirk there to serve as a lighting rod to Khan's madness, and to ultimately defeat him. Without a single target, Khan could have been lobbing Genesis bombs left and right to exact his revenge on Starfleet in general...
Timo Saloniemi
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