ST III: Self destruct question

[warpusher]

I posted a few months ago on the topic of TSFS and through either a mistype or misread came up with a good way to have not killed off the 1701. Appologies for not remembering the member who helped me come up with it.

Kirk and Crew go to the transporter room. Everyone save Scotty beams down. Scotty remains on to work the transporter room. before he leaves room throws an incendiary device of some sort into the transporter room. Klingons emerge into a room on fire and die.

Kruge in shock/rage at Kirk killing the boarding party and his surviving on Genesis still continues with the rest of the movie plot. Scotty remains on board Enterprise trying to reestablish systems somehow. Keep the beaming aboard the BoP and crew escape to Vulcan, but have Scotty tell Kirk and crew to go without him. Planet starts to blow, BoP warps out.

At the end have someone (Savvik or Uhura) answer Kirk as to the Enterprise's and Scotty's fate. Mention that Enterprise cleared the system somehow before Genesis's detonation and that Scotty got away onboard a shuttle. The Enterprise is a derelict adrift, but salvageable. Maybe Scotty gets to Regula I. Did it still exist or was it consumed by the Genesis device.

The self destruction of Enterprise set the series down the path of disposable capital ships and interchangeable names. The Enterprise shouldn't have gone down like that. The writers had to know that the ship was as loved of character as the crew. Dying like it did was meaningless in the grand scheme of things. The D's death was similiarly not-epic. Both capital ships got punked by the future equivalent of a U-Boat. The ship was not a disposable item. Using another genre (Star Wars) as an example, the heros don't ever give up on the Millennium Falcon. The heroes could have gotten off the Death Star in another ship, left Hoth or Cloud City on another ship, or used a dedicated attack craft to destroy Death Star II. Using the Hoth scenario, they're still trying to fix the ship while a ground assault is ongoing. After 20+ years of service on her, and having been in countless situations that were worse, I know Scotty could have found something to save not only himself but the ship one more time.

 

[Christopher]

^Yeah, but the idea was that, in order to get Spock back, Kirk had to make a sacrifice. Okay, he sacrificed his son, but the audience didn't have as much invested in David as it did in the Enterprise. So in order to get his miracle, Kirk had to pay a huge price.

It's sort of like the original Donner version of Superman II, where Jor-El's ghost/computer simulation/whatever had to sacrifice himself to restore Superman's powers. In order to gain something precious, the hero had to lose something else that was precious. Otherwise it's just too easy, like in the final Lester version of Superman II where Superman gets a magic crystal that gives him back all his powers without any personal cost whatsoever.

 

[Captrek]

If you're looking for an in-universe explanation, it's that Kruge was going to destroy the Enterprise if the boarding party encountered resistance. It wouldn't have saved the Enterprise, it just would have gotten Scotty killed.

 

[Timo]

Exactly - the vulnerability of the wounded starship is evident to our heroes, and they would take that into account in their plans.

Killing Klingons from ambush positions is easy; our heroes have weapons of mass destruction on their belt holsters for that. Avoiding Klingon retribution is the important thing here.

Would Kirk have had any hope of escaping the dying Genesis without Kruge's starship? He would probably be confident that the Excelsior would be down for the count - but also that other Starfleet assets would be hot on his heels. Perhaps he could have expected one of those to rescue him after he had eliminated all the Klingons by blowing up his own ship on Kruge's face and then gunning down Kruge's surface team. But I could also well see him planning on taking over the Klingon vessel, and taking special steps to ensure this vessel was not destroyed when the majority of her crew was eliminated.

In the end, Starfleet did not arrive in time to catch Kirk. Nor would it apparently have arrived in time to save Kirk's life in the absence of the BoP - that particular spot on the surface did appear very unstable and potentially lethal, even though the later shots of the planet from space revealed some non-molten patches, too. But we don't know exactly when Starfleet did arrive, and whether this was before or after the Genesis planet was destroyed for good. In any case, Kirk did well not counting on Starfleet there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[f14peter]

The self destruction of Enterprise set the series down the path of disposable capital ships and interchangeable names. The Enterprise shouldn't have gone down like that. The writers had to know that the ship was as loved of character as the crew. Dying like it did was meaningless in the grand scheme of things. .

I disagree, as I found the destruction to contain much symbolism and relevance to the story.

As already mentioned, yet another sacrifice by Kirk (and representing the lengths he was willing to go to) besides his career, the entity her cherished nearly as much as his dear friends.

Risks to the nearby planet and BoP aside, the self-destruct happened specifically to serve the story. If the process resulted in the instantaneous complete destruction via massive explosion, it would have been jolting but without lasting impact, merely the disposal of a piece of equipment. Instead, the destruction was prolonged, which along with the crumbling of the outer hull skin of the saucer section with the name and registry number to me almost represented some metaphorical agony the ship was experiencing before a larger explosion carries away the front of the saucer to represent the inevitableness of what was happening as a prelude to a more dignified final demise being cremated by Genesis' atmosphere.

 

[eyeresist]

I've been trying to think of the tactical term for Kirk's gambit in destroying the Enterprise. Best I can come up with is Parthian Shot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthian_shot

 

[Captrek]

A closer analogy might be the scorched earth strategy, where you destroy the food and water supplies of territory you can't hold and then retreat, allowing the invaders to take the territory and consequently die of starvation and/or poisoning.

 

[publiusr]

^Yeah, but the idea was that, in order to get Spock back, Kirk had to make a sacrifice. Okay, he sacrificed his son, but the audience didn't have as much invested in David as it did in the Enterprise. So in order to get his miracle, Kirk had to pay a huge price.

It's sort of like the original Donner version of Superman II, where Jor-El's ghost/computer simulation/whatever had to sacrifice himself to restore Superman's powers. In order to gain something precious, the hero had to lose something else that was precious. Otherwise it's just too easy, like in the final Lester version of Superman II where Superman gets a magic crystal that gives him back all his powers without any personal cost whatsoever.

It is interesting that you mention the Donner version of Superman.

Seeing that ST II and III were the first two parts of the Spock trilogy, I'd have liked to have seen the ship shots from the first three films cobbled together to make a more epic Wrath Of Khan.

Imagine that The Motion Picture never happened.

You see the dry-dock sequence, then the footage of Kirk in ST II:TWOK during an inspection. The Enterprise leaving the solar system in ST:TMP, and finally the return to Spacedock footage we saw in ST III at the close when Kirk says that he feels young.

There is some splicing that could be done. Maybe even a little Space Seed at the beginning.

The TOS Enterprise looked its best in Airplane II, so it would have held up. A disembodied voice calling for a return to Earth to be refit.

The self destruction of Enterprise set the series down the path of disposable capital ships and interchangeable names. The Enterprise shouldn't have gone down like that.

This is sticking point with me--because we never actually saw it crash. Even expert eyes can be fooled--from James Oberg:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/971/1

Only rockets aimed to fall back to Earth, as the long-range bombardment missiles were, counter-intuitively appear to fade away and disappear as they soar upward. Conversely, in the new common sense of the minutes-old Space Age, rockets not intended to fall back to Earth appear, instead, to head downward towards the far horizon.

I say Enterprise (which only did a partial distruct due to Reliant's damage) skipped back out of the atmosphere, and is drifting even now as a ghost ship among the rubble of the Genesis Planet.

Imagine Khan slumping over, a crewman entering the bridge, scooping him up to fly away on a Killer Bee from Reliant--and the same Genesis wave that resurrects Spock does the same to Khan. He and a handful are in the original 1701..asleep again...waiting to rise.

 

[Christopher]

Imagine that The Motion Picture never happened.

Annnd that's where you lost me.

You see the dry-dock sequence, then the footage of Kirk in ST II:TWOK during an inspection.

Well, TWOK already did recycle the drydock footage from TMP, so that's not much different.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

If you're looking for an in-universe explanation, it's that Kruge was going to destroy the Enterprise if the boarding party encountered resistance. It wouldn't have saved the Enterprise, it just would have gotten Scotty killed.

Agreed. Kruge didn't care about the Enterprise so much as he did whatever information he believed was stored in her memory banks. Even if his men had succeeded in capturing the vessel, it's unlikely he'd have left it intact once he had the Genesis information; I suppose the ship would have had some strategic value given that it could have been reverse-engineered by the Klingons to learn more about Starfleet technology, but Kruge wasn't interested in that. He wanted information about Genesis.

--Sran

 

[eyeresist]

Kruge didn't care about the Enterprise so much as he did whatever information he believed was stored in her memory banks. ... I suppose the ship would have had some strategic value given that it could have been reverse-engineered by the Klingons to learn more about Starfleet technology, but Kruge wasn't interested in that.

If we take on board the original explanation that the BoP was actually a stolen Romulan ship, could we then postulate a stolen Enterprise manned by Klingons?

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

If we take on board the original explanation that the BoP was actually a stolen Romulan ship, could we then postulate a stolen Enterprise manned by Klingons?

I don't see it. The advantage offered by the theft of a Romulan vessel is the ship's cloaking device, which no Federation ships had at the time of TSFS. And as most everyone (except Kruge, apparently) knew that the Enterprise was Kirk's ship (or had been), it's unlikely Kruge or his men would have fooled anyone by cruising around in it.

--Sran

 

[Christopher]

^Taking an enemy ship as a prize isn't generally about camouflage, it's about taking away some of their strength and adding to your own -- not to mention the psychological benefit of turning an enemy's ships against them. There's a long tradition in warfare of capturing enemy ships and sailing them under your own flag.

 

[FormerLurker]

Indeed. That's what Khan was doing in the previous film.

 

[Christopher]

^Except that Khan did take Reliant as camouflage -- initially he got the Enterprise off guard by making them think it was a friendly ship approaching. The prize-taking approach I'm talking about would mean openly displaying your own colors -- which in spaceships would probably mean altering the transponder codes, painting a new name and registry number on the hull, that sort of thing. For instance, if the Klingons captured a Starfleet vessel, it'd probably end up with its hull repainted in the Klingon color scheme and with Klingon writing and symbols on it. And vice-versa if Starfleet took a Klingon ship as a prize. (Come to think of it, some fan artists might find that an interesting project.)

 

[Timo]

Saying that Khan took the ship as camouflage is probably stretching it, as the camouflage idea would emerge well into Khan's multi-staged effort to escape from Ceti Alpha. But Khan made good use of what he had.

I sort of doubt Kruge's dozen Klingons could have made much use of the big "battle cruiser", especially in her damaged state. But if they were stranded without a ship of their own, they could no doubt effect an epic escape from UFP space and then sing songs about that...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

Kruge does does say he would transfere his flag there. In old terms that would be move his command over to that ship, but could also just mean claim it for the Klingon Empire with a prize crew.

If they could get the automation system working again, they could get both ships back to the Empire even with only the maybe 10 people he had.

 

[eyeresist]

Saying that Khan took the ship as camouflage is probably stretching it, as the camouflage idea would emerge well into Khan's multi-staged effort to escape from Ceti Alpha. But Khan made good use of what he had.

A good general adapts to his terrain!

Speaking of which, and only slightly off topic, I noticed for the first time the other night what I think is a TSFS reference in First Contact, when the Borg Queen says to Picard, "You think in such three-dimensional terms."

 

[Destructor]

There's actually a surprising lack of Federation ships being used by other cultures in Star Trek. It's probably a comprehensibility issue, like, imagine if in Way of the Warrior Klingos were using ships of their own design AND repurposed Federation ships?

Are there any examples in naval history of a ship getting confused in a large ship action and firing on a ship that was on its side, due to the fact that ships keep changing sides?

 

[Captrek]

Speaking of which, and only slightly off topic, I noticed for the first time the other night what I think is a TSFS reference in First Contact, when the Borg Queen says to Picard, "You think in such three-dimensional terms."

You mean a TWOK reference?