ST:III This just occurred to me.....

[F. King Daniel]

I think it was originally all to bring Spock's body to Vulcan.

Maybe Kirk thought they could do some magical mumbo jumbo and bring him back even before he's discovered alive.

 

[Timo]

Regardless of all the scene swaps, the basic chronology holds:

1) Spock deposits his katra, with instructions to take it to Vulcan.
2) McCoy goes crazy and cannot act on his inner voices to accomplish #1; he only gets his friends confused.
3) Sarek rushes in, accusing Kirk of deliberately refusing to hand over Spock's katra, while also stating that Spock's body can just as well rot on Genesis.
4) Kirk figures out the katra actually went to McCoy.
5) Sarek recognizes McCoy's distress and says Kirk must bring "both" to Mount Seleya for relief.
6) Kirk royally misunderstands and thinks he has to bring the dead corpse, too!
7) Meanwhile, McCoy is arrested on charges of wanting to go to Genesis.
8) After Kirk has already launched into his plan to get to Genesis, events on that planet establish the correctness of the approach after all.

The only question goes, does Kirk misunderstand out of basic stupidity, or does he deliberately take Sarek literally because he has already been musing about this "life from death" thing? Clearly, Sarek himself is still unprepared for the idea of resurrecting his son when the heroes bring the walking corpse to him... But Kirk is better versed on Genesis than Sarek is. And while he may not be up to the minutiae of Vulcan mystiscism, Spock/McCoy at one point goes from wanting to go to Vulcan to wanting to go to Genesis - Kirk may well have heard some of his rantings from after the moment when he makes the transition from one Promised Land to another.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vger23]

Did they even intend for spocks torpedo to land on genesis? Always thought the way David exclaims 'it mustv soft landed' implied they intended to shoot Spock off into space in a traditional space burial and that it landing on genesis was just blind luck? (wonder if the torpedo soft landing on genesis FX in WOK was added at a later date along with the torpedo in fern garden genesis scenes?)

The images of the soft landed coffin were indeed added to the film later. Test screenings apparently left audiences very sad with Spock's death, and the studio decided to add some hopefulness to the end of the movie. Nick Meyer was not involved, as he disagreed with the need to enhance the ending with additional scenes. A second unit crew went off and filmed of those scenes.

 

[diankra]

The novelisations make it clear that Saavik tweaked the torpedo's path so it would hit the last echo of the Genesis effect. That Spock was resurrected as a consequence was an unexpected side-effect.
Of course, it's doubtful that the script writers thought about it that deeply, but that's VMc's thinking in the books.

 

[Timo]

What did Spock's last will and testament specify? Clearly not "Take my katra and then take my body to Vulcan". Perhaps it was in fact "Make sure to burn my body before any Vulcan gets the chance to do touch telepathy with it", considering Spock's continuing estrangement from his father's culture?

Starfleet space burials in general do not involve any sort of necessity of cremation, though, judging by all the other witnessed examples. Spock's burial shouldn't be expected to be different a priori, then. Nobody need have known or cared where the body went - it would have been fired off without aim, and even the fact of it hitting the planet to begin with may have been an utter fluke.

Kirk does utter those words about "life from lifelessness" and the intent to revisit "one day" - perhaps next Tuesday when he thinks Spock might be done? But if so, why fire Spock out of a torpedo tube, instead of digging a conventional grave like those Kirk sometimes did in TOS?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[David cgc]

IIRC, the novelization explains that interring Spock's katra in the Hall of Ancient Thought required the corpse as well as the living person holding the soul. I believe someone speculated that Spock's will specified a burial in space because he thought that he might not be able to do the Katra thing since he was half-human (he'd had the same idea about Pon Farr until it actually hit him), and his intent had been, if it had worked, to have his very surprised executor change his arrangements. McCoy, unfortunately, didn't take to the mind-meld as well as would be hoped and wasn't able to understand Spock enough to figure out what was going on.

 

[Commishsleer]

IIRC, the novelization explains that interring Spock's katra in the Hall of Ancient Thought required the corpse as well as the living person holding the soul.

Then why not just say that in the movie clearly. I can't understand why a rotting corpse would be needed though. What if he was decapitated or something? Is any part of the body OK?
i suppose we were all just glad that Spock was alive-ish to worry at the time.

 

[Timo]

We do have Sarek in the movie rather clearly stating that his son's cadaver should be let to rot wherever Kirk left it. That is, Sarek insists that Kirk should have brought Spock home - and then proceeds to show that he thinks this Spock he speaks of is inside Kirk's head, hence not a corpse.

Timo Saloniemi