Star Trek 3 pet peeve of mine.

[Autocad]

Okay in Star Trek 3, Captain Kirk loses his son. Now to me and I have thought this ever since I saw the movie. So I'm going back 40 years.
I think Captain Kirk would have time warped back in time to save his son. Anyway that's what I thought years ago and I still think it to this day. Thoughts anybody?

 

[UssGlenn]

when exactly would he have done this? Spock's the only one who can do the calculations and he's out of commission. You can't do it after ST4 because you'd change the timeline and doom Earth to death by Whale probe.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I gather Kirk doesn't want to resort to time travel unless lives of countless innocents are at stake. Saving Spock was possible without time travel. Saving Earth was not. Plus, if he's going to anger the DTI, might as well make it count for something that wouldn't seem self-serving.

 

[Frontis]

I think it would be too easy to travel back in time to save everything and everybody.
In real life we can't either...

 

[mb22]

Time travel for pure research purposes was done in "Assignment Earth" and "Yesteryear".

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Initially, but flaws and complications these excursions revealed caused them to take a step back and refrain from doing it without further careful consideration. It's not a go-to; when it is done, it's done only when necessary, or the possible benefits outweigh the risks.

 

[FredH]

Okay in Star Trek 3, Captain Kirk loses his son. Now to me and I have thought this ever since I saw the movie. So I'm going back 40 years.
I think Captain Kirk would have time warped back in time to save his son. Anyway that's what I thought years ago and I still think it to this day. Thoughts anybody?

Same reason they don’t do it every time anyone dies violently, Federation-wide.

 

[Mojochi]

Kirk's got a dead brother too. We're gonna have us quite a backlog once we get rolling on this

 

[Citiprime]

This is part of the reason why I think anything fantastical needs limits and rules.

It not only makes the original mission more "heroic" in the mission proper, since they have to overcome those rules and limits, but it closes off any future uses of it where any crisis doesn't have an easy out.

It's the reason why I think Kirk should have stayed dead and Khan's blood in Into Darkness was a mistake. If you basically have a cure for death, that totally changes every challenge from that point forward, since everyone will say why not just use (X) to fix it.

I mean using the same idea of this thread, why wouldn't Prime Spock try to correct the Kelvin Timeline using time travel, since he would have the knowledge and ability to use the same tech too?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

why wouldn't Prime Spock try to correct the Kelvin Timeline using time travel

That would only create another new timeline.

 

[Frontis]

No more Timelines please!

 

[ananta]

Okay in Star Trek 3, Captain Kirk loses his son. Now to me and I have thought this ever since I saw the movie. So I'm going back 40 years.
I think Captain Kirk would have time warped back in time to save his son. Anyway that's what I thought years ago and I still think it to this day. Thoughts anybody?

Of all the issues you could have raised about the movie, this seems a bit of a non-sequitur. If it had been a time travel movie then, yes, maybe that idea might have organically come up in the course of the story. But it would have felt hella tacked on if they’d added that as an unexpected final act.

You could potentially raise this question after any and every Star Trek character is killed. But if, each and every time, they simply went back in time and stopped a character from dying, it would pretty much kill the drama and seem a little silly to boot.

Kirk has actually already, painfully, learned the price of changing history (in the show’s finest hour, “City on the edge of Forever”). I think it’s probably etched into everyone’s mind that changing the timeline is not the wisest thing to do and can potentially be catastrophic.

My pet peeves from ST III are, first of all, WHERE DID CAROL MARCUS GO? How did they manage to assign a starship to go study the Genesis planet before the Enterprise even gets back to Earth? Some of the passage of time feels a little jarring to me. On one hand, it feels like we’re picking up just hours after ST II ended, while at other times it seems like months have gone by. I love the whole darn thing though.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

How did they manage to assign a starship to go study the Genesis planet before the Enterprise even gets back to Earth? Some of the passage of time feels a little jarring to me. On one hand, it feels like we’re picking up just hours after ST II ended, while at other times it seems like months have gone by.

In my mind, it's a few months between the movies. That gives time for Saavik to be reassigned to the Grissom, an expedition to Genesis to be organized, and the Enterprise to sustain the extra damage we see at the beginning of STIII. If you're a fan of the first DC Comics run, a gap allows the adventures in the early issues to slot in perfectly.

It also makes Spock's sacrifice at the end of TWOK feel a lot more meaningful if he isn't resurrected mere days or weeks later. A months long gap allows some time for him to be mourned and for his friends to adjust to his absence.

 

[fireproof78]

It's the reason why I think Kirk should have stayed dead and Khan's blood in Into Darkness was a mistake. If you basically have a cure for death, that totally changes every challenge from that point forward, since everyone will say why not just use (X) to fix it.

The transporter has already cured aging in TNG and we have other aspects that restore functioning. Khan's blood is just in a long line of MacGuffins that honestly get the same rationale for nonuse: it's too hard. Time travel? Might have unintended consequences and Federation ceases to exists, and Spock isn't the first officer. Khan's blood? Required several transfusions, touch and go for weeks, and had no assurance of success.

I mean using the same idea of this thread, why wouldn't Prime Spock try to correct the Kelvin Timeline using time travel, since he would have the knowledge and ability to use the same tech too?

As well he should. It's probably the most common question of why Spock just chilled on Delta Vega and opted to not go with Kirk and Scotty, and instead let things play out.

 

[ananta]

In my mind, it's a few months between the movies. That gives time for Saavik to be reassigned to the Grissom, an expedition to Genesis to be organized, and the Enterprise to sustain the extra damage we see at the beginning of STIII. If you're a fan of the first DC Comics run, a gap allows the adventures in the early issues to slot in perfectly.

It also makes Spock's sacrifice at the end of TWOK feel a lot more meaningful if he isn't resurrected mere days or weeks later. A months long gap allows some time for him to be mourned and for his friends to adjust to his absence.

This makes a lot of sense. My assumption was that the Enterprise would head straight back for repairs, but this is a better head cannon, and explains the transfers, etc.
I still wish they’d at least mentioned Carol Marcus though.

 

[FredH]

Thing is, if they time travel back to fix it every time any Federation citizen dies in a preventable manner, society collapses as it entirely consumes itself focusing entirely on constant timetravel, possibly billions of times a day, until Federation (and Federation-adjacent) day-to-day continuity just unravels.

And if they save it for just “those of us in the family”, that’s cronyism, and suddenly our heroes are deeply corrupt. (In a few canonical cases, they kind of already are. I love Sulu, but his arbitrary attempt to rescue Kirk and Bones from Rura Penthe against orders could have blown up what was left of Federation/Klingon relations at that point, and did get one of his crew — who in my head canon is one of the Valtrane twins both serving on Excelsior — killed. With his brother later forced to stand there in a bridge crew tableau and accept it.)*

(Likewise Admiral Janeway, but it’s not out of character for Janeway — who I also like — to not give a sh—.)

(*Yeah, I know — but having two Valtranes present nicely solves the did-he-or-didn’t-he problem, even if the situation then further problematizes Sulu. It also leaves a nice puzzle for an imaginary Cardassian historical mystery novel about the situation—Who really died, Dmitri or Masoud?!)

 

[FredH]

This makes a lot of sense. My assumption was that the Enterprise would head straight back for repairs, but this is a better head cannon, and explains the transfers, etc.
I still wish they’d at least mentioned Carol Marcus though.

As a story, I love the DC Comics 80s run being in there, and kinda wish more tie-ins could have referenced it. But it requires the battle damage from the comics to just happen to exactly match that from TWOK etc.

 

[Dukhat]

So is the OP going to chime in at some point in this discussion?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Khan's blood is just in a long line of MacGuffins that honestly get the same rationale for nonuse: it's too hard.

Bureaucracy and secrecy are also convenient excuses in addition to feasibility. Star Trek has more than its share of red tape, secret agencies, and multiple convenient rationales for non-disclosure and non-availability.

 

[UssGlenn]

As a story, I love the DC Comics 80s run being in there, and kinda wish more tie-ins could have referenced it. But it requires the battle damage from the comics to just happen to exactly match that from TWOK etc.

not exactly, the ship in TSFS has more damage than in TWOK.