Star Trek III Question...

[Search4]

Perhaps this has been noted before... if so, sorry to interrupt.

In III the stolen Enterprise battles a Klingon Bird of Prey by firing torpedoes...

There's only a skeleton crew aboard. So who's down in the torpedo room? Last time we saw this ship, the same ship, it took people to rip off track covers, load the launcher, etc. The torpedo was left "live" in Spackdock? Kirk decided he need a torpedo in the launcher during the flight over to Genesis? Any thoughts?

 

[Jon1701]

Well...

Its pretty ridiculous that these things have track covers to begin with. Something like that would surely be automated. Having said that, I enjoy the artistic license Nick Meyer took in TWOK, so we have to assume that's how they were loaded.

That said, I have come up with four options:

1) Just because we see them going in there one at a time, doesn't mean it you can't store a few in there. I mean, how many does it fire? Three or four at the most. Chekov could have filled up the torpedo tubes before they set off. Once the automated system kicks in the torpedos could be fired.

2) The system is automated. Spock turned it off during TWOK just to give the Cadets something to do.

3) The system is automated. However, main power was offline (in TWOK) - meaning they had to be loaded by hand.

4) It doesn't make sense.

Take yer pick

 

[msbae]

I'll take option #3.

 

[Jon1701]

It seems the most logical.

Sort of a backup to the main system.

 

[Shatmandu]

Scotty rigged it up, just in case.

Joe, basic

 

[Iamnotspock]

Option #3 seems the most plausible. The Mutara battle sequence was a deliberate "Hornblower in space" homage on Nick Meyer's part, and so the whole thing of loading the torps by hand was a bit of dramatic license on his part to evoke a naval "man the guns!" feel. One of the talking heads on one of the DVD behind-the-scenes featurettes mentions that having crewmembers hand-loading the photon torpedoes was "about as Science Fiction as my Aunt Fanny's girdle".

Something like that would undoubtedly be automated, but by the time of that scene in TWOK, the Enterprise had already sustained several direct hits from the Reliant with the shields down. The bridge was smashed, the computer was inoperative, as were the turbolifts below C Deck, so it's certainly plausible that the automated loading system on the torpedoes was down, necessitating a loading by hand.

The system would've then been repaired en route back to Earth between II and III ready for use against the Klingons.

 

[Brian]

They seemed to have time on their hands on the way to Genesis. Maybe they loaded all the tubes up, "just in case".

 

[Meredith]

Yeah a missing scene where McCoy and Checkov load the tubes and McCoy complains "I'm a Dcotor, not a Photon Torpedo Loader!"

 

[JNG]

Something like that would undoubtedly be automated, but by the time of that scene in TWOK, the Enterprise had already sustained several direct hits from the Reliant with the shields down. The bridge was smashed, the computer was inoperative, as were the turbolifts below C Deck, so it's certainly plausible that the automated loading system on the torpedoes was down, necessitating a loading by hand.

I most definitely agree--that is one system you'd want locked down quickly in the event of even possible malfunction, as anything wrong with the reactant injection or the feed or launching mechanisms or even the computers that tell the torpedo when to go off could get the ship blown to kingdom come!

 

[Trekker4747]

Meyer, as much as I like him, has a hard-on for over-complicating things with an overly military feel and look. It makes no sense that Torpedo tracks have to be uncovered, a tube has to be lowered (the first time it's ever suggested that there's a physicality to "torpedoes" when it was always asumed that "torpedoes" were simply packet of antimatter that reacted with the matter of the target) and manually placed in the track in the 23rd century.

Something like that undoubtedly would be automated.

But it was just Meyer's masturbatory need to show overly "militaryness."

 

[Timo]

How about #5: the system in TWoK (as in TMP, or TOS, or TNG) was fully automated, and nothing whatsoever was done manually there. Cadets, trainees and assorted bystanders just crewed their consoles or otherwise spectated, just in case - but there was no "case" there this time around, and the automation armed, loaded and fired the torpedoes smoothly.

I mean, we don't actually see anything truly done "manually", except for the removing of the cover plates. No hands or even fingers are used for anything else. And the removal of the grilles doesn't strike me as something that would have to be done particularly often. To the contrary, installation of the grilles would be a rare operation, only performed when an Admiral wants to come aboard in a travel pod and hold an inspection. For that rare occasion, the torpedo bay would have to be temporarily transformed into a reception area, necessitating the temporary flooring. But the grilles would always be removed ASAP when the Admiral left - except on a training cruise where no combat was expected.

(the first time it's ever suggested that there's a physicality to "torpedoes" when it was always asumed that "torpedoes" were simply packet of antimatter that reacted with the matter of the target)

...An assumption that would go very poorly with everything else shown in TOS. Kirk's original starship was one built of pipes, adjusted with wrenches, held together by beams and bulkheads. Everything about it was very physical, down to there being "clips" to the guns and diskettes for carrying information. Indeed, antimatter was actually shown to be carried around in a very physical canister. Surely a torpedolike torpedo would have been the reasonable assumption?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Search4]

Thanks for the thoughts.

I have to believe this was automated... wouldn't you want this to work like a machine gun after all? So I tend to go with #3 - its automated, was broken (or no power), and we saw the backup.

And it was fixed on the route home. The ship has a great deal more damage in TSFS than WOK, so something happened in between (the entire port side is damaged).

I doubt that after stealing the "E", suddenly there was time or capacity to fix weapons that weren't thought to be needed.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The ship has a great deal more damage in TSFS than WOK, so something happened in between (the entire port side is damaged).

The "Mirror Universe" saga and "The Doomsday Bug" arc from DC Comics TOS Series I.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

I do think we saw back up. The ship was pretty badly damaged.

 

[Timo]

Why would "damage" cause a set of metal grilles to suddenly appear and block the torpedo rails?

I say TOS/TFS torpedo systems are much the same as TOS/TFS phaser systems. When everything goes well, the bridge crew can fire the weapons with the push of a button - but there is still a phaser crew tending to the phaser and making sure that the automation does work, and there apparently is still a torpedo crew to do the same for the other weapon type.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Haggis and tatties]

I assume before they stole the enterprise scotty somehow automated the who kit and caboodle, and if i remember correctly he did the same thing in The doomsday Machine, repaired the engines and also had the phaser charged just in case.....the old miracle worker that he was.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Since they were on a "simple training cruise", and weren't even meant to leave the solar system, it's quite possible that the torpedo launchers had been offline/in mothballs, and the grills were part of that. The cadets were just needed to get the torpedo launcher in what would be its normal state of readiness had the Enterprise been out on a real mission with potential danger.

 

[trevanian]

I assume before they stole the enterprise scotty somehow automated the who kit and caboodle, and if i remember correctly he did the same thing in The doomsday Machine, repaired the engines and also had the phaser charged just in case.....the old miracle worker that he was.

I had a post half-written to the same effect before I remembered him saying the automation system was overloaded and that he didn't expect the ship was going into battle ... so I'm guessing somebody will come along and make that counter-argument.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

^^Yeah good point, as it was just supposed to be a quick trip in federation space to Genesis to collect spocks body, and and then on vulcan for a quick katra removal, some cold plomeek soup and then home in time for a court Marshall.

 

[Kirby]

Maybe the two trainees and a chimpanzee were actually on board. Their original plan could have been to send them to pick up Spock and take him and McCoy to Vulcan. That way none of the main characters get blamed.