Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
- Thread starter Athena28
- Start date
Panic. They might not have a maintained a transporter lock.
I don't think Kruge had transporters.
Earlier and later on in the movie, we see red Klingon sparkles during transport. But then Kirk shoots at Kruge's ship, with results, even if not with as devastating ones as he would have hoped. And then Kruge parlays, and then boards - using the blue Starfleet sparkles, and arriving on the Enterprise transporter platforms.
If Kruge had working transporters at that point, surely he would refuse to let a Federation machine disassemble his warriors. And surely he would beam those warriors directly to the bridge, too.
I trust Maltz repaired the transporters between the space fight and the final escape from the planet. But not before.
Timo Saloniemi
Earlier and later on in the movie, we see red Klingon sparkles during transport. But then Kirk shoots at Kruge's ship, with results, even if not with as devastating ones as he would have hoped. And then Kruge parlays, and then boards - using the blue Starfleet sparkles, and arriving on the Enterprise transporter platforms.
If Kruge had working transporters at that point, surely he would refuse to let a Federation machine disassemble his warriors. And surely he would beam those warriors directly to the bridge, too.
I trust Maltz repaired the transporters between the space fight and the final escape from the planet. But not before.
Timo Saloniemi
Picard also would have remodulated the deflector to knock out the BoP, rescued the away team and warped away while the BoP crashes in to Genesis planet.Picard would have.
That’s an interesting theory.
Except would the klingons want to acknowledge their transporter was inoperative? As the ones arrogantly claiming to intuitively presume which side will surrender to which?
Also, dialogue at the time of transport implies they were sharing the load... something starships/bases seem to always DO for some unexplained reason.
It's also implied Kirk and party barely made it off themselves under their own power.
Visual cues can't always be taken literally. Sometimes the economy of storytelling simply requires that "continuity" work against itself. Such as in this case, it is perhaps more important that it's clearly visualized where/when the klingons rematerialized, rather than who threw the switches to make it happen.
(We see this again when Picard transports down to Veridian III after presumably taking part in a prisoner exchange with klingons not overly anxious to betray Soran's coordinates.)
Also, dialogue at the time of transport implies they were sharing the load... something starships/bases seem to always DO for some unexplained reason.
It's also implied Kirk and party barely made it off themselves under their own power.
Visual cues can't always be taken literally. Sometimes the economy of storytelling simply requires that "continuity" work against itself. Such as in this case, it is perhaps more important that it's clearly visualized where/when the klingons rematerialized, rather than who threw the switches to make it happen.
(We see this again when Picard transports down to Veridian III after presumably taking part in a prisoner exchange with klingons not overly anxious to betray Soran's coordinates.)
By the time Kruge hears the computer countdown and realises what's happening, there is 3-4 seconds left before the self destruct initiates. I'm assuming Klingon Birds of Prey don't have computer voice control (we've never seen this on a Klingon ship as far as I know, and Starfleet ships of the day didn't have voice interfaces either).
There are only two Klingons left on the BoP. There is simply not enough time for him to get out of his chair, go to transporter control (even if it's a bridge station) and bring his men back. His shouts of "Get out of there" are panic, plain and simple.
From that pedestal of perceived superiority, they would feel entitled to dictate rules, including ones that perhaps revealed the wobbliness of the pedestal.
Even though he never explicates it, Kruge does hold the ultimate trump card in that he can blow up the disabled starship with his guns (or at least he never admits to Kirk that those would be down, too). So it's really no different from a WWII raider skipper bellowing to the stopped ship that they have to send a boat over to receive a boarding crew - when said raider has six-inch guns pointed, and the victim's guns are smoking ruins.
Plus, the hostages, whom Kruge explicitly leans on. It's not as if Kruge would lose much if admitting to a slight weakness.
Generally, we merely see Starfleet-to-Starfleet beamings involve arrival on a pad, rather than directly at another destination. And the hero ship transporter operator doing at least some operating, because the extra gets paid for that fidgeting. "Sharing" basically only ever is suggested in TMP.
In TSfS, Kirk is the one who tells Kruge that the Enterprise is energizing. Kruge only commands "standing by", which isn't really an action, especially as it comes after the energizing - it's apparently merely a "folks at transporter room, they're transporting you now, be ready". No sharing of load in evidence, unless we want to postulate such. And why would we? It doesn't help and isn't required.
And then the Klingons beamed in, on Kirk's command of his side energizing. The power apparently was sufficient for that, and there's little reason to argue otherwise.
(What sort of implication do you see for that "barely" bit, BTW?)
But here it's not just a matter of there not being any reason not to, because literal reading solves a plot issue. It's also a matter of the cue being there deliberately: the VFX folks changed colors because they felt they had a reason to. They quite seldom do things they aren't paid and told to do.
And that one no doubt is a case of relayed signal, or else the heroes would get a fix on Soran's location and could slag it in a heartbeat.
Relaying is possible as such, supposedly. And when the possessed Klingon beams over from his doomed ship in "Dramatis Personae", his transporter ceases to exist first; his red signal flickers on the Cardassian platform next; and O'Brien then works it over, having the Klingon materialize from an amber Cardassian signal. It's very deliberate there.
Whether it's deliberate in ST:GEN and ST3:TSfS is not all that interesting. It being a thing fits better than it not being - Kirk doing all the transporting works well, and Picard getting rerouted by the Twisted Sisters works well, while the opposite interpretations would leave open questions about the tactical competence of the Klingons in both cases.
Timo Saloniemi
Kruge may also have simply assumed the computer was counting down to an explosion which was confined to the bridge. Ordering his men to get out of the room would make sense in that light. He thought he had Kirk's balls in a knot at this point, obviously didn't suspect a trick and these guys weren't the sharpest tools in the shed. They thought a full compliment of a starship was "hiding." Couple that with the implication that Klingon's transporter was - at the time - reliant on the Enterprise. Otherwise Kruge wouldn't have needed to wait for Kirk. Maltz was a bungler and didn't repair the transporter until shortly after.
Or, he felt being the last guy on the ship would make him a shoe in for promotion.
Or, he felt being the last guy on the ship would make him a shoe in for promotion.
Nobody crewing the Klingon transporter at that time is one of the rationalizations that don't really wash: if the ship not filling with poison gas depended on Maltz crewing an engineering console, Kruge would still order Maltz to hover over the transporter controls instead, because a borading party dependent on transporters was Kruge's one weapon and chief concern. That is, if he had transporters in the first place.
"Get out" might well be a valid command even if and especially if no transporters were available. There's an airlock nearby: the warrior heroes might take a spacewalk without suits and survive. For all we know, they would have collapsible helmets in their collars, DIS style... Also, running beats staying even if the exact specs of the countdown suggest the Klingons wouldn't make it to the shuttlebay or whatever. But since in the end, there was no time for anything but dying, this doesn't matter much.
Timo Saloniemi
"Get out" might well be a valid command even if and especially if no transporters were available. There's an airlock nearby: the warrior heroes might take a spacewalk without suits and survive. For all we know, they would have collapsible helmets in their collars, DIS style... Also, running beats staying even if the exact specs of the countdown suggest the Klingons wouldn't make it to the shuttlebay or whatever. But since in the end, there was no time for anything but dying, this doesn't matter much.
Timo Saloniemi
Didn't Scotty use Kruge's transporters to beam 2 thirty ton whales onto that ship?
Kruge didn't have working transporters at that moment, due to te battle damage with the Enterprise. But he did absolutely have transporters on the ship since he beamed back before the battle, beamed down after the Enterprise blew up (since they were apparently fixed) and then Kirk had Maltz beam himself and Spock back up.
Also the dialog:
Kirk: "We are energizing transporter beam...now!"
Kruge:"Transporter, stand by."
The implication is that the Klingons couldn't board the Enterprise on their own power at that moment. Otherwise, Kruge wouldn't sit around waiting for Kirk's go-ahead. He'd just beam over and take control.
Spock beamed from the Enterprise onto the pad in Commodore Stone's office in Court Martial. We didn't see him leave the ship but there's no console in Stone's office so, that probably counts as the first.
Similar threads
