Star Trek The Motion Picture 45th Anniversary Book Club

[drt]

Chapter Twelve: Kirk comments on his new larger bunk that it wouldn't be used much for sleep "or for anything else." Gene, you rascal...

This is an issue with the film as well, but it really makes no sense for the Vulcan shuttle to not disclose who its passenger is. Enterprise is on a critical mission, it really shouldn't be picking up unannounced hitchhikers,

Except that pretty much any FTL drive would have to use a space warp of some sort

Heh, I didn't want to get too deep into my personal TOS fantasy timeline, but I have humanity using Albecurrie drives capable of about 10-20c, until the Cochrane drive is developed. Even though I said my silly timeline was based on TOS/TAS above, I also include TMP, and it's fortunate that they happened to include the ringship Enterprise on the Rec Deck wall to accommodate me.

If anything was presumed to be relatively new, it was humanity's alliance with other species like Vulcans. "Whom Gods Destroy" implies that the era of peace that allowed humans and Vulcans to be "brothers" only began recently following a long period of conflict, which if you fold in "The Conscience of the King" might have involved Vulcan's conquest by somebody (either by Earth, or by some other power that Earth liberated it from).

My personal interpretation was more like Perry sailing into Tokyo Bay. I feel that in TOS Vulcans are still pretty mysterious, which makes it seem they hadn't been allies very long. For instance, it doesn't seem plausible humans wouldn't have noticed and figured out pon farr if we'd known Vulcans for two-hundred years.

Indeed, I suspect from "Balance"'s dialogue that Paul Schneider intended that Earth was the aggressor, an imperialist power that came to the Romulus-Remus system as aspiring occupiers/conquerors and was fought off by its natives until they eventually came to a truce and erected a neutral zone around that single system.

That's a nice observation that never really occured to me before, but puts an interesting spin on the entire human-Romulan relationship that we can unfortunately no longer explore with ENT making them the aggressos. On a slightly related note, I like to interpret TOS's world building based on the writers' common knowledge and experiences at the time, and with things like a neutral zone and needing to obtain more advanced military technology from the Klingons, I sometimes wonder if the Romulans were based a bit on North Korea.

What is she doing here? Who is at the navigator station?

Maybe she needed to use the powder room.

It's a funny switchback (I think) first calling the Enterprise a battleship and claiming that this is a more accurate but less diplomatic phrase.

I feel like Rodenberry was commenting less on the ship's purpose, but more on it's size and power, but there has never been a historical precedent where the military mission of a large, powerful ship isn't the primary one.

Yeah, this is weird. I mean, that doesn't seem to be a positive development. But everything afterwards (I think) has Kirk behaving in a more Kirk like fashion.

All he needed was Spock.

 

[Christopher]

Heh, I didn't want to get too deep into my personal TOS fantasy timeline, but I have humanity using Albecurrie drives capable of about 10-20c, until the Cochrane drive is developed.

Except Alcubierre (you anagrammed it) explicitly called his theoretical metric a "warp drive" in his original 1994 paper (wow, 30 years ago, how'd I get so old?). So they can't be considered something that predates warp drive.

My personal interpretation was more like Perry sailing into Tokyo Bay. I feel that in TOS Vulcans are still pretty mysterious, which makes it seem they hadn't been allies very long. For instance, it doesn't seem plausible humans wouldn't have noticed and figured out pon farr if we'd known Vulcans for two-hundred years.

Yeah. That kind of got screwed up when the idea emerged in fandom that Vulcans had been co-founders of the Federation, and then when FC canonized them as the first contact.

On a slightly related note, I like to interpret TOS's world building based on the writers' common knowledge and experiences at the time, and with things like a neutral zone and needing to obtain more advanced military technology from the Klingons, I sometimes wonder if the Romulans were based a bit on North Korea.

Well, they were basically Space Romans, but I'm sure more recent real-world precedents came into play as well.

Except the bit about technology exchange with the Klingons wasn't really a worldbuilding idea, just a throwaway excuse for showing off the brand-new Klingon ship miniature (after losing the Romulan ship miniature, if I have the timing right). All Spock actually said was "Romulans now using Klingon designs"; the idea of an alliance or tech exchange came from The Making of Star Trek.

 

[drt]

Except Alcubierre (you anagrammed it) explicitly called his theoretical metric a "warp drive" in his original 1994 paper (wow, 30 years ago, how'd I get so old?). So they can't be considered something that predates warp drive.

Sorry, I meant that they were both "warp drives", but the Cochrane drive had some added technological twist that made it thousands of times faster. Granted that doesn't entirely sync up with what Spock said in "Metamorphosis" about Cochrane discovering the "space warp", but I wanted to balance "Space Seed" saying sleeper ships weren't needed after 2018 and there being a robust enough colony at Alpha Centauri for Cochrane to have even been able to develop such a technology there.

Alcubierre (you anagrammed it)

Oops, both spellings were in my pad's dictionary, from a mistake years ago I imagine, i have now deleted the incorrect one.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Nogura did appear onscreen in Harold Livingston's first-draft script, but I'm not sure Ciana existed anywhere but the novelization.

Ciana was called Alexandra Keys in "In Thy Image". The partner of Kirk who is swimming naked with him when he gets the summons about the Klingon ships getting attacked by an electrical cloud.

And "Chekov's Enterprise" mentions the suggestion that Roddenberry himself should play a cameo as Nogura. A wall was designed and assembled for Nogura's office set, but it was never needed.

 

[Christopher]

And "Chekov's Enterprise" mentions the suggestion that Roddenberry himself should play a cameo as Nogura. A wall was designed and assembled for Nogura's office set, but it was never needed.

Huh?? A white man playing an admiral with a Japanese name? Thank goodness they didn't go there.

 

[Tallguy]

Chapter Thirteen - Looking a gift Vulcan in the ears

It occurs to me that the Enterprise is still in the Sol system. So while much is made of the "long range shuttle" that Spock arrives in (which I have always assumed is computer piloted after Spock arrives - with apparently zero evidence to back this up) but it might have made just as much sense for Spock to have traveled to Earth and then caught transport from there to catch the Enterprise. Of course as far as he's concerned he wasn't expecting to find the Enterprise at sublight.

I (rightly) give JJ's first film grief for going from Earth to Vulcan in a scene change. But honestly, how did Spock get from Gol to wherever it was he left Vulcan from and then to Earth in less than, what? Eighteen hours? Forget Kirk's conversation with Nogura. I want to see Spock pulling those strings!

Spock is traveling to find the Intruder. It's actually just dumb luck (good or bad as far as Spock is concerned) that it turns out to mean going to the Enterprise under Kirk's command. So he leaves Gol, contacts... Starfleet? The Federation? And tells them "Hey, I gather you have some big entity thingy that just took out a bunch of Klingons and is headed for Earth and it seems to be talking to me. Do you have any place I might go?" I suppose he might have some inkling that Kirk is involved or at least that Kirk knows about the Klingons.

This is an issue with the film as well, but it really makes no sense for the Vulcan shuttle to not disclose who its passenger is. Enterprise is on a critical mission, it really shouldn't be picking up unannounced hitchhikers,

Right? It does have a "grade one priority". So Spock is going through some kind of channels.

But yeah, while the drama is certainly excellent and Spock's (second) entrance is as good as any in the film, why did no one contact the Captain of the Enterprise, former Chief of Starfleet Operations Kirk, and say "Hey! We have living legend Spock en route to you now. You should be ready to receive him." It might have been a bummer if the engines had worked and Spock was unable to catch the Enterprise.

Kirk’s relief was absolute. If there was any way to get the starship into warp speed quickly, it had just somehow miraculously arrived.

You ever notice how many times the demonstration of Spock's genius tends to come at the expense of Scott's? This was not lost on Doohan either and it didn't make him happy. Scott is like the intellectual Worf of TOS: You beat him up to show how serious the problem is.

But it still felt painful to be reminded so powerfully and unexpectedly of his friendship and affection for Spock—theirs had been the touching of two minds which the old poets of Spock’s home planet had proclaimed as superior even to the wild physical love which affected Vulcans every seventh year during pon farr.

I have to say this is why I have never understood the desire for various "ships" like Kirk and Spock or Holmes and Watson. This always struck me as more than a simple romance. And this is certainly not an original thought. I gather in other centuries that this was just conventional wisdom.

Spock came to his feet abruptly from the science console. “The required fuel formula will need considerable cooperation from the chief engineer,” said Spock. “I can go there immediately, unless the captain wishes to question my tentative findings thus far.…”

Well. At least there is this.

I'm glad Chapel is in this movie. I know it did her character no favors that she was "Gene's girl". But this just feels a little more completely Star Trek because of her being here.

Kirk came very near intervening but held back, realizing that Spock could not be blamed for Chapel’s fantasies concerning him.

I guess nobody told Jim that they used to be an item.

Huh?? A white man playing an admiral with a Japanese name? Thank goodness they didn't go there.

While I agree that the optics would be weird for 1979, that's what you get after centuries of cultural mixing. It's why Henry Cho (very visibly Korean) still gets a laugh when he starts his act with "How you doing?" with a long southern drawl.

Or they could have just changed the name if Gene had done it.

 

[Christopher]

Chapter Thirteen - Looking a gift Vulcan in the ears

It occurs to me that the Enterprise is still in the Sol system.

Is it? After they emerged from the wormhole, Kirk ordered Ilia to lay in a new heading to conform to their original interception point, which means that the wormhole threw them far enough off course that recalculation was needed. So there's no telling exactly where they were at that point, although presumably it wasn't too far off, since Spock was able to find them fairly quickly.

But honestly, how did Spock get from Gol to wherever it was he left Vulcan from and then to Earth in less than, what? Eighteen hours? Forget Kirk's conversation with Nogura. I want to see Spock pulling those strings!

I'm sure they have transporters on Vulcan.

Spock is traveling to find the Intruder. It's actually just dumb luck (good or bad as far as Spock is concerned) that it turns out to mean going to the Enterprise under Kirk's command. So he leaves Gol, contacts... Starfleet? The Federation? And tells them "Hey, I gather you have some big entity thingy that just took out a bunch of Klingons and is headed for Earth and it seems to be talking to me. Do you have any place I might go?" I suppose he might have some inkling that Kirk is involved or at least that Kirk knows about the Klingons.

I don't see why he would've needed to contact Starfleet, since he came in a Vulcan warp shuttle. (The warp sled's nacelles were designed to have the same shape in cross-section as the Vulcan gong from "Amok Time," to signify the craft's Vulcan origin.) He was wearing civilian robes, so he didn't come in his capacity as a retired Starfleet officer. And when Spock arrived, he said "I have been monitoring your communications with Starfleet Command," explaining how he knew where to go. "Monitoring" implies that he was listening in passively rather than actively making contact with Starfleet.

Right? It does have a "grade one priority". So Spock is going through some kind of channels.

Vulcan government channels, presumably, since it's a Vulcan courier craft. Or maybe Spock just used an old priority-one clearance code he had left over from his Starfleet days. It wouldn't be the first time Spock fudged permission he didn't have.

But yeah, while the drama is certainly excellent and Spock's (second) entrance is as good as any in the film, why did no one contact the Captain of the Enterprise, former Chief of Starfleet Operations Kirk, and say "Hey! We have living legend Spock en route to you now. You should be ready to receive him."

Spock was on an unofficial, personal mission, so contacting Starfleet would've been pointless. Kirk had enough to deal with as it was.

It might have been a bummer if the engines had worked and Spock was unable to catch the Enterprise.

Why wouldn't he? Spock was on a high-speed warp shuttle. He was monitoring the Enterprise's transmissions so he knew where it was going. He could've caught up.

I have to say this is why I have never understood the desire for various "ships" like Kirk and Spock or Holmes and Watson. This always struck me as more than a simple romance.

The desire is because popular entertainment forbade depictions of same-sex relationships for generations, so LGBTQ people in the audience had to imagine them where they could so they'd have some sense of inclusion or representation. It's probably less necessary now that there are real same-sex couples on TV, but it should be easy for anyone with a shred of compassion to understand why people accustomed to never seeing themselves depicted in fiction would want to compensate for that as best they could. I personally don't interpret Kirk and Spock or Holmes and Watson as lovers (Holmes was more likely ace), but I certainly understand others' reasons for wanting to ship them. (Although another reason is just that it's fun to fantasize about two attractive people of your preferred gender getting sexy with each other. It doesn't have to be any deeper than that.)

And this is certainly not an original thought. I gather in other centuries that this was just conventional wisdom.

What, that platonic friendship was "more" than romantic love? I'm not so sure. I just finished a complete binge (if you can call something that takes half a year a binge) of all of Shakespeare's plays and poems, and I think the habit of past generations of scholars to deny their homoerotic elements and insist it's all just platonic friendship was disingenuous. Certainly the bulk of the sonnets are extremely gay.

So I think it's not so much that other centuries understood this as that more recent scholars went out of their way to efface and deny the homoeroticism that existed in the past.

While I agree that the optics would be weird for 1979, that's what you get after centuries of cultural mixing. It's why Henry Cho (very visibly Korean) still gets a laugh when he starts his act with "How you doing?" with a long southern drawl.

Or they could have just changed the name if Gene had done it.

It's not about what's plausible in a ficititious future, it's about what's appropriate in the real-life present, or in 1979. There were vanishingly few non-stereotyped roles for Asian-American actors, and casting a white guy in a role written to be Asian would've meant depriving an Asian-American actor of employment, perpetuating systemic discrimination.

If Roddenberry even considered this, it's further proof that his nominal image as a champion of diversity and inclusion was more facade than reality. He's the guy who delivered an all-white cast in "The Cage" after promising a diverse one to the network, and only got it right on the second try. And even though he included Sulu and Uhura, he never gave them focus episodes, even taking a romance subplot away from Sulu and giving it to Spock.

 

[drt]

I'm glad Chapel is in this movie. I know it did her character no favors that she was "Gene's girl". But this just feels a little more completely Star Trek because of her being here.

Yeah, she may not have appeared in as many episodes as the rest of the supporting cast, but to me she always felt like a key member of the crew.

I sometimes wonder if Paramount and Roddenberry hadn’t been largely on the outs for the 80s movies and Chapel appeared in all of them if we’d have a “big 8” instead of a “big 7”. I mean, say Walter Koeing was a regular on a TV show and couldn’t come back for any of the movies, would it have been a “big 6” instead?

 

[Christopher]

I mean, say Walter Koeing was a regular on a TV show and couldn’t come back for any of the movies, would it have been a “big 6” instead?

William Shatner was starring in T.J. Hooker from 1982-86, overlapping the production of ST II, III, and IV. If he could do both, the other actors probably could have too. (Also Ricardo Montalban was starring in Fantasy Island during TWOK's production, and his and Shatner's conflicting shooting schedules were the reason Kirk and Khan couldn't have any scenes together.)

 

[Airin]

The desire is because popular entertainment forbade depictions of same-sex relationships for generations, so LGBTQ people in the audience had to imagine them where they could so they'd have some sense of inclusion or representation. It's probably less necessary now that there are real same-sex couples on TV, but it should be easy for anyone with a shred of compassion to understand why people accustomed to never seeing themselves depicted in fiction would want to compensate for that as best they could.

I've written slash and read slash, and never got the impression that this kind of fanfiction had anything to do with the LGTB movement. The vast majority of readers/writers are straight women. It's far more a matter of women finally being able to read and write what THEY really wanted, without needing the approval or participation of men to do so. If anything it has more to do with women's emancipation than LGTB issues.
Whether there are explicit gay characters in media or not isn't going to change shipping. People will continue to ship the couples they personally find attractive or interesting, not the ones established by the people in charge. Compare the popularity of Harry/Draco vs. Dumbledore/Grindewald.

What, that platonic friendship was "more" than romantic love? I'm not so sure. I just finished a complete binge (if you can call something that takes half a year a binge) of all of Shakespeare's plays and poems, and I think the habit of past generations of scholars to deny their homoerotic elements and insist it's all just platonic friendship was disingenuous. Certainly the bulk of the sonnets are extremely gay.

I've seen 19th century reviews of Goethe's Faust, trying to prove that Mephistopheles lusting after the male angels at the end had ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with homosexuality. The degree of denial from such reviewers is certanly ridiculous.
That passage about "the touching of souls that's superior even to the wild physical love of pon farr" sounds to me anything but platonic. I'd definitely never refer to my love for my mother in such terms...

 

[Christopher]

I've written slash and read slash, and never got the impression that this kind of fanfiction had anything to do with the LGTB movement. The vast majority of readers/writers are straight women. It's far more a matter of women finally being able to read and write what THEY really wanted, without needing the approval or participation of men to do so. If anything it has more to do with women's emancipation than LGTB issues.

I gather that's true of early Star Trek slash, but it would be improper to generalize that to all slash over the decades since.

Whether there are explicit gay characters in media or not isn't going to change shipping. People will continue to ship the couples they personally find attractive or interesting, not the ones established by the people in charge.

Yes, obviously, but the specific practice of projecting same-sex romance or sexual desire onto canonically platonic relationships has other factors behind it. Like most things humans do, it's complex and multicausal.

 

[Tallguy]

@Airin thanks for the insights.

Is it? After they emerged from the wormhole, Kirk ordered Ilia to lay in a new heading to conform to their original interception point, which means that the wormhole threw them far enough off course that recalculation was needed. So there's no telling exactly where they were at that point, although presumably it wasn't too far off, since Spock was able to find them fairly quickly.

Well they were only at warp for less than a minute. If you want to say that they were flung some unexpected distance closer, farther, or just different to the Intruder, then sure. Maybe Spock got lucky and this actually hastened his rendezvous with the Enterprise.

I'm sure they have transporters on Vulcan.

Let's assume that it's super easy to get from Gol to someplace to get off planet. Like you say, transporters, sure. Now he has to convince someone to give him a ship and he has to find out where he is going. Is he flying to the Intruder himself?

Earlier in the book when Kirk was taking command and getting to the Enterprise it was not common knowledge that there was a very fast, very destructive Intruder heading from Klingon space to Earth. But just to speed things up lets assume that Kirk who said he hated the secrecy and it became public information within the twelve hours it took to launch the Enterprise.

He was wearing civilian robes, so he didn't come in his capacity as a retired Starfleet officer.

How did McCoy first appear on the ship? Just a few hours before?

Spock was on an unofficial, personal mission, so contacting Starfleet would've been pointless. Kirk had enough to deal with as it was.

Starfleet is the place with all the answers. What was the response to the Intruder going to be? As it turns out it was the Enterprise that is going to intercept.

Or, like you said, Spock has just got on a public channel (or hacked into Starfleet comms) and forged a Grade One Priority so he could get aboard the Enterprise, where it is fortunate that he runs into James Kirk and not the ancestor of Liam Shaw. Meeting with Kirk and the Enterprise could not have been his plan when he left Vulcan and there would not be much time to course correct (literally and figuratively) if he just had his, er, ear to the ground.

I'm not sure, even if he knows all the questions to ask and all the people to ask them to, starting from the moment that he fails Kolinahr, that Spock has time to get from Vulcan to Earth (or close to Earth).

 

[Avro Arrow]

Let's assume that it's super easy to get from Gol to someplace to get off planet. Like you say, transporters, sure. Now he has to convince someone to give him a ship and he has to find out where he is going. Is he flying to the Intruder himself?

It's just basically a warp-capable shuttle, and is presumably just a Vulcan civilian craft. Why does Spock need to convince anyone? Can't he just pop into his local T'Hertz Rent-a-Shuttle or whatever and be on his way?

Earlier in the book when Kirk was taking command and getting to the Enterprise it was not common knowledge that there was a very fast, very destructive Intruder heading from Klingon space to Earth. But just to speed things up lets assume that Kirk who said he hated the secrecy and it became public information within the twelve hours it took to launch the Enterprise.

Spock doesn't need the intruder to become public knowledge to begin his journey, because he already knows about it because of his mental connection.

 

[Tallguy]

Spock doesn't need the intruder to become public knowledge to begin his journey, because he already knows about it because of his mental connection.

That's the only thing he knows. But where is his journey going? What if Starfleet was launching a mission from Andoria?

You can chalk it up to Spock's amazing detective skills (which gets you a fair way, I admit) but he goes from "I will be spending the rest of my life at Gol" to finding the Enterprise (not too far from Earth) in 13 or 14 hours. Very hard to do even with all the resources of Starfleet and the Federation speeding him on his way.

 

[Christopher]

Well they were only at warp for less than a minute.

No, they were in a wormhole for less than a minute. The Bajoran Wormhole can get you to the Gamma Quadrant faster than that.

Let's assume that it's super easy to get from Gol to someplace to get off planet. Like you say, transporters, sure. Now he has to convince someone to give him a ship

Why would that be hard? He's the son of the Vulcan ambassador. He's got T'Pau on speed dial. He's a global celebrity on Vulcan.

and he has to find out where he is going.

Again, he explicitly said onscreen that he'd been monitoring the Enterprise's communications with Starfleet Command. This was explained.

Earlier in the book when Kirk was taking command and getting to the Enterprise it was not common knowledge that there was a very fast, very destructive Intruder heading from Klingon space to Earth. But just to speed things up lets assume that Kirk who said he hated the secrecy and it became public information within the twelve hours it took to launch the Enterprise.

Why would that be a factor? Spock sensed it directly. He knew it was coming. And for the reasons I just mentioned, it wouldn't be hard for him to find out the rest through his family connections.

How did McCoy first appear on the ship? Just a few hours before?

Huh? In simple terms, they drafted him. What's that got to do with Spock?

 

[David cgc]

Huh? In simple terms, they drafted him. What's that got to do with Spock?

The point is that McCoy was still in his civvies when he beamed up even though he’d already been recommissioned to active duty, so Spock being in his Vulcan robes when he got to the ship didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t on (retired) Starfleet business, at least on paper.

 

[Christopher]

The point is that McCoy was still in his civvies when he beamed up even though he’d already been recommissioned to active duty, so Spock being in his Vulcan robes when he got to the ship didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t on (retired) Starfleet business, at least on paper.

No. Kirk had to order Chekov to reactivate Spock's commission after he came aboard and offered his services as science officer. That means that when he showed up, he was a civilian.

 

[Tallguy]

Chapter Fourteen- Wednesday and Pugsly get an answer - There is a God.

“It should be possible to proceed without me now,” said Spock to the chief engineer. “Aye, we can manage from here.” His Highlands burr showed a twist of annoyance. “But we’ll miss the sound of your sweet laughter.” Spock ignored this as completely as he had the engineer’s outstretched hand two hours ago. Scott fought back an impulse to hurl some earthy obscenity after the departing Vulcan.

It occurs to me that writing movies must be hard. Any time I think "Hey, how would one write Star Trek: The Motion Picture in a way that it doesn't take thirty five minutes to launch the Enterprise and then fifty minutes to get (back) to Spock? And even longer to finally get to Vejur?" I wonder what I would cut or change that would still tell the same story of Kirk and the Enterprise, and of Kirk and Decker, and then you have Spock's story...

I say this because I want this scene back in. It even kind of addresses the point I made yesterday about Spock "intruding" on what should be Scott's hero moment. And anything that gives Scotty more lines is good.

After Spock is done Scott can tell that the intermix is correct just by visual inspection. I know Kirk was all bossy and stuff but if it was that obvious why couldn't he have said "It doesn't work" rather than "I can't promise it will work"? Maybe he was just second guessing himself under pressure?

Spock goes to meditate. Other than the opening scene which isn't exactly from Spock's POV, this scene gets into Spock's head the way we've been living in Kirk's for a dozen chapters. And he's just not happy. Oh, and Humans are weak and frivolous. And they suck.

Again, even in the movie it's almost difficult (for me at any rate) to get my head around how while it's certainly not real time (it's not quite 40 minutes from the time Spock picks up his Very Best Kolinahr award to the time we walks out of his shuttle) if he joins the Enterprise in the late evening he had been on Vulcan (and not planning on leaving) essentially "this morning".

I suppose Leonard McCoy's life was similarly upended just as quickly. But as Douglas Adams once said: This is not his story.

We just heard that the whole ship is battening down for another attempt at warp speed, hopefully the first successful attempt with this new design ever. Why are all of these people hanging around, or literally screwing around, in the private engineering spaces? Ah, Gene. (More than you needed to know, I'm sure, but this was the first description of sex that I ever read. Or at least the first one I would later know about. I guess everything I learned I did learn from Star Trek!)

I'm not sure where these spaces are supposed to be. I understand the idea that they are tucked into places where you didn't really have room for anything else. Which is cool, and even makes sense. But they have windows. I mean, I guess there are a few windows aft of the deflector assembly. But those windows aren't circular. There are a couple a little further aft, but this doesn't seem like "the extreme forward area of the engineering hull."

Sorry, I'm sure GR wasn't taking this as literally and I'm sure he wasn't going all Galaxy Quest even if I am. (It just occurs to me that Galaxy Quest does not have a Gene Roddenberry!) Of course this is the kind of thinking that gets Andrew Probert fighting with Harold Michelson about putting big scenic windows on the shuttle deck because it would look so cool to see the Earth!

To Vulcans, the sense of oneness with the All, i.e., the universe, the creative force, or what some humans might call God. Vulcans do not, however, see this as a belief, either religious or philosophical. They treat it as a simple fact which they insist is no more unusual or difficult to understand than the ability to hear or see.

An interesting detail, to say the least. There is a great scene in Spock's World where McCoy learns about this. His reaction is very... McCoy. It's the only place other than here that I've heard this brought up in Star Trek. But my knowledge of Star Trek literature is more than your average Joe but nowhere near your slightly better than average Trekkie. Yes, I know who I'm talking to.

The other physiological changes which beset him on entering the bridge were so shocking that they made him scorn himself.

You know, I never found this as heartbreaking as I do now. This just really sucks for everybody.

and, yes, of course, Chapel with her bizarre and impossible fantasies of one day pleasuring him.

Well this news really changes everything.

And again, Spock's mind touches the Intruder. I honestly don't remember how this is treated in the rest of the book. (But I'll find out.) In the film other than getting his Deanna Troi on and "sensing" what the Intruder is "thinking" he doesn't really relate to the object very much.

One might think that when the Ilia probe comes aboard (spoilers) that it might say "Hey! You're that Spock thing! Wait, you're one of these carbon things? No. Way!"

---

While I would find the ins and outs of Spock's travels to Earth interesting (wrongly so, apparently, because he's Spock and he just decided to go and he went) it still doesn't change the fact that Spock got from Vulcan to somewhere in the neighborhood of Earth in something like twelve hours. Even accounting for Kirk's travel time from Egypt and an unknown amount of delay after the transporter accident, less than a day. (When was the last time Kirk slept? Or Decker or Scott?)

No, they were in a wormhole for less than a minute. The Bajoran Wormhole can get you to the Gamma Quadrant faster than that.

Absolutely true. But if they had gone far enough for that to be worth mentioning (other than Ilia having to course correct which she would have had to do if they had moved at all because even if they aren't moving anymore the Intruder is) it would have gotten them to the Intruder either significantly sooner or or significantly later. Or even the same amount of time just from a wildly different location. But in all of these cases it would have taken Spock longer to get to them. Since Spock docks with them literally a few minutes after they attempted warp drive either he was really lucky that the Enterprise landed in front of him or they ended up essentially where he was already going.

Again, he explicitly said onscreen that he'd been monitoring the Enterprise's communications with Starfleet Command. This was explained.

But why is he monitoring the Enterprise's communications? Why not the Columbia or the Entente? And is Starfleet communicating on open channels that the Enterprise is on an emergency mission to this potentially Earth-ending Intruder? Earlier in the book it indicates that they are not.

In any event: It's been less than a day since he was at his ceremony. So he got there very fast.

(Oh, not that they are in any way definitive but could be at least an indication of what the creatives might have been thinking: The Official TMP Blueprint give the Long Range Vulcan Shuttle as having a top speed of warp 4.)

Huh? In simple terms, they drafted him. What's that got to do with Spock?

Well:

He was wearing civilian robes, SO he didn't come in his capacity as a retired Starfleet officer.

(Emphasis added.)

The point is that McCoy was still in his civvies when he beamed up even though he’d already been recommissioned to active duty, so Spock being in his Vulcan robes when he got to the ship didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t on (retired) Starfleet business, at least on paper.

Thanks. Not retired, inactive. I honestly don't know if there's a difference. But only took a sentence from Kirk to re-instate him.

Oh, duh. From the film (both editions): "Security scan. One boarder. Identity: Starfleet. Inactive." Well that explains why I always assumed Spock was alone on the ship.

 

[Avro Arrow]

"Security scan. One boarder. Identity: Starfleet. Inactive."

So the computer can identify who it is enough to look up and report their current Starfleet status, but doesn’t bother to mention who it actually is? The transporters may be messed up and the warp drive imbalanced, but it’s good to know the computer’s “dramatic reveal” subroutines are working perfectly!

 

[Tallguy]

but it’s good to know the computer’s “dramatic reveal” subroutines are working perfectly!

When I started reading your post that was almost verbatim the reply I was going to write!

I was also thinking while I was shoveling snow (because who doesn't think about Star Trek when they're... Well, doing anything?) that of all of the data points that the computer could reveal (I didn't even think of "name"!) the most important thing about this individual is Starfleet status?

Grade One Priority, non-belligerent, inactive Starfleet. Maybe this is all just Spock hacking the Enterprise computer so they'll pay attention no matter how busy they might be? Without messing up his dramatic entrance!

Also, Chekov: "I suspect it is a courier of some kind." (Ah. This was only in the film. Book Chekov is far more certain than movie Chekov.)

BTW, I know we're all on the page here, but since I was flipping between the Theatrical and the Director's Edition to see what was said where: The re-composite of the Vulcan shuttle sequence for the Director's Edition 4K is SO PRETTY!