STXI shuttle musings

[Timo]

As STXI was on air here a couple of days ago, I kept the volume up for a change, and also played with "pause" and "slo mo". Some shuttle-related questions:

1) When Pike pilots his shuttle out of the Enterprise and towards the Narada, the flight controller walla includes something like "recommend you raise shields at this point". What is being said, exactly?

2) When Scotty gives Kirk and Spock the guided tour of his transporter-equipped shuttle, he begins with telling them that the shield emitters are something-something-indecipherable-Glaswegian-something. What is being said, exactly?

3) Putting those together, it appears this troop transport craft is typically equipped with shields. Are there any hints that the other shuttle types (the Kelvin ones, or the big-nacelled 2258 shuttles) are shielded? Barely glimpsed graphics, further walla?

4) I guess this is the first time shields are part of shuttle equipment in in-universe terms (regardless of whether ENT shuttles had polarizable armor) - but where do shuttle shields next appear? TOS seems to be devoid of references; is it TNG or VOY that gives us shuttle shields?

5) When Pike prepares to drop his trio of skydivers, the three become glued to the ceiling. What do you think, is it some sort of an artificial gravity thing, and if so, what is the purpose? Or is Pike simply giving the shuttle some negative z, accelerating the craft and (after some inertia) the skydivers belly first towards the planet so that the heroic trio are aimed and propelled properly down the drill shaft?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Patrickivan]

http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie11.htm

1:

[Shuttle 89] CREWMAN: (over loudspeaker) Shuttle eight nine, USS Enterprise. You are cleared forward...
KIRK: You got the charges right?
OLSON: Oh yeah. I can't wait to kick some Romulan ass. Right?
KIRK: Yeah.
OLSON: Oh yeah.
(the shuttle departs the Enterprise)
KIRK: (to Sulu) So, what kind of combat training do you have?
SULU: Fencing.
PIKE: Pre-jump.
(the group put their EV helmets on and prepare for the space-jump)
CREWMAN: (over comm) ...You are clear from USS Enterprise airspace...
PIKE: Gentelmen, we're approaching the drop zone. You have one shot to land on that platform. You may have to fix this to pull your 'chute as late as possible. Three... two... one. Remember, the Enterprise won't be able to beam you back until you turn off that drill. Good luck.
(Pike pulls a lever, sending the three out of the shuttle)

2.

[Delta Vega outpost]
(Keenser is heard speaking in an alien language as Spock Prime and Kirk enter the outpost)
KIRK: Hello!
(Keenser walks up to them and leads them through the outpost. They come up to Montgomery Scott and Keenser gets his attention)
SCOTT: What? You realize how unacceptable this is?
SPOCK PRIME: Fascinating.
KIRK: What?
SCOTT: Yeah, I'm sure you're just doing your job, but could you not come a wee bit sooner? Six months I've been here, living off Starfleet protein nibs and a promise of a good meal. And I know exactly what's going on here, okay. Punishment, isn't it? Ongoing, for something that was clearly an accident.
SPOCK PRIME: You are Montgomery Scott.
KIRK: You know him?
SCOTT: Aye, that's me. You're in the right place. Unless there's another hard-working, equally starved Starfleet officer around.
KEENSER: Me.
SCOTT: Keenser, shut up! You don't eat anything. You can eat like a bean, and you're done. I'm talking about food. Real food. But, you're here now, so thank you. Where is it?
SPOCK PRIME: You are, in fact, the Mister Scott who postulated the theory of transwarp beaming.
SCOTT: That's what I'm talking about. How'd you think I wound up here? I had a little debate with my instructor on the issue of relativistic physics and how it pertains to subspace travel. He seemed to think that the range of transporting something like a, like a grapefruit, was limited to about a hundred miles. I told him that I could not only beam a grapefruit from one planet to the adjacent planet in the same system, which is easy by the way, I could do it with a lifeform. So, I tested it on Admiral Archer's prized beagle.
KIRK: Wait, I know that dog. What happened to it?
SCOTT: I'll tell you when it reappears. I don't know. I do feel guilty about that.
SPOCK PRIME: What if I told you that your transwarp theory was correct? That it is indeed possible to beam onto a ship that is travelling at warp speed?
SCOTT: I think if that equation had been discovered, I'd have heard about it.
SPOCK PRIME: The reason you haven't heard about it, Mister Scott, is because you haven't discovered it yet.
SCOTT: I'm a, uh, what... Are you from the future?
KIRK: Yeah. He is, I'm not.
SCOTT: Well that's brilliant. Do they still have sandwiches there?
(a wee bit later, in the Delta Vega transporter area)
SCOTT: Well, she's a wee bit dodgy. Shield emitters are totally bandjacked(?), as well as a few other things. In you go. So, the Enterprise has had its maiden voyage, has it? She is one well endowed lady. I'd like to get my hands on her ample nacelles, if you'll pardon the engineering parlance.

[Delta Vega shuttle] SCOTT: (to Spock Prime) Except, the thing is, even if I believed you, right, where you're from, what I've done, I don't, by the way, you're still talking about beaming aboard the Enterprise while she's traveling faster-than-light, without a proper receiving pattern. (to Keenser) Get off there! It's not a climbing free(?). (to Spock Prime) The notion of transwarp beaming is like, trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse. What's that?
SPOCK PRIME: Your equation for achieving transwarp beaming.
SCOTT: (mumbles something) Imagine that. It never occurred to me to think of space as the thing that was moving.
KIRK: (to Spock Prime) You're coming with us, right?
SPOCK PRIME: No, Jim. That is not my destiny.
KIRK: Your dest... He... the other Spock is not going to believe me. Only you can explain what's gonna happen.
SPOCK PRIME: Under no circumstances, can he be aware of my existence. You must promise me this.
KIRK: You're telling me I, I can't tell you that I'm following your own orders. Why not? What happens?
SPOCK PRIME: Jim, this is one rule you cannot break. To stop Nero, you alone must take command of your ship.
KIRK: How? Over your dead body?
SPOCK PRIME: Preferably not. However, there is Starfleet regulation six-one-nine. Six-one-nine states that any command officer who's emotionally compromised by the mission at hand, must resign said command.
KIRK: So, so you're saying that I have to emotionally compromise you guys?
SPOCK PRIME: Jim, I just lost my planet. I can tell you, I am emotionally compromised. What you must do is get me to show it.
SCOTT: Aye then, Laddie. Live or die, let's get this over with.
(Kirk and Scott enter the transporter areas. Keenser attempts to as well, but Scott pushes him out)
SCOTT: (to Keenser) You cannae come with me. Go on.
KIRK: (to Spock Prime) You're coming back in time, changing history, it's cheating.
SPOCK PRIME: A trick I learned from an old friend. (he does the salute) Live long and prosper.
(they transport away as Keenser whimpers)

 

[Timo]

Yup - the Chakoteya transcript fails to include that bit of walla (it should be right after Olson's "Oh yeah!"). It also fails to decipher Scotty's comments on his shuttle's shields.

The TrekCore page on STXI doesn't include a script or a transcript for this movie, either.

I'm sorta betting on somebody on this bulletin board speaking Fake Scottish as a first or second language...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[B.J.]

...walla...

I'd never heard that word before. Learn something new every day!

4) I guess this is the first time shields are part of shuttle equipment in in-universe terms (regardless of whether ENT shuttles had polarizable armor) - but where do shuttle shields next appear? TOS seems to be devoid of references; is it TNG or VOY that gives us shuttle shields?

The only thing I can remember is the TNG episode "Suspicions", where a shuttle is fitted with metaphasic shields. However, I don't think it's clear whether they're a new install or a modification of existing shields.

5) When Pike prepares to drop his trio of skydivers, the three become glued to the ceiling. What do you think, is it some sort of an artificial gravity thing, and if so, what is the purpose? Or is Pike simply giving the shuttle some negative z, accelerating the craft and (after some inertia) the skydivers belly first towards the planet so that the heroic trio are aimed and propelled properly down the drill shaft?

My impression was that it was artifical gravity. IIRC, doesn't the shuttle have some variable gravity signage?

 

[F. King Daniel]

If it'll be anywhere, it'll be in the early script here: http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Star-Trek.html.
Look out for all the extra and incidental scenes at the end, too, if whatever you're looking for isn't in the bulk of the story.

EDIT: It's "The shield emitters are totally banjaxed"

 

[F. King Daniel]

The shuttle shields may have been simple navigational ones, to deflect micrometeoroids and the like. I'm not sure what shuttle combat shields could do against Nero if he chose to swat Pikey out of the sky.

I'm pretty sure it was a trick Pike pulled with the shuttle's on-board gravity just before the away team dropped. IIRC, it was activated with a click of a switch and a slight "power up" -type sound effect.

 

[Tomalak]

EDIT: It's "The shield emitters are totally banjaxed"

Yeah, understandable Timo might have missed that! It just means "kaput".

 

[Timo]

Thanks - I'll add that to my vocabulary!

I'd never heard that word before. Learn something new every day!

It's probably not technically walla if you can discern the words. Alas, I can't say I can, not even after about twenty rounds of listening to it. But basically, Pike apparently is being told that raising the shields would be the thing to do according to the field manuals, and Pike rightly ignores the advice (because if he did have shields on, the skydiving trick probably wouldn't work).

My impression was that it was artifical gravity. IIRC, doesn't the shuttle have some variable gravity signage?

Yup - and I'd love to be able to read the lettering on the button that Pike actually pushes.

I'm pretty sure it was a trick Pike pulled with the shuttle's on-board gravity just before the away team dropped. IIRC, it was activated with a click of a switch and a slight "power up" -type sound effect.

But a button-push (or something Pike does with his left hand while pressing the hatch open button) could equally well result in a course change that spits the skydivers out.

The thing is, I can't see any reason for gluing our heroes to the ceiling with gravitics. They have greater odds of hitting the hatch frame and getting killed if they start from the ceiling, as opposed to them just stepping down from the edge of the hatch, or releasing their grip of the ceiling handle while vertical. But if the inertia dampers in the cabin are off, then negative-zee acceleration would give the witnessed result. And the camera does engage in the infamous Abrams Jitter when Pike pushes the button (or uses his left hand), possibly indicating a change in the shuttle's flight state.

Okay, so perhaps the ceiling is equipped with a gravity catapult that works best when the victims initially lie on their backs against the catapult. (And perhaps the catapult is just an alternate mode of operation for a gravity crane that ordinarily lifts loads up from the ground through the hatch.) Sounds a bit complicated, though.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MacLeod]

As STXI was on air here a couple of days ago, I kept the volume up for a change, and also played with "pause" and "slo mo". Some shuttle-related questions:


2) When Scotty gives Kirk and Spock the guided tour of his transporter-equipped shuttle, he begins with telling them that the shield emitters are something-something-indecipherable-Glaswegian-something. What is being said, exactly?


Timo Saloniemi

It was perfectly decipherable, but then again I am a Scot. :P

 

[blssdwlf]

4) I guess this is the first time shields are part of shuttle equipment in in-universe terms (regardless of whether ENT shuttles had polarizable armor) - but where do shuttle shields next appear? TOS seems to be devoid of references; is it TNG or VOY that gives us shuttle shields?

"The Immunity Syndrome" -Spock pilots a shielded shuttle.

 

[Timo]

Ah, true - thanks!

I wonder if we'll get armed shuttles in the next movie... TOS had few opportunities for demonstrating shuttle armament, but ENT already showed it's possible to pack phasers or/and plasma guns in a teeny weeny excuse for spacecraft. The modern style seems to be highly visible emitter heads (both on the hero ship and the sidearms), so the STXI craft would have to be modified or "reinterpreted" for that. Sliding panels or something.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Looks like there's been at least two other shuttle types with phasers.

 

[Timo]

...In addition, the good old Type 6 had optional phasers mounted in "The Outcast", as per Riker's words even if we didn't see them in action. And the aquashuttle from "Ambergris Element" had phasers, too. Both of the Defiant auxiliary types had identifiable phaser emitters as well, paired balls for the supposed Type 18 and strips for the supposed Type 10, even if we again failed to see them firing.

That gives us some diversity, and suggests that something really exceptional has to be going on if a shuttle is incapable of carrying phasers!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Librarian]

I believe the TMP shuttle also has phasers.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

banjaxed = bolloxed

 

[Jose Tyler]

I always just assumed the skydivers were pulled up by their parachute packs by some ceiling mounted magnet and then the magnet switches polarity and gives the divers a a shot out of the shuttlecraft. Seems like a simple, low tech system to keep on pretty beat-up looking shuttles...

 

[Timo]

Might be. The ceiling doesn't seem to feature the sort of doodads that would pull up the three persons matching the three handrails, tho - instead, there appear to be two circular protrusions there (gravity cranes for pulling loads up that hatch?) that do their best at breaking our heroes' backs when they slam against the ceiling.

Further trivia on the shuttles: the full-size prop appears to feature three equally sized aft cabin windows aft of the portside entry door, but flight scenes of the CGI model reveal an extra window between the starboard door and the trio. There is no contradiction there yet in the Riverside scene. Alas, we then move forward...

...To the Academy hangar. The boarding scene shows this small extra window on the starboard side of shuttles far away from the camera, with people boarding the craft. Are those mere computer-multiplied shots of the real prop with real people (meaning the starboard side indeed physically has that extra window), or are they pure CGI? None of the shuttles is seen from the port side, save for the one next to the room where McCoy vaccinates Kirk - and that one (the physical prop) is shot so that the door area isn't visible.

Then the shuttles take flight. And when they land onboard the ship, we can see there's this extra window on the port side of at least some of the craft, too!

Theoretically, we're still free of contradictions, as the specific shuttles we see might be different from the Riverside one in having symmetrical rather than asymmetrical windows. They have a different paint job at least.

(Also, while Kirk and McCoy board one type of shuttle in the Academy hangar and then are seen flying another type, the Memory Alpha remark that both of these would be the shuttle Gillian is a bit misleading, as the latter craft's name or registry isn't actually seen. The two probably just swapped shuttles when Kirk emptied his stomach on the only remaining free seats on the Gillian.)

We then get to the shuttle used by Pike. No portside extra window in the boarding scene, no portside exterior shots to worry about.

Scotty's shuttle is all prop, of course. No extra window there (or, rather, too many obstructions to tell one way or another, but we can guess it's not there).

Did we get away Scot free, the engineer's presence notwithstanding? Or did I miss a scene that would show a CGI window on a craft that was previously seen up close in prop form without the window? Can anybody tell if the prop had a starboard window or not?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Albertese]

I noticed a few discrepancies with the script extract and what I remembered from the movie, so I pulled out the DVD and rewatched it, subtitles on, and made a few corrections to Scotty's dialogue. The changes are in bold type. I'm surprised chakoteya.net missed so much. Must not have a good Scotsman aboard...

http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie11.htm

...

2.

[Delta Vega outpost]
(Keenser is heard speaking in an alien language as Spock Prime and Kirk enter the outpost)
KIRK: Hello!
(Keenser walks up to them and leads them through the outpost. They come up to Montgomery Scott and Keenser gets his attention)
SCOTT: What? You realize how unacceptable this is?
SPOCK PRIME: Fascinating.
KIRK: What?
SCOTT: Yeah, I'm sure you're just doing your job, but could you not come a wee bit sooner? Six months I've been here, living off Starfleet protein nibs and a promise of a good meal. And I know exactly what's going on here, okay. Punishment, isn't it? Ongoing, for something that was clearly an accident.
SPOCK PRIME: You are Montgomery Scott.
KIRK: You know him?
SCOTT: Aye, that's me. You're in the right place. Unless there's another hard-working, equally starved Starfleet officer around.
KEENSER: Me.
SCOTT: Get aff! Shut up! You don't eat anything. You can eat like a bean, and you're done. I'm talking about food. Real food. But, you're here now, so thank you. Where is it?
SPOCK PRIME: You are, in fact, the Mister Scott who postulated the theory of transwarp beaming.
SCOTT: That's what I'm talking about. How'd you think I wound up here? I had a little debate with my instructor on the issue of relativistic physics and how it pertains to subspace travel. He seemed to think that the range of transporting something like a, like a grapefruit, was limited to about a hundred miles. I told him that I could not only beam a grapefruit from one planet to the adjacent planet in the same system, which is easy by the way, I could do it with a lifeform. So, I tested it on Admiral Archer's prized beagle.
KIRK: Wait, I know that dog. What happened to it?
SCOTT: I'll tell you when it reappears. I don't know. I do feel guilty about that.
SPOCK PRIME: What if I told you that your transwarp theory was correct? That it is indeed possible to beam onto a ship that is travelling at warp speed?
SCOTT: I think if that equation had been discovered, I'd have heard about it.
SPOCK PRIME: The reason you haven't heard about it, Mister Scott, is because you haven't discovered it yet.
SCOTT: I'm a, uh, what... Are you from the future?
KIRK: Yeah. He is, I'm not.
SCOTT: Well that's brilliant. Do they still have sandwiches there?
(a wee bit later, in the Delta Vega transporter area)
SCOTT: Well, she's a wee bit dodgy. Shield emitters are totally banjaxed, as well as a few other things. On youse go. So, the Enterprise has had its maiden voyage, has it? She is one well endowed lady. I'd like to get my hands on her ample nacelles, if you'll pardon the engineering parlance.

[Delta Vega shuttle] SCOTT: (to Spock Prime) Except, the thing is, even if I believed you, right, where you're from, what I've done, I don't, by the way, you're still talking about beaming aboard the Enterprise while she's traveling faster-than-light, without a proper receiving pad. (to Keenser) Get off there! It's not a climbing frame. (to Spock Prime) The notion of transwarp beaming is like, trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse. What's that?
SPOCK PRIME: Your equation for achieving transwarp beaming.
SCOTT: Get out of it. Imagine that. It never occurred to me to think of space as the thing that was moving.
KIRK: (to Spock Prime) You're coming with us, right?
SPOCK PRIME: No, Jim. That is not my destiny.
KIRK: Your dest... He... the other Spock is not going to believe me. Only you can explain what's gonna happen.
SPOCK PRIME: Under no circumstances, can he be aware of my existence. You must promise me this.
KIRK: You're telling me I, I can't tell you that I'm following your own orders. Why not? What happens?
SPOCK PRIME: Jim, this is one rule you cannot break. To stop Nero, you alone must take command of your ship.
KIRK: How? Over your dead body?
SPOCK PRIME: Preferably not. However, there is Starfleet regulation six-one-nine. Six-one-nine states that any command officer who's emotionally compromised by the mission at hand, must resign said command.
KIRK: So, so you're saying that I have to emotionally compromise you guys?
SPOCK PRIME: Jim, I just lost my planet. I can tell you, I am emotionally compromised. What you must do is get me to show it.
SCOTT: Aye then, Laddie. Live or die, let's get this over with.
(Kirk and Scott enter the transporter areas. Keenser attempts to as well, but Scott pushes him out)
SCOTT: (to Keenser)No, go. You cannae come with me. Go on.
KIRK: (to Spock Prime) You're coming back in time, changing history, it's cheating.
SPOCK PRIME: A trick I learned from an old friend. (he does the salute) Live long and prosper.
(they transport away as Keenser whimpers)

Enjoy!

--Alex