Synthetic actor in the Cage???

Yeah, that 'mistake' was in the original.

Spock was being uncharacteristicly non speciific. The bridge WAS uninhabitable, but large parts of the rest of the ship were still okay---but clearly not ALL.

They mentioned emergency bulkheads several times in TOS, so they would have sealed off the 'open to space' areas.

 

Parts of the ship look pretty "uninhabitable" in this shot; there are at least three big bites taken out of the saucer. The bridge area actually seems undamaged, though!



So what do we believe: Spock's line of dialogue, or what we see on the screen?

 

In the remastered--they do show some damage to the bridge---and since the bridge is basically one 'room'--it's uninhabitable.

But clearly large parts of the ship are not damaged and are habitable.

Spock wasn't being totally specific, but the ship WAS habitable since a lot of it was intact.

 

Thing is he looked like a Cardassian at first.

 

Could easily have been microfractures through parts of the hull.. not visible, but nasty about letting air leak out. Could have been toxins released from something else that flooded some decks, etc... LOTS of things could have happened short of the planet killer taking a nibble there.

 

^ The bridge doesn't have be in a hard vacuum to be uninhabitable.