The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blasted

[Timo]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

The Genesis torpedo was clearly not ready to detonate since it was on a "build up", so it couldn't have been prematurely triggered in the process. Otherwise Khan would have rushed it himself.

It's quite possible that the Genesis device becomes lethal the moment the final button is pushed, and has to be left alone for an additional few minutes to also become useful (i.e. be capable of creating new worlds) in addition to already being lethal. If the sensors of the Enterprise already read the "Genesis waveform", it makes sense that this deadly thing is being kept bottled up and its release would be fatal.

Indeed, we don't know whether the build-up sequence ever finishes, or whether the Reliant just happens to blow up, triggering a premature release of the Genesis wave (and thus contributing to the instability of the end result).

As for Khan, he probably understood next to nothing about the device. He might have preferred to blow up the Reliant on Kirk's face, but he didn't know how to scuttle the ship. So he used the weapon he had already primed and learned to detonate.

Note how in "Space Seed", when intruder control gas is released and all is lost, Khan reaches Engineering - but apparently wastes several precious minutes looking up a way to slowly scuttle the ship, allowing Kirk to catch up. It's pretty natural for a superman to fail to study in advance the measures needed at defeat...

(What was Khan doing there at the conclusion of "Space Seed", though? Was he really committing suicide of a particularly spiteful sort? Or did he have a plan of blackmailing Kirk with the slow self-destruct? He certainly failed to make use of such a plan!)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

Spock: "Assuming he hasn't changed the combination. He's quite intelligent."

Maybe we're all giving Khan a little too much credit in the intelligence department, a superior memory sure, but when has he ever demonstrated "superior intelligence?"

 

[Kemaiku]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

Kahn ordered the annular confinement beam to be left in place after transport to act as a low level kinetic forcefield to both keep the device in place and be a barrier for anyone attempting to touch it or tamper with it, and prevent it being beamed back off the Reliant by the Enterprise.

There, done.

 

[Jon1701]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

Another small irritant about this scene, in a movie that I otherwise love: Why didn't the Enterprise just pummel the Reliant with photon torpedoes and blow it up quickly instead of crawling away? The Genesis torpedo was clearly not ready to detonate since it was on a "build up", so it couldn't have been prematurely triggered in the process. Otherwise Khan would have rushed it himself. No one would have had to go into the irradiated engineering room. I think I just answered my own question there.

This thing can create planets.

Best thing is just to get the hell out of there.

A couple of Photon Torpedos aren't going to do too much. We've no idea what's inside. Firing torpedos might even set it off.

I did once wonder whether you could beam over to the reliant and then beam out the genesis device to the limit of the transporter range in the opposite direction to buy you extra time but you might not be able to get a lock once the device is active.

Damn, I've not over analysed this stuff for a while...

 

[shapeshifter]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

Or just a big magnet at the bottom.

I was thinking it had some sort of 'gravity boot' installed. Perhaps that is how all large pieces of equipment, (I should have rephrased that) not bolted down stays secure during turbulence.

 

[Timo]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

...whether you could beam over...

Well, David Marcus clearly says "You can't".

Come to think of it, perhaps beaming anything anywhere inside the Mutara nebula is a bad idea, and David just gets to tell this to Kirk first, a few moments before Spock would have said the very thing.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[R. Star]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

Well it stands to reason if the view screen can't even work without giving off static... I'm not sure I'd want to transport my demolecularized body through that.

 

[Timo]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

The one thing speaking against that is that Uhura was sending messages of "Prepare to be boarded" for several minutes before the subject of "You can't" arose. Why did Spock say nothing? Was he thinking that Kirk's parties could board the Reliant via shuttles, spacewalks or hard docking even though the transporters were out of the question? Or that Kirk was bluffing for some reason and it was not Spock's place to point out the weaknesses of the bluff?

Mind you, it would be advantageous to send Khan the standard Starfleet surrender ultimatum even if there were practical problems with it. Kirk should press his advantage, and asking the impossible from the defeated party is good psychology that asserts Kirk's dominance.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Jon1701]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

...whether you could beam over...

Well, David Marcus clearly says "You can't".


Timo Saloniemi

I always took "You can't" as "You can't stop it".

It being Genesis. I've never read that line as you couldn't beam over.

I suppose you could take the line reading that way but I always assumed he was talking about turning it off. When David says "You can't" he means:

"We forgot to put an off switch on it"

 

[Marcus Porcius Cato]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

...whether you could beam over...

Well, David Marcus clearly says "You can't".


Timo Saloniemi

I always took "You can't" as "You can't stop it".

It being Genesis. I've never read that line as you couldn't beam over.

I suppose you could take the line reading that way but I always assumed he was talking about turning it off. When David says "You can't" he means:

"We forgot to put an off switch on it"

which brings more questions, why there was no abortion sequence. Did the research team really think everything would go right even if there was no Khan?

 

[MacLeod]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

The one thing speaking against that is that Uhura was sending messages of "Prepare to be boarded" for several minutes before the subject of "You can't" arose. Why did Spock say nothing? Was he thinking that Kirk's parties could board the Reliant via shuttles, spacewalks or hard docking even though the transporters were out of the question? Or that Kirk was bluffing for some reason and it was not Spock's place to point out the weaknesses of the bluff?

Mind you, it would be advantageous to send Khan the standard Starfleet surrender ultimatum even if there were practical problems with it. Kirk should press his advantage, and asking the impossible from the defeated party is good psychology that asserts Kirk's dominance.

Timo Saloniemi

...whether you could beam over...

Well, David Marcus clearly says "You can't".


Timo Saloniemi

I always took "You can't" as "You can't stop it".

It being Genesis. I've never read that line as you couldn't beam over.

I suppose you could take the line reading that way but I always assumed he was talking about turning it off. When David says "You can't" he means:

"We forgot to put an off switch on it"

That's how I understood David's line, is that once the Genesis device had been activated there was no way to stop it from detonating. As for being able to transport in the nebula. They might have been intending to use the Reliant's transporter pad as a receiving station. So using the Enterprises and Reliant's pads it acted like a pattern enhancer.

 

[MarsWeeps]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

...whether you could beam over...

Well, David Marcus clearly says "You can't".


Timo Saloniemi

I always took "You can't" as "You can't stop it".

According to the transcript, that's exactly what it means. "You can't stop the detonation," not "You can't beam over."

SPOCK: Admiral. Scanning an energy source on Reliant. A pattern I've never seen before.
DAVID: It's the Genesis Wave!
KIRK: What?
DAVID: They're on a build up to detonation!
KIRK: How soon.
DAVID: We encoded four minutes.
KIRK: We'll beam aboard and stop it.
DAVID: You can't!

 

[Timo]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

Well, the dialogue really is completely ambiguous on the issue. Jim just trusts that his son knows exactly what can and cannot be done - so if he shoots down "beam over and stop", there's no point in asking for specifics. David knows that something about it is impossible, and it might just as well be the beaming part.

Of course, David is by training a Genesis specialist, not a Mutara nebula specialist, so any inability to use the transporter would probably be Genesis-derived rather than nebula-derived. Then again, David has apparently lived for quite a while as next-door neighbors to this nebula, so we can't really tell what he knows about it...

Writer intent is pretty obvious here, even though the dialogue is not - but that's no reason to stop looking for clever excuses for why the movie wasn't wrapped up a few minutes sooner, with a bit less anxiety.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MarsWeeps]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

Well, the dialogue really is completely ambiguous on the issue.

Only to you it seems. It's pretty obvious to everyone else.

 

[Timo]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

Obvious, perhaps - but textually or contextually, nothing there says "You can beam but you can't turn off". The dialogue would need extra words to establish that, no way around it.

Since the device wasn't beamed out on wide dispersion or anything, it appears you and "everybody else" (quite probably including the writers) have the wrong idea and I have the right one.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MarsWeeps]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

Since the device wasn't beamed out on wide dispersion or anything, it appears you and "everybody else" (quite probably including the writers) have the wrong idea and I have the right one.

But isn't that how it always is? You can never admit being wrong despite the countless times it's been proven you are.

 

[Marsden]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

I think it had no off switch because of the long and elaborate arming that had to be done to get it started.

I think I remember 4 codes and 4 steps to arm it, probably could have been reversed until the final step, which is when the wave started.

Therefore, if it's triggered "you can't" stop it.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

why there was no abortion sequence. Did the research team really think everything would go right even if there was no Khan?

The device had been disconnected (and moved hurriedly) when Khan's people came aboard Regula I and started killing everyone else.

 

[publiusr]

Re: The Genesis Torpedo Should Have Tipped Over When Reliant Was Blast

Well, just to put a unique spin on it--maybe it did fall over and was damaged.

Something to remember. A smaller Genesis wave--using the same proto-matter, carved out a paradise inside the planetoid right? If it were unstable, it should have been evident early on.

Here is my theory.

The device would have worked perfectly.

One, it was placed inside a nebula, where it had to strain in order to re-awaken the pulsar we see--converting degenerate matter back to hydrogen (most of a stars mass remains at its death). We saw that later in DS9 when Richard Kiley's character awoke a star with perhaps similar means.

Reliants destruction, and the device falling over changed the genesis wave. The planet died, but it allowed Spock to live.

I would say that, without being knocked over, the reverse would have been true.

This plays into my dream Star Trek Star Wars cross over (with Dr. Who thrown in)

The Doctor and the Enterprise bring Alderan back to life by firing the genesis torpedo at the Death Star instead.

an even swap--added mass coming from an asteroid belt.