The Glaring Plot Hole of TWOK

[oldtrekkie]

The only two examples of robots in hostile environments I can think of are in TNG. There's the Exocomps in The Quality of Life and the season 7 episode, Interface, where Geordi remotely pilots a probe droid. Of course they're both 70-ish years after TWOK so I can forgive the Reliant crew for not using them.

Discovery is 30-ish years BEFORE TWOK and robots are everywhere.

 

[David cgc]

Much like the arrow of time, the chain of information involved only goes one way, but the TWOK novelization mentioned that Scotty had tried using a robot to rejigger the dilithium (or whatever was going on) at the end of the movie, but the radiation in the reactor room burned it out.

 

[oldtrekkie]

Much like the arrow of time, the chain of information involved only goes one way, but the TWOK novelization mentioned that Scotty had tried using a robot to rejigger the dilithium (or whatever was going on) at the end of the movie, but the radiation in the reactor room burned it out.

Yes, because the radiation that destroys a robot does nothing to the human body... Not very plausible.

 

[DonIago]

Not sure what you're talking about here? The radiation very obviously did something to Spock's body.

Unless you misunderstood David's comment, in which he was referring to an automated robot.

 

[Kor]

I always wondered if an engineering person wearing the full white & black protective suit (including a helmet) would have been able to do whatever Spock did in the reactor room and survive. But considering that Spock was wearing the white gloves and his hands still got burned up, maybe the suit wouldn't have provided great protection in that particular environment.

Kor

 

[fireproof78]

Discovery is 30-ish years BEFORE TWOK and robots are everywhere.

Then that whole nasty Control business happened. Then Nomad, the M-5, Landru and Mudd's planet. Starfleet started having bad experiences with robots.

 

[DonIago]

Huh. Interesting idea that Starfleet used to more openly embrace robots pre-Control and others.

 

[fireproof78]

I may not be the biggest fan of gigantic Interconnected universes but I don't think enough credit is given to newer Trek either informing future developments or being informed by past events. Despite some advancements presented in the visuals events are still unfolding that will inform future decisions in universe. The Federation has always been highly reactionary in forbidding tech. Why would Control not impact that?

Though, all that said, the Enterprise was also on a training mission.

 

[Timo]

I always wondered if an engineering person wearing the full white & black protective suit (including a helmet) would have been able to do whatever Spock did in the reactor room and survive. But considering that Spock was wearing the white gloves and his hands still got burned up, maybe the suit wouldn't have provided great protection in that particular environment.

Scotty was already clad in the full protective suit, just missing the helmet, and still considered it a very poor idea to go inside. Perhaps he had already been there, before looking at his rad badge and slamming shut the (revolving) door? Heck, it's possible his strange collapse was due to radiation that already was affecting people outside the protective plexiglass, despite those coveralls. Although I think he collapsed simply because he hadn't slept for three days straight.

I also think we already saw robotics in action there. Every Trek warp core is the same: there's dilithium in the middle, energized by "main energizer" when in use (but sometimes taken out and nursed back to health in a separate recuperative energizer, then carefully realigned and reinserted). Unlike in the 24th century, though, in TOS and the TOS movies it's buried pretty deep, possibly inside a fancy armored sphere, and reached through a waldo system that features a radlock at one end to allow for manhandling the dilithium into its frame, and then carries the frame to the working location robotically for final positioning. But if something goes really badly wrong, multiple radlocks may fail; even the dumbwaiter may cease working, so the only option is to crawl inside the sphere and start kicking...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[publiusr]

I always wondered if an engineering person wearing the full white & black protective suit (including a helmet) would have been able to do whatever Spock did in the reactor room and survive. But considering that Spock was wearing the white gloves and his hands still got burned up, maybe the suit wouldn't have provided great protection in that particular environment.

Kor

Probably...in the novelization the repair robot was damaged...I see that as a headless mass of arms and attachments...non-sentient.

 

[Maurice]

Probably because Trek was about humans. Also, Roddenberry was very hurt by another network hearing his pitch and then going on to make their own show without him. I think it was Lost in Space so that might have informed that.

We'r still trying to get to the bottom of that. Irwin Allen was in discussions with CBS to do a Swiss Family Robinson show, but it's unclear when that shifted to a space version. We know he was having a copyright search done on Swiss Family Robinson around the time Roddenberry was outlining the Trek pilot for NBC, well after CBS turned it down.

 

[mb22]

We'r still trying to get to the bottom of that. Irwin Allen was in discussions with CBS to do a Swiss Family Robinson show, but it's unclear when that shifted to a space version. We know he was having a copyright search done on Swiss Family Robinson around the time Roddenberry was outlining the Trek pilot for NBC, well after CBS turned it down.

What about this comic book and the legal issues it presented?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_Space#Legal_issues

 

[Maurice]

What about this comic book and the legal issues it presented?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_Space#Legal_issues

Those are a separate matter from whether or not CBS had decided on going with a space family Robinson show at the time Star Trek was pitched to them, which is what's been claimed forever. It's a whole 'nother can of worms.

 

[Charles Phipps]

I'm willing to buy it on the grounds of Starfleet having normalized spacefaring to such a degree that it is the equivalent of mistaking one near identical patch of land for another. No one was paying attention that day for what was a mind-numbingly tedious survey job for a bunch of ungrateful hippie scientists far away from the "real" job of exploration.

 

[Maurice]

I'm willing to buy it on the grounds of Starfleet having normalized spacefaring to such a degree that it is the equivalent of mistaking one near identical patch of land for another. No one was paying attention that day for what was a mind-numbingly tedious survey job for a bunch of ungrateful hippie scientists far away from the "real" job of exploration.

This suggests the computers are too dumb to alert them. ERROR 4004: PLANET NOT FOUND.

 

[Charles Phipps]

This suggests the computers are too dumb to alert them. ERROR 4004: PLANET NOT FOUND.

Or the computers are plotting against them.

Which would explain a lot.

 

[Commander Troi]

Huh. Interesting idea that Starfleet used to more openly embrace robots pre-Control and others.

Obviously at some point in there they managed to watch The Terminator...

 

[Timo]

I fear we got our prequels in the wrong order. Had ENT been produced in the 2020s, we could have seen amazing CGI gadgetry that plausibly flows from real-world developments - and then the sneaky Romulan co-opting of such assets, after which nobody would trust a computer unless it talked in a tinny voice, stumbled a lot, and every third word was "Massa". And DSC done in 2000s style would probably have offended fewer TOS diehards.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[FormerLurker]

and every third word was "Massa".

Masa, because this joke is corny.

 

[oldtrekkie]

I fear we got our prequels in the wrong order. Had ENT been produced in the 2020s, we could have seen amazing CGI gadgetry that plausibly flows from real-world developments - and then the sneaky Romulan co-opting of such assets, after which nobody would trust a computer unless it talked in a tinny voice, stumbled a lot, and every third word was "Massa". And DSC done in 2000s style would probably have offended fewer TOS diehards.

Timo Saloniemi

You know in "First Contact", Cochrane looks old, I'd say fifty-five easy, yet Archer claims to have met him. When Archer was old enough to tell the difference between one adult and another (not his parents) Cochrane must have been around one hundred and ten, half of his life spent in a world ravaged by heavy pollution, war and scarcity... and then he went out in space (around 120) to die there except he didn't die he met the companion...