This isn't the first time the delivery of the dialogue in this scene has been bashed. Personally, I think if the guy on the intercom had been emotional it would have come across as too melodramatic or even campy, especially since it's only a voice and you never see an actor's face. As it played out, it kind of makes sense. People, when faced with traumatic situations like that, often emotionally shut down for self-protection. They don't always fall apart and start balling in grief.
TMP - "What We Got Back Didn't Live Long, Unfortunately."
- Thread starter Joel_Kirk
- Start date
I can't see the image.Here's an artist's rendition of what he might have looked like, after browsing the web (mods, is this considered hotlinking? If it is, I apologize, but I did upload this pic to a photo sharing site):
I'm thinking Bottin's work for THE THING would be close to what they got back.
I agree with this entirely. As well, Grace Lee Whitney's delivery of the line "Oh, no. They're forming." was very well done, and got across without any melodrama that what she was seeing was horrific, because the character knew it would be. Every time I've heard the line, I've gotten a little creeped out by it, because I could tell how Rand, rather than GLW, was reacting to what was happening. It was subtle and understated, which was very effective.
Agreed
My only issue with the scene is an "in universe" one. If the transporters were having issues why weren't they completely deactivated until repairs were complete?
Hmm, I'm not so sure. Cars kill lots more people than transporters but we use them every day. People drive them when they're low on gas, with bald tyres, when they're overdue a service, and people drive when they're drunk or high. ;-P
Presumably the power surge was a one in a million freak accident that destablised the signal so that the quantum linked information in the matter stream got jumbled up.
With a crew of only 400 though, not all of whom would be essential for an emergency mission, one does wonder why they were using transporters for the crew. Technicians who were finalising the ship would make more sense.
Because they thought the system was fixed. They thought there was a 'wee problem'. Decker had just isolated it, and had ordered the appropriate repair.
Now you might ask why they could think the system was fixed when it was not. And the answer is the same as any industrial disaster. A minor component broke and was being repaired. An alarm was turned off because the workers believed it was trying to warn them about something they already knew. A backup was out of order but was left that way because it was a backup. An operator in a critical position was fatigued after long and stressful hours. And why was this? Because they were rushed. They were trying to do something a little beyond their readiness. They were trying to hurry for a greater purpose.
In short, a chain of little errors, any of them harmless by themselves, any of them normally caught by other systems, any of them normally caught by good operating procedure, lined up to allow for a terrible accident. The way people rushing to do big things are caught by the little things.
I have no problem with a lack of emotion; that would be expected, just like police/fire radio conveying the most horrific information in a very matter-of-fact way. The voice in TMP just had a weird, floating sort of delivery that sounded more lobitomized-unemotional than professional-unemotional. YMMV.
Well said.
To me maybe the biggest problem in the scene is that Kirk pushes Rand out of the way to take the controls. Because in an emergency, of course the high-level administrator fresh from his office would handle it better than the technician who works with the equipment every day!
Yeah, that irks me whenever I rewatch the scene now. And then Kirk has the gall to say, "It wasn't your fault, Rand" afterwards! Seeing the death glare that she gives him afterwards, I imagine she's thinking, "Yeah, no shit, Sherlock, because you shoved me out of the way! If it was anyone's fault, it was yours!"
Well, yeah, Kirk was an admiral at the time, but he can still be skilled at operating the transporter. He may have done it as a permanent posting earlier in his Starfleet career. So there's no reason to think he wouldn't be experienced at it. Hell, we never saw Rand do it before TMP, did we?
The movie shows us in several places that Kirk is not up-to-date on the new Enterprise design. He didn't know that the phasers were now channeled through the engines and at one point he actually loses his way and has to have a crewman direct him the right way to go. It stands to reason that Kirk wouldn't be as versed on the current transporter design as Rand, who was already working on it when Kirk arrived on board.
Ha, that does really fit with her expression!
So you think that Admiral Kirk working in some high post at Starfleet Command would be just as likely to get transporter refresher training, run drills, simulations and exercises, keep current on all the technical bulletins etc. as the petty officer assigned to that duty? OK...
Didn't Kirk and/or Spock often push Sulu aside when he reported that the helm was not responding? Then, after messing with his controls for a few seconds, they concluded that the helm was not responding!
To this day, now almost 37 years later, I will ALWAYS mute the sound just as Rand observes that, "...they're forming." That ung*dly shriek forced from a malforming trachea freaked the H3LL outa' me when I first heard it in Dolby Surround Sound at the 1979 premiere. It was that "perfect storm" of a "nails on a chalkboard" teeth gritting pitch that would plague my nightmares for days afterwards. We all have our particular personality "buttons"; well, something about that scream, I'm not sure what, "presses" mine and I can't handle it even (nearly) 4 decades later!
Now watch as some "clever b*st*rd" encourages me to click a link that will play that banshee like wail!
Sincerely,
Bill
Now watch as some "clever b*st*rd" encourages me to click a link that will play that banshee like wail!
Sincerely,
Bill
I doubt it was that. Rather, Kirk knew how badly things were going, and he knew it was his own fault through and through. So he chose to be the man pushing the buttons that would kill Sonak and the nondescript noncom, because pushing the buttons that would kill the two was all that remained to be done at that point, and it was his job and nobody else's to do the pushing.
A bit like Picard pilots the E-D on two occasions of great jeopardy ("Booby Trap", "In Theory") despite not being a master pilot or anything: skill won't make any practical difference on this matter of responsibility.
Timo Saloniemi
How the heck was the transporter accident Kirk's fault? He wasn't manning either station when the transport started. He was down in engineering with Scotty when they got the alert about it. He didn't even give the order to transport at that moment. The most you can lay at Kirk's feet is that he gave the order for the Enterprise to be ready in 12 hours, which may have led to some undue haste and carelessness on someone's part.
That's why Kirk is at fault - he gave the order for the ship to be ready far sooner than it should've been. As it's been established - a starship captain is responsible for the actions of his crew. Hence, he would be held accountable for the deaths of Sonak and the female crewman.
Well, if that's how Timo meant it, okay, I can see that... But then it wouldn't make any difference if Kirk was actually at the controls at the very end or not.
Kirk does have a history of being a bit of a control freak too. It's part of his established personality, particularly throughout this movie. It's why he almost always puts himself on landing party duty and why he's so freaked out when the M5 calls him 'non-essential personnel'. I just wish that Rand had been given some dialogue later on in the movie too. It's a shame that this was her only significant scene and she gets shoved aside by Kirk.
Yeah, that's pretty much how I take the transporter scene.
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