Transporters as Weapons

[Timo]

Oddly enough, one of the elements of the "plan" was that stealth was of essence in defeating Nero: the hero ship had to hide in Titan's clouds (even though she immediately emerged from them) in order to let Nero pass them (even though Nero was already at Earth) so that the transporters could whisk the raiding party to the enemy ship unnoticed (either for the surprise factor, or out of fear of retaliation).

Sending just two people to just a single location would certainly be in keeping with the stealth angle: if you send 2+2+2, you may well triple your chances of exposure. But it's unclear why stealth continues to matter. Kirk has a pretty good idea of Nero's weaknesses already (ludicrously vulnerable main weapon, limited crew, lack of military experience in them and their leader alike, a slow and wounded vessel), as well as of the stakes (entire planets dying). Overwhelming Nero with aggressive boarding action ought to be a distinct possibility, as there's little or nothing Nero can do against it. It's not as if he can hasten his evildoing, or beef up his defenses.

Then again, perhaps Kirk lacks suitable boarding crew? For once, the special training and skills of Security redshirts might be needed, and Kirk only has cadets aboard for the task... Upping the ante from two to six wouldn't be worth it if Kirk can't send over an assault team of dozens no matter what.

Ultimately, though, the key thing here seems to be that while the stakes were high, Kirk had plenty of time to attempt his rescue of Pike before things got really acute. Even if the mission was a total failure, Sulu could use transporters to wreck the Narada, or simple phasers to do the same, before Nero had the chance to deploy the red matter. Nero's ship was not declared invincible or even particularly frightening at that point, not any longer: a conventional strike would have ended his attack against Earth, but there was time to do the transporter rescue before that.

given that it is actually a civilian ship.

And a wounded one at that. Intel on Nero and the Narada kept accumulating; Spock must have based his theory about that "empty cargo bay" on something, and that might well be a wealth of knowledge already establishing the weakened state of the enemy.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

That's why I speculate if things should have been done differently.

Once again, your speculation is based on assumptions that of what should have been there as if Kirk should have made those very same assumptions. And once again, none of the things that "should" have been there actually WERE, so Kirk's failure to account for them isn't actually an error.

It doesn't really matters whether Kirk had used a 6 man team or not, he would still have succeeded. With only 2 men, he just gets more of the glory. I'd rather see him succeed by being smart rather than by being lucky and we don't see enough of that in NuTrek.

That's because Kirk is living proof of the fact that it's better to be lucky than smart.

Fortunately, he also hangs out with Spock, who is smart enough to save his ass when his supply of luck runs low.

Ha ha. Very true. As with idiocracy, you only have to be smarter than everyone else around you. We have no choice but to assume that even though the Enterprise has sensors to detect intruding transport signals, the ship that is 100 years newer and built by a race of paranoids, isn't fitted with any internal security at all and that it is sensible for Kirk to make those assumptions because they are, after all, true.

The other issue of course is that if the internal security was any good at all, you could just gas the intruders or lock onto them and beam them into space.

I think I'd prefer to see the heroes outsmarting the technology rather them forgetting that it exists or should exist.

 

[Timo]

I'd argue that it's crucially important that Nero is flying a civilian ship here. Sure, Romulans may be paranoid. But their regular 24th century warships are compact affairs compared to this massive mining rig. Why equip that beast with state-of-the-art security tech when the sheer quantity of it must be a major expense, to little gain?

Also, warships need crew, even in the 24th century - else why would they have it in such quantity? Nero apparently has very little crew in comparison. Automated intruder control can only achieve as much, as even Romulans must believe in rules of engagement that limit the robotic response.

I have no real trouble accepting that Nero's rig could be raided six ways from Sunday, especially when the raiding is done by a dedicated warship rather than a fellow civilian vessel or a pirate setup of some sort. And I doubt Nero would even care, most of the time, as there's so much of that ship that he could donate it in chunks to the enemy, like Stalin or Kutuzov donated Russia, to the enemy's detriment.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

I'd argue that it's crucially important that Nero is flying a civilian ship here. Sure, Romulans may be paranoid. But their regular 24th century warships are compact affairs compared to this massive mining rig. Why equip that beast with state-of-the-art security tech when the sheer quantity of it must be a major expense, to little gain?

Also, warships need crew, even in the 24th century - else why would they have it in such quantity? Nero apparently has very little crew in comparison. Automated intruder control can only achieve as much, as even Romulans must believe in rules of engagement that limit the robotic response.

I have no real trouble accepting that Nero's rig could be raided six ways from Sunday, especially when the raiding is done by a dedicated warship rather than a fellow civilian vessel or a pirate setup of some sort. And I doubt Nero would even care, most of the time, as there's so much of that ship that he could donate it in chunks to the enemy, like Stalin or Kutuzov donated Russia, to the enemy's detriment.

Timo Saloniemi

I'd agree with that ordinarily but once again for me it's about the inconsistencies. This civilian ship also has an unlimited supply of ship-destroying weapons (enough to destroy over 50 ships in the space of 48 hours) plus engines that allow it to travel faster than any starship in the 24th century.

I generally like my space battles more like Balance of Terror or Wrath of Khan than Independence Day and ST09. Not everybody does though, obviously.

TBH, a line of dialogue from Spock Prime explaining that the Romulan Mining vessel was equipped with huge stores of missiles for asteroid mining but confined its security sensors to habitable parts of the ship would have been enough to soften me up that they weren't risking the fate of the Earth on a total blag.

I suppose my desire to see a more varied landing party stems from my love of things like Mission Impossible where all the team had to contribute their relevant skills to the mission to succeed (compared to the ME ME ME of Tom Cruise versions). I was never a fan of Spock and Kirk hogging all the glory. They made a point of saying that Uhura speaks fluent Romulan but she gets to monitor their frequencies - you go girl.

 

[Timo]

This civilian ship also has an unlimited supply of ship-destroying weapons (enough to destroy over 50 ships in the space of 48 hours) plus engines that allow it to travel faster than any starship in the 24th century.

Well, not really - or at least both those claims are contradictions on their own rights.

We learn in the final engagement that the Narada actually has very limited firepower, and a very limited supply of her only anti-ship weapon type: "Fire EVERYTHING!" amounts to a smallish swarm of twenty or so missiles, launched in a brief and exhaustive volley rather than steadily pumped out. And her speed never impresses when actually witnessed, as the wounded Enterprise beats her to Earth even after making a detour towards Laurentius.

What is powerful and fast about the villain ship? Her exploits against the Klingons, and nothing else. But those are never seen. And not only do they not fit the overall picture - they also perfectly fit the other picture of Nero faking it all, to distract Starfleet. Vulcan sent no distress call about seismic troubles, the timeline of events rules that out. A "Klingon prison planet" need not have sent any distress call about a massive defeat, either. Starfleet simply fell for both ruses, launching two fleets under false assumptions - one to Laurentius and out of the way, and another, much weaker, to its doom above Vulcan.

It's quite possible Nero was never in Klingon space. He just went to receive Spock somewhere in the RNZ near Vulcan, hence the thunderstorm in space that Starfleet observed and considered relevant, and immediately sailed to Vulcan with his newly acquired red matter to set up his trap, sending en route a false message about unrest in Klingon space. This doesn't call for speed or firepower on Nero's part, only the sort of monomaniacal cunning he demonstrated elsewhere.

I was never a fan of Spock and Kirk hogging all the glory.

It's worse here: Spock does all the work and saves Earth and the universe, but Kirk saves the girl(y admiral) and hence gets the glory.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

I was never a fan of Spock and Kirk hogging all the glory.

It's worse here: Spock does all the work and saves Earth and the universe, but Kirk saves the girl(y admiral) and hence gets the glory.

Timo Saloniemi

LOL! Sooo true.

Nero's timeline is somewhat beholden to Spock's arrival, which was detected on sensors on the edge of Klingon space. Even if you assume that everything else was misdirection by Nero, the timeline is still screwy.

 

[Timo]

But Nero's timestorm was not at the edge of Klingon space (unless we assume it was the exact same spot as in 2233, a fair assumption as such even if not necessarily supported by the scenery, and then only if we assume that the "Klingons are 75,000 km from you" walla thing refers to Klingon territory being close to the Kelvin, rather than mobile Klingon assets being that).

"At 2200 hours, telemetry detected at an anomaly in the Neutral Zone. What appeared to be a lightning storm in space."

All we get in the way of coordinates is the Neutral Zone mention, and that can be either the KNZ or the RNZ (neither is explicitly mentioned in this movie, but both appear to exist - the first in the no-win scenario, the second arguably in the Vulcan affair).

That there is a subspace message from "A Klingon prison planet" at 2300 hours, telling of an attack that may or may not have taken place "at the edge of Klingon space", is just hearsay - arguably, Nero putting his disinformation plan into action now that he has secured Spock and the Red Matter. And even then, associating the "battle with 47 Klingon warbirds" with "the edge of Klingon space" is merely an option for an interpretation, not something spelled out in the dialogue (the "edge" thing only explicitly refers to that old Kelvin battle).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JES]

Yeah, but if we consider those deleted scenes canon, Nero and his crew definitely escaped from Rura Penthe. Now, did he destroy 47 Klingon Battlecruisers (I refuse to call them Warbirds!) while blasting her way out of Klingon juristiction?

THAT could be disinformation passed along by Nero's crew, to make the Narada seem even better armed then she actually is.

 

[Timo]

I'm not fond of the concept of re-adding scenes that the makers of the show decided were not good enough... Backstage mumbling about what a specific greeblie on a starship might mean or where a character might have been spending his offscreen years is not particularly relevant to a movie because it doesn't translate to anything that would be visible in the end result - but cutting something and leaving it cut is definitely directly affecting the end result!

I guess Nero might have been imprisoned by Klingons at some point. But for 25 years? With his ship left lying around so that he can just pick it up and continue where he left off? And he fails to escape for 25 years, but then manages to do so right in time to welcome Spock to the 23rd century? This is material better left on the cutting room floor.

If Rura Penthe did feature in the plot somehow, though, we could compare travel times to ST6:TUC, which is another movie featuring the three major players doing nasty things to each other and shuttling between important locations within a short span of time.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

That's why I speculate if things should have been done differently.

Once again, your speculation is based on assumptions that of what should have been there as if Kirk should have made those very same assumptions. And once again, none of the things that "should" have been there actually WERE, so Kirk's failure to account for them isn't actually an error.

It doesn't really matters whether Kirk had used a 6 man team or not, he would still have succeeded. With only 2 men, he just gets more of the glory. I'd rather see him succeed by being smart rather than by being lucky and we don't see enough of that in NuTrek.

That's because Kirk is living proof of the fact that it's better to be lucky than smart.

Fortunately, he also hangs out with Spock, who is smart enough to save his ass when his supply of luck runs low.

Ha ha. Very true. As with idiocracy, you only have to be smarter than everyone else around you. We have no choice but to assume that even though the Enterprise has sensors to detect intruding transport signals

No it doesn't.

It has OFFICERS who can spot a transport signal when looking at the raw data after the fact, and it has devices that can block/track transport signals once that signal has been identified.

But the Enterprise does NOT have sensor devices specifically designed to alert the crew/captain/chief of security of an unidentified transporter beam entering the ship. Neither do Romulan military vessels in the 23rd century. Neither, for that matter, do KLINGON military vessels in the 23rd century.

the ship that is 100 years newer and built by a race of paranoids, isn't fitted with any internal security at all

Do I again need to explain to you that the whole point of internal security isn't to STOP bad people, but to CATCH people who have already done something bad? It's more about deterrence and damage control than prevention.

it is sensible for Kirk to make those assumptions because they are, after all, true.

Except they're NOT. We have never seen a starship in the 23rd century that uses any of the technologies you claim should be commonplace. I can name a half dozen TOS episodes off the top of my head that would be dead-on-arrival if even half of those technologies were in use.

There are probably many reasons for it, but it doesn't change the fact that the technologies you assume SHOULD be there simply aren't.

The other issue of course is that if the internal security was any good at all, you could just gas the intruders or lock onto them and beam them into space.

Site-to-site transport doesn't exist until the 24th century and I would be much happier if the Abramsverse avoids going there altogether.

As for "gas the intruders" the Enterprise DOES have an anti-intrusion system that can be triggered by the Captain's order. Triggering it requires, of course, the Captain to know they've been boarded by a party of hostiles who didn't bring their own breathing gear and are present with enough force that a security detachment can't simply stun them.

I think I'd prefer to see the heroes outsmarting the technology rather them forgetting that it exists or should exist.

You would prefer to see the heroes making broad assumptions about technology that no one uses and making ever-more elaborate plans to circumvent security measures that don't really exist?

And I thought Voyager was painful to watch...

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I'm not fond of the concept of re-adding scenes that the makers of the show decided were not good enough...

If it wasn't good enough, they wouldn't have bothered FILMING it, let alone added it to the DVD release as bonus content.

In this case, it was cut from the film for runtime considerations and not much else. For whatever reason, studios don't believe in "directors cuts" anymore that restore the deleted footage into a coherent movie, but that's basically what we have in ST09 with the Rura Penthe angle.

Backstage mumbling about what a specific greeblie on a starship might mean or where a character might have been spending his offscreen years is not particularly relevant to a movie because it doesn't translate to anything that would be visible in the end result

You've never seen my son or either of my daughters and you've never met my wife. I've never really mentioned them much on this board either because they were never really relevant.

If, on the other hand, you were to use the fact that I never mention having a family as evidence that I am single and childless, you are simply full of shit. This would be just as true of me as a person as it would be of my characterization in "Crazy Eddie: the Motion Picture."

Background material is just that: background. You don't see it because you don't NEED to see it; it's just background. And yes, it DOES affect the end result, whether the effect is too subtle for you to notice or not.

I guess Nero might have been imprisoned by Klingons at some point. But for 25 years? With his ship left lying around so that he can just pick it up and continue where he left off?

Impounded in orbit. Even the warden recognized it for a civilian ship, but he thought the technology was suitably weird enough to keep it around and try and figure it out themselves.

 

[Timo]

Site-to-site transport doesn't exist until the 24th century and I would be much happier if the Abramsverse avoids going there altogether.

Grabbing an intruder from within the ship wouldn't be site-to-site as such - he could be beamed to the transporter room if need be. Or a transporter room, at any rate, perhaps one equipped for garbage disposal. But it seems superfluous, as the worries about transporting in TOS deal with the potential for messy end results. Intruders deserve to be messed up by the machine!

That said, blocking of transporters is always shown to be fairly simple. A boarding party might be immune to that sort of defenses by carrying a common piece of 20th century technology for all we know. Heck, we have seen a guy resist transport by sheer strength of will! (Or whatever. But Dona Ragar, while possibly a bit of a cyborg, wasn't supposed to be cutting edge in UFP terms.)

As said, boarding parties might be prepared against gassing, too. But anti-phaser armor isn't very effective at any Trek era, so key spots could always be provided with lethal and effective defenses.

It has OFFICERS who can spot a transport signal when looking at the raw data after the fact, and it has devices that can block/track transport signals once that signal has been identified.

This is true - but there's also automation that signals "INTRUDER ALERT!" with bold lettering without user involvement. False positives may be a nuisance, but the military would have learned to live with such nuisances. Spotting transporter use may take skill, but spotting intruders is doable with half a (duotronic) brain. It's just that the system must have shortcomings that explain its many failures, and we have insufficient knowledge of these shortcomings so far.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

If it wasn't good enough, they wouldn't have bothered FILMING it, let alone added it to the DVD release as bonus content.

Naah. Shit gets filmed all the time, and then editing polishes that into art. Discarding some stuff and inserting other stuff doesn't mean the stuff itself is good or bad - the results of the editing decide the outcome. And editing can change a story for the better.

As for DVD extras, that's like saying that there were sequels to Lion King. Trolling for cash doesn't count.

For whatever reason, studios don't believe in "directors cuts" anymore

They never did - what comes out is the director's cut in the general case. What is left on the cutting room floor is the aftermarket cut.

If, on the other hand, you were to use the fact that I never mention having a family as evidence that I am single and childless, you are simply full of shit.

Is your life a work of fiction?

Trek is. It doesn't exist outside that which is shown. If we started believing that it did, we'd have to believe in plywood starships.

Impounded in orbit. Even the warden recognized it for a civilian ship, but he thought the technology was suitably weird enough to keep it around and try and figure it out themselves.

How many wardens figure out impounded technology today? How many did yesterday? That just doesn't happen - and wouldn't happen with Klingons, who'd declare the thing Imperial Property and lock it up far away from Rura Penthe for dissection, tear it apart in a futile but swift attempt at learning it secrets, and then blow it up out of frustration. They would not park it above the prison planet for a quarter of a century.

Cutting unbelievable shit like this from the movie helps it along both dramatically and logically. Too much was of course left uncut, but short movies don't sell well. Yet the more is cut, the more freedom of interpretation the audience has, and any good movie is at least 50% audience interpretation. (A lamentable shortcoming, but being visual, they can't go for the 90% commonly reached in the written medium.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

Audiance and character assumptions on security messures can go weird places.

For an example of overthinking things: In the Doctor Who episode "Day of the Doctor" three versions of the Doctor from across time are placed in a cell at the Tower of London in the 1500s. It has a giant wooden door. Normally the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to unlock doors or otherwise open doors and just walk out. However it does not work on wood, an old quirk in the technology. Fustrated the Doctor think up a plan to dematerialize the door. However to do that they would need to know the exact molecular positioning of all the atoms in the door before it would work. Such a calculation on their handheld tool would take centuries to work out after being scanned. However, these Doctors are from different point in time, and their sonic screwdriver is using the same OS and saved programs. So the "youngest" of them scans the door and runs a program. The older ones confirm that it is running. The oldest of them confirms it will be finished in a moment and they can just vaporize the door. They congratulate themselves for being extremely clever.

Then their companion just opens the door from the outside. "How did you do that?" They ask. "It was unlocked" she answers. "Right". She then go on to say something like "There were three of you in here and none of you even thought to try the door?" To which the most realistic of them answers "It should have been locked".

An example of overthinking the problem without trying the easy solution.

 

[Timo]

Defeating security is indeed often a matter of playing against the assumptions. If you try to avoid being caught, you probably raise suspicions and get caught. If you just waltz in, you may well succeed. But then again, you may not - you have to make guesses as to the exact right balance between audacity and caution.

The thing is, somebody like nuKirk might have lots of experience with getting that balance right. He's decidedly anti-authoritarian, reputedly smart, and has already demonstrated great skill in defeating the safeguards of his own era, even the military-standard ones. He might actually have a pretty good idea about what to expect of a random spacecraft's security arrangements, possibly much better than the ship's own security personnel have.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

This is true - but there's also automation that signals "INTRUDER ALERT!" with bold lettering without user involvement.

This only happened once, when V'ger's probe busted its way into Ilia's quarters and took a shower. It's also not clear that this alarm was triggered automatically; it shows up on Chekov's threat board and a security officer is already telling him "Whatever it is, it's white hot."

I don't think Ilia's probe actually beamed onto the ship at that point; I think it never actually LEFT the ship, and after absorbing Ilia it moved below decks and transformed itself. Somebody probably noticed it on route and sounded the alarm.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

If it wasn't good enough, they wouldn't have bothered FILMING it, let alone added it to the DVD release as bonus content.

Naah. Shit gets filmed all the time, and then editing polishes that into art. Discarding some stuff and inserting other stuff doesn't mean the stuff itself is good or bad - the results of the editing decide the outcome. And editing can change a story for the better.

Not in this case, no. Abrams was forced to remove the rura penthe scenes just to make the movie shorter. They had to remove/replace quite a bit of other material for the omission to make sense. There WERE a few things they removed because in retrospect they detracted from the film, but Rura Penthe wasn't one of them; more importantly, Orci and Kruzman went on to revisit that story ark in the IDW comics, which makes them at least semi-canon.

As for DVD extras, that's like saying that there were sequels to Lion King. Trolling for cash doesn't count.

And yet you continue to make overt references to Star Trek: Voyager...

If, on the other hand, you were to use the fact that I never mention having a family as evidence that I am single and childless, you are simply full of shit.

Is your life a work of fiction?

As far as you're concerned, it is.

Trek is. It doesn't exist outside that which is shown.

And also the background lore that informs what is shown in addition to the logical implications that follow from the fictional universe it establishes.

It's one thing to say "Uranus may or may not really exist in the Trek universe but we've never seen it." It's another entirely to say "Uranus doesn't exist in the Trek universe because we've never seen it."

How many wardens figure out impounded technology today? How many did yesterday? That just doesn't happen

Which is why he never got anywhere with it in 25 years.

But that didn't stop him from trying. He probably figured he could get a good price for it on the black market if he could just figure out how it worked. Going by IDW's interpretation, he was at least PARTIALLY successful.

Klingons, who'd declare the thing Imperial Property and lock it up far away from Rura Penthe for dissection, tear it apart in a futile but swift attempt at learning it secrets, and then blow it up out of frustration.

First of all, did it never occur to you that if the Klingon Empire was going to try and dissect a ship they stole from a wandering alien in deep space, Rura Penthe would be EXACTLY the place they'd want to do it? Narada probably isn't the only impounded ship orbiting Rura Penthe, in fact I doubt it's even the most interesting.

Second of all, the "Borg Technology" angle was used pretty thoroughly in IDW: they couldn't dismantle the ship because every time they took a piece out it self-destructed and the missing piece "grew back" in its place.

 

[Pauln6]

It has OFFICERS who can spot a transport signal when looking at the raw data after the fact, and it has devices that can block/track transport signals once that signal has been identified.

But the Enterprise does NOT have sensor devices specifically designed to alert the crew/captain/chief of security of an unidentified transporter beam entering the ship. Neither do Romulan military vessels in the 23rd century. Neither, for that matter, do KLINGON military vessels in the 23rd century.

Do I again need to explain to you that the whole point of internal security isn't to STOP bad people, but to CATCH people who have already done something bad? It's more about deterrence and damage control than prevention.


Except they're NOT. We have never seen a starship in the 23rd century that uses any of the technologies you claim should be commonplace. I can name a half dozen TOS episodes off the top of my head that would be dead-on-arrival if even half of those technologies were in use.

There are probably many reasons for it, but it doesn't change the fact that the technologies you assume SHOULD be there simply aren't.

I think I'd prefer to see the heroes outsmarting the technology rather them forgetting that it exists or should exist.

You would prefer to see the heroes making broad assumptions about technology that no one uses and making ever-more elaborate plans to circumvent security measures that don't really exist?

And I thought Voyager was painful to watch...

Hmm OK I think maybe you are trying too hard to talk in absolutes. While I agree that many stories would not work if the Enterprise or enemy ships had half decent security I don't think that's an excuse to say security HAS to be incompetent and that the characters should assume that it will be (didn't space hippies take over the Enterprise ffs? That's just embarrassing)

Since we are talking about transporter use as weapons we should look at the scientific leaps of WWII where each side was racing to improve both offence and defence to outwit the other. Given the catastrophic potential of transporters it is ludicrous so suggest that in 200 years, vessels can't detect, flag, or even pre-empt unwanted incoming signals?

Scotty utilized site-to-site transport using Klingon transporters in STIV and a gangster was sent site to site in a Piece of the Action. All site to site is doing is bouncing from the pad to the new location. The best you can hope for is a slightly longer duration. I agree, my preference would be to keep a tight lid on what the tech should be able to do but I would have stopped at only allowing pad to pad or communicator/biobelt signal to pad at relatively short distances. Pandora's box is already wide open.

I believe that the Enterprise detected the Ilia probe's incursion in TMP. That might have been partly because she was smoking hot but if so, one has to wonder how the ship flagged it as an intruder and not just a temperature anomaly, the suggestion being that Chekov had cameras installed in all the shower units...

On the one hand, I applaud their desire to limit technobabble but on the other I lament the way they mashed real world science to fit their plot and the way stupid ideas appear smart because everybody else is more stupid.

 

[Ithekro]

I believe that the Enterprise detected the Ilia probe's incursion in TMP. That might have been partly because she was smoking hot but if so, one has to wonder how the ship flagged it as an intruder and not just a temperature anomaly, the suggestion being that Chekov had cameras installed in all the shower units...

Or just Ilia's. Deltan under an oath of celibacy, in a shower, being watched? I wonder if she would have requested that? (Don't remember much on Deltans).

 

[Pauln6]

I believe that the Enterprise detected the Ilia probe's incursion in TMP. That might have been partly because she was smoking hot but if so, one has to wonder how the ship flagged it as an intruder and not just a temperature anomaly, the suggestion being that Chekov had cameras installed in all the shower units...

Or just Ilia's. Deltan under an oath of celibacy, in a shower, being watched? I wonder if she would have requested that? (Don't remember much on Deltans).

Ha ha yeah maybe. Deltans have no sexual hang-ups. Better than Captain Proton movie night for sure.

On second thoughts I think I'd still rather watch Bride of Chaotica.