Trek III: "Don't get smart, Tiny."
- Thread starter Sisko_is_my_captain
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The story I heard was that he wanted the scene cut but agreed to leave it in after a test audience loved seeing him beat up the security guard.
Sulu wasn't wearing his rank insignia during the scene, and the guard he beat up was looking in a different direction when he showed his credentials to the other guard. It wouldn't exactly be out of the realms of possibility for a 23rd century rent-a-cop to fail to recognise an officer who by all indications had been working at the academy for the last few years.
I can confirm, and also that it's one of those cute character scenes that people tend to remember fondly years later (ala "neukelear wessels"). Takei himself admits he hated the scene, until he saw it in a theater with other patrons and the reaction of the audience convinced him that his initial instinct was wrong
I do feel like Leonard Nimoy brought that as director of TSFS and TVH. As an actor, but also as a member of this cast. Yes, TOS was never really an 'ensemble' like later Trek shows were, but this is the same Nimoy who insisted on George Takei and Nichelle Nichols being rehired to voice their characters in the Animated Series because "these actors and their characters were a critical part of what made Star Trek work". You'd almost certainly never have seen Shatner make a stand like that for his fellow cast, but Nimoy just seemed to intrinsically understand the importance of that. Nimoy had an empathy for it. I feel like it was absolutely his instinct to give these actors their chances to shine in the two Trek movies he directed. 
Pretty much everyone in STIII who isn't an Enterprise crew member is a dick or incompetent. The security guard was rude to Sulu, "Mr. Adventure" calls Uhura old, Captain Styles is a pompous, overconfident windbag, Captain Esteban is a wimp who can't do anything without quoting regulations or checking with headquarters, and Admiral Morrow is an unimaginative doofus who discounts Vulcan mysticism because he personally doesn't understand it and is totally ignorant that his friend Jim Kirk is about to steal a starship from under his nose. It's an easy shortcut to try and make our heroes look more impressive by default. Rather than making the Enterprise crew truly extraordinary, the filmmakers made everyone around them unimpressive.
And of course Nimoy was instrumental in getting Grace and Majel on board in STIII and STIV. It was a shame that Majel's brief scene with Sarek was cut. I love Grace's cameo as Woman in Cafeteria. It's a shame that they couldn't settle on her rank in subsequent appearances. I like to think Rand borrowed an officer's uniform to get a good look at her old Ship :-D.
In fairness , Chekov remains unimpressive after the brain damage caused in STII.
In the novelization, Uhura stays behind to scramble Federation communications long enough to facilitate the escape. She has to time her own exit based on Starfleet security response times. She has to beam close to the Vulcan embassy (presumably because there are strict protocols on beaming directly into an embassy) and then hot foot it to claim asylum. Scotty and Uhura do most of the hard work for the escape but Uhura gets none of the credit! I understand that they wanted the escape to be tense but they could have cut back to Uhura working her magic a couple of times.
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Mow now, give Saavik her due...
I count her as an Enterprise crew member. And I did write "pretty much everyone."
Maybe the security guard had just been chewed out by his supervisor for being too easy-going and mild mannered, so he was overcompensating so he didn't get reassigned or reprimanded.
On the other hand, he was also apparently the only person who thought ahead and brought a change of clothes with him for their three months on the run from the law. And he dipped into them pretty quickly, too.Dressing like the little Dutch boy in a pink shirt and white collar will do that.
Yep.
The stealing the Enterprise sequence is one of, if not my favourite scene in the whole franchise, but I like this idea, it would have added to the tension just quick shots back to Uhura scrambling the communications.
What was this scene?
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