TSFS-time from Mutara to Spacedock?

[Christopher]

I don't remember precisely -- I never owned a copy, and probably I read it within a year of its initial publication; that is to say, more than 37 years ago. But I know I didn't misinterpret the "shrank and vanished" language back then. I'm confident that what I read was different: The coffin/torpedo is seen to burn up.

Well, really, unless they were tracking it with remarkably good telescopes, they couldn't actually have seen it burn up, since it would've been too small and distant to see. So provided the text was written from the characters' POV rather than an omniscient narrator's, then the viewpoint character might have just assumed it burned up and the text would still be accurate. After all, nobody knew it hadn't burned up until Saavik and David detected it from Grissom's bridge.

 

[Nightowl1701]

I think William Rotsler's YA Short Stories tie-in books also inserted a couple of adventures between the movies, but I don't recall specifics.

The only one that really counts is the first one, The Azphari Enigma. In that, immediately after the end of TWOK, the Enterprise is literally coming apart at the seams thanks to vast structural damage from Khan's attack; Warp 1 is all it can manage, and they're forced to drop out of warp for thirty hours of repairs even Scotty calls "Cosmetic, practically - enough to hold her, though." They just barely hold off a warp core explosion. The ship is then further damaged (metal fatigue) by the guest aliens of the story.

 

[gottacook]

Well, really, unless they were tracking it with remarkably good telescopes, they couldn't actually have seen it burn up, since it would've been too small and distant to see.

I don't agree with this; if the crew is represented as having seen what they thought they saw, readers were intended to think so, too. Hence the revision (which apparently took place before McIntyre wrote her STIII novelization.)
Doesn't anyone here possibly own the original mass-market paperback of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan? I have no way to verify myself what I read in 1982-83, short of traveling to one of the very few remaining used bookstores in my area, which may be fruitless anyway.

 

[Christopher]

I don't agree with this; if the crew is represented as having seen what they thought they saw, readers were intended to think so, too.

Except that they can't possibly have seen it firsthand, so it's got to be an assumption, no matter what the intent might have been. So even if it was intended to be accurate, it isn't necessary to rewrite it in light of new information, because it can simply be reinterpreted as unreliable narration.

The whole reason most modern English-language fiction is written from specific characters' points of view is because each point of view is subjective and different. The whole intent is to focus on people's reactions and emotions in response to their experiences, not merely to be a factually accurate but impersonal catalog of events. So the subjectivity and non-omniscience of the narration is a given, as is its potential unreliability. For instance, if you were telling a Superman story and writing a scene from Lois Lane's perspective (at a point before she learns his identity), the narration might say something like "Clark Kent was no doubt still cowering in the closet as Superman swooped in to fight the robot," and that would be an incorrect factual statement, but a correct depiction of Lois Lane's perception of events, which is what a scene written from Lois Lane's viewpoint is intended to convey. Fiction isn't just about lecturing on facts, it's about creating identification with the characters' experiences and feelings. So what matters is what they think is going on, regardless of the facts an omniscient observer might be aware of.

In this case, as far as anyone knew at the end of TWOK, Spock's tube burned up in the atmosphere. Nobody but the audience knew it had survived, not until the Grissom picked it up on the surface in the next movie. So it is entirely correct to show the characters believing it burned up, and splitting hairs over whether it "actually" did is just sophistry, because it has no bearing on the characters' beliefs or actions at that point in the narrative. It's a difference that makes no functional difference.

 

[valkyrie013]

So, few points..
As for the Original post, alot more than a few days have past, as said, Saavik and David departed ship and got aboard the Grissom, and pick up the crew of the Reliant.
First, theres no telling how much time passed between Spock dying and when they were ready to set off, a few days, maybe a week for Scotty to complete repairs to the ship enough to get home and let Genisis form?
Now, after they went to Ceti Alpha 5, and got the crew, they probably went to a nearby star base to offload and make repairs. There Saavik could have been given a field commission, or graduated, and assigned to the Grissom with David to go see the Genesis planet, and how its getting along.
The ships trainee crew and the reliant crew could have disembarked at the starbase, and the Enterprise could have been recalled to Earth at that point with a skeleton crew for the voyage. For me, the "New" damage is just a mistake, and should be ignored.

As for Spock and the Tube. If Kirk and crew thought that Spock burned up in the atmosphere, then whey did they go back to get him? They had to believe that something was left to go get.

Also, in some novels/B cannon, the genesis device also created the Sun/Star that it orbited. I'm a little Meh on that, thats a big ask. But as seen, the genesis device created the planet out of the nebula correct? After formation it just happened to be the correct distance from the star to sustain life?? Also a big ask..

 

[Christopher]

So, few points..
As for the Original post, alot more than a few days have past, as said, Saavik and David departed ship and got aboard the Grissom, and pick up the crew of the Reliant.
First, theres no telling how much time passed between Spock dying and when they were ready to set off, a few days, maybe a week for Scotty to complete repairs to the ship enough to get home and let Genisis form?
Now, after they went to Ceti Alpha 5, and got the crew, they probably went to a nearby star base to offload and make repairs. There Saavik could have been given a field commission, or graduated, and assigned to the Grissom with David to go see the Genesis planet, and how its getting along.
The ships trainee crew and the reliant crew could have disembarked at the starbase, and the Enterprise could have been recalled to Earth at that point with a skeleton crew for the voyage. For me, the "New" damage is just a mistake, and should be ignored.

Yup. That's why I find the one-month interval indicated in The Genesis Wave Ch. 14 more likely than the three days depicted in McIntyre's TSFS novelization.

As for Spock and the Tube. If Kirk and crew thought that Spock burned up in the atmosphere, then whey did they go back to get him? They had to believe that something was left to go get.

The Grissom's discovery of Spock's intact torpedo tube happened before Sarek came to Kirk. So by that point, they knew the tube was intact. (Indeed, as scripted, the Grissom scene opened the film. Kirk's line in the log entry was going to be "The news of Spock's tube is like an open wound.")

Also, in some novels/B cannon, the genesis device also created the Sun/Star that it orbited. I'm a little Meh on that, thats a big ask. But as seen, the genesis device created the planet out of the nebula correct? After formation it just happened to be the correct distance from the star to sustain life?? Also a big ask..

I prefer to think that Mutara was a mini-stellar nursery that had already collapsed into a star and was condensing toward becoming a planetary disk. That would explain why it was about a gazillion times denser than a real nebula would be. The planet just happening to be in the right orbit is more problematical, though.

 

[Timo]

DIstance from the star would probably be utterly irrelevant: the climate down on the planet was independent of sunlight and could vary unnaturally at the drop of a hat. The Genesis magic apparently was responsible for that, and might have supported jungles on the planet even without any stars in the neighborhood...

The noteworthy thing here is the neighborhood, really. It's all within short impulse travel from Regula and its star. Yet in the end, there's only one star on the skies above Genesis. It must be the Regula star, then, because there's no sense in assuming that Genesis somehow destroyed that one!

For all we know, the planet itself is the Regula rock, too. We see a swirling mass that's already spherical - possibly Regula in the throes of a conversion process. And then we see a planet that really appears to be tiny, with an unnatural horizon that seems to be close enough to touch.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[valkyrie013]

There are main sequence stars in nebula's, the Regula one may have cleared out its area, or was on the outskirts. But yes, the Impulse travel from Regula to a dense nebula is a bit of an ask.. the Enterprise must have been first attacked on the very outskirts of the system to make it to Regula in any relevant time frame.
But I agree, the Regula Star might be the Genesis Star, there was no indication of where Regula was in the system, from its size it could be in the systems Kuper belt. and when Genesis formed the planet, it chewed up the whole nebula? Possible.

 

[Timo]

When we first see the Regula lab, the Mutara nebula appears to be a major element in the background. This holds true for every later appearance, too... Presumably, then, the nebula is basically inside the Regula system, either in the process of being sucked into the star, or then in the process of being blown out by it; only a small region of nebula-free space would appear to exist around the Regula rock, perhaps no larger than its orbit.

Having Mutara be a really small phenomenon, easily consumed by Genesis or dispersed by the explosion of the Reliant, would appear advantageous in many ways, including being consistent with how "Mutara class nebulae" are later portrayed.

When Khan meets Kirk, both ships are down to impulse speeds already, suggesting close proximity to Regula. The subsequent fight deprives at least Kirk's ship of warp, yet she soon reaches the lab anyway. Now, we might say that Kirk dropped out of his previous warp five

1) either before the scene where the officers acquaint themselves with Genesis (12 hours of travel remaining),
2) or when Kirk commands "half impulse" at meeting Khan, immediately after this scene.

The first would be the more sensible interpretation, since if 12 hours of warp travel remained, the impulse trip from the battle site to the lab ought to take months. And it's pretty understandable for Kirk to drop down to impulse half a day before the target if the target is surrounded by this weird dense nebula!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

What I wish is that instead of a nebula, Mutara had been a warm Jovian in its star's habitable zone. A real nebula is nowhere near as dense as Mutara, but a gas giant's atmosphere is, and it could be just as stormy and full of electrical discharges. The Genesis wave could've stripped away the Jovian's atmosphere and terraformed the Earth-sized rocky core that remained.

 

[Timo]

Nature is big enough to accommodate nebulae of the Trek sort, basically by definition: more often than not, those are such dinky affairs that no current technology could ever hope to see them. Say, "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy" had our heroes believing in a nebula a thousand kilometers across: we couldn't see one of those today even if it orbited Neptune.

Should our heroes invent a new word for that phenomenon, and consider "nebula" already "taken"? I don't see the point. A cloud in space is a cloud in space, even if small. And Trek is full of mechanisms that could create small and dense clouds in the middle of space - say, the bursting of a starship's fuel tanks!

Not that "Mutara class nebulae" would have to be small. All we know is that they are superdense, in every one of their many appearances. Either implicitly, so that they are perfect for hiding a starship, or then explicitly, such as in "Dark Frontier". Is this "original" one here small or large? For plot purposes, something extending out a dozen impulse-hours would be perfect.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Workbee]

I know the visuals directly contradict this, but for years I was under the impression that the Genesis waves from the explosion reached Regula I, and that was what became the Genesis Planet. Visually Regula matched the planetoids depicted in the project cgi demo. It was shown to have a sun, and reasonably close to the nebula (appearing to be reached by impulse power.) would have tidied up a few threads - like where was space lab Regula I in TSFS? Not to mention I found it easier to wrap my head around the idea that enough of the Genesis waves managed to reach all the way to Regula 1 to affect a transformation than it somehow causing the diffuse matter of a nebula to somehow coalesce into a planet (especially after much of it was blown way by the initial explosion), when it was made to terraform planets, not create them wholesale. Probably an artifact of earlier drafts of TWOK where It was a doomsday weapon.

back on topic, possible the best indication of how much time elapsed between movies comes from the relationship between David and Saavik. In TSFS, they act like they spent more than just a few days together. At least a matter of weeks. The fact that Saavik also compares David to Kirk so casually suggest she was around Kirk more than just 2-3 days. What is more difficult is to parse out at what point David and Saavik left the enterprise. Checkovs hesitation in assuming Spocks station suggests that was the first time he had been asked to use the Science station since Spocks’s death. It seems strange that the station would have been unmanned for weeks. Saavik was the one most likely to be filling that role as needed, as she was shown to at that station at the beginning of the training cruise as well as on Grissom, and her absence would then necessitate Chekhov to fill in. So while I think a month could certainly have passed between TWOK and TSFS, I think it had been days since David and Saavik left the ship. Or at least Saavik as I suppose it isn’t absolutely necessary that they departed at the same time - but logistically it would be the simplest explanation if they did. This could then trigger Kirks melancholy at that start of TSFS as to that point Kirk’s newfound relationship with his son helped counter the loss of losing Spock.

 

[Christopher]

Checkovs hesitation in assuming Spocks station suggests that was the first time he had been asked to use the Science station since Spocks’s death. It seems strange that the station would have been unmanned for weeks. Saavik was the one most likely to be filling that role as needed, as she was shown to at that station at the beginning of the training cruise as well as on Grissom, and her absence would then necessitate Chekhov to fill in. So while I think a month could certainly have passed between TWOK and TSFS, I think it had been days since David and Saavik left the ship.

I don't know about that. If most of the intervening time was spent on ship repairs or debriefing at a starbase, there wouldn't have been much call to use the science station.

Also, Chekov was still recovering from the Ceti eel at the end of TWOK. He was up to attending Spock's funeral, but might not have been cleared for active duty right away. So maybe one of the cadets handled sciences until getting reassigned.

 

[David cgc]

The trouble with Regula becoming the Genesis Planet is that Regula is depicted as being very, very small. It's referred to as a "planetoid," nothing more than "a great rock in space," even if we ignore the VFX shot of the camera tilting from one side of Regula to the other with Reliant and Enterprise both large enough to be visible as Trek's usual artistic license with scale and distance so we can actually see what's going on in space. It's possible Regula and Regula 1 were sucked into the forming planet with the rest of the Mutara Nebula, but they wouldn't be a major portion of the material in the final planet.

 

[Timo]

What's wrong with Genesis being tiny? We know our heroes walk in Regula gravity like they would on Earth, from the cave scenes, so size doesn't translate to unduly low gravitic pull. The shot of Spock's coffin diving towards Genesis features an arching trajectory that is suggested to go beyond the horizon of the planet - which is only possible if the planet is a couple of hundred kilometers across at most. And the horizons of Genesis are weird from the surface, too, especially in the ice field / lava field scenes (where the sunset is between the same mountains where the sun subsequently rises!).

As regards the time ponderings, Saavik would already know all about Kirk the man in the scenario where Kirk is the Academy Commandant; she would not need to spend extra time with him after the events of TWoK.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[valkyrie013]

If we go off the Starbase hypothesis I mentioned, its not like its weeks to Earth, more than likely days, so Saavik and David could have stayed at the starbase and been picked up, before, or after the Enterprise left to go back to Earth, and the Melancholy might have been that he might have known that the crew might be kept under wraps for abit, maybe even the Enterprises possible decommission, and was hoping to go back out.

As for the Nebula, It could be 1AU, or even a solar system sized one, and we'd never see it because its so small, or the light from a star inside would get muffled by the dust. Most Nebula that we see are Lightyears across.
the planitoid could be statistically anywhere in the system. and the Device could have homed in on the biggest object, and then added mass from the nebula to complete the process. Maybe even detecting where the planet would need to be to in solar orbit to sustain itself, and build itself there.. a big ask, but the device itself is a Huge Handwaivum.

 

[publiusr]

Even thought the graphics we see are not actually true to the Probert-designed interiors...Timo Saloniemi

I’d like to see some remastered shots fixing some on screen graphics. No one knows what cassette racks are, but I at least would have them hidden as dials. Outside of DC and choose your adventure fare—wasn’t there a story of Enterprise being Damon another battle, with another enemy? That said...I assumed we only saw part of the Battle of the Mutara Nebula...with that pulsar maybe playing a role. Both ships should have been cooked.

I like the idea of Khan being dragged to a killer bee from Reliant, of being healed same as Spock, and finding refuge in the remains of Enterprise having skipped back out into space...very like the Constellation.

 

[Christopher]

That said...I assumed we only saw part of the Battle of the Mutara Nebula...with that pulsar maybe playing a role. Both ships should have been cooked.

What pulsar? If you mean the shot where there's a strobing light in the nebula, I think that's meant to be more of an electrical discharge, like lightning. If there were a nebula that dense, it might well have a lot of static charge accumulated.

And we did see that the starboard side of the Enterprise was undamaged at the end of the battle, as it was retreating from Reliant before the Genesis torpedo blew. The whole reason Khan used Genesis was because Reliant's weapons were useless, so there's no way the Enterprise could've sustained further weapons damage after that point.

I like the idea of Khan being dragged to a killer bee from Reliant,

Uhh... huh? I would guess that by "killer bee" you're referring to the fan-conjectured combat variant of a work bee (a very silly notion, since a work bee is a space forklift and nobody ever made a combat vehicle out of a forklift -- well, except the A-Team). I think I've seen Reliant plans that postulated their presence aboard it. But dragged by what or whom? Everyone was dead except him.

of being healed same as Spock

It wouldn't be the same, since Spock wasn't "healed"; he was dead, and apparently some still-viable cells in his corpse were regenerated into a clone body, devoid of Spock's mind or memories. I guess if Khan died on impact (since a space forklift would not be equipped for entry, descent, and landing), he could have regenerated the same way, but then his mind would be a void.

, and finding refuge in the remains of Enterprise having skipped back out into space...very like the Constellation.

Okay, what? The Enterprise's remains were low enough in the atmosphere for the fireball to be visible from the surface. That's far too deep in the atmosphere for there to be any hope of "skipping" off the outer layers and back into space -- basically it's a stone that's already sunk into the lake and is nearly on the bottom already. Also, what's the Constellation got to do with it?

 

[publiusr]

Also surrounded by debris that used to be a planet

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

So, few points..
As for the Original post, alot more than a few days have past, as said, Saavik and David departed ship and got aboard the Grissom, and pick up the crew of the Reliant.
First, theres no telling how much time passed between Spock dying and when they were ready to set off, a few days, maybe a week for Scotty to complete repairs to the ship enough to get home and let Genisis form?
Now, after they went to Ceti Alpha 5, and got the crew, they probably went to a nearby star base to offload and make repairs. There Saavik could have been given a field commission, or graduated, and assigned to the Grissom with David to go see the Genesis planet, and how its getting along.
The ships trainee crew and the reliant crew could have disembarked at the starbase, and the Enterprise could have been recalled to Earth at that point with a skeleton crew for the voyage. For me, the "New" damage is just a mistake, and should be ignored.

As for Spock and the Tube. If Kirk and crew thought that Spock burned up in the atmosphere, then whey did they go back to get him? They had to believe that something was left to go get.

Also, in some novels/B cannon, the genesis device also created the Sun/Star that it orbited. I'm a little Meh on that, thats a big ask. But as seen, the genesis device created the planet out of the nebula correct? After formation it just happened to be the correct distance from the star to sustain life?? Also a big ask..

For all we know, the planet itself is the Regula rock, too. We see a swirling mass that's already spherical - possibly Regula in the throes of a conversion process. And then we see a planet that really appears to be tiny, with an unnatural horizon that seems to be close enough to touch.

There are main sequence stars in nebula's, the Regula one may have cleared out its area, or was on the outskirts. But yes, the Impulse travel from Regula to a dense nebula is a bit of an ask.. the Enterprise must have been first attacked on the very outskirts of the system to make it to Regula in any relevant time frame.
But I agree, the Regula Star might be the Genesis Star, there was no indication of where Regula was in the system, from its size it could be in the systems Kuper belt. and when Genesis formed the planet, it chewed up the whole nebula? Possible.

What I wish is that instead of a nebula, Mutara had been a warm Jovian in its star's habitable zone. A real nebula is nowhere near as dense as Mutara, but a gas giant's atmosphere is, and it could be just as stormy and full of electrical discharges. The Genesis wave could've stripped away the Jovian's atmosphere and terraformed the Earth-sized rocky core that remained.

The video game Star Trek Aramda II has a great way to address this concern: Regula is in the Badlands!

The game refers to the Badlands as the "Regula Badlands" at some points and early levels even take place in the Regula system(s?). There are various nebulae of many classes that affect navigation and not many habitable planets, but quite a few uninhabitable rocks and gas giants. The Genesis planet could have taken up one of the nebulae, or similar formation, without removing all of them from the area.

The Badlands being a difficult-to-navigate, hotly contested zone between the UFP, Klingons and Cardassians in DS9 and Voyager, fits well, too. The "Genesis Planet" then (apparently destroyed around the time of ST5/ST6?) was in an area that continued to be the site of territorial disputes for years to come.

Actually, to me the explanation that David cheated was unnecessary to the movie. If the "Genesis Device" was intended to be deployed on a currently-stable planet, and got deployed in a nebula or nebula-like phenomenon, that could have explained why the planet was unstable, having been made from elements that were not yet stable.