Damon Lindelof being the nerd boogeyman is the funniest thing.
TUC - not aged well
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Damon Lindelof being the nerd boogeyman is the funniest thing.
Sorry if someone already responded, but the movie came out in the early 90s, and it was very topical, as the USSR had just fallen.
Nimoy pitched the movie to Meyer as "the wall comes down in outer space." The line about "the end of history" came from an editorial about the end of the Cold War, IIRC. And the veiled references to Chernobyl (the explosion of Kronos), Mikhail Gorbachev (Chancellor Gorkon), and Glasnost (the Gorkon Initiative), were all VERY fresh in the minds of viewers in 1991. I know. I was one of them.
Aside from how the assassins were bemaed back to the Enterprise and how Valeris altered the computer from her bridge station if that's where she did it from. Is why didn't Chiang call for help? I mean I know the budget was rather low, but they were in Klingon space and he could've had a fleet of ships to back him up. And I wonder how the delegates got to the peace conference, I mean there should be a small fleet of ships in orbit. 
Surely each delegate would insist that the ship of the other delegate get lost ASAP, rather than hover over the conference site with photon torpedo magazines topped up and phasers armed?
The same goes for Chang. If a fleet of Klingon ships moved in to blockade Khitomer against Kirk, Chang might get his war all right - but he wanted it to look as if the UFP started it all. The assassination of Gorkon was carefully engineered so that either side could claim innocence and victimization and blame the other for the aggression; blockading Khitomer with a fleet of Klingon warships wouldn't achieve that.
Timo Saloniemi
The same goes for Chang. If a fleet of Klingon ships moved in to blockade Khitomer against Kirk, Chang might get his war all right - but he wanted it to look as if the UFP started it all. The assassination of Gorkon was carefully engineered so that either side could claim innocence and victimization and blame the other for the aggression; blockading Khitomer with a fleet of Klingon warships wouldn't achieve that.
Timo Saloniemi
Why? Nobody that we know of at the conference is at war and the Federation wouldn't leave two flag officers undefended in Klingon space.
Spock broke the treaty just rescuing Kirk and McCoy, Chang would've been in the right to have a fleet back him up.
Chang has a ship that fires while cloaked. Why would he need a fleet that would draw attention to his scheme to frame the feds when he doesn't have to? I think you're overthinking this a bit.
Yeah and that plan really worked didn't? It is reather odd though that there's no ships in orbit, the delagates and the Federation admirals had to get there in some kind of ship and of course a Klingon escort for those ships.
He was kicking the Enterprise's ass until they doctored that torpedo, which was a move that he wouldn't have anticipated. His plan was part of a secret conspiracy, and revealing his BoP that could fire while cloaked would have endangered said conspiracy.
Huh? Everybody is - they are just trying to talk each other out of actually pulling any triggers. And that would work a lot better if the triggers were moved a few lightyears away from the conference.
It's not about "right". It's about what looks right. Lawyers could have started the war without the need to assassinate Gorkon in the first place ("My client holds rights to Archanis Sector"; "No, my client does!"), but that would have satisfied nobody. Cartwright needs to start a war in which the UFP is the victim, or his own troops, disinterested in bloodshed, will refuse to fight. Chang needs to start a war in which the Empire is the victim, or his own troops, realizing they are the underdogs and unlikely to gain anything (including the thrill of actually winning some good battles), will refuse to fight.
No, the Klingon Imperial Bloodshed Fleet cannot appear in orbit above Khitomer or else the war is lost even before it gets started. Nor can Starfleet, and clearly Sulu has orders to that very end - why else would he, the skipper of a ship at the other end of the universe, be told about Khitomer being the conference location unless to specifically tell him to stay out of there?
More or less. Chang had already gotten most of what he wanted when Gorkon died. But both he and Cartwright wanted the war started, and neither the killing of Gorkon or sentencing of Kirk had sufficed. Something more was needed - and Cartwright wanted to kill the UFP President and blame the Klingons. Was Chang in on that? He'd have little reason to - he wanted the UFP to take the blame. But perhaps he in turn had a Klingon dressed up as a, umm, ah, probably a Tellarite and ready to shoot Azetbuhr, and for that reason wanted Kirk quietly silenced before he reached the conference?
Timo Saloniemi
Well, maybe there are ships in orbit but they were disarmed before the conference to prevent another maverick captain/commander taking matters into their own hands. It makes sense to me that they don't want to make what is in their eyes exactly the same mistake twice. Confidence in Starfleet - from either side - probably isn't that high if Kirk can go off the reservation which is what seemed to happen.. Maybe this temporary disarmament process was overseen by a neutral third power amenable to both powers.
It's funny how Khitomer is claimed to be neutral ground by Azetbuhr, but we never learn who rules the place. The vast majority of the people in the conference are either in UFP colors (the blue sashes) or wearing human faces (the green sashes), or flocking under the IDIC flag in pointed ears (the yellow sashes); Klingons (in red sashes) are a tiny minority. Who are the hosts here? If the green ones, what's neutral about them? If the yellow ones, Vulcan or Romulan?
It's not just that both Klingons and Feds would wish the other side to withdraw their starships. The two belligerents also appear to share joint responsibility for local security, as seen in the establishing shots where a Klingon and a human stand next to a console and watch the ceremonial proceeding reach the conference palace. There's no third party in evidence there. Then again, all the guards in the actual conference chamber look human. Etc.
Ultimately, one would expect there to be a carefully engineered failure of security so that the assassin can escape. Is this why Kirk and friends can beam down with impunity? Are shields (jammers/scramblers/whatnot) down in general, or does Valeris have codes for turning them off for a moment?
Timo Saloniemi
It's not just that both Klingons and Feds would wish the other side to withdraw their starships. The two belligerents also appear to share joint responsibility for local security, as seen in the establishing shots where a Klingon and a human stand next to a console and watch the ceremonial proceeding reach the conference palace. There's no third party in evidence there. Then again, all the guards in the actual conference chamber look human. Etc.
Ultimately, one would expect there to be a carefully engineered failure of security so that the assassin can escape. Is this why Kirk and friends can beam down with impunity? Are shields (jammers/scramblers/whatnot) down in general, or does Valeris have codes for turning them off for a moment?
Timo Saloniemi
For Chang's plan to have worked West needed to be spotted as a Klingon killing the Federation president, but he could've easily have escaped following the assassination. Ad no the other raaces weren't at war with the Klingons, there was such a thing as Klingon neutral zone. The point of the conference was to help the Klingons off their homeworld in time, nobody was really at war with the Klingons.
To go back to DWF's post from the last page, #164, we actually SEE Valeris reprogram the computers to show Enterprise firing the torpedoes. That's what she's doing right as the first torpedo hits Kronos One.
Who's to say there wasn't another conspirator there to double cross West and intercept him at some point. West is sold the lie he can escape in his disguise but as Valeris does with the two assassins in her charge, West is up for the chop as well.
It's just necessary for the president to be shot by somebody. That assassin doesn't have to be identified for it all to kick off.
What other races? There seemed to be only four players at a maximum: the UFP is multispecies, and everybody in blue sash would be de facto at war with the red-sashed, single-species Klingons, barring a favorable outcome of this conference. So would everybody in the yellow sash, be they Vulcans (UFP members) or Romulans (covert UFP allies).
Only the green sashes might stay out of it, although seeing how they all looked human, the odds of them avoiding being targeted by the Klingons would be pretty low.
There were multiple agendas there, but the main purpose was to get somebody killed so that the war could get going. Chang got Azetbuhr to play along with that (i.e. volunteer to be a potential victim) because she wanted to continue the peace process; Cartwright got Ra-Ghotarei to do the same for the same reasons. But how many in those delegations were really behind that benign agenda? And one could certainly count the Romulans out.
The UFP had in practice been at war with them for seventy years already, human formalities aside. Heck, even formalities included, Klingons had in ST4 openly declared war until Kirk died! And it's quite unlikely that Klingons and Romulans would not have been at war at that time - Kor once boasted of fighting the Romulans in this very timeframe.
Timo Saloniemi
It's not particularly effective if it's revealed the assassin wears a disguise, though: it not only undermines the effort of framing, it retroactively casts doubt on the framing in Gorkon's case!
Chang might love it if a human was found to have killed the UFP President. But even he wouldn't really want the world to know that a human wearing a Klingon mask had done it...
Timo Saloniemi
She reprogrammed the computer from the navigator position and Spock never found out who altered the computer log?
Why would it need to be openly revealed to be a disguise though? For all anyone outside of the conspiracy knows, the assassin successfully escaped. You'd have one dead Prez and people firing accusations at each other and then war given that preexisting tensions and suspicions are high. These guys aren't going to sit down to calculate this stuff. Maybe there's an extra off-screen dimension to this in that a more militant Presidential candidate was being lined up to succeed the peace-nik Prez.
For me, the more natural target here is Azetbuhr. Simply put, the Klingons aren't going to forever tolerate having their leaders being picked off willy nilly at various peace conferences.
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