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TWOK observation

D

Doug Smith

Ensign
Red Shirt
People cite Kirk's incompetence at not raising the shields in time, thus leading to the tragedy of what ensued. However, I blame Terrell and the Reliant crews' incompetence and not detecting Ceti Alpha V. I think what happened was a symptom of the Federation having settled into complacency for the first time ever and the events of this movie were a gut punch to get out of that.

However that might be overthinking it. Does anyone think that Bennett & Meyer wrote the movie with that intention? Or all they cared about was ginning up a lot of drama/action/tragedy?
 
In terms of blame, I'm sure there was plenty to go around. Kirk, at least, admits he screwed up shortly after the fact.

As to the Ceti Alpha System, I guess it depends on circumstances we aren't privy to as viewers. We get used to Trek tech being 'magical' but you can't assume star charts and records are perfect, even in the 23rd Century. Ceti Alpha may only have been surveyed once or twice (it's a huge galaxy out there and a small starfleet, when you boil it down). It may have been surveyed from long range and not even properly charted before the Enterprise dropped Khan there. The charts of the system could be less than perfect- there is a chance Reliant's visit was only the second or third ever by a starfleet vessel.

There is also the possibility that Khan was making a gross assumption (or exaggeration) with his claim that Ceti Alpha VI exploded six months after their arrival. Perhaps Ceti Alpha VI (or V) suffered some kind of catastrophic event that shifted the orbit of V and laid waste to the surface, but Ceti Alpha VI was in fact still there- it was just that with the new orbital arrangement and the conditions on the surface, Khan's people could no longer track it astronomically. In that case, the Reliant shows up, finds the orbits of the planets don't quite match the records (or miss the change), and mistake Ceti Alpha V for VI, but there is no missing planet.

Anyway, there are always 'possibilities' other than 'they just screwed up.' Although that is one of the possibilities. :D
 
The problem I have is that TOS presented Starfleet as being specialists in mapping star systems. By 2285 they're scanners have to be way better than even in the 2260s. So the only explanation for Reliant not assessing the situation properly is screenwriter's prerogative to create drama. I found the Federation's complacency vis-a-vis The Borg to be more plausible compared to this.
 
Doug Smith said:
The problem I have is that TOS presented Starfleet as being specialists in mapping star systems. By 2285 they're scanners have to be way better than even in the 2260s.
Click to expand...

Yet apparently Reliant's new and improved sensors couldn't detect the presence of a score of human life forms on a planet that was supposed to be lifeless...
 
Jedi Marso said:
Yet apparently Reliant's new and improved sensors couldn't detect the presence of a score of human life forms on a planet that was supposed to be lifeless...
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Didn't they mention Kraylon/Crayon/Whatever gasses and other elements preventing their scanners from working properly, hence the need to beam down? (Perhaps, despite the gasses being local to the planet, it gummed up everything from their position outside the system. After all, they can't use warp while in the solar system (TMP)... unless they're in a stolen Klingon ship and they do it from within Earth's atmosphere and yet that doesn't get stripped away with everyone promptly frying as a result... oops... (TVH) )

It still bugs me more that Ceti Alpha VI exploded and nobody had an archived star chart or that the computer wasn't programmed to analyze the star system being entered and blares a klaxon with voice saying "oops, one of our planets is missing". Okay, the systems are programmed to recognize a supernova about to happen but not necessarily for a planet blowing up. How did Ceti Alpha V explode? It's not mentioned at all, but it didn't need to be. Some scanner somewhere* should have noticed and flagged the Senior Orrery officer** or the Chief Clown or somebody...

* other than Michael Ironside, of course... :devil:
** do so before they get ornery; dang, am I on a roll today or what? :guffaw::guffaw::guffaw:​
 
Doug Smith said:
However that might be overthinking it. Does anyone think that Bennett & Meyer wrote the movie with that intention? Or all they cared about was ginning up a lot of drama/action/tragedy?
Click to expand...

That was basically it. Meyer had certain dramatic nautical movie ideas in mind, and that's what he went with. The "missing" planet was a riff on an uncharted island. See also carrying a dying person to the bridge, or a door closing right through the middle of an energy conduit.

Jedi Marso said:
As to the Ceti Alpha System, I guess it depends on circumstances we aren't privy to as viewers. We get used to Trek tech being 'magical' but you can't assume star charts and records are perfect, even in the 23rd Century. Ceti Alpha may only have been surveyed once or twice (it's a huge galaxy out there and a small starfleet, when you boil it down). It may have been surveyed from long range and not even properly charted before the Enterprise dropped Khan there. The charts of the system could be less than perfect- there is a chance Reliant's visit was only the second or third ever by a starfleet vessel.
Click to expand...

Enterprise navigated to Ceti Alpha V. Kirk decided to go there, and they went there. So it was charted.

It really does seem like a major failure on the part of Reliant's crew. Any number of explanations can be posed, but it's pretty clearly not a rock-solid plot point.
 
IIRC (it's been a long time), the novelization tries to workaround this by saying the only data Reliant had regarding the system was from an old probe (we can good-faith assume that Kirk's visit may not have been well-documented) and that its data didn't match what Reliant was observing, so they essentially 'best fit' the system they were observing with what they'd been expecting to observe.

We could similarly assume that any warning buoys Our Heroes previously put in place were destroyed by the same calamity that wiped out CA6 in the first place.
 
Here's a tangential idea - the Doomsday Machine robot was scouring the area before the events of 'The Doomsday Machine'. Six months after Kirk deposited Khan and his buds onto Ceti Alpha V, VI exploded and shifted V's orbit and caused the desolation. The problem is, of course, that the planet eating killer got full after eating VI so it bogged off to the next solar system inexplicably, or it had indigestion, gas, or some other malady and decided not to gulp down Khan. But it arguably fits the relative timeline, if nothing else, and accidentally so as even TOS's makers were saying how they had no continuity so they built up what they did based on what they remembered - not having a searchable Word doc to quickly confirm events would have taken forever to confirm, hence the reason for many little nitpickeries for the 1960s' scripts... even continuity advisors in later series sometimes got things wrong and scripts hadn't been put into a big database as of that point...
 
It's possible that Ceti Alpha VI's tectonic instability and subsequent breakup resulted not in an asteroid field, but a planet slowly reforming itself over the next several million years, and somehow switched orbits with Ceti Alpha V in the meantime.
 
Kor said:
Yes, the most that the Reliant's sensors were picking up was "a minor energy flux reading on one dynoscanner," and they had no idea exactly what it was.

Kor
Click to expand...

Super soldiers.

Predator drones using night vision to lock onto a target.

If Super Soldiers are not invisible to those sorts of threats, then they're super dead.
 
With Ceti eels Khan could just have his captives order Reliant’s crew about.

“We need all hands down here…”
 
DonIago said:
(we can good-faith assume that Kirk's visit may not have been well-documented)
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Outside of recording the hearing where it was decided, you mean?
(The senior staff are in dress uniform again.)
UHURA: Record tapes engaged and ready, Captain.
KIRK: This hearing is now in session. Under the authority vested in me by Starfleet Command, I declare all charges and specifications in this matter have been dropped.
MCCOY: Jim. Agreed you have the authority
KIRK: Mister Spock, I believe our heading takes us near the Ceti Alpha star system.
SPOCK: Quite correct, Captain. Planet number five there is habitable, although a bit savage, somewhat inhospitable.
Click to expand...
I'm amazed that some people still assume that Kirk's stranding of Khan was somehow off the books. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty are all in dress uniform, Kirk rings a bell before declaring the hearing in session, and Uhura is recording the entire proceedings. You don't get much more official or well documented than that.

Starfleet may have lost track of Khan and Ceti Alpha V after that, but that is hardly Kirk's fault. It's not his job to periodically check up on every single person he interacted with during the 5YM. Kirk didn't have any idea that Harry Mudd was out of jail when "I, Mudd" rolled around either, because he was dealing with other stuff (Boldly Going, Strange New Worlds and New Civilizations, etc.).
 
^If you prefer, then, classified in such a manner that Reliant wasn't aware of Enterprise's visit to the Ceti Alpha system.

Which wouldn't be an issue if there were warning buoys just in case a ship stumbled along without knowing the potential risk, but an anomaly that could destroy CA6 could presumably have destroyed the buoys as well.
 
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