Undiscovered Country Anomolies

[Vger23]

This isn't a nitpick thread or a bashing thread...I just have some genuine observations about TUC that I'd like to throw out there.

I recently re-watched TUC, which I hadn't done for a while. Looking at the film through a different lens, there were some things that struck me as oddities worth questioning:

1. The Excelsior is "headed home under full impulse power?" This seems weird given that it would likely take hundreds of years for the starship to return to Earth from out near the Klingon Empire. Maybe "home" for the Excelsior is a nearby starbase, and not Earth Spacedock....?

2. In a similar fashion, the Enterprise never seems to go to Warp to get to the Kronos One rendezvous, and they do not use Warp drive during their escort journey to the peace conference on Earth. I guess the Enterprise could have warped to a certain sector, and then throttled down to impulse to await the Chancellor's arrival, but the two ships being on impulse going to Earth makes no sense.

3. I don't really understand how the advanced sensors of the Enterprise (and presumably Kronos One) don't see a photon torpedo being fired from a cloaked position below the Enterprise. Even with today's technology, I'd think that would be a very easy thing to prove out. Also, no sensors or forensic analysis could show that the Enterprise torpedo bay had not launched torpedoes?

4. We've repeatedly seen that the transporter keeps logs and patterns of everyone who goes through it. Would it not have been a very simple matter to see that Burke and Samno were the assassins? Maybe they "erased" the data, similar to altering the torpedo inventory databanks?

5. I actually get very confused about Valeris going to sickbay to murder Burke and Samno. Why would the entire sickbay facility be dark and unstaffed, especially if there are two critical patients in there? Even so, would Valeris not want to scan the room before going in there with a drawn phaser to kill two crewmen to ensure there was nobody that would witness her?

6. The Khitomer Peace Conference seems to have absolutely no security. No vessels in orbit from either government (although supposedly all of the delegates arrived somehow)? No internal security watching obvious vantage points for snipers? The Klingon dude / Colonel West somehow gets into the building holding a briefcase that contains a sniper rifle? It all seems very loose for such a tense and critical situation.

7. The Morska listening post sensors can't tell the difference between a Constitution-class Federation starship and a freighter? I'd think even today's tech is better than that. Maybe the Klingons were just too drunk?

 

[Tallguy]

I have a couple of viewpoints on this. Please assume that I mean most of them charitably. (I love TWOK, and while I have cooled a lot on TUC over the years I still mostly like it.)

I'll start with TUC doesn't feel as finished as TWOK and I think there are a few reasons for that. One being that TWOK was meant to resurrect Star Trek for not very much money and TUC was meant to end Star Trek for not very much money. They have different outcomes. Also on TWOK was an untested gamble. On TUC he was a hope to return to the success of TWOK.

I often see TUC as "what if Nick Meyer got little to no push back on TWOK?" (And had even LESS time.) Many of his same instincts are in place on both movies. In fact several ideas that got removed or vetoed from TWOK find their way back in TUC.

Meyer's first priority is to make a thrilling movie. That's not a terrible instinct and he's pretty good at it. But there are aspects to Star Trek that clearly do not interest him. People complain about how Khan was "accidentally" discovered on Ceti Alpha V. To which the answer is: For a big majority of the audience this was plenty good enough. It certainly followed Hitchcock's "refrigerator logic". You weren't meant to be worrying about it for the next forty years.

So, impulse: If you're a Star Trek fan you know "This means sublight". But to a lot of the audience it probably registers as "It's been a long day and they are taking their time." I can see that being Meyer's view.

I have no evidence of this, but I would be very surprised if leaving spacedock's "thrusters only" exchange was not a direct rebuttal to fans complaining about in TWOK leaving dock at 1/4 impulse as opposed to TMP's more "realistic" maneuvering thrusters. I'm usually dismissive to these kinds of theories (I don't think most of these creatives care that much) but in this case It just seems very specific.

If you notice in TWOK, warp drive just means "We're now in a hurry." What kind of training mission pokes around at impulse power? But that's not what it's meant to communicate. It's meant to say "Oh! Now this is REAL!"

I think where TUC falls down is when it tries to be specific about things that were probably very shorthand in the scripting phase. Like "Two enlisted guys say racist things." And that was the best they came up with. It's barely a step above the shorthand. The performances don't help.

Or "Spock and Uhura and figure out how to beat the Klingon cloaking device." Easy to write and necessary to the plot. But... Heat seeking? That's what you came up with after 25 years of chasing after cloaked ships?

Meyer's not interested in the technology. He wants a thrilling chase and a heroic reversal.

Everything else on the list? Imagine The Manchurian Candidate... IN SPACE. You can see that Meyer didn't watch a lot of Star Trek. But you can totally see the other movies that he DID watch. Things that made sense in those movies are expected to make sense in Star Trek. Whether they do or not.

 

[Set Harth]

1. The Excelsior is "headed home under full impulse power?" This seems weird given that it would likely take hundreds of years for the starship to return to Earth from out near the Klingon Empire. Maybe "home" for the Excelsioris a nearby starbase, and not Earth Spacedock....?


2. In a similar fashion, the Enterprise never seems to go to Warp to get to the Kronos One rendezvous, and they do not use Warp drive during their escort journey to the peace conference on Earth. I guess the Enterprise could have warped to a certain sector, and then throttled down to impulse to await the Chancellor's arrival, but the two ships being on impulse going to Earth makes no sense.

Everyone. Keeps. Fucking. This. Up. All. The. Time.

Last year alone, both of the Alien and Predator franchises managed to fuck this up.

Star Wars fucked it up as recently as 2020, after already fucking it up in 1980 and 2017.

The sheer scale of space appears to be lost on many people.

 

[Tallguy]

Everyone. Keeps. Fucking. This. Up. All. The. Time.

Last year alone, both of the Alien and Predator franchises managed to fuck this up.

Star Wars fucked it up as recently as 2020, after already fucking it up in 1980 and 2017.

The sheer scale of space appears to be lost on many people.

I might have to create a thread called something like "You cannot fall into the sun TODAY!" There are many examples of this, but Relics is on my hit list.

(My take on The Empire Strikes Back is that Luke is on Dagobah for YEARS while Han and Leia travel to Cloud City at nearly C speeds. What's happening with the war during that time? Who knows?)

 

[David cgc]

For the first two points, ships in Trek rarely went site to site entirely at warp, but spent plenty of time at impulse (at least until it got more practical to have warp stars out the windows rather than the static starfield). The Enterprise and Excelsior could’ve been traveling through impulse “waypoints” until they reached the correct position to jump to warp and leave the system.

The Enterprise and Kronos One would’ve also have to have been at impulse to use the transporter for the state dinner.

 

[Tallguy]

For the first two points, ships in Trek rarely went site to site entirely at warp

When did they not? When Kirk told Scotty they were going on impulse in Elaan of Troyius he almost had kittens.

TOS never had people looking out windows except for the main viewer which was ALWAYS at warp.

TNG had warp "stars" all of the time from the start of season 1. There were times when they invented excuses to drop to sublight during conferences so they wouldn't have to pay for it.