Phlox's Tongue
Lieutenant
Why in TSFS did Kirk not raise the shields when they first detected the cloaked BOP? Theycould have saved the ship and Marcus.
What are you waiting for? Raise the shields
- Thread starter Phlox's Tongue
- Start date
He didn't want to tip off the Klingons that he knew they were there. Raising the shields would have let the Klingons know that Kirk knew there was a ship there. As he told McCoy, he was banking on them having to decloak before firing, which would give the Enterprise a clear target.
Not that it would have made much difference, as they discovered once Kirk ordered the shields up.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Or else, if the shields were the 'one thing too many' for the ship to handle, then if the shields went up first, the torps wouldn't have come out, and you'd have a whole different problem. No matter how you scroll it, it is all contrivance city, just a replay of Khan's sneak attack from TWOK but with Kirk doing a Solo and 'firing first.'
SFS has a few of those TWOK spins, like 'i have the secret of genesis, but you're going to have to bring us up there to get it' instead of 'if you want genesis you're going to have to come down here.'
In other words, they were screwed no matter what.
Yep, and in fairness, his gambit almost succeeded in crippling the BoP. If the ship hadn't given out, the Klingons would've been completely done for.
And not as well as they played in the first film.
If they had to keep the basic idea, I'd have been happier if the Grissom had not yet been destroyed, Kirk has to try to forge an alliance with Esteban upon arrival at Genesis, and suddenly the Bird of Prey decloaks and fires at the conclusion of their agreement, destroying the Grissom and damaging the Enterprise in the ensuing explosion. Done right, it could have been shocking and taken everything to the same plot point of Kirk having to destroy the Enterprise to foil Kruge. Esteban might even have been salvaged from being an uptight doofus to a more tragic figure.
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