Wouldn't letting Spock die on Nibiru be WORSE than seeing Enterprise?

[austen_pierce]

Re: Wouldn't letting Spock die on Nibiru be WORSE than seeing Enterpri

I've forgotten why they couldn't just beam Spock out.

My take on all of this is that Spock should have never been in the volcano to begin with. Beam the ice cube in, set to delayed release. If you have to send someone, you don't send your first officer.

That said, I agree with Kirk's decision. Impact on the Nibiru could be mitigated. Send in a competent undercover agent to dispel the god-ship worship as hokum.

Even that may not be necessary. Assuming star fleet ships don't regularly make low altitude flybys, the Nibiru should return to their normal development patterns.

 

[Kevman7987]

Re: Wouldn't letting Spock die on Nibiru be WORSE than seeing Enterpri

...I agree with Kirk's decision. Impact on the Nibiru could be mitigated. Send in a competent undercover agent to dispel the god-ship worship as hokum.

Even that may not be necessary. Assuming star fleet ships don't regularly make low altitude flybys, the Nibiru should return to their normal development patterns.

I doubt that villiage was the entire Nibiruan species. When a small group of villagers from some corner of the planet meet up with the rest of the planet's inhabitants, they'd be considered crazy people best ignored.

But then again, with the less than subtle impact of religion on the history of our planet...

 

[austen_pierce]

Re: Wouldn't letting Spock die on Nibiru be WORSE than seeing Enterpri

But then again, with the less than subtle impact of religion on the history of our planet...

You're on to something here. Folks have been looking for a way for Trek to feel relevant today the way it was in the 60s, giving audiences a thinly veiled allegory on very real current events. There is fertile ground here for a good and story presented in a way that audiences leave the theater and minutes, hours, or even days later realize "Holy Crap! I just saw that on the news!"

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Re: Wouldn't letting Spock die on Nibiru be WORSE than seeing Enterpri

I've forgotten why they couldn't just beam Spock out.

My take on all of this is that Spock should have never been in the volcano to begin with. Beam the ice cube in, set to delayed release.

There was a magnetic disturbance thing that made the transporters useless unless the Enterprise was hovering right over the thing to beam up.

 

[Search4]

Re: Wouldn't letting Spock die on Nibiru be WORSE than seeing Enterpri

I thought the scene was more that Pike and Starfleet are angry that Kirk lied on his report rather than bending the Prime Directive. What the hell did Kirk think was going to happen? That his entire crew would just up and decide to lie on their mission reports the same way he did? Is he that stupid and inept at covering things up?

I'm pretty sure the Vulcans will have their numbers back up soon. Weren't there less humans than that during some large extinction event that caused an ice age like 12,000 years ago? If 10,000 cavemen camping in the snow can survive, I'm sure 10,000 Vulcans can rebuild with the help of a sci-fi, future-tech, mega-government.

Or... Those moved off planet are something-else-ans. Romulans are Vulcan origin but not "Vulcans". Could that be the universals trope for Vulcan colonies?

 

[BigJake]

Re: Wouldn't letting Spock die on Nibiru be WORSE than seeing Enterpri

I've forgotten why they couldn't just beam Spock out.

Their spaceship was under the sea for no reason instead of in space.

 

[OpenMaw]

Re: Wouldn't letting Spock die on Nibiru be WORSE than seeing Enterpri

I've forgotten why they couldn't just beam Spock out.

Their spaceship was under the sea for no reason instead of in space.

Though even if it had been in space, for some reason the volcano was disrupting transporter signal.


@thread

The Prime Directive has always bothered me. Mostly because it is applied to situations so dogmatically post-TOS, and rather cruely at that. The idea our heroes would simply say "Well I don't know. So I wash my hands of it." Has always bothered me. I grant that there is risk in interfering, but as Kirk once said: "Risk is our business." And I don't buy into Picard's remarks in one episode of TNG that it's an all or nothing game. That you can't be choosey about when to interfere.

Of course The Federation should stay out of it if we're talking about a World War or political/social scenario, but if it's something like an inbound meteor, or a geological catastrophe, if you can step in and fix things so that life can go on, so that millions of alien children might live, then you do so. That's my opinion, of course. I'd rather be damned for trying, than be damned for just watching from high orbit.

The whole issue, as far as the movie seems to be concerned, is not that Kirk put Spock in danger, or let the natives see the Enterprise, it's that he was interacting with the planet at all. Pike's anger is more directed at Kirk just not respecting rules as a general policy. Certainly, Kirk's strategy could have used some polish, but I don't think he was wrong for saving the lives of a sentient race.

How could one volcano "threaten the planet" ? Well, it's hard to ascertain just what kind of volcano we're talking about, but if it's something along the lines of a super volcano, it's entirely possible that the resulting eruption could kill the local inhabitants and devastate the planetary ecosystem in a similar fashion to a large scale meteor impact.

 

[Richard Baker]

Re: Wouldn't letting Spock die on Nibiru be WORSE than seeing Enterpri

The super volcano under Yellowstone if it becomes active would devastate most of the north American continent and cause severe damage to the world's ecosystem, but people on the other side of the planet would survive.

What I find hard to grasp is after making an issue about how huge the NuE was, it was able to hide just off shore close enough so that they could just swim to it on one lungful of air.