Wouldn't Reliant already have all the Genesis data and materials.

[Timo]

We have often heard of materials that are too unstable to be transported, even in the 24th century (Kasidy Yates needed manual labor in offloading her ship for this reason). A "cold" Genesis torp might be stable for transport, while a "hot" one would simply detonate prematurely at the attempt. Indeed, it could be argued that any attempt at destroying Genesis would result in its detonation.

Remember that a transporter was used for getting rid of NOMAD at the conclusion of "The Changeling", yet the heroes set controls for "deep space" rather than "maximum dispersion" and trusted that the explosion of the NOMAD would simply now take place at a safe distance. It seems there is something undesirable about the beam dispersal setting, something possibly carrying the risk of backfiring badly.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

Because that would be less dramatically satisfying.

There's also the issue of the Enterprise not having main power at the time the device was activated. It's possible that using auxiliary power to run the transporters allowed for basic site-to-site transport only, and that main power was required for any additional transporter functions.

--Sran

 

[Timo]

To be accurate, the Enterprise had made efforts to restore main power, while Joachim had restored auxiliary power for the Reliant in the same time. The former choice saved Kirk by giving him warp when needed, again showing how experience (or dumb luck) trumped intellect; had he done what Joachim did, he'd be dead.

But it sort of follows that the Enterprise did not have auxiliary power available, because that was supposedly also lost in the first fight with Khan (leaving only the batteries), and there would have been no time to repair it in this race against time. There'd be "partial main power" for fighting Khan, and then presumably "just the batteries" for fighting or fleeing Genesis.

So we can actually argue that when Scotty was forced to take the mains off line, and Kirk then fired his "a couple of shots" from the batteries as in the previous fight, the Enterprise then lost all weapons and transporters capacity for the time being.

(We may also argue whether the first fight took place near Regula I or far away. Did Kirk and Khan reach the laboratory at warp or impulse? If the former, then both ships must have had pretty significant power sources available. But we can easily also believe in the latter.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MacLeod]

We know subspace weapons are illegal from Insurrection, but I don't recall any ban on the type of technology that the Genesis device is based on.

Protomatter. Granted, we aren't told explicitly that its use is regulated, only that it has been "denounced" by "every ethical scientist in the galaxy." In the world of the Federation, that probably means illegal.

And yet a hundred years later, protomatter is used to reginite a dead star (DSN: "Second Sight"). There is scant evidence to say the use of protmatter was in anyway responsible for the unstable Genesis planet.

Stage 2 the Gensis cave seemed stable.

Stage 3 the Genessis torpedeo, wasn't used as intended. It was supposed to be launced at a lifeless planet or moon and reorganise it to form a living breathing habitat. It instead detonate instead inside a nebula.

And wasn't the actual line :


Protomatter. An unstable substance which every ethical scientist in the galaxy has denounced as dangerously unpredictable.

 

[RyanKCR]

This doesn't mean Khan would have been off base to ask Kirk for Genesis, though. Kirk doesn't have it, but Khan has good reason to think Kirk might have it. He's fixated on Kirk to start with, and when it really is Kirk who first responds to Carol's SOS, his belief that Kirk is intimately involved in Genesis would appear to be verified.

Actually Kirk responds only because Carol called him because Chekov, at Khan's instruction, told her that Kirk ordered the Reliant to take Genesis.

 

[Dukhat]

Stage 3 the Genessis torpedeo, wasn't used as intended. It was supposed to be launced at a lifeless planet or moon and reorganise it to form a living breathing habitat. It instead detonate instead inside a nebula.

That's what always bugged me about STIII. Here we have a perfect reason why the Genesis Planet was unstable, and the writers go and create some silly maguffin with "protomatter," which they probably just pulled out of their ass. All so David could look bad, which wasn't even a necessary plotline.

 

[Timo]

Actually Kirk responds only because Carol called him because Chekov, at Khan's instruction, told her that Kirk ordered the Reliant to take Genesis.

Quite so - but the fact that Kirk is already halfway there (explicitly the nearest starship, save the secretive Reliant) when responding confirms all of Khan's delusions about the Admiral's "central role" in the Genesis project.

Yet it's mere coincidence: certainly Sulu didn't think "For his birthday, I'll take my former boss right next to the research project he currently supervises" when Spock told him to indulge himself with a choice of destination.

Without this coincidence, Kirk would probably have vectored in some other, closer starship (although naturally in addition to telling Sulu to set course for the distant Regula, where he would arrive after everything was over). And Khan would have had no reinforcement to his delusion that Kirk was involved with Genesis beyond being the old flame of the chief researcher.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lance]

The sole function of the Reliant was to find an empty planetoid for Genesis to test on. They weren't doing research or anything like that. That's what Regula 1 was for. That's where all the Genesis data was. There was no reason for the Reliant to have any of it. Look at how controversial the project was anyway...

I really can't imagine starfleet would lend one of their starships to a science research team to find a lifeless planet and when they ask the scientists what they want the ship for the Genesis team would say "You don't need to know that. So just shut your fucking mouth, give us a starship and stop asking questions."

It seems entirely plausible to me that somebody higher up at Starfleet Command, and certainly within the Federation, were back-rolling the Genesis research (Regula I is an independent facility but obviously their project is being supported on some level by the Feds). The point here is, the Reliant and her crew just follow orders. So if somebody at Command level gives them just enough information to know what the parameters of their search criteria are, but none of the top secret hush-hush research stuff, then that ties in perfectly with the idea that Reliant would know vaguely what the mission is, without actually being privy to what Genesis is.

So yeah. Terrell and Chekov would be good little soldiers and do what they're told, but there's no reason to assume they know anything more than they need to know. Whereas it's made blatantly clear that Admiral Kirk not only knows exactly what Genesis is, he's got the command clearance (possibly due to his rank; possibly due to his position; possibly due to being some kind of official Starfleet rep/contact to the Genesis team) to access that information. Which Khan wants.

 

[Timo]

Kirk has access to a demo. We don't know if that extends to anything useful, though. And there's no reason why Khan should know better than we do - the only people Khan could ask are the Reliant officers, and they would either know zip (since even Spock doesn't know) or then have access to everything, making it redundant for Khan to go to anybody else. So Khan is guessing, or hoping.

But the point isn't that Kirk might have Genesis. The point is that Kirk is Kirk, and Khan wants to hurt Kirk. Genesis is incidental to all that, mere bait in Khan's trap. When he gets to the stage of the revenge plan where Kirk is begging at his knees, he sees an opportunity to further humiliate Kirk and to get what he failed to get from the scientists. Whether he needs it is not the point. The point is that he doesn't like to fail...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lance]

It's a fair point. Indeed, if Kirk doesn't have anything more on Genesis than the demo tape, then it makes Khan's demands all the more dramatic -- as he's effectively asking Kirk for something Kirk can't possibly deliver. And if Khan has somehow guessed that this might be the case, but asks anyway, then it could all be a pretence for simply putting Kirk in an embarrassing "no-win" position.

In any which case, I still think it's perfectly believable for Reliant and her crew to know nothing. Genesis is simply one mission to them, and they've only been briefed about what they need to know to fulfil the parameters of their part of the mission, not necessarily a broader knowledge of the entire project.

 

[Timo]

One really, really wonders how much Starfleet knew when sending Kirk to places like Eminiar or Melkotia or Gideon essentially empty-handed and empty-headed... Sometimes it's not necessary to tell the starship captains anything. Sometimes it's necessary not to tell them anything!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[RyanKCR]

Stage 3 the Genessis torpedeo, wasn't used as intended. It was supposed to be launced at a lifeless planet or moon and reorganise it to form a living breathing habitat. It instead detonate instead inside a nebula.

That's what always bugged me about STIII. Here we have a perfect reason why the Genesis Planet was unstable, and the writers go and create some silly maguffin with "protomatter," which they probably just pulled out of their ass. All so David could look bad, which wasn't even a necessary plotline.

Actually that was Bennett's idea. It was the universe requiring balance because someone tried to play God. It was also the reason for the Enterprise's destruction. Kirk had to lose both his son and the Enterprise to get Spock back.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Yeah because that's how the military operates, they just totally trust civilian organizations with top secret projects and don't keep their at least their top people informed. When Paul Tibbets took off in the Enola Gay the Army Air Corps just told him he was going to be doing a little experiment over Hiroshima that day.

Most military/corporate projects operate under a "need to know" basis. Your premise misses why does the Reliant need to know anything more than "find a lifeless planet"?

To explain why Khan knew anything about Genesis specifically enough to know that its a pretty damned important thing to have seeing as nobody on Regula talked and the computers were wiped.

 

[Timo]

The very acts of defiance should be enough to convince Khan of the worth of Genesis, really...

It would stand to reason that Marcus would have shown the Genesis Cave to Terrell and Chekov, just for fun, and perhaps in gross breach of the secrecy rules imposed on her by her bosses. The officers would know what Genesis is, just like Kirk does - but they need not be any better informed than Kirk, and Kirk need not be any better informed than them.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captrek]

Stage 3 the Genessis torpedeo, wasn't used as intended. It was supposed to be launced at a lifeless planet or moon and reorganise it to form a living breathing habitat. It instead detonate instead inside a nebula.

That's what always bugged me about STIII. Here we have a perfect reason why the Genesis Planet was unstable, and the writers go and create some silly maguffin with "protomatter," which they probably just pulled out of their ass. All so David could look bad, which wasn't even a necessary plotline.

Actually that was Bennett's idea. It was the universe requiring balance because someone tried to play God. It was also the reason for the Enterprise's destruction. Kirk had to lose both his son and the Enterprise to get Spock back.

But the "protomatter" business wasn't necessary to accomplish that.

Even in the previous film, David realized that Genesis "could be perverted into a dreadful weapon." But he was so enraptured by the potential good the project could do that he willingly turned a blind eye to that obvious and extreme danger and went ahead and created Genesis anyway. Now, predictably enough, some Klingons are pursing this "ultimate weapon," destroyed the Grissolm and are threatening to kill Spock, Saavik, David and everyone on the Enterprise.

The "protomatter" technobabble characterizes the problem as the result of David's technical error in some incredibly complicated calculations, rather than the inevitable result of creating something like Genesis in the first place. With the protomatter the message is that these tragic losses are the result of David trying to play God and doing it badly; without the protomatter the message would have been that these tragic losses are the result of David trying to play God, period. So introducing the protomatter actually undermines the point Bennett was trying to make.

 

[RyanKCR]

That's what always bugged me about STIII. Here we have a perfect reason why the Genesis Planet was unstable, and the writers go and create some silly maguffin with "protomatter," which they probably just pulled out of their ass. All so David could look bad, which wasn't even a necessary plotline.

Actually that was Bennett's idea. It was the universe requiring balance because someone tried to play God. It was also the reason for the Enterprise's destruction. Kirk had to lose both his son and the Enterprise to get Spock back.

But the "protomatter" business wasn't necessary to accomplish that.

Even in the previous film, David realized that Genesis "could be perverted into a dreadful weapon." But he was so enraptured by the potential good the project could do that he willingly turned a blind eye to that obvious and extreme danger and went ahead and created Genesis anyway. Now, predictably enough, some Klingons are pursing this "ultimate weapon," destroyed the Grissolm and are threatening to kill Spock, Saavik, David and everyone on the Enterprise.

The "protomatter" technobabble characterizes the problem as the result of David's technical error in some incredibly complicated calculations, rather than the result of the inherent power of the project. With the protomatter the message is that these tragic losses are the result of David trying to play God and doing it badly; without the protomatter the message would have been that these tragic losses are the result of David trying to play God, period. So introducing the protomatter actually undermines the point Bennett was trying to make.

I think, based on how I read the article, was that both Kirk and David had to cheat to get to their current positions and now it came back to bite them. Karma is what he was going for.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

David did say that "it was the only way to solve certain problems" when asked why he used protomatter. So it would seem that Genesis would not have been possible without it.

For what that's worth, anyway.

 

[Captrek]

David did say that "it was the only way to solve certain problems" when asked why he used protomatter. So it would seem that Genesis would not have been possible without it.

A little more to the quote: "It was the only way to solve certain problems.... If I hadn't, it might have been years, or never." So even David doesn't know that Genesis couldn't have been done without protomatter. His comment is explicitly speculative.

Addressing this from the writing perspective, introducing the protomatter portrays David's mistake as a technical error. By eschewing the protomatter and logically extrapolating only from what had been presented in the previous film, they would have portrayed David's mistake as willfully ignoring the danger of harnessing this kind of power in the first place. The latter would have made Bennett's point more effectively than the former.

 

[MacLeod]

Even if David was the one responsible for the use of protomatter isn't it likely that others scientist invovled such as Dr. Carol Marcus would have been aware of it's use?

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

^Not necessarily. Often times in scientific research, the team leader's role in the research is more administrative; the bulk of the day-to-day research is handled by lower level scientists and graduate students. Carol Marcus would likely have been aware of the group's progress (i.e., which stage is the project in), but there's no guarantee she'd have known about the proto-matter. And based on what we saw of her in the films, I don't think she'd have approved of its use.

--Sran