Wrath of Khan's Big BooBoo

[JE Smith]

Forget favorite Star Trek film, The Wrath of Khan is one of my ten favorite movies of any type, of all time. I saw is six times at the theater, and countless times since. I adore it unconditionally.

And yet it has one of the biggest gaffes of any Trek film or show. A real clunker. (And apologies if this has been extensively discussed before.) It goes like this:

Sent to investigate what's happening at Regula One, Kirk asks Spock how long it will take them to arrive. Spock replies "Twelve hours, forty-three minutes, present speed."

"Present speed" had previously been established as Warp 5, per Kirk's orders to Sulu. Now, it's true there has been a scene break since this information was relayed, but there is absolutely no reason to think the ship has since reduced speed.

At this point, Khan, aboard the Reliant, appears and knocks out the Enterprise's warp drive, leaving the ship only impulse power.

And yet the Enterprise still arrives at Regula One before rigor mortis sets in on the dead bodies. (Yes, r/m does fade after a while, and the corpse will loosen back up, but McCoy specifically states "Well, rigor hasn't set in -- this couldn't have happened too long ago, Jim.").

If Regula One was almost 13 hours away at warp 5, it should take much much longer (weeks? years?) to get there on impulse power.

Personally I attribute this to Nick Meyer being a newbie to Trek and getting his terminology mixed up. It doesn't hurt my white-hot love for the film, but it does make me laugh every time I see it.

 

[Maurice]

"present speed."

And Khan, like most of the movies, is shot through with such illogic. I mean, if it's such an emergency, why are they puttering along at warp 5 anyway?

 

[Smellmet]

It spoils my enjoyment of the film by zero percent.

 

[DonIago]

Don't you mean it ruins your present enjoyment of the film by zero percent?

 

[JE Smith]

"present speed."

And Khan, like most of the movies, is shot through with such illogic.

You mean like...

 

[Smellmet]

Don't you mean it ruins your present enjoyment of the film by zero percent?

No, it's a solid zero. Across all parts of my life.

 

[JE Smith]

"present speed."

Corrected. I was going from memory anyway.

 

[xvicente]

I don't know where this recollection of mine comes from, either some SFX storyboards or the novelization, but the first battle was supposed to take place very near Regula so 1)both ships had their warp drive disabled (this happened) and 2) Reliant retreated to behind Regula (which remained at visual range all the time).

edit: also Reliant didn't intercept the Enterprise, just waited for it.

I though that made alot of sense. All it would have taken is to have the planetoid in some more of the space scenes.

edit: found it on trekcore. This page has all the storyboards, it's like reading a comic book. The nebula is in visual range too.

 

[Albertese]

I always thought it was silly that Reliant was looking for Ceti Alpha VI but showed up at Ceti Alpha V none-the-wiser. I always thought this was dumb as with Star Trek type sensors, there should be no problem counting planets in the system and seeing you are at the fifth one from the sun and not the sixth. I always wondered if someone just got confused with their Roman numerals and meant to type "Ceti Alpha IV" rather than "VI." This would have solved the problem, if Ceti Alpha IV had blown up then Ceti Alpha V would be fourth planet from the sun when Reliant arrives and the whole thing is solved.

Oh well. I still enjoy the film.

--Alex

 

[Elder Knight]

My explanation:

http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=8219725&postcount=44

 

[FormerLurker]

^I always took that as the system had never been explored by a manned vessel, only a remote. When they found a system with one fewer planets and an asteroid field, it doesn't take a rocket scientist(though there were several on board) to realize what happened. If Ceti Alpha VI is close enough to knock Ceti Alpha V off her orbit, assuming the surviving planet is VI because it appears to match the unmanned survey data, and the asteroid field hasn't had time to spread around the system to show its true orbit, and is somewhere not necessarily close to the presumed VI, make it easy for a crew looking for a type of planet, not a specific planet, to think they've reached their destination.

 

[BillJ]

Fun movie to watch, but it has its flaws. Like much of the rest of Star Trek.

 

[Timo]

there is absolutely no reason to think the ship has since reduced speed.

Well, starships almost invariably slow down to impulse speed when approaching star systems. Sometimes this happens relatively far out, and cannot be avoided even in extreme emergencies (say, when the Borg are about to assimilate mankind). We could argue that Regula 1 was located in a system where warp travel is particularly undesirable, perhaps due to the proximity of the Mutara Nebula, thus making this a good choice for a base conducting secret research.

Naturally, both starships are seen at sublight, that is, with basically immobile stars as the background. Of course, this doesn't mean much in terms of TOS movie VFX, but there you have it.

Also relevant is that Kirk never gives an order to slow down at any point preceding the battle. So the two starships appear to match speeds at sublight, all on Khan's initiative, while Kirk merely waits to find out what the heck is going on.

On the other hand,

I mean, if it's such an emergency, why are they puttering along at warp 5 anyway?

But it isn't an emergency (except in the technical sense that allows Kirk to take command). Odds are that there's some sort of a clerical error and Carol is so upset she has fumbled the settings of her communications board. Kirk is not in any particular hurry there; just moments before the Khan encounter, he's still idly speculating with Spock whether something really is wrong at Carol's end or not.

edit: also Reliant didn't intercept the Enterprise, just waited for it.

Makes sense. How could Khan locate Kirk in deep space if he can't even scan for the Enterprise without catching Sulu's attention? The better bet is to "hurry to meet Kirk" right next door to the station (the whole "hurrying" thing tells of Khan being unaware of Kirk's true ETA and having to improvise his schedules, to the detriment of his plans). Conversely, how could Kirk lose sight of Khan or vice versa after the battle, unless in the middle of all sorts of clutter from the local environment, that is, a star system?

I always thought this was dumb as with Star Trek type sensors, there should be no problem counting planets in the system and seeing you are at the fifth one from the sun and not the sixth.

But as said, Terrell's team had no interest in the ordinal number of the planet. The team looked for a desert planet. It would be silly to stubbornly head for the local jungle world or gas giant when the sensors show that the desert world is elsewhere.

There are no examples in TOS of our heroes idly scanning a star system for irrelevant things such as the number of planets. They focus on their target, as typically they have a schedule to keep. If some nerdy science officer belowdecks performs routine charting on the side, he won't be in a position to realize he should be relaying his as such utterly uninteresting findings to the Bridge ASAP!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nebusj]

I always thought it was silly that Reliant was looking for Ceti Alpha VI but showed up at Ceti Alpha V none-the-wiser. I always thought this was dumb as with Star Trek type sensors, there should be no problem counting planets in the system and seeing you are at the fifth one from the sun and not the sixth.

Unless planets are numbered in order of their discovery, so that numbers are more relevant to how detectable or worthy of study they are rather than what the size of their orbits is.

 

[Starborn Dragon]

Why Khan only took off one glove.

I've come to regard Khan, and other villains just like him, as incredibly lame. HEre's why:

I'm going to do whatever want to undermine you with my authority and Adonis greek god of a body and you have to sit down and noy fight against me in any way shape or form. RESPECT MY AUTHORITY:

Kirk proceeds to best him.

Oh you dare be better than I , who am a god and is your superior? NOW IT'S PERSONAL! And I must utterly destroy you.

Sorry folks, but that's just oh so incredibly lame to me.

And it is something I really don't get or understand.

 

[JE Smith]

there is absolutely no reason to think the ship has since reduced speed.

Well, starships almost invariably slow down to impulse speed when approaching star systems. Sometimes this happens relatively far out, and cannot be avoided even in extreme emergencies (say, when the Borg are about to assimilate mankind). We could argue that Regula 1 was located in a system where warp travel is particularly undesirable, perhaps due to the proximity of the Mutara Nebula, thus making this a good choice for a base conducting secret research.

Naturally, both starships are seen at sublight, that is, with basically immobile stars as the background. Of course, this doesn't mean much in terms of TOS movie VFX, but there you have it.

Also relevant is that Kirk never gives an order to slow down at any point preceding the battle. So the two starships appear to match speeds at sublight, all on Khan's initiative, while Kirk merely waits to find out what the heck is going on.

So, your assertion is that the ship is already on impulse power when Spock says, essentially, "13 hours, present speed"? Even if this "emergency" is mild, this seems like a colossal waste of time. Why put a space station in a sector of space that somehow can't tolerate warp drive? There have to be other lifeless hunks of rock that would be easier to deal with than having to travel half a day at impulse power just to reach them. That rationalization doesn't work for me.

I can understand the idea that all of this was meant to take place much closer to Regula than is presented in the final film, and maybe that was the original intent, but this got muddled either in the scripting or the editing. I just re-watched this section of the film, and it plays out like this:

Kirk watches Carol's garbled transmission about Reliant taking Genesis. (BTW, am I the only one who thinks Shatner plays this scene a little too whiny?)

Kirk goes to the bridge and takes command, ordering Sulu to head for Regula at warp 5. "So much for the little training cruise."

Cut to Reliant. "Course to intercept Enterprise ready sir." As far as SFX go, Regula is nowhere in sight, but it's made clear that Reliant is about to depart to meet Enterprise.

Cut back to the Enterprise. Here's where things get muddled. How much time has passed since Kirk ordered warp 5? We don't know. The editing makes it appear as though the cutaway to Reliant and back to Enterprise are happening in real time, but it can't be true, because this is where Spock tells Kirk they are still "Twelve hours, 43 minutes" away, and Reliant is just about to ambush them.

Spock questions the origins of Genesis, and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy go watch the powerpoint presentation. Then Saavik interrupts their meeting to announce the arrival of Reliant.

This sequence is unarguably happening real-time, meaning it's 10-15 minutes at most between Spock's time assessment and the arrival of Reliant. The implication is that Reliant is meeting Enterprise about halfway to Regula (meaning the journey may have been 25-ish hours to begin with... and if that's the case, yeah, why not bump it up to warp 8 or so? Reliant definitely seems to be going faster, since it appears to catch up to Enterprise almost instantly).

It's true, the ships are almost certainly "meeting" each other at impulse power (Khan specifically orders they slow to "1/2 impulse power"), and it's true we never see Kirk order it, but he could have done it while he was in the turbolift.

Bottom line is, after the battle with Reliant, the Enterprise is still about 12 hours from Regula, either at impulse or warp 5. Rigor mortis sets in at between 2-6 hours, so there's really no scenario in which McCoy's dialogue makes sense.


My head hurts.

 

[Franklin]

Fun movie to watch, but it has its flaws. Like much of the rest of Star Trek.

Like much of the rest of anything, really. My family will sit down and binge-watch episodes of M*A*S*H some weekend nights, and as much as I think the show can border on being brilliant, the more I see some episodes, the dumber they seem.

Very little put out there for popular entertainment was meant to be viewed, let alone scrutinized, as often and as much as some of it is. Trek especially.

I've found a few WTF moments in the times I've watched TWOK that took me a while to realize, but it still doesn't diminish its entertainment value to me. That we critique it and discuss it on these boards over thirty years after it came out must mean it still has merit.

 

[Maurice]

That overdubbed "Course to intercept Enterprise ready, sir," line is a BIG part of the problem, yes, but as pointed out above, the timeline makes no sense.

 

[Timo]

So, your assertion is that the ship is already on impulse power when Spock says, essentially, "13 hours, present speed"? Even if this "emergency" is mild, this seems like a colossal waste of time. Why put a space station in a sector of space that somehow can't tolerate warp drive? There have to be other lifeless hunks of rock that would be easier to deal with than having to travel half a day at impulse power just to reach them.

...Which is exactly why Regula 1 would be placed smack in the middle of this swamp: so that nobody in his right mind would decide that it should be a good idea to visit the place.

Regula 1 was apparently completely dedicated to this dangerous research the Marcuses were doing. The system did not offer them anything beyond secrecy, which it in turn had plenty of.

Cut back to the Enterprise. Here's where things get muddled. How much time has passed since Kirk ordered warp 5? We don't know. The editing makes it appear as though the cutaway to Reliant and back to Enterprise are happening in real time, but it can't be true, because this is where Spock tells Kirk they are still "Twelve hours, 43 minutes" away, and Reliant is just about to ambush them.

...And the heroes discuss the loss of signal from Regula 1, seemingly for the first time. Perhaps Uhura hasn't been working her voice hoarse for hours or days, but has only recently started hailing the station (again), with the assumption that they are now close enough that some putative hindrance X to communications might no longer apply?

Spock questions the origins of Genesis, and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy go watch the powerpoint presentation. Then Saavik interrupts their meeting to announce the arrival of Reliant.

FWIW, there's a bit of a delay as McCoy has been "making the sickbay ready" - for what, we don't learn. Is he just being pessimistic about what might be going on at the other end? Neither Kirk nor Spock seems to expect corpses at this point of the story.

Bottom line is, after the battle with Reliant, the Enterprise is still about 12 hours from Regula, either at impulse or warp 5. Rigor mortis sets in at between 2-6 hours, so there's really no scenario in which McCoy's dialogue makes sense.

Note that this 12 hours is still at "present speed". Kirk could always decide that supermen at large means a greater emergency than malfunctioning comms boards, and choose a different speed. Say, full impulse instead of half impulse (and this probably significantly antes up the speed, instead of just doubling it, considering all other uses of this terminology).

Trek starship action is based on two rather unintuitive premises: speeds are exponential (so emergency speed may well be dozens or hundreds of times faster than normal speed), and defenses are kept down until truly desperately needed (so it takes lots of guts to decide to go into an adventure shields raised, against all "common sense", whatever that sense may be in terms of the relevant technologies). ST2 does not set precedents there in either respect... Except perhaps for the exclusive moviegoer. But it is a bit disconcerting for somebody unfamiliar with the Trek way of doing things!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Albertese]

...

I always thought this was dumb as with Star Trek type sensors, there should be no problem counting planets in the system and seeing you are at the fifth one from the sun and not the sixth.

But as said, Terrell's team had no interest in the ordinal number of the planet. The team looked for a desert planet. It would be silly to stubbornly head for the local jungle world or gas giant when the sensors show that the desert world is elsewhere.

There are no examples in TOS of our heroes idly scanning a star system for irrelevant things such as the number of planets. They focus on their target, as typically they have a schedule to keep. If some nerdy science officer belowdecks performs routine charting on the side, he won't be in a position to realize he should be relaying his as such utterly uninteresting findings to the Bridge ASAP!

Timo Saloniemi

Honestly, this strikes me as a little absurd. We have heard about pre-approach scans of systems. How do you find any specific planet without knowing relative positions versus the parent star and other planets? It would seem to be common procedure to locate the star and then find the correct orbit and the body which occupies it from there.

I suppose a possible explanation could be that a large enough chunk of debris from Ceti Alpha VI could have struck Ceti Alpha V and altered its orbit such that by the time Reliant arrives 14.5 years later, its new orbit's aphelion is near to the recorded orbit of Ceti Alpha VI and Ceti Alpha V happens to be approximately in the right orbital altitude from the Ceti Alpha Primary. As it seems that the crew arrives and gets right to work, they probably don't bother checking whether the actual orbital path is following the expected ellipse, since, after all, there's a planets basically where we expected to find one.

I still think someone got their Roman numerals confused.

--Alex