WTF moments in TOS...

[Hambone]

In "That Which Survives", Kirk and McCoy are taking a nap when Sulu is attacked by Losira. He has his tricorder on the "burglar alarm" setting, which seems to do nothing; she just snaps it off. Kirk and McCoy = zzzz. Then Sulu fires his phaser at the ground, causing a big explosion. Kirk and McCoy, still snoozing. Losira touches Sulu, causing him to scream. Nothing. Then, and only then, Sulu yells for help; Kirk and McCoy finally wake up.

What, explosions and phaser fire won't wake up Kirk? But Sulu crying out his name does? Makes you think.

 

[siskokid888]

^Makes about as much sense as anything else in "The Alternative Factor." That whole episode is a WTF.

I thought I remembered reading that there was an inter-racial romance story in the ep that the censors made them hack out, and it destroyed the continuity and fabric of the episode.

 

[Christopher]

In "That Which Survives", Kirk and McCoy are taking a nap when Sulu is attacked by Losira. He has his tricorder on the "burglar alarm" setting, which seems to do nothing; she just snaps it off.

In fairness, Losira was not a life form or other entity of a type the tricorder was calibrated to recognize. She was pretty much what we'd call a hologram in modern Trek terms.

What, explosions and phaser fire won't wake up Kirk? But Sulu crying out his name does? Makes you think.

I remember reading or hearing a long time ago that the sound of your own name being called is one of the most surefire ways to wake you up. I'm not sure how truthful that is, since it might've just been one of those random factoids floating around that people accept as true. In fact, I remember it saying that specifically about men, not women, which sounds iffy to me.

^Makes about as much sense as anything else in "The Alternative Factor." That whole episode is a WTF.

I thought I remembered reading that there was an inter-racial romance story in the ep that the censors made them hack out, and it destroyed the continuity and fabric of the episode.

Nope. From the Unseen Elements site's review of the draft script:

This is the draft with the Lazarus/Charlene Masters romance subplot. The one that was ordered dropped by nervous executives. Or was it from on high? Someone had it cut, but at this late date no one is sure who it was.

Perhaps it really was cut because a Black actress was hired to play Charlene.

Perhaps it was cut because it plays very very similar to the Khan/McGivers subplot in "Space Seed."

Perhaps it was cut because it is simply bad and embarrassing, with an adult professional woman swooning instantly over the manly Lazarus, and acting like a lovestruck schoolgirl in a seventeenth-rate romance novel.

Though Ingalls never overtly states Charlene's race in the draft, a passage describes her face as a "white cameo" beneath her hair.
...
The script is little different from what aired except for the Charlene stuff.

And on the final draft:

Those seeking to learn more about the genesis of this much disparaged episode will find nothing in this final draft script. Except for a few cut passages of dialogue it is what aired, as confusing and ill-defined.

So the romance plot was cut midway through the script phase, well before shooting. What we ended up with is little different from the final draft script aside from a couple of minor cut sequences detailed on the linked page. So the incoherence of the episode can't be blamed on the editing. It was right there in the script all along. If anything, dropping the romance was an improvement, because we really didn't need to see yet another female Starfleet officer betray her oath because of her womanly urges.

 

[Bertie]

^I always interpreted it as a release valve -- Landru keeps everyone's natural drives controlled and repressed the rest of the year, and this is the one opportunity they get to let them out and burn them off. In that interpretation, it fits pretty neatly into the whole of the episode, I think. It shows the other side of the coin that's represented by "the Body"'s highly controlled, restricted existence the rest of the time.

Hmm. That seems to make pretty decent sense.

Next up on the WTF front: "The Paradise Syndrome". So there's this clearly understood threat of destruction — if we don't, like, leave orbit right now its going to be too late to deflect the asteroid (and in fact, when Spock does eventually get going it is too late, even after blowing out the engines and everything in the attempt). So are we leaving orbit, like, right now? No, we're going to loaf around the planet, chit chat about the natives and their idyllic lifestyle a while, and visit the obelisk twice.

(Now, I'm not totally stupid; I know that TV in those days wasn't edited to the same standards of sophistication as it is now, and I like "The Paradise Syndrome" just as I like "Return of the Archons". But this is the WTF thread, after all )

 

[Christopher]

The problem isn't just the timing, it's that it shouldn't have been that hard to deflect the asteroid. With two months to spare, it would've been far enough away that it would've only taken a small, steady push to change its course or speed by a tiny amount so that it would miss the planet. After all, a planet is a moving target. All you have to do is delay the asteroid by a few minutes out of those two months -- or by about 0.006 percent -- and you're good. Okay, maybe it's a really big asteroid -- though there's a limit to how big it could be without being pulled into a spherical shape -- but even so, two months should've been plenty of time to divert it, and phasers and torpedoes powerful enough to destroy all life on a planet's surface should've certainly been powerful enough to nudge even a large asteroid by a factor of a few thousandths of a percent.

 

[Lieut. Arex]

You know, at either 190,000 or 1,000,000 tons, especially the latter, the Enterprise itself would act as a gravity tug on the asteroid. Would so large a mass move it enough in that two month time?

 

[Christopher]

^Indeed it would. So again the question is just how large the asteroid is. And if it's too large for a gravity tug to work, then surely a phaser/torpedo barrage should evaporate enough of its mass to provide some thrust in the opposite direction.

 

[Bertie]

I guess I can accept, in a "willful suspension of disbelief" sort of way, that the ship really does have to get working on the asteroid by a certain time, since the basic principle (that it would be harder to deflect the closer it gets) is sound.

It is a little harder to accept that the crew would leave themselves no safety factor whatsoever and wait until the absolute last possible moment to begin (despite repeatedly stating in dialog how dire the situation is), since nothing they were doing on the surface was at all relevant to deflecting the asteroid anyway.

(I suppose same people who developed the command procedures for asteroid deflection were the same people who designed Starfleet warp engines, another thing famously devoid of safety factors/backups )

 

[T'Girl]

It is a little harder to accept that the crew would leave themselves no safety factor whatsoever and wait until the absolute last possible moment to begin

Spock computed the optimum deflection point, Kirk planned to leave orbit, travel to that point at crusing speed, position the Enterprise at that point, deflect the asteroid and move on to the next assignment. No problem, Kirk has confidence in his ship and crew. If Kirk had thirty minutes to leave orbit, he would look around for a few more minute and still leave with time to spare.

It was Spock and his decision to search for the captain that resulted in the asteroid not being deflected.

 

[Hober Mallow]

In "Wolf in the Fold," just after Piglet enters the computer, Spock realizes they have time for action because Piglet has to build up the fear in the crew before he kills them. However, Piglet the Ripper killed three times before on the planet, and each time he did it quickly, not wasting any time building up his victims' fear.

I'd very much like to think that these Space Centrals are local space traffic control hubs, and that every inhabited system worth anything has one. But that doesn't explain the "Miri" reference.

I don't recall the specific reference. What was the exact line?

 

[Christopher]

In "Wolf in the Fold," just after Piglet enters the computer, Spock realizes they have time for action because Piglet has to build up the fear in the crew before he kills them. However, Piglet the Ripper killed three times before on the planet, and each time he did it quickly, not wasting any time building up his victims' fear.

Yeah, but then he had a knife, which is a pretty efficient way to make people afraid quickly. Trapped in the computer with only psychological tactics at its disposal, and with its prey being trained Starfleet officers, Redjac needed to work harder to generate nourishing levels of fear.

I'd very much like to think that these Space Centrals are local space traffic control hubs, and that every inhabited system worth anything has one. But that doesn't explain the "Miri" reference.

I don't recall the specific reference. What was the exact line?

"I've already contacted Space Central. They'll send teachers, advisers."

 

[TheAlmanac]

^I considered it, but one could make a case that it's central in a more literal geographic sense, and I was looking for examples that demonstrated that "Central" was not always used in the sense of physical location.

Not to be morbid, but what about the World Trade Center?

 

[Timo]

So again the question is just how large the asteroid is

Actually, it's stated in the episode: almost as big as Earth's moon.

The real question is, how fast did that thing move? We know Spock managed to deflect it by 0.0013 degrees during the initial tractor beam attack. We don't know if that was already halfway home, or just one percent of the desired outcome.

What we do know is that the rock spent two months reaching the planet - but that Spock had spent several hours at warp nine to do the reverse journey! So it's possible the rock was moving at an appreciable percentage of lightspeed. (However, supposedly the shadow of the rock preceded it to the planet by several minutes, so we aren't speaking of really high percentages.) It would seem entirely plausible, then, that Spock would have his work cut out for him - that the task would be Herculaean even by Starfleet standards.

Timing might not be that crucial an issue, OTOH. The point calculated by Spock could be the last possible moment the starship's power would suffice for budging the rock, but the results would be only minimally better if the starship acted an hour earlier, or a day earlier. They would be minimally worse after the calculated point, sure, but perhaps Spock had left some safety margin there. It's just that he wrecked his ship going there, and thus couldn't even achieve the results he originally hoped for.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

Without the failure of the "Dilithium crystal circuit" and Spock's explicit order to Scotty not to change it out, the Enterprise most probably would have deflected the rock.

Why not change the circuit and try again?

1) They were pass the deflection point.
2) The rock was bigger than Spock original figured, the scans (perhaps long range) didn't revel the true mass of the rock.
3) Spock intended to replace the circuits after the phaser strike.

By splitting the rock into two or more pieces, Spock could deflect the smaller pieces with the Enterprise once again at full power. But because he ordered Sulu to channel power from the main engines (warp core?) directly into the phasers, Spock destroyed the warp drive. He should of split the rock after ordering the power systems repaired. Why didn't he?

Spock had abandon one of his few friends, he had rendered the Enterprise incapable of preforming the deflection, one of Star Fleets most respected engineers had publicly recommended against his course of action. I think Spock was becoming desperate.

McCoy's statement during "The Galileo Seven" was that Spock was new to high command, he most likely commanded personal and science teams and he had been a watch officer. But had never directly commanded a ship. Vulcan's aren't totally logical beings and Spock is far from perfect. From his own statement at the begining of the episode, Spock should have known that Kirk was inside or beneath the oblisk, it was the the only place he couldn't scan.

Spock has trouble accepting advice (Scotty) and delegation responsiblity. One obvious course of action would of been leaving several secuity teams behind with shuttles and suppies. Search and rescue to probably one of security main jobs. Spock directed the teams personally.

Spock was making mistakes and he knew it.

 

[Nardpuncher]

I just watched For The World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky and when the old man (who speaks the title of the episode) walks in they play what I consider the music they use when a beautiful woman enters the room. Ha!

 

[Hober Mallow]

In "Bread and Circuses," Spock notes that the inhabitants of the planet speak English. Since this is an earth in which Rome never fell, English shouldn't exist. The Romans should be speaking a form of vulgar latin, modern Italian at the very least. We could have dismissed the English we heard as the universal translator simply working its magic were it not for Spock's comment.

 

[GhostFaceSaint]

I'M CAPTAIN KIRK!!!
A real wierd WTF moment, but we as Trekkies and Trekkers eat it up!
More moments from the same episode.

 

[Christopher]

In "Bread and Circuses," Spock notes that the inhabitants of the planet speak English. Since this is an earth in which Rome never fell, English shouldn't exist. The Romans should be speaking a form of vulgar latin, modern Italian at the very least.

Actually, in the Eastern Roman Empire, Greek was the official language. The Romans were an empire that borrowed the culture of those it conquered rather than subsuming it with their own (the Greek pantheon and mythology, Christianity, etc.). In an alternate history where Brittania and the Anglo-Saxon peoples rose to prominence, it's conceivable that a hybrid Latin/Anglo-Saxon language such as English could've evolved and become the official language of at least some portion of the Empire.

Though of course the whole premise is fanciful, and the convolutions necessary to justify another planet developing a Roman Empire that lasts into the 20th century are no less absurd than those necessary to justify it using American English. It wasn't really meant to make scientific or historical sense; Roddenberry just wanted to write a satire on American media culture, so he used "Hodgkin's Law" as an excuse to merge that culture with the Roman Empire (for the thematic tie to "bread and circuses," the Roman poet Juvenal's complaint that the people willingly accept anything the state does so long as they get their food and entertainment).

 

[UssGlenn]

I'd very much like to think that these Space Centrals are local space traffic control hubs, and that every inhabited system worth anything has one. But that doesn't explain the "Miri" reference.

I don't recall the specific reference. What was the exact line?

"I've already contacted Space Central. They'll send teachers, advisers."

Would it make sense for Space Central to be a shortened name for some civilian organization? The peace cops of the 23rd century perhaps?

 

[ToddPence]

In "The Mark Of Gideon", the crew doing everything they possibly can to locate the missing Captain Kirk . . . except the most obvious, step one solution, call him on his communicator.