Yet Another Doomsday Machine Thread
- Thread starter Ssosmcin
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Yes Decker isn't totally wrong.
You know except where he beamed down everyone to a planet just after he saw the doomsday machine destroy another planet.
Didn't Spock just want to get Kirk then get out of range then tell Starfleet what was going on so they could defend Rigel? He wasn't giving up on Rigel.
Is there much difference between Deckers actions here and Kirk's actions in Obsession?
Kirk endangered his ship, his crew, kept sending redshirts down to the planet after he knew there was trouble.
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That would be a sound editor, not a Foley artist. Foley artists record sound effects that must be precisely synced to the action onscreen, using various physical devices to create appropriate sounds (the way they did in old-time radio).
Spock: “Illogical. We cannot destroy it, therefore we cannot save Rigel.”
Now he could have meant “Cannot save Rigel ourselves“ but the Planet Killer was probably too close to the system to be stopped before the fleet could be gathered. However perhaps an evacuation could have been attempted. Spock seemed to be looking ahead to trying to stop the machine before it reached “the most densely populated section of our galaxy.”
Yes, it’s not very clear why he did that.
This is not necessarily a plot hole, though: he might have had his reasons. In fact, I like to think his plan was to explode the ruined ship into the belly of the machine, just like Kirk eventually does, he doesn’t mention it afterwards because he’s in a confusional state and thinks he can find another way with the fully operative enterprise.
This was my impression as well.
very good point. The only great difference is that Kirk hasn’t been totally emotionally crushed by his experience: while he feels guilty for the death of his companions he wasn’t true captain and, more importantly, he has had several years to work on his feelings.
Didn't fighting it cause it to feed more? Best coarse of action is leave it alone so it only needs to feed on one or two planets per system. Based on System L-374, it would not have eaten planet 3 if Decker would have left the DDM alone. His own action to fight it, caused the Constellation destruction and crew evacuation to planet 3, reduced the energy reserves of the DDM which then caused it to feed on planet 3 killing his own crew.
Sure, it goes with the mechanically clicking computers!
How do you figure that?
Of System L-370...
SPOCK
KIRK
SPOCK
Ergo the planet killer blasted every planet in L-370. Next...
KIRK
Which implies it's blowed up every planet in every system they've seen in the sector.
When they arrive as System L-374 Spock reports the two inner planets are still intact. And according to Decker's log, when the Constellation arrived, "Science Officer Masada reports the fourth planet seems to be breaking up. We are going to investigate."
Note that Decker never says he initiated the attack. The DDM chases and attacks the Enterprise without provocation, just proximity.
So, by the time Kirk and co. arrive the Planet Killer has finished off planet 4 and then planet 3 (with the Constellation crew on it), and apparently hasn't gotten around to the inner two.
The only mystery here is this line...
SULU
¿"back on course"? By rights it should have been heading deeper into L-374 to chow down planets 2 and 1, as it has apparently all the other systems. I think this is just a writer's error. Spinrad (or a staff writer tweak) basically forgot about the inner two planets as soon as Spock concludes the machine's course will send it through the most densely populated region of the galaxy.
Now I want to dig out the earlier drafts and see if they differ on this point.
Or maybe the machine ignored those planets for a a reason. Perhaps their composition wasn’t as palatable...
If you can get any ringtone today, including a 1950s-sounding electro-mechanical bell, I'm sure Scotty could select any sound he wanted for his timer. The episode didn't know that, but it still counts.
I timed my audio cassette once as a kid, and the 30-second interval was more like a minute and a half if I recall correctly.
Correct, the timer is not in line with what we actually see.
On the ticking-clock show 24, they often packed multiple screens in at once to show various things happening simultaneously. Maybe scenes on the two ships are happening at the same time, but shown sequentially.
Yes I thought he meant we cannot save Rigel now here by ourselves.
I sort of got the impression that the doomsday machine would take quite a while to reach Rigel as it was not moving very fast when we saw it but who knows how fast it was at Warp Speed. However I think Deckers tactics were meant to be wrong and Kirk and Spock's correct. The stance of stand and fight at any cost seemed to be incorrect.
I mean if it were a couple of hours to Rigel then they probably needed to at least delay it until say a shuttlecraft could get far enough away to send off a message. Even if that were true though they had time to pick up Kirk for his input.
So even if they gave up on the fight they probably would have needed to tail the planet killer to give Rigel defensive forces and Starfleet a location for the planet killer.
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A lot of questions are left open and indeed unasked. And it's plausible the heroes and villains would not take the time to ask nor answer. But it does seem absolutely vital to learn why the beast skipped planets this time around.
Possibly it doesn't hurt planets with people on them? Not even ones with just 400 people on them, the last time it checked. Or then it's a murder machine and specifically targets sapients and what is dear to them, and all the previous L-systems had resources on every planet, yet L-374 only on two.
It's a bit annoying that our heroes for the duration of one adventure become a different set of heroes, a set uninterested in pertinent questions. And conversely glorious when they triumph by surprisingly asking the exact right question, such as with Kirk homing in on the gynoid in "Requiem". But here we can argue it is because the heroes get separated: Spock and Kirk just plain work better as a team.
Timo Saloniemi
Possibly it doesn't hurt planets with people on them? Not even ones with just 400 people on them, the last time it checked. Or then it's a murder machine and specifically targets sapients and what is dear to them, and all the previous L-systems had resources on every planet, yet L-374 only on two.
It's a bit annoying that our heroes for the duration of one adventure become a different set of heroes, a set uninterested in pertinent questions. And conversely glorious when they triumph by surprisingly asking the exact right question, such as with Kirk homing in on the gynoid in "Requiem". But here we can argue it is because the heroes get separated: Spock and Kirk just plain work better as a team.
Timo Saloniemi
I timed the 30 second clock taking ~80 seconds on screen. One half minute on Enterprise plus one half minute on Constellation sequentially only equals one minute. Maybe the extra 20 seconds was sequentially spent following the DDM, too?
You gotta consider that maybe some of the shots are happening in parallel.I timed the 30 second clock taking ~80 seconds on screen. One half minute on Enterprise plus one half minute on Constellation sequentially only equals one minute. Maybe the extra 20 seconds was sequentially spent following the DDM, too?
I timed it from Sulu's countdown; And Kirk was beamed off 9 seconds after the Constellation's impulse engines should have exploded.
I timed it from Sulu's countdown; And Kirk was beamed off 9 seconds after the Constellation's impulse engines should have exploded.
That's why Kirk calls it the longest 30 seconds of his life.
I wonder how Kirk, Spock and the Enterprise crew would have dealt with Galactus instead? Or did Stan Lee rip off Norman Spinrad too? 
JB
JB
Exactly!You gotta consider that maybe some of the shots are happening in parallel.
Time to repost the excellent compilation vid that @blssdwlf put together earlier this year - it shows how all the events can happen in the allotted 30 seconds countdown:
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