Star Trek: Questions you always wanted answers to

[Laspector]

But, other than just for burial purposes, why would they want the body? Not counting the out-of-order scenes, (which I did not know about) Spock's original body was dead from the radiation. Putting the Katra back in that body would do no good, it was dead beyond repair. Kirk and Company had no idea that Spock's body had been regenerated until they heard it from Saavik once they were already there.

As stated above, I don't think Kirk would risk everything just for the dead body to be returned to Vulcan. Unless somehow the Katra cannot be released unless it is in the presence of the body?

Also, why not just get the Grissom to retrieve the body? They were already going there. I know they weren't originally supposed to go down to the planet, but they could've beamed it up, maybe? Scanners should've been able to locate it. Kirk should've just asked for that first.

 

[Captain Dunsel]

But, other than just for burial purposes, why would they want the body? Not counting the out-of-order scenes, (which I did not know about) Spock's original body was dead from the radiation. Putting the Katra back in that body would do no good, it was dead beyond repair. Kirk and Company had no idea that Spock's body had been regenerated until they heard it from Saavik once they were already there.

As stated above, I don't think Kirk would risk everything just for the dead body to be returned to Vulcan. Unless somehow the Katra cannot be released unless it is in the presence of the body?

Also, why not just get the Grissom to retrieve the body? They were already going there. I know they weren't originally supposed to go down to the planet, but they could've beamed it up, maybe? Scanners should've been able to locate it. Kirk should've just asked for that first.

Absolutely agree on every point.

Why did they need the radiated and decaying corpse of Spock?? Did Sarek intend to regenerate / clone the body??

Why couldn’t they just journey straight to Vulcan and have McCoy “drop off” the Katra?

HUUUGE plot hole / hand waive, there….

 

[universaljoint]

Absolutely agree on every point.

Why did they need the radiated and decaying corpse of Spock?? Did Sarek intend to regenerate / clone the body??

Why couldn’t they just journey straight to Vulcan and have McCoy “drop off” the Katra?

HUUUGE plot hole / hand waive, there….

Sarek wanted Spock's body. It doesn't matter why. The Vulcans clearly were very culturally aware and practiced their traditions almost religiously.

I think that for the point of the plot, it was convenient that his body was re-animated back into the living. But that's just story telling hand waiving that's in almost everything.

And again, they didn't travel straight to Vulcan, because Sarek wanted the body brought back.

 

[universaljoint]

But, other than just for burial purposes, why would they want the body? Not counting the out-of-order scenes, (which I did not know about) Spock's original body was dead from the radiation. Putting the Katra back in that body would do no good, it was dead beyond repair. Kirk and Company had no idea that Spock's body had been regenerated until they heard it from Saavik once they were already there.

As stated above, I don't think Kirk would risk everything just for the dead body to be returned to Vulcan. Unless somehow the Katra cannot be released unless it is in the presence of the body?

Also, why not just get the Grissom to retrieve the body? They were already going there. I know they weren't originally supposed to go down to the planet, but they could've beamed it up, maybe? Scanners should've been able to locate it. Kirk should've just asked for that first.

There was nothing in the dialogue that suggested the Katra would be put back into the body for the purposes of repairing it.

It could have just been a very strong burial tradition. It was only in the convenience related to (the plot) Genesis reanimating Spock that allowed for the Katra to go back to restore him to his old self.

As for Grissom not doing it... Though there would be a disconnect in how the scenes were presented, perhaps the comms jamming actually started happening before Sarek could get through.

Though you're response about Grissom beaming it up was answered in the dialogue. It was against procedures at the time. Then shortly after Saavik and David beamed down, found the PHOTORP housing, and then went searching for the bio-readings, comms were jammed and Grissom soon destroyed. I.e., they probably would have beamed them all up if there were time after the landing party confirmed the safety of the lifeform.

Of couse why wouldn't Starfleet be concerned over the lack of comms to Grissom? That's my big plot hole issue. No other ships is the usual Trek Trope, and despite space being stupid huge, there must have been SOME ships within range. I mean, aside from Kirk stealing the Enterprise, there's no way that Excelsior was the ONLY ship around that they could have sent to at least investigate.

But we always have to take plot movement with a grain of salt. There's only so much explaining that can be done for anything sci-fi.

 

[Captain Dunsel]

There was nothing in the dialogue that suggested the Katra would be put back into the body for the purposes of repairing it.

It could have just been a very strong burial tradition. It was only in the convenience related to (the plot) Genesis reanimating Spock that allowed for the Katra to go back to restore him to his old self.

As for Grissom not doing it... Though there would be a disconnect in how the scenes were presented, perhaps the comms jamming actually started happening before Sarek could get through.

Though you're response about Grissom beaming it up was answered in the dialogue. It was against procedures at the time. Then shortly after Saavik and David beamed down, found the PHOTORP housing, and then went searching for the bio-readings, comms were jammed and Grissom soon destroyed. I.e., they probably would have beamed them all up if there were time after the landing party confirmed the safety of the lifeform.

Of couse why wouldn't Starfleet be concerned over the lack of comms to Grissom? That's my big plot hole issue. No other ships is the usual Trek Trope, and despite space being stupid huge, there must have been SOME ships within range. I mean, aside from Kirk stealing the Enterprise, there's no way that Excelsior was the ONLY ship around that they could have sent to at least investigate.

But we always have to take plot movement with a grain of salt. There's only so much explaining that can be done for anything sci-fi.

So….Kirk and crew decided to scuttle their careers and become criminals in order to deliver dead Spock’s body to Sarek? It would seem that would be an item for Sarek to sort out with the Federation as a TBD item.

I love Trek III but that makes no sense.

 

[universaljoint]

So….Kirk and crew decided to scuttle their careers and become criminals in order to deliver dead Spock’s body to Sarek? It would seem that would be an item for Sarek to sort out with the Federation as a TBD item.

I love Trek III but that makes no sense.

I can't imagine that anyone who's watched every Star Trek ep and movie wouldn't believe these characters would move the stars, short of harming anyone, to do anything for their close friends and colleagues. They lived in close quarters for years. Served together. Saved each other countless times (though we could count if we wanted to LOL). Though I think that there's no way those crimes would be deemed criminal by Star Trek standards.

There was a clear fierce loyalty to each other going back years to when they served together on the pre-refit Enterprise. And, they were still punished for their activities after The Voyage Home. And Spock illogically, but emotionally stood with them for the punishment he expected to applied to his friends. Because that's who they were.

I mean, that fierce loyalty to each other, transcending their duty, while trying to maintain the spirit of what Starfleet is, has always been a strong part of Star Trek. For all of Star Trek.

Sarek clearly, though for personal, traditional, or because of something he sensed, had an urgency to complete process of laying Spock's body and Katra to rest on Vulcan.

 

[Bloop]

Was the Katra the equivalent of The Holdo Manuever for Star Trek?

I mean, after SFS, any Vulcan simply needs to have their Katra dumped, temporarily, into someone and a clone body made…(you don’t need Genesis for that).

“Zip-zip-zoom! Hokus Pokus! Fal-tor-Pan—and you are a new you!!”

View attachment 1800202

Pretty much anyone in the Star Trek universe that has access to a transporter could extend their lives. We've seen the transporters fix all sorts of medical problems, store people's patterns for extended periods of time, and even clone individuals, including all their memories and personality. It's a storytelling problem that we have to ignore if you start looking too closely at things.

 

[universaljoint]

Pretty much anyone in the Star Trek universe that has access to a transporter could extend their lives. We've seen the transporters fix all sorts of medical problems, store people's patterns for extended periods of time, and even clone individuals, including all their memories and personality. It's a storytelling problem that we have to ignore if you start looking too closely at things.

I almost Completely agree with you (except for the transporters extending a life. If you mean like stasis, then yes, but to actual extend one's life, then no)... Especially with the older series of TOS, TNG, VOY, and DS9 when writers were pumping out 24-26 eps a year at 45 minutes each. There were bound to be some stinkers, inconsistency, and just all round silliness.

I don't think it's beyond reason that we just kind of ignore some things. I can't think of any series with such world building that does have any real cohesive rules that have been either created, and or adhered to. Even the few Trek rules in place have been ignored for the plot/ story telling purposes. Like with Enterprise. They really started throw the baby out with the bathwater in that series. I still really like Enterprise despite it.

Fun fact. This is the first time in my life that I've ever typed or said "throw the baby out with the bathwater"!

 

[Treadwell]

I think the timeline of events and dialogue very much support that the main characters know about Spock's body on Genesis .
Sarek clearly states that he's aware of Spock's body on Genesis

At Kirk's apartment:
SAREK: Why did you leave him on Genesis! Spock trusted you. You denied him his future!
Later in the apartment:
SAREK: One alive, one not. Yet both in pain.
KIRK: What must I do?
SAREK: You must bring them to Mount Seleya, ...on Vulcan. Only there can both find peace.
KIRK: What you ask ...is difficult.
SAREK: You will find a way, Kirk. ...If you honour them both, you must.

Key words: Bring Them

Coupled with the probability that Sarek was aware of Spock's PHOTORP having been found on Genesis just prior to the BOP jamming their comms, it was clear that Sarek had surmised that the body survived the impact and therefore explains his comments at Kirk's place.

We don't know exactly how much time took place between the initial discovery in the scene before Sarek arrived at Kirk's. Even if it was just hours, the timeline fits. Sarek had a vested interest in everything Genesis. His position would have afforded him high level clearance for information.

It makes sense.

Why Genenis? Because Sarek knew Spock's body was there. But the missing piece of his puzzle was the Katra. That of course was cleared up in the apartment scenes.

The real question is: Why didn't Sarek's position afford him more influence to retrieve Spock's body officially? I can only assume he presumed his request would be denied for some odd reason. It is what it is.

THEM is McCoy and the katra. Spock's katra finds peace in whatever it is they do with katras normally, and McCoy has peace by not having a second consciousness in his head. A body doesn't need peace.

 

[universaljoint]

But, other than just for burial purposes, why would they want the body? Not counting the out-of-order scenes, (which I did not know about) Spock's original body was dead from the radiation. Putting the Katra back in that body would do no good, it was dead beyond repair. Kirk and Company had no idea that Spock's body had been regenerated until they heard it from Saavik once they were already there.

As stated above, I don't think Kirk would risk everything just for the dead body to be returned to Vulcan. Unless somehow the Katra cannot be released unless it is in the presence of the body?

Also, why not just get the Grissom to retrieve the body? They were already going there. I know they weren't originally supposed to go down to the planet, but they could've beamed it up, maybe? Scanners should've been able to locate it. Kirk should've just asked for that first.

 

[universaljoint]

THEM is McCoy and the katra. Spock's katra finds peace in whatever it is they do with katras normally, and McCoy has peace by not having a second consciousness in his head. A body doesn't need peace.

Them is Spock, and McCoy (who is carrying Spock's Katra). McCoy and the Katra are one at that point in time.

Sarek very clearly refers to Spock's body ON Genesis... Then says to bring them to Vulcan. He wouldn't refer to Spock's body, then say them, but NOT mean Spock.

At Kirk's apartment:
SAREK: Why did you leave him on Genesis! Spock trusted you. You denied him his future!
Later in the apartment:
SAREK: One alive, one not. Yet both in pain.
KIRK: What must I do?
SAREK: You must bring them to Mount Seleya, ...on Vulcan. Only there can both find peace.
KIRK: What you ask ...is difficult.
SAREK: You will find a way, Kirk. ...If you honour them both, you must.

 

[Captain Dunsel]

I think we can all agree that the writing regarding the need to bring Spock’s carcass to Vulcan, when neither Kirk nor Sarek knew he had been regenerated, was VERY poorly executed and made zero sense. It would have made more sense for Bones and Kirk to simply book a flight on Southwest, or British Airways straight to Vulcan to do whatever normally is done with Katras. The reason behind the stealing of the Enterprise to take a forbidden side quest to Genesis to search for Spock is never explained.

Again, I say this as someone who is a lover of Trek III and routinely leverage it as an argument against the “all the odd numbered films are bad” perspective.

Harve Bennett was no Nicholas Meyer, as writers go…

 

[universaljoint]

I think we can all agree that the writing regarding the need to bring Spock’s carcass to Vulcan, when neither Kirk nor Sarek knew he had been regenerated, was VERY poorly executed and made zero sense. It would have made more sense for Bones and Kirk to simply book a flight on Southwest, or British Airways straight to Vulcan to do whatever normally is done with Katras. The reason behind the stealing of the Enterprise to take a forbidden side quest to Genesis to search for Spock is never explained.

Again, I say this as someone who is a lover of Trek III and routinely leverage it as an argument against the “all the odd numbered films are bad” perspective.

Harve Bennett was no Nicholas Meyer, as writers go…

No, we don't all agree that bringing Spock's body back to Vulcan made no sense.

It was quite clear that it was VERY important to Sarek that his body and Katra be returned to Vulcan.

Saying it makes no sense is like saying it's senseless to return a lost soldier's remains home to a family today. People expend a LOT of resources and money to get the peace they feel with that return.


After putting it like that, if you still find it senseless, that's you and whomever agrees with you. But it's not everyone.

 

[Captain Dunsel]

No, we don't all agree that bringing Spock's body back to Vulcan made no sense.

It was quite clear that it was VERY important to Sarek that his body and Katra be returned to Vulcan.

Saying it makes no sense is like saying it's senseless to return a lost soldier's remains home to a family today. People expend a LOT of resources and money to get the peace they feel with that return.


After putting it like that, if you still find it senseless, that's you and whomever agrees with you. But it's not everyone.

I’ll yield on those points.

 

[Lightning]

except for the transporters extending a life. If you mean like stasis, then yes, but to actual extend one's life, then no)...

just replicate the accident from Rascals, calibrated for 18 years old.

 

[Riceball]

I almost Completely agree with you (except for the transporters extending a life. If you mean like stasis, then yes, but to actual extend one's life, then no)... Especially with the older series of TOS, TNG, VOY, and DS9 when writers were pumping out 24-26 eps a year at 45 minutes each. There were bound to be some stinkers, inconsistency, and just all round silliness.

I don't think it's beyond reason that we just kind of ignore some things. I can't think of any series with such world building that does have any real cohesive rules that have been either created, and or adhered to. Even the few Trek rules in place have been ignored for the plot/ story telling purposes. Like with Enterprise. They really started throw the baby out with the bathwater in that series. I still really like Enterprise despite it.

Fun fact. This is the first time in my life that I've ever typed or said "throw the baby out with the bathwater"!

Theoretically, transporters could make you effectively immortal or at least as long-lived as Elves are in a lot of fiction. Since the transporters have a detailed record of you at the time of transport, when you beam back you'd just have the transporter reassemble your body the way it was at the time you beamed out and ignore any and all effects of aging that has occurred between beaming from point A to point B.

 

[Astyanax]

Theoretically, transporters could make you effectively immortal or at least as long-lived as Elves are in a lot of fiction. Since the transporters have a detailed record of you at the time of transport, when you beam back you'd just have the transporter reassemble your body the way it was at the time you beamed out and ignore any and all effects of aging that has occurred between beaming from point A to point B.

Yep! That is exactly how they saved Dr. Pulaski in TNG Season 2. All they needed was a sample of yesterday's DNA.

This is why I think Picard Season 3 has a sly nod to that when it turns out that the transporters were the vector for doing something bad across all of Starfleet.

I also appreciate that Seth McFarlane left transporters out of The Orville.

 

[Riceball]

No, we don't all agree that bringing Spock's body back to Vulcan made no sense.

It was quite clear that it was VERY important to Sarek that his body and Katra be returned to Vulcan.

Saying it makes no sense is like saying it's senseless to return a lost soldier's remains home to a family today. People expend a LOT of resources and money to get the peace they feel with that return.


After putting it like that, if you still find it senseless, that's you and whomever agrees with you. But it's not everyone.

Except that people don't risk careers and steal planes or ships to retrieve the remains of a fallen comrade in the real world.

In the case of STIII, if retrieving Spock's remains was so important, why couldn't Sarek have contacted Starfleet Command and asked them to retrieve them for him? But that still brings up the question of how they even knew that there were any remains to be recovered. Presumably, they would have been either destroyed entering the Genesis planet's atmosphere or during the process of the Genesis planet's forming.

 

[Astyanax]

But that still brings up the question of how they even knew that there were any remains to be recovered. Presumably, they would have been either destroyed entering the Genesis planet's atmosphere or during the process of the Genesis planet's forming.

They knew because the Grissom transmitted to Starfleet that Spock's tube had been located on Genesis.

 

[blewis17]

Why would anyone even think Spock's body was there? By all accounts it should've burned up in the atmosphere. Even David and Saavik were surprised to find the torpedo tube. And when Saavik announces to Kirk that there is "a certain Vulcan" there, he seems surprised.

Well, it never made sense to me that the Enterprise crew jetisoned Spock's body at the Genesis planetoid in the first place. Why wouldn't they keep the body in the Enterprise morgue, and deliver it Spock's family/Sarek, or at the very LEAST deliver it to the Vulcan Starfleet representative, for a proper Vulcan burial/ceremony?

And they gutted a torpedo tube to place the body inside it.... why? On a starship with hundreds of crew members, a medical bay and the ability to perform surgical procedures, you know they had coffins on board. Or at the very least, the ship's replicators could create one as needed. The torpedo seems to be a plot device, just so they could shoot his body into the void. Unless this was standard Starfleet procedure (to jettison dead crewmates when on a mission, when away from a Starfleet member world or space station for an extended period of time).

...And then there was NO representation of Spock's Vulcan identity at the funeral. Kirk spoke briefly about how HUMAN Spock ultimately was. Amazing Grace was played, on the bagpipes. Which is a Christian, Western Society tradition (I know, bagpipes come from Scotland/Europe). Amazing Grace is a 100% relatively modern Christian song that speaks about overcoming life's troubles with divine help, and ultimately the promise of eternal life in Heaven with God. It would be highly inappropriate to use this song at his funeral, UNLESS:
1) Spock had converted to Christianity, or...
2) They lyrics had been changed over the years, to remove the religious connotation, or...
3) Spock just liked the song and would have wanted it to be played at his funeral (we later learn in ST 6 that Spock had a painting of the Expulsion from Paradise in his private quarters... he referenced it as an Earth myth that reminded him that all things end).


...And even though the torpedo tube did not somehow disintegrate on atmospheric entry on the Genesis planetoid... it didn't have thrusters to help it decelerate or even "land", and it would have CRASHED into the ocean or land, and certainly been shredded to smithereens at impact.

...And even though it DID survive its crash landing, the corpse inside most certainly would NOT HAVE remained intact. It would have been green fleshy goo and pulverized bones inside the torpedo tube.

..And since a Vulcan's Katra was a known "thing" in the Vulcan society, then the only way Sarek would have known to seek Kirk and read him the riot act would be because it WAS commonly (or at least, not infrequently) acted upon to somehow preserve the deceased Vulcan's mind/spirit/essence. But there's no indication that Spock's Katra communicated with Sarek for Sarek to be aware of what was really going on... because Sarek didn't know any of the details. Kirk didn't know what Sarek was talking about, which meant that probably NO HUMAN would know about the Katra... which means that Sarek should not have been upset with Kirk for not knowing about some private, ancient Vulcan ritual that was never discussed with outsiders.

...and exactly HOW was this used in day to day Vulcan society? Grandma is on her death bed, so she does a quick mind meld with a family member to pass on her spirit... and then what? Did the recipient now have their relative's mind living inside of them?

The closest I THINK we got was when Sarek mind melded with Picard, and then Picard allowed Spock to mind meld with him and experience Sarek's sssence/mind/Katra ??? So, did Picard possess the mind of Sarek, and then hand it over to Spock?