Star Trek: Questions you always wanted answers to

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I started watching V and every time, unless I'm missing something, I can't see how Spock's brother manages to get control of the entire ship with just a handful of armed people. I could see if they had actually started bringing his people up, but it doesn't make sense. I get that once he's one the bridge and broadcasts that he has some weird ability to manipulate people, but I would have thought Scotty would have alerted the entire ship that armed intruders were in the docking bay!

 

[Gregatron]

I started watching V and every time, unless I'm missing something, I can't see how Spock's brother manages to get control of the entire ship with just a handful of armed people. I could see if they had actually started bringing his people up, but it doesn't make sense. I get that once he's one the bridge and broadcasts that he has some weird ability to manipulate people, but I would have thought Scotty would have alerted the entire ship that armed intruders were in the docking bay!

The ship does have a skeleton crew at the time (or less than, as Scotty notes). It’s a plot point established at the beginning of the film, most certainly to help justify the takeover.

 

[Lightning]

What bothers me most about III is that the Genesis Planet looks like a sound stage. If only they had the budget for location shooting.

 

[NeoRutty]

Btw I also really enjoyed the “Motion Picture”… with its 3.5 minutes ship model fanfare and casual attire.

Love Bones and his disco wear.

It was boring in the best way…

So far the one I’ve liked the most…

 

[NeoRutty]

What bothers me most about III is that the Genesis Planet looks like a sound stage. If only they had the budget for location shooting.

The matte paintings in Kahn for that genesis room they had were some of the worst I’ve never seen.

Didn’t even look like correct perspective….

Somehow I found it charming anyway. Crap 80’s effects don’t bump for me

Kinda helps with these that I watched the entire 60’s run a while back and it feels in-line with that…

 

[Captain Dunsel]

Btw I also really enjoyed the “Motion Picture”…

So far the one I’ve liked the most…

You, sir, have impeccable taste.

The Motion Picture is the best cinematic presentation of Trek yet produced.

It’s also the one that has gotten better with age.

 

[somerset fox]

Riddle me this: how do objects travel around the galaxy, visiting various solar systems, seemingly at sub light speed? V’Ger, The Nexus, the Whale Probe. There was no indication that they travelled at warp speed so should have taken centuries to arrive. Also, The Nexus; a ribbon of energy seemingly not being studied, or investigated by Starfleet. you’d have thought a reality bending phenomena would have had scientists all over it, but it passes through the galaxy every few decade without notice. Why?

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

I have been inculcated in Trek literally my whole life. My parents were first-generation Trekkies, and so the reruns were a weekly part of my existence from before memory. It took longer to latch on with me than Star Wars and Transformers. I didn't dislike it, but it required more attention and active thought than elementary-school-aged me could muster. It started clicking around the time I was ten, and rapidly carried me away. Star Trek IV came along when I was twelve and knocked me over the ledge that I was teetering on into full-on Trekkie-dom, and TNG premiered the following Fall, which squared and cubed it for me.

And, because my parents are engineers and I inherited the hardwiring that leads to that, I've skewed hard toward the technical side of things from early on. Logistics and engineering and timeline matters and science and all of that -- I'm in there.

I've spent the last three-plus decades figuring out how to make things work, how to make them fit... I've used proper research methodology when those working on the shows and movies haven't, and come to evidence-based conclusions that clash with official lore. I've made almost everything work, sometimes even when I have to close one eye, tilt my head, and squint to do so. One of the things I always hate to do is give up on rationalizing or retconning something, and just acknowledge that the writers didn't know -- or care -- what they were doing.

So recognize how hard it is for me to say this: V'Ger, the Whalesong Probe, and the Nexus make no sense.

V'Ger, in the original version of TMP, was generating an energy cloud "over eighty-two AUs in diameter", with energy readings almost off the scale. That size got scaled down somewhat in the Director's Edition to "merely" over two AUs in diameter. They tracked it moving from Klingon space into Federation space on "a precise heading for Earth". But the whole time it was, as you said, moving sublight. No indication it was warping space or tunnelling or any sort of go-faster tech.

The Whalesong Probe also was not moving FTL, for the Saratoga to intercept and scan it. When the ship had its power knocked out and started drifting, the Probe was still poking along -- it didn't immediately zip off at zuperluminal velocity.

Both of those were presumably making their way to Earth from wherever for over a century. The race that sent the Probe needed the lag time for the outgoing whalesong to stop reaching them before then sent it. And we don't know how long it took the "machine planet" that found V'Ger to build that ship around it and sent it back where it came from.

The "Solar Neighborhood" is roughly five hundred light-years radius from Sol. With the exception of Rigel, all the individual stars we can see are closer than that. FJ took a lot of that into consideration when he did his Technical Manual in the '70s. Greg Mandel likewise when he did his Star Charts. The fact that Rigel is so far away presents problems I won't get into here. But that means if V'Ger and the Whalesong Probe were traveling sublight, they could only come from a couple hundred light-years away, at most. And the fact that none of the races we know seems to have ever stumbled onto those planets is a stretch. But it could happen. They're just problematic as hell.

The Nexus is far, far worse, though. It circles the galaxy every 39.1 years. Which means, with the circumference out around where we are being about 314,000 light-years, the Nexus is booking it at about 8,035 light-years per year -- or warp 9.99, TNG scale. While it was certainly energetic, it also wasn't moving faster than light any of the times that we saw it. I highly doubt it would slow down when people were about and then piff off again at ludicrous speeds.

 

[somerset fox]

So recognize how hard it is for me to say this: V'Ger, the Whalesong Probe, and the Nexus make no sense.

V'Ger, in the original version of TMP, was generating an energy cloud "over eighty-two AUs in diameter", with energy readings almost off the scale. That size got scaled down somewhat in the Director's Edition to "merely" over two AUs in diameter. They tracked it moving from Klingon space into Federation space on "a precise heading for Earth". But the whole time it was, as you said, moving sublight. No indication it was warping space or tunnelling or any sort of go-faster tech.

The Whalesong Probe also was not moving FTL, for the Saratoga to intercept and scan it. When the ship had its power knocked out and started drifting, the Probe was still poking along -- it didn't immediately zip off at zuperluminal velocity.

Both of those were presumably making their way to Earth from wherever for over a century. The race that sent the Probe needed the lag time for the outgoing whalesong to stop reaching them before then sent it. And we don't know how long it took the "machine planet" that found V'Ger to build that ship around it and sent it back where it came from.

The "Solar Neighborhood" is roughly five hundred light-years radius from Sol. With the exception of Rigel, all the individual stars we can see are closer than that. FJ took a lot of that into consideration when he did his Technical Manual in the '70s. Greg Mandel likewise when he did his Star Charts. The fact that Rigel is so far away presents problems I won't get into here. But that means if V'Ger and the Whalesong Probe were traveling sublight, they could only come from a couple hundred light-years away, at most. And the fact that none of the races we know seems to have ever stumbled onto those planets is a stretch. But it could happen. They're just problematic as hell.

The Nexus is far, far worse, though. It circles the galaxy every 39.1 years. Which means, with the circumference out around where we are being about 314,000 light-years, the Nexus is booking it at about 8,035 light-years per year -- or warp 9.99, TNG scale. While it was certainly energetic, it also wasn't moving faster than light any of the times that we saw it. I highly doubt it would slow down when people were about and then piff off again at ludicrous speeds.

Exactly!!!

 

[Gregatron]

Sulu notes that V’Ger has “slowed to subwarp speed” when it approaches Earth.

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

Sulu notes that V’Ger has “slowed to subwarp speed” when it approaches Earth.

Yep. But it was never shown -- alone, patterning the Klingons, patterning the Epsilon IX station, or encountering the Enterprise, to be moving at warp.

 

[Gregatron]

Yep. But it was never shown -- alone, patterning the Klingons, patterning the Epsilon IX station, or encountering the Enterprise, to be moving at warp.

Does Sulu's statement not clearly indicate that it HAD been moving at warp, under its own power, until it arrived at Earth?

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

Yes. It is a literal contradiction between narrative slugs and dialogue in the script. If the cloud were supposed to be moving at warp, there should have been some indication that the visuals should reflect this. There should be even one other line of dialogue, from the Klingons, from the Epsilon IX tech, from Sulu saying they've pulled abeam and have matched warp velocities with the intruder -- something to compensate for the utter absence of visual cues.

Instead, we have the Enterprise pulling right up nose-to-nose with the cloud, when they'd have to be REVERSING at warp to not be steamrolled by it if IT'S travelling FTL.

It just doesn't work as presented.

 

[Gregatron]

Yes. It is a literal contradiction between narrative slugs and dialogue in the script. If the cloud were supposed to be moving at warp, there should have been some indication that the visuals should reflect this. There should be even one other line of dialogue, from the Klingons, from the Epsilon IX tech, from Sulu saying they've pulled abeam and have matched warp velocities with the intruder -- something to compensate for the utter absence of visual cues.

Instead, we have the Enterprise pulling right up nose-to-nose with the cloud, when they'd have to be REVERSING at warp to not be steamrolled by it if IT'S travelling FTL.

It just doesn't work as presented.

Is it not possible that the line of dialogue was written to allow the audience to logically conclude that V'Ger was traveling at warp, rather than employing yet another expensive visual effects shot to actually show it? In a film already well over budget and in a serious time-crunch?

I see nothing wrong with the occasional "tell, don't show" moment. TOS proper has plenty of them, after all.

 

[pengbuzz]

Yes. It is a literal contradiction between narrative slugs and dialogue in the script. If the cloud were supposed to be moving at warp, there should have been some indication that the visuals should reflect this. There should be even one other line of dialogue, from the Klingons, from the Epsilon IX tech, from Sulu saying they've pulled abeam and have matched warp velocities with the intruder -- something to compensate for the utter absence of visual cues.

Instead, we have the Enterprise pulling right up nose-to-nose with the cloud, when they'd have to be REVERSING at warp to not be steamrolled by it if IT'S travelling FTL.

It just doesn't work as presented.

IIRC, Kirk had them do a "conic intercept course"; Gene Roddenberry described it in the movie novel:

"The conic interception to be used would see them passing to one side, but always with the "nose" of the Enterprise headed at the center of the strange cloud. Thus, as Enterprise passed the cloud, the starship would be traveling sideways but still heading directly toward it until the starship's path took it in directly behind the cloud, almost as if attached by a rubber string. Once behind the cloud, Enterprise could overtake it from the rear, permitting Kirk to appraoch as slowly or as rapidly as he chose. To anyone looking out the nose of the starship, the conic interception would make it appear that they had always been approaching the cloud head-on, but more and more slowly.

The Klingons had not intercepted the cloud this way. Kirk hoped that any star-travelling intelligence would immediately understand the Enterprise maneuver for the peaceful interception that it was"

-Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, pg. 141-142. ©1979 Pocket Books.

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

So the Enterprise is slewing sideways around the cloud at warp? That all reads like a sublight maneuver.

It's part of the problem of writing the thing. If the machine planet was 280 light-years away in a part of the galaxy we haven't mapped yet, and V'Ger had been heading back toward Earth sublight, it would've taken this long to get there. With the original size of the cloud, the dozen-mile-long ship was generating an energy field more than twice the size of the Solar system. The entire thing out to heliopause. Rather than a rogue planet, that would be a rogue star system moving through space. Hard to avoid detection, especially as it closer to where there are people flying around.

In the revised version, even the ~185,000,000-mile-diameter of the cloud is obscene. That's still bigger than even a largish star. That's the size of the Earth's orbit, in roughly spherical form. How it didn't collapse under its mass -- 82-AU or 2-AU version -- I do not know.

Be that as it may, that line from Sulu always struck me as odd because the cloud had never looked to have been travelling at warp. Yes they were over-schedule and over-budget and had had to change effects houses because RA&A was taking way too long and yes Bob had to drop whole effects sequences in uncut to be able to make it to the premiere with the one existing print in-hand. But I lay the problem more at the feet of Paramount and the battle between Gene and Harold. The script was a mess, with the two re-writing and re-re-writing each other constantly. Revised pages would arrive on-set for a shot to be filmed that afternoon, only to have a later revision come in from the other later still. That the story is as cohesive as it is is a miracle.

But one hill I'll die on is that V'Ger was not shown to be moving FTL ever. It was sublight when the Klingons were attacking. Why? It's an energy cloud twice the size of a typical star system. It didn't even need to slow down. I guess it found them curious and worthy of storing in its memory. I can accept the same for the comm station. I can accept that it stopped to assess the Enterprise. But it needed to have been conveyed at least in dialogue. I agree "tell, don't show" can work when you're over-budget.

A little bit of dialogue on Epsilon IX would have gone a long way. have the tech observe that once it was done with the Klingons, the whole cloud had accelerated to warp speed and would pass through into Federation territory not too far from them. Have the Commander express incredulity at something that size moving at warp. Have dialogue on the bridge that they have reached i.p. with the intruder and it seems to have stopped to figure out what they were. Then, once they're in V'Ger's tractor beam, let one of the last sensor readings they can get indicate the ship as gone back to warp.

Yes, we have the countdown dialogue for when it'll reach Earth, but that clashes with the visuals. We needed just a little bit more.

And that still doesn't address the Whalesong Probe or the Nexus.

 

[robn1]

In the Cinefex article on STTMP John Dykstra mentioned that he thought V'ger should appear to be traveling at warp but they gave the production what they asked for.

I was more bothered by the multi-plane star effects in TWOK even when the ships were at sublight.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

Did anyone else notice the cat dancer's screams in V sound like James Brown? They had to have sampled him from "I Got You" singing "Whoa!" for the start of her cat scream.

 

[Ron]

The matte paintings in Kahn for that genesis room they had were some of the worst I’ve never seen.

Didn’t even look like correct perspective….

Somehow I found it charming anyway. Crap 80’s effects don’t bump for me

Kinda helps with these that I watched the entire 60’s run a while back and it feels in-line with that…

Wait until you see the Bird of Prey parked on Vulcan in part IV.

 

[Captain Dunsel]

Wait until you see the Bird of Prey parked on Vulcan in part IV.

Star Trek IV, of all the Classic films, has aged the worst of the series…from the horrible soundtrack that sounds like it was patched together from commercial bumpers performed by the house band from Saturday Night Live, circa 1984…to the bland and flat cinematography…to the dramatically dated 1986 setting.

Of all the classic films, Trek IV gets about one viewing every 8-10 years, by me.