Wrath of Khan questions

Best Trek film. But I digress. Answer me these questions three.

1) Sensors are inoperable due to the Mutara Nebula. They don’t know where each other are. Why not Just look out the window? Clearly sensors are worse at "sensing" than basic eyesight is. Look! There they are!



2) Why does a Vulcan funeral feature an English song played by Scottish bagpipes?

3) And isn't it a bit harsh just shooting Spock out the nearest torpedo tube rather than taking him home and informing his family? I bet that was an awkward conversation when the got back to Vulcan and/or Earth.

P.S. These aren't really questions.

I'll take a stab at answering these. ("From Hell's heart, I stab at these questions!")

1. I imagine the size of the starships is a factor. Unlike driving a car, where you can look out the windows in all direction by turning your head, any bulkhead "window" is only going to face one way; to look all around the starship, you need to run around the edge of the vessel, or have everyone on board stop what they're doing (as in leave their battle stations) to go look out the nearest window and let the bridge know if they see anything coming. And even then, the starships likely don't have windows facing "up" or "down" - their best bet might have been to send out some shuttlecrafts so their crews could try to "look in all directions" like you can do in a car (at least in a shuttlecraft you can look in three of six general directions).

2. I doubt Scotty played the bagpipes at Spock's formal request; it was likely just a showing of respect on Scotty's part. He'd likely do the same at any of the bridge crew's funerals.

3. This was no doubt the outer space equivalent of burial at sea. And, from a writing standpoint, if they didn't jettison Spock's body out a torpedo tube, he couldn't have been subsequently reborn in the next movie on the Genesis planet. (Um, spoilers?)

But if you're just picking nits for fun, some other questions might be:

4. How did Khan recognize Chekov (as he stated when they met at the beginning of the movie) when Chekov wasn't even part of the USS Enterprise crew at the time of "The Space Seed," the episode which introduced Khan and his genetic supermen?

5. Don't Kirk and Spock know that "homemade codes" are frowned upon when discussing classified information in the clear - such as their impromptu "hours seem like days" comment when discussing how long it will take to repair the Enterprise? And if Khan's so smart, why didn't he pick up on it?

I'm with you on "best Trek film," though. And by far.

Johnathan

P.S. - Oh, throwing a P.S. onto your post after asking us to answer? No fair!

to be fair, the bagpipes were Scottys contribution to the funeral, I suspect he insisted and refused to take no for an answer -

as to the burial in space, perhaps thats Federation protocol to guard against the spread of alien infection to Federation worlds

and windows, yes star ship windows are a problem...

If this was a Federation ship from Star Fleet Battles instead of from a Star Trek movie, they could have put Spock's body in the Photon Freezer box for transport home, I suppose.

Looking out the window only works at distances that would be point-blank range anyway.

Does this Enterprise even have windows?

Eltab said:

If this was a Federation ship from Star Fleet Battles instead of from a Star Trek movie, they could have put Spock's body in the Photon Freezer box for transport home, I suppose.

Looking out the window only works at distances that would be point-blank range anyway.

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The picture shows the range. It’s pretty close!

trappedslider said:

Does this Enterprise even have windows?

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You can see them all over it. And Kirk’s cabin certainly has one.

1) Someone forgot to activate the visual sensors (ie. open the curtains).
2) What, everyone doesn't appreciate the "wake the dead" nature of bagpipes?
3) You expect the Vulcans to be both logical and efficient, but they're only logical. Klingons are efficient.

Morrus said:

1) Sensors are inoperable due to the Mutara Nebula. They don’t know where each other are. Why not Just look out the window? Clearly sensors are worse at "sensing" than basic eyesight is. Look! There they are

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I imagine that shot is for the audience more than a realistic portrayal of what the visuals would actually be. So the audience can tell what's happening.
In a foggy day you're lucky to have visibility of a few city blocks, and this is farther away than that.

Also, if you look at images of the refit enterprise, there are mostly windows on the side of the hull. They don't really face down. In that shot, it's akin to standing at the window of a ten story building and looking down to the street. The angle isn't favourable.

(Which is TV fiction anyway, as nebula are big and only look as bright as they do because of their distance from us. They'd be practically invisible at close range.)

They also wouldn't *need* to be as close as they are in most of the shots. Their weapons have ranges measured in kilometers.

Morrus said:

And isn't it a bit harsh just shooting Spock out the nearest torpedo tube rather than taking him home and informing his family? I bet that was an awkward conversation when the got back to Vulcan and/or Earth.

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Starfleet custom equating to burial at sea?

Jester David said:

I imagine that shot is for the audience more than a realistic portrayal of what the visuals would actually be. So the audience can tell what's happening.
In a foggy day you're lucky to have visibility of a few city blocks, and this is farther away than that.

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I find the suggestion that what you can see on the screen isn’t what’s happening fairly tenuous. There’s nothing to suggest that the movie is suddenly switching into an odd “this is a representational graphic for the audience’s informational purposes only and does not represent the actual sight” mode.

The more likely explanation is that it’s just a weird inconsistency in the film.

Also, if you look at images of the refit enterprise, there are mostly windows on the side of the hull. They don't really face down. In that shot, it's akin to standing at the window of a ten story building and looking down to the street. The angle isn't favourable.

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Ah, I see the misunderstanding. When I said “look out the window” I was being silly. More specifically, the concept I was failing to communicate with my attempt at humour was “the sensors are less good at sensing than my eyes are - look!”

(Which is TV fiction anyway, as nebula are big and only look as bright as they do because of their distance from us. They'd be practically invisible at close range.)

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Yeah, I know.

They also wouldn't *need* to be as close as they are in most of the shots. Their weapons have ranges measured in kilometers.

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It doesn’t really matter how far they *need* to be. We can *see* how far they are from each other. Whether they need to be or not, they are very close to each other.

Starfleet custom equating to burial at sea?

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Yeah, probably. My curiosity was it was quick. While in wartime sometimes sea burials are held quickly so the vessel can continue fighting, in peacetime you’d expect the family to be involved in some way. Just feels like they just fired him out the nearest torpedo tube, then went home!