Star Trek by the Minute 085: Ample Nacelles
Walking around the shuttlecraft, Scotty offers: "So, the Enterprise has had it's maiden voyage has it?" It's a minor quibble, but fleet personnel would seem more likely to say "her" and "she" rather than "it's" and "it" when referring to a ship, especially in a sentence regarding a "maiden" voyage.
Still slurring from the ale, Scotty adds: "She is one well-endowed lady! I'd like to get my hands on her ample nacelles if you'll pardon the engineering parlance..." following Kirk and Spock through a side hatch.
Cutting to the interior, Spock sits at a dusty computer console and begins typing as Scotty continues "...except the thing is, even if I believed you, right? Where you're from, what I've done, which I don't by the way...You're still talking about beaming aboard the Enterprise while she's traveling faster than light without a proper receiving pad."
While it is possible that there was conversation between "parlance..." and "...except", what appears onscreen suggests that this was essentially just a pause, and the audience is given no clue that any time has elapsed. If what was shown onscreen matched what happened in the story, Kirk and Spock had not been talking about beaming aboard the Enterprise, as far anyone in the audience can tell, and those who are trying to make sense of the story and stay in the film? They are left stranded yet again.
Scott walks over toward Kirk and sees his crewmate Keenser sitting on a shelf and interrupts himself to say "Get off there! It's not a climbing frame!"
With a Han Solo homage/ripoff, Scotty tears a piece of the shuttle's interior bulkhead absently, while pontificating: "The notion of transwarp beaming is like trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet, whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse." Returning to look over Spock's shoulder, he asks: "What's that?"
Scotty sits, gawks drunkenly at the screen for nearly 3 seconds, and gasps: "Imagine that - it never occurred to me to think of space as the thing that was moving."Kirk approaches Spock and says "You're coming with us, right?" Um, coming with who? Kirk is the one who Spock claims mysteriously "must" be returned to the Enterprise, yet Scotty and Keenser would seem to have alot of engineering yet to do at the station. The outpost still appears unable to communicate with anyone or detect anything going on around it. anything going on right in front of it, much less around it, like fleet-sized battles, planetary distress calls that cross the Federation, destruction of entire planets, etc. Simply leaving would be a direct violation of orders, not to mention abandoning your post during an emergency which appears to be the closest undamaged base to a disaster area. If Keenser or Montgomery Scott left, they would properly be court-martialed, just as should Robau, George Kirk, Pike, and nuSpock each for abandoning their respective duties during an emergency.
Spock prime, getting even more religious, claims: "No Jim, that is not my destiny." Kirk repeats quite rightly with incredulity "Your dest...?" Then he points out: "The other Spock is not gonna believe me, only you can explain what has happened."
While his statement is untrue that *only* old Spock can explain, it would be the most sensible course of action. Old Spock is relatively current on Nero, he may also be the only individual who can save the Federation based on his encyclopedic knowledge of future technology, and is undoubtedly the best option for convincing nuSpock to resign his command and accomplishing the nonsensical, but stated goal of "returning" Kirk to the Enterprise as its Captain in part of an on-again, off-again inconsistency about whether the timeline needs to be changed or preserved at any cost (which has been already explained in detail as an impossibility by nuSpock. Someone either changed a basic premise of the plot halfway through, it seems, resulting in conflicting scenes shot out of order, or they never had a coherent setting for the film and just made up whatever seemed good around the time of filming
No women speak or appear in this segment.
In our next episode of Star Trek by the Minute 086: Regulation Six One Nine, old Spock crams almost as many ignorant logical fallacies, mistakes and impossibilities into as few seconds as any footage in the film.
Comments
Going back as far as you care to recall, the captain and crew of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) have ALWAYS been rogues and Federation policy-breakers.
Scarcely an episode ever aired in which James Kirk, Mr. Spock, Leonard McCoy, Montgomery Scott and the rest DID NOT violate the none-too-holy "Prime Directive," that foremost StarFleet regulation FORBIDDING contact with primitive civilizations, lest future-shock skew the natural development of said civilization, or bring it crashing down altogether.
Hell, James KIrk wiped his ass on the Prime Directive with regularity. You would think that this infraction alone would be worthy of the death penalty, even by the Federation's decidedly lax standards. I mean, damnation, Kirk would go storming in and destroy whole religions, destroy planet-wide Internet access, kidnap and seduce a queen, install a new Constitution...
And they made him an Admiral.
So, let's not fool ourselves into believing that Star Trek EVER adhered to such trivial concepts as logic or continuity or common sense. It didn't. That was its beauty, that was its allure.
I mean, criticizing the logic and continuity of "Star Trek" is like holding "Doctor Who" to some high level of dramatic excellence. LOL
If you really mean to say "the crew of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) have ALWAYS been rogues and Federation policy-breakers" we must conclude logically that that they NEVER follow normal operational rules and Federation policy. Is that really the claim you intend, or would a more measured rewording of your claim better reflect your intent?
I remember the PD as dealing with "non-interference" rather than prohibiting mere "contact", although I agree that the writing was inconsistent.
I'm afraid I can't agree with the claim that TOS never attempted to be consistent, nor do I think it fair to object to such egregious disregard for logical consistency in one film which had enormous resources by appealing to what, in relative terms, are the kind of minor errors one ought to expect on a starved budget within a hostile studio environment by people breaking new ground.