Star Trek by the Minute 100: I Gotcha

The phaser battle continues with one Romulan after another dropping in flames, until we see a new gadget in phaser technology as Kirk switches his weapon from "red-kill" to "blue-stun", and with a smirking shot, (perhaps his leering is at the thought of his victim's upcoming telepathic rape at the hand and mind of Spock?) takes down yet another Romulan crewman with yet another perfect shot.

Spock approaches and in reply to Kirk's promise "I'll cover ya" asks: "Are you certain?"  With a decent Sarah Palin impression, Kirk affirms: "Yeah, I gotcha."

I like the idea of building coordination of their actions for a great, long term partnership but this near telepathic matching of their actions and intent on how to proceed is too sudden, has no explanation, and is completely inappropriate given their previously discussed plan.  The purpose in Spock being aboard the Narada was claimed that he would be able to access the computers given the similarity of Vulcan & Romulan languages.  A more reasonable plan would have had the xeno-linguistics expert Uhura (familiar with "All three dialects" of Romulan) accompany the best computer expert - which could plausibly be considered Spock, or Kirk if he had been presented as the hacker genius as claimed in the Kobayashi Maru sim.
 
Since reasonableness of plot and common sense dialog, morality, and most of science were tossed out the external space hatch long ago, we have Kirk and Spock now mind raping the unconscious Romulan like a well skilled wolf pack.  A mind meld at this point should be very unfruitful, since the Romulan's mind is not operating when he's unconscious, but perhaps Spock's meld is sufficiently strong to rip the information out of his victims skull like TOS mind scanner used on Organia.  Imitating the worse villains Roddenberry imagined has become what Abram's heroes do now without a second thought - "earning" multi-million dollar profits, awards, and fame for their creators, along with accolades from the military!

Another Romulan sneaks up behind Spock so Kirk can make good on his promise of more killing, or as aggressors invariably claim: "defending."  Kirk approaches and asks Spock: "Do you know where it is?  The black hole device?"
As if by magic, Spock replies: "...and Captain Pike..." and bolts off, presumably having gained intimate knowledge of the ship from groping his victim's scalp for 4 seconds.

Meanwhile, the drill is lowered to a position above San Francisco bay, and once again stabs its flaming pillar of drilling energy into the undefended planet below.  One has to wonder what it so critical in the Laurentian Cluster that Vulcan and Earth must be left undefended.
  
All these Starfleet academy people, are the doing something to save their lives?  Nope!  They are all running TOWARD the gigantic death beam... no one is getting on a NOKIA(r) to call for emergency beam out, or to arrange a shuttle for their families, or anything I'd probably already have done.

No women speak in this segment.

The Jellyfish is found unguarded in our next segment, Star Trek by the Minute 101: On Their Own

Comments

The forced mind meld was reminiscent of the interrogation of Lieutenant Valeris in ST6 (would it be better to be awake or unconscious for this kind of forced mental intrusion?) One does wonder how effective a mind meld would be on an unconscious mind.

There was also the alien mind meld through the wall in "By Any Other Name" that was not consensual.

The fact that I did not find this as shocking as I did the scene in ST6 just speaks to how far out of the film I was by this point.

-RAnthony
Nemo said…
Sensors that can detect a fleet light years away and they cannot lock onto two intruders aboard their own ship and emit their body matter into space via transporter beam or something, oh wait they are moving too fast I forgot ok :P
BurntSynapse said…
Valeris' pain reminiscent of the neural neutralizer combined with Spock's hoarse, emotional report after his interrogation of her mind that "She does not know..." made for an unforgettable scene of intellectual violation more dramatic than TNG's rather weak "Violations".

As for sensors...there is a plausible out: those fleet readings are from long range scanners, as opposed to short range, both of which a distinguished in canon from internal sensors.

Popular posts from this blog

Star Trek by the Minute 018: Vulcan Racism

Star Trek by the Minute 117: My Honor, Commander

Star Trek by the Minute 019: Ladies’ Night