Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

** Note that we never again see the engine-emission-homing photon torpedo that Scotty jury-rigged to counter this new cloak, either. Another case of [[Reed Richards Is Useless]].

*** Actually, Scotty didn't modify the torpedo, which was something that always bugged me. Spock, the ship's science officer asks Dr. McCoy Enterprise's chief surgeon to help him modify a torpedo. Why does Spock need a physician to attach scientific mapping equipment to a weapon system, and more to the point, why would he want the good doctor's help?

*** In-universe [[Science Marches On]]. Build a better cloaking device and someone will build better sensors. In the dozen years following this Starfleet starting making sensors that could detect and extrapolate from exhaust vapours, and someone in (or under contract to) the Klingon and Romulan empires was racing to try and find a way to mask this. As soon as they found that way all those sensor modifications Starfleet came up with were obsolete.

** It's also been stated that the cloak was adjusted to allow for weapons fire but not shields. One torpedo shot was all it took to take the cloak down. The Scimitar in ''Nemesis'' may very well have been built expressly to handle such power requirements for cloak, weapons and shields, but it seemed to be a custom-built ship from the ground up (not using a prior starship model) that was in no way viable for mass or semi-mass production. Even today most stealth ships are meant for recon or nuclear payloads, the F-22 had to sacrifice some stealth capability in order to be combat efficient. If you're going to do recon or first-strike stuff, regular cloaks work just as well.

** Yes, but they weren't on it for very long. And McCoy doesn't read Klingon.

*** They were on Vulcan with it for three months after they left Genesis. It's another 8 years from ST:III to ST:VI, more than enough time for the Federation's top minds to translate the contents of the computer.

*** Wonderful stuff, Romulan Ale...

** They even failed basic diplomatic precautions. If you're rendezvousing with a ship carrying the most important foreign dignitaries ''ever'', and you're ''bringing them over for dinner and drinks'', it's just plain common sense that you would have someone IN YOUR OWN CREW<ref>because even if the other ship has its own medics, they'd still lose precious time communicating, gathering their med kits, beaming over, and getting to the patient</ref> with the medical training to deal with an emergency. Like, say, from one of them choking on a pretzel, to someone tripping and landing gut-first on a steak knife, to someone suffering food poisoning<ref>although it's clear enough that they know at least SOMETHING about Klingon physiology that they can serve food edible to them</ref>. Basically, if your function is to act as diplomatic hosts and military escorts, their well-being is ''entirely'' your responsibility, and whether or not they have their own doctors, you shouldn't trust ''them'' to account for medical emergencies. Otherwise you end up with scenarios like what happened in the movie.