What do Spock and McCoy know about torpedo programming? - Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) Discussion

How do they get out of the way? Using propulsion? Which the torpedo homes in on?

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[–] Ohio9 9 years ago

That would still give them a better chance of evasion then doing nothing. And how would they know what it homes in on anyway?

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[–] kerryedavis 9 years ago

Not sure it matters. They might have figured they just fired to fire. Firing blind, sheer desperation. Without being able to home in on them, it would have probably just gone straight or something. Once they could see that the torpedo seemed to have a way to home in on them, even if they'd had TIME to maneuver, it wouldn't have mattered.

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[–] Ohio9 9 years ago

They could see the torpedo coming right at them. I'm not saying an attempt at evasion would be successful, it's just that I would expect them to at least try something instead of just staring at it and watching it slam right into them.

I guess general Chang was too busy thinking of more Shakespeare quotes to be concerned about such matters.

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[–] kerryedavis 9 years ago

But it WASN'T coming right at them, especially not at the start. It went straight out from the Enterprise, at first. Then it was curving and curling, almost a loop-de-loop... Before it hit.

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[–] Ohio9 9 years ago

Still doesn't justify the Klingons just sitting there and watching it hit them. And if they were so sure it would miss from the start, why did the entire Klingon Bridge crew stop all activity to stare at it from the moment it was fired until the point of impact?

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[–] kerryedavis 9 years ago

They were surprised. As Spock told Garrovick, "They... hesitated."

And, it's a movie.

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[–] persen1 9 years ago

Spock is a science officer, McCoy is a doctor. So what exactly are their qualifications for performing "torpedo surgery?" But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. After all, this is Star Trek, where the senior officers on the ship do pretty much everything, including the most basic grunt work.

To answer that, you need to understand how they teach children on Vulcan, while attending their academy of sciences, who does not just incl. what you understand of what science means. Their field is a whole wider spectrum, where mechanical sciences also is a part of it.
On top of that Spock can put what he learned while attending lots of different classes he took at Starfleet Academy, from where he graduated with honors.

He was so darn good at what he did, that Starfleet even offered him a teaching position at the academy.

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[–] Ohio9 9 years ago

Still I don't see anything in his background that covers ordinance work. And even if he does know how to make the modification, wouldn't it be more efficient for the ship's weapons experts (the ones specifically trained for this kind of thing) to do it instead of waiting for him to travel from the bridge to the torpedo launcher to do it himself?

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[–] kerryedavis 9 years ago

Just to be clear, when discussing ammunition etc, it's ordnance. an ordinance is a law, rule, or regulation.

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[–] chinaglenn 8 years ago

Spock is basically a genius who has been in Starfleet for a long, long time, and as second officer needs to know all parts of a ship's operation. Since they were people of the late 23rd Century, they should know a lot about computers and whatnot.

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[–] Ultra_Nova 8 years ago

It takes more than a few seconds for a ship to raise their shields when "not" cloaked. For a cloaked ship, it takes even longer, because of the massive energy drain on the ship. If Chang ordered them to raise shields, they would have had to de-cloak first, which would have made them visible, and they wouldn't have had enough time to raise the shields before being hit by enemy fire. They were toast the moment the Enterprise fired.

As to how Spock would know how to program a torpedo, it is pretty much established in Star Trek that he is the smartest man in the fleet at that time. I'm sure he knows a thing or two about torpedoes.

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[–] bjlevine 9 years ago

Well, little about it makes actual sense. But in dramatic sense, Chang knew that Kirk had played his move and it was Checkmate.

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[–] kerryedavis 9 years ago

That's a good way of looking at it too. Although the previous poster might respond, how could Chang know it was Checkmate when he didn't even try to move away?

I wonder if it would have all made more sense, if the apparently original version had made it to film.

The whole thing about "cataloging gaseous anomalies" makes it clear that either Kirk/Enterprise were originally supposed to have been the ones doing that at the start of the movie instead of Sulu/Excelsior, or that Sulu/Excelsior were originally supposed to save the day at the end. If the latter, would it have been two engineering/weapons people aboard Excelsior doing the work, rather than Sulu himself and... who, maybe Commander Rand?

Or maybe Tuvok (in his role on Excelsior at that time) instead of Spock, and someone else? That might have seemed more reasonable in some ways.

Having McCoy involved though, seems like it might have been another signal to the audience that "Hey, this isn't how it was supposed to happen, but you know how The Shat can be..."

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[–] Ohio9 9 years ago

I suppose, I just think it would have been better if the battle had involved more then rigging a torpedo for an "instant win" setting.

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[–] kerryedavis 9 years ago

Not sure how much more you could get from a scenario where they're being more or less fired on at will, by an invisible enemy. Even if they were able to spot/track back where those shots were coming from, the ship would have been gone from there by the time they shot at it.

Perhaps they could have tried anticipating where the Klingon ship would be next, but Trek was often about technology and technological solutions to technological problems, so coming up with the exhaust-seeking torpedo isn't really out of place.

That said, why did the final torpedo hit the FRONT of the Klingon ship? Isn't the "tail-pipe" at the BACK? So, that was clearly just for dramatic effect.

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[–] Ohio9 9 years ago

I would have liked to see it more like the epic battles in Star Trek II, rather then a simple encounter where "let's rig a torpedo" is the magic solution to everything. It would be fine if that played a major role, it just should not have equaled an instant win.

They spent the whole movie building up how formidable a ship with the ability to fire while cloaked is, but when the confrontation came, it just felt a little underwhelming, especially the way Chang just seemed to give up when the torpedo was fired. At the very least I wanted to see him go down with guns blazing.

Also, I find it a bit odd this super-technology (the ability to fire while cloaked) never came up again, at least not in Voyager or The Next Generation (I never watched DS9). If the Klingons have this technology, you would think they would take full advantage of it, but we don't even see it used 80 years later when TNG takes place.

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[–] persen1 9 years ago

That's a good way of looking at it too. Although the previous poster might respond, how could Chang know it was Checkmate when he didn't even try to move away?

Torpedoes normally travel in a straight line to the target it has been locked on, Chang also knew this, one reason why its possible to avoid getting hit, if you can move the ship fast enough out of the torpedo's flight path.

But first leading up to the Enterprise's launch of the rigged torpedo:
With Chang's first firing on the Enterprise, Kirk ordered to back off the Enterprise. Chan wondered why they where doing this, could it be that they actually detected his cloaked ship?

Later on in the battle, the Enterprise suddenly launches a torpedo.
Chang has a chocked reaction as we can see, because why the heck would they now suddenly do this, when they don't have a target to lock the torpedo on?
Chang notices how the torpedo is swirling all over the place, as if its actually seeking for something, his fear is now confirmed, they DO have a way to actually locate his cloaked ship, he knows its Checkmate for them, because he knows that when that torpedo hits, he has been located and is up against two Starfleet wessels, where one of them is a Battle Cruiser, a no win situation for him.

Chang chooses to die with honor in battle, you know the whole thing about being allowed in to Sto'Vo'Kor, the Klingon afterlife.

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[–] Ohio9 9 years ago

Choosing to "die with honor" doesn't mean just standing there and doing nothing as you see a torpedo closing in. It means fighting all the way to the end.

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[–] persen1 9 years ago

Choosing to "die with honor" doesn't mean just standing there and doing nothing as you see a torpedo closing in. It means fighting all the way to the end.

For a Klingon it does not matter, just dying in a battle is enough to be considered honorable and Chang was in the middle of a battle, even if he was just standing there for 10 seconds or so doing nothing.

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[–] Ohio9 9 years ago

Well I still don't find that to be a valid excuse for inaction.

Also I noticed no one considered my original question. What would a scientist (Spock) or a doctor (McCoy) know about torpedo programming? Wouldn't they have specially trained weapon specialists for that sort of thing?

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[–] kerryedavis 9 years ago

McCoy was just assisting. Spock knew all that stuff, partly because as a Vulcan he didn't even join Starfleet service until in his 50s or something so he'd been in school a lot longer already, plus he had lots of time to read tech manuals etc in the course of repairing the Entprise while he was accelerated.

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[–] Ohio9 9 years ago

Still I'd have to question if he knows every possible thing about every aspect of the ship. And even if he does, wouldn't it be more efficient to simply have the ship's trained ordinance personnel make the modifications to the torpedo instead of waiting for Spock to travel from the bridge to the torpedo room to do it himself? Surely they could do it faster.

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[–] Odilwerk 8 years ago

Spock is possibly the smartest person in Starfleet, and is the chief science officer. He would have studied weaponry. He will also have vast knowledge on how the sensor technology works for the gaseous anomalies, thus he would be better suited than the weaponry officers whom wouldn't understand them.

As for Chang. He is taken by surprise, as he is unsure why they fire. He is more concerned with the torpedo at this point, trying to ascertain whether it's tracking him. He'd of been to late to do anything, regardless of whether he'd known it was tracking him. In the last few seconds his fear was confirmed. There was nothing he could have done.

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[–] Ultra_Nova 8 years ago

Spock is the smartest man in Starfleet at that time, and he helped redesign many things on the new Enterprise (which is addressed in Star Trek 5 in the holding cell). He was more than just a science officer. He always was. "Science Officer" was the position that he was assigned too, but he could do almost any job on the Enterprise. We have seen him giving directions to Scotty (an engineer) on how to fix things from his station on the bridge (in the TV show), that had nothing to do with Spock's actual job.

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[–] jerryrip54 9 years ago

Because Spock is not only the science officer but he knows EVERYTHING about the Enterprise and all of its workings. Surely if he can fix stuff like the warp engines he can master a little bit of computer programming in a photon torpedo.

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[–] jerryrip54 9 years ago

Because Spock is not only the science officer but he knows EVERYTHING about the Enterprise and all of its workings. Surely if he can fix stuff like the warp engines he can master a little bit of computer programming in a photon torpedo.

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[–] Ohio9 9 years ago

Even if that's true, wouldn't it have been simpler to simply have the trained ordinance personnel make the modifications to the torpedo instead of waiting for Spock to travel all the way from the bridge to the torpedo launcher to do it himself? Surely the ship's weapons experts could have done the modifications faster.

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[–] ryan-anderson 8 years ago

^^ This. Remember in the Star Trek The Motion Picture when Spock shows up and fixes the warp engines in a few hours?

In a humorous scene from TOS (i.e. Journey to Babel), Spock and his dad were discussing surgical techniques right there in front of Bones.

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[–] green_dog 9 years ago

I would have rather had Scotty and Checkov modifying the torpedo. While not specific to their expertise, Scotty has engineering know-how and Checkov is the ship's weapons officer.

That, and it would have given them something to do in the movie besides be window dressing. Instead, Spock and McCoy get to play an important role in yet another scene when they've pretty much dominated the first and second acts already.

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[–] bjlevine 9 years ago

Well, it's rather poignant that the two friends (albeit with years of ripping on each other) get to work together in the climactic scene of their last movie together. But yeah, Spock and Chekov might have made more sense (Chekov served as backup science officer in TOS).

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[–] kerryedavis 9 years ago

And was assigned to do the pre-approach/docking scan when they were approaching Earth at the start of movie 3.

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[–] ffnogoodnik 8 years ago

After all, this is Star Trek, where the senior officers on the ship do pretty much everything

This is done A LOT more in TNG than in the original series. In TNG if they needed someone to analyze a rock formation the would not call the archaeology department they would say "Geordie, you took a class in archaeology at the academy why don't you take a look.", whereas in TOS the archaeologist would be that week's guest star.

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[–] Ohio9 8 years ago

Good point, although TNG did occasionally have guest stars who are experts in their field.

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[–] 8 years ago

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[–] Strangerhand 8 years ago

Ah man, it's plausible enough in a pinch, like near the end of the movie when it all needs to be wrapped up.

But, just for your sake, consider this: Spock may have been the Science Officer and McCoy may have been dammit Jim I'm the Doctor not the Engineer, but I bet the basic "surgical" reprogramming of a photon-torpedo with data from the gaseous anomaly detecting hardware they had aboard, could be like simply a requirement of being in the 23d Century, perhaps.

Like say you are a medical doctor, or maybe you're a chef, or maybe a piano-player, whatever. But you still, now in the early-21st Century, know how to work a very common technological device called an automobile, yes? Okay, good enough then hehehehehe

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[–] contreraschz 8 years ago

Spock is a captain by that point. He knows all the subjects. Even medicine.

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[–] magolding-94772 7 years ago

Kerrydavis wrote:

McCoy was just assisting. Spock knew all that stuff, partly because as a Vulcan he didn't even join Starfleet service until in his 50s or something so he'd been in school a lot longer already, plus he had lots of time to read tech manuals etc in the course of repairing the Entprise while he was accelerated.

So you think Spock "didn't even join Starfleet service until in his 50s or something so he'd been in school a lot longer already"?

Maybe, but that makes him older than his mother in "Journey to Babel". Jane Wyatt turned 57 the year "Journey to Babel" was filmed and the script says Amanda was 58.

Of course, maybe after Spock grew up and left home Sarek kept Amanda in suspended animation or a time stasis field and only took her out of it every seven years and for diplomatic events. Thus she might now be younger than her son. If Sarek kept that up she might have outlived him, but apparently something happened and she died.

If Amanda was younger than the number of years since she was born that could explain why she looked so young about 14 years after her son Spock was already senior enough to be the third in command of the Enterprise at Talos IV.

But that theory contradicts the chronological information about Spock in "Yesteryear" and Star Trek (2009) and the official though not canonical Star Trek Chronology: The History of the Future.

What do you mean by:

plus he had lots of time to read tech manuals etc in the course of repairing the Entprise while he was accelerated

Did Spock repair the Enterprise while accelerated in "Wink of an Eye"? And would those tech manuals still be accurate by the time of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country?

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