So good. One thing never mentioned are the sound effects. The transporter screwing up…or the score…so good.
Edit: I will say the biggest plot hole is…The Enterprise keeps making passes only to get smashed by the Anti-proton beam. Uhm…you could just hold station over the things back or under it.
in fact…in the Blish adaptation or maybe the pseudo-sequel “Vendetta”…wern’t there some sort of remora ships or natural creatures on the Machine using it or leaching off it? Maybe trailing it to harvest crushed planets??
I never read the novel-sequel. Seems to me a neutronium shell that size would be immensely valuable, if you could hollow out the machinery and use it as an invulnerable starbase.
As for the maneuvers, I gathered the device could rapidly pivot toward a ship that got too close, but if the ship stayed far enough away and presumably far enough out of the device’s line of sight, the device would ignore it. Of course, three-dimensional maneuvering was never Star Trek’s strong point. I don’t think it was until the second film that the concept was even mentioned, and in that context it was almost an incidental with there still being an implicit “up” orientation.
I saw this one recently, the first time I had seen it with the updated visual effects. Usually the improved VFX just make orbiting the planet of the week look slightly more realistic, but they redid the whole space battle effects between the DM and the two starships and it looks fantastic!
Yes. This is the episode that needed the improved effects the most. When the original was done, they didn’t have the technology to show what was really going on, now they do.
One of the best things about the episode - the solution was not some technobabble, but instead the fairly clear method of letting the dead ship explode. And lots of great lines.
It’s been years since I’ve seen the episode, but wasn’t it the case that the thing’s hull was basically impervious? (“Neutronium” and all that.) Only putting a shot straight down the “maw” offered any hope of damaging it–and that, of course, would also put an attacking starship right in the thing’s sights.
Yes! The new starship which wasn’t an “AMT model kit modified with the flick of a Bic”. The damage was excellent. The way the Constellation wobbled as it flew was a nice touch.