I don’t know why I was thinking about this (probably prompted by the “worst TOS episode” thread), but I just thought of a pretty huge plot hole.
(and no, it’s not the obvious one regarding the mix-up of Sulu’s mission (“charting gaseous anomalies”) and the Enterprise’s).
OK, so the Klingons meet with the Enterprise. Gorkon and his crew (including Chang) are traveling together. Then, all hell breaks loose - the Klingon ship is fired upon, presumably by the Enterprise. Turns out, there’s another ship - a Klingon ship that can fire when cloaked. Later on, the cloaked ship and the Enterprise get into a battle.
Who’s commanding the cloaked Bird of Prey? Chang.
OK - how did he get on that ship, and why didn’t any of the crew of the Ambassadors’s ship ask where he went?
Not really sure this a plot hole. However, I assume Chang got on the cloaked ship via a teleporter. As to what he told the crew of Ambassador’s ship? Does it matter? He told them a lie and they believed it.
There is no reason to believe that Chang needed to be on the inviso bird of prey during the first attack - and after that proved successful, there was plenty of opportunites for him to join that crew in time for the final assault.
A bigger hole is, why are a bunch of geriatrics beamed down to stop the assassination of the Federation President?
Here’s an actual one…what is the Klingon conspirators plan after the Accords break down? They NEED peace to happen. They are going to turn into the USSR if they can’t reform.
And what if the assassin saw Kirk at the last second (“what the”) and didn’t fire? Leaving Kirk to tackle Kurtwood Smith and everyone from The Enterprise looking like idiots. Sulu beams down, sees what happened…promptly beams back up and starts writing his report to say:
“Uhhh…I saw the Enterprise in a fight and rushed to her aid. I didn’t know we were destroying a priceless prototype that had been assigned to protect the conference.”
The Klingons leave, the bad guys win. Way to break it heroes!
They just had to be loyal to Chang - they may not have know the plot was to assassinate the Chancellor - they saw it as an opportunity to bring down Kirk and the Enterprise crew.
I guess I assumed Chang had beamed over to the cloaked warbird after the awkward dinner party, knowing what he did of the Chancellor’s ship’s defensive capabilities, and led the brief attack, then returned in time to confront and arrest Kirk and McCoy right after Gorkon’s death. Or he needn’t have left at all - an encrypted transmission of his orders to the cloaked ship would’ve sufficed.
A bigger plot hole for me (or just a headsmack moment, I guess) was how helpless all the Klingons seemed to be when the artificial gravity failed. These are Klingons! You don’t think they train in zero-G combat eight ways from Sunday?
Chang actually rather clearly was not on the cloaked Bird of Prey during the initial attack. He hailed Enterprise from the ambassador’s ship, remember? “We came to you in peace, and you blatantly defied that peace. And for that, I will blow you out of the stars.” And the ambassador’s ship turns and prepares to fire, right before Kirk’s surrender.
Oh -
At the beginning of the movie, Sulu is dictating his Captain’s log (he’s the captain of the Excelsior), and mentions that they are wrapping up their mission of mapping gaseous anomalies.
At the end of the film, Spock figures out a way to detect the cloaked Bird of Prey, by using a gas detector (inserted into a Photon Torpedo). Uhura suggests using the equipment they have onboard to catalog gaseous anomalies as a weapon since the bird of prey "has to have a tailpipe on it.”
Chang was part of the Klingon military establishment who would stand to lose a whack of power if the constant need to defend Klingon interests against the Federation subsided. Overall , the Klingons end up better off with a peace treaty, but certain segments of the Klingon political sphere, including Chang, end up worse off.
I’d still bet on the guy with the jetpack or mag boots over the guy without. Without either of these things, you can only move along predictable straight lines, giving the other guy a much easier time of shooting you.