Okay.
But the digitized version looks cool as hell, doesn’t it?
50 shades of Star Trek
How hard could it be to find a lifeless planet? I can find several right in our own solar system let alone the moons. I realize by that point most of the livable planets in our solar system have been colonized but seriously space is big, finding planets with life should be the real challenge. Archer had the hardest time finding planets with life on them so much so that he almost peed himself with excitement when he found one with plants.
Yeah, the ShatnerKirk-era universe presumes abundant life everywhere.
or that we’re better at locating “particle(s) of pre-animate matter”
which are, what, dirt?
Ink and paint.
oh, wait, that’s pre-animated matter.
It’s only questionable when it is “caught in a matrix”.
I have to quote myself. I’ve thought more, and I blame Kirk for Preston’s death. He should have had the shields up. Saavik even told him! High stupidity at best, gross negligence at worst.
I however, can only blame myself for the apostrophe error. " Crews’ " indeed!
I agree the failing to raise the shields is a serious error. Kirk has been in enough situations where all is not as it seems. Heck, they probably have that regulation just because of the Five Year Exploration program. The final frontier has some weird stuff going on. If you don’t have comms with a ship you just go ahead and raise the shields.
It does make me wonder why Kirk doesn’t. I’ve always thought that there must be inside joke among Starfleet captains that raising your shields around a Starfleet ship means you’re timid and/or paranoid. They probably have a nickname for it like the Captain Dunsel thing.
Your interpretation makes sense. Better to be blown up than give the impression of timidity. That’s the Starfleet mindset.
If they had only communicated that to the audience. The way it is in the film makes Kirk look stupid.
I thought that was Porthos. 
I remember one episode in which Archer brought Porthos with him on a first contact mission and caused an interplanetary incident when he let Porthos “go where no dog has gone before.”
A plot device, or are we fan wanking?
Definitely fan wanking.
The most obvious answer is because the needs of the plot outweigh the needs of the making sense. I dunno I got nothin’.
Yes. Yes, it does!
And of course in the end they didn’t even need a planet at all, just a nebula which Genesis was able to coalesce into a planet somehow.
It might not be PC, but just from watching/reading the news I can see there are still plenty of women around who allow themselves to be abused. As you suggest, it’s their choice.
I doubt human nature is going to change much over the next 200–300 years.
I’ve been thinking about your question.
I suspect that, were this to be written in 2016, what with “grittier” television, that McGivers would be the one seducing Khan. He wouldn’t have to abuse her as in the original.
It would probably be her idea to take over the ship, because “chicks dig bad boys”. She’s finally found the manly man she’s been waiting for. I don’t propose Khan as some softie, and McGivers as the power behind the throne. No, Khan likes her idea and runs with it. He just doesn’t have to manipulate her into taking part.
Then at the end, as she’s beaming down, you can see her giving Kirk the bird as she dematerializes.
Oh.
Well, nm.
I could buy that lifelessness was not the only criterion, that there were numerous fussy requirements regarding planetary mass and temperature and whatnot, which is why Ceti Alpha VI (or at least what Reliant assumed was CA6) seemed promising, but for an anomalous lifesign blip. The planet seemed to meet the unmentioned 99 out of 100 requirements and as for the last…well, maybe it’s something we can transplant.
That said, I never understood the “protomatter” MacGuffin in the next film. If the Genesis planet is wildly unstable, just say it was because the planet coalesced after the device was detonated in a nebula, which was so far outside the intended use that of course it wasn’t going to last, or it’d be a quite-astonishing miracle if it had.
Of course if we really wanted to tidy the premise up a bit, don’t have the battle take place in a nebula at all, but in the cloudy atmosphere of a Neptune-sized gas giant. The device detonates, the planet loses much its atmosphere in the crazy reactions that follow and its core gets converted (temporarily) to something vaguely Earthlike.
My take is “protomatter” was shorthand for “let’s all forget Genesis exists, because it could solve a lot of future problems, and completely alter the Federation, so we’ll ignore it and hope you do, too”. And I did - I’ve almost completely forgotten ST:III. I hope to fully forget it in the future.
As for nebula v. planet, I guess that the planet test was a precise test. One lifeless planet becomes earth-like in a measurable way. Exploding it in a nebula means it is harder to compare before and after. It still “works”, you just can’t determine how well.
It seems that Genesis detonating in the nebula also created a star as well as a planet, or at least that’s how it seemed.
Gosh, a massive advance in technology being instantly forgotten in the Star Trek universe? Say it ain’t so!
A more plausible explanation why the Genesis Project wasn’t pursued (if anyone needs one) could be that the core group of scientists are all dead, except for Carol Marcus, and that all the research data was lost when the Reliant went kablooie.
You can sort-of see the star (or at least a bright background light) in some of the battle scenes, in this video at 4:28 - 4:40. It’s distinct from the occasional flashes of “lightning”, whatever those are supposed to be.
Looking at the entire sequence, I can see the contrast between it and the hyperkinetic craziness of the battles in the more recent films. I prefer the drama over the raw overstimulation.
IIRC , in the novel, ‘protomatter’ meant that they ‘chaeted’ and that it was known to be unstable - it was a call back to the Kobiyashi Maru in that Kirk - and Kirk’s son - both cheated when needed.