And it really was a great weapon. McCoy’s emotionalism notwithstanding, he was fully correct in his assessment.
Is there even any shielding from the Effect? Explode one near a Borg cube, or a Doomsday Device, or a stone whale probe, or a space amoeba, and not only is the threat gone, now you have new matter! Maybe a nice space ship, or starbase, instead of a full planet, if the initial mass is too small.
And they are small enough to carry several on ships. Forget Corbomite! It would be criminally stupid not to weaponize them! Think if all the threats to the Federation that Genesis eliminates. Heck, explode it around DS9 and have it make a planet centered right where the wormhole is. No more Dominion threat.
Even using “unstable protomatter” doesn’t limit its effectiveness as a weapon.
Darned if I know. I can think up a few potential fanwank explanations, or suggestions to rewrite the scene a bit to make the encounter (and Khan’s ability to hijack Reliant) more plausible, but this and other MacGuffins are minor nuisances in what is otherwise a great movie and by far my favourite “episode” in the 50-year Trek history.
Oh yeah. The best Star Trek movie.
A friend made a VHS copy for me, and recorded the opening credits twice because he liked the music so much.
Terell’s first officer is proof that most starfleet officers save Kirk were wimps. “Let’s give them a little more time…”
My standing orders on landing parties would be “If contact with the Captain is lost, beam his ass up immediately.”
I always figured atmospheric conditions made scanning for life signs difficult (as in the episode “The Galileo Seven”). Of course the password that KirK uses to disable the Reliant’s shields is so simple that no one today would use it.
One sort of related question: why was Kirstie Alley so beautiful as a Vulcan and in VI Kim Cattrall, who is very beautiful, just kind of blah? Alley was pretty much unknown at the time yet several people I knew remarked how beautiful she was. Or do pointed ears help rather plain looking actresses more (like Joanne Linville as the Romulan commander in “The Enterprise Incident”)?
Yeah, there was a whole backstory of how Romulans used rape as a weapon, with Vulcan males being forced into pon farr and Romulans raping Vulcan females, then forcing their victims to see their children being born.
I can see how that didn’t make it into the movie. :eek:
