I’m comfortable in assuming that Ceti Alpha Five had only been visited twice before: once by the initial unmanned probe, and once when Kirk dumped Khan & company there. I’ll go further and say that Starfleed decided to classify Khan’s location so no 24th-century version of Neo-Nazis would get any ideas and try to rescue him, and that the unmanned probes were notorious for being unreliable. So, according to the library computer, Ceti Alpha has only been visited once. Thus, when Reliant arrived in the Ceti Alpha system, they noticed that there was one fewer planet than the catalogue said to expect, but as that happened a lot with systems without intelligent life or exploitable resources, they shrugged it off and just said, “Update the records.”’
Yes, it would be been better for Starfleet to put a “keep away from Ceti Alpha” notice in the library computer–a lesser version of what they have on record for Talos. But even real-world military agencies do stupid things sometimes.
I might be misremembering but we see a badly maintained ship, with a bunch of intimidating garbage glued to the outside, coming after the Serenity which is identified as Reavers by the crew. But its not like psychotic road bandits never tried to look intimifating, something like an outlaw biker group.
I admit its almost certain Whedon meant Reavers to be real and as described.
I just figured they were on a long and mind-numbingly boring mission that they weren’t emotionally invested in. They just didn’t care to pay more attention to what they were doing. So perhaps lacking detailed information on things like planet rotation and where a particular planet might be at a particular time, they found Ceti Alpha V close to where Ceti Alpha VI might be found in relation to the sun (I think maybe VI’s destruction might have mucked up V’s orbit due to differences in gravity, maybe making the orbit more eliptical than it had been before). They cruise in, see a planet in what looks like close to the right spot, but have no reason or motivation to survey the system to see if there were any unexplained asteroid fields or short-range fighters headed towards nearby moons.
In short, they just didn’t care, and they half-assed it instead of being on their A-Game.
Here’s one that may or may not have been mentioned yet (read: I’m too lazy to check): Star Trek II, Kirk is marooned under the surface of the planet, the Enterprise is crippled, and Khan has just made off with the Genesis Device.
Kirk looks up at the sky (ceiling, but whatever) and screams:
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAN…
But then, minutes later, it is revealed…
I sincerely hope you didn’t need this spoiler warning for one of the finest movies ever produced, which has been out for nearly 30 years. Kirk is not as marooned as he seemed, and he knows that the Enterprise will soon be repaired and on he way to retrieve him.
So why did he flip out like that if he knew it wasn’t as bad as it looked? Because he wanted Khan to think he had won. What better way to instill Khan with a false sense of confidence than to make him think he had made Admiral Kirk completely lose his shit? Everybody always assumes this was just bad acting on Shatner’s part, but it is really one of his better moments.
When the ship shows up, Wash notes that they’ve modified their engine so that they’ll go faster, at the cost of flooding their ship with radiation that will kill them in a short (if not immediate) time frame, and that this is clearly a deliberate decision: they knowingly are poisoning themselves just so they’ve got a better chance at being able to butcher people.
Time dilation would only have occurred if their non-FTL engines were capable of taking them anywhere near the speed of light - and I don’t see why they would be. They were designed for in-system maneuvering and combat, not for long-distance travel. That’s what the hyperdrive was for.
You specifically said that Roddenberry did not have two motives for Chekov. Even the snopes link you provide cannot discount that Roddenberry wrote a letter to Pravda to tell them he was adding a Russian character.
Roddenberry was originally looking for a “English-accent ‘Beatle’ type”. Chekov modeled strictly off the Beatles and the Monkees would have been British. But he was made Russian. Why, if not for the officially stated reason?
I imagine it would be hell on septic tanks. But I doubt the Star Wars universe has septic tanks, or if it did, they’d be city-sized laser-powered disintegrating septic tanks or something, so no problem!
In the Star Wars prequels how can Padme be a queen AND a senator?! And she was elected in TPM by the nobles to be queen, say what? Does Lucas even know what queens and senators are?
I have seen several professional reviewers bitch about this. Yes Padme is an elected queen, they make it clear in TPM that the nobles of Naboo select a young pre-pubescent girl who rules as queen for a few years until aging out. We see at least two other girl monarchs of Naboo in the prequel trilogy, as for why they would do this it is tradition, its a peaceful planet until TPM AND the girls have tons of old wise advisors(we see Padme talking to them) so it isn’t as nuts as it seems.
And since Padme became a celebrity war hero after TPM she was chosen by Naboo to become their senator in the senate after her reign as queen.
Many years ago, I saw James Doohan (who played Scotty) speaking at a New York convention. He said people were always pointing out to him that the set of Enterprise blueprints then on sale showed no lavatories on the ship.
“There’s a very simple explanation, for that,” he explained. “We just set the phasers on ‘disintegrate’ and aim very, very carefully.”
For your last paragraph, I don’t know whether she was supposed to not be queen anymore, but my impression was that her new position represented a galactic influence rather than just on Naboo as she would’ve had as a Queen.
I wish people would stop saying things like, “So they turn a corner, and all of the sudden they’re ten miles away!” when talking about something filmed in their town. Film crews can’t just set up shop wherever they please. It would be impractical, if not impossible, to film something like a car chase in correct geographical sequence. No one who doesn’t live in said city gives a crap, and if you live in L.A. you don’t even notice anymore.
The pilot did air. It was in fact the very last episode of Firefly that was shown on Fox. Not surprising if you missed it, considering the oh so excellent scheduling job they did with the series. :rolleyes:
Back to the Future Part II. For years I’ve heard people argue that because Marty and Jennifer have traveled into the future with Doc, their older 2015 selves should not exist. But the fact that their older selves do exist is just proof that they made it back to 1985 safely.
