I served in the Navy on a submarine. If there were a similar situation (the only thing I can think of is an enemy helo inbound a few hours away, we are on the surface recovering from an emergency, the reactor is ‘shut down’ [scrammed, actually, for any nukes] due to an inside-the-reactor-compartment problem), the Captain would not hesitate to order someone (or many someones) inside the reactor compartment to fix it, even though we all know they would get an extremely high dose of radiation.
So why didn’t Kirk or Scotty just order some crewman (or Scotty himself) to go in there and fix whatever technobabble problem there was? Why did only Spock think of this?
In war, I’m sure decisions like this have been made countless times.
The only thing I can offer is that the Enterprise was on a training cruise, and full of trainees. It could be the only person qualified to fix whatever needed fixing were Scotty and Spock.
There was an episode of TNG that dealt with this exact issue BTW - Troi was taking the exams to get a command certification or something, and the only way to pass one of them was to order a (holographic) crew member into lethal radiation to fix the engines.
ETA: Scotty’s trainee nephew died at his post during the first attack by Khan. It could be that he didn’t have the stomach to order anyone else to his death at that time. Why he didn’t volunteer himself though, I don’t know.
I don’t remember anything about Vulcan physiology in the movie – from my recollection it was just ‘no one can go in there or they’ll die’, but Spock goes ahead and goes in there. But perhaps it was explained elsewhere.
The narrative required Spock to “sacrifice” himself in order to save the ship.
It’s beyond idiotic to believe that Scotty would have been standing around in the engine room waiting for the Genesis device to overload (certain death for everyone) when he could have donned radiation gear and went in to the chamber and done what Spock did ( potentially only his death). The film simply decided that Spock needed to do it to make it appear to be more “dramatic.”
Think about it: As large as the Enterprise is, and Spock got to the engine room from the bridge in enough time to manipulate the core in order to bring the warp drive back online? Huh? It wasn’t as if he left BEFORE Kirk told Scotty that they needed warp speed quickly or they were all dead; he left after Kirk made that statement and got Scotty’s response.
If there’s one thing we can count on never seeing in Star Trek, it’s the captain of the Enterprise knowingly send a crew member into certain death. Logical or not, audiences wouldn’t go for it.
My memory of the scenes in question is that Kirk had no idea that it was fixable; he was too busy chewing the scenery. Spock figured out how to fix it, realized he was the only one who could, deduced that he didn’t have time for a “needs of the many/needs of the few” argument with Kirk, and fixed it.
Ok the whole final scene is online here. Until they saw that Genesis had fired (16:30 in), they had no idea they HAD to get the warp engines on line. Once they did, no one in the engine room was responding to intercom, so there was no way for Kirk to order Scotty or anyone else to fix them. Spock headed down, saw Scotty was injured, McCoy told him no human could survive the radiation, Spock nerve pinches him and heads in anyway.
So it’s all perfectly logical. No one in the engine room except Spock knew they had to get the engines back on line or die.
Scotty had collapsed while making his report to the bridge via intercom. He didn’t regain consciousness until Spock had entered the irradiated area.
McCoy said "Are you out of your Vulcan mind? No human can tolerate the radiation that’s in there!
Spock: As you are so fond of observing, doctor, I am not human.
I gather Spock didn’t take a minute to slip into a radiation/ Hazmat suit because he literally had to fix the engines within seconds. Didn’t he? Did he?
That’s my impression. He spares about half a second to put on Scotty’s gloves, but that’s all. And even at that, they escape the Genesis wave by that much.
It bugs me more that Kirk didn’t go down to the engine room himself; it’s not in his character to wait around to die. Also that he keeps leaving Saavik–a lieutenant–with the conn when Sulu and Uhura are RIGHT THERE.
That makes better sense – thanks. Kirk should have been a little more on the ball – if no one’s answering in Engineering, then get your ass down there (or send someone), but it makes sense the way it happened.
Yep- Spock adapted, improvised and overcame, as I’m sure Starfleet’s finest traditions expect, without Kirk having to order him, or even being aware of the problem.
That said, I’m sure Spock was the recipient of the Starfleet equivalent of the Medal of Honor/Victoria Cross/etc…
They were both lieutenants, too, but she was command track, and Spock’s star pupil (some say daughter…). It would have been a first for either Sulu or Uhura to get the center seat, so why not give it to somebody who’s been trained for it?
Neither Sulu nor Uhura was a lieutenant in WoK. She was a full commander, and he was either the same rank or (if you go by the novelization and the deleted bits from the script), he was a captain about to take command of his own ship (the Excelsior) who was only on the training mission to kill time before his next posting and as a favor to Kirk.
And Sulu had been in the command before. Kirk left him with the center seat when they were about to go to war with the Klingons, for Athena’s sake, and at least one other incident.
Please. He got the IDIC just for not slapping McCoy in the face over the 1000th Vulcan/fucking pun. He’d have gotten a second one if he’d ever done Uhura.