boyajian@akov68.DEC (Jerry Boyajian) (06/05/84)
Gee, I must be a mutant. I appear to be a member of an elite group that wasn't
too wild about THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK. Everyone else in my household loved it,
though my lady friend thinks exactly the way I do. And just about everyone on
the net here seems to rave about it. Oh, well.
Anyways, here are some more thoughts about the film, inspired by various
comments from other netters. Some of the comments are answers to questions post-
ed by other netters. Since there are spoilers, they comments will follow a <FF>.
Jettisoning the primary hull:
Brian, I think you misunderstood. People weren't inferring that since
the trailers showed the primary hull half destroyed that it was obviously going
to jettison it in the movie. What was being said was that that particular scene
in the trailer didn't *necessarily* mean that the *Enterprise* was going to be
destroyed. Of course, it *was* destroyed, but that's really irrelevant.
Bird of Prey crew:
I originally thought that the Bird of Prey was the latest design for the
Klingon battlecruiser. It's obvious from the landing scene and the fact that it
has only a crew of 12 that it's more like a heavily-armed scout (or perhaps des-
troyer).
Spock and Saavik:
Well, Spaf, I think you're right, it could prove interesting if Saavik's
carrying Spock's child, but like I said last time, the scene was thankfully
vague about whether any fooling around actually went on (I've looked through the
novelization, and the way McIntyre wrote that scene, I'm even less certain that
Spock got laid by Saavik.
David Marcus' death:
Personally, this didn't bother me very much in concept, though it did
in...ah...um...er...execution. It seemed out of character for the Klingon to
just walk around trying to decide which one to kill; he should have just pulled
out the knife, stabbed at Saavik, and David jump in front of her to take the
thrust. As far as the comment about david paying for his sin against Science, I
didn't see that at all. Commonly referred to as the Mephistophelean -- or Frank-
enstein -- Complex, this would have been the case only if David were killed in
some manner by the Genesis Planet itself (the Creator killed by the Creation).
Thankfully, they avoided this cliche by having David murdered outright.
Carol Marcus:
Speaking of Carol, where the hell *was* she in this movie? She didn't
transfer over to the *Grissom* along with David and Saavik, nor was she on the
*Enterprise* when it arrived at Earth. Furthermore, did anyone else notice that
when the Klingons were reviewing the Genesis tape, Kirk says in the report that
he would replay the prospectus tape that the Genesis scientists prepared, While
*that* tape replays, Kirk's voice-over says the *exact same dialogue that Carol
said in that tape in THE WRATH OF KHAN*! Why not use her voice again? So they
wouldn't have to pay her anything for this movie? Did someone have something
against Bibi Besch?
The torpedo casing/coffin:
A possible reason why the casing/coffin didn't burn up in Genesis' at-
mosphere occurred to me. Perhaps it's made of some type of balognaeum metal that
is super heat-resistant. Remember, it has to hold a superheated plasma torpedo
(though perhaps in a magnetic field), so it must have *some* heat resistant
properties. Anyways, what struck me is: why did David open the coffin in the
first place. *I* wouldn't have opened it if I knew it most likely contained a
ripe corpse. At the very least, he and Saavik should have made faces and held
their noses while he opened the thing.
Spock's eyebrow-raising at end:
Obviously, when all of the others, happy that Spock seems to begin re-
membering, crowd around him, he looks at Kirk and raises his eyebrow as if to
wonder just what the hell are all these clowns doing and why?
This whole "core-dump" business:
(Thanks, Spaf, that's a wonderful term for it!). Quite frankly, I don't
see the whole point of it in the first place. Say somebody (Vulcan) gets bumped
off, so he core-dumps into somebody else, and that someone else takes the dead
guy's body (and katra) up to the top of Mt. Lookithat (or whatever). Then the
Vulcan version of the AMA gets together and transfers the katra back to the
body. So what purpose is served? The guy's still singing with the Choir Invisi-
ble; he's no better off than he was when he made the core-dump. Spock lucked
out in this regard, since his body had been regenerated, but Sarek didn't know
that when he asked Kirk to retrieve Spock's remains and bring them and McCoy
(with the katra) to Vulcan).
As for why Spock remembered lines that he said after making the core-
dump (this could also be said of McCoy speaking with Spock's mind): some of
McCoy's memories concerning Spock made their way into Spock's thought patterns.
The destruction of the *Enterprise*:
Well, it's nice to see that someone else didn't like the movie, but odd-
ly enough, I don't agree with the reasons. As I said in my review, I was sorry
to see the old gal go, but I was *very* pleased with the way it was handled.
Kirk could not have surrendered the ship regardless of whether he was able to
erase the Genesis info or not. Letting the *Enterprise* fall into the hands of
the Klingons was probably more abhorrent to him than destroying it. An analogy
(not quite the same thing, but humor me): if you were a part of a group who was
being hunted by a band of Apaches, and you knew that if they captured you, you
would all be tortured to death slowly, wouldn't you prefer to die quickly by
having one of your party kill everyone else in the party once capture was deter-
mined to be inevitable, rather than be staked down on the ground and flayed
alive?
I'm sure that all of the others had faith enough in Kirk to know that if
he felt that the only availble course was to destroy the ship, then that's what
had to be done. As much as Scotty loved the *Enterprise*, I think he knew that
Kirk loved her more. Sure, the decision was a hard one for Kirk, but I likened
it to his preventing McCoy from saving Edith Keeler in "The City on the Edge of
Forever". No matter how much it hurt, it *had* to be done.
Robin Curtis as Saavik:
Sorry, she just didn't cut the mustard. Oddly enough, considering that
she played a [half-] Vulcan, I though she was too flat and unemotional. Back in
the series, I always thought Spock maintained an amused, condescending attitude
toward the human members of the crew, almost as if he thought of humans as chil-
dren. Kirstie Allie brought that same feeling to her role as Saavik, amused in
some manner at the humans' bursts of emotion, while at the same time not under-
standing them at all. However unemotional the characters were, Nimoy and Allie
put some *feeling* in their roles, in their actions, and in their speech. I
didn't get any of this with Curtis; she just had no feeling in her portrayal at
all.
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
--- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC Maynard, MA)
UUCP: {decvax|ihnp4|allegra|ucbvax|...}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-akov68!boyajian
ARPA: boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.ARPAfriedman@uiucdcs.UUCP (06/10/84)
#R:decwrl:-110700:uiucdcs:24900043:000:711 uiucdcs!friedman Jun 10 15:38:00 1984 Re. the whole "core-dump" business: The problem is in the sentence: "Then the Vulcan version of the AMA gets together and transfers the katra back to the body." First, the lady pointed out that the technique used on Spock was rarely used, had not in fact been used for ages. Second, in Sarek's conversation with Kirk on Earth, it is clearly implied that the katra is to be stored somehow; just how, and to what purpose, is left unstated, but resurrection is clearly not expected. It sounded to me like the corpse and the katra are both to have been stored, perhaps symbolically together. (On the other hand, there must be LOTS of deceased Vulcans; how much storage space could they have on that mountain?)
lmaher@uokvax.UUCP (06/19/84)
#R:decwrl:-110700:uokvax:5800026:000:970 uokvax!lmaher Jun 19 01:15:00 1984 /***** uokvax:net.startrek / uiucdcs!friedman / 3:38 pm Jun 10, 1984 */ perhaps symbolically together. (On the other hand, there must be LOTS of deceased Vulcans; how much storage space could they have on that mountain?) /* ---------- */ A quick calculation shows that you could store 6,000,000,000 corpses in a one-kilometer cube. I've seen estimates that 100 billion people have lived on Earth; Vulcan's population may well be less (harsher conditions), and they probably didn't start the Katra and Corpse storage until after Surak led them into Rationality and Mysticism. Regardless, you can fit nearly 30 billion corpses into a cubic mile, which is surely far less than that Mountain (assuming huge caverns underneath or the like, and ignoring accessways). After the bodies decay, or if they're cremated, they take up much less space, of course. Carl (formerly uok!crigney) ..!ctvax!uokvax!lmaher ..!duke!uok!uokvax!lmaher