Miscellaneous Topics

The following is a collection of topics I want to mention, but are too short to justify an own article. Hopefully I can examine the one or other topic more in depth.

Morrow’s 20 Years

In the movie “The Search for Spock” the crew of the Enterprise is debriefed by Admiral Morrow, Commander Starfleet. During the debriefing Morrow mentiones one odd figure: He claims that the Enterprise is just 20 years old.

According to the now current interpretation of the timeline, the movie is set in the year 2285 and if the Enterprise is indeed twenty years old it would mean it was built in 2265. Other timelines published earlier suggest a date around 2282, but even that conflicts with the following: If built that late there would be no ship to have the events of “The Cage” taking place on. The very first pilot show with Captain Pike in command, was to play 13 years before the later series, hence it is dated 2254. The authors of The Star Trek Chronology even went further and calculated the launch of the Enterprise back to 2245 in order to include the proposed first Captain of the ship, Robert April.

While others have tried to explain the figure in connecting it with the refit of the Enterprise after the five-year mission and so place the events of Star Trek II and III 20 years after Star Trek: The Motion Picture¹ I have quite another explanation:

If one looks beyond the events of the in-universe you instantly understand the figure: Star Trek III was shown in 1984 in the cinemas and the original series first aired in 1966, some rounded 20 years. And in my eyes this is the very key to the scene; Morrow directly speaks to Kirk about the 20 years, because Kirk would know that he assumed command two decades before and when he did so the Enterprise was already an aged vessel.

Crew of the Traitor’s Claw

The following is actually more a display error or discontinuity that was introduced by Filmation for the TAS episode “The Slaver Weapon”, but worth to include here:

The picture below shows four Kzinti outside the Traitor’s Claw, but shows a fifth Kzinti inside the ship. In the original novel by Larry Niven, only two Kzinti (Chuft-Captain and Slaverstudent) left the ship, Telepath was in stasis (he was wounded by the rocket setting), and Flyer stayed on board to guard the prisoners Anne and Jason (in Niven’s original story, Nessus was not aboard).

Filmation Error in “The Slaver Weapon” showing one Kzinti more.

References

1. ↑ See James Dixon’s Fandom Star Trek Chronology, which is based on the timeline presented in the Federation Reference Series: In there TMP is set in 2267, TWOK and TSFS in 2287.