Corrected entry: Kirk tells Gillian he can't pay for the meal at the restaurant because they don't use money in the 23rd century. However, in Star Trek III, McCoy tells the captain of the alien ship, "Price you name. Money I got."
wizard_of_gore
29th Sep 2023
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
5th Sep 2021
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Corrected entry: Nothing in space could communicate with whales in the ocean without radios. It wouldn't matter if it was generating the loudest sound in the universe, or had the most sensitive mike and most powerful amplifier - sound can't travel through a vacuum. The probe couldn't "hear" the whales, and the whales couldn't hear the probe.
Correction: This assumes that the probe, which does not appear to be a 'mechanical' device, uses a communications technology that we are familiar with, and there's no reason to assume that it does. It's a fictional, alien probe, which is likely using a fictional, alien technology to communicate with the whales.
You're describing fantasy fiction and not science fiction. The whales are not equipped with alien technology to send and receive, so it doesn't matter what technology the probe contains The movie makes a point of "playing" the sounds of whales and the sounds of the probe. Sounds, by definition, are vibrations of a medium - there is no medium here to carry the vibrations, and even if there were, they would have to be so powerful as to cause worldwide, catastrophic shock waves in order to reach.
Star Trek does often dabble in fantasy under the guise of "too advanced for our puny minds." The probe's signal is not itself a sound but some kind of energy (or something) that can inexplicably drain power from starships, cause giant hurricanes, and produce a sound when it hits a medium. The probe presumably has sensors that can detect the effects of a whale call and extrapolate/ "hear" it much the way the Enterprise bridge screen can "see" across vast distances using sensor data.
10th Apr 2006
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Corrected entry: Starfleet has serious regulations on bringing future technology to inappropriate time periods (which is why the Bird of Prey remained cloaked during it's time in 1986). Chekov being fully aware and considerate of these regulations, considering he has been in Starfleet for about 20 years should have never tossed the Klingon phaser (23rd Century technology) at the navy officer (20th Century person) with full knowledge that he'll never be able to retrieve it. He is too smart for it to have been panic.
Correction: Maybe a bad error in judgment, but a character mistake, not a movie mistake.
Correction: First off, the men interrogating him do not appear to be Navy officers but rather federal agents (FBI, CIA, etc.) The guy asking the questions has some idea of what the phaser is supposed to be, "Make nice, give us the ray gun" so he either deduced that or as is common in interrogations, they're asking the same questions over and over. The interrogators obviously don't believe a word of what Chekov is saying, hence why the one agent tells him, "Go ahead, stun me."
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Correction: They don't use money in the Federation, but that doesn't mean that other alien cultures don't use currency for illegal activities.
wizard_of_gore ★