Corrected entry: Spock announces that the Enterprise's gravity systems are failing and, from that point on,"down" is no longer towards the bottom of the ship, but is instead towards whichever side of the Enterprise happens to be nearest to Earth as the ship spins out of control. This would make sense except that the ship is in freefall and therefore everything on it should not be experiencing any gravity at all. A correction for a similar mistake supposes that the shifts in gravity are due to fluctuations caused by the malfunctioning gravity systems as they attempt to come back online. The main problem with this excuse is that, if the gravity systems are attempting to restart, then there must be intervals between each attempt wherein they are NOT started - moments where they are offline during which there should be no gravity aboard the Enterprise. These moments never occur, and so the gravity systems cannot be attempting to restart. They are simply down, and the inevitable result of such a situation was misrepresented in the film to increase the tension for the audience. (01:41:15)
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Correction: You are assuming that any malfunction of the Enterprise's gravitational systems must necessarily involve moments, however brief, when these gravitational systems are entirely offline, and therefore the crew and contents of the ship should be seen floating in freefall. There is no evidence in the movie (or in the other corrected entry referring to the ship's gravitational fluctuations, that you mention in your submission) that this has occurred, or that it must occur, as you assume. Why can't the problem be exactly what we see in the film - that the ship's gravity is experiencing serious fluctuations in direction and strength, as the ship's power weakens and has to be diverted among several critical systems?
Aerinah