MovieChat Forums > Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) Discussion > "How can you do that?!" ?

"How can you do that?!" ?

posted 10 years ago by cdhanger-1
9 replies | jump to latest

I may be remembering this wrong, I don't have a convenient way at the moment to check the movie myself. But I've seen it numerous times, and if I'm not mistaken, when Gillian is aboard the bridge with the crew and they're going after the whales, there's a part where Uhura reports that something is coming up ahead, Kirk says "On screen" and has her put it on the screen, and startled, Gillian says "How can you do that?" Given everything she's witnessed by this point, should she really be that surprised that something from outside can be put onto a screen? Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly, or misinterpreted the words or meaning of the line or something.

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[–] PillowRock 10 years ago

I don't think that she's reacting to the fact that an outside view is being put on the screen.

I think that she's reacting to the fact that what they're showing is over the horizon. No part of the ship actually has a "line of sight" to what they're showing. That's something that happens periodically in the Trek universe and is usually just glossed over / ignored. Are they taking some residual light that's reflecting off of the upper atmosphere, somehow separating it from the directly viewed light, and de-convolving & restoring it? Do they have a whole constellation of autonomous drone cameras transmitting video back to their ship? How are they seeing clearly over the horizon?

The transporter's function is clearly so far beyond what she knows that it's pointless to ask how it works. Same for the cloaking of the ship.

That video feed is the first thing that she sees that is in that in-between realm of things that are both impossible according to what she knows and also close enough to being possible that she might grasp the basics of an explanation.

[–] bjlevine 10 years ago

And what makes it even more effective is that nobody bothers to answer her. It's just normal to them. So thankful they didn't feel the need for some Geordi Laforge technobabble here.

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[–] 10 years ago

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[–] sage2112 9 years ago

Great post.

[–] The_Honest_Truth 9 years ago

I always thought she was asking how they could put the image on screen when the whales were 600 nautical miles away.

[–] captain-bryce 9 years ago

I don't think that she's reacting to the fact that an outside view is being put on the screen.

I think that she's reacting to the fact that what they're showing is over the horizon. No part of the ship actually has a "line of sight" to what they're showing. That's something that happens periodically in the Trek universe and is usually just glossed over / ignored. Are they taking some residual light that's reflecting off of the upper atmosphere, somehow separating it from the directly viewed light, and de-convolving & restoring it? Do they have a whole constellation of autonomous drone cameras transmitting video back to their ship? How are they seeing clearly over the horizon?

The transporter's function is clearly so far beyond what she knows that it's pointless to ask how it works. Same for the cloaking of the ship.

That video feed is the first thing that she sees that is in that in-between realm of things that are both impossible according to what she knows and also close enough to being possible that she might grasp the basics of an explanation.

I agree with what you said. And it's actually a legitimate question. How exactly are they getting an image transmitted back to them from over 600 miles away, beyond line of sight? Is it a satellite feed to the whales, lol? They never actually explain how this is possible. But it's Star Trek, so we just ignore the science/physics of it and explain it away as "magic".

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[–] bootnell-890-982772 9 years ago

I always just figured the screen interpreted sensor readings.

[–] bjlevine 9 years ago

It's a bit silly for us to hypothesize how 23rd century technology would work (kind of like Ben Franklin trying to figure out how my smart phone worked).

But I can see the ship detecting any kind of available radar, microwave or other communications signals and creating it's own network of them. A bit like how the aliens in Independence Day used our communications satellites to coordinate their own global communications.

But again, that is a technobabble explanation, and I for one am glad that no such nonsense was given. It wasn't needed.

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[–] 9 years ago

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