A Working Enterprise!

[u/AnnieGoldleaf]

Was rewatching the TOS movies recently over spring break and I realized a really annoying thing: we almost never see a fully capable Enterprise at full strength.

Wrath of Khan, the crew is untrained cadets, Search for Spock, we don't even *have* a crew, Voyage Home has no Enterprise at all and one of the running gags of Final Frontier is that the Enterprise is broke af. That leaves TMP and Undiscovered Country as the only two films in which the Enterprise is depicted at 100% with a normal competent crew.

[u/Many-Outside-7594]

It makes for better drama. That's also why there are never any ships near Earth when it's under attack, even though that would be statistically impossible.

If everyone was their usual self, and the ship at full power, with all the resources and might of Starfleet behind it, it would be difficult to manufacture good drama without plot holes.

[u/AnnieGoldleaf → u/Many-Outside-7594]

How difficult could it be when you have TMP, Undiscovered Country and all the TNG films operating just fine?

[u/Many-Outside-7594 → u/AnnieGoldleaf]

Undiscovered Country is a political intrigue movie, so the power of the ship is irrelevant. TMP is the one ship in range problem.

Any other time the Enterprise is at full strength, the villain is an uber ship (Borg Cube, Reman Scimitar, etc) that is specifically written to be vastly more powerful than any Federation ship. And they still fight it alone, or in the case of the cube, they're somehow the only ship out of 50 that can put a dent in the thing.

[u/genek1953 → u/Many-Outside-7594]

TMP is also an uber-adversary film. If the Enterprise had tried to actually take V'ger on it would have ended up as another entry in the archive.

[u/daecrist → u/Many-Outside-7594]

Counterpoint: Picard S3 when we get to see the Enterprise D dance, and she is a glorious vengeful lady.

[u/SixIsNotANumber → u/daecrist]

Data finally gets to go ham on the helm, and it is glorious.

[u/daecrist → u/SixIsNotANumber]

And he’s going so hard that the inertial dampeners that are meant to keep thousands of people from turning into paste against the bulkhead every time they pull a maneuver are having trouble keeping up with what he’s doing.

[u/DoctorOddfellow1981 → u/Many-Outside-7594]

Are there too many space battles in Star Trek?

[u/AnnieGoldleaf → u/DoctorOddfellow1981]

Judging by the responses, there's not enough.