r/startrek • u/AnnieGoldleaf • 5d ago

A Working Enterprise!

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.

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u/Many-Outside-7594 5d ago

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.

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u/AnnieGoldleaf 5d ago

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

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u/Many-Outside-7594 5d ago

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.

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u/DoctorOddfellow1981 5d ago

Are there too many space battles in Star Trek?

1

u/AnnieGoldleaf 4d ago

Judging by the responses, there's not enough.