[Nate the Great]

PART TWO

The Fiver

Scotty: Sir! There be darkness here!

Interesting place for a Voyage Home joke...

Kirk: How're the shields, Scotty?
Scotty: Eh? What're these things called "shields" that you mention?
Kirk: Look, just find a way to pull a techno-rabbit out of the warp core like you always do.
Scotty: Uh, sure, but... what's a "warp core"?

As best as I can figure, the joke is supposed to be that these technobabble terms don't exist at this point in TOS, they'd say "deflectors" and "engines".

Kirk: Did everyone survive?
Chekov: Aye, sir -- but what's happened to all the stars?
Valen: Welcome to... the Void.
Spock: Scientifically speaking, this isn't truly a void if you're already in it.
Valen: (grumbles) Whatever, big-ears, just as long as you don't have a crazy coffee-drinking redheaded woman on board.

Valen is a character from the Voyager episode "The Void". There are some similarities between the episodes, but I think the joke was a bit forced in this case.

Scotty: Captain, we've (gasp) lost his signal -- Mr. Spock is dead!
McCoy: Wha--? That's my line! I'll kill you!

Scotty should've used "he's dead, Captain" to fit McCoy's joke format better. I don't like the death threat; Bones could've made a more appropriate threat, like "next time you need a shot I'm using a REAL needle!"

Uhura: Not yet, there's another message from Starfleet coming through --
Kirk: Huh--? What do they want now?
Uhura: They've just found a crazy woman with red hair who keeps on asking for a cup of coffee.
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy: (stick fingers in ears while loudly whistling)

The horror! The trio should've hummed along with the end-of-episode fanfare, though.

Memory Alpha

* There's confusion about the Intrepid's class and registry number. Eventually it was given NCC-1631 and fixed as Constitution-class. Robert Justman wanted a Vulcan name, but this never happened. In future eras the Hera and T'Kumbra will also have predominately Vulcan crews, and you have to wonder if the T'Pau did as well.
** As an aside, I wonder why assign "Intrepid" to a Vulcan ship. Of the initial batch of Constitution-class ships, I'd think ''Constellation'' or ''Endeavor'' would fit better.
* Last appearance of the shuttlecraft interior, and yet they spent money to refit the set. Weird...
* First episode after Paramount bought Desilu, so now the Paramount logo is at the end of the episode.
* The writers of Memory Alpha attempts to work around the conflicting comments as to whether or not Vulcan has been conquered by saying that it was one of the Vulcan colonies that were conquered. I see no need for such blatant plot-hole patching, just say that McCoy was drunk when he made the earlier comment and Spock wasn't in the mood to correct him at that time.

Nitpicker's Guide

* Phil points out that the E-D finds another area of blackness in "The Immunity Syndrome" and yet doesn't mention this episode.