Starfleet Jedi

One thing particularly disappointing in ST navigation was how lame it turned out to be in STII, when it's decided that that they simply travel to the desired star-system at warp, and then locate the desired planet by counting in from the furthermost planet-- not even noticing if anything's changed on their planetary-charts. While this may have been retconned for the plot of TWOK, it's pretty lame, and is a heavy strike against ST nav, equivalent to a sailor not noticing that a charted island has moved.

In contrast, SW navigation is so precise, that Solo came out of hyperspace exactly where Alderaan was supposed to be, and he knew that the planet wasn't there. In other words, hyperspace travel gives very precise point-to-point travel capability anywhere in the galaxy.

ST nav might have improved in TNG due to the advanced stellar-cartography, however.

I suppose not noticing that a planet was missing or the orbits of some had changed is a bit of a error but Khan does say that the orbital path of hs planet was changed so for all we know his planet was in the right place/orbit for the planet they were looking for.

Not noticing a missing planet is a big one though.

Is that a question of navigation or a question of cartography?

We know that the UfP is still cartographying space. That's one of the main purposes of the Enterprise.

And if the map is wrong, the best navigation skills and abilities can not help.

Maybe the Reliant did not have detailed maps of the Ceti Alpha system that was only visited once by the Enterprise to resettle Khan Noonien Singh and the crew of the SS Botany Bay after their attempted takeover of the USS Enterprise in 2267.

Maybe the maps were deleted by Starfleet or decreed secret to prevent others going for the habitable Ceti Alpha V, either to deliberately liberate Khan Noonien Singh and the crew of the SS Botany Bay or to colonize the planet and undeliberately liberate them.

I've always been of the opinion that Khan was lying about the destruction of Ceti Alpha Six and that they had tried to leave Ceti Alpha Five, only to crash and be trapped on Ceti Alpha Six. Given the abilities of Star Trek sensors in other shows and episodes, it's the only answer that really makes sense to me. Chekov and the Captain were not exactly in a position to contradict him at the time. There's a chance that Starfleet deleted the maps in order to prevent anyone from rescuing Khan, deliberately or otherwise, but I do think that if that wast he case the Science Team of the Reliant would have been told not to go there, or merely told that the planets in the system did not meet the criteria for the use of the Genesis Device. After all, the Genesis Wave spread out pretty far after the detonation of the torpedo. I think that even if it was tested on "Ceti Alpha Six", that Ceti Alpha Five may possibly have felt the effects as well.

The Ceti Alpha 5/6 debacle is a rare example... in fact, quite possibly the only such example of it's kind in all of Trek. It's not necessarily any kind of improvement between TOS and TNG, since in TOS' "The Doomsday Machine", the Enterprise was easily able to scan several star systems and spot immediately that previously charted planets were gone, and precisely which planets had been destroyed in the star systems.

In "The Changeling", the ship's sensors from a significant distance out were able to give Spock the information that all life on Maluria, including 4 billion people had been wiped out.

So either toss out the TWoK example, or try to find an explanation. Either way it is completely out of wack with the rest of Trek.

On the other hand, Han's observation about Alderaan was nothing terribly special given the circumstances. The ANH novelization confirms that when the Falcon dropped out of hyperspace, it should have been one planetary diameter out from it, so since Han couldn't visually confirm the existance and his sensors were telling him about a lot of wild energy going on, not to mention the asteroidal debris, it didn't take a genius to figure out that the planet had been destroyed. Given the all too numerous examples throughout the Wars movies of crappy sensor performance, any spotting of anything seems miraculous at times.
-Mike

This is one of those times that makes me wish that some of the novels were canon, as "To Reign In Hell" tells us that the Ceti Alpha system was A) In a largely unexplored region of space, and B) Surrounded by an extensive asteroid field even before Ceti Alpha VI exploded. But even that wouldn't explain everything, as even in RL today, we can identify seperate planets in a star system hundreds of light-years away.

It simply would have been better had they explained it by saying that some anomaly (say a black hole passing through the system) had caused the two planets to shift their orbits so that one planet was in the other's orbit, and that CA5 suffed the catastrophic enviromental damage as a result.
-Mike

That's.... eerily similar to Spock's theory of Ceti Alpha VI's destruction in the book. According to his theory, a black hole passed through the system, and the gravitational forces ripped Ceti Alpha VI apart, while causing the environmental damage to Ceti Alpha V. Given the fact that the book mentions colossal volcanic eruptions on CA5, much like how Jupiter's gravity causes Io's volcanism in our solar system, this would fit with the idea that a black hole's gravitational field was what reeked havoc on the system. Also, the book describes that CA5 and CA6 had very close orbits.

Well, we've discussed it a while back...

I'm not sure it was exactly discussed in detail in that particular thread. What with the way it quickly degenerated after people started making fun of your little typo error there. ;-)
-Mike

Khas wrote:That's.... eerily similar to Spock's theory of Ceti Alpha VI's destruction in the book. According to his theory, a black hole passed through the system, and the gravitational forces ripped Ceti Alpha VI apart, while causing the environmental damage to Ceti Alpha V. Given the fact that the book mentions colossal volcanic eruptions on CA5, much like how Jupiter's gravity causes Io's volcanism in our solar system, this would fit with the idea that a black hole's gravitational field was what reeked havoc on the system. Also, the book describes that CA5 and CA6 had very close orbits.

I'm sure someone thought of it that was well. The exception here in my alternate version of the catastrophe is that CA6 is not destroyed, though it might also have been devastated by the passage of the black hole or other phenomena as CA5 was.
-Mike

Mike DiCenso wrote:I'm not sure it was exactly discussed in detail in that particular thread. What with the way it quickly degenerated after people started making fun of your little typo error there. ;-)
-Mike

Yes, but no one said the idea had no merit either, so they probably agreed the explanation had some merit and they couldn't think of anything to say contrary to my explanation, so they had fun with my mistake... :)

Ceti Alpha 5 was different because it was the old "cardboard prison"cliche, i.e. the villain only gets locked up so that he can escape: it's supposed to be impossible.

Welcome to the board, Sarah. I would argue that CA5 does not quite fit the trope, at least as I understand it, is simply because Khan never broke out of that prison on a consistant basis during TOS the way, say, the Joker breaks out of Arkham Asylum in the various incarnations of Batman. This was a one time only circumstance, and in order to do it, Harve Bennett and company did not really think things through. It's simply a McGuffin to move the story along, and in hindsight, a bit of a clumsy one at that.
-Mike

I think it just means they escape through a hole in the plot, because the plot requires it. The sad thing is that Khan wasn't even originally a villian, he was a archetypical superman: Star trek was supposed to be about understanding your enemies, which set it above all the old other space-shows by being deeper than the old "zap 'em" formula. But Hollywood made him into just another 2-dimensional space-fiend who couldn't even make vertical maneouvers or earplugs.
So I'm not surprised if a starship couldn't find a planet even as well as the Falcon: remember, Han popped up exactly where the planet was supposed to be, not just in the right solar-system. If star trek navigation is that inaccurate after only 15 years of charts being updated, then maybe they retconned it to make it worse, just like they retconned Han Solo from shooting first in order to make him more politically-correct. (Who knows, maybe they'll re-digitize Raiders of the Lost Ark so the swordsman will have an Uzi that he fires first).

But how hard can it be to navigate to a planet? Planets move at precise rates, and their positions and orbits have precise orientations to the galactic map, just like their stars; so if a federation ship was ever in a star-system, you'd definitely be able to tell exactly where a planet should be, at any time: 15 years later, or 1500. And likewise you'd know immediately if it wasn't there as on the map, that something changed: as well as the type of planet, it's atmophere, it's gravity when you set up in orbit, etc. You have to ask whether the writers knew anything about this: just saying "a wizard did it" would have been better.