A curiosity about The Voyage Home

[Cγrano Mudd]

I’ve always had a gripe about The Voyage Home. I never really liked the film very much. In particular, there is a bit of a logic problem regarding the following dialogue:

McCOY: Come on Spock, it's me, McCoy! You really have gone where no man has gone before. Can't you tell me what it felt like?
SPOCK: It would be impossible to discuss the subject without a common frame of reference.
...
McCOY: You mean I have to die to discuss your insights on death?

The thing is, Spock wouldn’t actually remember his death.

Spock, in his current incarnation, would remember his birth, up through the moment he terminated his mind meld with McCoy. His memory would then pick up inside the Mark VI torpedo casing, followed by the subsequent events on Genesis, etc., the refusion on Vulcan, and forward from there.

The event of Spock’s actual death was not part of his Katra stored in McCoy, and occurred before his regeneration.

I think Spock is just having a laugh at McCoy's expense.

 

[David cgc]

You're assuming that Spock was using McCoy as a backup, like a spare hard drive, but we know that's not how it works. As you yourself say, if that were the case, Spock wouldn't remember anything after he knocked out McCoy, but the first thing he remembered after being revived was what happened after he melded with Bones. "I have been, and ever shall be, your friend... ship, out of danger?"

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Spock's katra was alive in McCoy. Spock spoke through McCoy. Getting out of control while assuming parts of Spock's personality was what got McCoy arrested in the first place. Spock might have memories of all of that.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Perhaps McCoy was referring to more spiritual ideas like the soul and an afterlife rather than Spock's Katra.

 

[Cγrano Mudd]

You're assuming that Spock was using McCoy as a backup, like a spare hard drive, but we know that's not how it works.

The Katra in McCoy was a spare hard drive, yes. Otherwise, why bring McCoy along? Why have a refusion?

As you yourself say, if that were the case, Spock wouldn't remember anything after he knocked out McCoy, but the first thing he remembered after being revived was what happened after he melded with Bones. "I have been, and ever shall be, your friend... ship, out of danger?"

Right. That's part of the logic problem. It doesn't work. That's what I'm saying. Although, you could say that Spock's Katra witnessed those events via McCoy, through McCoy's eyes.

Spock's katra was alive in McCoy. Spock spoke through McCoy. Getting out of control while assuming parts of Spock's personality was what got McCoy arrested in the first place. Spock might have memories of all of that.

I'll buy that.

 

[Cγrano Mudd]

Perhaps McCoy was referring to more spiritual ideas like the soul and an afterlife rather than Spock's Katra.

I'm going by what McCoy explicitly states in dialogue:

McCOY: You mean I have to die to discuss your insights on death?

 

[Marsden]

I’ve always had a gripe about The Voyage Home. I never really liked the film very much.

Me, neither. It's just too silly and it made the next one even sillier. There's too much silliness in 4, 5, and 6.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

I'm going by what McCoy explicitly states in dialogue.

I don't see how that contradicts what I said, but okay.

 

[Cγrano Mudd]

As you yourself say, if that were the case, Spock wouldn't remember anything after he knocked out McCoy...

I didn't write that. What I wrote was that Spock wouldn't remember anything after he ended the mind meld. During the mind meld, Spock still effectively transferred his Katra while McCoy was in a semi-or unconscious state, obviously.

 

[David cgc]

The Katra in McCoy was a spare hard drive, yes. Otherwise, why bring McCoy along? Why have a refusion?

How did Spock's fingers have the bandwidth to copy his entire neural network into McCoy's in the space of half a second, when it usually takes moments, at least, for a mind-meld to find a single piece of information? How did McCoy's nervous system have the physical space to accommodate an entire second set of connections, never mind the fact that Spock's mind would seem to be far more information-dense than the average human's? For that matter, how can telepathy work at all, weak electrical signals being picked up across thousands of trillions of miles, faster than the speed of light?

Your interpretation that the mind is a property of the various nerves of the brain acting in concert is very reasonable, but all the way back to the beginning, and continuing to the most recent episodes, Star Trek has never worked without a mind-body duality. Whatever a "katra" is, it's "spookier" than a pile of bits and bytes that Spock can shove around like copying files from a thumb drive. Maybe Spock's ghost was tethered to McCoy by the process and was just floating around his head. Maybe consciousnesses are entirely separate from bodies, and our brains act as "antennae" to the spirit world, and bodies and souls are joined in a symbiotic relationship. I don't know, no one has done for metaphysics and eschatology of Star Trek what Christopher L. Bennett did for time travel and come up with a unified model.

Right. That's part of the logic problem. It doesn't work. That's what I'm saying. Although, you could say that Spock's Katra witnessed those events via McCoy, through McCoy's eyes.

That's be a great twist ending.

"Ship... out of danger?"

"You saved the ship. You saved us all! Don't you remember?"

"... He's not really dead, as long as we remember him. Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a moon-shuttle conductor!"

"Sarek, whatever you did, I don't think it worked right."

I didn't write that. What I wrote was that Spock wouldn't remember anything after he ended the mind meld. During the mind meld, Spock still effectively transferred his Katra while McCoy was in a semi-or unconscious state, obviously.

Wait, are you arguing that the mind meld continued "wirelessly" until Spock actually died, or disputing that absolutely nothing of relevance happened in the seconds between Spock neck-pinching McCoy and actually groping his face, so they can't actually be treated as the same event for the purposes of this discussion?

 

[Cγrano Mudd]

Wait, are you arguing that the mind meld continued "wirelessly" until Spock actually died, or disputing that absolutely nothing of relevance happened in the seconds between Spock neck-pinching McCoy and actually groping his face, so they can't actually be treated as the same event for the purposes of this discussion?

I am not making the argument that the mind meld continued wirelessly. Everyone knows that would be nonsense!

... absolutely nothing of relevance happened in the seconds between Spock neck-pinching McCoy and actually groping his face, so they can't actually be treated as the same event for the purposes of this discussion?

Wha--?

A neck pinch isn't a mind meld. They aren't the same event.

Re: your other questions above... uh, I dunno.

But this is cute. I like it:

That's be a great twist ending.

"Ship... out of danger?"

"You saved the ship. You saved us all! Don't you remember?"

"... He's not really dead, as long as we remember him. Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a moon-shuttle conductor!"

"Sarek, whatever you did, I don't think it worked right."

 

[Timo]

What resides in the reincarnated Spock's noggin should include his every life experience, certainly.

I mean, if we argue that the katra is a recording of those experiences, then Spock donating some to McCoy should not detract from Spock continuing to record further experiences, just like he has always done. And if those experiences reside in something as concrete and pseudo-physical as katra, then Genesis really ought to resurrect those, along with Spock's bladder function and whatnot. The fancy ceremony would just merge Spock's life experience from birth to death with Spock's life experience from birth to "Remember!".

Which may or may not have been necessary for restoring Spock's mind, but I could imagine the katra recording to be somewhat incomplete, with the older bits fading somewhat, getting overwritten, whatnot. So there might be some practical benefit from Spock getting a "frozen" version of his older experiences, without the rewriting from the final, traumatic moments.

In any case, Spock placing his katra into McCoy did not appear to deprive Spock of anything at all. He didn't appear to become mindless with the maneuver. He didn't appear to become soulless. He didn't appear lighter or emptier or whatever. Sharing of katra does not appear to result in any discontinuities of note.

Whether there's a discontinuity at death is the question McCoy is asking. Spock is evasive, perhaps suggesting that death doesn't put all that much of a stop to the katra recording stuff. That Sarek is distraught over the loss of Spock's katra is because Kirk shot Spock's corpse into space before Sarek had the chance to collect the katra in a jar; there's no need to assume that the katra would have been wiped clean with Spock's death as such. It's just that it's so damned inconvenient to go to the corpse with the jar now!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[X24actor]

I never understood that either since Spock was inside of McCoy the whole time and McCoy almost went crazy over it. So I think Spock gave him a quick mind meld at some point and said

"Forget"

 

[Antonovus]

I never understood that either since Spock was inside of McCoy the whole time and McCoy almost went crazy over it. So I think Spock gave him a quick mind meld at some point and said

"Forget"

I would not assume anything that isn't explicitly in the text.

 

[Defiler-Of-Redshirts]

I'm not a giant fan of The Voyage Home myself. It was kind of lightweight, silly fluff compared to other Trek films. It was pleasant enough to watch, but irrelevant and inconsequential. Despite it's good nature. You might say that it's Star Trek's cotton candy.

 

[Maurice]

The "Katra" is just the File Allocation Table (FAT) necessary to connect all his synapses. I'd maybe have bought it if he hadn't been reborn and grown from zygote to Nimoy in a couple of days.

 

[Therin of Andor]

How did Spock's fingers have the bandwidth to copy his entire neural network into McCoy's in the space of half a second, when it usually takes moments, at least, for a mind-meld to find a single piece of information?

People forget that Spock had already done this before: with Nurse Chapel in "Return to Tomorrow", to trick Henoch.

 

[Defiler-Of-Redshirts]

The Voyage Home's other massive production liability was having the most loathsome musical score ever committed to Star Trek, courtesy of Hollywood's most loathsome, zero-talent composer of all time, Leonard Rosenman. Whose musical scores were always such tired orchestral moaning & groaning, I've never heard a musical note by that Rosenman-feces that I didn't find revolting. In the space of four movies, how did Star Trek music manage to plummet from Goldsmith's room-shaking, gut-shaking thunder in TMP, down to Rosenman's castrated musical sniveling??

 

[Yellow Flame Sushi]

People forget that Spock had already done this before: with Nurse Chapel in "Tomorrow is Yesterday", to trick Henoch.

"Return to Tomorrow", actually.

 

[Therin of Andor]

"Return to Tomorrow", actually.

Ha! I even typed that into Google to sort the titles in my head - and the wrong one still popped in. Drat.

The Voyage Home's other massive production liability was having the most loathsome musical score ever committed to Star Trek, courtesy of Hollywood's most loathsome, zero-talent composer of all time, Leonard Rosenman.

One of my favourite composers. Love Bakshi's animated "Lord of the Rings" and ST IV's soundtracks!