What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in TWOK

[enterprisecvn65]

So when Kirk walks on to the bridge to announce the emergency situation that has arisen and as a result he assuming command of the Enterprise the first thing he does is give an order so "Stop energizers." To which Sulu responds "Stop energizers". Then Kirk orders the shipwide PA turned on where he tells the crew the situation before setting a course for Regula and going to Warp speed.

So I might be showing a little rust in my ST knowledge here but what exactly WAS an energizer? Scotty also refers to it twice in TWOK when he says main energizer's out after Reliant's first attack and how the energizer is bypassed like a Christmas tree when Kirk asks him if they can make it into the nebula.

Of course they said "energize" as the command to activate the transporter beam and I think the transporters themselves may have been called energizers a few times, but I honestly don't remember that term being used before, or even after, TWOK very much as referring to a main component of the ship's systems.

I'm going to take an educated guess and say it's obviously tied into the ships power system some how and their appears to be more than one with Kirk using the plural form in his announcement and Scotty saying MAIN energizer's our, implying there are other lesser ones. So exactly what was it's function?

Also why would Kirk order the energizers to be stopped to make his announcement? Was there something the energizers did that would have interfered with his announcement to the crew? I can't imagine the ship's PA system needed extra power to function properly so that was the point of the order.

I'm not saying it was stupid or makes no sense, I just never understood the whole point of it. It seems like to me it's like the captain of an aircraft carrier ordering the reactor shut down for a simple announcement to the crew.

Anyone shed light on this question?

 

[Christopher]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

Kirk gives the order to stop energizers just before he orders Sulu to change course and go to warp, so I'd assume the idea was to put on the brakes, to bring the ship to a halt so that it could be put onto a new course.

Looking over the transcript, there are two instances where the commanding officer is told that the main energizer is out and responds by ordering a switch to auxiliary power. That seems to indicate that the main energizer is supposed to be the primary power source for the ship. These days, that's assumed to be the warp reactor. But when Kirk ordered "Stop energizers," the ship was evidently at impulse and Kirk was about to order the warp engines activated. But there seems to be a difference between the main energizer, singular, and the energizers, plural.

Basically, it's a bit of jargon unique to the movie and it doesn't mesh well with the rest of Trek tech.

 

[enterprisecvn65]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

Kirk gives the order to stop energizers just before he orders Sulu to change course and go to warp, so I'd assume the idea was to put on the brakes, to bring the ship to a halt so that it could be put onto a new course.

Looking over the transcript, there are two instances where the commanding officer is told that the main energizer is out and responds by ordering a switch to auxiliary power. That seems to indicate that the main energizer is supposed to be the primary power source for the ship. These days, that's assumed to be the warp reactor. But when Kirk ordered "Stop energizers," the ship was evidently at impulse and Kirk was about to order the warp engines activated. But there seems to be a difference between the main energizer, singular, and the energizers, plural.

Basically, it's a bit of jargon unique to the movie and it doesn't mesh well with the rest of Trek tech.

Yeah that makes sense. I guess from a technical point it would have just been better for Kirk to order "Stop engines" since they were obviously going to make a new course after his announcement.

Saying stop energizers just makes it sounds like large parts of the ship's power systems have to be stopped for a simple announcement over the PA system.

And like I said, I may be rusty here, but I really don't remember the phrase "energizers" being used much either before or after TWOK, except in relation to the transporters. Maybe Meyer and Bennett came up with the name thinking it would be something cool that would become a regular technical reference and it just never caught on.

 

[Christopher]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

And like I said, I may be rusty here, but I really don't remember the phrase "energizers" being used much either before or after TWOK, except in relation to the transporters.

It was only used once before TWOK, in "The Alternative Factor." Lazarus performed sabotage that caused a short in a system that Lt. Masters called the "energizer" and the "energizing circuit." But aside from there and TWOK, it was never used again. (And it was never used in connection with the transporter either -- the verb "energize" was used, of course, but not the noun "energizer.")

Maybe Meyer and Bennett came up with the name thinking it would be something cool that would become a regular technical reference and it just never caught on.

I doubt they were thinking about the future in that way. When they made TWOK, Trek was on the verge of extinction as a franchise; TMP had been reasonably successful, but so expensive that the studio wasn't convinced it was worth continuing their investment. So it was far from a sure thing that there would ever be any movies beyond TWOK. And even if they had been confident that there would be, their priority would be the stories and characters. The technobabble would've been an incidental concern. They probably just cribbed the term from "The Alternative Factor" and didn't give it any more thought.

 

[HigHurtenflurst]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

Always just assumed it was a throw-away line written by people who didn't know the show that well and didn't give a toss about continuity...

 

[mos6507]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

The term "main energizer" and it being online and offline is used in more than one occasion in the movie era. I don't understand why anyone would have such a big problem with it.

 

[Christopher]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

^I've refined my search of Chakoteya's transcript site, and while I found that the term "main energizers" was used in "The Doomsday Machine" (I forgot to search for the plural form before), there is no other use in the films outside of TWOK. (Unless it's in the Abrams films, which Chakoteya rather annoyingly refuses to include in her otherwise comprehensive site.) "Doomsday," however, used it in the context of a report of power failure on deck seven. That suggests it was meant to be a localized part of the power systems, rather than the main shipwide power source.

So, in short, TWOK used the term because TOS used the term twice, although TWOK didn't use it in quite the same way. It just never caught on in later productions.

 

[ChristopherPike]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

Sulu liked to keep a pair of cheery bunnies, continually shaking their groovethang and crashing cymbals, on the helm console. Spock had told him about it before. So he grassed him up to the Admiral.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

I read somewhere (maybe the Okudas' text commentary?) that Shatner's line was originally "Stop engines", but they realized that it didn't make much sense for a starship to stop dead instead of just changing course. So they dubbed it over with something else which would match the existing lip movements. So I doubt that anybody had much of a concept of what "Stop energizers" meant - It was just a filler line.

Kind of similar to how Spock and Saavik's "Nobody's perfect" exchange was made into Vulcan after the fact - they dubbed it over to match what was originally said in English.

 

[enterprisecvn65]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

I never said I had a problem with it, so don't put words in my mouth, I just said don't remember it being used much before or after TWOK and was just saying it was kind of a strange thing for Kirk to order when he was just making a simple announcement to the crew over the PA.

Someone explained the stop engines script change, that seems to be a plausable explanation.

 

[Grant]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

I read somewhere (maybe the Okudas' text commentary?) that Shatner's line was originally "Stop engines", but they realized that it didn't make much sense for a starship to stop dead instead of just changing course. So they dubbed it over with something else which would match the existing lip movements. So I doubt that anybody had much of a concept of what "Stop energizers" meant - It was just a filler line.

Kind of similar to how Spock and Saavik's "Nobody's perfect" exchange was made into Vulcan after the fact - they dubbed it over to match what was originally said in English.

100% correct. The script says "Stop engines."

After he saw the rough cut--Roddenberry said "you cant just turn off the engines!"

So they looped in something to match his mouth movements.

 

[Maurice]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

It was a dumb line anyway. They were at impulse, and went to warp 15 seconds later, so even if they'd shut off impulse power the net effect would have been diddly+squat.

 

[FormerLurker]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

An in-universe explanation has the same effect as the "Stop engines" line would have. If the energizers, little power-flow directional thingies in the walls all stop at once, there would probably be a lull in the background noise of the ship. This would be a way to get the attention of the crew without having to call out "Attention all hands!" Meyer and/or Bennett may have assumed the general audience would take it for something like that.

 

[T'Girl]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

^ That makes the most in-universe sense, cut off the background noise so the crew of cadets could hear better. Althought I doubt TPTB were considering that.

.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

Maybe "Energizers" is an immensely popular sitcom that the bridge crew watches on the viewscreen during dull shifts... It's the 23rd Century equivalent of Friends.

 

[Timo]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

It's clearly derived from the oceangoing version of naval adventures: turning off engines would provide the necessary silence to address the crew if this were the crew of a smallish diesel- or petrol-engined fighting boat or perhaps a steam-driven destroyer, and certainly if she were an old-fashioned reciprocating-engine steamer.

However, even if shutting down power thingamabobs in Star Trek has no real effect on sound levels, it still serves the other function of such an action: that of shocking everybody aboard into realizing that something major has come up. The change in power status would not be heard across the ship, but it would still be felt, in various ways (mostly, people operating machinery would notice the machinery stopping, idling or at least complaining).

FWIW, this movie is the one time in Trek where such dramatics are appropriate. It's a training cruise - the trainees expect to be impressed by grandstand stunts and nonsensical ceremonies like that...

Personally, I enjoy the return of the "energizer" terminology to the TOS era technobabble here. In "The Alternative Factor", this terminology was associated with a single-point failure that crippled the ship; in ST2, a single-point failure that cripples the ship is repaired by a single hero as logical and appropriate. In both cases, it could be argued that the energizers keep the dilithium energized so that it does what it's supposed to do (perhaps its ENT- and TNG-explicated job of regulating annihilation, perhaps some TOS-specific job), and the "main" one does this "online", deep inside the engine where the crystals can only be accessed via a dumbwaiter system of sorts - but drained crystals need to recuperate in a separate energizing unit to become viable again.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Maurice]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

It makes about as much sense as "right standard rudder": none.

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

It makes about as much sense as "right standard rudder": none.

The only nautical-type comment made that translates well is "Z minus ten thousand meters".

 

[F. King Daniel]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

It always sounded like the 23rd century version of "Stop the presses!" to me.

It reminds me a bit of the similarly silly technobabble in "Encounter at Farpoint":

PICARD: From this point, no station aboard, repeat no station, for any reason will make use of transmitted signals or intercom!

It always gave me the mental image of the crew communicating between departments via morse code, banging on the adjacent walls.

 

[Christopher]

Re: What exactly was the point of Kirk's "Stop Energizers" command in

It reminds me a bit of the similarly silly technobabble in "Encounter at Farpoint":

PICARD: From this point, no station aboard, repeat no station, for any reason will make use of transmitted signals or intercom!

It always gave me the mental image of the crew communicating between departments via morse code, banging on the adjacent walls.

I assume the idea is to avoid radio emissions that the enemy could intercept, to communicate only through hardline channels between parts of the ship, station to station. Basically, use DSL rather than wi-fi. Although why intercoms wouldn't work that way is harder to explain. Maybe because the intercom system is wirelessly networked to the combadges?