Regulus was re-formed as the Genesis planet, while the Mutara Nebula coalesced to form the star. Remember, they limped away from Regulus to the nebula on incredibly slow impulse power, and made it there in only a few minutes. If we had a ship today capable of travelling the speed of light, it would take 8 minutes to reach the sun… the Enterprise travelled from Regulus to the nebula in much less time, moving at speeds well under the speed of light. When the Genesis torpedo exploded within the Mutara nebula, Regulus would have been enveloped in the blast radius, and the Genesis effect would have gone into action.

Genesis, accelerated the “life-giving” process of anything the Genesis wave contacted. Since stars are formed natually over millions of years in stellar nebula, it only makes sense that star formation was rapidly increased by the effect of the explosion.

I believe there was a story written around this idea… and that the reason for the instability of the Genesis planet had nothing to do with the protomater (as Marcus had speculated), but was caused by the Genesis torpedo being forced to do too much, with too much, for its programming to handle.

First, we must take into account that they couldn’t pick just ANY lifeless planetoid. After all, after the Genesis effect was tested, they would want this planet to last, to be available for study, and to perhaps even colonize.

In order for the Genesis planet to be able to sustain humanoid life forms, it would have to conform to certain laws of planetary physics. For example, planets that could be Earth-like and sustain our life form need to fall within a very narrow band in orbit around their parent star. Too close, and the temperatures on the planet would bake everything to death. Too far, and your nice new “accelerated life forms” are popsickles in no time flat. For example, we have a number of lifeless space bodies right here in our own solar system in Mercury and Pluto. However, I think you’d agree that firing the Genesis torpedo at those planets would be a waste of resources. None of the plant life would be able to survive or grow!

Now that we’ve narrowed the search for acceptable planets to that narrow range, we also need to make sure the planet has a suitable mass. (Remember, Carol Marcus even states that the terraformed planet has an equal mass to the progenitor planet.) Planets too large would have oppresive gravity, making it impossible to stand or move. Planets too small would have insufficient gravity and would not be able to maintain the dense atmosphere of oxygen/nitrogen humanoids need to survive. (For example, modern astronomy theorizes that Mars once was quite Earth-like. However, it was too small to maintain an Earth-like atmosphere, which gradually evoporated into space leaving the much-less-dense Carbon Monoxide atmosphere it has now.)

So now that we’ve even further narrowed our search parameters, we now have to factor in the fact that the planet had to be COMPLETELY lifeless. In Carol Marcus’s own words, “There can’t be so much as a microbe, or the show’s off!” Since, in the mythos of Star Trek it seems that any world that is cable of supporting life generally does, one would have to believe that given the right position around a star and the proper mass, that some form of life would have sprouted on a planet. Sure, it may have been little more than primitive bacteria still evolving out of their primordial soup… but that alone would have invalidated a planet according to the search parameters.

So… given ALL those limitations, I could see why finding a proper planet would be a difficult task!

Hope that helped!!

I like the way you put that. It’s taken years for me to come to the conclusion that WOK (while I still love it) is not the be all end all Trek Movie everyone gushes about.

You’re sense of the character development from TMP makes good sense and rings true. The directors edition bore some of that out as well, by timing the moments with better cuts.

While I will never argue that WOK isn’t a more fun movie, TMP feels more classic Trek to me in a weird way. I was also not as big a fan of 6 as the rest of the world. To me the characters became more caricatures of themselves in the later movies.

My favorites are 1,2,3,4 & first contact. The rest not so much. 6 was off, it had elements of greatness and the right look and feel, but their were some really weak plot elements that lessened the impact for me.

Anyway it’s all fun. Doug L.