Talk:The Tholian Web (episode)

Moved from Background Information

 * In the original DVD release of this episode, there are about ten seconds of missing film, as McCoy answers the intercom and tells Chapel he will report to the lab to look at the latest tests. Has this missing snippet been restored on the complete third season set?

Granted this is not really for the purposes of this talk page, but I could think of no other place to put it at the moment. --From Andoria with Love 15:05, 24 Aug 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, it has. Also, mention is made in the Background Information to an Away Team. "Landing Party" is the correct term for TOS.

Random Comment
Oh, come on! Spock lies, no question about it! McCoy says of the taped orders, "We never had a chance to listen to them!" Spock then verifies this by saying, "No, the crisis was upon us and then passed so quickly that we....never...-" We all know he's more human than he likes to pretend--- it's okay!!!
 * And what's the problem? The "vulcan never lie" legend is, in fact, a mere legend. Spock lies all the time in The Enterprise Incident, the episode in which the legend is introduced, and in Journey to Babel is also made clear that a vulcan, given a logical reason, has no problems in lying. - Jackoverfull 10:14, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Background note on dead crew
OK, rather than make another edit, I am going to discuss the problem. In its current wording, it says that the Enterprise encounters 3 constitution class ships with their entire crew dead. This statement is wrong the way it is worded:
 * In The Doomsday Machine, the commander, Commodore Decker is found on the ship still alive. Therefore, the Enterprise encounters a constitution class ship with a crewmember still alive.
 * In Omega Glory, they encounter a ship with no one alive. Yes, the captain is alive on the planet, but they encounter a ship with a dead crew, so that is OK.
 * In The Tholian Web, the crew is all dead.

The problem here is Machine. The Enterprise simply does not encounter it with its crew dead. In fact, the Commodore does not die until the end, with the destruction of his ship. In that case, you would have to include the Excalibur from The Ultimate Computer. Its whole crew is lost when it is destroyed by the M-5. I don't think that is what the note is going for though.

The fact is, a member of the crew is alive and on the Constellation when the Enterprise encounters it. --OuroborosCobra talk |undefined  03:21, 3 July 2006 (UTC)


 * My stance on the issue is that the Enterprise encountered three other Constitution class ships with the crew dead. Many times in many Star Trek productions, the captain has never been included in the whole "crew" scenario; the crew is everyone else on the ship, besides the captain. In "The Doomsday Machine", Decker eventually leaves the Constellation and dies, therefore, the entire crew and captain ultimately perish. In "The Omega Glory", even thugh Captain Tracey is still alive, his crew is dead, and he's not even on the Exeter, therefore, the Enterprise finds it dead as well. In "The Tholian Web", again, the Enterprise finds the Defiant with a dead crew and in this case, the captain is included in that deal. It's all semantics, I suppose. Out of the whole thing, Captain Tracey is the only one who actually survives, and yet, we never see him on his ship.


 * As far as "The Ultimate Computer" goes, the Enterprise didn't find the Excalibur dead, the Enterprise was the one that destroyed it in the first place; it was alive when it first encountered it. -- User:Kyle C. Haight (Who originally put the claim on the page. [I'll be joining Memory Alpha officially shortly])

Well, my point was on the word encounter. That essentially has the same meaning as first finding. THe part of your argument that is valid is that the commanding officer is often said to be seperate from "the crew". OK, I'll buy that. --OuroborosCobra talk |undefined  03:48, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Forum:Cup mutes?
For my own sake of curiosity...

...are there trombone cup mutes on the shelves behind McCoy as he explores the Defiant's sickbay in the TOS episode "The Tholian Web"? The are behind opaque glass, illuminated from behind, but if you look closely, you can see their shapes.

I have noticed them on in other episodes as well, but even with pause capability of my Tivo DVR, I am still not certain if I am right about this.

For those unfamiliar with the shape of a bone mute, see http://www.1800usaband.com/htmls/itementryview.asp?itementryid=3759 -- Anon

Did the Tholians Attack the Defiant?
A previous author had written at the beginning of this article that "The Enterprise is then attacked by a mysterious local race, the Tholians, the same ones that attacked Defiant." I have watched this episode many times, and there is no mention whatsoever that the Tholians attacked the Defiant. Even in the Enterprise episode, while Archer states that the Tholians of that era attempted to lure a spaceship into their time period, no mention was ever made of a Tholian attack on the Defiant prior to Archer and company boarding the ship. For these reasons, I deleted the previous author's assertion.Cvieg 18:00, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

The War on Bad Background Information
I removed the following items for various reasons.

First, the nits:
 * * During the teaser there is an editing mistake as Spock rises from his station to look at the Defiant approaching on the viewing screen. As Kirk says, "The Defiant!" Spock stands up from his chair again even though he was already standing.  The reaction shots were obviously cut together slightly out of sequence.

Horrors.


 * * If you look closely during some of the effect shots of the Tholian vessels, stars are visible through the ships. This is especially noticeable after the first Tholian ship is shown backing off after being hit by the Enterprise's phasers.

If I have to "look closely," how is it "especially noticeable"?


 * * Dr. McCoy seems to appear at an incredibly opportune time in the bridge. On the other hand, he was probably present on the bridge to discuss his report with Spock.  He was expecting something to happen to the members of the landing party, and Chekov was the first to show symptoms of what had happened to the crew of the Defiant.

Opinion and speculation.


 * * When Dr. McCoy enters Spock's quarters with the theragen, the mirror wobbles. The person controlling the door behind the mirror bumped the wall while operating the door cables.

How on earth do we know that the person controlling the door bumped the wall? Who cares about the mirror wobbling, anyway?


 * * Even though Chekov was taken away to sickbay, when we see the Tholian on the viewscreen, the back of Walter Koenig's head is still visible at the navigator's station.

Yeah, and in a lot of episodes you can see the back of Bill Blackburn's head even though someone else is at navigation. Totally irrelevant.


 * * Just before the berserk engineer leaps down on Mr. Scott, we get a view down from the top of the ladder; this is the only time we see Engineering from this angle. Look carefully, and you can also see the colored lights behind the set that were used to light up the engineering consoles!

I really hate notes that are written like this: "we see ..." and "watch and you'll see ...", plus the dreaded exclamation point.


 * * The TV Land version of this episode edits out the scene of the crewman going mad at Kirk's memorial service. This creates a continuity error, as there is now a man missing between different cuts of the attendees at the service.

Please, let's not start including every instance of scenes edited out by various networks. It would never end. - Bridge 10:31, 14 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I removed another nitpick today:


 * * When Chekov asks if there's ever been a mutiny on a starship, Spock says there's no record of one. The writers failed to remember the events of The Menagerie, Space Seed, and This Side of Paradise.


 * – Cleanse 01:42, November 16, 2009 (UTC)

Fisheye lens?
The 'space madness' first-person shots were not shot using fisheye lenses. The effect is rather that of an extremely wideangle, rectilinear (which basically means 'not fisheye') lens. This is evident in the preservation of straight lines in the shots (hence 'rectilinear'; this is the normal behaviour of most lenses, it just starts to produce a strange effect with extreme wideangle lenses... but then just about anything produces strange effects on an extreme wideangle lens; rectilinear, fisheye, close shots, long shots, tilted shots, you name it...), and the extreme elongation of objects close to the camera near the edges of the frame, such as hands holding the person the camera's view represents. (in the case of a fisheye lens it is the objects at the center which tend to be enlarged)

I know the 'fisheye effect' reference is wrong, but how to edit it given the above long-winded explanation? Joe0Bloggs 18:35, April 19, 2010 (UTC)Joe0Bloggs