From Newsgroup: alt.tv.star-trek.tos   
   From Address: gene@genekhatesspammers.com   
   Subject: Re: Those Amazing Computers!   
      
   On 5/12/2011 7:14 PM, Ron wrote:   
   > http://www.tvrage.com/Star_Trek/episodes/162320   
   >   
   > And if you have to bust your hump to explain something so it seems   
   > right, then it's probably wrong.   
      
   I don't recall "busting my hump" on this one.  It was pretty obvious to    
   me that the four had at least one thing in common from the computer's    
   POV (that it had just recently run all of their names through its    
   processors in the same login session), and that that one thing should    
   have been a fairly big red flag the moment Spock heard it.   
      
   What I see as the real mistake Spock made in his inquiry is (amusingly)    
   what actually made it work for him:  he entered a totally unfiltered    
   search request("any item").  He should have ended up buried in 10,000+    
   totally irrelevant hits.  Maybe he did, and they just didn't show us how    
   long it took for him to sift through them and figure out what Kirk's    
   interest in Karidian was.   
      
   > Then there's one other thing that skirts being wrong: the Tarsus   
   > executions took place 20 years before. Depending upon "canon" as some   
   > finicky folks here rely upon almost obsessively, Kirk was 14 or if you   
   > go by the scene that was cut, Kirk was a midshipman just out of the   
   > Academy-- making him then between 18 and 22 roughly,  Okay...   
   >   
   > But now there's Riley who presumably is a few years younger than Kirk.   
   > What was Riley when *he* witnessed the crime; nine? Do the math   
   > children... wouldn't it have been easier if Lenore just ignored Riley   
   > altogether. Never mind; she's crazy, but still... Riley was awfully   
   > young back then.   
      
   Oh, definitely.  If they'd left the midshipman scene in place Kirk would    
   have had to be pushing 40 to have been on Tarsus 20 years earlier.  Of    
   course, at the time they hadn't specified Kirk's age at all, other than    
   on the tombstone in WNMHGB, so the plot hole wouldn't have materialized    
   until the next season when they old us he was 34.   
      
   Bruce Hyde was 26 when he played Riley.  Stretching things a bit, the    
   character could have been a couple of years older, but at most Riley was    
   seven or eight during the Tarsus disaster.  Of course, that's the sort    
   of experience that tends to burn intself into one's memory pretty deep.    
     I imagine that little kid that Saddam Hussein was hugging on TV before    
   the first Gulf war can probably still remember how many gaps there were    
   in the guy's teeth.   
      
   GeneK   
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