The 14 Dumbest Things In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
1. Starfleet’s Sitting Ducks
STARFLEET COMMAND (voice): Spacedock, this is Starfleet Command. Launch all vessels. Launch all vessels.
CONTROLLER #2: Sir! Spacedock doors are inoperative! All emergency systems are non-functional.
CONTROLLER #1: Engage reserve power.
CONTROLLER #2: Aye sir.
CONTROLLER #1: Starfleet Command, this is Spacedock on emergency channel. We have lost all internal power.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Starfleet knows this giant “probe” in making a beeline for Earth, and that it’s knocked out at least five ships en route
CARTWRIGHT: Mister President, the Probe is headed directly for us, The signal is damaging everything in its path. The Klingons have lost two vessels. Two starships and three smaller vessels have been neutralised.
Those starships being the Saratoga and the Yorktown. (After V’ger and this, you’d think the Klingons would have had quite enough of invincible ginormous alien contraptions pasting their ships to the wall en route to Earth.)
So, with this seemingly unstoppable unknown bearing down on them does Starfleet set up a picket line of starships? Launch ships to approach this unknown from various trajectories in order to figure out the radius of its power neutralizing force, or study it from afar? Nope. Starfleet keeps its “great experiment” the Excelsior and other ships parked in Spacedock—with the doors closed— until the Probe is literally on top of them, with the result that none of them can make any attempt to contact or escape the probe.
The 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise. Starfleet saw this one coming. That’s not just dumb, it’s criminally negligent and dereliction of duty.