Being a look back at cards from the Star Trek CCG, and what I thought of them back when they were fresh and new... in EPISODE order. Moving on to Kirk and Spock visiting the Institute looking for whales, we get two cards from this sequence. The first, naturally...
PICTURE: The angular pool looks cool enough, and they did take the time to clean up the bottom part of the image by digitally removing the people there. That bench offers itself to us, and I guess we'd have to sit there to catch sight of the whales. Yeah, not much of either whale in this image, but at least one's visible. Great sky, but the contrast in the image makes it look a little fake (or else the buildings are). Not all that interesting, mostly due to color, it's a competent 3.4.
LORE: Date's right. Information's right. Nothing special. A plain 3.
TREK SENSE: A little dull when you consider something like Montana Missile Complex. Like that card, it's part of Earth's history. The focal point of this time travel adventure was getting the whales, so George and Gracie must be downloaded here. They aren't worth points here because they aren't important enough yet. Only when they will get to the future. And the natives are correct. It's doubtful any other personnel could have been made from this time period even if 1E had continued. What can I say? Everything fits. It's just that I would have liked a little more flavor, especially since so much more happened in 1986. Ah well. Gotta give it its due for not making mistakes and actually supplying a tank for our aquatic personnel to survive in. A 4.5 is nothing to complain about.
STOCKABILITY: The ST IV mechanic isn't the most compelling one to come out of The Motion Pictures. The whales are basically a 15-point mission that requires you to time travel to the Cetacean Institute, which thankfully downloads them (they may only report there anyway), and return to Earth in any other time period. That's it. You can throw in Gillian Taylor to protect the whales from harm, but you're only protecting 15 points anyway. As standard personnel, they don't do much, especially since you probably wouldn't want to move them from Earth, though you might make an exception to fly them to The Whale Probe's location to nullify that dilemma. As far as "Earth" goes, maybe Montana Missile Complex would be a better location than Espionage Mission, simply because it would be harder to hurt them there. And you can use whatever means, of course, but the funniest to me is slipping them through the time doughnut that is The Guardian of Forever, to Historical Research, then to Montana (break out the Parallax Arguers). Seems like a lot of trouble for what it's worth. I can't see giving it more than 1.8.
TOTAL: 12.7 (63.5%) Just goes to show how Trek Sense can be a liability to usefulness.
Comments
I last visited about 20 years ago, and I had noticed that the buildings in the movie were real, but the skyline and whales were not.