Welcome to the fifth last #TMPRead of the week! Can you believe we've made it this far? Don't know what the heck a "conic section flight path" is? Well, this certainly isn't one! 
Chapter 16. Kirk wants all sensors off while approaching the cloud. He's worried about what the Epsilon 9 did to get blasted. They are still transmitting friendship messages via "Linguacode". #TMPRead
Gene goes over the relative speed of the Enterprise and the cloud as they approach each other. An "eyeblink of a navigational error" in hyperspace could send them zooming by the cloud? Is navigation that manual a process? #TMPRead
The Enterprise with use "conic interception" to meet with the center of the cloud. This means taking the Enterprise in an elliptical pass of the cloud, always facing her nose toward it until it passes it, comes around, and catches up to it from behind. #TMPRead
This is the same technique used in the film explaining why we see V'Ger's rear first, however the bridge display gives zero indication that that's what they're doing. #TMPRead
The Klingons met the cloud head on. Kirk is hoping this interception technique will show V'Ger that they are both intelligent and peaceful. #TMPRead
On being scanned by V'Ger Kirk order the whole ship to be sure not to return any scans. No one is to take any action without his order. #TMPRead
The Klingons are brought up a lot, which makes more sense than not acknowledging them at all in the film. Deck reminds Kirk the Klingons were hit that this particular distance of approach. #TMPRead
"Twelfth power energy" is enough to make the Earth's sun stop rotating. #TMPRead
The chapter ends with V'Ger firing on them. #TMPRead
Chapter 17. The have full forward deflectors and full forcefields. I assume these are separate things because Decker wouldn't be redundant with 20 seconds to an impact. #TMPRead
The Enterprise actually takes sweeping evasive maneuvers as opposed the complete stand still in the film. V'Ger's weapon is called a "whiplash bolt". #TMPRead
The hull of the ship is "tritanium". I recall hearing this term in TNG, but never in TOS. #TMPRead
Kirk's thoughts during the unending reverberations of the whiplash hit that he'll need to discuss the shock effect with Nogura. #TMPRead
Spock looks to be in meditation as if searching for V'Ger with his mind. #TMPRead
The whiplash hit lasted 26 seconds. That really is a near eternity to be afraid for your life. #TMPRead
Ilia comes the Chekov's aid after his panel explodes. She grips his temples like a mindmeld. Chapel observes that he looks to be in "ecstasy" and notes the Deltan psionic sharing of consciousness during sex. #TMPRead
So, essentially, Ilia is giving Chekov a mental handjob to take his mind off his burnt arm. #TMPRead
Spock senses that V'Ger is confused as it has contacted them and received no answer. Uhura says she's gotten nothing. I agree with @ryantriddle that Uhura should have spotted the transmission instead of having Spock do everything. #TMPRead
Kirk always wondered what he'd think about before his death as the second shot is fired at them. He's mostly annoyed he could have lived another century barring accidents. #TMPRead
V'Ger's message is more than a million megahertz. That's honestly not too fast for our current computers the handle. #TMPRead
Chapter 18. Oh boy! Here comes the cloud journey!
The cloud is big enough to hide even a star and planets. They'll need deflectors up to make sure they don't hit anything. #TMPRead
The description of the cloud is equally trippy as the film. There's waves of color patterns, the sensation of impact with water, and streamers and globules. Kirk describes it as being a paper boat in a sea of milk. Groovy... #TMPRead
The cloud is a power field. It's visibility is due to the annihilation of hydrogen atoms. #TMPRead
Spock is enjoying theorizing about the intruder with others too much and shuts back down into a shell. #TMPRead
There's still no scanners allowed, only minor navigation aids. Sulu is freaking out at everything on screen as he gets ready to take any evasive action. #TMPRead
Kirk is super impressed by the size of V'Ger's ship. Nothing compares to it, not even the "largest orbital cities".
V'Ger is seventy-eight kilometers long. Twice the length of "old Manhattan Island". Odd that people would compare sizes of things to stuff that seems to no longer exist. #TMPRead
V'Ger's displacement is six million times the Enterprise's. #TMPRead
V'Ger's probe appears immediately on the bridge. The is no external approach. #TMPRead
The probe's rippling energies take on the form of mechanisms that Spock and Kirk can make out through the blinding light. #TMPRead
"Tendrils of energy" are used by the probe to check stuff out. One nearly hit's Uhura in the head. A security team arrives suddenly and one of them is hit. He vanishes. #TMPRead
This death was going to be part of the film and there are some stills of the scene in action. #TMPRead
Spock smashes his science console when Decker can't turn it off. I don't know how breaking a keyboard severs a console's communication with a computer core, but ok. #TMPRead
Ilia is specifically trying to distract the probe after it attacks Spock. The probe seems to deliver a killing blow to her instead of what was meant for Spock as opposed to purposefully scanning her as it does in the film. #TMPRead
And with Ilia departing so too shall I. Just three chapters today, but boy were they dense. All the descriptive blocks of text made it hard to find important bits. I'll be back on Monday at the usual time. Enjoy your weekend! #TMPRead
