The Reality Bomb (And Other Doctor Who "Science")

[Mr. Oragahn]

Wait, ST had a planet buster?

Yup. Q Bomb. In SST3 (Marauders), they blow up a planet while the black cool guy and some lady kiss in front of the screen. It's some kind of montage, but that's the point. I think they blew up the planet with the Arachnid God thing that lived inside the entire planet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_woGjV_q8fM

[The Dude]

Ahh, I haven't seen that one.

[Mike DiCenso]

Planet busters have appeared plenty of times in ST. The earliest one was the Planet Killer as depicted in "The Doomsday Machine" [TOS: season 2] that sliced up planets with an anti-proton force beam into rubble only a few tens of meters wide at the most. Interestingly enough, both the Constellation's and Enterprise's shields and survived numerous hits from the weapon before collapse or serious damage. In ST:Generations, Solian Toran's trilithium star killer weapon set off super novas in what would otherwise be stable stars, and the shockwave from that was sufficent to blow apart Earth-like planets. A similar weapon was employed by the Dominion in "By Inferno's Light" [DS9: season 5]. Species 8472 from VOY's "Scorpion, Parts 1 & 2" could destroy a planet using nine of their bioships in a specialized linked formation. And of course, there is the Genesis device from ST2:TWoK, that while it does not "bust" a planet, it does break it down and reorganize it's material into whatever form is in it's preprogrammed matrix, effectively utterly destroying the original world. I'am not going to go into the uber-antimatter of TOS' "Obsession" and "The Immunity Syndrome", nor the 20 ship fleet planetary bombardment of DS9's TDiC, among others since they are not specifically super-weapons ala a Death Star.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Whoops. Forgot about the original Firefly.

What about it? It's not a British TV show, and it certainly doesn't wank anything power-wise, except River Tam.
-Mike

[Khas]

I meant Blake's 7 was the original Firefly. I was stating that I forgot about it.

[Khas]

Planet busters have appeared plenty of times in ST. The earliest one was the Planet Killer as depicted in "The Doomsday Machine" [TOS: season 2] that sliced up planets with an anti-proton force beam into rubble only a few tens of meters wide at the most. Interestingly enough, both the Constellation's and Enterprise's shields and survived numerous hits from the weapon before collapse or serious damage. In ST:Generations, Solian Toran's trilithium star killer weapon set off super novas in what would otherwise be stable stars, and the shockwave from that was sufficent to blow apart Earth-like planets. A similar weapon was employed by the Dominion in "By Inferno's Light" [DS9: season 5]. Species 8472 from VOY's "Scorpion, Parts 1 & 2" could destroy a planet using nine of their bioships in a specialized linked formation. And of course, there is the Genesis device from ST2:TWoK, that while it does not "bust" a planet, it does break it down and reorganize it's material into whatever form is in it's preprogrammed matrix, effectively utterly destroying the original world. I'am not going to go into the uber-antimatter of TOS' "Obsession" and "The Immunity Syndrome", nor the 20 ship fleet planetary bombardment of DS9's TDiC, among others since they are not specifically super-weapons ala a Death Star.
-Mike

You forgot red matter, that black hole-creating goo that destroyed Vulcan.

[Mike DiCenso]

That falls into the "among others" catagory, especially since it was deployed specifically as a weapon in the Alternate Timeline Trek, not the Prime one.
-Mike

[The Dude]

Uh, Mike, I meant Starship Troopers not ST. Just in case that's what prompted the ST planet killer tangent.

[PunkMaister]

Wait, ST had a planet buster?

Yup. Q Bomb. In SST3 (Marauders), they blow up a planet while the black cool guy and some lady kiss in front of the screen. It's some kind of montage, but that's the point. I think they blew up the planet with the Arachnid God thing that lived inside the entire planet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_woGjV_q8fM

Indeed they smashed that giant planet bug with a Goa'uld complex :D

[Khas]

Back on the subject of DW science screw-ups, we come to those creatures made of living fat. While such creatures could exist in real life, any organisms with a lipid-based biochemistry would require a Titan-like environment to survive.


But maybe we can take some consolation in these screw-ups by remembering that Doctor Who was originally supposed to be a children's show.

[Khas]

Something just plain stupid in Doctor Who was the one where the Master gets elected Prime Minister of Britain, and enslaves the Earth, and then the Doctor was restored by everyone saying "Doctor", after the Master had used his laser screwdriver to age him drastically. I felt my IQ temporarily drop a few points when I saw that. I think that the writers took too many lessons from da Orkz and their reality-bending WAAAGH!s for writing that episode.

I was reading something Narsil said earlier about the Daleks' beams being something that Time Lords couldn't survive. Well, one did. Can you guess who?

As for PunkMaister saying that the Reality Bomb was the mother of all wanks, well, I thought of one more wank-tastic than even that. It's called the CosCon Device. Here's the basic physics behind it.

According to some theories, each universe has it's own cosmological constant. And when two universes collide, the one with the smaller constant survives, and the one with the higher constant is thorughly destroyed. Matter, energy, space, time, the whole shebang gone.

The CosCon Device works by creating a field with a much lower cosmological constant than the surrounding universe. The blast travels instantaneously, destroying the entire universe. Place that in the Medusa Cascade. That would have been much scarier.

[Mike DiCenso]

Nah, as far as wanking is concerned, the neo-Daleks and Time Lords pale by comparison to the Xelee and the Photino Birds.
-Mike

[Khas]

(Looks at page, mouth starts foaming and eye starts twitching due to wank levels.)

[Mike DiCenso]

Yeah, and you can see why I put my vote in for the Xelee Night Fighter in the starfighter matchup over all the other choices.
-Mike

[Khas]

Yeah, and you can see why I put my vote in for the Xelee Night Fighter in the starfighter matchup over all the other choices.
-Mike

Even though that was a "Which one was your favorite", not a "Which one would win" poll.