A Review of Brian Young's Minbari vs Federation Video
Posted: Sun May 06, 2012 9:49 am
All right, I said I'd get around to doing this, and I'm going to take a stab at reviewing this "case study" video by long time Versus debater Brian Young. A quick overview, SWST introduced Brian Young's SciFight.net website to us about two and half weeks ago in this thread. The site is a series of video commentaries on various science fiction franchise technologies, such as warp strafing in Star Trek or the validity of the Star Wars EU's AOTC:ICS' numbers. People have commented on those already in the thread itself, and so I am going into a more detailed look at the only actual crossover Versus commentary by Brian that he has posted so far on his new website; "Minbari vs Federation" in his "This vs That" section of his website. Brian pits the two together and just gives the Federation the long term win over the Minbari. But is that so? I noted in the original thread that there were some serious flaws in Brian's handling of the subject and so I will go into the good, the bad, and the very ugly about Brian's take on that fight. So without further ado, let's get to the nitty-gritty...
- The video starts off with Brian giving a very brief overview of the Earth-Minbari war as it happened canonically, which is all well and good as is his point that Trek and B5 have almost totally different technology bases; B5 has the extra-dimensional hyperspace accessible via jumpgates and Trek has space-distorting warp drive. Again all well and good. But then Brian goes off on a tangent of sorts talking about the TOS warp cubed formula and then pulls out a Star Trek the Next Generation Technical Manual book and takes the speed formulas from there and uses it as a basis for all Trek speeds while totally ignoring any canon TOS warp speed examples, of which there are plenty to chose from. Even after acknowledging that the canon had examples of speeds far faster than TM or writer guide formulas allowed for. But Brian seems to strangely pick the TNG TM formula numbers as if he's doing Trek some great big favor here.
- This gets to the next big issue, as Brian uses several apparently cherrypicked B5 speed examples to set B5 speeds in the 20-something thousand c range, though he does cite a couple lower examples, but dismisses them mainly as low-end due to them being Earth hyperspace speeds, and he claims that Earth hyperspace speeds would be inferior because Earth technology was inferior. In each case he chooses the highest examples possible for B5 and the lowest for Trek to give the Minbari an FTL advantage and a big one. This is blatantly unfair and dishonest for obvious reasons. First and foremost is that Brian in using the TNG TM is handicapping Trek using an official, but still non-canon book. Conversely in canon Classic Trek while we have inconsistent speeds as we do with B5, we do get many that exceed B5's given examples by a humongous range. Take for example TOS' "That Which Survives" from season three, where the Enterprise is traveling back over 990.7 light years to rescue Kirk and the rest of a stranded landing party on a mysterious and hostile alien planet. Once underway, the Enterprise soon achieves better than warp 8 and is holding that when we get the following estimate to arrive back at the planet:
RAHDA: We're holding warp eight point four, sir. If we can maintain it, our estimated time of arrival is eleven and one half solar hours.
SPOCK: Eleven point three three seven hours, Lieutenant. I wish you would be more precise.
Even if it took a few minutes or even an hour to reach warp 8.4, it won't affect the speed or time of arrival much. We have a clearly stated distance of 990.7 light years and a clear estimated time of arrival; 11.337 hours. We'll round up and say 12, just to cover possible acceleration time to warp 8.4. Thus 990.7 x 365 light days = 361,853 x 24 hours = 8,678,532 divided by 12 = 723,211 c. That's 31 times faster than the fastest example Brian gives from B5. Ah, but this is a one-time only example, right? Wrong. In TOS' second season episode "Obsession", we get this as Kirk, Spock, and McCoy discuss the vampire cloud creature:
KIRK: Whatever it is, Doctor, whatever it is, wouldn't you call it deadly?
MCCOY: Yes, there's no doubt about that.
KIRK: And what if it is the same creature that attacked eleven years ago from a planet over a thousand light years from here?
SPOCK: Obviously, Captain, if it is an intelligent creature, if it is the same one, if it therefore is capable of space travel, it could pose a great threat to inhabited planets.
That planet is Tycho IV and is stated here to be "over a thousand light years" away. Later a time estimate to reach that planet and return across that distance to rendezvous with another starship is given:
KIRK: Yes, I think I do. I don't know how I know, but home is where it fought a starship once before. (to Uhura) Inform them of our tactical situation and inform them I'm committing this vessel to the destruction of the creature. We will rendezvous. Round-trip time, Mister Chekov.
CHEKOV: One point seven days, sir.
KIRK: We will rendezvous with the USS Yorktown in forty eight hours.
So it takes them 1.7 days round trip, and Kirk pads in a few extra hours to bring that time up to 48 hours. That's a minimum of 2,000 light years x 365/48 = 365,000 c. Slower than "That Which Survives", but still 17 times faster than Brian's B5 example. And remember Kirk padded in extra time because Chekov gave 1.7 days or 40.8 hours. So really that's 429,411 c. In neither of these cases is the Enterprise modified by aliens or uses weirdness to enhance the speed of the ship as was the case in "By Any Other Name". And keep in mind these are not highly unusual speeds in TOS. In "Where No Man has Gone Before", the Enterprise reached the literal edge of the Milky Way galaxy and attempted to penetrate the Galactic Barrier to go out into intergalactic space, but was forced to turn back when it took heavy damage. Such a trip would have been extremely impractical if the ship were limited to a thousand c since even a trip straight up or down and back again would cover thousands of light years round trip and cost years off the 5 year mission, which did not happen. In "The Squire of Gothos" (middle of season 1), it's remarked that the Enterprise is some 900 light years from Earth, which given they visit Earth at the end of the next season ("Assignment: Earth"), they would have had to have no adventures (basically no stopping anywhere, not even for the numerous mentioned starbase layovers) and just spent the time in transit to get back in time for the events of that episode, which is clearly not what they did as anyone watching the series could tell you! The implied speed average is better than 10,000 c. So Brian's claims of not having clear speed examples in Trek is blatantly false and is fair proof of his dishonesty, especially since he jumps through hoops to spin away B5 hyperspace inconsistencies with one excuse or the other is really a slap in the face to fans who are knowledgeable and a disservice to those who don't know better.
Now this doesn't even cover the first 10 minutes of the video and we're already dealing with this much! To his credit Brian brings up the warp strafing tactic, which is good, but he goes to lengths to try and reduce it's importance in starship combat. He also gives Trek a fair advantage in troop capability over the knives and staff-weilding Minbari warriors. Again, all well and good, but it hardly makes up for the atrocious dishonest arguments he made prior and makes afterwords.
Which brings us to the next round in the starship firepower comparison where Brian once again cherry picks his examples and makes some rather huge leaps in assumptions and logic. Because we know now that the Minbari have no FTL advantage (they are actually at a huge disadvantage) along with warp strafing and ground forces capability are clearly huge advantages for the Federation. Brian next makes the claim that Minbari firepower is superior, showing examples primarily from Star Trek II and VI. But is that so? Let's look closely:
- In TOS' "Errand of Mercy", for example, the Enterprise engages and destroys a presumably shielded Klingon scout ship with just a few shots of return fire. Brian claims that warp core breeches are what are causing the one-hit or few hit kills, but he never backs these up. Furthermore, the E-A and Excelsior would never fire full-yield torpedoes at the BoP since the E-A was unshielded by this point and as was established in TNG's "Q Who?" and "The Nth Degree" that firing full yield, full spreads of torpedoes will likely severely cripple or destroy the ship launching them, if it is unshielded, so that's right out.
- Brian also disingenuously leaves out the context of the ST VI scene where the E-A allegedly fires on Kronos One. The E-A's shields are down (so a full-yield torpedo is out, especially at the close range of a few hundred meters) and the assassins had no intention of destroying Kronos One , merely crippling her so that they could board her and kill Chancellor Gorkon and frame the Federation for it. When we see torpedoes hit an unshielded E-A in the final fight scene at the end and from the small cloaked BoP (a ship canonically 10 times weaker than a refit Constitution-class starship), it blasts a huge hole in the nearly unshielded E-A's saucer section.
- Another important piece of information Brian leaves out; in Star Trek, particularly the TNG-era, we know of structural integrity fields (SIF), which as seen in "The Chase" can even reinforce the hull of the ship to withstand low-level beam weapon fire. In combat, why wouldn't SIF be cranked up to full? We also know that unlike Earth Force ships of B5, the hulls of Federation starships can withstand temperatures in excess of 12,000 degrees C as per TNG's "Descent, Part 2" without reaching the glowing point. So you need a lot of energy to burn the hull of a Federation starship, never rmind getting through the shields first, which can withstand thousands of terajoules of EM radiation. As Brian once calculated years ago, the hull of a Minbari Sharlin-class starship cannot take even a fraction of the energy from a single 2 megaton nuke, never mind what antimatter-matter photon torpedoes of many tens of megatons would do to them. Ironically enough, in his later warp strafing video, he shows the refit E-nil firing on and vaporizing a modest-sized asteroid in ST:TMP which clearly establishes such firepower for TOS-era ships, never mind the raw energy generated in episodes like "The Paradise Syndrome" where the ship actually nudges a nearly Luna-sized asteroid with her deflectors, which implies the warp core is capable of 1e23 watts or better. So the Minbari are hopelessly outclassed in firepower and defense. In fact, the Minbari don't have shields. Again, a lopsided fight, but Brian keeps on making fallacies to continue to allow for a balanced fight.
- Another fallacious example, assuming Khan had Reliant's phasers and torpedoes fired on full in the first battle in ST2. The Enterprise was disabled and Khan calls up Kirk to gloat and to get Genesis information from him, which Kirk exploits to lower Reliant's shields and damage it with a few phaser shots. Quite an important context there. Furthermore, just prior to Khan opening fire, Kirk orders yellow alert and they charge up some sort of defense fields on the hull. This seems remarkably similar to the polarized hull plating used by the old NX-class starships of 134 years ago. This may also be a raising of those SIF to reinforce the hull, again throwing off Brian's assumptions since the hull is now much tougher, even without shields. Thus any numbers you can derive are minimums, not upper limits, and it is a demonstration of just how freakin' tough Federation hulls are, even without shields and being much smaller than most B5 ships it is quite impressive! Brian also uses an example from "Who Mourns for Adonis?" from TOS season 2 to claim weak firepower, but again fails to note what anyone can see.... that Kirk and other members of the landing party are only a few tens of meters away from Apollo's "temple" structure (of which we know nothing of it's composition or if it is actually shielded somehow). I find it hard to believe Spock would fire down on Kirk and the landing party with full phasers and kill them when when what he did do was more than sufficient for the purpose at hand. It was also established that the E-1701 was firing down through small holes in Apollo's "hand" shield that was holding the ship in place, so we don't know if that also contributed to weakening the phasers. In either case Brian seems oddly neglectful once again of providing context.
- His comparison of the Enterprise surviving an unknown yield nuke in "Balance of Terror" to the Black Star's destruction in "In the Beginning" as a result of two 2 megaton nukes is similarly flawed. The E-1701 had been fighting a running battle with the Romulan BoP, and survived an earlier strike from the powerful plasma torpedo fired by the BoP. So whatever the nuke's yield, it was being used against a ship that had already suffered some damage and may not have had full shields. The Black Star on the other hand, was in pristine shape and was about to pounce on what it thought was a hapless Earth ship.
- Then we have a section where Brian tries to make the Minbari stealth technology look more awesome than it really is. He cherry picks a few out of context sensor examples to make Trek sensors look bad, then ignores that the Federation and before that, United Earth's Star Fleet have dealt with far more sophisticated stealth technology in the form of the cloaking devices that not only spoof target lock-ons, but visual as well, too, rendering the cloaked starship completely invisible. And yet in BoT, the E-1701 was still able to track that ship and fire on it's approximate location, causing heavy damage with proximity blast phasers. To say that the Minbari stealth would be useful against sensors that capable is silly. What's more interesting is that in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" [TOS, Season 1], the Enterprise demonstrates a cloaking ability similar to the Minbari's against 20th century radar:
SPOCK: We've achieved a stable orbit out of Earth's atmosphere. Our deflectors are operative, enough to prevent our being picked up again as a UFO. And Mister Scott wishes to speak to you about the engines
So their shields basically give them a similar capability, which may prove to be an advantage against the Minbari. So even if the Minbari stealth tech can spoof Trek sensors, Trek shields can possibly spoof Minbari and very likely Earth Force sensors, and neither side would be able to get an immediate bead on the other.
- Brian also goes off on a bizarre and unsupported series of tangents later on with throwing out the claim that the Federation was founded in the 2260s based on Kirk trying to explain UESPA and the construction authority to Air Force Captain Christopher of the 20th century. Yet Brian ignores that the Federation is firmly established in TNG and ST:ENT as being founded in 2161. More than a century prior to the events of TOS' "Tomorrow is Yesterday". He makes the claim that the Federation's experience in space is only a century old at most, and yet this ignores canon again where we know the Vulcans, Andorians, Tellerites and other members of the Federation were space faring centuries and even millennia before the Federation was founded!
He also makes the fallacious claim that there are only 12 ships in all of Starfleet when we know that at least dozens exist and of several different classes, such as Miranda, Soyuz, and Constellation. All of which are contemporaries of the Constitution-class, which the Enterprise is one of 13 such ships. So if there are similar numbers in the other classes of starship, then Starfleet is at least 52 ships strong. Star Trek:Enterprise also showed us that there are even older classes of starship, some of which might still be serving in the fleet in backwater areas of Federation territory. TOS' "The Menagerie, Part 1" mentions the old J class starships. Furthermore, the registry numbers for Starfleet ships indicate that hundreds of ships are available (registry numbers up to 2000 by 2285). We even see other classes of ship on display monitors in ST2 and ST3 which are taken from the old Franz Joseph Technical Manual, such as the Hermes and Saladin-class scouts and destroyers and the Ptolemy-class tugs. So we have quite a large number of ships to fill out the Federation battle groups with.
Brian also neglects to mention local theater and large-scale planetary shields for planet-side installations, the firepower of the massive Spacedock-class space stations that would bog down the Minbari fleets or just paste the crap out of them the way Deep Space Nine did with the Klingons and Dominion fleets. Imagine the Minbari frustration at being unable to land their warriors down on a planet covered with a full planetary shield like the one the Elba II asylum had in "Whom Gods Destroy" [TOS, Season 3]. Ground combat might never even occur at major planets, only minor outlying colonies. Furthermore it took the Minbari 3 years to deal with the small and very primitive Earthforce and just 12 or so planets. They'd be really in trouble dealing with dozens of Federation member worlds and quite literally thousands of colonies and starbase installations!
Most of the rest of the video is Brian saying that the Minbari would have a big weakness because of the jumpgates, which can be destroyed and without the beacons B5 ships would be lost in hyperspace forever or unable to travel anywhere. But as I have demonstrated, the fight would not necessarily even get this far with the other superior advantages on the Federation's side, such as transporters that would make this into a horrible curbstomp. The Minbari to put it simply have no chance whatsoever barring full out intervention from the Vorlons or other First Ones.
-Mike
- The video starts off with Brian giving a very brief overview of the Earth-Minbari war as it happened canonically, which is all well and good as is his point that Trek and B5 have almost totally different technology bases; B5 has the extra-dimensional hyperspace accessible via jumpgates and Trek has space-distorting warp drive. Again all well and good. But then Brian goes off on a tangent of sorts talking about the TOS warp cubed formula and then pulls out a Star Trek the Next Generation Technical Manual book and takes the speed formulas from there and uses it as a basis for all Trek speeds while totally ignoring any canon TOS warp speed examples, of which there are plenty to chose from. Even after acknowledging that the canon had examples of speeds far faster than TM or writer guide formulas allowed for. But Brian seems to strangely pick the TNG TM formula numbers as if he's doing Trek some great big favor here.
- This gets to the next big issue, as Brian uses several apparently cherrypicked B5 speed examples to set B5 speeds in the 20-something thousand c range, though he does cite a couple lower examples, but dismisses them mainly as low-end due to them being Earth hyperspace speeds, and he claims that Earth hyperspace speeds would be inferior because Earth technology was inferior. In each case he chooses the highest examples possible for B5 and the lowest for Trek to give the Minbari an FTL advantage and a big one. This is blatantly unfair and dishonest for obvious reasons. First and foremost is that Brian in using the TNG TM is handicapping Trek using an official, but still non-canon book. Conversely in canon Classic Trek while we have inconsistent speeds as we do with B5, we do get many that exceed B5's given examples by a humongous range. Take for example TOS' "That Which Survives" from season three, where the Enterprise is traveling back over 990.7 light years to rescue Kirk and the rest of a stranded landing party on a mysterious and hostile alien planet. Once underway, the Enterprise soon achieves better than warp 8 and is holding that when we get the following estimate to arrive back at the planet:
RAHDA: We're holding warp eight point four, sir. If we can maintain it, our estimated time of arrival is eleven and one half solar hours.
SPOCK: Eleven point three three seven hours, Lieutenant. I wish you would be more precise.
Even if it took a few minutes or even an hour to reach warp 8.4, it won't affect the speed or time of arrival much. We have a clearly stated distance of 990.7 light years and a clear estimated time of arrival; 11.337 hours. We'll round up and say 12, just to cover possible acceleration time to warp 8.4. Thus 990.7 x 365 light days = 361,853 x 24 hours = 8,678,532 divided by 12 = 723,211 c. That's 31 times faster than the fastest example Brian gives from B5. Ah, but this is a one-time only example, right? Wrong. In TOS' second season episode "Obsession", we get this as Kirk, Spock, and McCoy discuss the vampire cloud creature:
KIRK: Whatever it is, Doctor, whatever it is, wouldn't you call it deadly?
MCCOY: Yes, there's no doubt about that.
KIRK: And what if it is the same creature that attacked eleven years ago from a planet over a thousand light years from here?
SPOCK: Obviously, Captain, if it is an intelligent creature, if it is the same one, if it therefore is capable of space travel, it could pose a great threat to inhabited planets.
That planet is Tycho IV and is stated here to be "over a thousand light years" away. Later a time estimate to reach that planet and return across that distance to rendezvous with another starship is given:
KIRK: Yes, I think I do. I don't know how I know, but home is where it fought a starship once before. (to Uhura) Inform them of our tactical situation and inform them I'm committing this vessel to the destruction of the creature. We will rendezvous. Round-trip time, Mister Chekov.
CHEKOV: One point seven days, sir.
KIRK: We will rendezvous with the USS Yorktown in forty eight hours.
So it takes them 1.7 days round trip, and Kirk pads in a few extra hours to bring that time up to 48 hours. That's a minimum of 2,000 light years x 365/48 = 365,000 c. Slower than "That Which Survives", but still 17 times faster than Brian's B5 example. And remember Kirk padded in extra time because Chekov gave 1.7 days or 40.8 hours. So really that's 429,411 c. In neither of these cases is the Enterprise modified by aliens or uses weirdness to enhance the speed of the ship as was the case in "By Any Other Name". And keep in mind these are not highly unusual speeds in TOS. In "Where No Man has Gone Before", the Enterprise reached the literal edge of the Milky Way galaxy and attempted to penetrate the Galactic Barrier to go out into intergalactic space, but was forced to turn back when it took heavy damage. Such a trip would have been extremely impractical if the ship were limited to a thousand c since even a trip straight up or down and back again would cover thousands of light years round trip and cost years off the 5 year mission, which did not happen. In "The Squire of Gothos" (middle of season 1), it's remarked that the Enterprise is some 900 light years from Earth, which given they visit Earth at the end of the next season ("Assignment: Earth"), they would have had to have no adventures (basically no stopping anywhere, not even for the numerous mentioned starbase layovers) and just spent the time in transit to get back in time for the events of that episode, which is clearly not what they did as anyone watching the series could tell you! The implied speed average is better than 10,000 c. So Brian's claims of not having clear speed examples in Trek is blatantly false and is fair proof of his dishonesty, especially since he jumps through hoops to spin away B5 hyperspace inconsistencies with one excuse or the other is really a slap in the face to fans who are knowledgeable and a disservice to those who don't know better.
Now this doesn't even cover the first 10 minutes of the video and we're already dealing with this much! To his credit Brian brings up the warp strafing tactic, which is good, but he goes to lengths to try and reduce it's importance in starship combat. He also gives Trek a fair advantage in troop capability over the knives and staff-weilding Minbari warriors. Again, all well and good, but it hardly makes up for the atrocious dishonest arguments he made prior and makes afterwords.
Which brings us to the next round in the starship firepower comparison where Brian once again cherry picks his examples and makes some rather huge leaps in assumptions and logic. Because we know now that the Minbari have no FTL advantage (they are actually at a huge disadvantage) along with warp strafing and ground forces capability are clearly huge advantages for the Federation. Brian next makes the claim that Minbari firepower is superior, showing examples primarily from Star Trek II and VI. But is that so? Let's look closely:
- In TOS' "Errand of Mercy", for example, the Enterprise engages and destroys a presumably shielded Klingon scout ship with just a few shots of return fire. Brian claims that warp core breeches are what are causing the one-hit or few hit kills, but he never backs these up. Furthermore, the E-A and Excelsior would never fire full-yield torpedoes at the BoP since the E-A was unshielded by this point and as was established in TNG's "Q Who?" and "The Nth Degree" that firing full yield, full spreads of torpedoes will likely severely cripple or destroy the ship launching them, if it is unshielded, so that's right out.
- Brian also disingenuously leaves out the context of the ST VI scene where the E-A allegedly fires on Kronos One. The E-A's shields are down (so a full-yield torpedo is out, especially at the close range of a few hundred meters) and the assassins had no intention of destroying Kronos One , merely crippling her so that they could board her and kill Chancellor Gorkon and frame the Federation for it. When we see torpedoes hit an unshielded E-A in the final fight scene at the end and from the small cloaked BoP (a ship canonically 10 times weaker than a refit Constitution-class starship), it blasts a huge hole in the nearly unshielded E-A's saucer section.
- Another important piece of information Brian leaves out; in Star Trek, particularly the TNG-era, we know of structural integrity fields (SIF), which as seen in "The Chase" can even reinforce the hull of the ship to withstand low-level beam weapon fire. In combat, why wouldn't SIF be cranked up to full? We also know that unlike Earth Force ships of B5, the hulls of Federation starships can withstand temperatures in excess of 12,000 degrees C as per TNG's "Descent, Part 2" without reaching the glowing point. So you need a lot of energy to burn the hull of a Federation starship, never rmind getting through the shields first, which can withstand thousands of terajoules of EM radiation. As Brian once calculated years ago, the hull of a Minbari Sharlin-class starship cannot take even a fraction of the energy from a single 2 megaton nuke, never mind what antimatter-matter photon torpedoes of many tens of megatons would do to them. Ironically enough, in his later warp strafing video, he shows the refit E-nil firing on and vaporizing a modest-sized asteroid in ST:TMP which clearly establishes such firepower for TOS-era ships, never mind the raw energy generated in episodes like "The Paradise Syndrome" where the ship actually nudges a nearly Luna-sized asteroid with her deflectors, which implies the warp core is capable of 1e23 watts or better. So the Minbari are hopelessly outclassed in firepower and defense. In fact, the Minbari don't have shields. Again, a lopsided fight, but Brian keeps on making fallacies to continue to allow for a balanced fight.
- Another fallacious example, assuming Khan had Reliant's phasers and torpedoes fired on full in the first battle in ST2. The Enterprise was disabled and Khan calls up Kirk to gloat and to get Genesis information from him, which Kirk exploits to lower Reliant's shields and damage it with a few phaser shots. Quite an important context there. Furthermore, just prior to Khan opening fire, Kirk orders yellow alert and they charge up some sort of defense fields on the hull. This seems remarkably similar to the polarized hull plating used by the old NX-class starships of 134 years ago. This may also be a raising of those SIF to reinforce the hull, again throwing off Brian's assumptions since the hull is now much tougher, even without shields. Thus any numbers you can derive are minimums, not upper limits, and it is a demonstration of just how freakin' tough Federation hulls are, even without shields and being much smaller than most B5 ships it is quite impressive! Brian also uses an example from "Who Mourns for Adonis?" from TOS season 2 to claim weak firepower, but again fails to note what anyone can see.... that Kirk and other members of the landing party are only a few tens of meters away from Apollo's "temple" structure (of which we know nothing of it's composition or if it is actually shielded somehow). I find it hard to believe Spock would fire down on Kirk and the landing party with full phasers and kill them when when what he did do was more than sufficient for the purpose at hand. It was also established that the E-1701 was firing down through small holes in Apollo's "hand" shield that was holding the ship in place, so we don't know if that also contributed to weakening the phasers. In either case Brian seems oddly neglectful once again of providing context.
- His comparison of the Enterprise surviving an unknown yield nuke in "Balance of Terror" to the Black Star's destruction in "In the Beginning" as a result of two 2 megaton nukes is similarly flawed. The E-1701 had been fighting a running battle with the Romulan BoP, and survived an earlier strike from the powerful plasma torpedo fired by the BoP. So whatever the nuke's yield, it was being used against a ship that had already suffered some damage and may not have had full shields. The Black Star on the other hand, was in pristine shape and was about to pounce on what it thought was a hapless Earth ship.
- Then we have a section where Brian tries to make the Minbari stealth technology look more awesome than it really is. He cherry picks a few out of context sensor examples to make Trek sensors look bad, then ignores that the Federation and before that, United Earth's Star Fleet have dealt with far more sophisticated stealth technology in the form of the cloaking devices that not only spoof target lock-ons, but visual as well, too, rendering the cloaked starship completely invisible. And yet in BoT, the E-1701 was still able to track that ship and fire on it's approximate location, causing heavy damage with proximity blast phasers. To say that the Minbari stealth would be useful against sensors that capable is silly. What's more interesting is that in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" [TOS, Season 1], the Enterprise demonstrates a cloaking ability similar to the Minbari's against 20th century radar:
SPOCK: We've achieved a stable orbit out of Earth's atmosphere. Our deflectors are operative, enough to prevent our being picked up again as a UFO. And Mister Scott wishes to speak to you about the engines
So their shields basically give them a similar capability, which may prove to be an advantage against the Minbari. So even if the Minbari stealth tech can spoof Trek sensors, Trek shields can possibly spoof Minbari and very likely Earth Force sensors, and neither side would be able to get an immediate bead on the other.
- Brian also goes off on a bizarre and unsupported series of tangents later on with throwing out the claim that the Federation was founded in the 2260s based on Kirk trying to explain UESPA and the construction authority to Air Force Captain Christopher of the 20th century. Yet Brian ignores that the Federation is firmly established in TNG and ST:ENT as being founded in 2161. More than a century prior to the events of TOS' "Tomorrow is Yesterday". He makes the claim that the Federation's experience in space is only a century old at most, and yet this ignores canon again where we know the Vulcans, Andorians, Tellerites and other members of the Federation were space faring centuries and even millennia before the Federation was founded!
He also makes the fallacious claim that there are only 12 ships in all of Starfleet when we know that at least dozens exist and of several different classes, such as Miranda, Soyuz, and Constellation. All of which are contemporaries of the Constitution-class, which the Enterprise is one of 13 such ships. So if there are similar numbers in the other classes of starship, then Starfleet is at least 52 ships strong. Star Trek:Enterprise also showed us that there are even older classes of starship, some of which might still be serving in the fleet in backwater areas of Federation territory. TOS' "The Menagerie, Part 1" mentions the old J class starships. Furthermore, the registry numbers for Starfleet ships indicate that hundreds of ships are available (registry numbers up to 2000 by 2285). We even see other classes of ship on display monitors in ST2 and ST3 which are taken from the old Franz Joseph Technical Manual, such as the Hermes and Saladin-class scouts and destroyers and the Ptolemy-class tugs. So we have quite a large number of ships to fill out the Federation battle groups with.
Brian also neglects to mention local theater and large-scale planetary shields for planet-side installations, the firepower of the massive Spacedock-class space stations that would bog down the Minbari fleets or just paste the crap out of them the way Deep Space Nine did with the Klingons and Dominion fleets. Imagine the Minbari frustration at being unable to land their warriors down on a planet covered with a full planetary shield like the one the Elba II asylum had in "Whom Gods Destroy" [TOS, Season 3]. Ground combat might never even occur at major planets, only minor outlying colonies. Furthermore it took the Minbari 3 years to deal with the small and very primitive Earthforce and just 12 or so planets. They'd be really in trouble dealing with dozens of Federation member worlds and quite literally thousands of colonies and starbase installations!
Most of the rest of the video is Brian saying that the Minbari would have a big weakness because of the jumpgates, which can be destroyed and without the beacons B5 ships would be lost in hyperspace forever or unable to travel anywhere. But as I have demonstrated, the fight would not necessarily even get this far with the other superior advantages on the Federation's side, such as transporters that would make this into a horrible curbstomp. The Minbari to put it simply have no chance whatsoever barring full out intervention from the Vorlons or other First Ones.
-Mike