Cylons invade Star Trek

[Mr. Oragahn]

Whom Gods Destroy isn't an episode without its own WTF moments.

SCOTT: Mister Sulu, what do your sensors show?
SULU: We can't beam anybody down, sir. The force field on the planet is in full operation, and all forms of transport into the asylum dome are blocked off.
SCOTT: We could blast our way through the field, but only at the risk of destroying the Captain, Mister Spock and any other living thing on Elba Two.
MCCOY: How can we be powerful enough to wipe out a planet and still be so helpless?

The planet is doused with a poisonous atmosphere. No individual lives outside of the asylum dome without a proper environmental suit.
There's a grand total of 15 inmates on the planet, including the unique female of this forsaken place, plus a number of missing scientists and perhaps guards.
So what kind of life is Scott talking about?
Only that of inside the dome? Because I couldn't really imagine anyone seriously caring for every single little microbe in this terrible world.
Is McCoy directly referencing Scott when talking about wiping an entire planet? Is he thinking about Elba Two?
Are the two of them seriously thinking that in order to blast a hole in that field, and perhaps even in the dome itself, they'd have to unleash a firepower that would... kill an entire planet?

SCOTT: No breakthrough?
UHURA: No, Mister Scott. Still no response from the planet.
SCOTT: Sensor readings?
SULU: The force field is weakest on the far side of the planet. We can send down a shuttlecraft carrying a team in environmental suits.
MCCOY: It won't work, Scotty. They'd have to cover thousands of miles through poisonous atmosphere before they'd ever reach the asylum.
SCOTT: Aye, you're right. Even if they made it, they couldn't carry anything powerful enough to break through the asylum dome. Only the ship herself could do that.
MCCOY: Probably kill Jim and Spock.
SCOTT: Doctor, they may already be dead.

Was Sulu really suggesting that a team would cover, by foot, a whole half circumference of this planet as part of an epic rescue mission???
Or was he thinking about using the shuttle for the trip, once slipped underneath the force field? You know, like the Smart Thing To Do (TM).
Then why is McCoy suggesting something as silly as precisely walking that distance???
Why not stop there? No? Because we can't! Buckle up!
Suddenly, that asylum, formerly just a place where a handful loonies were stuck there as part of some psychological and chemical project and technically nothing too fancy really in principle but suddenly the best military outpost ever in practice, gets some of the toughest armour in the entire Federation?
And they couldn't carry one or two bombs, perhaps torps to be detonated manually, inside the rather spacious shuttle? Or that even if they did, they couldn't break through the asylum's dome??
Fascinating.

KIRK: Listen to me. This may be our last chance. Garth will destroy all of us unless you help me stop him. And he's using you, you know that, because he wants the power for himself. I brought something that might have cured you, but he destroyed it. If I can get a patrol down, they'd bring more of that medicine and
(Kirk tries to switch off the forcefield and gets hits for his effort. Garth enters.)
GARTH: Well done. Well, Captain, you continue to resist. How stupid of you. Put him in that chair right here. I've arranged a small entertainment. I wouldn't want him to miss any of it. Well, Captain, even you must admit that I'm a genius. What you see here is my latest invention. This is an explosive, the most powerful one in history. If I were to drop this flask, the resulting explosion would vaporise this planet. Now do you see why it is ridiculous to resist me? Well, perhaps you require the demonstration I've arranged. Watch closely.

Oh, only that. A breeze!
What kind of super duper equipment do they keep on this "asylum"??
Are we sure that this Extreme McGuyver, who manages to build one of the most seriously haxplosive in the entire history of this show from whatever he found in a freaking asylum, hasn't also used his same super cunning in order to enhance the force field to super dick level?

(Shutters open to show the planet surface on a screen.)
GARTH: Now, it is true that she is deadly as a poisonous serpent, but she is also a beautiful woman, and you have held her in your arms, Captain. I've ordered my men to drive her out of the protective dome. And, of course, she would choke to death on the outside in minutes.
(On the screen, Marta is struggling against two figures in environment suits.)
GARTH: But I've arranged a more merciful end for her because after all, Captain, she is my consort. One tiny crystal implanted in her necklace, a portion of this explosive no bigger than a grain of sand. I propose to detonate it from here.
(Marta is left alone, choking.)
GARTH: Poor girl. Poor, dear, suffering child. I will help her now.
(Boom!)

[Bridge]

SULU: There's been an explosion on Elba Two!
SCOTT: Point nine five!
MCCOY: It must've wiped out everything.

Wiped out everything? That again? What the hell!
Did the explosion cover the entire planet???

SCOTT: Immediate probe. Is the force field in place, Mister Sulu?
SULU: Yes, sir. Solidly.
UHURA: (at Spock's station) Life continues to exist on the planet.

But what life praytell?!
Is the audience really told that this grain of sand worth of armageddon nearly managed to scorch the entire planet's surface??

MCCOY: Got to break through it somehow.
SCOTT: Doctor, I told you we couldn't do it without killing everyone in the asylum dome.
MCCOY: I know it, Scotty.

OK.
As I suspected, when they say life, they may actually think "stuff under the dome."
Meaning that they were concerned that the explosion would have destroyed the dome.
Oh, wait.
Since we're supposed to think these guys aren't total idiots, we must presume they'd have thought about shooting at the force field, but not right on top the dome.
And then, does that mean that indeed, even by doing that, if they were to manage to shoot through the field, the indirect destruction would still destroy a dome that only direct fire from a prime starship would actually damage?
This plot is totally nuts.

SCOTT: Well, there's one last thing we might try. Perhaps the ship's phasers can cut through a section of the force field at its weakest point. Where did you say that was located, Mister Sulu?
SULU: On the far side of the planet, Mister Scott.
MCCOY: Will it leave a margin of safety for the people below?
SULU: Yes, sir.

Damn, they weren't kidding. We're really supposed to believe that even by aiming at the weakest point of that über shield, a hole could only be made by delivering so much firepower that McCoy had to ask if the Impregnable Megadome would survive!! ... on the other side of the planet!!!
To rain that kind of destruction is almost like pulverizing the entire crust of that world: a silly asylum has some God-level force field which can only be pierced with the equivalent of a non-souped up Death Star shot (refering to the "normal" part of a Death Star shot, before the extra funky big boom effects kick in).
Riiight.
That's not even an outlier, it's beyond that, it redefines stupid, it has passed the final scriptwriting frontier a long time ago and entered a parellal universe entirely made of pot! Weeee!

SCOTT: Prepare to change orbital path, Mister Sulu.
SULU: Orbital co-ordinates released, sir.
SCOTT: Break synchronous orbit. Come to course one four mark six eight.
(after a few moments)
SULU: Course one four mark six eight. Synchronous orbit re-established, sir.
SCOTT: Ship's phasers to narrow beam.
SULU: Ship's phasers ready, sir.
SCOTT: Let's punch a hole in it. Full power. Another blast, full power.
SULU: Force field still holding, sir.

Oh! Perhaps the best ship in the entire Fudurayshun can't even punch through the weakest part of a force field that may very well be cast from the other side of the planet (there's no reason for a weak spot to exist at all on the opposite side of the planet otherwise).
Meaning that a stupid asylum with armour nearly made of unobtainium can cast a planetary force field so strong that the equivalent of its anus hole can't even be unsealed by brute force. By a ship that shoots so hard that if it ever were to get in, it would actually destroy all (irrelevant) life and the godly base on the other side of this stinky ball in the process.
Geez.

The entire setup is literally insane: best armour + best planetary shield ever VS Death Starised Connie, and she still fails despite poking the paper thin corner.
You wish that kind of hardware had been more ubiquitous!

Are we supposed to take that nonsense seriously or what?
Is Q involved?


Script courtesy of Chakoteya.

[2046]

Elba II had an asylum dome of sufficient strength to preclude penetration by man-portable devices. It also had a forcefield that covered the planet, and also presumably nullified antigravs given that the shuttle couldn't fly around. The forcefield could be penetrated, but this might possibly cause an overload at the asylum, destroying all life there.

Volumetrically, Garth had a powerful explosive, but despite his crazed claim of destroying the planet, it wasn't much better than ultritium, if better at all.

[Lucky]

Sure, if in your book, crossing vast expanses of galactic space in the blink of an eye and placing in geosynchronous position above cities some kilometer wide weapon platforms filled with a wide variety of nuclear ordnance, from long range missiles to MIRVs, from multi-kilotons to multi-megatons and one button away from an alpha strike, isn't much of a problem!

Because, you know, that is exactly what a Basestar is, when it's armageddon ready.

Contrary to Cylon War Battlestars (and perhaps Basestars too), the latest Basestars used the same firing ramps for all types of ordnances, meaning it was absurdly quick to them to fire nukes the moment they'd jump into a battlefield. As demonstrated many times on screen btw.

Not counting the Raiders and Heavy Raiders, all of which can easily be armed with multi-kiloton nukes, quickly enter atmosphere and even accomplish their own short-range FTL jumps.

There is no practical difference between a cloaked ship and the jump drive using Cylons from a defender's perspective.

1.A. You'll have to do more than that to dismiss my arguments. Like, say, actually provide counterarguments instead of handwaving my entire paragraph that precisely demonstrated why what happened in the episode of Voyager isn't as fantastic as you make it out to be.

There's no hand waving, or fallacy fallacy here. Nothing you stated has any relevance to what you quoted because I was talking about transprters.

Why you are focusing on a single episode of Voyager while ignoring the other Alpha Quadrant examples is beyond me.

1.B. Also, what I quoted doesn't even begin to prove anything of what you claimed about each of the factions you named being able to defend against that kind of FTL tech and the great strategical advantage it provides.

I stated why the Cylon jump drive isn't a game changer for someone like the UFP.

Follow this simple line of reasoning:
1) There are mini jump drives that can be used as transporters. They are native to the Alpha Quadrant, hard to trance, and can seemingly go through a ship's shields.

2) The reason the jump drive transporter are not used is because they cause irreversible damage that slowly kills you.

3) The Dominion uses expendable mass produced clones that are ready in three days.

4) The Dominion would not care about the negative long term effects of the jump drive like transporter so long.

5) The Dominion did not make use of the Jump Drive like technology despite its down sides being irrelevant to them.

6) If the Dominion did not use the Jump Drive like technology then there must be a reason other then morals.

Conclusion:
The Alpha Quadrant powers have defenses in place that neutralize the Jump Drive like technologies.

2. Repeating yourself won't change anything.

Why go through the trouble of writing something new if I can just copy and paste a valid response? You might have missed it the first time.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Sure, if in your book, crossing vast expanses of galactic space in the blink of an eye and placing in geosynchronous position above cities some kilometer wide weapon platforms filled with a wide variety of nuclear ordnance, from long range missiles to MIRVs, from multi-kilotons to multi-megatons and one button away from an alpha strike, isn't much of a problem!

Because, you know, that is exactly what a Basestar is, when it's armageddon ready.

Contrary to Cylon War Battlestars (and perhaps Basestars too), the latest Basestars used the same firing ramps for all types of ordnances, meaning it was absurdly quick to them to fire nukes the moment they'd jump into a battlefield. As demonstrated many times on screen btw.

Not counting the Raiders and Heavy Raiders, all of which can easily be armed with multi-kiloton nukes, quickly enter atmosphere and even accomplish their own short-range FTL jumps.

There is no practical difference between a cloaked ship and the jump drive using Cylons from a defender's perspective.

Aside from the fact that the UFP does have ways to detect cloaked ships and it always was a sort of arms race, with each new update (often given from people from the future) that nullified the previous one until a new gift came by. Adding to this the fact that ships still had to use warp, which was also spottable.
On the other hand, Cylon FTL drives still remain untraceable to UFP sensors.

1.A. You'll have to do more than that to dismiss my arguments. Like, say, actually provide counterarguments instead of handwaving my entire paragraph that precisely demonstrated why what happened in the episode of Voyager isn't as fantastic as you make it out to be.

There's no hand waving, or fallacy fallacy here. Nothing you stated has any relevance to what you quoted because I was talking about transprters.

I commented the transcript of Voyager S04E20 episode "Vis a Vis ", dealing with a starship's advanced form of FTL transport, precisely relevant to the topic because it seemed similar to what the Cylons use.
You quoted that comment of mine, starting with "Quite the opposite..."
I provided a counter argument to your grossly erroneous understanding of what had happened in that specific episode, regarding the coaxial drive.
To that, you just said: "1) You aren't responding to what you quoted."

So yes, you did handwave all that I wrote. You'd be nice to actually adress my arguments now, if it's not too much to ask for? :)

Why you are focusing on a single episode of Voyager while ignoring the other Alpha Quadrant examples is beyond me.

I missed them. For some reason, I forgot about the upper part. No problem though, time to deal with your other examples and the loads of irony to be found in them.

Starting with...

TNG S03E12 "The High Ground"
By this time in the UFP, their Rutian sensors could not track the dimensional shifting. Bright minds had formerly worked on that. Humanoid tissues simply didn't survive the transportation method.
In other words, you proved that the UFP isn't able yet to deal with a transportation method the Cylons routinely use. Considering their meticulous planning before a large scale offensive, they'll surely come across that information, which is not secret at all but actually well known in the UFP. The Cylons, if they were transported to that era, would immediately know the massive advantage they have here.

Even more interesting is that the UFP's collective knowledge about "adaptive" transport, or dimensional transport, boiled down to "the Elway Theorem" which "proved to be entirely inaccurate. All research was abandoned by the mid-twenty third century."
That's precisely TOS era, which is good news for the Cylons.

"LAFORGE: It would certainly be untraceable by any standard method of detection."
Yep, screwed.

"DATA: Captain, anyone who is willing to transport in this manner, would suffer significant internal damage that could be detected."
They can only scan humanoids whom they think may have used that transportation method and see if it's true. That, only because their method deteriorates humanoid tissues.
Screwed again.

"DATA: A dimensional jump can create subspace pressure modulation, Captain. By setting up a magnetosphere echogram that can monitor each of their movements, we may be able to collect enough data to trace their power source."
An observation range which, as far as known in the episode, is limited to some orbital range, and that's knowing where it would roughly come from (the planet in this case).
Assuming the BSG system leaves anything about a subspace pressure modulation.

"CREWMAN [OC]: Intruder signals unstable, Captain, I cannot lock on.
DATA: They are moving inter-dimensionally. Neither transporters nor forcefields will contain them, sir."
It isn't exactly what the Cylons use. The Ansata tech is more akin to phase shifting.


VOY S01E10 "Prime Factors"
Moving on to a case of folding space tech using platforms (some kind of launchers as we may say).

"JANEWAY: That's something that's been theorised, but no one's ever been able to develop the technology."
Even at that time, the UFP is still not capable of cracking the working of that form of tech. They had to meet people in a wholly different quadrant to see it put to practical good use, and only for a specific purpose which isn't even totally relevant to how the Cylons use it.

"KIM: Apparently it's never been used to move anything as large as Voyager, but as I understand the principle of space folding, the size of the object isn't relevant.
JANEWAY: What do you think? Would it be possible to modify your technology so we could use it?"
They want to have it mounted on Voyager. But it will fail:

"CAREY: The manifold is being bombarded by anti-neutrinos from the trajector field.
SESKA: Anti-neutrinos?
TORRES: They must be the catalyst for the space-folding process.
SESKA: It's not working. I can't compensate for the instability.
CAREY: There's no way to compensate for a field that size!"
Even with the help of the people who used to that technology, they couldn't expand it to the scale of transporting a whole ship (still smaller compared to a Basestar). All what Gath's people did thus far was moving people around, albeit at a very long range (a whole quadrant).
Cylons move ships over one kilometer in length and show no problem with that. They can at the very least do it every 32 minutes and a Raider has been seen to hop continuously by intervals of a couple seconds, in the same area.

"TORRES: We didn't anticipate anti-neutrinos. The trajector could never be compatible with Federation technology."
I think this says a lot.
Won't work with UFP tech of the Voyager era. Period.
Super screwed.


There, I adressed your other cases.
Note that the TNG and VOY cases are relevant to eras for which I did declare that they would be seriously fatal to the Cylons, at least in a clear upfront war.
Anything around ENT to TOS, not so much. I mean, around TOS it's still going to be tough, but there's room for chaos.
Around ENT times and beyond that by a few decades? It will be bloody. For the UFP or proto-UFP.
Cylons have no obligation to engage the enemy's ships, which as far as Earth is concerned are considerably limited in numbers. Other worlds such as Vulcan and Andoria don't seem to be in possession of large fleets either.
If anything, to the point of just pre-TOS, Into Darkness shows that screwing with Vulcan means reducing the Vulcan population to much less than 100,000 iirc.
That doesn't speak of a large expansion at all. Even the human Colonials were present on more worlds and had plenty of people in ships and stations. I think in fact that both survivors' populations were similar, around 40K~50K.

1.B. Also, what I quoted doesn't even begin to prove anything of what you claimed about each of the factions you named being able to defend against that kind of FTL tech and the great strategical advantage it provides.

I stated why the Cylon jump drive isn't a game changer for someone like the UFP.

Follow this simple line of reasoning:
1) There are mini jump drives that can be used as transporters. They are native to the Alpha Quadrant, hard to trance, and can seemingly go through a ship's shields.

2) The reason the jump drive transporter are not used is because they cause irreversible damage that slowly kills you.

3) The Dominion uses expendable mass produced clones that are ready in three days.

4) The Dominion would not care about the negative long term effects of the jump drive like transporter so long.

5) The Dominion did not make use of the Jump Drive like technology despite its down sides being irrelevant to them.

6) If the Dominion did not use the Jump Drive like technology then there must be a reason other then morals.

1. Ansata tech. Not the UFP. Not cracked by the UFP. TNG era. Your reasoning already collapses here.
2. Yes, which is just bad news for the UFP. Plus same UFP cannot trace it. How is that something good in your book, exactly?
3,4. Good for them.
5,6. Do you have proof that the Dominion understands the physics behind such tech (or a similar tech) and have built anything like it?

Conclusion:
The Alpha Quadrant powers have defenses in place that neutralize the Jump Drive like technologies.

No, you should have said
Conclusion:
The UFP can't deal with it, and even the species who seemingly can is just from one planet, has done it over a short range, with jumps deemed unstable enough to prevent any easy count. Plus the shiftings were untraceable and the UFP still couldn't use it safely.
Then, to finish, these strangers even remotely having any effect against the Cylons presumes the technologies are similar enough.

2. Repeating yourself won't change anything.

Why go through the trouble of writing something new if I can just copy and paste a valid response? You might have missed it the first time.

Because you typed:
"2) The jump drives are no more dangerous to a planet then a cloak."
If by new you mean the exact same defunct idea, only refurbished...

[Mr. Oragahn]

Elba II had an asylum dome of sufficient strength to preclude penetration by man-portable devices. It also had a forcefield that covered the planet, and also presumably nullified antigravs given that the shuttle couldn't fly around. The forcefield could be penetrated, but this might possibly cause an overload at the asylum, destroying all life there.

Volumetrically, Garth had a powerful explosive, but despite his crazed claim of destroying the planet, it wasn't much better than ultritium, if better at all.

Now I condone this suggestion you brought here, but there's something to be said that makes this even less fantastic than it sounds like.
For one, I'm not sure where there would be any evidence of an antigravity effect cast by the force field in any area that is underneath it.
Secondly, and that's where things go ugly, I think you'd have prefered having an episode being so trippy in its figures that you could safely cast it out than have one that seems more reasonable, and therefore acceptable, but hinges on the fact that merely piercing a tiny hole in a force field would not only result in the destruction of the force field generator, but the whole compound it's supposed to protect.
Let's not forget that the crew of the Enterprise really thought that their ship, one single ship, had its chances in poking such a hole. We could equally muse on the implication, that of an event wherein one ship or more could indeed bring a bit or much more firepower to the table and actually do put a hole in that force field (like, say, a flotilla of alpha strike ready Basestars and their megaton nukes).
It would be like hiding right behind a wall of TNT crates covered with a layer or reinforced concrete.
Which one would you rather go with it? The silly episode route or the silly tech one?

[2046]

I would rather have a sensible canon in which we try to accept it for what it presents of itself as best we can. Tossing out what you don't like because you misinterpreted it is not worthwhile.

Case in point, there is no reason for the shield to have an antigrav effect. The episode just suggests that antigravs not be usable beneath it.

I say that because they discussed getting a shuttle through with an armed team, a team that would then have to travel overland, whereas we know from the first season's "Galileo Seven" that shuttles can fly around searching planet surfaces.

So for some reason, the shuttle would be unable to carry the team. What do you suggest that reason might be?

[2046]

Also, I am not going for trippy figures. That's you, Mr. Death Star.

I see a planetary shield penetrable on the far side of the planet from its projector by a Constitution Class ship. That suggests a fairly weak shield to me, certainly inadequate to defend the planet against a Klingon fleet, but good enough for most purposes.

[2046]

Let's say there was a chance of overload and explosion from shield penetration, perhaps even an issue unique to that planetary shield generator type or such generators otherwise. Now, put that unit within a sealed dome, or even outside but nearby. Now you are tasked with penetrating that shield to rescue friendlies inside.

Any uncontrolled penetration of the dome by large enough explosion inside or outside the dome equals death by poison atmosphere. Any other large explosion inside will be contained by the dome, creating a pressure cooker.

Do you take the chance right off the bat, or do you hold out for another option?

[Mr. Oragahn]

Yeah, 50 Megatons would not be scoffed at since Photorps are rated at around 64Mtons in the manual...
IF it was able to hit, that is...

I really wish people would read books a touch more carefully.

While the maximum payload of anti-matter in a standard torpedo is only about 1.5 kilograms, the released energy per unit of time is actual greater then that calculated for a Galaxy class anti-matterpod rupture.

As you can see there is no stated yield for a Photon Torpedo given, and if you do some fan calculations based on assumptions you get about 64 megatons...

It is actually stated: "maximum payload of anti-matter".
We even know today that around half of that energy vanishes into neutrinos. That is, largely harmless. Most of the scientific advances would hinge around finding a way to catch those neutrinos and convert them into something more useful. But that could only be done with a functional hardware, which is going to be problematic because it's that very hardware that blows up. So they'd need to rely on a layer of some kind of super captative material to do it, for maximum coupling, but there's no indication that anything like that is used.
Notice that the text talks about energy per unit of time. It's talking about power.
In other words, it's saying that it's delivering energy faster, releasing more energy per second (for example) than the big boom you'd get from an AM pod rupture, which isn't designed as a bomb anyway but quite the contrary!
Still, the wording is not making me comfortable because it suggests that an AM pod rupture is something of a very slow process: there's so much AM in there that in order for a bomb carrying a ridiculously smaller amount of AM to still come out with a power far in excess of an AM pod rupture (an explosion?), the rupture in question has to happen very slloooowwwwllllyyyyyyyyyy.
Which is pretty much contradicted by all AMpod explosions seen thus far.

But if you read further into the book they actually state the yields of a Photon Torpedo:

Matter from the primary deuterium tankage and the total supply of anti-matter from the storage pods on Deck 42 are expelled simultaneously, producing an energy release on the order of 10^15 megajoules, roughly 1000 photon torpedos.

2.39 Gigatons...

The grand total is 1e21 J, a thousand exajoules. Or about 239 GT.
Suddenly, each torp would be rated at 239 MT, contradicting the former paragraph.
They have gotten lost in the numbers.

And just paragraphs later the yield is stated again:

The release yield of the secondary system is calculated to be 10^9 megajoules, roughly equivalent to 500 photon torpedos. The secondary destruct system becomes the primary system for the Saucer Module in Separated Flight Node.

5 kilotons...

They really needed a better proof reader, or where really trying to hammer home how unreliable the book was?

That's actually a thousand terajoules, or 239 kilotons. Supposedly the combined yield of 500 torpedoes...

I agree about the proof reader.
They halved the number of torps by two, and this translated into a loss of six orders of magnitude.

If the numbers had been correct, perhaps we could have known that such a ship would carry a maximum AM payload that could power 1500 torpedoes.

And, Separated Flight Node. Uh-huh.

I've got to ask, then. Is that the reliable book SD.net has been using all these years?
Did they even bother to read it entirely?
Don't answer. Nope, always cherry picking I see.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I would rather have a sensible canon in which we try to accept it for what it presents of itself as best we can. Tossing out what you don't like because you misinterpreted it is not worthwhile.

Case in point, there is no reason for the shield to have an antigrav effect. The episode just suggests that antigravs not be usable beneath it.

I say that because they discussed getting a shuttle through with an armed team, a team that would then have to travel overland, whereas we know from the first season's "Galileo Seven" that shuttles can fly around searching planet surfaces.

So for some reason, the shuttle would be unable to carry the team. What do you suggest that reason might be?

That's a fine explanation I have no problem with, even if quite heavy on the speculation side. But anything else is stupid so there's not much wiggle room.
Plus the asylum seemed to be a place built so the only way out was with transporters. A mechanism blocking antigravity (without messing with gravity) would make sense. It's more than that, it's just the only option there is and we're lucky that apparently, nothing else in the episode suggests that antigravity does actually work underneath the force field.
Logic works here. Anyway, this wasn't the real problem.

Also, I am not going for trippy figures. That's you, Mr. Death Star.

I see a planetary shield penetrable on the far side of the planet from its projector by a Constitution Class ship. That suggests a fairly weak shield to me, certainly inadequate to defend the planet against a Klingon fleet, but good enough for most purposes.

That is, again, an acceptable view. Problem is, the acceptable also comes with what follows, the terrible caveat.

Let's say there was a chance of overload and explosion from shield penetration, perhaps even an issue unique to that planetary shield generator type or such generators otherwise. Now, put that unit within a sealed dome, or even outside but nearby. Now you are tasked with penetrating that shield to rescue friendlies inside.

Any uncontrolled penetration of the dome by large enough explosion inside or outside the dome equals death by poison atmosphere. Any other large explosion inside will be contained by the dome, creating a pressure cooker.

Do you take the chance right off the bat, or do you hold out for another option?

All options suck. The real issue is about the overloading parameter that turns a would-be reliable shield into a Sword of Damocles.
To me, the tech does sound terribly silly.
Garth knew what the Enterprise was capable of, firepower wise. Applying the same level of reasonnable logic, if he could have changed the force field so it would be less encompassing but more reliable, he'd have done so. He had nothing to lose: the force field would stil be impregnable, but much more reliable, perhaps even stronger then, plus he still had the dome to count on and the toxic environment anyway.
The problem there is that it just doesn't happen, and this design is so terrible that simply poking a ridiculously small hole in the mesh of that entire defensive field would literally turn against those who are underneath it.
The final point being that the seemingly unique case of a shield that covers a rather very nice area of a world is actually the most unsafe system of all and, eventually, as known by the Enterprise's crew, if the bombardment of one single ship had a certain risk of triggering an overload by piercing the field somewhere, the bombardment of a flotilla would dramatically rise the odds in favour of this dreaded event.

Now, to make things clear, I'm not against a proper rationalization either. After all, I've been the one trying to have The Die is Cast fit with normal levels of firepower by going as far as claiming that some kind of Genesis knock off mixed to normal weapons (torpedoes or descending beam as channels for delivery) could produce the effects seen, and then insisting that the destruction of the crust wasn't really a vaporization per se but more something that hinted at the dramatic alteration of the geological ordering of said crust, largely on the basis that you don't need to remove something from space to have it destroyed, aka ruined.

So here, using the same kind of acrobatics, I may enjoy a typical exercise of baffling rationalization that may actually stand on its own. After all, I'm fine with accounting for all parameters. I could use Garth's madness, but aside from his delusions of grandeur and dreams of a tyrant, he didn't make stupid decisions. Still, we might suggest that he pushed the rather "normal" theater shield beyond its margin of tolerance and even had the field encompass the entire planet, and perhaps couldn't remodulate it back to its original setting, perhaps also because it would require lowering it during the tweak, foiling his grand master plan.
Eventually, he counted a lot on his ruse to quickly obtain hostages, whom he may have been ready to bargain in last resort, although full of himself, he prefered to outwit his enemies first. It turned out that he didn't have time to use another option before getting... disabled.
There, with this little nice narrative, I say that he turned the shield into a suicidal system which would actually serve him well for an epic bluff.

The conclusion of this adventurous thought is that theater shields, although being rare but real, and apparently seldom used, seem to have some drawbacks, especially if pushed hard, like to encompass such a large area.
They also have the disadvantage of making the protected unit totally immobile. Which, eventually, would be good if you had something to shoot back with, or could count on reinforcements, or if the defensive force field was reliable, very safe and a hard nut to crack.
This is simply not the case in Whom Gods Destroy. It's tough, but the Enterprise crew did think it possible to poke a small hole in it in short time with narrow beams, and seriously considered that piercing it could have disastrous results for its users, even if the hole was made on the other side of the planet!