In defense on TDiC

[Mike DiCenso]

Huh. Give me two pennies and I can strap you a white glow on the surface with photoshop, and do the same crap with a compositing software.
Please.

Except that that is not how they did things back then. Yes, CGI and computer technology have advanced to where even the average person can do some pretty impressive things. But at that time they were still largely relying on motion-control models, matte paintings done by hand, and other old-style methods. CGI at this time in DS9 was limited to special-purpose things like Odo's morphing, and to digital paint to create the phasers and torpedo FX. From the look of it, I'd say that the TDiC bombardment was done using liquid nitrogen in a tank.
-Mike

[Cocytus]

Perhaps more importantly, they were using trilthium-based plasma torps, and we have reason to suspect trilithium reacts more violently than M/AM when detonated on/in a massive target.

Just look at Soran's trilithium torpedo in Generations. Chain reaction weapon, anyone?

Or "Starship Mine," where the small amount of trilithium resin Kelsey got off the ship produced an explosion which violently rocked the Enterprise from some distance. And don't forget "For The Uniform," where two quantum torpedoes loaded with trilithium resin produced similarly large, albeit brief, shockwaves on the surface of Solosos III before the toxic clouds begin to propogate.

Of course, those two examples deal with trilithium resin, which clearly doubles as both an exposive and a chemical agent. Generations mentions trilithium, not trilithium resin. Perhaps there is some sort of purification process which enables trilithium to act as a nuclear inhibitor, but reduces its usefulness as an explosive. Kelsey specifically mentioned the volatility of resin, and that the detonation of the small quantity they had obtained could destroy the Enterprise. If pure trilithium were as volatile as trilithium resin, I find it hard to believe the beating the Amargosa observatory took from the Romulans failed to set off Soran's stash of the stuff.

[Mike DiCenso]

An important point here is that the E-D was largely unpowered and inert. It is very likely that there was no mass lightening of the ship at the point that the time the explosion went off.

As for the Amargosa observatory, remember that Dr. Soran had the trilithium, along with his special purpose torpedoes and probes, hidden in a fairly heavily reinforced area. It is possible that the stuff was protected in there just enough to prevent it from being set off, and I can't imagine that a guy like Soran would go through all that trouble without providng for the possibilty that something like an attack might occur and set it off. He was generally just too smart for that.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Perhaps more importantly, they were using trilthium-based plasma torps, and we have reason to suspect trilithium reacts more violently than M/AM when detonated on/in a massive target.

I'am not sure that was the case, JMS. The torpedoes seen in the bombardment look nothing at all like the plasma torpedoes used by the BoP in "Balance of Terror". Certainly nothing stops the Romulans from using trilithium in their warheads, or even gravimetric charges, like in the one prepared by the Voyager crew in "The Omega Directive".
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Huh. Give me two pennies and I can strap you a white glow on the surface with photoshop, and do the same crap with a compositing software.
Please.

Except that that is not how they did things back then. Yes, CGI and computer technology have advanced to where even the average person can do some pretty impressive things. But at that time they were still largely relying on motion-control models, matte paintings done by hand, and other old-style methods. CGI at this time in DS9 was limited to special-purpose things like Odo's morphing, and to digital paint to create the phasers and torpedo FX. From the look of it, I'd say that the TDiC bombardment was done using liquid nitrogen in a tank.
-Mike

Right, they didn't get CGI for that sequence, but the explosion effect, the fireball, would have been terribly easy to obtain. It's like this supposedly hundreds megaton explosion in skin of evil which lasts only a fraction of a second. It's not that people didn't know how to do it, it's that people didn't know what to show.
Besides, not everything is CGI even today.
But what I am alluding to is that even by times of TOS, such shows could have white, blue, orange spots in your everyday episode.
Even the poorest SF show would use such cheap effects to illustrate the presence of some alien entity, a weapon or else.
Now, there are and were better effects (well, depending on what you wanted). Studios could tap in their stock of prefilmed explosions and compose the image, like it was done for Star Wars, like it was done for Alien Resurrection and a good thousand of films with stuff exploding, and the explosions in those were particularily luminous.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Perhaps more importantly, they were using trilthium-based plasma torps, and we have reason to suspect trilithium reacts more violently than M/AM when detonated on/in a massive target.

I'am not sure that was the case, JMS. The torpedoes seen in the bombardment look nothing at all like the plasma torpedoes used by the BoP in "Balance of Terror". Certainly nothing stops the Romulans from using trilithium in their warheads, or even gravimetric charges, like in the one prepared by the Voyager crew in "The Omega Directive".
-Mike

Actually, we don't hear a thing about trilithium in "Balance of Terror." The information that Romulan plasma torps have trilithium in them comes from "Image in the Sand."

Both Cardassians and Romulans use plasma torps, although we aren't told whether or not Cardassian plasma torpedos use trilithium as well.

TDIC also provides one of the stronger arguments for greater-than-raw-energy yields for phasers in a bombardment with no restrictions on collateral damage. Much as with the case of the Death Star, secondary information strongly suggests that we conclude chain reaction weaponry is being used.

However, against shielded targets, the only matter a plasma torpedo can consume in a trilithium reaction is its own (plus negligible wisps of gas and dust en route), and it is unlikely that takes place at high efficiency. Thus, while excellent for bombardment, the plasma torpedo is not necessarily as effective as photon torpedoes ship to ship.

[Mike DiCenso]

Huh. Give me two pennies and I can strap you a white glow on the surface with photoshop, and do the same crap with a compositing software.
Please.

Except that that is not how they did things back then. Yes, CGI and computer technology have advanced to where even the average person can do some pretty impressive things. But at that time they were still largely relying on motion-control models, matte paintings done by hand, and other old-style methods. CGI at this time in DS9 was limited to special-purpose things like Odo's morphing, and to digital paint to create the phasers and torpedo FX. From the look of it, I'd say that the TDiC bombardment was done using liquid nitrogen in a tank.
-Mike

Right, they didn't get CGI for that sequence, but the explosion effect, the fireball, would have been terribly easy to obtain. It's like this supposedly hundreds megaton explosion in skin of evil which lasts only a fraction of a second. It's not that people didn't know how to do it, it's that people didn't know what to show.
Besides, not everything is CGI even today.
But what I am alluding to is that even by times of TOS, such shows could have white, blue, orange spots in your everyday episode.
Even the poorest SF show would use such cheap effects to illustrate the presence of some alien entity, a weapon or else.
Now, there are and were better effects (well, depending on what you wanted). Studios could tap in their stock of prefilmed explosions and compose the image, like it was done for Star Wars, like it was done for Alien Resurrection and a good thousand of films with stuff exploding, and the explosions in those were particularily luminous.

Not necessarily. In those days, when CGI was still limited and Babylon 5 was pioneering it's large-scale use, to make use of explosions and other effects, even from a stock collection, was an expensive thing. Much of the effects made use of optical printers, which took seperate film or digital video elements and matted them together.

In other words, the more the elements that need to be matted together, the more expensive it got.

In the case of TDiC, in order to make it work, it would have required dozens of seperate elements matted together at a high relative cost. The nitrogen tank effects reduced that to a smaller number. Just make multiple nitrogen rings in one big tank, and film it. Then optically combine that single element over the stock footage of the Founder's planet, and you have yourself an on the cheap planetary bombardment. Perfect for a TV show budget at the time.
-Mike

[SailorSaturn13]

However, against shielded targets, the only matter a plasma torpedo can consume in a trilithium reaction is its own (plus negligible wisps of gas and dust en route), and it is unlikely that takes place at high efficiency. Thus, while excellent for bombardment, the plasma torpedo is not necessarily as effective as photon torpedoes ship to ship.

This also explains why Starfleet has't switched to tri-cobalt torps - they also appear to affect only unshielded targets

[Mr. Oragahn]

Not necessarily. In those days, when CGI was still limited and Babylon 5 was pioneering it's large-scale use, to make use of explosions and other effects, even from a stock collection, was an expensive thing. Much of the effects made use of optical printers, which took seperate film or digital video elements and matted them together.

Compositing films together is precisely that, and there's a simple fact, in that they did for TDIC, but akwardly.
The effect stacking is there. They had that planet, and those effects put upon it. They just did a poor job at meshing both elements if they wanted to have a white stuff.

Price is totally irrelevant, because we do see a series of complex effects, namely the ripples.
It's just that they did it badly.

In the case of TDiC, in order to make it work, it would have required dozens of seperate elements matted together at a high relative cost. The nitrogen tank effects reduced that to a smaller number. Just make multiple nitrogen rings in one big tank, and film it. Then optically combine that single element over the stock footage of the Founder's planet, and you have yourself an on the cheap planetary bombardment. Perfect for a TV show budget at the time.
-Mike

The hidrogen tank effect has to be filmed, and by the evidence of the episode, several different ripple effects were filmed.
They didn't cut the budget, they precisely merged several elements there.
Merging awfully low grade white blurbs would have been much more accurate and certainly not as expensive.

[Mike DiCenso]

Actually, we don't hear a thing about trilithium in "Balance of Terror." The information that Romulan plasma torps have trilithium in them comes from "Image in the Sand."

I think you misunderstood, JMS. I never said that such a thing was stated in BoT. I just simply pointed out that the torpedoes used in TDiC look nothing at all like the plasma torpedoes. I suppose we could retroactively include trilithium in the TOS-era plasma torpedoes, as it would explain away the enormous power of that weapon, dispite the fact that it was fired by a relatively small, fusion-powered starship.

TDIC also provides one of the stronger arguments for greater-than-raw-energy yields for phasers in a bombardment with no restrictions on collateral damage. Much as with the case of the Death Star, secondary information strongly suggests that we conclude chain reaction weaponry is being used.

Possibly. It could also be that the quantum singularity powered weapons of the Romulan and Cardassian ships are generally more powerful and can sustain that firepower longer than their antimatter-powered Federation and Klingon counterparts.

However, against shielded targets, the only matter a plasma torpedo can consume in a trilithium reaction is its own (plus negligible wisps of gas and dust en route), and it is unlikely that takes place at high efficiency. Thus, while excellent for bombardment, the plasma torpedo is not necessarily as effective as photon torpedoes ship to ship.

Unfortunately, that does not explain away the enourmous power of the plasma torpedoes against the Federation outpost deflector shields, as well as the fact that had the one plasma torpedo hit even a fully shielded Enterprise at it's maximum power, it would have utterly destroyed her, or left her hopelessly wrecked and disabled. As it is, what makes the plasma torpedo useless is it is too slow to catch up to a starship before it's range limitation kicks in and it loses too much power to be devastatingly effective.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Not necessarily. In those days, when CGI was still limited and Babylon 5 was pioneering it's large-scale use, to make use of explosions and other effects, even from a stock collection, was an expensive thing. Much of the effects made use of optical printers, which took seperate film or digital video elements and matted them together.

Compositing films together is precisely that, and there's a simple fact, in that they did for TDIC, but akwardly.
The effect stacking is there. They had that planet, and those effects put upon it. They just did a poor job at meshing both elements if they wanted to have a white stuff.

Price is totally irrelevant, because we do see a series of complex effects, namely the ripples.
It's just that they did it badly.

In the case of TDiC, in order to make it work, it would have required dozens of seperate elements matted together at a high relative cost. The nitrogen tank effects reduced that to a smaller number. Just make multiple nitrogen rings in one big tank, and film it. Then optically combine that single element over the stock footage of the Founder's planet, and you have yourself an on the cheap planetary bombardment. Perfect for a TV show budget at the time.
-Mike

The hidrogen tank effect has to be filmed, and by the evidence of the episode, several different ripple effects were filmed.
They didn't cut the budget, they precisely merged several elements there.
Merging awfully low grade white blurbs would have been much more accurate and certainly not as expensive.

I think you missed the point, Oragahn. With the nitrogen tank, you don't need to seperately film multiple nitrogen ring effects and then matte them together later; you can do them all at once and photograph them in one go. The only elements that needed to be optically combined were the single nitrogen tank FX, and the stock Founder's planet FX. Simple and cheap to do.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

These ripple effects look much more like independant pieces of footage than ricochets all filmed in one big pool of mud, notably because of how the ripples cleanly stop at a certain distance and don't interact with each other.
If obtaining some light show in one single film, they could just take pictures of a board with light bulbs and switch them on at different moments. There, you have your bombarded surface with big shiny lights.
Imagine the luminosity of Star destroyers engines put onto the surface of the Founders' world. A wasted opportunity, isn't it?

[Jedi Master Spock]

I think you misunderstood, JMS. I never said that such a thing was stated in BoT. I just simply pointed out that the torpedoes used in TDiC look nothing at all like the plasma torpedoes. I suppose we could retroactively include trilithium in the TOS-era plasma torpedoes, as it would explain away the enormous power of that weapon, dispite the fact that it was fired by a relatively small, fusion-powered starship.

It is something I'm in favor of. However, we have Romulan and Cardassian weapons ID'd as plasma torpedoes in DS9; they're definitely called the same thing, even though they look quite different.

Possibly. It could also be that the quantum singularity powered weapons of the Romulan and Cardassian ships are generally more powerful and can sustain that firepower longer than their antimatter-powered Federation and Klingon counterparts.

Worth considering, although indications are that a Vor'Cha can beat the stuffing out of a similarly sized Galor, and a GCS can beat a much larger D'deridex.

Unfortunately, that does not explain away the enourmous power of the plasma torpedoes against the Federation outpost deflector shields, as well as the fact that had the one plasma torpedo hit even a fully shielded Enterprise at it's maximum power, it would have utterly destroyed her, or left her hopelessly wrecked and disabled. As it is, what makes the plasma torpedo useless is it is too slow to catch up to a starship before it's range limitation kicks in and it loses too much power to be devastatingly effective.
-Mike

Different plasma torpedo. That was designed as a weapon whose single shots were as large as possible from a cloaked vessel, rather than one that could be fired many times in an ongoing battle.

It also was probably the first generation of Romulan plasma torpedoes, and Federation shields were perhaps poorly designed to deal with trilithium-enriched plasma at the time.

The large single plasma torpedo didn't work out in the long run as a tactical weapon for whatever reason.

[Mike DiCenso]

Not necessarily. In those days, when CGI was still limited and Babylon 5 was pioneering it's large-scale use, to make use of explosions and other effects, even from a stock collection, was an expensive thing. Much of the effects made use of optical printers, which took seperate film or digital video elements and matted them together.

Compositing films together is precisely that, and there's a simple fact, in that they did for TDIC, but akwardly.
The effect stacking is there. They had that planet, and those effects put upon it. They just did a poor job at meshing both elements if they wanted to have a white stuff.

Price is totally irrelevant, because we do see a series of complex effects, namely the ripples.
It's just that they did it badly.

In the case of TDiC, in order to make it work, it would have required dozens of seperate elements matted together at a high relative cost. The nitrogen tank effects reduced that to a smaller number. Just make multiple nitrogen rings in one big tank, and film it. Then optically combine that single element over the stock footage of the Founder's planet, and you have yourself an on the cheap planetary bombardment. Perfect for a TV show budget at the time.
-Mike

The hidrogen tank effect has to be filmed, and by the evidence of the episode, several different ripple effects were filmed.
They didn't cut the budget, they precisely merged several elements there.
Merging awfully low grade white blurbs would have been much more accurate and certainly not as expensive.

There aren't seperate nitrogen shots there. It's all one tank, look closely and you will see all the rings interacting, often in a complex manner not possible with seperate optical compositiion. The white blobs would have maybe been a nice animated FX overlayed at the center of the nitrogen rings to enhance the look of explosions being set off. But that's not what was being done since this was all part of a big two-parter storyline, and it looks like the budget was already stretched to it's limit, in particular because of the huge finale battle scenes with the Defiant coming to Odo and Garak's rescue.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

I think you misunderstood, JMS. I never said that such a thing was stated in BoT. I just simply pointed out that the torpedoes used in TDiC look nothing at all like the plasma torpedoes. I suppose we could retroactively include trilithium in the TOS-era plasma torpedoes, as it would explain away the enormous power of that weapon, dispite the fact that it was fired by a relatively small, fusion-powered starship.

It is something I'm in favor of. However, we have Romulan and Cardassian weapons ID'd as plasma torpedoes in DS9; they're definitely called the same thing, even though they look quite different.

We never got to see the Romulan plasma torpedoes. The Cardassian ones we see in "Tears of the Prophets" [DS9, Season 6] are whiteish-yellow blobs that have nothing in common with either the Romulan BoT plasma torps, or the photon torpedoes with their distinctive flares. Certainly as of TNG's "Contagion", we know that at least one type of the D'Deridex warbirds carry photon torpedoes and use phasers as part of their weapons loadout inventories.

Possibly. It could also be that the quantum singularity powered weapons of the Romulan and Cardassian ships are generally more powerful and can sustain that firepower longer than their antimatter-powered Federation and Klingon counterparts.

Worth considering, although indications are that a Vor'Cha can beat the stuffing out of a similarly sized Galor, and a GCS can beat a much larger D'deridex.

Not directly applicable to TDiC, however, as the Keldon class (larger, more powerful version of the Galors) were specifically identified as having been uniquely modified to use the Romulan quantum singularities for their warp cores. Thus with these two factors in mind, the Keldons are likely more than capable of taking on a Vor'Cha.

As for whether or not a GCS can beat a D'Deridex; that is a questionable assessment given that any time the E-D faced off with that class of warbird, it was generally a stalement, with the D'Deridex appearing to have the upper hand, though it required often a second D'Deridex to conclusively ensure the complete overwhelming of the E-D.

Unfortunately, that does not explain away the enourmous power of the plasma torpedoes against the Federation outpost deflector shields, as well as the fact that had the one plasma torpedo hit even a fully shielded Enterprise at it's maximum power, it would have utterly destroyed her, or left her hopelessly wrecked and disabled. As it is, what makes the plasma torpedo useless is it is too slow to catch up to a starship before it's range limitation kicks in and it loses too much power to be devastatingly effective.
-Mike

Different plasma torpedo. That was designed as a weapon whose single shots were as large as possible from a cloaked vessel, rather than one that could be fired many times in an ongoing battle.

It also was probably the first generation of Romulan plasma torpedoes, and Federation shields were perhaps poorly designed to deal with trilithium-enriched plasma at the time.

The large single plasma torpedo didn't work out in the long run as a tactical weapon for whatever reason.

Well, if anything suggests that the Romulans began modifying their plasma torpedoes to be more effective anti-starship tactical weapons, it is found in "The Deadly Years" [TOS, Season 2], where the Enterprise is surrounded by several warbirds, and is fired on with a much weaker, but much faster plasma torpedoes that have a greater rate of fire than the older prototype version from BoT.

The older version though, as demonstrated quite conclusively in BoT, would make for a very ideal planetary and space station bombardment weapon.
-Mike