TOS: Obsession -- because we need one

[Mr. Oragahn]

Yep. Here it is. Mummy's ugly.
Where are we going with that one? I guess we should start with the basic, perhaps, like how they cobbled that bomb, where they found the reactants, and then in a second part, look at the destruction itself, including the environment (was it special?) and else.

I'm telling you, I call BS on the entire event, but I know some would love to rationalize it so let's see what you've got, pussies! >:]

[Mith]

...Um, they used Kirk's balls for the matter-antimatter reactant?

[Mith]

Okay...okay, I'll start us off:

MCCOY: It's the time factor that bothers me. Those drugs are perishable.
SPOCK: Doctor, evidence indicates the creature is here to spawn. If so, it will reproduce by fission, not just into two parts, but thousands.
KIRK: Antimatter seems our only possibility.
SPOCK: An ounce should be sufficient. We can drain it from the ship's engines and transport it to the planet surface in a magnetic vacuum field.
KIRK: Contact medical stores. I want as much haemoplasm as they can spare in the transporter room in fifteen minutes.
GARROVICK: Yes, sir.
MCCOY: I presume you intend to use that haemoplasm to attract the creature?
KIRK: We must get it to the antimatter. It seems attracted to red blood cells. What better bait could we have?
SPOCK: There is still one problem, Captain.
KIRK: The blast, yes.
SPOCK: Exactly. A matter-antimatter blast will rip away half the planet's atmosphere. If our vessel is in orbit and encounters those shock waves
KIRK; A chance we'll have to take, Mister Spock.
SPOCK: Also, we cannot be certain the transporter will operate under those conditions. If a man is beaming up when that hits, we may lose him.
KIRK: That's exactly why I've decided to set the trap myself.

Honestly, it's all sort of non-sensical. If there were a gap in the scenes in the ounce thing, you could try to argue that they changed their minds. However, I would like to present a new form of argument--one that we often don't do here.

The authors had no idea what they were talking about. Just like in early Trek they called black holes 'black stars' and so forth, we should just take it as the authors not understanding that antimatter wasn't that powerful. Lots and lots of early sci-fi made this mistake and given how much harder it was to obtain that information and mantain script writing, we should just ignore the whole problem.

To explain it, well, that's harder. We could assume that the ounce of antimatter was used to trigger a greater form of explosion. Perhaps it was part of some sort of complex subspace mine. Ie, we've seen that subspace explosions are rather powerful.

Or we could assume that Spock and Kirk were speaking in code. Perhaps they were relying upon the ignorance of the bridge crew or they simply didn't want to say what it was.

Those are the two explinations. Whichever way, it wasn't a coventinal explosive. It goes under superweapon of the week.

[Praeothmin]

I once again posit that the Dilithium crystals, or "Matrix", that ST ships use are soome sort of power amplifiers.
M/AM reactions cannot produce the power these ships need to perform all the things we see them do.
So there must be some other Treknobbable that amplifies M/AM reactions in ST.
That being said, Obsession is clearly an outlier and may not be rationalized...

[Mr. Oragahn]

To explain it, well, that's harder. We could assume that the ounce of antimatter was used to trigger a greater form of explosion. Perhaps it was part of some sort of complex subspace mine. Ie, we've seen that subspace explosions are rather powerful.

Problem 1: lost tech. They never use it again, against the Dominion, the Cube or else.
They don't even scale it down. Yet it's supposedly the result of merely picking AM from the ship's reserves and dumping into some random containment sphere on repulsors.

Problem 2: the destruction. There's no dust, no crack, no glowing matter. The atmosphere and any other particle is literally gone, which is simply impossible.

Or we could assume that Spock and Kirk were speaking in code. Perhaps they were relying upon the ignorance of the bridge crew or they simply didn't want to say what it was.

You still have the lost tech problem at hands.

I once again posit that the Dilithium crystals, or "Matrix", that ST ships use are soome sort of power amplifiers.
M/AM reactions cannot produce the power these ships need to perform all the things we see them do.
So there must be some other Treknobbable that amplifies M/AM reactions in ST.
That being said, Obsession is clearly an outlier and may not be rationalized...

1 kg of AM provides two dozen megatons. How is that not enough for a ship? You puzzle me.

[Mr. Oragahn]

One very random looking planet, a class M I guess by Trek standards, is turned into this:





Because of this:

[Mike DiCenso]

That being said, Obsession is clearly an outlier and may not be rationalized...

An outlier, really? Then what are you going to say about "The Immunity Syndrome" where the Enterprise crew blows up the planet-sized Space Amoeba with whatever amount of antimatter would fit in a science probe.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Problem 2: the destruction. There's no dust, no crack, no glowing matter. The atmosphere and any other particle is literally gone, which is simply impossible.

Have you seen the episode? I didn't think so. The original as well as the remastered version do not at anytime show the explosion going off from the vantage point of space. Until the remastered version came out with all-new CGIed effects, we never really got to see the planet itself as they left. Here's some more dialog on the effect the bomb would have and it's yield:

KIRK: Kirk to Enterprise.

SPOCK [OC]: Spock here, Captain.

KIRK: Proceed immediately to maximum orbit.

SPOCK [OC]: Acknowledged.

GARROVICK: Just think, Captain, less than one ounce of antimatter here is more powerful than ten thousand cobalt bombs.

KIRK: Let's hope it's as powerful as man will ever get. Detonator.

GARROVICK: Aye, sir.
(He primes and sets it on the anti-grav unit.)

Also later the shockwaves did hit the Enterprise during Kirk and Garrovick's beaming up, shaking the ship violently and nearly results in their loss. So the blast was not only powerful enough to "rip away half the planet's atmosphere", but also send shockwaves up into high orbit sufficently strong enough to rock the nearly million ton starship.
-Mike