Elba II and Planetary Shielding

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Elba II and Planetary Shielding

Post by 2046 » Fri Mar 17, 2017 5:59 pm

Regarding Elba II from "Whom Gods Destroy"[TOS], let's recap pages 1-7 of the main Planetary Defenses thread . . . or at least the on-topic parts. Since Oragahn is now distancing himself from his claims that Elba II represented an advanced alien shield and instead seems to have settled on it being a base shield expanded to cover the planet, let's ponder that versus what I consider to be a hypothesis of stronger explanatory power, that being the ignitable atmosphere.

1. Shield Expansion (the Garth-Mod)

Basically, this is the notion that the madman Garth, who curiously claimed to have created an explosive capable of destroying the whole planet, was an actual genius and managed to expand the shields around a small domed base for no apparent reason. This shield expansion served no useful purpose for him whatsoever, except to make sure that the toxic planet whose only tourist trap was an insane asylum had yet another reason to have no visitors.

Garth's genius is, as noted, demonstrated by his creation of an explosive which he claimed could destroy the planet. Contained in a semi-transparent vial smaller than a canned beverage (I'd estimate it at about 8 fluid ounces, or about a quarter of a liter), the explosive was shelf-stable but supposedly impact-sensitive, and Garth had a remote detonation technique available for use.

However, when a sand-grain size amount was detonated, it produced nothing like the effect one would expect. A grain of sand tops out at 2mm, but can be as small as 0.0625, per most definitions. Even dropping that smallest figure down to 0.05 for ease of calculation, that's 0.000000000000125 cubic meters versus the vial's 0.000236588 cubic meters . . . a factor of 1.9 billion, give or take, with the smallest difference at 2mm being 30,000 times. The explosion of the sand-grain sized amount produced an explosion that was visually impressive for an explosive so small, but which under Earth-like conditions certainly didn't appear to exceed a ton of TNT, and looked very much like far less . . . something in the range of kilograms.

Even assuming an entire ton of TNT, the yield of the whole vial similarly detonated ought not exceed 1.9 billion tons of TNT, or 1.9 gigatons. In the worst cases, it would be closer to 30,000 times oh, say, ten kilograms, or 300,000 kilograms, which is of course a mere 300 tons of TNT.

Obviously, neither of those figures are sufficient to actually destroy the planet. But, let's skip any further derision of the genius of this explicit madman for now.

Given that extension of starship shields by five kilometers is known to weaken them significantly ("The Defector"[TNG3]). . . even in relatively skinny tubular form this would represent something up to like a factor of ten expansion of protected volume . . . let's ponder what it would take for a madman to expand the shield to cover the planet. Assuming Earth-like size, and with a starting point of a shield of around ten kilometers (which we'll treat as a sphere for sake of laziness), that means that in order to cover the entire planet, the shield would have to project itself through thousands of kilometers of rock, and at the same time expand by a factor of . . . oh, let's be generous and assume it was only a factor of literally one billion (1000 cubic kilometers expanded out to the trillion or so of the Earth's volume) . . . while still being capable of repelling phaser strikes under those conditions.

But, a factor of a billion might seem unfair. After all, shields aren't necessarily to be judged by volume, but by surface area. So, let's consider . . . the surface area of a sphere ten kilometers wide is 314.15 square kilometers. The surface area of the planet Earth is 510 million square kilometers. That brings us down to a surface area difference of a mere 1.6 million times.

Clearly, then, the Elba II shield that was meant to protect an asylum was undoubtedly impervious to the combined fleets of all the major 23rd Century territorial powers, until Garth went and expanded it to cover the whole planet.

An unfortunate side effect of this planetwide coverage was that, if phasered down as it now could be, the shield's generator or related systems could, according to this hypothesis, explode violently, killing everyone inside the dome.

The expansion also apparently enabled shuttlecraft flight into the shield via some unspecified technobabble, presumably related to small instabilities or weapons-fire-related dimplings or what-have-you. The shuttle could gain entry but the ship presumably could not, and neither could her phasers. And, when the shuttle entered the shield, she'd be unable to fly, period . . . a completely unexplained detail in this hypothesis.

Interestingly, however, this proves that Federation planetary shielding is possible, since even a madman seemingly incapable of math had the ability to expand shield coverage by a factor of millions or billions with, we might try to realistically presume, no actual drop-off in effectiveness. As the shields survived in this modified state, the Federation would have the ability to study the technique and improve upon it.

Still, we have a variety of unanswered questions. Similar to religious "GodDidIt" proposals, this "GarthDidIt" argument has more than a few holes.

A. When was the shield expanded? If it was planetwide on Enterprise arrival, this would've been shocking, so it must've happened afterward. The moment it happened should've raised all manner of alarms, and yet there is never any mention of it. Indeed, after Garth's first attempt to fool the Enterprise into beaming him up in the guise of Captain Kirk, Sulu's report about the status of the shield is entirely normal . . . and yet even then Scotty suggested that everyone would die if they phasered the shield down.

B. Why couldn't shuttles fly beneath the shield?

C. Why would Garth take a powerful shield and nerf its effectiveness by expanding it by millions or billions of times, which also put his life in danger if the shield were actually used?

D. How would Scotty instantly know that this modified shield would explode?

Obviously, I have little faith in "GarthDidIt".

2. A More Than Toxic Atmosphere

Much is made of Elba II having a protective dome, beyond which lies a poisonous atmosphere. One of the inmates is taken out into it and, while there is no clear indication of pressure differential, it is clear that Garth's description that she'll choke to death in minutes is accurate.

However, what if there's a bit more to it?

In the 2150's the SS Enterprise visited a colony with an atmosphere very sensitive to great heat sources, such as shuttlepod drive plasma. The Paraagan colony was a mining world and their mining operations emitted tetrazine gas into the atmosphere, which settled at a relatively thin layer dozens of kilometers up in the atmosphere. Visiting vessels had to secure their exhaust plasma so as to avoid ignition.

Similarly, Bersallis III is a world that features a regular cycle of firestorms. High-energy plasma in the planet's atmosphere and particle emissions from the local star combine to cause the entire atmosphere to burn regularly. In "Lessons"[TNG] an unusually fierce and early firestorm begins, one more than capable of overwhelming the thermal insulation designed into the colony's structures.

And, of course, we have "A Matter of Time"[TNG], in which asteroid impact and volcanic dust motion in a planet's atmosphere generates such severe electrostatic effects that a modified phaser blast is thought capable of literally burning off the planet's atmosphere in a single shot as the dust particles are converted into a high-energy ionized plasma.

That's three planets with ignitable atmospheres in the Trek canon, and I may very well have missed one or more.

So let's take this fairly common concept and apply it to Elba II. First, let's assume the planetary shield is normal in its function. Then . . . well, let me just quote me, with some minor modifications:

"Suppose, for instance, that the very atmosphere of Elba II is not just toxic, but like the {other atmospheres noted above this quote} was actually explosive under certain conditions, like excesses of energy release. In this case, phasering down the shield means detonating the whole atmosphere, the .95 {explosion} concern for the dome was based on the worry that the atmosphere would ignite, and even Garth's uber-explosive sand starts to make {somewhat} better sense. Certainly the fact that the shuttles shouldn't fly is also notable, here. Similarly, Scotty's plan to phaser down the shield at the weak point might've been with the hope of not igniting the atmosphere, or igniting it and then running like hell to the other side of the planet to beam everyone up before they died in an atmospheric explosion (hence the "margin of safety" {which Sulu, not Mr. Scott, confirms}).

{With an atmosphere like that}, having a planetary shield makes a rather good amount of sense. Indeed, given that it's a small dome and a planetary shield is generally not necessary nor used to shield small facilities on the surface of planets, the notion of the explosive atmosphere is actually chock-full of explanatory power because it even explains why they have a planetary shield *at all*, along with a dome of sufficient strength that only starship weaponry can penetrate. After all, if the air was just poison, a simple inflatable dome could otherwise suffice."

Now, obviously I rather favor this idea. Besides having plenty of precedent, it doesn't add more holes to an already weakly-scripted episode, and relies only upon a single concept, not directly spelled out in the episode, that is well-covered in Star Trek precedents, yet which basically explains all of what otherwise seems odd.

3. Discussion

Contrast the last note above with "GarthDidIt", which requires that Garth basically create a new technology, Scotty be clairvoyant, Garth be an actual genius with egomania and suicidal tendencies otherwise unobserved, and still doesn't explain why shuttles can't fly in the atmosphere.

Occam's razor has been cited in favor of "GarthDidIt" because no additional entities are created . . . a somewhat disingenuous point of view. After all, if I was assessing modern technology and knew the capacity for aircraft existed but was ignorant of actual aircraft, and had before me an example of Person A going from New York to London in a matter of hours circa 1990, I could simply posit a supersonic rocket-boat, but I'd be wrong, and would have in all reality created an additional entity anyway via the modified ship that doesn't exist.

Instead, the criteria should not be an overreliance on simplicity . . . commonly Occam's formulation includes the caveat "but no simpler" . . . but on explanatory power. This is what Chatton and Menger's Anti-Razors are getting at when having too few entities is noted as leaving explanatory inadequacy.

Mind you, the two ideas discussed aren't the only two possibilities. I just happen to be fond of #2 right now because it has great explanatory power, neatly wrapping up the episode's oddities.

Thoughts?

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Re: Elba II and Planetary Shielding

Post by Mike DiCenso » Sun Mar 19, 2017 1:26 am

The explosive atmosphere theory doesn't hold up too well, especially when looking at the dialog where it is mentioned a shuttlecraft might be made use of:

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.

SCOTTY: 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.

SCOTTY: Doctor, they may already be dead.


Nothing is mentioned about the atmosphere beyond that it is poisonous and it can only be by a great stretch implied that the Shuttle has to land and the team would have to walk the rest of the distance. Also, the idea of getting the shuttle through is only possible in regards to the shield being weak at that point. You'd make a better case that the shield was projected around the planet so low in altitude that flying a shuttle would be risky and slow than you could that the atmosphere would magically blow up. Also making an atmosphere magically burn/explode were critical plot points and got a great deal of mention in their respective episodes and there is no reason why it wouldn't here.Also, the third example used technobabble combined with the E-D firing at what seems to be full-power and so we can reasonably conclude that Penthara IV's atmosphere was not naturally unstable. You may as well add in the Klingon super-weapon employed in "The Chase" that was capable of causing a plasma reaction to burn off a planet's atmosphere. Also the "Shockwave" example is the result of artificial means as well by your own given information and was not a natural phenomena of the planet's atmosphere. Can you cite anything in "Whom Gods Destroy" that suggests artificially or natural means that would trigger Elba II's atmosphere to explode or burn? I can't.

No, given the evidence on hand in "Whom Gods Destroy", Elba II's atmosphere may be poisonous, but it is stable and there are no other know variables that exist that would account for that.

The Garth mod theory fails simply because, as noted, not only was nothing noted about it to begin with, but it was not even mentioned afterwords about its coverage suddenly expanding. It's like Ensign Kim's utter lack of reaction to the Krayor having a full-coverage planetary shield in "Nightingale". So either our heroes are super steely-eyed professionals that they don't bat an eye and don't mention how unusual something is, or they just aren't surprised at a common technology. The inverse example happens in "The Lights of Zetar" where Kirk is openly shocked anddumbfounded that Memory Alpha has no shields of any kind until Spock explains the reasoning. In fact, TLoZ 's idealistic reason is probably a good explanation as to why we don't see shields around many places that would benefit from them. A bunch of idealists go found a pastorialist colony somewhere and don't bring planetary defenses with them because it goes against their beliefs as stated clearly by Elias Sandoval in "This Side of Paradise":

ELIAS: There are two other settlements, but we have forty five colonists here.
KIRK: What was the reason for the dispersal?

ELIAS: We felt three groups would have better potential. If disease were to strike one group, the others would be less likely to be affected. You see, Omicron is an ideal agricultural planet. We determined not to suffer the fate of expeditions that went before us.

LEILA: Elias.

ELIAS: Leila, come meet our guests. This is Leila Kalomi, our botanist. This is Captain Kirk, Doctor McCoy, Mister Spock.

LEILA: Mister Spock and I have met before. It's been a long time.

KIRK: Mister Sandoval, we do have a mission here. Examinations, tests.

ELIAS: By all means, make them. I think you'll find our settlement an interesting one. Our philosophy is a simple one, that men should return to a less complicated life. We have few mechanical things here. No vehicles, no weapons. We have harmony here. Complete peace.


When it is required or desired, we here of planetary defenses, even limited ones, like those that protected the archeological dig site on Calder II, which had shields that at least covered the outpost and the archeological site as well as phasers and possibly photon torpedoes.
-Mike

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Re: Elba II and Planetary Shielding

Post by 2046 » Sun Mar 19, 2017 4:12 pm

Mike DiCenso wrote:The explosive atmosphere theory doesn't hold up too well, especially when looking at the dialog where it is mentioned a shuttlecraft might be made use of:

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.

SCOTTY: 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.

SCOTTY: Doctor, they may already be dead.


Nothing is mentioned about the atmosphere beyond that it is poisonous and it can only be by a great stretch implied that the Shuttle has to land and the team would have to walk the rest of the distance.


The key element there is that they'd have to wear environmental suits, meaning they have to get out, and that they'd have to cover thousands of miles, which is only a relevant figure if you're hoofing it. Shuttles can fly through space, of course, so there's no need for suits, nor is there any sudden limitation on flight range that would make any sense.

Ergo, it is not a great stretch at all. It's rather explicit, though it is true they didn't use the phrases "land", "crash", or "walk".

(Still, though, the most curious statement is Scotty's . . . he acts like they'd have to bring a ship's phaser cannon or torpedo warhead or something, and yet it seems apparent the dome has an entrance somewhere based on the exit of Marta and the suit-wearers who returned inside. No transporter platform was observed.)

That said, one could argue in your support, for instance, that the atmosphere was corrosive, which would necessitate an early landing before traversing the hemisphere to the dome . . . but if that were so, (a) getting out at all would be eventual suicide, and (b) neither Marta's exposed skin nor clothing seemed affected. She was explicitly choking, not melting.

In concert with the fact that even phaser strikes on the other side of the planet left only a "margin of safety", then we need something that could cause risk on the other side of the planet from a phaser strike. That is to say, we need some explanation as to how death and destruction could occur explicitly thousands of miles from point of aim. To my mind, logical carriers of the effect can only include the shield itself, which makes no sense given what shields do, or some other alternative, not stated, that might also explain why a shuttle cannot fly in the atmosphere.

If it is not an issue with the atmosphere itself, then I am open to sensible suggestions.
You'd make a better case that the shield was projected around the planet so low in altitude that flying a shuttle would be risky and slow than you could that the atmosphere would magically blow up.


This has the benefit of explaining localized bleedthrough, given that when the shield fell you'd still have a fireball right on top of the place. However, it doesn't explain the cross-planet mere "margin of safety", and seems odd, besides . . . if there was a path at all for walking men, then a shuttle, being only a couple of feet taller, should be able to follow the same path automatically. Even before the episode was made, Earth had terrain-following radar-based autopilot systems. We also have systems not requiring radar, based only on detailed terrain mapping. Chances are, then, that a shuttle could've flown at blade-of-grass altitude at high speed, were Elba to have grass.
Also making an atmosphere magically burn/explode were critical plot points and got a great deal of mention in their respective episodes and there is no reason why it wouldn't here.


If we're going out-of-universe like that, we could note that this episode was so badly written that Nimoy was demanding rewrites, et cetera. Don't get me wrong, I agree that the explanation should've been mentioned . . . I just think they didn't have one, so we are left to our own devices.
Also, the third example used technobabble combined with the E-D firing at what seems to be full-power and so we can reasonably conclude that Penthara IV's atmosphere was not naturally unstable.


Penthara IV's atmosphere *was* "naturally unstable" to phaser blasts. The conditions that caused the instability were an asteroid strike and accidentally-produced volcanic activity, both of which are naturally occurring phenomena. The technobabble only came in how they avoided igniting the atmosphere, but the risk of doing so via phaser was stated directly.
You may as well add in the Klingon super-weapon employed in "The Chase" that was capable of causing a plasma reaction to burn off a planet's atmosphere.


I'd always assumed that the plasma reaction thing at Indri VIII was just a weapon that the Klingons had, but it is also possible they exploited a natural phenomenon a la Bersallis III given that we never saw such a weapon so casually employed elsewhere. So, yes, I may as well add it as a possibility.
Also the "Shockwave" example is the result of artificial means as well by your own given information and was not a natural phenomena of the planet's atmosphere.


The released tetrazine was the result of mining, but tetrazines aren't super-exotic. They're similar to benzene which we release a good bit of, with concentrations in urban areas around 1ppm, or a third of the tetrazine level Enterprise recorded on sensors. The tetrazine of the colony had settled dozens of kilometers up in the atmosphere.

To my mind, either tetrazine has an odd thermonuclear property in the Trek-verse, or else there was another issue with the planet's atmosphere, because 3ppm at 50 klicks shouldn't burn the surface of the world to ashes.

(Case in point, the most common explosive atmosphere on Earth is one of methane and hydrogen sulfide, and requires figures in percent, not per-million.)
Can you cite anything in "Whom Gods Destroy" that suggests artificially or natural means that would trigger Elba II's atmosphere to explode or burn? I can't.
The atmosphere was toxic. This opens up any number of possibilities in regards to its composition, limited only by what we observed of an umprotected humanoid exposed to it. There was white/green mist/fog near the ground, the sky was green, the pressure wasn't extremely low or extremely high, the temperature was in the vicinity of Earth-normal (she didn't freeze to death or burst into flame), and there was sufficient oxygen in the atmosphere to prevent her from asphyxia within seconds.

Beyond that we're just guessing.
The Garth mod theory fails simply because, as noted, not only was nothing noted about it to begin with, but it was not even mentioned afterwords about its coverage suddenly expanding. It's like Ensign Kim's utter lack of reaction to the Krayor having a full-coverage planetary shield in "Nightingale". So either our heroes are super steely-eyed professionals that they don't bat an eye and don't mention how unusual something is, or they just aren't surprised at a common technology. The inverse example happens in "The Lights of Zetar" where Kirk is openly shocked anddumbfounded that Memory Alpha has no shields of any kind until Spock explains the reasoning. In fact, TLoZ 's idealistic reason is probably a good explanation as to why we don't see shields around many places that would benefit from them.


Well said.

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Re: Elba II and Planetary Shielding

Post by 2046 » Sun Mar 19, 2017 11:40 pm

2046 wrote: The key element there is that they'd have to wear environmental suits, meaning they have to get out, and that they'd have to cover thousands of miles, which is only a relevant figure if you're hoofing it.


I would, of course, prefer they have a moon rover sort of vehicle or even an enclosed boxy golf cart thing they could assemble onsite, but given the terrain I still wouldn't imagine we're talking race-car speeds, so the same stuff still applies.

An alternative is the notion that the antigravs would be unavailable for use a la Vulcan's Forge, but we still need a carrier for risk on the other side of the planet. The Forge featured that weird zappy action so if you wanted to technobabble it up one could take that route as a planetwide damage carrier, but other than the fact it would look cool as all hell that's just a mess all around.

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Re: Elba II and Planetary Shielding

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sat Apr 15, 2017 11:33 pm

Good thing a thread exists for this topic alone.
All in all, it's an average episode with rather plotholed writing. At some point, it's perhaps necessary to recognize that no hypothesis will win the hearts of everybody and will most certainly remain rather fragile.
The script is such a mess that it's virtually impossible to come up with a perfect solution to an obvious problem.

There may have been some wiggle room if the crew of the Enterprise faced the known tactical conundrum exhaustively described in the former thread, when orbiting somewhere not too far from the asylum's geosynchronous position, the Enterprise couldn't avoid killing people in the asylum if attempting to pierce the force field. But it just became a crazy mess the moment it turned out that even shooting at the shield from the other side of the planet, the issue of people dying in the asylum because of the shooting remained!
So clearly, some theory was needed to explain what was the "transporting" process at play here, the causal link that binds the would-be-pierced far side of the shield with people dying in the asylum; that is, the real phenomenon that risked triggering the death of people under the sturdy dome of that asylum regardless of the point of the shield being shot at (including the weak spot).

So now, we can posit that we face three causes that would explain why shooting on the other side of the planet would still threaten the people under the dome:
  1. The Enterprise's weapons. Quite stupid unless one wishes to argue that she packs the firepower of a Death Star or has a Doomsday firing mode that propagates across the planet's surface and dissolves everything on its path, a bit like a Genesis effect gone south.
  2. The shield. Is a likely culprit –the most likely as far as I'm concerned– as it's an obvious element since it is ubiquitous and leads to people (in the asylum) dying the moment it is defeated (after being shot at).
  3. The planet's environment. Triggered by the Enterprise's weapons fired at the shield and then punching through it and hitting... what? The ground? Clouds? The atmosphere as a whole? Nevermind, all of them require that planet to have an additional property that needs to be explosive.
Let's begin.
2046 wrote:Regarding Elba II from "Whom Gods Destroy"[TOS], let's recap pages 1-7 of the main Planetary Defenses thread . . . or at least the on-topic parts. Since Oragahn is now distancing himself from his claims that Elba II represented an advanced alien shield and instead seems to have settled on it being a base shield expanded to cover the planet, let's ponder that versus what I consider to be a hypothesis of stronger explanatory power, that being the ignitable atmosphere.
I understand that the thread in question was rather lengthy, but I'd like to point out (again) that my main theory always was about the shield mod.
The idea of Elba II being used for testing a rather unique kind of shield –and perhaps some other wild suggestion I just threw just like that during the discussion– was just an off the hand suggestion as a reply to what someone said. I'll go dig the relevant post if you need that.
2046 wrote: 1. Shield Expansion (the Garth-Mod)

Basically, this is the notion that the madman Garth, who curiously claimed to have created an explosive capable of destroying the whole planet, was an actual genius and managed to expand the shields around a small domed base for no apparent reason. This shield expansion served no useful purpose for him whatsoever, except to make sure that the toxic planet whose only tourist trap was an insane asylum had yet another reason to have no visitors.
I gave the reason.
It was a gamble, knowing that the shield in such a state would automatically make shooting at it a danger for anyone inside the asylum, so anyone down there would be a hostage.
Which is exactly what happened.
Garth's genius is, as noted, demonstrated by his creation of an explosive which he claimed could destroy the planet. Contained in a semi-transparent vial smaller than a canned beverage (I'd estimate it at about 8 fluid ounces, or about a quarter of a liter), the explosive was shelf-stable but supposedly impact-sensitive, and Garth had a remote detonation technique available for use.

However, when a sand-grain size amount was detonated, it produced nothing like the effect one would expect. A grain of sand tops out at 2mm, but can be as small as 0.0625, per most definitions. Even dropping that smallest figure down to 0.05 for ease of calculation, that's 0.000000000000125 cubic meters versus the vial's 0.000236588 cubic meters . . . a factor of 1.9 billion, give or take, with the smallest difference at 2mm being 30,000 times. The explosion of the sand-grain sized amount produced an explosion that was visually impressive for an explosive so small, but which under Earth-like conditions certainly didn't appear to exceed a ton of TNT, and looked very much like far less . . . something in the range of kilograms.

Even assuming an entire ton of TNT, the yield of the whole vial similarly detonated ought not exceed 1.9 billion tons of TNT, or 1.9 gigatons. In the worst cases, it would be closer to 30,000 times oh, say, ten kilograms, or 300,000 kilograms, which is of course a mere 300 tons of TNT.

Obviously, neither of those figures are sufficient to actually destroy the planet. But, let's skip any further derision of the genius of this explicit madman for now.
If anything, it just suffices to reinforce both his madness and perhaps also his attempt at pretending having access to greater power than he actually does. Which just happens to fit with the megalomaniac side of his personnality anyway.
Given that extension of starship shields by five kilometers is known to weaken them significantly ("The Defector"[TNG3]). . . even in relatively skinny tubular form this would represent something up to like a factor of ten expansion of protected volume . . . let's ponder what it would take for a madman to expand the shield to cover the planet. Assuming Earth-like size, and with a starting point of a shield of around ten kilometers (which we'll treat as a sphere for sake of laziness), that means that in order to cover the entire planet, the shield would have to project itself through thousands of kilometers of rock, and at the same time expand by a factor of . . . oh, let's be generous and assume it was only a factor of literally one billion (1000 cubic kilometers expanded out to the trillion or so of the Earth's volume) . . . while still being capable of repelling phaser strikes under those conditions.

But, a factor of a billion might seem unfair. After all, shields aren't necessarily to be judged by volume, but by surface area. So, let's consider . . . the surface area of a sphere ten kilometers wide is 314.15 square kilometers. The surface area of the planet Earth is 510 million square kilometers. That brings us down to a surface area difference of a mere 1.6 million times.

Clearly, then, the Elba II shield that was meant to protect an asylum was undoubtedly impervious to the combined fleets of all the major 23rd Century territorial powers, until Garth went and expanded it to cover the whole planet.
If we're on the topic of laughing at the tactical silliness of certain decisions or designs, and just to repeat myself –and you know this point was adressed a million times already– then it's perhaps good enough to remember that it's just as silly to stretch a shield to cover an entire planet when the chief engineer aboard the Enterprise was convinced that a single starship (and not a warship) had a good chance to punch through it. At least make it that wide when it could be capable of tanking an entire fleet's firepower!

And as a bonus, by following the logic of shield strength related to area coverage, simply shrinking this shield back to a "theater" mode would have therefore made it stronger. That's an argument I also already made in the other thread.
So yes, indeed, it serves absolutely no purpose to have it that wide.
Unless you gain a somehow additional property by stretching it (hint hint).
An unfortunate side effect of this planetwide coverage was that, if phasered down as it now could be, the shield's generator or related systems could, according to this hypothesis, explode violently, killing everyone inside the dome.

The expansion also apparently enabled shuttlecraft flight into the shield via some unspecified technobabble, presumably related to small instabilities or weapons-fire-related dimplings or what-have-you. The shuttle could gain entry but the ship presumably could not, and neither could her phasers. And, when the shuttle entered the shield, she'd be unable to fly, period . . . a completely unexplained detail in this hypothesis.
You are wrong.
First of all, I don't relate that anti-grav attribute to the shield extension. In fact, the anti-grav "attribute" is just a suggestion I mentioned several times but is just another mini-theory in an episode that's desperately in need of patches. We're never told why the shuttle wouldn't be used to transport people from the entry point through the shield to the asylum or anywhere close.
Even without the hypothesis, the fact remains that the shuttle wouldn't be used to cover that distance.
Interestingly, however, this proves that Federation planetary shielding is possible, since even a madman seemingly incapable of math had the ability to expand shield coverage by a factor of millions or billions with, we might try to realistically presume, no actual drop-off in effectiveness. As the shields survived in this modified state, the Federation would have the ability to study the technique and improve upon it.
It depends on the criteria you want to ponder.
I used the TNG episode as evidence of a rather logical physical principle affecting shielding effectiveness. You even refer to it in your post, but then decide to ignore it and claim that as far as Elba II would be concerned and within the confines of a rebuttal to this hypothesis, there would be no drop-off in effectiveness if the shield were stretched. Obviously there would.

Also, the fact that once the shield is pierced, people who are meant to be protected by it are actually lethally threatened no matter where the world wide shield is hit, would seriously encourage us to question the claim of a zero drop-off in the effectiveness of a passive defensive system that more or less acts like a barrier.
Still, we have a variety of unanswered questions. Similar to religious "GodDidIt" proposals, this "GarthDidIt" argument has more than a few holes.

A. When was the shield expanded? If it was planetwide on Enterprise arrival, this would've been shocking, so it must've happened afterward. The moment it happened should've raised all manner of alarms, and yet there is never any mention of it. Indeed, after Garth's first attempt to fool the Enterprise into beaming him up in the guise of Captain Kirk, Sulu's report about the status of the shield is entirely normal . . . and yet even then Scotty suggested that everyone would die if they phasered the shield down.

B. Why couldn't shuttles fly beneath the shield?

C. Why would Garth take a powerful shield and nerf its effectiveness by expanding it by millions or billions of times, which also put his life in danger if the shield were actually used?

D. How would Scotty instantly know that this modified shield would explode?

Obviously, I have little faith in "GarthDidIt".
A. The real quotation does not really say that:
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.
Sulu just says that it's in full operation.
But then it's true that if there was anything unusual about the shield, it would have been mentioned... unless we're dealing with an episode that literally bypasses crucial expositions, like an explanation as to what kind of causal link exists between "Enterprise shoots at force field at random coordinates" and "people in the asylum die if beams get through" and other things.
It also begs to be pointed out that even if point A is probably the best counter to the theory, it's not exactly stellar. Sure, in a perfect world, the theory would have characters be surprised or something, perhaps. But in a perfect world, we wouldn't be wasting time over an obvious problem caused by a hastily penned script.

B. Does not need to be explained for the theory to work, because that problem remains when taking the episode at face value and for all possible theories anyway.
It only adds bonus points to a workable theory that also happens to cover that mystery. See earlier comments.

C. See above as to why Garth would take such a risk.

D. For the same reason that even outside of the theory, he knows people inside the asylum would die regardless of where someone were to shoot at the shield? As I said, there are things which are untold in that messed up episode.

So, to conclude, yes, that theory isn't perfect. Obviously the unusual size of the force field should warrant a stupefaction of some kind somewhere in the script. It's absent... just as much as we're never told anything about the causal link that leads to the death of people, nor the reason why the shuttle is not used to cover the thousands of kilometers once through or under the force field, or even why a shuttlecraft could even get through that force field to begin with but no beams nor teleportation, all of which are quite obviously acknowledged and tactically relevant to the characters who, yet, don't even adress these conditions, to such an extent that said characters look like they take them for granted (and they do).
It's just best seen as if we were dealing with a crappy director's cut wherein key elements were left on the cutting room's floor.

Also, if stretching a shield like that could be possible –and again, factors don't need to be linear when it comes to the reduction of shield strength– but unwwise because it would be known to simply make shield generators stupidly explosive or something similar, alongside making the field weak, not only nobody would ever do that, but Scotty wouldn't exactly be shocked as if this technical feature were a total novelty because it would actually be well known (at least, by people as qualified as he was).
For sure, pushing the shield system to this state would just be a totally INSANE thing to do.

Which just happens to be what Garth is.

2. A More Than Toxic Atmosphere

Much is made of Elba II having a protective dome, beyond which lies a poisonous atmosphere. One of the inmates is taken out into it and, while there is no clear indication of pressure differential, it is clear that Garth's description that she'll choke to death in minutes is accurate.

However, what if there's a bit more to it?

In the 2150's the SS Enterprise visited a colony with an atmosphere very sensitive to great heat sources, such as shuttlepod drive plasma. The Paraagan colony was a mining world and their mining operations emitted tetrazine gas into the atmosphere, which settled at a relatively thin layer dozens of kilometers up in the atmosphere. Visiting vessels had to secure their exhaust plasma so as to avoid ignition.
In other words, a mining colony was set up there because there was a clear effective gain in doing so – contrary to Elba II and some 'splodey atmo.
Similarly, Bersallis III is a world that features a regular cycle of firestorms. High-energy plasma in the planet's atmosphere and particle emissions from the local star combine to cause the entire atmosphere to burn regularly. In "Lessons"[TNG] an unusually fierce and early firestorm begins, one more than capable of overwhelming the thermal insulation designed into the colony's structures.
http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/245.htm
The peculiar fiery storms on Bersallis III, in the Bersallis system, seem to be a scientific high point of interest. They're generated by particle emissions from the Bersallin star reacting with the high energy plasma of the planet's atmosphere.
A woman called Nella is quite thrilled to observe one such storms.
In other terms, although it's not stated openly, it's rather possible that the outpost on Bersallis exists solely for the study of that phenomenon.
A typical storm is also nothing like the effects of a nuclear-level explosion:
LAFORGE: A fire storm can kick up winds of over two hundred kilometres per hour and temperatures as high as three hundred degrees C.
The storm of that moment was going to be twice as strong but that's still quite short of a nuclear fireball.
Also, isn't it regretable that a meagre twofold increase in the overall power of the storm would prove decisively overwhelming against the outpost's protections?
And, of course, we have "A Matter of Time"[TNG], in which asteroid impact and volcanic dust motion in a planet's atmosphere generates such severe electrostatic effects that a modified phaser blast is thought capable of literally burning off the planet's atmosphere in a single shot as the dust particles are converted into a high-energy ionized plasma.
A modified phaser you say. Probably on purpose, right? So a normal phaser couldn't achieve that.
Going back to Elba II, why would anyone modify a phaser to a state that would trigger a devastating, planet-wide chain-reaction capable of even destroying a dome resistant to point-blank range blasts, sufficiently powerful to worry whoever has his or her eyes on the scopes at the moment of the explosion?
That's three planets with ignitable atmospheres in the Trek canon, and I may very well have missed one or more.

So let's take this fairly common concept and apply it to Elba II. First, let's assume the planetary shield is normal in its function. Then . . . well, let me just quote me, with some minor modifications:

"Suppose, for instance, that the very atmosphere of Elba II is not just toxic, but like the {other atmospheres noted above this quote} was actually explosive under certain conditions, like excesses of energy release. In this case, phasering down the shield means detonating the whole atmosphere, the .95 {explosion} concern for the dome was based on the worry that the atmosphere would ignite, and even Garth's uber-explosive sand starts to make {somewhat} better sense. Certainly the fact that the shuttles shouldn't fly is also notable, here. Similarly, Scotty's plan to phaser down the shield at the weak point might've been with the hope of not igniting the atmosphere, or igniting it and then running like hell to the other side of the planet to beam everyone up before they died in an atmospheric explosion (hence the "margin of safety" {which Sulu, not Mr. Scott, confirms}).
It is never said that shuttles shouldn't fly. The very plan included deploying people in suits to the ground and letting them walk.
So a shuttle can actually reach the ground despite the force field (and the suggestion was made as an alternative to shooting at the force field), but then can't fly any longer.
So if that atmosphere was so shittily ticklish as to burst the moment it would be exposed to the controlled exhaust of a shuttle that could actually get through the force field, the very idea of even deploying people on the ground would be quite impossible and you'd have to be worried by any natural explosion or considerable fire occuring inside the atmosphere, under (or inside?) the force field, and equally pray that no fiery rock could actually punch its way through.
{With an atmosphere like that}, having a planetary shield makes a rather good amount of sense. Indeed, given that it's a small dome and a planetary shield is generally not necessary nor used to shield small facilities on the surface of planets, the notion of the explosive atmosphere is actually chock-full of explanatory power because it even explains why they have a planetary shield *at all*, along with a dome of sufficient strength that only starship weaponry can penetrate. After all, if the air was just poison, a simple inflatable dome could otherwise suffice."

Now, obviously I rather favor this idea. Besides having plenty of precedent, it doesn't add more holes to an already weakly-scripted episode, and relies only upon a single concept, not directly spelled out in the episode, that is well-covered in Star Trek precedents, yet which basically explains all of what otherwise seems odd.
If makes no sense at all, you mean. As I said, building a prison in space would have been far more practical, less dangerous or stupid, than chosing a planet with a tendency to see its atmosphere explode because of the slightest random fire (on the mere level of a small craft's exhaust!) and then build an entire force field to prevent external causes from triggering that atmosphere that's more sensitive than a SWJ under psychiatric survey, whilst totally ignoring natural phenomena that happen inside an atmosphere.

So, I'm really wondering if you've actually bothered reading anything I typed about your theory of explosive thingies. Most certainly not, otherwise you wouldn't be pushing it again here through some kind of reboot.

In fact, all I've said above doesn't even remotely approach the effectiveness of what I already said and I'm about to type again here:

Let's make it simple. The ignitable atmosphere theory DOES NOT WORK.
I don't even need to debunk it, the episode does it all by itself not only once but twice.

First of all, when it's suggested to send people down to the surface of Elba II to detonate a bomb to crack the dome. Mentioning the poisonous atmosphere but failing to mention the explosive nature of it in light of the tactical suggestion, or in an other way, making such a suggestion despite the triggery nature of a would-be-explosive atmosphere, proves rather firmly that there's nothing like an explosive atmosphere (or crust) to be found here.

Secondly, because an explosion –specifically a ~.95 explosion that warrants a shock from Uhura reading the scopes– did occur outside the dome, at ground level. It was created by triggering a tiny crystal, the small quantity of some Garth-made explosive the size of a grain of sand, a sample stored in the chick's necklace and picked from a flask said to contain a quantity that could destroy the planet if it only were to hit the floor.
And yes, Garth just carries it around the place like that because to hell with safety measures!
Yet no chain reaction from a trigger-sensitive explosive atmosphere ever happened following that explosion.

In the other thread, I already have presented quite a solid list of reasons why nobody would be insane enough to build anything on a planet which atmosphere is explosive, simply because it could be triggered by a good number of perfectly natural causes too, originating from space, atmosphere and ground.

I'm perfectly fine with the idea of the shield mod theory being challenged, but only by things that do make sense and can actually fit with the episode.
The explo-atmo hypothesis fails left and right so it is already discarded.

3. Discussion

Contrast the last note above with "GarthDidIt", which requires that Garth basically create a new technology,
Nope, just use a specific tech according to parameters that are not safe.
Like a fission power plant: there are the good parameters, and the bad ones that trigger a chain reaction where the entire fuel stock burn and destroy the core itself.
Or like a new car. You musn't push it too far otherwise you'll damage it, since you first have to get the hardware used to the unique configuration of the car after several thousand miles of gentle driving.
Scotty be clairvoyant,
You mean like for THREE other facts that he doesn't say a thing about either yet takes as granted ?
  • Causal link shield-defeated-people-die.
  • No shuttle flight under the field.
  • Shuttle-friendly force field.
Garth be an actual genius with egomania and suicidal tendencies otherwise unobserved,
"Unobserved."
...
LOL
Why did you waste time typing a seemingly long article if you then shoot yourself in the foot in such a comical way?
There is no excuse for that. You have the transcript, you know the episode (or I thought you did) and we talked about it ad nauseum.
  • Actual genius?
    He's highly known for his military skills, plus his victory at Axanar is taught at the Academy. He modified a sonic rehab chair into a torture device (I guess he "basically create[d] a new technology") and composed a massively potent explosive god knows how with what he found in the asylum ("the most powerful explosive in the universe" said Garth to Cory). Oh and went as far as to master a technique from the Antos species that allowed him to transform into anyone else, clothes included (yeah, only that). A trick he "mastered" as he says.
    Actually, screw that.
    Let's just quote Kirk here: "He was such a genius. What a waste."
  • Egomania?
    "Lord Garth!" (correcting Kirk) "You, Captain, are second only to me as the finest military commander in the galaxy." "I offered them the galaxy. They rejected me, and I condemned them to death." (he destroyed Antos Four) "All the people of the galaxy who will not bow to my will must be confined or destroyed." "I am master of the universe, and I must claim my domain." "Remove this animal!" (refering to Spock). "I am Lord Garth! Master of the universe!"
    Went as far as to wear a crown.
    Nuff said.
  • Suicidal tendencies?
    Dude's crazy, literally walks around a room boasting about a planet-busting explosive contained inside a flask he holds in his hand and which would detonate would he ever drop it on the floor. Has fun detonating what would be a considerable quantity of said super explosive right next to the dome –an explosion that got Uhura all wet on her seat– not caring at all about the damage it could do to the dome and the consequences of this issue such as the dome falling apart or the wall letting the poisonous atmosphere slip inside.
Looks like you really don't know what you're talking about.
and still doesn't explain why shuttles can't fly in the atmosphere.
Doesn't have to. Irrelevant to the theory, unless you want to precisely explain why I should cover that?
Admitedly, a theory that would finely explain why this happens would score a point against the shield mod one, but it would have to be a theory that actually works to begin with.
Occam's razor has been cited in favor of "GarthDidIt" because no additional entities are created . . . a somewhat disingenuous point of view. After all, if I was assessing modern technology and knew the capacity for aircraft existed but was ignorant of actual aircraft, and had before me an example of Person A going from New York to London in a matter of hours circa 1990, I could simply posit a supersonic rocket-boat, but I'd be wrong, and would have in all reality created an additional entity anyway via the modified ship that doesn't exist.

Instead, the criteria should not be an overreliance on simplicity . . . commonly Occam's formulation includes the caveat "but no simpler" . . . but on explanatory power. This is what Chatton and Menger's Anti-Razors are getting at when having too few entities is noted as leaving explanatory inadequacy.

Mind you, the two ideas discussed aren't the only two possibilities. I just happen to be fond of #2 right now because it has great explanatory power, neatly wrapping up the episode's oddities.

Thoughts?
Occam's Razor is to be used for competing theories, with other circumstances/things being equal...
The explo atmo is not competing with anything because it is contradicted by the episode twice in the clearest way possible. So it is not even equal. It is debunked.

Now, any other possibility is indeed welcome, as long as it fits with facts first.

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2046
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Re: Elba II and Planetary Shielding

Post by 2046 » Mon Apr 24, 2017 12:03 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Good thing a thread exists for this topic alone.
So glad you approve. Now, as I said in the Planetary Defenses thread, mind your manners.

Given your prior complaints on whether I quote you versus summarizing your arguments, let me note that below is not a linear line-by-line rebuttal of every sentence, as your reply features several incidents of returning to the same topic with a different point much later, so it makes sense to combine these elements into a more coherent form. However, as you also literally argue opposite things about most every point, all in the same post, I will attempt to determine what it is you're arguing for. For example:

- Garth is both completely uselessly insane and also an engineering genius when it comes to shield modifications, except that it's just a known and simple "crazy" setting, but he's still a genius, though also useless and insane.

- Shield weakening from the bubble being expanded millions of times need not excessively weaken them, yet I am also silly for making fun of such an idea because of course they would.

- Shuttles both can and cannot fly, perhaps depending on whether cats inside are dead or alive.

. . . and so on.

Let me concur with one thing, right off the bat:
So clearly, some theory was needed to explain what was the "transporting" process at play here, the causal link that binds the would-be-pierced far side of the shield with people dying in the asylum
As I have spelled this out many times in approximately that same way, I naturally concur. However, I wouldn't use the term "transporting", since that's already a term.

That said, if theories are needed to explain these things, then it seems to me that we can't merely cry "bad writing" whenever we hit a rough spot. For instance, you say:
we're dealing with an episode that literally bypasses crucial expositions, like an explanation as to what kind of causal link exists between "Enterprise shoots at force field at random coordinates" and "people in the asylum die if beams get through" and other things.
. . . and at times you appear to assume additional bad writing where it isn't necessarily so. You even say:
It's just best seen as if we were dealing with a crappy director's cut wherein key elements were left on the cutting room's floor.
That's an excuse, not an answer. I'd say we have enough bad writing to contend with as it is, and creating more out of whole cloth is not proper. More broadly, jumping back and forth to both sides of the proverbial fourth wall is commonly a hallmark of a weak argument.

With those general ideas out of the way, let's deal with the shuttle issue, simply because you view it as a separate matter and I do not:

I. SHUTTLE FLIGHT

I concur with your statement that a hypothesis with explanatory power regarding the shuttle flight issue "adds bonus points to a workable theory that also happens to cover that mystery", and note that yours does not.
It is never said that shuttles shouldn't fly. The very plan included deploying people in suits to the ground and letting them walk.
I'm not clear on why you even say this, since the next line includes an acknowledgement that shuttles can't fly at Elba.
The expansion also apparently enabled shuttlecraft flight into the shield via some unspecified technobabble, presumably related to small instabilities or weapons-fire-related dimplings or what-have-you. The shuttle could gain entry but the ship presumably could not, and neither could her phasers. And, when the shuttle entered the shield, she'd be unable to fly, period . . . a completely unexplained detail in this hypothesis.
You are wrong.
First of all, I don't relate that anti-grav attribute to the shield extension {...} We're never told why the shuttle wouldn't be used to transport people from the entry point through the shield to the asylum or anywhere close.
Even without the hypothesis, the fact remains that the shuttle wouldn't be used to cover that distance.
No, I am not wrong, because as you say above, the inability of shuttles to fly in the Elba II atmosphere is, to paraphrase, "a completely unexplained detail in this hypothesis", as I said . . . or, to put it as you do, "Does not need to be explained for the theory to work". Had I been wrong, your sentences would most emphatically not have been "I don't relate {those details}", "we're never told why {...}", and the suggestion that we just treat the shuttle non-flight as a separate fact.

The ring ... I mean, the lack of shuttle flight capability ... is an important thing to ponder, not merely ignore as unimportant because it doesn't fit one's choices of what to believe. Taken in isolation, there are several possible reasons for shuttle non-flight, but given that we also have other things afoot on Elba, we can either toss out ad-hocs until we look like Andorians or we can put all the pieces together and figure out what's up.

II. GARTHDIDIT

A. ON GARTH EXPANDING THE SHIELDS
"GarthDidIt", which requires that Garth basically create a new technology,
Nope, just use a specific tech according to parameters that are not safe.
This is almost exactly my rocketboat example. Thanks. However, my point stands. You claim planetary shields do not exist. Ergo, this is the creation of a new technology.
2046 wrote: 1. Shield Expansion (the Garth-Mod)

Basically, this is the notion that the madman Garth, who curiously claimed to have created an explosive capable of destroying the whole planet, was an actual genius and managed to expand the shields around a small domed base for no apparent reason. This shield expansion served no useful purpose for him whatsoever, except to make sure that the toxic planet whose only tourist trap was an insane asylum had yet another reason to have no visitors.
I gave the reason.
It was a gamble, knowing that the shield in such a state would automatically make shooting at it a danger for anyone inside the asylum, so anyone down there would be a hostage.
Which is exactly what happened.
This concept makes no sense. (I realize I had tossed it out there as a joke at one point for how it would be useful for the Federation to have a shield designed that way to prevent breakout attempts, but that was only a joke.)

1. There are, without question, at least 1,000 simpler, less fool-proof, and less suicidal ways to keep hostages well-threatened. Everything from Terra-Nova-badguy plastic commissary sporks to planting his existing remotely-detonatable explosives on the hostages would work in this regard . . . he could even tell Scotty his explosive would detonate on transport, or as long as he has time to modify things (heh) he could go full Darkness-and-the-Light-badguy and rig up a detonator that actually *is* triggered by transport, akin to a remat (or premat in this case). We've even seen such a thing before in "The Ascent"(DS9).

2. Modifying the shield runs counter to Garth luring in Enterprise personnel, as does your timing of the event.

Consider the situation. Put yourself in Garth's position. You have taken the facility and you and your allies have free reign of the place. You have no mechanism of departure from the planet, but you have hostages you might be able to parlay and of course you have your shape-shifting wiles. With a Federation starship inbound and thus your best chance for a ticket outta there, you thus decide to pretend to be the administrator long enough to get visitors from the ship down, adding them to your prisoner/hostage pile, and your goal is to infiltrate the ship using your shapeshifting skills and take it over.

Put simply, absolutely everything should be kept as normal-looking as possible for this plan to work. Failing to do so would be the equivalent of BLM terrorists trying to sneak up on the police department by driving up in a stolen police car with obvious sticks of dynamite duct-taped all over it. And, keeping things normal-looking to the outside was Garth's thing until late in the game . . . he even held himself together long enough so as not to flip out where Scotty could see when asked for the code. Instead, he tried to play it off and then get the code rather than tip his hand that bad things were afoot.

"Normal-looking" does not include radically, previously-impossibly expanded shielding, nor even shields set on suicide mode as you also posit. You even tried to argue that Sulu's report that the shield was in full operation was not equivalent to Elba showing normal conditions ("The real quotation does not really say that {...} Sulu just says that it's in full operation.") To which I can only reply, full operation is not normal? If your car is in full operation, is it acting normally or are you doing 400mph wheelies right before accelerating to Mach 24?
Obviously the unusual size of the force field should warrant a stupefaction of some kind somewhere in the script. It's absent...
This is your own supposition. You argue that planetary shields do not exist and that therefore this one should be a shock. I consider that view incorrect, and the fact that there is none of your expected stupefaction supports my view.

Indeed, let's have the whole bit, shall we? Thanks to Chakoteya:

SCOTT: I gave him the sign. Why didn't he give me the countersign?
MCCOY: Something's wrong.
SCOTT: Using the chess problem was the Captain's own suggestion. He couldn't have forgotten it, and I can't believe he was testing me. Lieutenant, re establish communication.
UHURA: Aye, sir. There's no response, Mister Scott.
SCOTT: Send an armed detail to the transporter room immediately.
UHURA: Aye, aye, sir.
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?

So, as I said, Sulu's report about the shield status was entirely normal, and thus the shield is normal, which is also supported by the very nature of Garth's original plot to lure people down, which required that everything appear *normal*.

Thus, logically, the shield up to this point had not been modified, yet this was the very conversation in which Scotty predicted death for all. That alone destroys your argument. I could literally quit there.

Speaking of:
D. How would Scotty instantly know that this modified shield would explode?
D. For the same reason that even outside of the theory, he knows people inside the asylum would die regardless of where someone were to shoot at the shield? As I said, there are things which are untold in that messed up episode.
This is no answer at all.

3. Modifying the shield would weaken the very thing that keeps people from just arrivals and departures at will anyway, which could refer to beaming in a force to retake the asylum or beaming out everyone of consequence.

If Garth wanted to use hostages as a backup plan, that's fine, but there would be absolutely no need to make a profound advancement in shield technology to do it, especially if that ups the odds that your whole hostage enterprise could fail. This would be akin to concluding you need to make your 4-cylinder car capable of 900 horsepower just so you can jaywalk across the street, and revving the crap out of it to guarantee police are there to see you jaywalk. It makes no sense whatsoever.
C. Why would Garth take a powerful shield and nerf its effectiveness by expanding it by millions or billions of times, which also put his life in danger if the shield were actually used?
C. See above as to why Garth would take such a risk.
Merely saying he's nuts, a Bond villain, and/or badly written simply won't do.
Scotty wouldn't exactly be shocked as if this technical feature were a total novelty because it would actually be well known (at least, by people as qualified as he was).
For sure, pushing the shield system to this state would just be a totally INSANE thing to do.

Which just happens to be what Garth is.
So, your argument here is that Garth didn't invent planetary shields ... that they're a known quantity, maybe activated by a switch that says "do not do this, dumbass", and considered dangerous. This has the advantage of not requiring you to argue that Garth is a genius with deflector shield grids, but still comes with a litany of problems, to wit:

1. The shield was completely normal when Scotty predicted death.
2. You have replaced one shocking thing for another, as your own capslock suggests.
3. If Garth did something well-known like that there would no longer be any purpose in him trying to extract the beam-up authorization code from Kirk, but instead he could just go hostage-y.

. . . and so on. That's not an exhaustive list, by any means.

B. SHIELD EFFECTIVENESS
I used the TNG episode as evidence of a rather logical physical principle affecting shielding effectiveness. You even refer to it in your post, but then decide to ignore it and claim that as far as Elba II would be concerned and within the confines of a rebuttal to this hypothesis, there would be no drop-off in effectiveness if the shield were stretched. Obviously there would.
Please do not pretend I am claiming there is no drop-off in effectiveness. That is the position required by your hypothesis, wherein a madman can expand a simple asylum shield by millions of times and still repel Constitution Class starship phaser blasts.

I make the opposite claim, which is why I did the math to highlight the absurdity of your position.
That brings us down to a surface area difference of a mere 1.6 million times.

Clearly, then, the Elba II shield that was meant to protect an asylum was undoubtedly impervious to the combined fleets of all the major 23rd Century territorial powers, until Garth went and expanded it to cover the whole planet.
{snip} it's just as silly to stretch a shield to cover an entire planet when the chief engineer aboard the Enterprise was convinced that a single starship (and not a warship) had a good chance to punch through it.
The logical surmise at that point is that the designers must've had a good reason to want to shield the entire planet after already planting an armored dome on the surface, and that full-on fleet defense wasn't it. Considering the toxic atmosphere provides another layer of protection from escape already, then logically there must be some still-extant danger that must be protected against or prevented planet-wide ... transporters cannot be the answer.
Also, if stretching a shield like that could be possible –and again, factors don't need to be linear when it comes to the reduction of shield strength–
... Wait, I thought your statement earlier was to claim that I was saying there would be no effectiveness drop-off. Are you now arguing for "maybe only a little"?

Just sayin', we're talking about a surface area difference of 1.6 million times. Assuming the asylum shield was like the armor of an Iowa Class battleship, that's like taking a single solitary square inch of foot-thick steel and hammering it so flat it can cover 1.6 million square inches. That's 1032 square meters, or a surface 32 by 32 meters . . . 105 by 105 feet. At that point, when you've expanded a square inch to cover something around the size of the Millenium Falcon, it's not exactly gonna be thick. What is one 1.6-millionth of a foot, and would steel of that thickness even be bulletproof? (Spoiler: No.)

C. ABOUT THE EXPLOSIVE
Even assuming an entire ton of TNT, the yield of the whole vial similarly detonated ought not exceed 1.9 billion tons of TNT, or 1.9 gigatons. In the worst cases, it would be closer to 30,000 times oh, say, ten kilograms, or 300,000 kilograms, which is of course a mere 300 tons of TNT.

Obviously, neither of those figures are sufficient to actually destroy the planet. But, let's skip any further derision of the genius of this explicit madman for now.
If anything, it just suffices to reinforce both his madness and perhaps also his attempt at pretending having access to greater power than he actually does. Which just happens to fit with the megalomaniac side of his personnality anyway.
So he's pretending it's powerful. Okay. Yet later, you seem to suggest it is powerful when decrying his inattention to safety matters. Then, when claiming he's a genius, you say:
composed a massively potent explosive god knows how with what he found in the asylum ("the most powerful explosive in the universe" said Garth to Cory)
So is it powerful enough to destroy the planet, or isn't it? Both ways are taken as evidence of his insanity, while at the same time he's supposed to be sane enough to make engineering advancements, and you also argue he's a genius. I'm confused.

Frankly, I don't believe Garth's claim that a mere grain of sand was in there, or that he actually developed a new explosive on his own. Hell, one could even press this case by noting that the explosion origin point is not the necklace, and conclude that the planted explosive behind the rock, pre-positioned for Kirk's benefit, was just some off-the-shelf chemicals in the asylum.

D. CONCLUSION
So, to conclude, yes, that theory isn't perfect.
That is very generously stated. It is awful, and in direct opposition to the rest of the episode, and general logic besides. The contortions required to support it also lead one toward mental anguish.

Just to review my questions A-D, which I'm actually surprised you typed at (kudos!), your answer to when the shield was modified, why shuttles can't fly, why Garth would create a suicidal situation that weakened his position, and how Scotty knew the shield would be deadly are all variations of 'I don't know'. That your position requires contradiction with Garth's plan, besides . . .
just as much as we're never told anything about the causal link that leads to the death of people, nor the reason why the shuttle is not used to cover the thousands of kilometers once through or under the force field, or even why a shuttlecraft could even get through that force field to begin with but no beams nor teleportation, all of which are quite obviously acknowledged and tactically relevant to the characters who, yet, don't even adress these conditions, to such an extent that said characters look like they take them for granted (and they do).
Pretty much all of these elements are explained in my view. Why not yours?

III. A MORE THAN TOXIC ATMOSPHERE

A. EPISODE CONTRADICTION CLAIM

So, with GarthDidIt smashed to bits, in my opinion, let's jump ahead to the part where you seem to think you've got a lot of argumentative strength, insofar as the claim that my hypothesis is contradicted by the episode (which would, if true, make two of us).
Let's make it simple. The ignitable atmosphere theory DOES NOT WORK.
I don't even need to debunk it, the episode does it all by itself not only once but twice.

First of all, when it's suggested to send people down to the surface of Elba II to detonate a bomb to crack the dome. Mentioning the poisonous atmosphere but failing to mention the explosive nature of it in light of the tactical suggestion, or in an other way, making such a suggestion despite the triggery nature of a would-be-explosive atmosphere, proves rather firmly that there's nothing like an explosive atmosphere (or crust) to be found here.
Well, that's not a promising start, what parts of that make sense.

Basically, you suggest above that there is no mention of explosive atmosphere, ergo it doesn't exist. I could, of course, respond that "it would have been mentioned... unless we're dealing with an episode that literally bypasses crucial expositions", or otherwise fall back on bad writing, but that's an excuse, not an answer. And obviously, none of what's been discussed, including shield modifications that result in explosion, why shuttles can't fly in the atmosphere, et cetera are expounded upon.

Thus, this is an astonishingly weak counterargument in this context. Refusing to accept anything beyond what is specifically stated, *including previously-established facts*, would leave us completely unable to fill in the gaps, by definition. A 40-some-odd-minute Star Trek episode would barely be able to fill in all the potential gaps even if they were simply demonstrating waste extraction systems, so, while we can decry the breadth of this gap, we cannot selectively declare that some hypotheses are acceptable despite not being in the episode while others suddenly aren't. That's disingenuous at best.

Also, more specifically, you seem to suggest that an explosive atmosphere may actually run counter to the episode, but this isn't true at all. For instance, you claim that there was a suggestion to send people down to crack the dome with a bomb. That's not what happens. Sulu suggests sending people down in a shuttle, suited up. Scotty counters that they'd be traversing the thousands of miles and even on arrival wouldn't have any way to break through the dome as only ship's weapons would do the job.
Secondly, because an explosion –specifically a ~.95 explosion that warrants a shock from Uhura reading the scopes– did occur outside the dome, at ground level.


Repeating 0.95 like it's a magically huge thing is very strange to me. There are no units attached, and as seen the explosive yield is on par with kilograms of TNT, at best. Hell, it might even be .95 kilograms. Even giving Jim Rugg wiggle room for the effort to suggest a bigger kaboom via practical effects on a soundstage with an actress/double nearby, it still just wasn't a huge blast, and only the doctor thought everything would be wiped out.

(There are ways to imply a larger blast, by the way, that the effects guys were aware of. Cut from Marta to a shot of Kirk's face in blinding light a la "Balance of Terror", then cut back to smoke out the window . . . done. But that's not what we get at all.)

Also, Uhura didn't detect the explosion or report about it. She scanned after Sulu, Scotty, and Bones were done talking about it, and she calmly reported that life still existed on the planet. What was that about knowing what one's talking about?

In any case, the presumption that a volatile atmosphere must be detonated by a little TNT at ground level is simply your own presupposition placed upon my hypothesis. Be it a particular atmospheric layer at unknown altitude, a specific reaction to specific energies (e.g. charged particle interactions that might be expected from phasers and torpedoes), or what-have-you, simply assuming that the whole atmosphere is a fuel-air mixture ready to blow as soon as Garth goes outside for a smoke isn't my idea, it's yours.

B. CONSTRUCTION OF THE ASYLUM
In the other thread, I already have presented quite a solid list of reasons why nobody would be insane enough to build anything on a planet which atmosphere is explosive, simply because it could be triggered by a good number of perfectly natural causes too, originating from space, atmosphere and ground.
And I have presented multiple cases of similar atmospheres where the folks are "insane enough". Seems brilliant to actually put insane people at one. Kidding aside, if you have a planetary shield and a massive dome capable of withstanding extraordinary explosive yields such that you'd need a Constitution Class starship to defeat it, I'd say you're doing pretty good.
{With an atmosphere like that}, having a planetary shield makes a rather good amount of sense. Indeed, given that it's a small dome and a planetary shield is generally not necessary nor used to shield small facilities on the surface of planets, the notion of the explosive atmosphere is actually chock-full of explanatory power because it even explains why they have a planetary shield *at all*, along with a dome of sufficient strength that only starship weaponry can penetrate. After all, if the air was just poison, a simple inflatable dome could otherwise suffice."

Now, obviously I rather favor this idea. Besides having plenty of precedent, it doesn't add more holes to an already weakly-scripted episode, and relies only upon a single concept, not directly spelled out in the episode, that is well-covered in Star Trek precedents, yet which basically explains all of what otherwise seems odd.
If makes no sense at all, you mean. As I said, building a prison in space would have been far more practical, less dangerous or stupid, than chosing a planet with a tendency to see its atmosphere explode because of the slightest random fire (on the mere level of a small craft's exhaust!) and then build an entire force field to prevent external causes from triggering that atmosphere that's more sensitive than a SWJ under psychiatric survey, whilst totally ignoring natural phenomena that happen inside an atmosphere.
So if that atmosphere was so shittily ticklish as to burst the moment it would be exposed to the controlled exhaust of a shuttle that could actually get through the force field, the very idea of even deploying people on the ground would be quite impossible and you'd have to be worried by any natural explosion or considerable fire occuring inside the atmosphere, under (or inside?) the force field, and equally pray that no fiery rock could actually punch its way through.
Clearly, the Federation thought there was a "clear effective gain" in putting criminally-insane people on some random toxic planet rather than on an Earth island or similar locale, and evidently considered it easier to build a heavily-armored and shielded ground facility than a space installation.

Further, your insistence on making the planet's atmosphere susceptible to stupid things like "random fire" is your own strawmanning, and not reflective of my view.

As for the shuttle descent, we have no indication that it was going to be a fully (or at all) powered landing, nor even much of a landing at all. All that is required is that the shuttle get through the shield and get the people down to the surface in relative safety.

(In my headcanon, the shuttle is allowed into the shield via a technobabble dimpling by ship's phasers, allowing it to pass through ... then the shuttle has to button up and deploy pod wings or parachutes or something, likely for a rough landing.)

C. PRECEDENTS
In the 2150's the SS Enterprise visited a colony with an atmosphere very sensitive to great heat sources, such as shuttlepod drive plasma. The Paraagan colony was a mining world and their mining operations emitted tetrazine gas into the atmosphere, which settled at a relatively thin layer dozens of kilometers up in the atmosphere. Visiting vessels had to secure their exhaust plasma so as to avoid ignition.
In other words, a mining colony was set up there because there was a clear effective gain in doing so – contrary to Elba II and some 'splodey atmo.
This is your say-so, and nothing more. By your reasoning, the Paraagans should've had an entirely automated mining facility, leaving no risk of death for an entire colony.

Beyond that, you have not made any point against the notion that a so-called "'splodey atmo" could exist in principle and that there is precedent.
Similarly, Bersallis III is a world that features a regular cycle of firestorms. High-energy plasma in the planet's atmosphere and particle emissions from the local star combine to cause the entire atmosphere to burn regularly. In "Lessons"[TNG] an unusually fierce and early firestorm begins, one more than capable of overwhelming the thermal insulation designed into the colony's structures.
http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/245.htm
The peculiar fiery storms on Bersallis III, in the Bersallis system, seem to be a scientific high point of interest. They're generated by particle emissions from the Bersallin star reacting with the high energy plasma of the planet's atmosphere.
A woman called Nella is quite thrilled to observe one such storms.
In other terms, although it's not stated openly, it's rather possible that the outpost on Bersallis exists solely for the study of that phenomenon.
A typical storm is also nothing like the effects of a nuclear-level explosion:
LAFORGE: A fire storm can kick up winds of over two hundred kilometres per hour and temperatures as high as three hundred degrees C.
The storm of that moment was going to be twice as strong but that's still quite short of a nuclear fireball.
Also, isn't it regretable that a meagre twofold increase in the overall power of the storm would prove decisively overwhelming against the outpost's protections?
You typed much but said nothing of consequence. The fact is that the outpost structure(s) were reinforced and insulated against standard firestorms. That they were not built to withstand "a meagre twofold increase" that is "nothing like the effects of a nuclear-level explosion", whereas the Elba facility features not only shielding but also an armored dome sufficient to require Constitution Class starship weapons to defeat it, should tell you something about what they were expecting at Elba.
And, of course, we have "A Matter of Time"[TNG], in which asteroid impact and volcanic dust motion in a planet's atmosphere generates such severe electrostatic effects that a modified phaser blast is thought capable of literally burning off the planet's atmosphere in a single shot as the dust particles are converted into a high-energy ionized plasma.
A modified phaser you say. Probably on purpose, right? So a normal phaser couldn't achieve that.
Non sequitur. It's a "modified phaser blast", not a modification to the phasers. Picard references programming, and Data later references the power supply for the phasers, which is important given the precision of the yield required.

Indeed, the modifications to the blast, whatever they were, might've largely been to avoid the bad result.
Going back to Elba II, why would anyone modify a phaser to a state that would trigger a devastating, planet-wide chain-reaction capable of even destroying a dome resistant to point-blank range blasts, sufficiently powerful to worry whoever has his or her eyes on the scopes at the moment of the explosion?
This is an irrational attack piling non sequitur upon non sequitur. You have glommed on to "modified" as a life preserver and then applied that term to phasers to be used against a completely different planet. There is no evidence the Enterprise phasers were modified in orbit of Elba II and that this was why there was a threat, and to even ask the question that way is absurd.

As such, you have done nothing to respond to the existence of precedent for my hypothesis.

D. CONCLUSIONS

Your entire attack on my hypothesis is remarkably absent of red meat. Your attack upon the precedents is completely meritless, you claim a space station would be better but hey, when is that not the case? And still, that has nothing to do with anything. And you claim contradictions with the episode where none exist, whereas your hypothesis does in fact do so.

IV. ERRATA

On the point that your hypothesis requires Scotty be clairvoyant to know that the shield mod would blow things up, you say:
You mean like for THREE other facts that he doesn't say a thing about either yet takes as granted ?
First you beg the question altogether by saying "Causal link shield-defeated-people-die." Then you basically ignore what we're told in the episode regarding shuttles. Again, for Scotty to know something is acting strangely, as you require, he needs to be aware of it. That you are doing none of the legwork for your hypothesis, instead leaving me to have to do it while you claim I'm wrong yet then say the exact same thing, is inappropriate at best.

Speaking of inappropriate, let's take a moment to enjoy how you literslly went on and on for paragraphs regarding the below when, in fact, you clearly misunderstood the point:
{requires that} Garth be an actual genius with egomania and suicidal tendencies otherwise unobserved,
"Unobserved."
...
LOL[/quote]

That's "suicidal tendencies otherwise unobserved", as you well know, pretense like this aside:
Why did you waste time typing a seemingly long article if you then shoot yourself in the foot in such a comical way? There is no excuse for that. You have the transcript, you know the episode (or I thought you did) and we talked about it ad nauseum.
First things first, even if I'd said something ridiculous about a character, thus bringing me closer to your record of doing similar, what would it have to do with the truth value of the rest? If I say 2+2=4 and the sky is chartreuse, does 2+2 no longer equal 4, to you? And does that really justify like a quarter of your post fixating upon it, or should we logically just take that as you trying to get personal?

In any case, I didn't say anything ridiculous. Let me spell it out more clearly and slowly. Your hypothesis requires Garth be a genius who invents new technology at the drop of a hat, rather than simply being an insane person. Your hypothesis also requires he be a suicidal egomaniac, and those two items simply do not go together. You can't be 100% ego and want to kill yourself at the same time ... it doesn't go together, as a rule.

Thus, to review, and slowly, you require Garth to be an actual genius (not a self-described / pretend one), with the contrary aspects of egomania and suicidal tendencies . . . an unlikely combo, and the latter part of which (i.e. suicidal tendendies) is clearly unobserved.

The irony is that now you, who have repeatedly accepted that Garth is crazy as I've noted, now go on to defend his genius:
He modified a sonic rehab chair into a torture device (I guess he "basically create[d] a new technology")
He claimed the chair was his invention, then admitted it was a modification when Kirk recognized it. Basically, he broke a standard mental asylum diagnostic chair in such a way that it caused pain. That's not hard to do, in principle, with a device that uses ultrasonics already.

Whatever he did, he couldn't break Spock with it, so it isn't like it's impressive. I guess the true "Dagger of the Mind" mind-control suggestion-box, using the exact same chair, was too genius for him.
Oh and went as far as to master a technique from the Antos species that allowed him to transform into anyone else, clothes included (yeah, only that). A trick he "mastered" as he says.
He was *taught* the technique of cellular metamorphosis . . . shapeshifting. He later figured out the good part on his own, which he had time to do in confinement.
Actually, screw that.
Let's just quote Kirk here: "He was such a genius. What a waste."
"Was" is past-tense.
Suicidal tendencies?
Dude's crazy, literally walks around a room boasting about a planet-busting explosive contained inside a flask he holds in his hand and which would detonate would he ever drop it on the floor. Has fun detonating what would be a considerable quantity of said super explosive right next to the dome –an explosion that got Uhura all wet on her seat– not caring at all about the damage it could do to the dome and the consequences of this issue such as the dome falling apart or the wall letting the poisonous atmosphere slip inside.

Looks like you really don't know what you're talking about.
1. Still not Uhura.
2. A few kilograms of TNT equivalent aren't going to crack a dome that requires a starship to break through.
3. His explosive, if it even exists as more than a threatening ruse, is not evidence of suicidal tendencies. Garth doesn't actually want to kill himself. That's what suicide means, you know.

So, Garth has no observed suicidal tendencies, though your hypothesis needs there to be some. Thus, one could, as I did, describe them as "unobserved".

V. FINAL CONCLUSION

"GarthDidIt" is incomplete and cannot withstand even cursory scrutiny, much less the added scrutiny given above. Meanwhile, the lengthy but vapid attacks on the ignitable atmosphere of Elba II fell incredibly flat.

Put simply, my hypothesis has greater explanatory power and does not contradict the episode, whereas the main alternative does. My hypothesis also doesn't require excess absurdities to be adopted and believed in order to work.

There is no comparison.

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Mr. Oragahn
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Re: Elba II and Planetary Shielding

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Oct 26, 2017 8:28 pm

PoMa k wrote:Why hasnt anyone ever used "Encounter at Farpoint" to help determine the Enterprise-Ds phaser and reactor output?
Well, why not. What kind of data have you found from that episode?
I am not sure as to why this would be very relevant though.

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Re: Elba II and Planetary Shielding

Post by Iscander » Fri Oct 27, 2017 12:21 am

Knew I had read this one before too.
PoMa k wrote:Why hasnt anyone ever used "Encounter at Farpoint" to help determine the Enterprise-Ds phaser and reactor output?
http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/view ... int#p48738

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Re: Elba II and Planetary Shielding

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Oct 27, 2017 9:29 pm

Iscander wrote:Knew I had read this one before too.
PoMa k wrote:Why hasnt anyone ever used "Encounter at Farpoint" to help determine the Enterprise-Ds phaser and reactor output?
http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/view ... int#p48738
Haha LOL.
Okay, so?... :D

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