Commentary on StarWarsStarTrek v. 2046

[User1601]

You are both wrong. Phasers at full power failed to penetrate shield; but photon torpedoes would have penetrated shield, althought collateral damage would be enough to cause unintentional execution of GO24 on planet. Or at least it is how I interpreted episode.

Then you fail to properly interpret the evidence; Scotty's failure to mention the torpedoes, properly means that they would do no more than the phasers would; otherwise it would be silly for him to tell Dr. McCoy that the phasers would endanger the people, but make no mention of the torpedoes.

More succinctly, there's no evidence to show that torpedoes will have more effect on a planetary shield than phasers; after all, the shield was miles above the surface, so at most it would only impact on the shield's surface, even if they dropped every single photon torpedo they had at the same time.
However, there's NO evidence that torpedoes would bring down the planetary shield.
In Elaan of Troyus, for example, Kirk fires a full spread of torpedoes at the Klingon ship, and scores several hits, bringing down a couple of shields and causing some damage-- he doesn't destroy the ship, it just takes off and leaves.
Given the proportionate difference in energy-stats here, Garth wouldn't even hear a little "ping" in the planetary shield-generator. Remember, those are anti-SHIP weapons, not anti-planet; for that, you'd need something HUGE, particularly if it's of a class of defense that could stop V'ger!

[Mr. Oragahn]

You are both wrong. Phasers at full power failed to penetrate shield; but photon torpedoes would have penetrated shield, althought collateral damage would be enough to cause unintentional execution of GO24 on planet. Or at least it is how I interpreted episode.

Then you fail to properly interpret the evidence; Scotty's failure to mention the torpedoes, properly means that they would do no more than the phasers would; otherwise it would be silly for him to tell Dr. McCoy that the phasers would endanger the people, but make no mention of the torpedoes.

More succinctly, there's no evidence to show that torpedoes will have more effect on a planetary shield than phasers; after all, the shield was miles above the surface, so at most it would only impact on the shield's surface, even if they dropped every single photon torpedo they had at the same time.
However, there's NO evidence that torpedoes would bring down the planetary shield.
In Elaan of Troyus, for example, Kirk fires a full spread of torpedoes at the Klingon ship, and scores several hits, bringing down a couple of shields and causing some damage-- he doesn't destroy the ship, it just takes off and leaves.
Given the proportionate difference in energy-stats here, Garth wouldn't even hear a little "ping" in the planetary shield-generator. Remember, those are anti-SHIP weapons, not anti-planet; for that, you'd need something HUGE, particularly if it's of a class of defense that could stop V'ger!

Excuse me but I thought torpedoes didn't really exist during TOS, that this concept only appeared in TMP...

[Praeothmin]

They existed, as in the TOS episode "The Changelling", when Nomad fires on the E-Nil, it was said by Spock, I believe, that the probe fired with the equivalent force of 90 Photon Torpedoes...

[Admiral Breetai]

after reading this guys most recent post I think I should raise it to attention he's going out of his way to ignore..DS points and his plea for civility when generally he's shown none what so ever to any one he has trouble debating against.

I'm also curious about how valid power scaling a reactor anime style is..for evidentiary purposes

[Mike DiCenso]

Photon torpedoes were first introduced by episode 19, "Arena" which fairly late in the first season of TOS. Before that, the globs of glowing death were identified as proximity phaser blasts in "Balance of Terror".
-Mike

[User1601]

Photon torpedoes were first introduced by episode 19, "Arena" which fairly late in the first season of TOS. Before that, the globs of glowing death were identified as proximity phaser blasts in "Balance of Terror".
-Mike

In fact, BoT seemed to be the reason for the development of Photon Torpedoes, possibly in response to Kirk's intelligence gathered during this episode reagarding the Romulan threat and their anti-matter plasma-weapon; after all, there seems to be no reason why they wouldn't use torpedoes in BOT if they had them-- particularly as an auxiliary weaopn, since the ship was nearly destroyed when the phasers malfunctioned twice in that same episode, and torpedoes would have saved them both times. (Phasers also seemed to be tricky things at the time; in "The Cage," we see that the crew only used hand-lasers rather than phasers, and the ship presumably had them as well.

(Gene Roddenberry also wrote that they gave the Enterprise phasers, because lasers were rather obsolete in sci-fi by the time of TOS, being rather common knowledge around tha ttime; and that people would know that lasers couldn't do what's shown on-screen in the episodes.)

I don't have any canon-info about Starfleet's developing topedoes and mounting torpedo-tubes on the Enterprise in-between BoT and Arena, but it's quite implicit here.

[2046]

in "The Cage," we see that the crew only used hand-lasers rather than phasers { ... } I don't have any canon-info about Starfleet's developing topedoes and mounting torpedo-tubes on the Enterprise in-between BoT and Arena, but it's quite implicit here.

Either you never watched Enterprise, or you're an older fellow, or both.

That is to say, your speculations above are standard 90's fare, but Enterprise changed a lot.

[User1601]

in "The Cage," we see that the crew only used hand-lasers rather than phasers { ... } I don't have any canon-info about Starfleet's developing topedoes and mounting torpedo-tubes on the Enterprise in-between BoT and Arena, but it's quite implicit here.

Either you never watched Enterprise, or you're an older fellow, or both.

That is to say, your speculations above are standard 90's fare, but Enterprise changed a lot.

Right, but we were talking about when photon torpedoes were first developed by the writers-- not retconned. I'm quite well aware of Braga's bungle, unfortunately... and I don't mean the retcons.

(Whiny, mocking voice: "It's been a long road--- DOWN")

[Praeothmin]

after reading this guys most recent post I think I should raise it to attention he's going out of his way to ignore..DS points and his plea for civility when generally he's shown none what so ever to any one he has trouble debating against.

I'm also curious about how valid power scaling a reactor anime style is..for evidentiary purposes

While I agree he ignores arguments against his position, I haven't seen him being disrespectful to anyone.
Do you have specific quotes?

[Admiral Breetai]

While I agree he ignores arguments against his position, I haven't seen him being disrespectful to anyone.
Do you have specific quotes?

in reference to his conduct in his two duel threads? he was less then civil with me (and I repaid him in kind and took my lumps for from you guys) and he has a very brash and arrogantly patronizing tone with Ds that i think was uncalled for he basically entered the thread with the intention of showing the guy up and proving his wong copied ideals where better and seemed to come off as treating Ds as one stereotypically would a crazy fan I thought it was just a little disrespectful

now that KSW is gone the only person who's more aggressive as a debater than i am is SWST and i know you guys don't really like that

[Praeothmin]

Ah, yes, in your vs thread, which is a few months old, and both of you had received 2 warnings from this (which are now nulled for good behavior).
We don't mind aggressive argumenting, we mind uncalled for insults towards people who disagree with you...

[Mr. Oragahn]

What sort of mind would present such a thing as a failure? No force can prevent everything. That's like saying "OMG the WW2 US Navy sucked because they failed to stop attacks on America!"

Aren't you kinda shooting your own foot in saying that no force can prevent anything?
If the Breen were actually that suicidal to attack Earth, why would they not mass spam the planet with whatever sort of bioweapons and torps? If they had time to beam down, there's even less excuses!

The better explanation would be that they were not looking for mass destruction but actually conquest, by taking control of some positions in official buildings and bargaining with countless hostages or something. Now I haven't seen the episode so I don't know if that even could remotely fit with the facts.

[Admiral Breetai]

it seemed to be more than anything a terrorist attack...designed to deal a blow to moral due to the Fed stereotype of being softies. it failed of course..

[Mr. Oragahn]

it seemed to be more than anything a terrorist attack...designed to deal a blow to moral due to the Fed stereotype of being softies. it failed of course..

Why no nuke?

[Admiral Breetai]

[
Why no nuke?

what makes you think they didn't we only saw one part of an affected area orbital defenses likely handled most of the damage and they're terraform tech and environmental technology is so advanced they likely initiated damage control long before anything we'd recognize as symptoms of WMD's of various types would appear