2046 wrote:I like how I say I'll try to ignore your BS so you turn it up to 11, tossing out insults and obnoxiousness even to the point of pretending you don't know what "wee" means. Oh, and the whole continued pretense that I, who have frequently made the point that what is long- and oft-repeated is not necessarily true, would suddenly claim the inverse merely by mentioning common elements of the frequent nature of your wacky windmill targets is sad.
(Sigh)
(Sigh too)
OK, let's just skip all that nonsense and focus on discussing the episodes.
None of that makes any sense. You do know the plan involved taking the temporal core offline, yes?
Just saying that none of what I said makes sense does not suffice. Again, drop the sniping please.
How is saying that your statement makes no sense sniping?
Because you don't explain why.
Saying it's wrong, doesn't work, is flawed, etc., isn't going to help much. You have to elaborate.
Taking it from the top, I said you were asserting things against the face value of the statement (where "face value" is "planetary shields"), one being that Chakotay was spewing a ridiculous lie at Annorax that planets could be protected via shielding and the latter was too stupid to catch it. Your response was to nitpick that Chak was bluffing instead of lying (where "nitpick" refers to the fact that a ridiculous bluff = ridiculous lie in my book), and something about something being verified because somebody didn't have weapons or something. That has nothing to do with my statement.
1. The so called face value regarding planetary shields is non-existant. Star Trek has seldom proven the existence of planetary shields, only theater ones of very limited range and that has defined the norm for the entire franchise for decades. Elba II is a huge outlier in that department and hardly one you'd like to rely on imo.
2. I'm trying to see what you see as a bold faced lie here, one that is so bad that Annorax wouldn't take the bait; is it that according to a certain interpretation, Chakotay would have been suggesting that upgraded ships could now defend planets? That it is utterly silly? But isn't it exactly how Star Trek has routinely shown how worlds and home worlds were defended? With fleets of ships and, in second position, orbital weapon platforms and eventually some minefield cases at a third distant position?
From there you say ships can't do anything against the temporal weapon so only a huge and temporally upgraded defensive military-grade forcefield would do the job.
Yet such attributes, both being world-encompassing and impenetrable when attacked by a powerful weapon, all rolled into one super shield, have not been observed yet.
If we are to extrapolate on the quality of the Mawasi's and Nihydron's vaunted planetary shield tech from what their ships displayed after the upgrade, it does not really encourage one to think they'd have something suddenly nigh invincible as required by the pro-planet-wide shield argument.
Then we come to the lie. So I'll requote a part of your post:
I said you were asserting things against the face value of the statement (where "face value" is "planetary shields"), one being that Chakotay was spewing a ridiculous lie at Annorax that planets could be protected via shielding and the latter was too stupid to catch it.
So you say that "I asserted [...] that Chakotay was spewing a ridiculous lie at Annorax that planets could be protected via shielding and the latter was too stupid to catch it." Correct?
If that is what you say, I disagree. I couldn't have done that because I have not said that Chakotay was attempting to sale the idea that planets could be protected via shielding when Annorax would know that to be impossible. This is an interpretation of my words one can reach only by thinking I'd have Chakotay imply a protection by shielding directly applied to the planet (planetary shield), when I actually considered that the defense would be provided with other assets, notably ships.
Wrong or not, at least that was my position. I, at best, recognized the possibility of a defense of important assets with theater shielding, which is sufficiently documented in Trek.
However, I recall saying to sonofccn that a defense needn't be perfect. Being able to protect yourself, say in a fight, doesn't mean the opponent won't get through your guard. It just means that now you know how to defend yourself, compared to a previous state when you didn't.
You assume the protection will be perfect. When someone says "wear that chainmail, it will protect you", do you assume it will also cover the face, the hands, the legs and feet? When someone would hand you a bulletproof vest and tell you to wear it so it would protect you, would it magically exclude all the bruises and being knocked down? When you put suncream on your skin that is said to protect your skin, do you assume it will be perfect too?
Or it's like saying that now you've got a gun, you'll be able to protect your family. True, but that hardly makes them suddenly immune to criminal weapon fire, right?
Chakotay simply says that now they'll be able to protect their planets. Of course the best case scenario is a Druidia-like shield with temporal ability. But that's the best case scenario and requires assumptions and technological levels that have not been demonstrated at all. More moderate understandings of Chakotay's words work with both what we've seen both alien species use and what we can safely infer considering that they can at least shield ships.
Besides, the Krenim weapon ship was only capable of warp six, which would leave quite some time for the home worlds to update their defenses (and even send data to other worlds on urgent diplomatic missions). If the alpha quadrant is of any indication, home worlds are well spaced.
Didn't this entire episode actually last one year? Janeway said she'd forget it. This would actually leave months to Mawasi and Nihydron to update and build up defenses.
You are forgetting the context.
This is Chakotay talking to Annorax. Annorax aims for one thing, the full Krenim empire. Yet both know that the very simple fact of having Voyager survive assaults against the temporal weapon sufficed to thwart Annorax's plans.
That is not the context. The context is that Chakotay is trying to talk Annorax into standing down.
Part of having Annorax stand down is precisely done by Chakotay trying his best to deceive Annorax into thinking that the battle to come is pointless, that he'll probably be damaged (with destruction obviously implied) and that he won't be able to endanger the home worlds anymore (because ships and unspecified other assets would get the shield upgrade).
He first suggests Janeway can hurt them based on his knowledge that she wouldn't waste the effort. After a separate scene, he notes the alliance temporal shields, and is trying to make the case that destroying Voyager and her allies will accomplish nothing.
Correct. Plus even if he doesn't spell it out (perhaps during the cut to another location, who knows?), a smart individual could consider that Janeway would have shared the offensive trick with the other crews. It's a strong possibility.
Annorax sees the fleet attacking. Chakotay talks about Janeway's possible knowledge of how to do some damage. It's very likely that Annorax would also wonder if the other ships are also capable of that.
And that produces a problem for your argument, especially. You claim that having individual ships and buildings shielded is the same as "protect their planets", which it isn't.
As per the examples before, I think it is. Should we assume a
flawless protection?
You claim that having new shielded "components" will throw off calculations, and that this is the threat to Annorax that Chakotay was going for.
Recall, however, that the Ram Izad were subjected to an incursion despite Voyager's temporal shields. That component was accounted for in calculations.
First of all, the Ram Izad didn't get the upgrade.
Secondly, that incursion happened at a time when Voyager was the only ship capable of temporal shielding. So that ship was the only wild element that had to be corrected at the time of the attack. Thing is, the incursion alone isn't what matters entirely. The wake is an important part too and Voyager hadn't her shields up at the moment of the firing, but did when the wake arrived.
So either the simple fact of having that activable ability is already a new problem, or using shields against the wake casts some kind of disturbance, a shadow in the wake that weakens its effects and leaves incomplete results in the continuum.
Whatever the reason, Voyager was a trouble-maker in relation to the calculations; it could not remain ignored.
Now, don't you think that compounding this singular issue through the spreading of the shield upgrade to warships, perhaps stations, bases and small cities
directly belonging to the species exposed to a temporal incursion, wouldn't throw off the calculations
even more in comparison to what happened because of the activity of the fairly neutral Voyager?
Recall also that Annorax planned to hit the fleet by disabling their temporal shields using the weapon, whereas planetary shields can be assumed stronger… perhaps too strong for the weapon to deal with.
As I pointed much earlier on, this is totally unsubstantiated considering how the Nihydron and Mawasi ships were either destroyed or disabled. Voyager proved stronger and yet if we're to take the UFP as our basis for what kind of tech one is to expect, the glaring lack of conspicuous evidence of ubiquitous planetary shields tells us that we shouldn't even expect anything equal to that on par of either the Nihydron or the Mawasi, but actually even less than that.
Of course we can argue about that until we're blue in the face but...
Recall also that Annorax and his crew are ageless.
Correct but so what? They've been fiddling for something like a century, but the interrumption of one single ship that occasionally switched her temporal shields on screwed the calcs big time over.
Put simply, a number of temporally-shielded objects no stronger than Voyager is merely a time-wasting nuisance for Annorax.
Yes, the show has demonstrated that,
after Chakotay's bluff.
Voyager had no way to damage the weapon ship and the alien ships got dispatched despite their shielding, proving Chakotay dead wrong on all points. But that doesn't matter because it was a bluff, not a solid truth. A bluff is useful as long as it hasn't been exposed.
Only something big that can defend against or attack the weapon is a real threat . . . just like if Janeway thought she could do damage, which Chakotay also suggested.
A planetary shield wouldn't be a
threat to the ship. What can be threatened by the use of a temporal shield, however, is Annorax's plan, the one which
absolutely requires both perfect removal of a species' existence from the continuum (because people under a shield won't vanish and that can mean a lot of them, especially military personnel and same goes for their hardware) and the total absence of temporal wild elements.
Both being utterly impossible if a shield upgrade happens on all fronts.
And again, to belabor the point as it seems necessary, Chakotay did not say "I am sure she thinks she can hurt the weapon-ship, and even if she fails she's probably told the others how," as you sporadically imply.
It's true, he did not say that, but there's no reason why the upgrade to offensive capabilities (or the trick Janeway would know about) wouldn't be shared too.
As other ships were attacking too, it would also be expected of Annorax to consider the possibility that they also knew how to deal some damage.
Would it be impossible just because Chakotay didn't mention it? That's absurd.
As for your tortured . . . what do I even call that? As for your effort to recontextualize Chakotay, that was a whole long waste of effort. You now argue that Chakotay was saying the handful of Nihydron and Mawasi ships are going to somehow protect their respective planets because they sent a transmission. Must be a helluva speech!
But it was a
temporal speech!!
More seriously, the sheer grammatical structure of Chakotay's lines isn't really adequate, because at no point he refers to the alien species themselves before eventually using "they" as a replacement for them. I highlighted the entities he mentionned.
But let's have that slide. Say, yes, that he meant (in his head) the Mawasi and Nihydron and not specific assets like ships.
Obviously, Chakotay referred to the Nihydron and Mawasi protecting their worlds. I suppose you can now debate whether they even had governments, media, militaries, on-planet comm systems, smoke signals, et cetera by which such information might be usefully disseminated. I guess Chakotay just assumed it . . . y'know, like planetary shields.
Why are you conflating the notion of transmitting data across a planet (a point that never entered the discussion and which we can already achieve today with landline phones) with the notion of planetary shields?
A species capable of building warp-capable space ships is certainly expected to be able to cast signals across its planet rather easily. But it does not imply the knowledge of a planet-wide shield technology.
2046 wrote:Just a note: Voyager had literally just turned on the temporal shield when the screwed up incursion occurred. Given the Ram Izad incursion that accounted for Voyager, there is no reason to suggest that screwing up incursions equates to protecting planets.
What is the relevance of this? Ram Izad wasn't a world Voyager made contact with. They had no temporal shield upgrade, it was just... that world.
Also, reviewing the Elba II situation, there's nothing wrong with the bloody thing. The Enterprise considered defeating the shield over the asylum but the likely bleedthrough from defeating it could have destroyed the facility.
They don't need to be shooting right above the asylum to put a hole through the shield. You know, like they could actually shoot 30 km north of the asylum, for example...
Later they considered dropping a shuttle through the shield somehow on the opposite side of the planet where the shield was weakest, but the shuttle would not have been able to fly afterward, and any team they sent would have to travel overland half the circumference of the planet.
And? Either they'd do it after putting a hole through the shield's weakest point, or it means one could literally cram a shuttle through the weakest point without even putting a hole through it beforehand.
In either case, it requires speculation as to why this happens but I see no meaningful relation to the issue at hand. The script doesn't exactly explain why the crew would have to go on foot from there.
Even then they would, per Scotty, not be able to have anything with them capable of penetrating the asylum dome. Only starship weaponry could do so, and even if they ruptured the protective dome it would probably have killed everyone due to the poisonous atmosphere.
Finally it dawns on them to try to penetrate the shield on the aforementioned weak farside, which would have the benefit of not killing the asylum dome residents.
So, to summarize, save for the missing technobabble about how the shuttle could penetrate but that would render it incapable of flight, the shield makes perfect normal sense.
I beg to differ, for very obvious reasons.
I covered many of these problems
here and
here already, but I'm going to provide comments in a different fashion in this thread.
Transcript time. Behold.
Whom Gods Destroy wrote:
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. [The first time I read this, without being aware of the planet-wide attribute of the force field, it did make sense as I thought it described a theater shield. But now... either these people are absolute cretins for not figuring out not to shoot right ontop the asylum, or there's something else about that force field that's a wee bit different from a typical shield.]
MCCOY: How can we be powerful enough to wipe out a planet and still be so helpless?
GARTH: But I've arranged a more merciful end for her because after all, Captain, she is my consort. One tiny crystal implanted in her necklace, a portion of this explosive no bigger than a grain of sand. I propose to detonate it from here. [For the reminder, a vial of that stuff was said by the mad genius to be able to vaporize the entire planet. Not sure how many grains you can put in that vial but it may seem that Garth was overestimating his voodoo juice by a notch or two after all.]
(Marta is left alone, choking.)
GARTH: Poor girl. Poor, dear, suffering child. I will help her now.
(Boom!)
[Bridge]
SULU: There's been an explosion on Elba Two!
SCOTT: Point nine five! [OMG! That's almost... ONE!]
MCCOY: It must've wiped out everything. [A very powerful explosive. For example, grains of antimatter would already weigh several grams, more than enough to generate a hefty multi-kiloton explosion.]
SCOTT: Immediate probe. Is the force field in place, Mister Sulu?
SULU: Yes, sir. Solidly.
UHURA: (at Spock's station) Life continues to exist on the planet. [Despite occuring very close to the dome (Marta had no suit), the dome's still there! We can conclude that only direct fire from a capital ship could get through the shell.]
MCCOY: Got to break through it somehow.
SCOTT: Doctor, I told you we couldn't do it without killing everyone in the asylum dome. [Two elements: 1: implies that they could actually get through the force field, but it would kill all the people in the asylum. 2: in all that time (and to recoup a similar commentary from above), not a single one of them suggested that maybe they should try shooting further away from the dome (5, 20, 100 km away, who knows?) in order to avoid killing people down there beccause of bleedthrough firepower? Sorry, but that makes them be complete morons and it's hard to believe. Unless, for the sake of their intelligence and a sense of respect, that where you shoot on the force field doesn't really matter regarding the unavoidable fatal consequences under the very, very solid dome. Thus hinting that the moment you poke the shield with some blunt force, the asylum housing the shield generator explodes regardless of where you aimed at. Hence the unstable explosive generator "theory".]
MCCOY: I know it, Scotty.
SCOTT: Well, there's one last thing we might try. Perhaps the ship's phasers can cut through a section of the force field at its weakest point. Where did you say that was located, Mister Sulu?
SULU: On the far side of the planet, Mister Scott.
MCCOY: Will it leave a margin of safety for the people below?
SULU: Yes, sir. [Now that is precious. They're planning on drilling a hole through the other side of the planet-wide force field and still are seriously asking about the survival rate of the people stuck under the super sturdy dome! This is impossible to take at face value unless, again, that force field is so fubar that the moment you crack it open, it blows up no matter what... or perhaps if you aim for a weakspot, you needn't apply the full array of the ship's firepower (beams + torps) and you may get through, but without overloading the generator and thus not killing the people bunkered inside a super tough compound on the other side of the world. If we assume that the Enterprise had torpedoes, it is indeed interesting to notice then that they chose to rely on the phasers only, and tried to achieve some kind of "clean cut" by narrowing the beams. Perhaps to really make it efficient and maximize the intensity, reduce the energetic waste from weapon fire and thus lower the risk of a dramatic overloading.]
SCOTT: Prepare to change orbital path, Mister Sulu.
SULU: Orbital co-ordinates released, sir.
SCOTT: Break synchronous orbit. Come to course one four mark six eight.
(after a few moments)
SULU: Course one four mark six eight. Synchronous orbit re-established, sir.
SCOTT: Ship's phasers to narrow beam.
SULU: Ship's phasers ready, sir.
SCOTT: Let's punch a hole in it. Full power. Another blast, full power.
SULU: Force field still holding, sir. [They may continue firing, we don't know. I suppose they would for quite some time. The episode ends quickly after that (perhaps a dozen minutes?). At some point Spock proposes to beam down some people, which strongly suggests that the Enterprise had stoppped firing and failed to get through.]
Thus, unless one agrees with the exploding shield generator and its supplement that it was pushed to insane limits, the episode's plot really runs in full retard'o mode, as evidenced by my earlier comments in the two posts I linked to.
Also, I would like to quote and second sonofccn's summary of the situation, made in this thread before I sullied it with my nefarious presence:
The majority of the evidence suggest, from the 23rd century onward, the Federation has the capability, if not necessarily the will, to shield its planets. In addition to surface emplacements, theater and installation shields as well as local defense ships we've seen them employ. Suffice it to say I don't think planetary defense is a particularly weak link in the Federation.
There is no such "majority of evidence". It's only speculation of the highest order. Maybe you could pick up where sonofccn left?