Star Trek Canon Database
Displaying 1 to 50 of 56 records.
Database started: 1999-07-27
Page generated: 2009-11-20
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TNG Season 1, Ep# 3: "The Naked Now" WORF: What we're seeing, sir, is a huge chunk of the star's surface blown off, heading for us! |
Shields and Forcefields: the star's surface must have been solid, since a solid chunk was hurled out. We later saw that this chunk was a few times larger than the diminutive USS Tsiolkovsky, it was not accompanied by a dense debris field, and it was moving so slowly that the Enterprise was able to shove the Tsiolkovsky at it with greater speed than it possessed. As Ted Collins points out, this raises the question of why they didn't simply point their tractor beam at the fragment itself in order to "push off" and avoid an impact that way, but to be fair, everyone on board was basically inebriated, so their judgement was presumably impaired. The danger posed by this slow-moving fragment is quite telling. Even if its mass is enormous, the physics of any collision dictate that the limiting factor is the smaller of the two bodies rather than the larger one. The Enterprise would have only had to absorb the change in its own velocity upon impact, since it was not required to stop the fragment dead in its tracks (indeed, if its mass was as great as advertised, the fragment's velocity would be largely unaffected by the collision). This reveals that Federation ships do not handle physical impacts very well, but to be fair, this failing is commonplace and it makes sense for reasons upon which I hope to elaborate in my shield page someday, if I ever get time. |
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TNG Season 1, Ep# 7: "The Last Outpost" WORF: They are firing on us! PICARD: Damage report! TASHA: Shields holding! DATA: Mostly electromagnetic, sir. Fusion generator and batteries down by (thirty percent) GEORDI: Our impulse engines are surging! WORF: They're firing again. TASHA: Deflector shield power weakening, Captain. Phasers ready, sir. Photon torpedoes ready... RIKER: Shall we return their fire, sir... ? PICARD: Negative, Number One. They are reacting to close pursuit. Fall back a bit but stay with them. |
Shields and Forcefields: apparent contradiction of the commonly held belief that electromagnetic energy weapons are totally useless against Federation shields. Just 2 impacts from a "mostly electromagnetic" weapon were enough to weaken the Enterprise's shields. Also note the first instance of Picard's notorious "turn the other cheek" combat tactic. It is utterly incomprehensible that this man became a renowned military officer. Note: "thirty percent" dialogue noted by Mike Griffiths. |
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TNG Season 1, Ep# 7: "The Last Outpost" TASHA (over comm): Excuse the interruption, Captain, but this may be worth it. We're now receiving a signal from the probe. PICARD: We'll take it here, please. (Viewscreen shows forcefield being projected from planet, holding both the Enterprise and the Ferengi vessel in place) GEORDI: Incredible! RIKER: That's our mysterious "something," Captain. It is a forcefield of some kind... PICARD: Reaching up from the planet surface. What amazing power! How does the legend describe the end of the Tkon Empire? DATA: By their Sun going supernova, sir. |
Shields and Forcefields: they are utterly astonished at the ability of the Tkon outpost to project a forcefield into orbit and seize two capital ships (one can only imagine what they would think of the Endor shield generator). This is indicative of the state of power and forcefield technology in the Federation. |
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TNG Season 1, Ep# 7: "The Last Outpost" PICARD VO: Captain's log, supplemental. In orbit of the mysterious planet Gamma Tauri IV in the Delphi Ardu star system, whose unexplained forcefield has seized us with a power almost beyond imagination. |
Shields and Forcefields: more breathless superlatives for this "incredible" planetary forcefield generator which can hold two capital ships. What would Picard think of the Alderaan planetary shield, which deflected the Death Star superlaser for more than a tenth of a second? |
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TNG Season 1, Ep# 20: "Heart of Glory" SCREENPLAY: Kommel removes what looks like a very common button from his uniform, then leans down and carefully attaches it to the bottom of the forcefield. The field is instantly neutralized.. |
Shields and Forcefields: the Klingons have tiny devices which can easily shut down a detention cell forcefield. This, in turn, makes me wonder what is required in order to shut down one of those forcefields. There are obviously some weaknesses we are not aware of. |
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TNG Season 1, Ep# 23: "Symbiosis" PICARD: All hands, this is the captain. The sun in the Delos system is undergoing large-scale magnetic field changes, producing violent, gigantic flares. We will be studying this star at close range. Even though we will be running with full deflectors, the closeness of the event and its severity are going to create problems. Intense magnetic fields have a disruptive effect on electrical systems. We can therefore expect an interruption of communications, and potential temporary loss of other systems. As a precaution, we are now going to Yellow Alert... |
Shields and Forcefields: the Enterprise's communications systems are electrical, and can be affected by magnetic fields in spite of full shielding. It should be noted that these solar flares, contrary to some Trekkies' claims to the contrary, were not astronomically remarkable. Two planets in the system sustain life, which would not be the case if the star were highly unusual in nature. It should also be noted that we could see the ship from outside, and it was no closer than the planets in the system. |
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TNG Season 1, Ep# 23: "Symbiosis" WESLEY: Captain, deflectors are being hit by a huge burst of X-rays (bridge panels begin to short out) ... Sir, my console seems to be overloading. WORF: The X-ray burst is disrupting systems, Captain. I'm adjusting deflectors to compensate. ... DATA: Captain, our sensors are being severely affected by the sun flares. ... TASHA: The solar flares are interfering with the tractor beam, Captain. I am unable to lock on. ... RIKER: I'll beam over with a team. TASHA: Captain -- I strongly recommend against anyone from this ship beaming over. The solar interference is too great. ... TASHA: Have them go to their own Transporter Room. It will be tricky, but perhaps I can link the two transporters in series and get them over with the increased power. ... TASHA: Reading six life forms... but I can't get a solid lock. RIKER: We've no choice. Energize. (four people materialize) RIKER: You said six; where are the other two? |
Shields and Forcefields: An X-ray burst from the solar flare disrupts the operation of onboard computer consoles despite full shielding. |
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TNG Season 2, Ep# 30: "The Outrageous Okona" WORF: Unidentified craft Sector four to Sector four two six one. Overtaking us, no response to our hailing. ... DATA: Sensors report a minimum range combat craft of the Squadron Class, twenty-six crew. WORF: Captain, they have locked phasers. PICARD: Phasers? RIKER: Regulations call for a Yellow Alert. PICARD: It's too small of a craft to be of any threat to us. Do you agree, Lieutenant Worf? WORF: We could blow it out of space before it could scratch our hull. |
Shields and Forcefields: this dialogue is somewhat different from the dialogue that eventually aired on the show. When they filmed it, they replaced "phasers" with "lasers", and replaced Worf's tactical assessment with the dismissive line that "that won't even penetrate our navigational deflector". In any case, this scene was clearly meant to describe tactical inferiority, although some unintelligent Trekkies have wildly interpreted it to mean that any weapon with the word "laser" in its name must be useless against Federation ships, regardless of how powerful it is (yes, they even lump the Death Star superlaser into that group). I won't bother to explain yet again what's wrong with that interpretation. If you have a brain, it should be obvious to you, and if you're dumb enough to believe in it, then you probably wouldn't understand any explanation. |
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TNG Season 2, Ep# 32: "Loud as a Whisper" PICARD VO: Captain's log, Stardate 42411.2 ... the two sides of a bitter little planetary conflict have petitioned Starfleet to transport to their world a mediator they have mutually selected. Our orders are transportation only -- no interference, no responsibilities. It is a mission much to my liking. ... WORF: I'm reading laser activity in the Solari Solar System! RIKER: How concentrated is the activity? WORF: It is localized -- and very intense. RIKER: So much for the cease-fire. PICARD: Open hailing frequencies. WORF: I can establish voice only. PICARD: This is Captain Jean-Luc Picard, commander of the Federation starship USS Enterprise. If you continue to violate the rules by breaking the cease-fire, I will abort this mission. FIRST LEADER: You have no jurisdiction here, Picard. Where is Riva? PICARD: Riva is in charge of the summit. I command the ship that brings him. I will not endanger my ship under any circumstances. |
Shields and Forcefields: why would it endanger his ship to fly into a war zone contested with laser weaponry? "The Outrageous Okona" proved that Federation starships are completely immune to any weapon with "laser" in its name, right? Right? Wayne Poe notes that certain chronically dishonest Trekkies have attempted to explain this away (funny how Trekkies spend so much time explaining things away instead of trying to analyze them), usually by saying that since Picard's orders forbade "interference", he actually had no intention of entering the contested zone and his posture was a mere ploy. But of course, this explanation utterly fails to fit the facts. His mission was to bring Riva to mediate a peace treaty, and he would have failed in that mission if he didn't fly into the contested zone and transport Riva to the surface. If the ship's navigational could really block any laser fire regardless of magnitude (an inherently stupid proposition), then they should have been able to fly into the contested zone without shields and transport Riva to the surface! Remember that the navigational deflector is separate from the shield system, and does not impede transportation. The presence of laser fire should have been completely irrelevant to Picard's mission if the rabid Trekkie "no laser" morons had a shred of validity to their argument. |
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TNG Season 2, Ep# 42: "Q Who?" GEORDI: Security to Main Engineering -- we have an intruder. WORF: He came right through the shields! Q: Interesting isn't it? Not a he -- not a she. Not like anything you've ever seen. An enhanced humanoid. |
Shields and Forcefields: Borg drones can teleport directly through the E-D's shields, although this vulnerability was closed without explanation in subsequent encounters with the Borg such as STFC. |
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TNG Season 2, Ep# 47: "Peak Performance" BURKE: Captain -- Romulan warship approaching fast from astern! PICARD: What the -- ?! BURKE: He came from nowhere, sir! PICARD: Bring us about, Ensign -- maximum shields! DATA: Disengage modified beams. PICARD: Weapon-systems full -- lock on! Open a hailing frequency. BURKE: I can't, sir. There's nothing there. (The Hathaway moves to 5 o'clock high, and hits the Enterprise repeatedly from a range of only 1 or 2 km. Picard realizes he's been had) PICARD: Warp three, evasive! Disengage weapons, re-engage modified beam. ... WORF: Computers report heavy damage to Enterprise, sir. |
Shields and Forcefields: the Enterprise is fooled into coming about, in order to face imaginary Romulan ship and they raise their shields to maximum. But the Hathaway is able to damage the Enterprise anyway, thus indicating several possibilities:
Note that this is simulated damage rather than real damage. But since the simulator is designed to accurately model the effects of a real confrontation, it is reasonable to conclude that if it were real, the attack would have been just as effective. |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 50: "Evolution" RIKER: Ensign, our position.... WESLEY: Approaching ten million kilometers from the neutron star... |
Shields and Forcefields: the Enterprise can approach to within 10 million km of a neutron star. Note that the Millenium Falcon was able to approach to within a thousand km of a neutron star (one which was accreting matter from a neighbour and throwing off huge quantities of radiation as a result), in "Rebel Dawn". |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 50: "Evolution" DATA: Ten seconds to stellar blast. WESLEY: We're at forty million kilometers from the neutron star. RIKER: Hold your position. |
Shields and Forcefields: as the moment of the geyser approaches, they retreat from 10 million km to 40 million km. |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 51: "Survivors" (A Husnock ship arrives and fires on the Enterprise from a range of less than 5 km) WORF: The vessel is firing jacketed streams of positrons and antiprotons, equivalent firepower of forty megawatts. Shields are holding. (The Husnock ship fires again) WORF: Again forty megawatts. No damage. RIKER: If that's as good as they can do, this'll be over in five minutes. |
Shields and Forcefields: quantification of the "bitch slap" shots taken by the Husnock warship at the Enterprise. "Equivalent firepower" of forty megawatts, which suggests that whatever the true energy content of the beams, their effect was equivalent to 40 MW. This makes sense because a sensor cannot detect anything but the effects of a matter or energy on its environment. There is no way to magically divine the "true" energy of an object; we monitor its interaction with the environment (and with our instruments) in order to determine what it is. If the instruments say it's forty megawatts, that means it must have the same effect as a forty megawatt beam because effects are the only thing that can be measured. Without interaction, nothing is detectable even in theory. |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 51: "Survivors" (The Husnock warship returns and approaches to within 5 km again) PICARD: Lieutenant Worf, open a hailing frequency. Warn the vessel to stay clear of the planet. WORF: Aye, sir. But they are already within firing range. (The Husnock ship fires) WORF: Shields down! Captain, they hit us with four hundred gigawatts of particle energy! PICARD: Damage? WORF: Superficial -- but I am having trouble reassembling the shields! (The Husnock ship fires again) WORF: Shields down! There is thermal damage to the hull! DATA: The warship is in possession of enormous energy reserves. It is capable of striking us with far more powerful bursts. WESLEY: They're maneuvering to come between the Enterprise and Rana Four. PICARD: Number One, we have been exemplary in our patience. RIKER: Lieutenant Worf, fire phasers on full with a simultaneous spread of torpedoes. (The Enterprise finally returns fire) DATA: The vessel appears undamaged. Its defenses are apparently able to absorb incoming matter and energy. RIKER: Commence rapid fire with all weapons on full! (The Enterprise unloads on the Husnock ship, with a nice display of at least a dozen torpedoes and a similar number of phaser blasts. The Husnock ship returns fire and numerous bridge consoles erupt in showers of sparks) WORF: Shields are down! There is internal damage -- weapon systems control has been lost! RIKER: Riker to Sickbay. Medical assistance to the bridge! PICARD: Mister Crusher, move the Enterprise out of range of the attacking vessel! |
Shields and Forcefields: the Husnock ship didn't fire until it was within a stone's throw of the Enterprise. When it did, it unleashed a 400 GW burst. This blast, a fraction of a second in duration, knocked out the Enterprise's shields. A second burst damaged the hull, and a third burst knocked out the ship's weapons. |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 54: "Booby Trap" PICARD: Agreed. Worf, what would be the impact of lowering shields long enough to get an away team out... ? WORF: Negligible, sir. GEORDI: It won't help our energy conservation any, Captain. |
Shields and Forcefields: according to Geordi Laforge, it seems to require more energy to drop and then raise the shields than it does to simply keep them up. |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 58: "The Defector" PICARD: Bring us to within five kilometers of the scout. Mister La Forge, prepare to extend our shields around that ship. GEORDI: Captain, at that range, the shields won't be able to take much punishment. |
Shields and Forcefields: they can extend them at least five kilometres ahead of the ship, but not without a dramatic loss in strength. Obviously, a Federation starship's shield generators pale in comparison to the theatre and planetary shield generators commonly deployed in the Empire. |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 59: "The Hunted" GEORDI: He's making a suicide run. DATA: Shields have been automatically activated. Tractor beam disengaged. SCREENPLAY: no longer enveloped in the tractor beam, the transport vessel hurtles head on towards the Enterprise, then skids off the invisible shield, away from the ship. WESLEY: He's bounced off our shields. RIKER: That's one trick I didn't even know about... |
Shields and Forcefields: unlike Imperial shields, Federation shields do not destroy objects upon impact. Instead, low-momentum craft bounce harmlessly off the shield. High-momentum craft should do the same, but there are limits to the shield's elasticity, hence the resulting shield penetration and/or structural damage that we usually see during collisions. |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 63: "Yesterday's Enterprise" TASHA: Deflector shield technology has advanced considerably during the war. Our heat-dissipation rates are probably double those of the Enterprise-C, so we can hang in a firefight longer. |
Shields and Forcefields: according to Tasha Yar, a starship's ability to survive combat hinges on its maximum rate of heat dissipation. The ability to dissipate energy as heat means nothing without the ability to store that energy in the first place, so this means that the shield system must somehow store incoming energy and then re-radiate it to the environment. In other words, a deflector shield system is functionally similar to a physical piece of armour rather than a true forcefield, which can act on mass/energy but cannot "store" anything. The only question is whether the energy is absorbed by the shield itself, or by the shield generator systems inside the spacecraft. Since very powerful weapons can damage the ship even before total shield failure, it seems that the latter theory is valid: energy is absorbed by shield generator systems inside the spacecraft. Powerful impacts would therefore overload those generators by exceeding their input limits, causing circuit overloads inside the ship (such as the infamous sparking and exploding bridge consoles). |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 65: "Sins of the Father" DURAS: For many turns, the truth about Khitomer has lain dormant, unknown. Now the truth is revealed. The traitor, Mogh, sent the defense access code to the Romulan patrol ships and allowed them to destroy the outpost. Thousands died on Khitomer. My father died on Khitomer. Their deaths must be avenged! |
Shields and Forcefields: although Klingon shields of that era couldn't withstand an attack from Romulan warbirds (as demonstrated at another border outpost: Narendra Three), it sounds like they could withstand an attack from Romulan patrol ships (or at least, delay it long enough for reinforcements to arrive). |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 66: "Allegiance" WESLEY: Orbiting the pulsar at fifty million kilometers, sir. DATA: The pulsar is exactly as our records indicate. There appear to be no anomalies or significant changes since the last scan by a Federation ship. FALSE PICARD: Helm -- take us in to twenty million kilometers. WESLEY: Aye, sir. RIKER: Mister Worf, divert enough power to the shields to offset the increased radiation and magnetic fields. DATA: Sir, at twenty million kilometers our shields will be effective for only eighteen minutes. |
Shields and Forcefields: the radiation from a pulsar will take down the Enterprise's shields in 18 minutes even at a range of 20 million km. |
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TNG Season 4, Ep# 76: "Suddenly Human" JONO: My name is Jono. PICARD: You were born Jeremiah, on Galen Four. Your colony was destroyed, later, during a border skirmish. ... DATA: Talarian warships are limited to neutral particle weapons, high-energy X-ray lasers and merculite rockets. No match for the Enterprise, Captain. PICARD: The last thing I want is to be forced into destroying one of their ships. RIKER: They won't back off. They've been willing to fight to the death in past encounters. PICARD: The lines are being drawn... all this for a chosen son. WORF: Is it worth it, Captain? To go to war -- over a child? |
Shields and Forcefields: the Federation has actually fought with an opponent whose ships used lasers? How odd ... aren't they completely immune to such weapons? They even seem to be concerned about the possibility of renewed war with this opponent. Trekkies tend to leap to the conclusion that if an incoming starship is no match for the Enterprise, then its weapons must belong to an inferior "technology class" and would therefore be utterly useless. This is a hopelessly simple-minded conclusion; a single BOP or Cardassian Galor-class ship is no match for the Enterprise either; does that mean its weapons are totally impotent against Federation technology? Or are they just not powerful enough? To put this issue into stark contrast, there is no reason to believe that the average starship would be immune to a salvo from a WW2 battleship. Of course, a battleship wouldn't be able to get into space to fire that salvo, but if you took a WW2 battleship's guns, stuck them on a starship and fired them at close range, you would find that a full salvo is nothing to sneeze at, particularly since physical impacts seem more deleterious to Federation shields than EM radiation. A full broadside from an Iowa-class battleship would consist of 9 16 inch shells, each massing 862 kg and moving at 762 m/s. Upon impact, the shells stop on or in the target vessel, in which case their full 2.25 GJ of kinetic energy and 3 GJ of chemical potential energy are delivered, or they punch holes all the way through the ship (in which case they actually do less damage because they still retain most of their kinetic energy and all of their chemical potential energy when they come out the other side). That's more than 5 GJ of energy (not to mention nearly 6E6 kg·m/s of momentum), and we've seen how gigajoule-range energy yields can pummel the Enterprise (as seen in "Survivors"). |
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TNG Season 4, Ep# 76: "Suddenly Human" RIKER: Geordi, the Talarians are moving into attack posture. Classic triangular envelopment. GEORDI: I've tapped the impulse engines for additional power to shields, Commander. We're ready. |
Shields and Forcefields: they need "additional power" to handle the onslaught of the Talarians? Even though their ships add up to a small fraction of the Enterprise's size and they are armed with lasers? But what happened to the vast immunities guaranteed by the cadres of Trekkie apologists? |
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TNG Season 4, Ep# 86: "The Wounded" RIKER: He'll never drop his shields to let you transport on board. O'BRIEN: The Phoenix is using a high-energy sensor sweep. It cycles every five-point-five minutes. Between those cycles there's a window of a fiftieth of a second. Trust me. I can get through. ... O'BRIEN: It's good we're trying this with another Federation ship. It would never work with an alien vessel. GEORDI: I'm not so sure it's going to work this time. Can you get an accurate enough fix on his shield modulation to get through? O'BRIEN: I think so. The Phoenix should be following standard Starfleet protocols. They have to align their shields at the start of every sweep. GEORDI: So you'll sync up the beam... O'BRIEN: And slip right through. |
Shields and Forcefields: Shields must be adjusted in order to prevent interference with sensors, which means that there is a trade-off between shielding effectiveness and sensor effectiveness. |
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TNG Season 4, Ep# 93: "The Nth Degree" DATA: Captain, an energy field is forming around the device. Intensity is three point two terawatts, and increasing. ... DATA: Captain. The probe's energy output is overloading our shields. Failure anticipated in forty-seven seconds. |
Shields and Forcefields: exposure to a terawatt-range emitter will take down the Enterprise's shields in a matter of minutes. One possible Trekkie excuse might be to argue that the probe vastly increased its output by many orders of magnitude while we were watching, and Data didn't bother to quantify the increase (although I would think that such a vast increase would merit comment). |
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TNG Season 5, Ep# 101: "Redemption Part 2" KURN: New course... three zero seven... mark two seven five. HELMSMAN (shocked): But sir---! KURN: GhoS! (Do it!) ... WORF: We are entering the star's corona... we will reach the photosphere in 30 seconds. KURN: Stand-by to enter warp on my command, course 250 mark 015. WORF: Shields failing ... outer hull temperature exceeding design limits ... ... WORF: Captain! KURN: Maintain course... WORF: They're closing on us! KURN: Stand-by... ... KURN: DaH! (Now!) (his BOP pulls up and goes into warp, and for some reason, this induces twin solar prominences, one on either side, which reach up and destroy both pursuers) |
Shields and Forcefields: Both Kurn's damaged BOP and its pursuers can survive as much as 30 seconds of close-range exposure to the star, but the pursuers are destroyed almost instantly when they are come into contact with photosphere gas. This reveals the drastic difference between their shields' ability to withstand electromagnetic energy and direct contact with matter. It is commonly assumed that the Sun's photosphere is far more dangerous than its chromosphere or corona, but this assumption is mere intuition without basis in fact. The danger of approaching the Sun is a simple matter of the distance to its centre, and it doesn't suddenly spike when you breach its "surface". In fact, the Sun has no "surface" at all; it's a gaseous body, and it has no more "surface" than our own Earth's atmosphere does. The density of our Sun's photosphere is less than 0.01% of the density of air. It closely approximates an ideal gas, so if we estimate T=6000K, the total kinetic energy found in one cubic metre of the Sun's photosphere is less than 7½ kJ. To put this in perspective, that's not even enough energy to boil a cup of water! I know this sounds strange, but given equal volumes, you have more to fear from boiling water than from gases at the temperature and pressure of the Sun's photosphere. This doesn't mean you can waltz around the Sun with impunity, but it means that it's dangerous because of the radiation, not the temperature and pressure. But take note: this radiation does not suddenly spike when you enter the photosphere. If the BOP's could survive the radiation before being hit with the flare, then we can logically conclude that the radiation isn't what destroyed them so easily. It must therefore have been the heat of the photosphere gas itself, as feeble as it is. Gas like this simply won't be dangerous when compared to the ambient radiation. The BOPs' projected surface area from below was less than 20,000 m², the prominence was moving at less than 5 km/s, and if I recall correctly, their shields collapsed in a single frame of video (1/15 second). Given these figures, each BOP could have absorbed no more than 50 GJ from the incident, even if we make the incredibly generous assumption that the gas transferred 100% of its energy to the ships (note that this would be impossible, and would leave a supercooled chunk of metallic hydrogen sitting under the ship). |
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TNG Season 5, Ep# 114: "Conundrum" WORF: Captain, I am picking up a vessel directly ahead. PICARD: Can you identify? DATA: The ship matches the Starfleet description of a Lysian Destroyer. A short-range attack vessel ... with disruptor-style weapons, and a standard crew of fifty-three. ... PICARD: Tactical analysis, Mister Data. DATA: The destroyer has minimal shields. Their disruptor capacity appears to be only 2.1 megajoules. ... DATA: Captain, The Lysians have stopped transmitting. They are powering up their disruptors. They have locked onto us, sir... RIKER: Full shields. WORF: Shields up. (the ship is hit, and the bridge shakes) |
Shields and Forcefields: against an enemy armed with 2.1 MJ disruptors, they raise full shields and the bridge is still rocked with the impact. To put this figure in perspective, you will get 2.1 MJ from the combustion of less than 50 mL of gasoline, the explosion of a pound of TNT, or about 5 minutes of equatorial noon-time sunlight on the body of a car. |
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TNG Season 5, Ep# 115: "Power Play" RIKER: A concussive charge would blow out the security field. Then we could go in with phasers on wide beam. Stun everybody. Sort it out later... |
Shields and Forcefields: their security forcefields can block hand phaser fire but not a physical concussion, hence Riker's suggestion that they knock out the security field with a concussive charge. |
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TNG Season 5, Ep# 125: "The Inner Light" WORF: Sir, I'm detecting a low-level nucleonic beam coming from the probe. RIKER: Shields up; stand by phasers. DATA: The beam is scanning the shield's perimeter. The probe is emitting an unusual particle stream -- WORF: Captain, the beam is penetrating our shields -- |
Shields and Forcefields: even a "low-level" particle beam can quickly penetrate their shields if its configuration is unusual enough. Once again, we see that their technology is over-optimized for predictable threats (a failing which eventually came back to haunt them during DS9's Dominion War, until they managed to adapt their shields to the unfamiliar Dominion weapons). |
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TNG Season 6, Ep# 130: "Relics" SCREENPLAY: The ship is still in orbit around the star. A huge solar flare billows up behind the ship... part of the flaming plasma brushes against the shields of the Enterprise. WORF: Shields still holding... but down another 15%. |
Shields and Forcefields: the ship loses 15% shields after a brief contact with a flare. Obviously, they're going to have to revise their 3 hour estimate after losing 15% shields, when they only had 23% shields to begin with. Furthermore, since the energy density of photosphere material is less than 10 kJ/m³, the fact that a brief contact with a flare would drain 15% of their shields is indicative of the particular weakness to charged particle contact that I've alluded to before. |
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TNG Season 6, Ep# 130: "Relics" SCOTT: The shields will hold Lad, don't you worry about that. I know how to get a few extra gigawatts out of these babies. |
Shields and Forcefields: this strongly suggests that shield power requirements are in the high gigawatt range, or perhaps the low terawatt range. Even though Scotty is not being precise, it seems highly unlikely that a qualified engineer would use units which are too many orders of magnitude away from appropriate values. A modern engineer might say "I know how to squeeze a few more horsepower" out of an engine rated for a few hundred horsepower, or "I know how to squeeze a few more megawatts" out of power reactors which produce hundreds of megawatts or just over a gigawatt, but you generally won't expect to hear someone get the units completely out of proportion, eg- "I know how to squeeze a few more kilowatts" out of a gigawatt-class nuclear reactor. That kind of fluctuation would be insignificant. |
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TNG Season 6, Ep# 137: "Chain of Command Part 2" GEORDI: The McAllister C-Five Nebula is located just over the border, approximately seven light years from Federation space. JELLICO: Could there be Cardassian ships inside the McAllister Nebula? GEORDI: It's possible, but they couldn't stay in there very long. The particle flux in the nebula would begin to degrade a ship's hull after about 72 hours. |
Shields and Forcefields: they can't keep diffuse nebula gases from damaging their hulls. This means they couldn't prevent physical contact between the nebula gas and their hulls. |
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TNG Season 6, Ep# 137: "Chain of Command Part 2" GEORDI: The mines will have to be laid within two kilometers of the Cardassian ships. But the particle flux from the nebula will blind all the sensors except for the proximity-detector. |
Shields and Forcefields: the mines will float toward the Cardassian ships and attach themselves to their hulls ... which means that the Cardie ships must not have any active shielding (which would normally stop the mines from touching the hull). This is not a surprise, considering that their shields must have already been neutralized by the nebula gases which are degrading their hulls at that very moment. |
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TNG Season 6, Ep# 138: "Ship in a Bottle" PICARD: Those two planets will collide in less than five hours and explode to form a new star. If we don't have navigational control we won't be able to maintain a safe distance -- and this vessel will be destroyed. |
Shields and Forcefields: they expect to be destroyed by the birth of a nearby star, even though its power output would be based on the collision itself rather than the nuclear fusion processes that normally power a star. |
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TNG Season 6, Ep# 145: "Lessons" WORF: The Federation Outpost on Bersallis Three reports that they are entering a period of fire storm activity. ... GEORDI: The fire storms can kick up winds of over 200 kilometers per hour -- and temperatures as high as 300 degrees C. ... GEORDI: If we set up a series of thermal deflector units along the northern perimeter, we could create a fire wall to deflect some of the heat -- the outpost's insulation could probably handle the rest. |
Shields and Forcefields: they have portable "thermal deflector units" which can block some of the heat from a firestorm. But as we learn later, they can't keep the firestorm from raging right through their lines. These were large devices which required set-up time and crews, yet they couldn't stop a simple firestorm. |
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TNG Season 6, Ep# 145: "Lessons" PICARD VO: Captain's Log, Stardate 46697.2. Although we succeeded in rescuing all 643 Bersallin colonists, we lost eight crewmembers. |
Shields and Forcefields: despite Geordi's hopes, the thermal deflectors failed to stop the firestorm, and lives were lost as a result. If they can't even protect their away teams from a firestorm with large, bulky deflector units, how are they going to protect armies from field artillery? They obviously rely on their opponents not using it. |
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TNG Season 6, Ep# 148: "Suspicions" REYGA: You've all seen my experimental data. The metaphasic shield has been proven. T'PAN: Forgive my skepticism, Doctor, but your claims are somewhat extravagant. Protect a shuttle within a star's corona? Not even your own government believes it can be done. |
Shields and Forcefields: the assembled scientists think that Reyga's claims of being able to protect a shuttle in a star's corona are nonsense, which gives some indication of the strength of normal shielding. A shuttle is a very small craft, with a profile area of perhaps 30 m², which means that it would absorb less than a gigawatt of stellar radiation in the corona, rising to 1.8 GW when the ship enters the photosphere (which it cannot do). T'pan's reaction to Reyga's claim is an indication that gigawatt-range power dissipation is well beyond the limitations of conventional shielding for a shuttle. |
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TNG Season 6, Ep# 148: "Suspicions" COMPUTER: Warning. Approaching stellar photosphere. Metaphasic shield at seventy-one percent ... (Dr. Crusher and Jo'Bril scuffle for the phaser) COMPUTER: ... Metaphasic shield at fifty-nine percent ... (Dr. Crusher knocks Jo'Bril down and grabs the phaser) COMPUTER: Metaphasic shield at thirty-four percent ... |
Shields and Forcefields: Reyga's "metaphasic shield" is rapidly losing strength in the star's corona. This means that even this specialized shield can only last a few minutes under gigawatt-level bombardment. If we extrapolate to a full-sized starship with a thousand times more profile area, this would translate to rapid depletion at terawatt-level bombardment. And some Trekkies still insist that hand phasers put out that much power ... |
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TNG Season 7, Ep# 153: "Descent Part 2" BEVERLY: If we had metaphasic shielding, we could enter the sun's corona and the Borg ship wouldn't be able to follow. ... TAITT: Sir, hull temperature is rising ... now at 12 thousand degrees C. Radiation level is nearing ten thousand rads. ... BARNABY: The program is on line. Engaging metaphasic shield ... now. TAITT: Hull temperature dropping ... down to 7 thousand degrees. ... BARNABY: The Borg ship has broken off pursuit. ... (on the planet, Data begins to have doubt. There's a couple of minutes of action). ... BARNABY: Sir, the metaphasic shielding is losing integrity. BEVERLY: Can you stabilize it? BARNABY: No... we won't be able to stay in here more than another three or four minutes. |
Shields and Forcefields: the Borg ship's shields can't withstand the otherwise harmless, widely dispersed gas in the star's corona for even a short time, hence its failure to follow the Enterprise into the corona. The Enterprise's "metaphasic shielding" seems to last longer, but unfortunately, we're not sure just how much longer. |
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TNG Season 7, Ep# 153: "Descent Part 2" BARNABY: There's an eruption forming on the surface. (a solar flare destroys the Borg ship) BARNABY: She did it. The Borg ship has been destroyed. |
Shields and Forcefields: a solar flare destroys the Borg ship easily. |
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TNG Season 7, Ep# 155: "Interface" PICARD VO: Captain's Log, Stardate 47215.5. We are responding to a distress call from the science vessel Raman, which is apparently trapped inside the turbulent atmosphere of an unusual gas giant planet. We will use an experimental interface probe in our attempt to rescue it. |
Shields and Forcefields: Picard doesn't even consider taking the Enterprise into the planet's atmosphere in order to find the Raman, so they have to put Geordi's life at risk by tying his central nervous system into a sophisticated RPV at extreme long range (the range necessitated such high levels of boost that it threatened to cause permanent nerve damage). Too bad their shields can't protect the Enterprise from the swirling gases of the planet's atmosphere |
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TNG Season 7, Ep# 156: "Gambit Part 1" PICARD: I'm configuring the disruptors to fire a phase resonant pulse ... if I can hit their shield generator at precisely the right frequency, I should be able to knock it off-line with a single shot ... firing ... their shields are down ... |
Shields and Forcefields: they must have a resonant frequency, hence their vulnerability to phase-resonant weapons. |
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TNG Season 7, Ep# 157: "Gambit Part 2" TALLERA: The Stone of Gol is ... a psionic resonator ... a device which focuses and amplifies telepathic energy. It is one of the most devastating weapons ever conceived. ... PICARD: A telepathic weapon... TALLERA: A Vulcan trained in the mental disciplines would be a formidable assassin. The entire Vulcan council could be killed with a single thought, and there would be no defense. |
Shields and Forcefields: their defensive technologies are useless against telepathic weapons, such as the Stone of Gol or the Dark Side powers of a Sith Lord. |
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TNG Season 7, Ep# 161: "Force of Nature" PRAK: We detected what appeared to be a Federation signal buoy. When we approached it, it emitted a massive verteron pulse... our warp drive, our sensors, our communications systems were all disabled. We assumed we were the victims of a new Federation weapon. PICARD: Daimon Prak. The Federation established this Corridor to ensure a safe route through the sector. We have nothing to gain from mining it. |
Shields and Forcefields: they cannot block "verteron particles", whatever those may be. These particles are therefore able to disable any ship which is unfortunate enough to get too close. They probably take advantage of the delicate interconnected nature of the ship's subspace systems, since they have no effect whatsoever on human tissue but they wreak havoc on the ship. |
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TNG Season 7, Ep# 164: "Pegasus" WORF: We could use the phasers to cut our way out. DATA: The asteroid's internal structure is highly unstable. Any attempt to cut through the rock could cause the entire chasm to collapse. |
Shields and Forcefields: according to Data, the Enterprise cannot withstand the weight of the asteroid's rock if it falls upon it, even though the asteroid's gravitational field is insignificant. There are two possible interpretations:
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TNG Season 7, Ep# 171: "Genesis" PICARD: Maintain a sensor lock on the torpedo -- we'll have to go after it. DATA: That would be inadvisable, sir. The asteroid field is unusually dense -- the Enterprise is too large to navigate through it safely. PICARD: Then I'll take a shuttlecraft to retrieve it. |
Shields and Forcefields: neither their shields or navigational deflectors will make the asteroid field safe for travel (note that this field is nowhere near as dense or active as the Hoth asteroid field, which was tricky to navigate even for one-man fighters). |
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TNG Season 7, Ep# 176: "Pre-emptive Strike" KALITA: How are we going to beam through their shields? RO: We can't -- if we're going to get those medical supplies, we're going to have to take this ship through their shields. ... RO: The Enterprise shields have a weak point... When the ship is at impulse, the thrust destabilizes the shield configuration right at this point. (she points to a spot behind the impulse engines, between the warp nacelles) RO: I'm going to try to punch through there. KALITA: Won't they detect us? RO: They'll know something's penetrated the shields, but with all the interference it'll take them a few seconds to find us. We'll have to beam the medical supplies aboard and get out fast. |
Shields and Forcefields: according to Ro Laren, there is a weak spot behind the saucer and between the warp nacelles. Of course, she might be trying to bullshit Kalita. However, since a strikingly similar weakness was eventually seen in a Jem'Hadar ship, it seems likely that this is a real vulnerability of warp-driven spacecraft, albeit perhaps exaggerated somewhat by Ro. There may be some kind of interaction between shields and warp nacelles that opens up a weak spot. |
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DS9 Season 1, Ep# 1: "Emissary" DAX: What do you know about the Denorios Belt? SISKO: Your basic charged plasma field... nobody gets anywhere near it unless they have to... |
Shields and Forcefields: Yet another reference to naturally occurring plasma in interplanetary space being a threat to a starship. |
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DS9 Season 1, Ep# 6: "Captive Pursuit" KIRA: Shields up... SISKO: Open all hailing channels... DAX: Open. SISKO: This is Commander Benjamin Sisko of the United... The station shakes... Sisko looks to O'Brien... O'BRIEN: They're bombarding our shields with some kind of radiation I've never see before... very rapid magnetic flux variations... SISKO: Red alert. thru OMITTED: EXT. SPACE - DEEP SPACE NINE (OPTICAL): The ship floods DS9 with a wide beam... suddenly the shields do an optical flash and disappear... INT. OPS: O'BRIEN: What the... they've reversed the polarity of our shields! DAX: I'm picking up transporter locks... they're beaming on board... |
Shields and Forcefields: Yet another magic trick to instantly drop Federation shields; apparently you can simply drop them instantly if you can just reverse the polarity. For those who don't know what this overused sci-fi term means, polarity is a property of magnetic dipoles. If you reversed the polarity of a magnet, you would make its positive pole negative, and its negative pole positive. If it were suspended in a magnetic field and its polarity abruptly reversed, it would probably flip around. In any case, this kind of statement suggests that the functioning of shields requires a charge potential between one part of the shield and another. This would explain why they are particularly vulnerable to charged-particle bombardment or highly charged environments such as the Mutara Nebula. As a non-technical aside, this incident is consistent with a thematic pattern of shield behaviour in Star Trek: whenever they encounter something new and alien, their shields seem to be useless. But given enough time, they will find a way to adapt. Interestingly (and ironically) enough, this trait is shared by their most feared enemies, the Borg. |
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DS9 Season 1, Ep# 9: "The Passenger" SISKO: Dax... is there any way to disrupt Vantika's control over Bashir? DAX: I have an exact model of Vantika's neural energy patterns. If I can design an electromagnetic pulse to disrupt those patterns, Julian might emerge... But we still need a way to get it there. SISKO: What if we send it right along the tractor beam... at the same frequency as their shields... ? DAX: (seeing it work) The pulse would resonate off the shields... and create a reflected EM field inside the ship... |
Shields and Forcefields: Apparently, if you hit the shields with a tractor beam at their operating frequency, they will resonate and produce an EM field on the inside.
Amazingly enough, this is not totally nonsensical, unlike most Star Trek plot-device technobabble. If a shield carries charge (as suggested by previous incidents), then any vibration in the shield geometry would produce a fluctuating magnetic field in and around the shield. It's the electromagnetic equivalent of ringing a church bell: you whack it on the outside, it vibrates, and it produces a hellacious noise on the inside. Of course, the problem would be intensity: the shield would need to have a high charge and high-amplitude vibrations in order to produce a powerful electromagnetic pulse on the inside, and it's difficult to imagine why this pulse would fry the intruder from Bashir's brain but have no effect on any of the equipment inside the shuttle. Nevertheless, this is not as random as Treknobabble can sometimes be. Unfortunately, while the mechanism beneath the technobabble is potentially intelligible (although the writers really should have used the "church bell" analogy onscreen in order to inform the viewers), its basic intent is deplorable. They basically created an unsolvable dilemma in the story and then magically solved it with technobabble, which is the worst possible use of technobabble. |
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