Star Trek Canon Database
Displaying 1 to 4 of 4 records.
Database started: 1999-07-27
Page generated: 2013-05-19
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TNG Season 4, Ep# 76: "Suddenly Human" RIKER: Data, is there any way to detect their self-destruct device? DATA: Negative, Commander. The Talarians employ a subspace proximity detonator. It would not be detectable to our scans. RIKER: ... or the Away Team's tricorders. |
Sensors: again, we see that a particular type of detonator can make an explosive device invisible to their sensors. If their sensors were capable of the sort of omniscience often described by certain Trekkies, they would be able to detect the explosives themselves, regardless of how the detonator works. |
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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# 76: "Suddenly Human" RIKER: Our position has not changed. We are returning him to Starfleet. ENDAR: I regret your stubbornness. Much will be lost. ... PICARD: Jono will return home -- to the only home he has ever known. To the father that he loves. To you, Endar. |
Culture: Captain Picard can singlehandedly decide whether Jono, after being kidnapped by the Talarians as a child, should be returned to his adopted parents or his natural grandmother? Custody cases involving child abductions are a thorny issue at best, but since when does a starship captain get to make that decision on his own? The concentration of Federation power in military hands is even greater than I thought. |
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