possible reason we never seen the phaser rifle after w.n.m.h.g.b.

[stationzebra]

it seems to me that the phaser pistols were still in the expermental stage at this time,that is why we see spock with the cage era laser gun still in use by starfleet.it would appear perhaps that the new phaser one-two model was equel in power and range to the phaser rifle kirk used.maybe thats why we never seen the phaser rifle anymore.this would mean that the phaser pistols were new issue by the time of corbamite".we also see dr crater and korby using the old lasers in ereas of limited contact.not the new phasers.of course we did see new rifles years later in tng.possible?

[King Daniel]

Yet phasers in both pistol and rifle form were in use over a century before, in Star Trek: Enterprise.

I think it's best to pretend those were phasers in "The Cage", and calling them "lasers" was a goof.

[Dalen Quaice]

Gene Roddenberry didn't like the Phaser Rifle, which is why it never appeared again.

Bjo Trimble said, "The gun was just a little too lethal-looking for Gene's taste and he just didn't like it."

[Hartzilla2007]

I just figured they never really ran into anything that couldn't have been handled with a regular phaser pistol so they never needed to use the rifle again.

[TREK_GOD_1]

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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I just figured they never really ran into anything that couldn't have been handled with a regular phaser pistol so they never needed to use the rifle again.

The landing party could have used it against the parasites on Deneva. Phasers 1 and 2 barely stunned the creatures, so one can imagine how a Phaser rifle would have handled the creatures.

[Nerys Myk]

Roddenberry found out that lasers would not do what he needed them to do in various plots, so he switched to the fictional phasers. From his POV there never were any laser weapons on the Enterprise. The hand guns we see in WNMHGB and other episodes are just primitive phasers, even though they're the same prop as the Cage lasers.

[scotpens]

Santa Kang wrote:

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Roddenberry found out that lasers would not do what he needed them to do in various plots, so he switched to the fictional phasers.

And it's a good thing he chose the name "phasers." Scientific consultant Harvey Lynn, who was called in to advise Gene Roddenberry early in the preproduction stage of "The Cage," suggested calling the weapons ACE guns (Amplified Coherent Energy), BEE guns (Beam of Electromagnetic Energy) or CLEB guns (Coherent Light Energy Beam). Can you imagine Kirk ordering, "Landing party will arm themselves with CLEBs on stun setting"?

[Gil T.Azell]

Dalen Quaice wrote:

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Gene Roddenberry didn't like the Phaser Rifle, which is why it never appeared again.

Bjo Trimble said, "The gun was just a little too lethal-looking for Gene's taste and he just didn't like it."

I thought it looked 'Campy', like something you'd see in those '50 Sci-Fi Movies., it just didn't look right, nor did the big one in The Cage/ "The Menagerie, it just looked wrong. (but mt 2¢ don't matter)

[C.E. Evans]

I never had a problem with lasers being used during Pike's time, because I figured they would operate differently than the ones we have today (the name "laser" could even be just a holdover term). I think phase pistols were still more rare than common during ENT and never did become a standard-issue weapon (lessons learned from them still eventually led to phasers though a century later).

I also think the same rule applies to phaser rifles, they're not standard-issue. IMO, they're not any more powerful than phaser pistols, but the larger size enables a larger power pack, so they're more ideal for combat situations in which prolonged use is expected.

[SchwEnt]

I like to think that phasers were a new tech when we saw the rifle in WNMHGB. We already saw only lasers in use during Pike's time. Even this eps has Kirk and crew still armed with the Pike-era lasers. At this point, phasers were still a new development and maybe the experimental model was only available in this rifle form.

This works with Mitchell evolving into an unprecedented threat, Spock surmised that it warranted use of this new experimental weapon to combat Mitchell.

Later, phasers developed into the usual Type I and II models we know.

So yeah... my theory is that the early prototype experimental phaser took the form of the rifle we saw. Once it went into production as standard issue, it evolved into the handheld model.

We never saw the rifle again because that was an early prototype of the new phaser tech and later phasers were the same weapon only in pistol form.

[Ronald Held]

Perhaps phase pistols on ST:E were another technological experiment that did not survive when the Federation was formed?

[Nerys Myk]

My fanboy speculation is that phase pistols were a technological dead end until someone modified the tech using "rectification". Prior to that, an advancement in lasers made them the weapon of choice.

[Wingsley]

How prominently was the term "laser" used in "The Cage"? I remember it being mentioned, but has fannon evolved around that to distort it into more than it was in the pilot?

That seems to be a techno/historical/continuity hangup; if one assumes lasers were the weapons-of-choice in the 2250s, then one has to scratch one's head and explain how/when phasers replaced lasers. But if TOS phasers and ENT phase pistols/canons are all different rungs on the particle beam evolutionary ladder anyway, then it would seem that Berman & Company (unwittingly?) left their mark on TOS history, and it would seem that Pike and company were actually using some kind of particle beam weaponry that was simply referred to as "laser" as a kind of slang. (It should be noted that "laser" is, after all, an acronym; IIRC, "laser" stands for Light Amplification through Stimulated Emission of Radiation, or something like that... I seem to recall Sternbach & Okuda referring to "phaser" as slang for "phased ray emitter" in literature over 20 years ago.)

[SiddFinch1]

Terms carryover
I still sometimes say I am taping something on Tv when I mean dvr

[King Daniel]

Santa Kang wrote:

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My fanboy speculation is that phase pistols were a technological dead end until someone modified the tech using "rectification". Prior to that, an advancement in lasers made them the weapon of choice.

That would make sense only if phasers and phase pistols weren't shown to be exactly the same.*



*excepting the vanishing/here again abilities like wide beam and insanely high power settings. But just like we're supposed to pretend "The Cage" weapons were phasers, in DS9's "The Seige of AR-558" we're supposed to pretend wide beam and building-destroying settings don't exist.