We also saw Reliant hit Enterprise in the port side torpedo tube. It seemed to knock it out, but the largest explosion we get was when the phaser cut through the large airlock of the docking port.
I always figured that was because they hit the airlock door's power supply cabling, or oxygen tanks, or lightbulbs, or whatever that wasn't purely hull plating. Nice touch, really. Mark
Inert torps that get loaded at the last minute (second?) make good sense, continuity-wise - the only objections I see are 1) the wounded and automated Enterprise in ST3 chose to fire torpedoes rather than phasers, suggesting little effort involved in preparing a torp for firing 2) ST2 in turn showed lots of manual labor and slowly moving parts involved in torpedo preparation, long before the actual firing, perhaps indicating that loaded torps spend a lot of time in the tube after all but I could easily see a wholly automated and very rapidly working system that in ST2 just had to be "de-safed". That is, the training ship would have a more or less deactivated torpedo system that had to be taken out of hibernation by removing all sorts of covers, safety pins and whatnot, and the first torpedo manually loaded to properly and carefully test the lighting-fast auto-loader. As for the placement of launchers, if antimatter is inserted at the last minute, then it makes sense to place the torps close to the antimatter source. If there's going to be an explosion involving antimatter, a) a centralized "citadel" might be better armored than a distributed system, or b) a distributed system might only partially explode if there are sufficient "circuit breakers" in it. The Constitution could work on the first model, the Miranda on the second. The TOS Constitution seemed to have the second setup, with separate antimatter pods on Deck 11 in the saucer next to the launchers, as per "Errand of Mercy"... Timo Saloniemi
Unfortunately, most of the time Star Trek treats photon torpedoes as "explodey thingies" without considering too much about how they are "supposed" to work. I always thought of that phaser shot as a production error of some kind, since the dialog implies Enterprise was only firing torpedoes.
OK, I have what is perhaps a stupid question...do we know for certain that TOS/movie era photon torpedoes contained antimatter? I know TNG-era torps do, but is it possible that TOS and movie-era torps were just some kind of enhanced high-explosive? Aside from the movie being over with a Khan victory if Reliant's rollbar phasers detonated an antimatter-armed photon torpedo in Enterprise's port tube with that blast, the possibility that movie-era torpedoes are just high-explosive would also help explain that giant-ass fireball that consumed part of the torpedo bay.
It's the inconsistency of star trek that both fascinates and frustrates. I always use TOS as my touch stone. There, the enterprise weapons seemed to function more like that of a cruiser during the first world war. It's main weapons were larger caliber guns which fired at a relatively slow rate of fire. They also carried torpedoes. The guns were faster to bring to bear on target. The torpedoes were a devastating weapon, with a warhead signignifiantly larger than that of the shells, but.... They were slow to load, slow to get to to their target, and the ship carried many fewer ones than shells for the guns. Extrapolating to star trek, the phasers take time to cycle (re charge?), but provide their weapon payload much fast (light speed). Torpedoes were slower on every account, did not have a guidance system,but delivered a devastating affect upon impact. Now, JJ changed this concept to show the phasers "rapid fire". This is possible only for much smaller caliber guns, not the main armament of a capital ship.
I seem to recall that the old idea (pre-TWOK) was that the photon torpedo was some sort of energy weapon with no physical casing or whatnot. Then in TWOK it became a coffin sized protectile that is launched. The 2009 Trek phasers follow the TWOK phaser, just in a flashier way. They both pulsed as they fire. It is the torpedoes that seem different. The Kelvin's torpdoes are tiny and are used in point defense while its phasers are solid beams. Enterprise has pulsed phasers and a larger torpedo, or else that is some sort of giant pulsed phaser on the neck and instead Enterprise has a mass of tubes on the flanks for coffin sized torpedoes seen in Into Darkness.
Possibly. The script is not specific about which weapon are fired other than the first torpedo. Still, there's nothing in the script or film which indicates the Reliant's phasers are more powerful than the Enterprise's.
Ahhh... I was wondering what was in the script. I think part of what makes me think that was an error is how pedantic they normally are at "calling their shots" in Star Trek.
Well, notice it reads "fires torpedo; one which hits..." um, meaning it fired more than one? The whole description is a little vague.
Hmh? "One which hits" is apparently just a way to differentiate this single torpedo from the one Khan previously fired, the one which missed... That is, the script doesn't say "One of which hits" or otherwise suggest plurality. Save for the fact that Spock says Khan outguns them. This isn't because Khan would have more phaser emitters (the difference in count between the two ship models is minimal, and may even be to Kirk's advantage), so there are three ways our rather literal-minded hero could be right: - Khan has at least some phasers of "larger caliber" - Khan's extra torpedo tubes are significant - Khan's weapons or the power systems feeding them are less damaged than Kirk's The first is pure speculation, the second is a judgement call on an observable fact, and the third is a matter of interpreting complex dialogue. We hear that Khan's "photon controls" are knocked out, but does Spock know that? We hear that both ships struggle to recover power, and Khan regains auxiliary power while Kirk regains partial main power. Nobody comments on Kirk having lost one of his two torpedo tubes for good. No phaser emitters were harmed in the filming of this movie. Etc. Timo Saloniemi
"fires torpedo; one which hits, destroying Reliant's weapons pod on top" is a poorly constructed sentence in that if the ship fires a single torpedo it's clearer to write "fires torpedo; which hits and destroys Reliant's weapons pod on top." Spock says "She can still outrun us and outgun us" which I submit means she's not as damaged as "poor Enterprise", not that she's a more powerful ship in normal circumstances.
The "still" would rather suggest that this has always been the case... But the transcripts don't have that word included. How come Spock knows the tactical status of Khan's ship? Khan doesn't know the status of Kirk's ship, even though it seems both can project a "tactical display" showing where the other ship is (Khan is surprised by the fact that the Enterprise is mobile, not by the fact that she is present, in the "Thar' she blows! Thar' she blows!" scene). If Spock is just guessing based on what happened in the previous encounter, he should be claiming the Enterprise can outgun the Reliant - Khan withdrawing with his tail tucked between his nacelles is proof of that. Timo Saloniemi
The "still" tells me, that even after repairs to the Enterprise, the Reliant, with it's damage, is still in better condition than the Enterprise.
^ Which heightens the dramatic tension, IMO. Makes for a more interesting space battle. Additionally, I am thinking that the Enterprise's targeting sensors must have been damaged by Reliant's initial attack. Or else when Spock got Reliant's shields down, the first and most logical target should have been Reliant's bridge. Take out the bridge, take out Khan, beam over a landing party to retake Reliant's main engineering, then operate the ship to a SpaceDock or similar complex from auxiliary control. If Spock had Reliant's command codes, it would have been more effective, though substantially less dramatic, to order the ship's computer to flood the ship with neurazine gas, thereby retaking Reliant without further damage. It would have been ironic to beat Khan twice with the same tactic. One would imagine that the powers-that-be would have improved the gas over the years, especially after discovering Kirk's report that the gas was less than immediately effective against augments 15 years earlier...
Kirk never reported such a thing. Khan RAN to engineering when the gas came in, and the rest of his people all collapsed on cue.
...And the jury is still very much out on whether Kirk reported anything at all. I'd like to think that once Spock entered the prefix code, he triggered every dirty trick he possibly could aboard the enemy-controlled ship, short of those that would be fatal to possible hostages or endanger the entire starship. It's just that most of those tricks failed, either because Khan had preempted them (he would be painfully aware of the stun gas in particular!) or because Khan's crew only inhabited a tiny part of the ship and Spock's blows hit empty air or even vacuum. Indeed, I'd think that after the "Space Seed" experience, Khan would mechanically disable stun gas dispensers in the parts of the ship controlled by his forces, and slave the rest to his manual control. Timo Saloniemi
Yep. Spock knows where the Enterprise was hit and where the Reliant was hit. I'm sure he could figure out what systems were likely affected and which ship had the advantage. You want to talk intent? Here's what the Reliant was intended to be in the script: Clearly not intended to be better than the Enterprise.