Why didn't Data shoot incoming torpedoes with the ship's phasers?

You mean like in Deep Space Nine?

 

DS9 went up against sizeable fleets of both Klingon and Dominion ships and managed to keep her shields intact throughout the majority of both battles--even when the Klingons took out two shield emitters they were able to restore them to suitable strength soon afterwards.

 

The Armada games had Nebula-class vessels in which the top pod could fire point-defense phasers against incoming torpedoes. Not at all canon, but a nice thought nonetheless.

 

^I thought of that when creating this thread. It's a tactic we don't really see again until NuTrek.

 

Torpedoes are warp-capable ordinance. As fast as Data is he can't travel at the speed of light (or faster).

 

Some posters here also assume that Data is quick-witted. However, this is not shown to be the case in TNG at all.

It takes Data forever to, say, access his library files and figure out a human idiom. Whenever there's serious computing to be done, he always sits down and accesses the ship's computer. And while he can perform certain repetitive tasks fast (say, push in isolinear chips, as in "The Naked Now"), he isn't particularly fast at things like drawing his gun, aiming it, or assembling hardware that he needs to think about.

As far as computing devices in the 24th century go, Data is probably among the slowest. It's just that he's also very compact, which may be the one advantage provided by positronics as opposed to the more standard optronics. Hey, perhaps that's why Soong decided to build sapient androids, even though nobody else bothers with those - they were the one way he could demonstrate his fancy new positronics to an advantage.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Accessing a database and pressing a few buttons on a visual cue are two different things. Data has the hand eye coordination to shuffle isolinear chips without missing a slot or smashing them upon grabbing them. We also see how fast he could use a terminal in Generations.

I think they didn't do it just because it would be a cheap defense mechanism.

 

But as said, the chip trick is repetitive, and he has to start out slow to learn it. He can't sling a gun to save his life, or that of a fellow officer, and he can't put together an ultraviolet beacon or adjust a phaser any faster than a clever human despite being strongly motivated to do good.

Even if Data were extremely adept at hitting triggers, that wouldn't make the triggers work any faster. Too much hardware between him and the target for his own reflexes to make much of a difference. Yet I still feel that Data's supposed speed is mostly an urban legend only.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Also if Data's perception is so much faster than that of humans, he basically would perceive everything and everyone around him in slowmotion. So maybe he isn't faster in that respect by design.

 

Zero point six eight seconds, sir. For an android ...that is nearly an eternity.

 

If you're going to go along that line of thinking though you can also ask, why do torpedoes travel at speeds slow enough to be trackable by the human eye?

The answer is, of course, so the audience can see them. And because it would perturb much of the audience if the characters explained "Torpedoes move at speeds upward of 20000 kph, so given the distance between ships delivery is nearly instantaneous and that's why you couldn't see the torpedo". And for that matter, why are they all glowing orbs instead of nearly black due to stealth casing?

Another question is, how come 'evasive maneuvers' always constitute banking softly to the left, usually showing your broadest side to the enemy ship? Why not move erratically in weird unpredictable directions that align the slimmest side of the ship to the enemy?

Because it would look weird on camera, of course.

 

Nevermind the fact that at least in the age of models such maneuvers would be unfilmable on a television show's budget.

 

Weird jerky maneuvers would, but they could have at least had the maneuvers spin just a little more and try to orient the ship sideward to the enemy to reduce the enemy hit arc.

 

From TWOK

KIRK: Visual.

Reliant fires a torpedo.

]KIRK: Sulu, divert all power to phasers.
SPOCK: Too late.
KIRK: Hang on.

So apparently it is possible, if you're fast enough. And Nicholas Meyer thought of it seventeen years before Abrams copied that idea from The Wraith of Khan (along with lot's of other ideas).

 

That would blow Soran's model rocket to the sun in GEN out of the sky pretty quick as well, a lot faster than Worf's claim that it would take seconds to lock on and shoot.

 

The stuff that was impossible to do is the full rotation while turning -- basically any shot where you can't hide the mounting point for the length of the cut.

But doing jerky moves and stutter-steps and side-weaves ... all of that would be possible with motion control, just depending on the system and the number of axes available, and whether the miniature was on a separate rail from the camera.

You would probably need to be shooting against a space background to pull it off though. They tried to program erratic moves for aircraft in THE RIGHT STUFF and it just didn't look credible against a realworld environment like sky, where everybody has seen how planes really jink.

 

It's possible torpedoes emit something that makes targeting them phasers, or any other weapon, difficult or impossible. Or may even be shielded to make any attack on them with phasers pointless.

 

Kirk was doing it (or attempting to) in his day. I think the only reason they didn't do it was because it would be a cheat out of most situations but I still feel Data was fully capable of shooting them down.

 

The torpedoes of Kirk's day weren't the same as those used in TNG. It's safe to assume that what might have worked then might not work in the future.

In any event, the simplest answer is that Data didn't shoot incoming torpedoes because he was incapable of doing so, because if he -was- capable of doing so, why wouldn't he? From there it's just a matter of explaining why.

 

The torps in all the eras from ENT to TNG appear pretty much identical, both up close and in flight...

As for their glow, it's pretty similar to the glow of the Orion vessel from "Journey to Babel" - the sign of a warp engine on serious overdrive, apparently. "Regular" starships only shine like that for a brief moment when jumping to warp (and in TOS, not even then - perhaps it's Sulu's gentle touch on the throttle?), but a torpedo would have little reason to hold back. A bit like torpedoes today cavitate like mad, whereas the propellers of big ships are specifically designed not to do any of that.

I doubt the glow has much effect on whether one can shoot down the projectile or not. If we did see somebody taking potshots at torps, we might learn that torpedoes dodge, or are shielded, or something like that. But the one time a modern projectile like that is successfully shot down, in "The Price", shielding or dodging doesn't appear to be an issue. It's purely a matter of targeting.

And STXI shows that a starship that cannot target incoming projectiles to save her own skin can effortlessly shoot down the very same projectiles when they are going after some other target... This might support the "torpedoes dodge" hypothesis, since an incoming projectile can do much higher angular velocities and accelerations when coming towards you than when going past you.

It doesn't take Data to do it either in STXI or "The Price", mind you...

Timo Saloniemi