Enterprise-D vs. Voyager (extenuating circumstances)

[Apache038]

Hi, all. I'm new here, but I thought I'd make a quick observation.


In "The Emissary," the Enterprise-D has a faceoff with the K't'inga-class T'Ong. They are clearly not concerned about the T'Ong's tactical abilities, and the Enterprise easily shrugs off the Klingon disruptor fire--twice.


In "Prophecy," Voyager is attacked by a D7 Klingon cruiser, which is even older than the K't'inga-class. The Klingon ship knocks Voyager's port shields down to 50% with a few shots.


So, the Enterprise decisively outmatches a 23rd century Klingon cruiser--the Enterprise crew knows it and the Klingons know it. Voyager trades fire with a 23rd century Klingon cruiser and does get the upper-hand, but it takes some significant damage to its shields.


Direct comparisons are hard, since both shows jumped around a lot with measurements of power. Data says the Enterprise generates 12.75 billion gigawatts in "True Q". In "The Dauphin," Riker says that a terawatt source is "more power than our entire ship could generate." LaForge says the Enterprise "kicks plasma up into the terawatt range." There's a line in "Revulsion" that Voyager's main power supply has "5 million gigawatts" running through it. Through the whole TNG-VOY era, different power measurements are tossed around with very little consistency.

[Deks]

Except that the T'Ong had a crew of Klingons who were in stasis and the ship was running on its own, whereas Voyager faced off against the Klingon D-7 cruiser whose crew were very much awake and travelling for 4 generations... encountered new races, learning, and probably upgraded their weapons in the process.
The Klingons do seem to be leaning a bit more towards weapons, so its not exactly strange they would be focusing on those - while other systems probably weren't much of a priority for them (even the cloak they used - while primitive - was still just enough to fool Voyager's primary sensors - until the crew used a metaphasic sensor sweep because the Klingons probably modified the tech somewhat but didn't change the underlying technology or its weaknesses).

[mtblillie]

Both the Enterprise and Voyager faced off against the borg several times also, even though every other ship that encountered it seemed to be destroyed very quickly...although in fairness the borg seemed to more want to assimilate both ships rather than destroy them.

Honestly trek writers jump around so much that an argument could probably be made either way.