Why has warp core safety regressed so much in 80 years?

[enterprisecvn65]

So obviously warp core are like nuclear reactors in the fact that if they are damaged and fail the results are probably going to be bad.

Yet in TOS I don't remember any instances where the warp core was in danger of breaching because of battle damage. I remember times when an outside force or Kirk himself set the engines to explode (which was always avoided of course). But I can't remember a battle sequence where the Enterprise or any other Federation ship got hit and the core either exploded or came close to it (maybe it wasn't in the budget).

Even in the TOS films it never happened. Enterprise took a head on bolt from V'ger with its shields up. Systems overloaded and so on, but the Scotty never said the warp core was in danger.

In TWOK the Enterprise is hit DIRECTLY IN THE ENGINE ROOM and no warp core breach is mentioned. Conversely the Enterprise blows one of the fucking nacelles off the Reliant and that doesn't trigger a warp core breach.

In TSFS if you buy the theory that all the extra battle damage to the Enterprise was caused by more battles between the end of TWOK and returning to Earth, then it appears the Enterprise got hit directly in the engine room on the other side and on the warp engines themselves and that obviously doesn't trigger a breech. Takes a hit from a BOP that knocks out the automation control center, which I assume controlled the warp core since Scotty was on the bridge. No core breach.

Enterprise-A gets pummled by Chang's BOP in TUC, Scotty makes a reference to she can't take much more of this, but no core breech is imminent.

So judging from all this you'd assume the warp core is 1. really well protected, the way warships add extra armor (Which didn't always work see USS Arizona and HMS Hood) to magazines and nuclear reactor spaces and/or 2. Not this ticking time bomb that can be set off by even a decent amount of damage. Just like if a carrier took a direct hit in its nuclear reactor it wouldn't trigger an automatic nuclear explosion.

You'd assume in the years between TOS and TNG and everything that followed they'd make warp cores even safer and tougher. Yet I can't recall all the times some damage to the ship either causes a warp core breech or comes close to doing so. I remember the one where the Reliant model captained by Kelsey Grammar hit the nacelle of the Enterprise over and over and it caused the core to breach and destroy the ship until the ended the loop. Yet Reliant had a freaking nacelle blown clean off and it didn't explode. I also remember the one where Picard, Data, Troi and Geordi are coming back from somewhere and the see the Enterprise frozen with a warbird firing on it and when they go board, sure enough there's a warp core breach in progress.

Of course the star drive section of the Enterprise- D is eventually destroyed by a warp core breach due to battle damage in Generations. And I think they had jettison the warp core from the Enterprise-E in Insurrection (its been so long since I watched that hunk of junk) so it didn't destroy the ship.

I seem to remember warp core breaches happening in DS9. I never watched VOY or ENT so I don't know how often they happened on those shows.

But my question is what the hell happened in 80 years where starships could take considerable battle damage and the warp core seemed to hold up to the point where anytime a starship is damaged in any significant way then BOOM!!! it's all over because of the warp core.

Did they stop putting the core in a protected part of the ship and just have it in a vunerable area, or did they just switch to some new design that fails easily and for some reason never corrected it. And the "shield" that's supposed to contain a breach, that thing is worthless as tits on a bull because it's ALWAYS the first thing that fails in battle.

When did the core go from being something that could survive some damage to a freaking china doll.

 

[Tom]

Simply put, it's become an easy plot device for the writers of those films. It was first used in TNG and after became an easy way for writers to either blow up the ship or put it in more dire peril.

 

[C.E. Evans]

But my question is what the hell happened in 80 years where starships could take considerable battle damage and the warp core seemed to hold up to the point where anytime a starship is damaged in any significant way then BOOM!!! it's all over because of the warp core.

It could be a combination of that weapon systems have become more powerful and warp cores have become more intricate in 80 years. Put a 23rd-Century ship up against a 24th-Century ship, though, and it might be ripped to pieces fairly easily.

 

[enterprisecvn65]

Simply put, it's become an easy plot device for the writers of those films. It was first used in TNG and after became an easy way for writers to either blow up the ship or put it in more dire peril.

I agree. It was a convenient plot device that lazy writers used over and over instead of trying to be original.

 

[Timo]

So you think it would have been better if they invented an all-new way for the ship to blow up every week?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BillJ]

Foreign labor and cheaper materials. It's what happens when you outsource jobs to the Pakled homeworld.

 

[enterprisecvn65]

So you think it would have been better if they invented an all-new way for the ship to blow up every week?

Timo Saloniemi

Maybe just a couple of new ones

Not every ship that sank in WWII did so because the magazine exploded.

 

[enterprisecvn65]

Foreign labor and cheaper materials. It's what happens when you outsource jobs to the Pakled homeworld.

That's why I have my "Buy Terran" and "Out of a job yet? Keep buying Vulcan." stickers on my shuttle pod.

Vulcans are a bitch when it comes to contracts. They always say "There are literally thousands or millions of people who can do what you do, so it is illogical to pay you much since you are easily replaceable."

And of course the Vulcan employees can't argue with their employers hard line stance because they see that it's totally logical as well.

 

[DWF]

So obviously warp core are like nuclear reactors in the fact that if they are damaged and fail the results are probably going to be bad.

Yet in TOS I don't remember any instances where the warp core was in danger of breaching because of battle damage. I remember times when an outside force or Kirk himself set the engines to explode (which was always avoided of course). But I can't remember a battle sequence where the Enterprise or any other Federation ship got hit and the core either exploded or came close to it (maybe it wasn't in the budget).

The Grissom was destroyed with one hit in Star Trek III, the gunner was told to target the engines only I can't imagine one hit taking a ship without hitting the engines.

 

[Nightowl1701]

The Grissom was destroyed with one hit in Star Trek III, the gunner was told to target the engines only I can't imagine one hit taking a ship without hitting the engines.

As tiny and unsuited for combat as that ship was, one unshielded (not even polarized hull plating) direct hit from a photon torpedo didn't even need to be a 'lucky shot' - just a reasonably accurate one. Kruge should maybe have been more specific in which weapon to use.

 

[Timo]

When Kruge again fires a torpedo in the fight with the Enterprise, it again hits an engine, and this time nicely causes the targeted ship to lose power and submit to capture. It almost seems as if this torpedo is specifically designed to "stun", sending peculiar sparks and arcs flying around the target but not creating much charring and penetrating nothing. Disruptors, OTOH, were previously used for completely destroying the small merchant vessel...

Was the Grissom unshielded? Merely failing to hear Esteban command shields raised and weapons preheated is no proof that these systems would be lacking from the science vessel; they are probably just lacking in performance.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

I seems to recall Esteban sayng something about phasers just before Kruge orders "fire".

 

[enterprisecvn65]

When Kruge again fires a torpedo in the fight with the Enterprise, it again hits an engine, and this time nicely causes the targeted ship to lose power and submit to capture. It almost seems as if this torpedo is specifically designed to "stun", sending peculiar sparks and arcs flying around the target but not creating much charring and penetrating nothing. Disruptors, OTOH, were previously used for completely destroying the small merchant vessel...

Was the Grissom unshielded? Merely failing to hear Esteban command shields raised and weapons preheated is no proof that these systems would be lacking from the science vessel; they are probably just lacking in performance.

Timo Saloniemi

Can you seriously expect a starship that has PINK chairs on the bridge to be able to take any kind of serious battle damage?

Well whatever the reason Grissom blew up so easily I thought it was funny as hell when Kruge got pissed because he didn't get any prisoners and the gunner said a lucky shot and Kruge blew him away.

It also set up another funny moment when he told the new gunner to target the Enterprise's engines only and said "Understood" and the scared looking gunner said "Understood clearly sir"

 

[enterprisecvn65]

I seems to recall Esteban sayng something about phasers just before Kruge orders "fire".

Actually he says stand by for evasives.

Which doesn't make much sense because generally when you're ambushed by an enemy ship you don't give an order to stand by for evasive maneuvers, you take that action immediately.

 

[Franklin]

Foreign labor and cheaper materials. It's what happens when you outsource jobs to the Pakled homeworld.

Non-union labor, too. Would you really trust your engine room to be built by electricians without their union cards?

 

[Mytran]

To be fair, Nextgen made it through most of its run before the dreaded "Warp Core Breach" trope finally arrived on our screens (according to Memory Alpha). Prior to that they used the old TOS standby of the containment fields around the antimatter failing - which makes more sense as a threat, since the quantities of antimatter in those stores are vastly larger than the tiddly bit inside the warp core (which is basically just a fuel conduit). In addition, the dialogue of the episodes in question make a big deal about the extraordinary sequence of events which would have to occur in order for antimatter leakage to happen. From Season 2's Contagion:

LAFORGE: Sensor recordings reveal that what we witnessed was an uncontrolled and catastrophic matter-antimatter mix. The magnetic seals between the chambers collapsed and
PICARD: Wait. Wait. That's not possible.
LAFORGE: Yes, sir, it is, but a highly improbable series of events has to take place for such a result to occur.
PICARD: Explain.
LAFORGE: Okay. In the event of a breach of seal integrity there's an emergency release system which dumps the antimatter.
DATA: Apparently such a dump began, was then halted, and the containment seals were dropped. There was still sufficient antimatter present to lead to an explosion.

It was not until Season 5's Cause And Effect that the WCB finally made its first appearance (and it does not bear too much close scrutiny):

DATA: Starboard nacelle sustained a direct impact. Venting drive plasma.
LAFORGE: Initiating emergency core shutdown.

OK, so the nacelle has been smashed and it's leaking drive plasma, so you want to shut off the supply. Fair enough.

RO: Inertial dampers failing. We're losing attitude control.
RIKER: This is the Bridge. All hands to emergency escape pods.
DATA: Core shutdown was unsuccessful. We are losing antimatter containment.

For various inadequately explained reasons, the core can't be simply switched off. Presumably drive plasma continues to be pumped into the nacelles (or the wreck of them). Why this in turn should cause the antimatter pods to lose containment is not explained either, especially given the aforementioned list of safety systems.

LAFORGE: We've got to eject the engine core!
DATA: Ejection systems are offline. Core breach is imminent.

This (ejection systems offline) trope obviously stuck in the writer's minds, because they used it over and over again. Given how many safety systems there are around the containment of the antimatter itself, it should be impossible for those systems to ever be offline.


Voyager of course seemed to have a Warp Core Breach every other Tuesday!

 

[MacLeod]

In the early 24th century a new material with fantastic properties was discovered Explodium it unfortunatly had one minor side effect it could be easily explode when coming into contact with certain particles such as those given off by weapons fire.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

Can you seriously expect a starship that has PINK chairs on the bridge to be able to take any kind of serious battle damage?

I realize you meant this in jest, but it's a silly comment nonetheless. The Sao Paulo/Defiant bridge was equipped with purple chairs and carpet, and clearly held its own in combat. The Grissom's seeming inability to defend itself stemmed from its being an Oberth-class vessel rather a Constitution- or Miranda-class cruiser.

--Sran

 

[Ithekro]

Too large of a core to sustain high warp velocities. That or one of the anti-Borg ungrades was to make it easy to explode the ship (preventing Borg from taking the technology) as an effort to stop them.

 

[Timo]

Which doesn't make much sense because generally when you're ambushed by an enemy ship you don't give an order to stand by for evasive maneuvers, you take that action immediately.

That would be giving up the one remaining element of surprise the prey has. Evading is probably entirely futile in the long run, the warship having better targeting and quite possibly better agility and all. But by waiting till the last possible moment, seeing the weapons of the enemy heat up (the BoP is very polite in featuring such a visible pre-fire signal), and then dodging, Esteban could realistically expect to live a bit longer.

Of course, the enemy may simply be there to capture them. Which Kruge would have been able to do, had he not fired but merely threatened to do so... Alas, he was too Klingon for that. Evasive maneuvering would just call in warning shots, then, and risk one of them actually hitting the Grissom.

It does seem in any case that there was no realistic chance of the Grissom jumping to warp to escape the enemy. Activating warp engines wasn't declared technologically impossible or anything - but the BoP could probably have followed the science ship into warp, making the change of drive mode futile as a life-prolonging attempt. Still, "standby evasive" could involve the helmsman tensing a finger above the warp engage button, among other things.

Timo Saloniemi