Yet Another Doomsday Machine Thread

[Commishsleer]

While the planet killer is huge compared to a starship it is actually a tiny thing relative to a planet. Cutting up a planet could actually be a time consuming affair let alone digesting the entire planet. It might only require taking bite sized chunks out of a planet, which could still be quite devastating. It could also more easily consume asteroids, comets and small moons for fuel.

Consuming planetary matter is likely just a convenient side benefit to it’s actual purpose as a weapon of terror—a near unstoppable device to destroy inhabited planets or powerful defending/attacking spacecraft.

Yes agreed it looks like it would take ages for the planet killer to destroy a planet at the rate we saw in the episode. Would it actually be possible ? Wouldn't gravity stop it? What about oceans?
I'm picturing when it is dealing with a entire planet rather than a starship it sort of torpedoes or anti-matter blows up the planet - using its cutting beam for fine work such as dealing with starships and to get the fuel out of the chunks of planet

 

[Noname Given]

Yes agreed it looks like it would take ages for the planet killer to destroy a planet at the rate we saw in the episode. Would it actually be possible ? Wouldn't gravity stop it? What about oceans?
I'm picturing when it is dealing with a entire planet rather than a starship it sort of torpedoes or anti-matter blows up the planet - using its cutting beam for fine work such as dealing with starships and to get the fuel out of the chunks of planet

The DDM's anti-proton beam was used for carving up planets. Decker states this outright:

Decker: "We saw this thing hovering over the planet carving out chunks of it with a force beam."

Kirk: "Did you run a scanner check as to what type of a beam?"

Decker: "Pure anti-proton. Absolutely pure!"

 

[Ronald Held]

Since it uses an antiproton beam,I would speculate that it has stocks of antimatter. Hence any part of the planet is "tasty" and gets converted to energy ( and neutrinos)

 

[BK613]

How does one use an anti-proton beam in a damping field that "deactivates" antimatter?

 

[Timo]

By being in charge of where the field is pointed at, perhaps.

Might even be the damping is a random side effect of the DDM's effort to control its planet-carving beam, a sort of side lobe attenuator or constrictor or whatnot.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Push The Button]

How does one use an anti-proton beam in a damping field that "deactivates" antimatter?

“Treknology”

 

[1001001]

How does one use an anti-proton beam in a damping field that "deactivates" antimatter?

Very carefully?

 

[Henoch]

How does one use an anti-proton beam in a damping field that "deactivates" antimatter?

“Treknology”

Treknobabble. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=treknobabble
(see "plot hole" solution in the definition to explain previously mentioned antimatter plot hole).

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Wonderful summation of the episode's strengths. It is also one of my favorite episodes. Windom is the best guest star they ever had, except maybe for William Marshall or Ricardo Montalban.

TOS had a boatload of great guest stars who were acting their asses off, such as Morgan Woodward, Michael Ansara, Arnold Moss, John Colicos, Jeff Corey, et al. All the perfectly playing off of the regulars to make TOS filmed sci-fi to be taken seriously.

 

[M'Sharak]

By being in charge of where the field is pointed at, perhaps.

Might even be the damping is a random side effect of the DDM's effort to control its planet-carving beam, a sort of side lobe attenuator or constrictor or whatnot.

Timo Saloniemi

Works for me.

There are certain electromagnetic field patterns in common use today which produce highly-directional emissions. Scale that up to Planet-Killer size and ZOMG! YeV, add whatever FutureTech™ means are needed to produce a collimated antiproton beam, and it's not very much of a stretch to imagine it having such a corollary effect.

 

[BK613]

Works for me as well as a fanon explanation.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Works for me as well as a fanon explanation.

Ditto.

 

[Timo]

It's sort of the same kind of "implicit verisimilitude" as Nero's drill cum jammer, in that movie created by vastly different writers at a different time, and with different aims. Certain basic truths remain evident to the audience. Of course big machines are likely to be noisy. And the noise can be a weapon unto itself, just like big naval cannon at close range can kill even when they hit nothing.

I guess the really cool thing here is that the DDM is a mystery. The heroes speculate it is a vengeance weapon or a deterrent, but they really have no basis for doing so. The strange planet-carving cone could be just about anything, from a broken terraformer to an unsuccessfully straitjacketed dangerous lifeform to an interstellar explorer that has strange ways of refueling. The heroes might perhaps stop or deflect the machine by figuring out the mystery. But for a rare once, they don't do that, perhaps because they (mistakenly?) think they don't have the time. So they do the second best thing, and figure out its weakness. And that's "implicit verisimilitude", too, the heroes not always having the luxury of being nonviolent.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Professor Moriarty]

The similarity of Spinrad's description for the planet-killer to aspects of Narada (including several concept drawings later simplified) had indeed occurred to me; both seemed well-suited to the task of reducing large planetary bodies to smaller, more easily-processed pieces.


For CGI replacement of the original effects, I much preferred @Professor Moriarty 's take on it* to the official version provided by CBS.


* Which I don't seem to be able to find online anymore. It was pretty impressive, though.

Thanks! I deleted my old YouTube account about 10 years ago, and the computer with the old videos was lost.

NBD though, cuz I’m working on a much better version anyway.

 

[jackoverfull]

Whatever the origins, it had to be stopped and fast, as it would soon reach a very populated area.

But yes, it is peculiar that no attempt at communication is shown.

 

[Timo]

Also peculiar is the hurry. At first, it seems Kirk and Decker are at the outer rim of everything, and close to the edge of the galaxy to boot since they can tell the DDM came from the outside. But suddenly the Rigel Colony is, or the Rigel Colonies are, within striking distance.

Granted, we never learn how long it would actually take for the DDM to get there. But during the adventure itself, the DDM fails to outrun a wrecked starship that can move at 1/3 impulse at best. How is it a threat to anybody, within the next century or two?

Even if we assume the beast is slow as a snail insystem, but accelerates to high warp when between systems, the heroes ought to have a pretty good idea of its overall rate of progress. Kirk personally visited these systems half a year previously. It is within this time that all of them have been reduced to rubble, establishing a minimum speed for the beast. But that alone is unlikely to make the Rigel Colonies feel threatened. Did Decker and Kirk by good fortune encounter the DDM within some very brief period during which it gobbled up all these systems?

Although the DDM did not gobble up all of them. At L-374, it only ever ate two of the planets. Surely this would be crucially important, and the heroes should devote at least as much attention to making the DDM skip planets as they do to trying (in seeming vain) to destroy it outright. Perhaps the DDM is so slow and inefficient in the fight because it's hungry? Keeping it from getting more food would solve the whole problem easily enough, then.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ssosmcin]

And the fun rapidly gets sucked out of the episode.....

 

[Timo]

Dunno. I think the episode would have been more fun if there wasn't some inane immediate threat to civilization, if Decker could hunt for his Moby Dick for purely selfish reasons and be all the more a villain for this. His actions aren't in the interests of the UFP anyway, as surely the truly pressing priority would be to tell the world about this beast: the hunt for the neutronium whale prevents that from ever happening.

Okay, so in theory it might be nice for Decker not to be an utterly bad guy. But having him be insane with guilt is IMHO sufficient...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ssosmcin]

The threat to Rigel gives him the opportunity to justify his obsession enough to take command. By saying that destroying it now is the best option, he’s reinforcing his mania with this argument. Decker isn’t totally unlikeable. His stated reasons – saving Rigel by destroying the machine – gives him a solid motivation to take command beyond simple rank. It’s still a decision based on revenge, guilt and obsession. Spock, on the other hand, reasons that since they can’t destroy it, Rigel is doomed. Decker won’t accept that. If he wasn’t so fixated on his quest, he might have moved off and consulted with Kirk and Spock about their best course of action. What a dull episode that might have been.

The episode was plenty fun as is. I don’t feel removing the ticking clock would make it more so.

 

[Redfern]

And it literally had a ticking "timer". After Kirk toggles that improvised "self destruct" rocker switch, on can hear the "clicks" of a mechanism sounding rather mechanical. Please, that's not a complaint, merely an observation. For an audience of 1967, it's a sound they would immediately associate with a "time bomb". If done today, the Foley artist would probably dub in electronic "beeps". But 53 years ago, the average Joe in their living room or den would have expected a mechanically ticking "clock".