Can the Enterprise destroy a planet?

I don't think the Enterprise could blow up a planet, but realistically, dropping a few torpedoes into the planet's equivalent of the Yellowstone supervolcano or a few Krakatoas would be plenty to put any survivors back into the stone age.

 

An armada would be rendered useless against the whale probe; if you recall, it drained/shut down all artificial power systems, so you could have 3,000 1701-refit styled ships, Excelsior and Reliant class ships around earth, but they would quickly drift away, unable to do anything.

 

Wasn't the line that the Enterprise could; "lay waste to the entire surface of the planet." Phaser beams are slim, but I suppose if you had enough power and plenty of time....

 

Claudius to Kirk in "Bread and Circuses." TREK_GOD_1 quoted that line earlier in this thread.

In any case, the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

Kor

 

If I were ever to depict a Trek ship destroying a planet, I'd got with that sort of "work smarter, not harder" approach; phasers breaking existing weak points in the crust, tectonic plate boundaries, volcanos, then torpedos going below the surface to blast the surface inside-out, flipping the planet like a crepe one chunk at a time. That seems like it could be suitably spectacular, plausible, and horrific. Sort of like how the slower disintegration of Earth in Enterprise's "Twilight" seemed much weightier than the way planets are just replaced by stock explosions in Star Wars.

 

Blowing up a planet is TOO showy - ST only did it by accident (A LOT). Now, blowing up someone's sun... it seems to happen a LOT to species us humans don't like...
"Nice star ya' got there... be a shame if sumthin' were to happen to it..."
Aliens: "Gulp!"

But destroying all life on a planet? Hell, every series did that at least once to someone. Last episode I watched Janeway showed up on some world that had just died the day before using Polaric Ions (or some-such). Everyone - including B'lanna - says, "They used that to power their civilization? Are they nuts? Thats so dangerous! Its been banned by EVERY civilization we know of!!!"
Next scene, B'lanna: "I just completed this polaric ion generator... right here in the ship's engine room... the most dangerous stuff in the universe thats been banned... right here... in this ship we gotta live in for the next seventy five years..."

Anyhow, all jokes aside - the folks on Voyager knew how to EASILY build something that could instantly kill all life on a planet. Heck, Archer did that by accident with his shuttle engines. Saving the planet itself so that we can move-in and colonize it? Priceless! (psst... look up neutron bombs) The only reason to go full-bore world-blowing up is to make a point, which I guess its what the Deathstar was all about. Heck, even with today's tech scientists can figure out how to genocide all us fairly easily if they really wanted to. But in SW, its all about the explosions.

And if we needed more examples - Federation tech was on-par with Romulan, Klingon, and Cardassian tech, and all of them have been know to annihilate everyone on a planet when they felt like it. Heck, I'd wager 1/4 of the episodes mention some colony or other that got 'wiped out'. Once again, destroying the planet itself is wasteful, not to mention that it could destabilize the system, which could then destabilize nearby systems. its just bad for business. Plus, for some reason Federation sensors can't seem to count or detect the number of planets in a system when one 'goes missing'. Just ask Checov and KHAN!!!!

 

Lol. I'm picturing some poor ensign stuck with the tactical equivalent of being told to color in a poster board with a pencil.

 

All you need is a handful of nukes of sufficient yield set off in the right spots, mimicking what killed off the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago only a couple of times worse to be thorough. Or something to strip away the atmosphere.

You don’t have to actually bust the planet apart to make your point.

 

Unless your last name is Tarkin.

 

Oh, as far as phaser beams being slim, in TOS they could expand the beam so that a single burst affects a larger area, as seen in "A Piece of the Action. "

Kor

 

I wanted to see a multi part VOY episode where Voyager hooked up with and led a rag-tag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest.

 

Watched another episode of Voyager last night (doing a complete rewatch) and the Haakonians used a Metreon Cascade to kill all the Talaxians on a M-class Moon, and they had nowhere near the tech-level that Voyager did (they were impressed by the transporters, which the UFP have had for like two centuries?) I think they said it was 300K people, but the whole moon was 'destroyed' (surface/atmosphere unlivable). So not quite blown-up, but completely destroyed beyond use, by a species far less advanced than the Federation. I think the Empire building Deathstars was akin to the Japanese building the battleship Yamato - inspiring to its people, a majestic show of power, but ultimately, a total FAIL. Big might be impressive, but at the end of the day, Optimus Prime could be absorbed by a single Borg drone. Size isn't everything - using your resources wisely is.

 

a matter-antimatter weapon would not only cause an intense shockwave and thermal damage far greater than a thermonuclear weapon but the gamma radiation would be horrific. one day humans will get around to making them in the next big push to screw humanity over , but for now even making a few antihydrogen atoms at a time is still an achievement.

 

You got that with the NX-01