When the Klingons attack in Generations.

[Infern0]

Why, instead of standing around, talking about weaknesses in that klingon ship do they not fire every weapon they have at it, Even if they just do it WHILE thinking up a plan. Isnt that ship 80 years old? could it take a barrage of Photons? Its an old bird of Prey, pretty much a scoutship, the Galaxy class should have massacred it in about 2 seconds.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Isnt that ship 80 years old? could it take a barrage of Photons? Its an old bird of Prey, pretty much a scoutship, the Galaxy class should have massacred it in about 2 seconds.

The outside design might be 80 years old, but when was it ever said the actual ship was old?

 

[Shazam!]

The outside design might be 80 years old, but when was it ever said the actual ship was old?

Yeah, there's a cut scene of Riker telling everyone that although it looks old, they best hold back just in case.

 

[docrice]

You'd also figure that the Duras sisters, out of all people, would heavily customize their ship given all the resources they had, including removing an old vulnerability that's been around forever. I guess they're on the run from everyone and had to make do with what they could get.

 

[Michael]

Plus, the script needed the Enterprise to lose the fight and they wanted to reuse that old Klingon Bird-of-Prey model.

 

[The Badger]

Eric Bana had already copyrighted the phrase "FIRE EVERYTHING!" and wouldn't let Frakes say it.

 

[Dream]

It was a fucking stupid scene that should have never been in there in the first place. The E-D has gone up against a Borg Cube without getting destoryed but they can't handle a little BOP? WTF indeed.

 

[NIUPonyBoy]

Bad script writing plus they wanted a new ship for the rest of the movies.

 

[DonIago]

They really need a fan-edit replacing the BoP with a Vor'cha.

And the reused explosion was completely unforgivable. Oh how I laughed in contempt.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Why, instead of standing around, talking about weaknesses in that klingon ship do they not fire every weapon they have at it, Even if they just do it WHILE thinking up a plan. Isnt that ship 80 years old? could it take a barrage of Photons? Its an old bird of Prey, pretty much a scoutship, the Galaxy class should have massacred it in about 2 seconds.

Yeah, but then they wouldn't have had that cool crash scene on the planet. Which, in turn, was only an excuse to dump the E-D sets and hand them over to Voyager because they wanted to build new sets and a new ship because Sternback thought it would be Kewl.

Personally, I would have had Picard find Kirk in the Nexus and then send him back to the Enterprise with Soran's exact coordinates; then we'd have Kirk giving the orders--including the more appropriate "fire everything!" order instead of trying to McGuyver his way out of a fight--and then Picard could have his big manly fight with Soran.

And then we could have had the Enterprise-D in First Contact and Insurrection, which IMO would have been MUCH cooler.

 

[Agenda]

Let's face it, the ship went out like a punk, just like Kirk did.

I hate Generations.

 

[Michael]

Which, in turn, was only an excuse to dump the E-D sets and hand them over to Voyager because they wanted to build new sets and a new ship because Sternback thought it would be Kewl.

What does Rick Sternbach have to do with it?

 

[nx1701g]

They really need a fan-edit replacing the BoP with a Vor'cha.

In the Video Game it is a Vor'Cha.

 

[Tom Riley]

Why, instead of standing around, talking about weaknesses in that klingon ship do they not fire every weapon they have at it, Even if they just do it WHILE thinking up a plan. Isnt that ship 80 years old? could it take a barrage of Photons? Its an old bird of Prey, pretty much a scoutship, the Galaxy class should have massacred it in about 2 seconds.

Well they're first thought was to get away from the Bird of Prey because they were kind of shooting THROUGH their shields. They had NO defense WHATSOEVER. They were trying to think of something that would DEFINITELY take one shot so they could stay out of weapons range as much as possible. It makes sense, and it's not that it was written poorly, it was just a little pointless because it was strictly a means to getting a new ship for the movies.

 

[Cyke101]

Why, instead of standing around, talking about weaknesses in that klingon ship do they not fire every weapon they have at it, Even if they just do it WHILE thinking up a plan. Isnt that ship 80 years old? could it take a barrage of Photons? Its an old bird of Prey, pretty much a scoutship, the Galaxy class should have massacred it in about 2 seconds.

Well they're first thought was to get away from the Bird of Prey because they were kind of shooting THROUGH their shields. They had NO defense WHATSOEVER. They were trying to think of something that would DEFINITELY take one shot so they could stay out of weapons range as much as possible. It makes sense, and it's not that it was written poorly, it was just a little pointless because it was strictly a means to getting a new ship for the movies.

Even then, we've seen the Enterprise take much more damage even when shields were down. In Yesterday's Enterprise, the ship loses shields and gets pounded heavily by two larger (and therefore presumably more powerful) Birds of Prey, and no debris would fly out. In some regards, even the Odyssey lasted longer against the superior Jem'Hadar than the Enterprise-D with one lone, obsolete BOP. Voyager lasted for months essentially without shields against the Krenim, dealing damage similar to what we see in GEN, no way is that BOP stronger than an entire fleet.

That's the thing: we accept that the Enterprise has to be destroyed. We accept that a new ship must be made. However, there are so many other ways to do it than with a cheap and old model. The fact that this model fought the TOS-E and E-A really strains credibility (sure, Worf gives it lip-service that it's a different design, but to everyone else, it's still the goddamn same ship we've seen four movies! give us something new). If the Enterprise must be destroyed, let it be by a Vorcha or design a brand new ship, just don't let it go out against a weakling. If the Sisters hijacked a Romulan Warbird, it would be far more believable... heck, they might not even have to rely on bypassing the shields.

And frankly, the plan of staying away from weapons range as much as possible while trying to buy time for the perfect shot makes NO sense whatsoever. Not when the E-D has shown time and again that it can fire 10 torpedoes simultaneously and multiple phaser blasts in a couple seconds. However, all we got were one, maybe two phaser blasts and a single torpedo. The E-D is also large enough and durable enough to twice withstand a Borg Cutting Beam unshielded... but somehow she has to run if an obsolete BOP can hit her a few times? No way in Hell is that BOP stronger than the beam that crippled countless ships before. No way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_XbWq49vUM <-- the E-D manages to fire not one but TWO full phaser/torpedo spreads. Shields or no shields, if they fired even one spread on the BoP, it would be destroyed, especially after how easy they seem to get blown up in the Dominion War.

 

[Forbin]

And the reused explosion was completely unforgivable. Oh how I laughed in contempt.

Oh, me too! The climax of the film and it leaves sitting there thining, "How fucking cheap of them!"

Which, in turn, was only an excuse to dump the E-D sets and hand them over to Voyager because they wanted to build new sets and a new ship because Sternback thought it would be Kewl.

What does Rick Sternbach have to do with it?

Not a blessed thing. Pretty sure it was Berman's orders to destroy Roddenberry's ship and replace it with a ship that was "his."

 

[Timo]

Really, the argument that the E-D didn't fight back is false. We don't see her firing multiple weapons at the Klingons, true - but we hear her firing a lot, whenever the camera visits the bridge. That's a standard trick for saving in VFX expenses, and was used frequently in the TV series.

Also, we have to remember that Riker did fire everything he'd got, right in the beginning. Star Trek ships seem to channel all their destructive power through a single phaser beam in most battles; firing of two or more beams is very seldom done. The E-D fired a single beam, sustained longer than usual, at the BoP, and that beam failed to score the intended amount of damage.

Later on in the battle, the Klingons seem mightily surprised that they are still alive and fighting. They yell "Our shields are holding!" as if that were a miracle greater than Kahless' Third Coming. Presumably, if you were Soran the tech wizard, capable of blowing up stars and eavesdropping on the prosthetic gizmo of one of Starfleet's brightest engineers, you'd also give your Klingon allies a shield-enhancing secret technology - even if you held back with giving them strategic starkillers.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Cyke101]

Really, the argument that the E-D didn't fight back is false. We don't see her firing multiple weapons at the Klingons, true - but we hear her firing a lot, whenever the camera visits the bridge. That's a standard trick for saving in VFX expenses, and was used frequently in the TV series.

But when do we hear her firing a lot? We don't get the usual trigger-button sound effects we normally do in the show, whereas we hear many of the other usual button-pressy sound effects PLUS plenty of the "Ship-gets-hit" sound effects.

Also, I don't really buy that it was a cost-saving measure to have the Enterprise fire only one blast. For one, it's a film with a much larger budget. For another, we get plenty of shots of the BOP firing.

"Yesterday's Enterprise" and "The Die is Cast" has an example of what you're talking about, but in such cases, the weapons officer outright says what's happening, ie Sisko ordering a torpedo and Kira reporting that the enemy's nacelle is hit and thus dropping out of warp. That's much more direct in dialogue, whereas I'm just not seeing where it's implied that Worf maintained continuous fire in this battle. And it's rather unfair for any film to rely on the audience to infer something, especially in the midst of such an action-driven sequence.

Also, we have to remember that Riker did fire everything he'd got, right in the beginning. Star Trek ships seem to channel all their destructive power through a single phaser beam in most battles; firing of two or more beams is very seldom done. The E-D fired a single beam, sustained longer than usual, at the BoP, and that beam failed to score the intended amount of damage.

This I don't really believe either. Compare to the Husnock battle or Best of Both Worlds -- in both cases, "fire everything they've got" amounted to an all out weapons barrage and not a single, concentrated attack. Why would that differ in this case? Besides, Riker gave the specific order of firing phasers, not everything.

Later on in the battle, the Klingons seem mightily surprised that they are still alive and fighting. They yell "Our shields are holding!" as if that were a miracle greater than Kahless' Third Coming. Presumably, if you were Soran the tech wizard, capable of blowing up stars and eavesdropping on the prosthetic gizmo of one of Starfleet's brightest engineers, you'd also give your Klingon allies a shield-enhancing secret technology - even if you held back with giving them strategic starkillers.

The Klingon's line about their shields holding is why I give them maybe another offscreen phaser blast, but that's about it, really. And that still says nothing about the firepower of the BoP as well. Even with the Enterprise's shields down, the BoP is a rather flimsy ship in at that point in 24th century design. No mention is said about souping up its firepower or its shields (compared to Defiant Vs. Lakota, where the Lakota's suspicious upgrades were a rather important plot point), and I still find it incredulous that the Enterprise isn't split in half by the Borg on two separate occasions, but has to run away from the tiny BoP.

 

[Timo]

Also, I don't really buy that it was a cost-saving measure to have the Enterprise fire only one blast. For one, it's a film with a much larger budget. For another, we get plenty of shots of the BOP firing.

I don't mean it would have been done only as a cost-cutting measure. The main purpose of the writers was to show the heroes losing the battle, so of course the visuals would support that. But the audio track could be used for credibility-preserving trickery. Whether it was used that way or not, I'm not sure - I think I hear the weapons-firing bleeps there, but I'm by no means certain.

This I don't really believe either. Compare to the Husnock battle or Best of Both Worlds -- in both cases, "fire everything they've got" amounted to an all out weapons barrage and not a single, concentrated attack. Why would that differ in this case? Besides, Riker gave the specific order of firing phasers, not everything.

But in BoBW, "fire everything" did explicitly mean firing a single phaser, in one of the engagements. In another, the same order meant adding two beams from the engine pylons - from locations that could not actually fire phaser beams! But other episodes (including "The Survivors", the one with the Husnock) all supported the superiority of firing a single beam.

And I already did tackle the failure to fire torpedoes... Firing them would not have been a consistent Starfleet fighting technique, not at those ranges.

Even with the Enterprise's shields down, the BoP is a rather flimsy ship in at that point in 24th century design.

Hmh? We've seen the ship type take shields-down hits on several occasions ("Redemption", "Return to Grace"), and generally its destruction has required multiple torpedo hits. So the vessel in ST:GEN actually is flimsier than her sisters, at least when it comes to death throes. Although we can argue that a single torpedo is enough, when it's big enough a torpedo... Starfleet apparently fires torpedoes of small yield when it's not certain about scoring a lethal hit at a vulnerable target, even though a single full-yield torp can vaporize large unprotected starships all by itself (as in "Unnatural Selection" or "Conundrum"). A sound tactic as such: save your ammo until it becomes truly effective.

...Or until you want to play all or nothing. Which is what Riker was doing in ST:GEN.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Cyke101]

Also, I don't really buy that it was a cost-saving measure to have the Enterprise fire only one blast. For one, it's a film with a much larger budget. For another, we get plenty of shots of the BOP firing.

I don't mean it would have been done only as a cost-cutting measure. The main purpose of the writers was to show the heroes losing the battle, so of course the visuals would support that. But the audio track could be used for credibility-preserving trickery. Whether it was used that way or not, I'm not sure - I think I hear the weapons-firing bleeps there, but I'm by no means certain.

I must admit, I constantly play with my Art Asylum Ent-D, and a couple of sound effects include the trigger effect. It's drilled into my head at this point

But in BoBW, "fire everything" did explicitly mean firing a single phaser, in one of the engagements. In another, the same order meant adding two beams from the engine pylons - from locations that could not actually fire phaser beams! But other episodes (including "The Survivors", the one with the Husnock) all supported the superiority of firing a single beam.

I think the Husnock example could be forgiven as the crew wasn't really up against the ship, they were up against the near-omnipotent Uxbridge, so whether it be a spread or a single blast, they were bound to fail. But in BoBW, which engagement had the "everything" count as a single phaser blast? The only time I recall that happening was when Shelby ordered a very specific scalpel-like attack, rather than the sledgehammer of a weapons-spread.

And I already did tackle the failure to fire torpedoes... Firing them would not have been a consistent Starfleet fighting technique, not at those ranges.

But that's exactly how this battle ended

Also, IIRC, the Lantree was safely destroyed by the E-D's torpedo at even closer ranges than we see see in this battle.

...Or until you want to play all or nothing. Which is what Riker was doing in ST:GEN.

This is a matter of opinion on my part of course, but it was a rather crappy tactic on Riker's part. We don't know how effective/ineffective the Enterprise's weapons are, and I think we would have to assume normal efficiency as there was nothing in the script to indicate otherwise (such as the BoP's hits meaning weaker phaser output or disabled launchers). So tech aside and speaking merely from tactics, even then this goes against standard Trek fare (such as Picard and Riker ordering torpedoes at near point blank range at a Cube, knowing that it would both be ineffective AND suicidal). I would cite Nemesis as Picard firing despite the ineffectiveness of the weapons and his definitely not playing all or nothing, but that could very well be the result of lessons learned from this battle!

Lastly, with the BoP, I doubt we would be having this much of a discussion had the producers simply used a different design of ship. There would be no need for inference or extrapolation or convoluted ways for the ship to go down. The main concern for the writers would be in taking the ship down, not explaining how to take it down.