Phaser settings

[CorporalCaptain]

I agree with much of what you said, DakotaSmith, except that I was never satisfied with the idea that stun settings are somewhere along such a continuum. If they are though, I would think that the lowest levels would be stun, and these would be even lower than any setting that could heat rocks.

 

[Wingsley]

Let's not forget the ultimate hand-phaser setting: disintegrate.

 

[Timo]

In any case, we have both TOS and DS9 references to phaser settings that aren't integer values, suggesting that the quality being set might be something as linear and continuous as output power (and thus probably something the user adjusts using the roll control of the TOS weapons, or the button combinations manifesting as shrinking and growing LED bars in the TNG sidearms).

Things like "stun", "kill" and "disintegrate" might be specific parts of that continuum - or they could be a completely different category of settings, so that one can choose "kill" and any setting between zero and maximum, or then "stun" and any setting between zero and maximum. There is support for both views, but perhaps more for the latter, mainly because there are numerous occasions where we have reason to believe a phaser is at a low setting (dialogue, or seamless action from a preceding scene where low settings were manifest) yet manages to create significant heat or material destruction.

Like CorporalCaptain, I prefer to think that the stun mechanism is quite fundamentally different from the disintegration mechanism, as disintegration appears so obviously irreversible yet stun is harmless unless repeated a lot and frequently. Indeed, I'd like to think the average phaser gun has two (or, with Pike, three) separate guns built into one and the same casing, with closely co-located barrels. The TOS barrel has a dish and a spike coaxially; one could be the kill barrel, the other the stun barrel. The TMP weapon is seen firing four narrow beams in parallel; each of the four barrels might provide a different beam, and different combinations could provide different effects, a mixture of all four being "white noise" that kills by heating as seen when Kirk barbeques the Ceti eel. Guns from TNG onwards would have "high tech" barrels where the numerous internal mechanisms can all fire through one and the same emitter...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I kinda like the idea of multiple emitters, for all the reasons you gave, Timo.

I guess one you didn't cover is that stun seems engineered to trigger some kind of neurological effect in humanoid lifeforms. I suppose it's possible for that to occur from the some sort of beam at low power that disintegrates an object when turned all the way up. But the idea of straight-up different emitters takes care of any questions about the process rather neatly.

Also, although YMMV, I can chalk up the discussion of "hand lasers" in The Cage as "first pilot technospeak immaturity", especially give what those props can do in What Are Little Girls Made Of?.

I think it's kinda cool to suppose that TOS phasers have the same sort of multiple emitters, but just miniaturized. Additionally, in case you didn't mention it, the idea also "explains" why the hand phasers in Trek '09 had rotating barrels.

Good idea.

 

[Doug Otte]

I always wondered how the "disintegrate" function worked. It seemed to always manage to disintegrate the target completely, and not anything surrounding it. How was this accomplished? Was the beam "intelligent" somehow, and would only disintegrate contiguous molecules of a similar composition, e.g. a humanoid body? Could it sense the boundary of that object, and thus stop the disintegration process for any molecules beyond that boundary? How did the beam know what substance it was supposed to disintegrate? What if the shooter missed the mark - would it disintegrate the entire wall behind the body, or just drill a hole in it?

Doug

 

[CorporalCaptain]

What if the shooter missed the mark - would it disintegrate the entire wall behind the body, or just drill a hole in it?

Doug

Ditto on your questions, all good ones.

Since we aren't privy to the settings used, perhaps this doesn't even really answer the question, but in The Return of the Archons, Kirk and Spock do burn a hole in the wall to get to the Landru computer, around 42:30 as shown at http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=47&page=15. That time anyway, it leaves a funny-looking hole.

 

[Timo]

There is some consistency to how the phaser behaves...

The one thing it usually fails to damage is the walls and other dense structures around the victim. We could easily argue that the phaser effect propagates in matter until it encounters a boundary - and that it propagates rather poorly in dense metals and the like. Thus, a solid hit in the victim's chest would propagate to consume his flesh and bones and barely pause at his clothes, then pause a bit more to deal with his tricorder and sidearm - but fail to make the jump either to the surrounding air (much less dense) or the floor or the wall (much more dense). Yet when aimed at a wall, the effect would propagate, very slowly, to create a circular hole that isn't much wider than the beam that hit the wall. The ST6:TUC scene where a phaser vaporizes a kettle but fails to vaporize the food inside would be the reverse of this...

Also, vaporizing does not involve much heat: the holes drilled in walls or bedrock are never too hot to touch, as our heroes almost invariably hop right through without bothering to wait for cooling. This makes sense if the disappearing of matter is achieved the same way the transporter achieves it!

I guess it's up to the heroes to choose between making a hole with a single wide "disintegrate" shot, or with a narrow "burn" shot that cuts a line. It might well be that the "burn" setting does not involve disintegration but relies on delivery of heat (as the burning is often associated with extra care, much as if our heroes were cutting the wall with an acetylene flame), but has an advantage over the disintegration choice in that the burning beam won't suddenly start to propagate in the material in unexpected ways.

Timo Saloniemi