The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with it??

[ZapBrannigan]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

We don't know if the fictional neutronium is the same as actual neutron star material. If it is, moving it would require a LOT of ships because it would be so flipping massive (100 milliion tons per cubic centimeter). Also, since neutron star material is held together by gravity rather than atomic bonds, to cut it would be like cutting water...it would just flow back together (which also means it should just crush itself into a sphere unless there is some other powerful force maintaining its shape).

And along with that incredible density, the planet killer was miles long. I have to agree with those who've said we could not tow it anywhere whatsoever, because it is too massive.

It's going to continue moving through space the way it was when the Constellation blew up, and as LMFAOschwartz said, it has to go on the star charts as a new feature of the cosmos.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

It's now a Motel 6.

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

They shrank it down to normal size and someone ate it.

 

[Melakon]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

It was good, too.

 

[T'Girl]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Create a neutronium platform, bait Q into the middle and drop the DDM on top.

Could he get out?

 

[Mysterion]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

It's now a Motel 6.

"We'll leave the plasma beam on for ya'..."

 

[Marsden]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

A space giant that happened to be hard of hearing is now using it for his grandkids to yell into.

 

[Warp Zero]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Kirk rammed an old starship into it's mouth and set the warp drive stuff to blow up in 30 seconds. Like always, he barely makes it and everything works out fine!

 

[Maurice]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Kirk rammed an old starship into it's mouth and set the warp drive stuff to blow up in 30 seconds. Like always, he barely makes it and everything works out fine!

^^^Which has what to do with the topic exactly?

And it was the impulse engine, which Scotty rigged to blow.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

With the power plant disabled, I wonder if the neutronium hull would start decaying into simple neutrons, under the premise that part of the operation of the machine was to hold the neutronium together, since the mass of the berserker is obviously below the Chandrasekhar limit of 1.39 solar masses (or otherwise it couldn't have been hovering over a planet slicing out chunks of it, without flinging the planet out of its natural orbit*).

* - Unless part of the operation of the subspace dampening field is to negate most of the machine's mass, in which case it could be massive enough to support its own solar system with its power plant off, assuming it doesn't decay into neutrons anyway; neutron star radii are only a few miles, so the machine could actually have a mass of around twice the sun's.**

** - So, it would actually be consistent with the length of the machine stated in the episode for the machine to have been made out of a neutron star.

 

[Maurice]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

As portrayed the machine's scale is inconsistent, but at its biggest (Enterprise caught in tractor beam as seen from the side) it's about 13,300 feet long.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

As portrayed the machine's scale is inconsistent, but at its biggest (Enterprise caught in tractor beam as seen from the side) it's about 13,300 feet long.

In dialog, Decker said it was "miles long," in a manner which suggested significantly more than two. How are you coming up with your figure in feet? Based on screencap analysis?

 

[Relayer1]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Starfleet Museum.

They turned it into Starfleet Museum...

 

[publiusr]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

That really big Gorn, Godzilla, used in as that spike in a rematch with Kirk.

The toupee broke it dead in two.

There's neutronium, and then there's that.

(not to be confused with Newt-ronium)

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Why can't it be cut with a antimatter beam?

The actual Quantum theory says that there's no such thing as an antimatter beam.

 

[Maurice]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

In dialog, Decker said it was "miles long," in a manner which suggested significantly more than two. How are you coming up with your figure in feet? Based on screencap analysis?

Yep. Did that back in 1989. I even did the math to figure out its volume and how much it would weigh if made out of neutron star material. It's in my files someplace.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

In dialog, Decker said it was "miles long," in a manner which suggested significantly more than two. How are you coming up with your figure in feet? Based on screencap analysis?

Yep. Did that back in 1989. I even did the math to figure out its volume and how much it would weigh if made out of neutron star material. It's in my files someplace.

Yeah, my remarks above were based on the assumption that the machine was larger than you're saying based on screencaps, vis-à-vis "miles long". As fun as the VFX were in the original,* they were, as you essentially pointed out, obviously bogus in terms of scale in at least some shots, such as when the shuttlecraft is going in. Also, it's often the case in TOS (if not usually the case) that it makes more sense to consider the VFX as suggestive than as something to take literally; that begins right with the stock shots of the Enterprise orbiting in a noticeably curved path around a planet that's seemingly turning faster on its axis than it would, were the situation operating according to celestial mechanics as they do IRL.

It's worth noting I think that inside of the machine it might have been even denser than neutronium (neutron star material), say if it had a black hole in the reactor; while the machine was in operation, they couldn't scan inside.

* - This isn't meant to imply that the effects in TOS-R were an improvement.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Create a neutronium platform, bait Q into the middle and drop the DDM on top.

Could he get out?

Yes.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Also, it's often the case in TOS (if not usually the case) that it makes more sense to consider the VFX as suggestive than as something to take literally

The same could be said of Decker's dialogue...he was a little off his rocker and wasn't above embellishing the DM's attributes...or are we also to take his word for it that the DM was literally the devil?

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

I always thought it was interesting that Decker said it had 'a maw that could swallow a dozen starships'. It's like he unintentionally was onto the very idea that would eventually destroy the machine!