Fun Fact About Hand Phasers

You're assuming the leak is within the small area we see. It could be anywhere along the line. So we wouldn't see anything if it were all toward the aft section.

As for a hole in the hull, none was mentioned, so none was had. They didn't make any exterior repairs and even double checked to see if they "overlooked any minor damage." So, if there was a break in the hull, it would have been mentioned.

 

So we are basically in agreement: if there had been a liquid leak, it would either have been visible when Scotty opened the bottom hatches, or would have involved a hull breach (and most probably a puddle that Boma would have commented on, as he saw much more than we did). Ergo, there was no liquid leak. Which goes well with the idea that the fuel was under high pressure, unnecessary for storing liquids which won't compress and will only need minor overpressure to properly flow in zero gee or inconvenient gee or whatever.

A volatile or cryogenic fuel that compresses like gas would best fit the cues here. Whether it would also be what powers the hand phasers... Well, those are awfully small fuel tanks in the pistol handles, compared e.g. with the clumsy tanks we see on the walls of the shuttle aft compartment (whatever those are holding). Would pistols have better compression storage than shuttles? Possibly, given the high utility of compactness in sidearms and the lesser demand in vehicles.

Timo Saloniemi

 

The Enterprise is powered by matter/antimatter. The idea that hand phasers or shuttlecrafts use liquid or gaseous fuels seems way outdated. I'm not suggesting hand phasers or shuttlecrafts are (necessarily) also powered by matter/antimatter, but I do think there should be a better explanation than liquid or gaseous fuels.

 

Obvs, the science is beyond our current understanding, but M/AM reactions regulated by dilithium in the warp core produce drive plasma which can power systems, like warp coils, or maybe even phasers. But they also have ways to store and transport drive plasma (don't ask me how I know) so maybe the shuttles just carry some drive plasma and not M/AM and dilithium reaction chambers. This is beyond a super heated gas but super heated, often electrically charged, atomic particles. How one stores that stuff is beyond me, but hey, most Trek science is. You accept the premise, or scoff and watch something else, so since I'm keen on the stories, I accept it and hope, like good fiction, it remains internally consistent (in most places, at least).

 

That sounds like a better explanation to me.

 

The matter/antimatter of ENT- and TNG-era ships is liquid or gaseous, though, while stored. More specifically, it's deuterium and antideuterium fluid, a good choice if one wants it to double as a fusion fuel as well. Or as a propellant, i.e. a substance ejected from a rocket nozzle for Newtonian thrust, although we never really learn that this would be a major or important mode of impulse engine operations.

Also, we learn in "The Menagerie" that an identifying factor of the TOS shuttle is that it utilizes "ion power". Since such is never associated with the big starships (indeed, in "Spock's Brain", having ion power on starships is said to be beyond Scotty's knowledge, and in VOY "Time and Again", polaric ion power is so risky it blows up civilizations and is shunned in the UFP), we would be justified in giving the shuttles a somewhat different drive system at a fairly fundamental level.

However, we learn in "Metamorphosis" that a shuttle ought to leave "antimatter residue" if it "powers away". So quite possibly ion power is just a different way of utilizing antimatter, perhaps best suited for small-scale applications.

Regardless, if the fuel spilled by Scotty in "The Galileo Seven" were antimatter, we should expect more dramatic consequences. Perhaps ion power involves using a primary power source (aka fuel) for creating some antimatter in situ, this antimatter then being annihilated for the usual warp magic as soon as it's created.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Do you think they have to ionize the anti deuterium so it's charged and can be held by a magnetic bottle? Kind of hard to hold onto it with magnetism if it has a neutral charge. And I'm not sure one can liquify ions, but maybe they can. Each nucleus would tend to repeal the others, so it would take a lot of pressure.

But hey, with anti gravity, maybe there's a better way to hold it - though they do tend to go on about magnetic bottles.

 

They specifically mention "magnetic" containment as the element failing on "Contagion" - but then again, they may be using the word as a synonym for "attractive", as with those magnetic boots of ST6:TUC fame that were also called gravitic boots...

So I wouldn't sweat electric charge here, not with such semantic support for alternative interpretations.

Timo Saloniemi

 

What makes it "attractive" in either case is magnetism. Plasma is charged particles, and they tend to heat things up, even antimatter, to use it. Maybe they keep it hot. They are using plasma all over these ships (EPS) so need to contain it with magnetism since it's too hot to keep in a normal container. The particles spiral around magnetic lines in a closed loop. This one is huge, but with better miniaturization, Trek can make smaller magnetic bottles. So they use big ones for the impulse engines, and probably use something like this to hold antimatter plasma, too.

I said elsewhere, I think, an "Antimatter Pod" may be just a magnetic bottle, and it can contain antimatter or antimatter plasma, but it might also pull double duty and contain just drive plasma, which Trek seems to use and transport like fuel somehow (don't know how that works). So shuttles might not have full blown M/AM reactors with dilithium regulators, but just carry drive plasma "fuel" they siphon from the ship's main drive.

Anyway, this is beyond what most fans want to see or know, or certainly need. But for those who like it, here's a video on what we have now that "will" become the fusion reactors for impulse engines - ha ha.

 

Clearly not, if the boots are called "gravitic". Our heroes and villains are masters of manipulating gravitic pull (and push, a futuristic twist), and this could easily handle neutral antideuterium if need be.

All we lack is a clear-cut, spoken-out-loud reference to antimatter being contained by "gravitic fields" or even the more ambiguous "forcefields"; so far we only have references to wholly ambiguous "containment fields" which in theory might be EM in nature.

Possibly so. But letting that stuff leak should be more spectacular than what we witnessed in "The Galileo Seven" - compare, say, to VOY "Fair Trade".

...And if we only could manipulate gravity the Trek way, we could do all that so much more easily...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Sorry, but memory alpha calls those "magnetic gravity boots." The only place I've seen those working are like magnetic boots, and the reference to gravity is only they use magnetics in place of gravity (real or artificial). Which boots did you have in mind?

While it's true any civilization that has mastered artificial gravity should be able to use it more than they are (for propulsion, containment, and other things) they usually mention magnetic bottles for this stuff.

Force fields, too, might be able to contain the stuff, but like super heated gas eroding a normal container's surface, the same kinetic reaction would be constantly kicking the force field, which will evenetually collapse, or require more energy to maintain - possibly more energy than the antimatter or plasma can deliver back to them, so that would be pointless.

The drive plasma, while created with M/AM reactions regulated with dilithium crystals, becomes plasma of a normal matter variety. So it is comprised of super heated electrons (not positrons) and protons (not anti protons) and neutrons (not anti neutrons - i.e. regular matter (not anti matter). So at that point, that fuel is not so nasty if it loses containment like it would be if it were antimatter. It'd be like a hot gas, only hotter, and technically not a gas, but atomic and sub atomic (regular matter) particles.

But if you mean it should be more spectacular (and didn't mean antimatter spectacular), just leaking that into space or the atmosphere wouldn't be too bad. It might leave a nasty burn hole in whatever was containing it, or whatever it shot through (like a hull breach) but not particularly explosive.

Yeah, this whole artificial gravity is another milestone, and we're no where near that. Yet they claim we had it by 1990 (on the Botany Bay) and yet got it from a flying belt artifact found in a slaver box (where did we find that prior to 1990?) Or maybe by "we" they meant another Federation race, and "they" shared it with us. Often overlooked, artificial gravity is as impressive, perhaps more impressive, than a lot of other tech Trek bandies about so effortlessly. And what are its energy costs? It seems free.

 

I'm sorry for Memory Alpha, too.

The two ST6:TUC expressions are "magnetic boots" and "gravity boots" (or perhaps "gravitic boots", allowing for pronunciation ambiguities).

What possible reason would we have for thinking they use magnetics in place of gravity? Boots are boots - if they aren't "gravitic" by very special technological nature, there's no reason to call them that for merely doing the usual boot thing.

I rather think those in ST6 were pretty much the same as those in ST5, just without the spacewalk jet extension pack attached. That is, Starfleet spacewalk gear is modular and can be boosted up to the level of complexity we see in the STIS trailer if need be, or left to be nothing but basic air-containing sacks.

"Magnetic" and "gravitic" are used interchangeably elsewhere in Trek, too. Say, the "magnetic" field of the solar system blinked off and on in "The Alternative Factor", which was the same as the planet briefly "attaining zero gravity".

Only in "Contagion", "That Which Survives" and "Obsession". Might be magnetic. Might merely be "magnetic", considering all the gravity stuff going on there.

This is no different from magnetic containment in which the very escape-oriented charged particles exert forces that the field has to countermand. Except that we know that gravity is super-cheap and super-reliable, with all sorts of derelicts maintaining it for centuries.

Actually, this is a bit debatable, considering the way "warp plasma" was handled in VOY "Fair Trade". Might be it's just energetic charged particles. Might be there's more magic to it, making the trade in said episode more logical.

On Mars or Jupiter, perhaps? Interplanetary travel was old news when Khan left, and only Saturn explicitly remained to be scored. Perhaps more remarkably, Khan left with the help of onboard gravity, which may have been a prerequisite for those superfast insystem drives, too.

My preferred interpretation, too.

At the very least, it seems fine for "bootstrapping" - it should be able to force fusion to happen in carefully controlled amounts, perhaps powering itself through a positive-feedback loop of such "microfusion".

OTOH, given what Einstein thinks about movement and gravity, perhaps warp is also gravity manipulation at its very root? Perhaps Star Trek happens in the first place because in its universe, gravity manipulation is so easy?

Timo Saloniemi

 

Well, I myself wouldn't call them gravity boots just because magnetism is taking up the job gravity normally does on its own, but Trek is written by a lot of often scientifically illiterate writers, IMO. I know when they use them I usually hear the magnetic snap of the boots clinging to metal decks when they turn them on, and like a clunk or something as the pull away. They sound like I'd imagine magnetic boots would. Gravity boots wouldn't make special noises beyond what a normal boot would, IMO.

I never assumed Spock wasn't talking about two things. A, the magnetic field of the solar system blinked, and B, the planet below seemed to go to zero mass in that instant, too. Just two different things, but both suggested the stellar system and the planet winked out, or into a parallel existence for a second where the sensors couldn't read them. It never suggested to me those terms were interchangeable or he was only taking about one thing.

What? They mentioned somewhere "gravitic" containment of antimatter?

In magnetic containment, the charged particles are constantly on the move in circular or spiral courses in a vacuum, but with force fields, they would hit the force fields, using up energy, unless they are somehow suspended away from the force field. One could use artificial gravity to do that - I would if I had it, it was cheap and reliable and portable, but I don't know enough about Trek artificial gravity to make any of those assumptions. As for derelicts maintaining it for centuries, well, that's just the same goof than makes it necessary to use it in the first place - they don't want the expense of floating around in zero G scenes. Still, they do it, so it's canon, so we have to deal. Amazing stuff, AG. I'm not sure why shuttles need fuel at all. Just stick AG platting on every side and by adjusting gravity, you can overcome a planent's gravity or go in any direction - for free. So, it must cost something. But I know of no way to justify all the things they do, or don't do, because of AG.

I just mostly marvel they can contain it and transport it so well, whatever it is, and it's pretty valuable stuff, too. It must be a extremely dense form of clean energy with many ways to use it. So, that alone would suggest a serious problem should it escape, and it wouldn't require it to be antimatter to make it serious.

Another Trek mystery, to be sure.

Except we had it before 1990, and didn't meet Vulcans until 2063. I honestly think the best possible fix would be retconing the Botany Bay and derelicts with the Enterprise extending its cheap and free AG field over those vessels before they went over. Ha ha. Actually, there's no fixing this, I suspect.

A parallel universe where the laws of gravity are sufficiently different than here such that AG is easy to find and use. Hmmm. So what does G = if not 6.67408 × 10-11 m3 kg-1 s-2? 42?

The only thing I'm fairly certain of is the AG is used in the inertial compensators, and even then, I can't be too sure of that.

 

Huh? It all depends exclusively on how steep a gradient the attractive force makes. And we know artificial gravity can have gradients of arbitrary steepness, such as pulling down on Deck 47 at one gee but up on Deck 48 at zero gee.

Magnetic boots would be a pretty bad idea because they would only work on metal hulls. We have no reason to think the hulls of starships would be metallic let alone ferromagnetic.

Might be. The magnetic fields of star systems aren't all that remarkable, though - why comment on that before going for the amazing thing of gravity acting weird?

No. They just didn't mention "magnetic" containment of said, either, except in those three episodes.

...Thus exerting major forces on the field, no different from gas impacting walls or forcefields. You can't have something for nothing (except perhaps in Trek): the force will always be there.

Yup. Perhaps AG is something you don't turn "on" for gravity and "off" for freefall, but merely flip through desired settings? That is, you select "one gee", and then the deck is at that physical state without consuming any sort of power, until and unless again reset to "two gee" or "zero gee", in a maneuver that in itself may consume a small amount of power?

Loss of power doesn't coincide with loss of gravity in Trek much; indeed, it seems that knocking out gravity in ST6 took very special effort.

Whatever the nature of the fuel of the Galileo, the important thing is to limit the "serious problem" to the fact that there is no fuel remaining. The leak itself was never indicated to pose any sort of a danger worth mentioning, after all. And this should extend to all eras of shuttle operations, as crashed shuttles never seem to be in danger of going up in flames the way crashed cars or helicopters in action movies always do...

But Spock would be saying that Vulcans had it in AD 344 already, and Ludicrians perhaps five thousand years before that, and they are Federation today. Or then that history records that the Weallyulduns got it from Slavers half a million years ago, this marking the first reliable documentation on AG and predating all known native inventions of AG. What humans have and when they got it wouldn't be all that relevant to this show-and-tell about the significance of Slaver Boxes.

I wonder when we got it first? Did Henry Starling steal it from Braxton's crashed timeship in the 1960s and immediately put it to market? Things were still being launched by primtive rockets in the late 1960s, and there were no flying cars in evidence in the 1990s yet, but we might have missed some rare, secret, high-cost military applications.

Then again, making AG easy to invent makes space travel much more likely to occur. And everybody and his idiot cousin has space travel in Trek.

It's not as if there'd be evidence that you have to invent X first before you get AG. In contrast, we might suspect that you have to invent AG first to get warp (inertial damping seems necessary for the slow acceleration to FTL evident in Cochrane's first experiments), or at least that you need warp before you can invent subspace radio (or else the Prime Directive would be irrelevant).

Trek uses gravitons for gravity. Whatever those are, one could arguably use X amount for one gee and 2X for two gee, and pack the X twice as densely for a steeper gradient, or whatever.

In contrast, actually adjusting G seems to be stuff for gods only, as per "Deja Q".

I'd like to think so, too - so we would get the rationalization Diane Carey uses for ubiquitous and never-failing gravity, namely that it's by far the most important life support system!

In ST6, the Chancellor's ship loses gravity and subsequently becomes incapable of maneuvering - but isn't said to have lost maneuvering power or other powers or capabilities as such. Perhaps the skipper is afraid of turning to face Kirk's ship because he knows the maneuver would kill most everybody aboard?

Timo Saloniemi

 

If anyone needs a specific reference in an episode regarding the use of a magnetic field to contain antimatter, this bit from That Which Survives should suffice:

SPOCK: As I recall the pattern of our fuel flow, there is an access tube leading to the matter-antimatter reaction chamber.
SCOTT: There's a service crawlway, but it's not meant to be used while the integrator operates.
SPOCK: Still, it is there, and it might be possible to shut off the fuel at that point.
SCOTT: What with? Bare hands?
SPOCK: A magnetic probe.
SCOTT: Any matter that comes in contact with antimatter triggers the explosion. And I'm not even sure a man can live in the crawlway in the energy stream of the magnetic field that bottles up the antimatter.

 

They might know, but yeah. It might even be why some wanted to use "gravitic" instead of "magnetic," and maybe boots use both systems. Magetic, because it's useful, and gravitic, because it free and always works and easily fits in the boot and doesn't weigh anything since it takes its own weight and then some, or adds some, or whatever you want, whichever direction you want.

I wonder how many rooms in the Enterprise are oriented differently since they can make AG go in any direction.

One was a lager, more widespread effect? Stellar wide system. Well, both would be, and who knows which one a passing ship would notice first, the magnetic effect of a whole stellar system, or the gravity of one planet? The fact they were above it might make that only more noticeable, but I'd say both things were significant and he reported them both and both were probably being monitors by his instruments as a matter of course anyway.

It is different insofar as plasma is far more kinetically energetic than room temperature gas, for example, so it would take a lot of power to hold a plasma in with a force field than a gas (again, unless the plasma is suspended in the vacuum away from the force field, but if you can do that, you don't even need the force field except as a backup. Well, maybe to hold out the outside air and maintain the vacuum, I guess. But any box of normal matter would do that. Transparent aluminum would be good.

Fascinating. It acts like a huge mass for making gravity, but does not require extra exertion to move all that pretend mass around through space. Naw, I can't figure how AG works, so speculating on it is almost pointless.

Crashing spaceships must cleverly jettison antimatter into space, or maintain confinement even after the crash. Or you'll have a really bad day. Shuttles, after the leak didn't blow you up or burn too big a hole in your hull, they just needed to fix the leak and replace the fuel. Phaser work, if you have a clever boy along who knows how to convert what phasers use to what shuttles need (not an obvious things since Spock didn't already know about it, unlike cold intermix formulas, which he does have a passing familiarity with. But neither Spock or Scotty can make a radio out of a coconut, so they got nothing on the professor.

Good thinking!

AG before warp, eh? But you could do so much with AG, you really wouldn't need to go to other stellar systems. Well, you might want to anyway, but with AG, you could fill the solar system with habitats. We'd be busy here for millennia.

Without your ICs, high speed maneuvers are instant death. Ah, Trek. I wonder if the Romulan warbird had 'em. Escape maneuver 1 really tossed them to the walls, and they're only impulse maneuvers.

 

Integrator? Hmmm. What are they integrating? Matter and Antimatter integrated together?

 

You know, I can be a nerd, but I have to say you guys are NERDS!

 

This would be helpful in explaining the inner geometries here and there, but personally I think we should mostly believe in a universal down for one reason and one reason only - those cutaway drawings they have on their bridges.

OTOH, I'm convinced the turbocars get oriented this way and that while zipping through the ship! They are the one bit the most difficult to squeeze in, after all. And if a cab from Deck 1 has indicator lights for upward movement, I really, really want to think it tilted and now is diving head down.

Re: "Alternative Factor": Agreed, not very good proof for magnetic=gravitic. And I just remembered that TNG "11001001" is another episode where the heroes specify their ship's antimatter containment as "magnetic". So better to go with the flow there, I guess.

Hmm... Forcefields holding cold neutral deuterium vs. magnetic fields holding hot plasma (as they can't hold neutral deuterium) seems like a match going to the forcefields. Perhaps magnetics kick in with the drive plasma, which still contains antimatter residue and for that reason gets mentioned in the context, while forcefields store the fuel before it enters the process?

It's even more magical than that: if you create a tractor beam out of 'em gravitons, it's not a lasso nor a rigid pole but something else together: the target can be made to suffer major forces while you yourself feel nothing! Just see Wesley levitate a big chair using a handheld unit in "The Naked Now"...

Speculating - wasted effort (but a fun pastime). But pointing out consistencies vs. inconsistencies - potentially taking us somewhere.

We sort of hit middle ground in DS9 "Battle Lines" where our runabout heroes say they have to eject the antimatter, and do, and then crash. After the crash, a big podlike component that cannot be part of the runabout (unless it's an interior part, but the runabout didn't exactly split open) is sitting right next to the wreck... Oops! But fortunately for our heroes, it's not ticking or sizzling or anything, and they ignore it.

Shuttles in theory might have antimatter pods aboard, and they could be as indestructible as the "Battle Lines" example. Indeed, "Contagion" suggests 24th century heroes disbelieve in containment failure as a thing. One way or another, a shuttle even in TOS ought to leave that "antimatter residue" when moving. But admitted that it could still be a product and not a storable.

The thing is, we need nothing from Sol (not even a colony in Mars until AD 2103) if we do get warp - it's all there waiting on paradise planets where all you need is a tent, plus a mining or farming implement of your choice.

Perhaps AG involves understanding of subspace physics which gives warp in no time flat? After all, we haven't seen good examples of non-warp societies with mastery of their own star system - perhaps that's a step most people skip due to the laws of nature of Star Trek?

There might be degrees: most maneuvers would be lethal without at least 80% control of inertia, but Klingons and the like wouldn't want to pay for the remaining 20% if they can just grab their seats real hard and endure the near-blackout with warrior strength. Although in most maneuvers, it might still be more like 98% vs 2% - even simple linear acceleration in ST:TMP seems to be hundreds of gees (which is exactly what they'd need for viable interplanetary maneuvering of the sort they supposedly practice).

Of course, the small Romulan ship might make do with less than Picard's big ship that would pulp all Ten Forward patrons with a gentle turn to starboard...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Those diagrams don't preclude using ceilings as floor and vice versa, though getting the Turbolift properly oriented would be a bitch, and the Jeffries ladders (if they are called that) that go between decks certainly wouldn't work well then. Then again, a spinning turbo and shifting gravity orientation might not be that hard to work. Anyway, those ladders might not go through the whole ship, but just short sections of it where G is all one way.

Wouldn't it be a laugh if the AG tech required one upward gravity plating for every downward one to "balance" each other out and reduce the costs to nearly zero? They don't have to be back-to-back, but less than one-for-one and it cost a lot more energy. You do it right, it could be . . . free, and even work when the power is down.

But if not, then most decks are probably in the normal "downward" gravity orientation, even if a few odds places and corners probably could benefit from a different orientation.

Just how often do we even see sideways movement in the lights on the turbocars? What episodes, and where are they going? I clearly remember at least one they were moving one way, then stopped and started moving in another, but I can't recall what episode that was in, or if they did it a lot.

Even normal matter plasma has charge and could be contained magnetically. Antimatter residue? I wonder exactly what that is supposed to be. I would expect all AM would eventually annihilate itself with matter, and the product be pure photons. Well, that assumes the AM particles meet comparable matter particles, like a positron for an electron, a neutron for an antineutron, a proton for an antiproton, or a deuterium ion (deteron) for an antideterium ion (anatideteron), yet if you hit regular hydrogen with antideuteron, you'd have a radical antineutron left over. AM Residue? I'm sure it could find a regular neutron somewhere. Residue? Hmmmm. I guess the photons must energize regular matter and turn it into plasma (drive plasma) for some good reason, like being able to magnetically contain and direct normal matter plasma all over the ship through plasma conduits (until a EPS tap turns it into electricity).

Maybe he's just partially nullifying the effect of the AG, so you shouldn't expect him to carry the load.

To speculations about even greater possibilities. To infinity, and . . . well, it's infinity already, so give me a break.

Ejecting AM almost certainly means ejecting its container. And AM bottles, or AM PODs are probably tough, small, containers using room temperature super magnets and contained battery backups that make it all better than the mythological indestructible black box. You still wouldn't want to be around one, or find an ancient one whose battery life is suddenly coming to an end. Better to drop them in space where, when it does happen, it won't hurt much of anyone.

He doesn't really believe it's impossible - just that there are so many redundancies it makes it highly improbable. You thought the emergency overload bypass was a wise precaution, well, I've got 6 of them, and each one can only fail 1 in a million times. Wouldn't that mean all of them failing at once would only happen 1 in 1 x 10^36 times? Isn't that "impossible?"

Anyway, maybe the antimatter residue is just a stray antimatter particle they got rid of since that is easier than trying to contain it again and putting it back in the POD (for if they made a mistake they could get matter in there, too) so it gets dumped. Oh look, an anti neutron floating in empty space. How quaint. You wouldn't expect to see that naturally laying around in space. Not in this neighborhood.

Perhaps. All those dimensions to play with, and we hardly dipped our toe in any of them yet. But I guess it's a good idea to colonize more than one star system anyway, or next thing you know, a probe like Nomad comes along and destroys the whole stellar system, and then where could you keep your eggs? Nowhere man, the only basket you have was flawed and imperfect. That, or a giant amoeba like organism just eats you, and that's all she wrote for you. Nothing left for a man like Picard to even dig up a million years later. So sad.

Doubtless, we have to discover AG and make IC before we can get to warp. Luckily this seems to avoid relativistic effects, too. Or maybe the big corporations already have it but are still sitting on it since it's a product of alien tech or salvaged time travel ships that crashed. I just don’t see how we can get there to discover it first. We probably just need to do some more math. Or the kind that is tedious, so only when we have AI will it let us know what it found. AI. Hmm. And Data actually using a positronic brain. Ohhhh, that sounds so cool, Issac, but it's just the matter equivalent to electrons or an electronic brain, so how is it really better than an electronic brain? Seems a lot harder to contain the positrons and prevent them from annihilating the normal matter of the rest of the system. So, ever considered a good "reason" for that? Apart from an homage.

Meh, the TOS review thread is bogged down again. 2 post limit annoys me. You'd figure they cut some slack when more than 24 hours had passed.
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/tos-rewatch.283254/