A question about the episode 'A Taste of Armageddon'.

Which is exactly why he got away with it. Several repetitions of Borgus Frat along with other nonsense syllables. But he was the type to throw a "Damn it!" out there. '60s era censorship never let him do it, though.

 

Yes, true. I've studied this very phenomenon. It would be nice to believe that humankind is moving towards higher intelligence, but given the degeneration, I'm not perfectly convinced that's the case.

 

Hmmm...beaming down would be in tune with firing phasers through raised shields. That is a good theory. Although my memories want to say that there is evidence against this, it's been a few years since I last saw any Trek on television. And that leads to false facts and jumbled up theories. However, I do have clearer memories of a TNG episode where I think it was Romulans whom manage to nab Geordi and use his visor as a loop hole for gaining vital information. Like the phase variance frequency to the ship's shielding. Which allows the enemy phasers to pass right through the raised shields. Given that one scene, it would suggest that the ship's own phasers would match this frequency setting to shoot through the shields, much like how a machine gun would shoot through the blades of an old style bi-plane by syncing up to the rhythm of the propeller to avoid destroying it in the process of firing. I suppose teleporters could sync up to that shield frequency to do the same trick.

However, teleporters are a whole ton worth of complications that wouldn't be found in phasers. In fact, I'd bet that there are well over a couple dozen or more episodes that give support to over six theories on how the things work. And all those theories would have a lot of variance. But, that's a topic for what I bet are a lot of threads, already present on this board.

 

Jup, that was ST: Generations, and you might have something there.

 

Good post. I was going to say much the same in response to whomever was promoting the "shields only prevent beaming one way" theory but I forgot to do so.

There's no doubt that TNG would deal with this issue by saying that phasers and photon torpedoes can be fired through the shields because of a frequency or phase variance, and in Generations (the 1994 movie), that's essentially what the producers did assert, at least if you take the next logical step from the Duras sisters being able to get a torpedo through the Enterprise's shields by ascertaining and matching the shield frequency. However, in TOS, before there was a technical solution for every problem where Geordi could adjust the resonance dissonator in the quantum replication field to emit an EPS burst from the deflector dish, I have a feeling that the solution was actually more along the lines of the shields as an energy field that was "skintight" around the ship, and the phaser emitters and the torpedo launchers were outside of that field. Alternatively, perhaps the shields could be dropped around the weapons emitters for a split second while they fired, but the emitters would be shielded the rest of the time to prevent an enemy from piercing the shields that way (and disabling weapons as well).

The problem with extrapolating all of this to the transporter is that it's never made clear in TOS, to my knowledge, where the transporter beam is generated and received. Perhaps the shields can't be dropped around that area, or there's something in the matter-to-energy conversion process that makes it far more complex than firing weapons, and thus ill-suited to whatever allows the phasers and PTs to fire out with shields up. Maybe the data stream carrying transporter patterns is actually more intense than a phaser blast. Maybe it's much too fragile to make it through the shields without scrambling the atoms of the people being transported out; we certainly have ample evidence to conclude that transporting was not the safest process even under peaceful, ideal conditions, let alone while under attack. Since the transporter is probably - depending on where you stand on FTL travel - the least likely piece of Trek technology to ever be invented, I don't think there's a whole lot of information on this out there, at least not from the TOS era, but I'm happy to be educated if anyone knows better.

Returning to A Taste of Armageddon, while it's technically true that no one in the episode says that the shields must be lowered for anyone to beam down, the entire exchange between Fox and Scotty on the bridge seems to lose a lot of its meaning and highly dramatic impact if all they're really debating is whether or not to resume a "peaceful status" as a mere token of goodwill. For example, the idea that Fox could end Scott's career because he refused to lower the shields essentially becomes ridiculous, although Scotty and McCoy treat it quite seriously. Could Starfleet really be blamed for keeping the shields up around its prized vessel AFTER it was fired upon and the Eminians faked a ludicrous message from Kirk about "trained Eminians" beaming up to assume duties on board the ship? But more to the point, if Fox could beam down anyway regardless of shield status, who cares? All he needed to do was transport down with his trusty assistant and that large book (I've always wondered if the poor assistant was supposed to have been killed or just hurt in the corridor, and what that book was), and explain that the Enterprise was being commanded by a rogue engineer who refused to lower the shields despite Fox's orders. Problem solved - that is, if the Eminians had been acting in good faith, which of course they were not.

Because of this, I've always preferred to explain this problem by hypothesizing that Scotty moved the ship out of the Eminians' weapons range (confirmed by dialogue) but still kept it within transporter range, enabling Fox to beam down without risk to the ship. The otherwise unexplained line "I knew it had a rotten ring to it" by Scotty (when talking to Spock) seems to suggest that Anan or someone from Eminiar contacted Fox again, offscreen, and urged him to beam down. Two more interesting points for discussion are the fact that Spock sees the need to order Scotty not to allow anyone to beam down from the Enterprise to the planet's surface, which could support either side of this debate, and Scott's decision not to insist that he could not allow Fox to jeopardize his own safety by beaming down given the Eminians' hostile and duplicitous actions.

Basically, one or two lines of dialogue - "Mr. Scott, can you move the Enterprise out of range of the Eminians' weapons but maintain orbit close enough to transport up the landing party? // Aye, Mr. Spock, I've already determined the range of their weapons and given that order. They can't hit us again but we can beam you up at any time." - would have pretty much solved the problem. I wish those lines were in there!

 

But surely, for both dramatic and continuity reasons, we want it to be impossible to beam people up from the planet?

I mean, if Scotty could do that, it would be a no-brainer to yank Kirk or at least Spock out - Eminiar has no shields, and Spock is a beacon for being biologically distinct. By the rules of the rest of Star Trek, Scotty should beam the heroes to safety - but by the same rules, and those of drama, he is forced to raise shields at the very moment he finally decides it is his duty to attempt the extraction of the top officers.

Similarly, we want it to be possible to beam people down to the planet, and fairly easily at that, so that the civilian Fox (and his aide of unknown capabilities and training) could do it without help and indeed despite the efforts of the crew. Scotty really shouldn't be making things easy for Fox, though, quite the opposite. And if he just plain can't beam Kirk up, should he loiter in a position allowing Fox to beam down?

Well, perhaps he should, in preparation of the situation with the shields changing. But the dialogue, if any, should reflect that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I like the way you think. What you've raised is another problem altogether, and one that recurs in a few other eps where Scotty is in command and the Enterprise is not immobilized; I'm thinking of Bread and Circuses and The Empath, and possibly Return of the Archons, although I believe in the latter that Landru's attack on the ship (diverting transporter power and preventing beamout) does not end until Kirk talks Landru to death, the first of his several quite enjoyable outwit-the-computer forays.

Because I am not a huge TNG aficionado (I like it fine, just don't have dialogue memorized and such), I can't remember if TNG solved this issue, but in TOS, doesn't a shore-bound crewmember need a communicator to transmit coordinates to the ship and/or establish a transporter lock? I thought that was the case, and therefore since Spock and Scotty didn't know where Kirk was, they couldn't beam him out until they located him on the ground. Hence, Spock stayed with the two guards for assistance, and presumably preferred to leave Tamura with Mea rather than beaming Mea to the ship. That still leaves the question of whether or not Scotty should have been able to use the ship's sensors to distinguish one human (or three once Fox & Friend headed down) from a city of Eminians, but the capabilities of the sensors in that regard weren't always consistent either. I believe Spock can tell the difference between Bele and Lokai and locate where they materialize on Cheron, for example.

So maybe one more line of dialogue about how Kirk, Fox, and the aide cannot be located by the sensors, at least not quickly?

 

It is something of a plot point in "The Enterprise Incident" that our heroes need to extract Spock from the Romulan ship while knowing that he has lost the use of his communicator. Locating Spock only takes one and a half lines of dialogue (two and a half if you count Kirk's original command for Chekov to proceed)...

Whether a Romulan battlecruiser full of near-Vulcans or an Eminian tricobalt-bomb-proof bunker full of near-humans is the greater obstacle to sensors is then the point to be debated. But drama-wise, Scotty doesn't even bother to begin the locating attempt until a few seconds before the Eminians open fire at the ship.

Here, as in several other episodes mentioned, Scotty clearly is under no orders to immediately yank the landing party back to orbit at the first sign of trouble. Indeed, it would appear he is generally under opposite orders altogether: "We're probably fine, but if I disappear into thin air in the middle of my big speech, there might be war."

Also, no episode directly states that communicators are needed for beam-up. Conversely, "Bread and Circuses" shows our heroes wearing subcutaneous versions of the communicators for the very purpose of ease of beam-up, yet it never occurs that they would actually be used for their intended purpose. The limitation isn't technological, then, but must be doctrinal. It's just that when the doctrine finally allows for a beam-up attempt, communicators typically no longer are an option, and a variety of sensor tricks sees use, in TOS and TNG and things like ENT alike.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I always saw it as being a real order Scott was going to carry out. Uhura's reaction when he contacts Eminiar VII always reflected that. The above further cements it for me that the Enterprise was going to wipe life off of the map if the Eminians didn't play ball.

Star Trek was always a much darker show, thematically, than people give it credit for.

 

That was "Patterns of Force".

 

Oh, right. In any case, done in the worst traditions of McGyver: our heroes have the means of escaping directly to their ship, but elect to escape to the other side of a single set of steel bars instead, by voluntarily downgrading their hardware.

The communicators later in that episode are torn down by intrigued Nazi scientists, so they're rather useless both in the return-to-ship sense and in the tech-left-behind-and-needing-recovery sense. But the whole episode is another example of our heroes not really wanting to be extracted from their exciting adventure - they have a job to do, and even if it involves being captured by the natives every second commercial break, this is no reason to tell Scotty to stand by with the transporter. Except perhaps to beam down further assets.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Definitely some valid points, but not quite accurate. Before having the subcutaneous transponders injected, Kirk orders Scott (who has one line and then disappears completely for the remainder of the episode) to beam them back up in three hours. However, Kirk and Spock are captured, disarmed and tortured almost immediately, and Eneg the party chairman only manages to spare their lives for one hour before the SS thug overseeing the torture is allowed to kill them. He even emphasizes that he'll be watching the clock. So they had to use the crystals in the transponders to burn through the lock right away, or the Enterprise would have beamed them back too late. (What's not made clear is why the transponders automatically cease to function when removed. As with many of these technological issues, another few words of dialogue would cleared this up with certainty.) But I credit the writers of this one for at least coming up with a workaround for the recurring problem of losing the communicators.

In any case, a full season after A Taste of Armageddon, the subcutaneous transponders' inclusion in the script of POF does seem to confirm that retrieving landing parties is not as easy as just scanning for their signatures and energizing. Even Spock apparently can't be located as the only Vulcanoid on the planet, or he wouldn't need a transponder at all. This further seems to confirm my suspicion that without knowing where Kirk was in TOA, the Enterprise couldn't just beam him up. This is why Spock stays even after contacting the ship, and also why it doesn't help us with the "can transporters penetrate the shields?" dilemma.

 

Never In the episode is there an indication GO24 is a bluff, either. No dialog. No scene.

 

The difference being, if we assume the unstated in the shields case, we get a contradiction. No matter what we assume or leave unassumed in the GO24 case, nobody really needs to care.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Considering people will actually say LOL (and other internet txt acronyms) out loud - No, common speech is not trending toward a 'more intellectual' speech pattern. (IMO)

 

For what it's worth, Kirk tells Mendez "Blast you anyway! You had no right to come along" in "The Menagerie."

 

The dialog that Galileo7 left out of his post is interesting:

Note that the Eminian leader Anan gives up fighting Kirk, opts to try to make peace, and leaves the room and then then Kirk calls Scott and tells him to cancel General Order Twenty Four. If General Order Twenty Four is some bluff there is no need to keep up the pretense after winning, when the former enemy leader has accepted your proposals, and is not present to hear you anyway.

Thus I fear that General Order Twenty Four might not be a bluff.

 

But if there is no need to keep up the pretense, then surely Kirk must cancel the pretense - which happens to be called General Order 24? Otherwise, Scotty would just keep on playacting and pointing his phasers at the cities and whatnot.

"Cancel GO 24" or "Stop bluffing" would simply be alternate ways for Kirk to tell Scotty that the trick is no longer needed.

Timo Saloniemi

 

My view in the context of the show is Kirk never intended to destroy the planet but was letting them know in no uncertain terms he COULD annihilate their planet, could do so on his own authority, and they were severely pushing him to do so. They'd also committed acts of war against the Federation and the Federation would NOT act like their enemy. Scotty didn't know Kirk was kidding because he WASN'T kidding even if he never intended to do it. When you pull out a gun, you need to let the person you're intimidating know you're capable of pulling the trigger even if the point is not to.

It was a reality check akin to THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.



In scholarly terms, I think Kirk would have been wrong to involve himself in their war normally (A treaty to prevent MAD is perfectly rationale even if they went about it in a lemming like way) but they'd murdered a previous ship which had visited and attacked first. All bets were off at that point.

 

Umm, no - there's no evidence the Eminians or the Vendikans had anything at all to do with the disappearance of the Valiant. Or with the disappearances of any of the other ships our heroes were worried about in the teaser. This is simply a wild corner of space, and the UFP forcing Eminiar to give them a treaty port would have helped tame it.

(...Unless one wants to speculate that the War Computers, looking very much like Starfleet ones, were stolen from the Valiant. But that wouldn't work timeline-wise, the computer war being much older than that.)

Timo Saloniemi