Spoilers Beyond: the technical points (spoilers, and nothing but)
- Thread starter Timo
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More or less. Our heroes recount her story for the benefit of the audience, and supposedly her disappearance was a mystery, with various parties blamed: a Romulan attack, a giant green hand floating in space (both a TOS reference and a visual joke punchlined in the end credits)... But Scotty then declares that considering the evidence, the only correct theory would be the one involving a wormhole.
Of course, Scotty may be wrong about that. But the point is, he authoritatively declares that the ship crashed so far away from home that Edison had zero hope of being rescued by fellow Earthlings during his lifetime. Which just clarifies his position as an irrational madman (Edison's, that is - the jury is still out on Scotty).
Hopefully we get the exact wording when enough people view the movie for the third time.
Timo Saloniemi
It kinda makes you wonder if the refit Enterprise would have left a really cool shipwreck on the surface of Genesis if the planet hadn't exploded.
Star Trek nebulas have NEVER made any sense. The asteroid clutter is just a minor variation on a theme.
The deflector dish is the main component of their shields. We've always kind of known that, but it's interesting to have this spelled out so explicitly: it is basically THE shield generator, with the "shield grid" around the hull probably just helps it keep a nice (mostly) spheroid shape.
It also explains why we're not seeing the big obvious "bubble shield" effect of TNG+. It's because the shields aren't "blocking" incoming projectiles so much as constantly pushing them away from the ship. The only thing those projectiles seem to need is shielding of their own (to prevent being crushed by the deflector) and engines powerful enough to push through them (like Balok's buoy in "Corbomite Maneuver" when Bailey says their deflectors aren't stopping it).
So NuTrek shields aren't an "invisible wall" type thing so much as a powerful always-on, never-visible repulsor beam. In this new paradigm, the shields don't loose power because they've been hit, they loose power because something GOT THROUGH them and damaged the circuits that provide them with power.
It seems there's a big difference between having the SIFs, shields and/or hull polarization up and running and not, especially evident in this movie. I sort of fear the ship in the other ST3 wouldn't have fared well in the final descent.
Unless gravitational fields were still "in flux"...
What bothers me about the setup is that the asteroids are there both right next to Yorktown and right next to Altamid. Is it like that all the way? In that case, the distance between the two locations must be truly minimal, as our heroes cover it within their lifetimes at 50 mph! But there's talk towards the end about the nebula now being essentially open to traffic, what with Krall gone and the new ships supposedly all equipped with Enterprise standard navigation systems. If there's nothing to explore there but Altamid and rocks, why bother?
Great. So now we have to redouble our efforts in figuring out how any starship can make do without a deflector dish...
Might be that the actual shielding machinery is located right behind the dish, not because it needs the dish but because the dish benefits from it. The price to pay: shield generators now have a vulnerability, in the form of said arrangement prompting the designers to put them closer to the surface than in dishless ships.
Timo Saloniemi
I had a thought about that, and I realized that ships like the Bird of Prey and the K'tinga actually do have other features that are visibly tied to their shield system; the bird of prey has those "coils" running along the side of the ship and down the neck, looping up and around the wing roots. That would be the Klingon equivalent of the deflector dish, even if it isn't actually dish shaped (just a whip antenna flattened against the hull). Other ships probably do something similar, but the point seems to be that "deflectors" in the 23rd century probably operate more like antennas than armor; the ship is broadcasting a signal (gravitational waves?) that repels any object above a certain mass away from the ship at high velocity, which more than explains why we haven't SEEN any bubble shields in three movies.
The bubble shields were supposed to be "gravitational waves" in backstage babble, too: gravitons suspended in a subspace trench. I'd guess Earth (or its providers for military goodies) first learned to create feeble artificial gravity (both attractive and repulsive sorts), then intensify it enough for simulating planetary gravity indoors (repulsive gravity would certainly be needed for that in combination with attractive), then intensify it further for turning the starship hulls into neutron stars (all-repulsive here), and finally intensify it even further and project it at a distance.
The 23rd century might represent a stage where stuff is being projected at some distance in some cases, but not very far; the 24th would see the distance effortlessly varied between strong-and-close-but-bumpy and far-and-comfortable-but-weak, but the happy medium would now be about 50-100 m from the ship, rather than the 20 cm of the preceding century.
Timo Saloniemi
The 23rd century might represent a stage where stuff is being projected at some distance in some cases, but not very far; the 24th would see the distance effortlessly varied between strong-and-close-but-bumpy and far-and-comfortable-but-weak, but the happy medium would now be about 50-100 m from the ship, rather than the 20 cm of the preceding century.
Timo Saloniemi
^ Yes, but what I mean in this case is that 23rd century/TOS starship shields probably start affecting the trajectories of incoming weapons and energy at CONSIDERABLE distances, something like 5 or 10km from the ship, if not more than that. Kinda like Neo stopping bullets with his mind. The thing is, most weapons by modern adversaries are equipped with a little rocket booster in the back so when Neo stops the bullets, they fire up again and try to hit him anyway (just not as hard as they would have). 24th century shields probably have the "bubble" effect as a countermeasure against that: the deflectors stop the projectile, and the bubble is a solid holographic shell that those projectiles crash into.
More like 23rd century shields are designed to KEEP threats from getting proximal in the first place. When the shields fail to keep an enemy away, at the very least they'll keep it from hitting you TOO HARD. But either way, you're in a lot of trouble and now have to get creative.
TOS shields worked this way too, as you seem to have forgotten. Balok's buoy, the Romulan torpedo, etc. In later battles it's implied that the strain of keeping enemy fire away from the ship is what's weakening the deflectors; it's never clear to us how far away the Klingon or Orion phaser blasts were actually getting to the hull before the deflectors stopped them.
Which, again, has ALWAYS been a valid tactic, we just never knew why. It could well be that engagement ranges in Star Trek are as close as they are because deflectors are less effective at those ranges and weapons will simply do more damage up close.
I posted this link in Fan Art section too but Trek Collective has posted some design sketches for the Franklin by Sean Hargreaves. More posted over the next few days including the Enterprise-A:
http://www.thetrekcollective.com/2016/08/uss-franklin-production-art-by-sean.html#more
http://www.thetrekcollective.com/2016/08/uss-franklin-production-art-by-sean.html#more
How so? There's no shield activity in relation to Balok's buoy, and certainly no commentary on attempts to block its approach with shields at a distance. There'd be no good reason for our heroes to apply shields there, either. No shields are mentioned as regards the Romulan plasma cloud, either, nor is there any mention of trying to defeat the cloud from approaching, or the defenses weakening it, or anything.
TOS shields might work exactly the same as TNG shields for all we know. Or then completely differently.
Apparently not, because adversaries in TOS did not opt to use it.
I dig the compactness of the ship, and the consistency in interior design. Whether this looks anything like a breaker of speed records or a tool of trade for the MACO (back in the 2140s-50s) is a different matter...
Timo Saloniemi
I get the sense that the nebula was supposed to be a large dark nebula (like a king-size version of the Coalsack), as if you think of it as that all of the verbal references make more sense. However, I assume it was decided that flying Enterprise through a giant, lightyears across dark cloud wasn't particularly visually interesting for a big budget movie - particularly as part of a movie series that had been previously dinged for flying through big, uninteresting space clouds.
Jackill had a page on the turbolift cars in his 1st Reference book.
The moment it approaches, Bailey announces "Deflectors aren't stopping it." So the Buoy pretty much ignores their shields and closes on them anyway.
Commander Hansen: "Had our deflector shield on maximum.... Hit by enormous power... First attack blew our deflector shield... If they hit us again with our deflector shield gone... Do you read me, Enterprise?
So TOS shields/deflectors become active at considerable distance, maybe tens or hundreds of kilometers. It's an active repulsor system that pushes objects away from you or, failing that, reduces their kinetic energy when they DO hit you. Balance of Terror established that some weapons simply ignore deflectors and hit you anyway; "Corbomite Maneuver" makes this explicit. And "Where No Man Has Gone Before" gives us an indication that deflectors will interact with objects around the ship LONG before the ship is close enough to make contact.
Makes sense - early in TOS the deflectors were envisioned as a series of repulsor beams that would sweep far ahead of the ship,clearing the path of anything that might collide with the vessel as it travelled at superluminal speeds.
In fact, phasers were said to be an offshoot of this technology as well - just increase the power to a deflector at shorter range and WHAM! A powerful weapon.
In fact, phasers were said to be an offshoot of this technology as well - just increase the power to a deflector at shorter range and WHAM! A powerful weapon.
Yep, it was definitely accidental. But if the cars weren't designed to be space-safe, the air would've begun leaking out as soon as the shaft was breached. There wasn't any indication that they were losing atmosphere (though you could probably argue that if they were, it would explain why the Swarm ship that caught them cracked open the lift rather than just carrying them back down to the planet).
How so? Two centimeters would cover the Outpost Deflector issue, and would much better fit the way the Enterprise protects herself during that fight.
And the "shields/deflectors" vs. shields=deflectors" distinction is probably at the core of this anyway. The navigational deflector in all eras would reach out to considerable distance, and stop many types of threat but not be particularly helpful against weapons. It's just called "the meteorite beam" in "The Cage", but performs the same practical and dramatic function at the same distance in "Corbomite Maneuver". Whatever combat protection there is to the starship, this doesn't kick in until much later, either practically or dramatically.
And may have remained that way throughout all of Star Trek, really. "Shields" were invented for "Return of the Archons" and exclusively dealt with weapons fire; most previous mentions of "deflectors" do not appear to refer to this system at all, but to the system that is supposed to stop unknown, "natural" threats at a distance, a system that remains part of the Trek concept till the 24th century.
Timo Saloniemi
