Did Balok Really Fall for It?
- Thread starter Brutal Strudel
- Start date
Yeah, this thought occurred to me recently as well, but, yes, it appears clear that he wasn't actually fooled and the test would proceed the same either way. Otherwise, it wouldn't make sense as a test if the plan was to actually destroy the Enterprise.
I'd bet that one of those First Federation golfballs would have been a good match for a Borg cube.
Unless failing the test meant being destroyed. But I agree.
Whether or not Balok fell for the Corbomite ruse, the Romulans definitely did--as they fell for lovey-dovey turncoat Spock, Garak's forgery and whatever it was hat required Troi's plastic surgery. Romulans are kinda dumb, aren't they?
Did anyone not find Balok's drinking of the Tranya no reassurance at all of the safety of human comsuption?
First he has 3 cups already filled and then fills his own, so drinking his own really doesn't say what's in the other three, then there's alien body chemsitry and other considerations.
Plus, what is it? A juice? Alcoholic? Is Balok so nicely toasted that he doesn't care about if Kirk shoots the puppet? He sure laughs a lot. I think he's relishing the Trayna quite a bit.
Bailey, you can't handle pressure, have some of this and you'll mellow right out, nothing will phaze you.
First he has 3 cups already filled and then fills his own, so drinking his own really doesn't say what's in the other three, then there's alien body chemsitry and other considerations.
Plus, what is it? A juice? Alcoholic? Is Balok so nicely toasted that he doesn't care about if Kirk shoots the puppet? He sure laughs a lot. I think he's relishing the Trayna quite a bit.
Bailey, you can't handle pressure, have some of this and you'll mellow right out, nothing will phaze you.
I now think of the First Federation as being similar to the First Ones of Babylon 5 - for the most part they don't concern themselves with the lesser races. Unless they're a bored border guard, I guess.Timo said:
Perhaps Balok "deactivated" the landing party's phasers upon arrival. It seemed that most of the more advanced civilizations had this capability.
That's a possibility, but the test wasn't over until the ship had the opportunity to rescue the small craft. Either way, they wouldn't have died at the end of the countdown.
Ah. Good point.
When Kirk asks Spock how big the Feaarius is, Spock replies "The reading goes off my scale, Captain. Must be a mile in diameter."
What?? The ship's sensors regularly measure the diameter and mass of entire planets, and suddenly something that's one lousy mile in diameter is off the scale?
Also, if the Fesarius is a mile in diameter, it would only be about twice as big as the Enterprise. The image we see indicates that Balok's ship is several times as big.
What?? The ship's sensors regularly measure the diameter and mass of entire planets, and suddenly something that's one lousy mile in diameter is off the scale?
Also, if the Fesarius is a mile in diameter, it would only be about twice as big as the Enterprise. The image we see indicates that Balok's ship is several times as big.
no doubt there's a dead man switch that releases the bear
Sorry, I don't have a reasonable rationale for that one. It definitely was an awkward and, well, illogical statement.
If we accept the notion the Enterprise is "roughly" 1,000 feet long (947 feet according to the vintage "Making of Star Trek" book), it would still take about 6 starships aligned bow to stern to approximate the diameter of Balok's ship.
Sincerely,
Bill
Well, Kirk asked for the object's mass, and that's what Spock said was "off his scale". The diameter estimate, while atypically inaccurate for Spock, would be a separate issue.
In a universe where gravity manipulation is commonplace, it might be that the mass of the Fesarius indeed goes "off the scale" - either because it exceeds the masses of routinely measured astronomical objects hundredfold, or because the methods used for measuring the mass of a gravity-manipulated object are fairly limiting to begin with.
Timo Saloniemi
Actually, though this is one of my favorite episodes, scale is off as well with the warning buoy.
Sulu or Bailey says it measures about 107meters on a side, yet it is way smaller than the Enterprise saucer, generally accepted these days at 127 meters in diameter!
Sulu or Bailey says it measures about 107meters on a side, yet it is way smaller than the Enterprise saucer, generally accepted these days at 127 meters in diameter!
I think you're right, it might have a small neutron star as it's power source in the middle. That would certainly be massive.
^^^Neutron stars are small by definition, but don't think they can get tiny enough to fit inside the Fesarius, unless the whole ship is just a shell around one... and even then it's have to be about 6 miles diameter (about 300 Enterprises across). If they have enough mass to get smaller than that they cross the mass limit and collapse into black holes.
RE BALOK PUPPET HEAD
It was designed and made specifically for the show (link).
RE BALOK PUPPET HEAD
It was designed and made specifically for the show (link).
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The only out from that one that I can think of is that the cube is off to portside bow, and 1593 meters away as stated.
Indeed, it would make sense for Kirk to try and keep his bow turned away from the cube, in hopes of steering past it.
The First Federation could quite plausibly have the technology to carry onboard very massive black holes. Gravity manipulation (and general mucking about with spacetime and lightspeed) might even in theory enable one to "compact a black hole", that is, reduce the diameter of the event horizon while hiking up the mass.
However, the relevant question here is, how does one measure mass? It's far from said that the ship has some sort of a very sensitive balance aboard that detects the pull of the object, and actually rather likely that some less direct methods are used for determining the mass of, say, a planet or a spacecraft. And the limits of the "scale" would then be specific technological limits applying to a particular measuring technique; it would be no consolation that Spock could easily assign a mass value to the entire universe and write it down on a PADD.
Timo Saloniemi
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