Hear, hear.
Doomsday machine theory
- Thread starter A Ruffian
- Start date
Yep, everything I need to know about it was told to me in the episode. I actually like having things not explained to death. But you all have at it.
I just wish the production info on the model was actually more in depth. The "windsock dipped in cement" holds ZERO water for me, it's clearly a model and one made to bring to mind a giant sperm whale, which (wait for it) fits the premise of the episode. Right down to the tail.
Oh, wow.Yep, everything I need to know about it was told to me in the episode. I actually like having things not explained to death. But you all have at it.
I just wish the production info on the model was actually more in depth. The "windsock dipped in cement" holds ZERO water for me, it's clearly a model and one made to bring to mind a giant sperm whale, which (wait for it) fits the premise of the episode. Right down to the tail.
HD caps reveal what appears to be transparent Scotch tape at the mouth in several places:
Maybe the model was made of chicken wire, lined with painted paper, and the outside of it was then wrapped in painted paper and taped up. And the paint job is fantastic. It looks like a very alien material, rough-hewn (who can work neutronium?), and ancient. The detailed weathering is superb.
I think Dochterman's theory that it was a wire frame surrounding a fresnel light, wrapped with gaffer's foil and blue lighting gels is probably correct. Those are all materials they would have had on hand and been able to use in order to put the model together pretty quickly.
Neutronium is only indestructible once cooled.
Like adamantium.
That's my head canon.
But you could never fit a Fresnel light inside the model. Look at the size of the transparent tape for scale. I think the mouth is only about 4 inches (10 cm) in diameter, give or take some. It's way too small to have a Fresnel light in there.
A fan attempt and history
www.trekbbs.com
www.trekbbs.com
DOOMSDAY: A Star Trek Fan Production
A fan film portraying events aboard the Constellation and its encounter with the Planet Killer. I wish I'd known they were making this because I could have told them the details of that encounter spelled out in Spinrad's story outlines. Some really preposterous scaling issues, with the titular...
www.trekbbs.com
The DOOMSDAY MACHINE- Videos, stills, rare insights, fan made material
I will start with this video I put together a few years ago. A side by side comparision of two wonderful artists and their own unique vision of the classic episode. https://vimeo.com/111014212 And of course, the Constellation uniform insignia...
www.trekbbs.com
Last edited:
Harry Mudd: The tricky thing about neutronium is... if you ever manage to process it in its raw liquid form, you've got to keep it that way. Got to keep it hot! Because once the liquid cools... it's indestructible.
(a neutronium android appears next to Mudd)
Mudd: I used to think you were one of a kind, Data. I was wrong.
(The neutronium android sends Data flying with the flick of a wrist)
Data: ****
"Neutronium," like "dilithium," does not exist—one of those "in universe" things one must simply accept at face value. I'm guessing the author(s) who came up with it (the term is used again in "A Piece of the Action") was alluding to neutron stars. While commonly "accepted" in mainstream astrophysics, neutron stars were an ad-hoc "explanation" for the faster-and-faster pulsars detected in space. Pulsars are assumed to be spinning "like a lighthouse," and above a certain rate even the densest matter would blow apart. Ergo, "neutron stars." Hand-wavium. Ignore the fact that neutrons degrade into other particles after 14 minutes outside an atomic nucleus, and repel each other.
(There are alternative models for pulsars that do not require a spinning body. And the Structured Atom Model posits that neutrons "do not exist" as primary particles, as they degrade into a proton and an electron outside an atomic nucleus.)
Whatever the DDM material is, it stands up to full phaser fire without a twitch. Considering the compositing techniques available at the time, it is hard to say exactly what one is looking at on-screen. Bluescreening required a lot of fill light on the model, explaining the diffuse shadows and generally ghostly appearance of the Enterprise itself. The DDM looked partly translucent, like an uncut diamond, or etched glass. (Here and there a star may be seen through, but I took that as a hole in the traveling matte.) It is possible that "neutronium" or some other ultra-dense material might be partly transparent or translucent.
As for "Fresnel lights," that refers to the flat lens used to focus the light. (I'll allude to lighthouses again!) I think the transporter platform used Fresnels in the transport pads. Anyway, Fresnel spotlights come in a variety of sizes, including some smaller sizes that would fit easily into a model about the length of the Enterprise model. And I'm guessing the model was around that size (2 to 3 meters in length), otherwise it would present depth-of-field problems for the cameras. If the model contained a small spotlight, then the heavy foil used on studio lights would stand up to the heat—and give the same appearance after compositing as seen in the episode.
Lastly, I just wanted to say that whatever the original VFX artists used for the plasma field in the throat of the DDM, it looked much better than any of the CGI re-creations I've seen. All the CGI stuff made the DDM look like a videogame sprite.
(There are alternative models for pulsars that do not require a spinning body. And the Structured Atom Model posits that neutrons "do not exist" as primary particles, as they degrade into a proton and an electron outside an atomic nucleus.)
Whatever the DDM material is, it stands up to full phaser fire without a twitch. Considering the compositing techniques available at the time, it is hard to say exactly what one is looking at on-screen. Bluescreening required a lot of fill light on the model, explaining the diffuse shadows and generally ghostly appearance of the Enterprise itself. The DDM looked partly translucent, like an uncut diamond, or etched glass. (Here and there a star may be seen through, but I took that as a hole in the traveling matte.) It is possible that "neutronium" or some other ultra-dense material might be partly transparent or translucent.
As for "Fresnel lights," that refers to the flat lens used to focus the light. (I'll allude to lighthouses again!) I think the transporter platform used Fresnels in the transport pads. Anyway, Fresnel spotlights come in a variety of sizes, including some smaller sizes that would fit easily into a model about the length of the Enterprise model. And I'm guessing the model was around that size (2 to 3 meters in length), otherwise it would present depth-of-field problems for the cameras. If the model contained a small spotlight, then the heavy foil used on studio lights would stand up to the heat—and give the same appearance after compositing as seen in the episode.
Lastly, I just wanted to say that whatever the original VFX artists used for the plasma field in the throat of the DDM, it looked much better than any of the CGI re-creations I've seen. All the CGI stuff made the DDM look like a videogame sprite.
FWIW, the term 'neutronium' was coined by a chemist creating a new periodic table in 1926 (his name for a theoretical 'element 0' with no protons/electrons).
During my life, as I've read things about astronomy/cosmology, I've seen the term used by authors to refer to the super-dense degenerative matter theoretically found at the cores of neutron stars.
So, at best, the author of TDDM co-oped the term but he didn't make it up.
During my life, as I've read things about astronomy/cosmology, I've seen the term used by authors to refer to the super-dense degenerative matter theoretically found at the cores of neutron stars.
So, at best, the author of TDDM co-oped the term but he didn't make it up.
If you're willing to watch a show with faster than light warp drive travel and transporters, believing in neutronium doesn't seem like such a big deal.
You did read the line where I said "one of those 'in universe' things one must simply accept at face value"? Sometimes I'll bring up a detail like "neutronium" to introduce an associated topic like SAM (Structured Atom Model), which is an alternative model for atoms that is still being hashed out. I thought some TrekBBS visitors might find the subject interesting. Meanwhile the Bohr atom, like a tiny Solar system, is still taught in basic science classes, despite being deprecated long ago.
And since you brought it up, faster-than-light may be a reality, although that does not mean we can ever travel at such speeds. There are many arguments for it, and astronomer Tom Van Flandern calculated the speed of gravity at around 20 billion times faster than light. (Among his tests was "aberration" between sunlight and gravity during an eclipse. That is, sunlight came in at an angle pointing to where the Sun was about 500 seconds previously, while the gravity of the Sun showed no aberration at all. For that matter, celestial mechanics, like navigating space probes to the planets, ignores speed-of-light and treats gravity as instantaneous. And the spacecraft make their appointed rounds, as expected.)
But-but-but—Einstein! He was a notable scientist, but none should be on a pedestal. Aristotle was trouble enough that way. Maxwell's electrodynamics are a part of Einsteinian Relativity, even though he knew it introduced certain problems. And the work of Edward Dowdye shows that the "gravitational lensing" around the Sun described in ER is not observed. (It is likely that the "lensing" observed by Eddington during an eclipse was nothing more exotic than starlight being refracted through the plasma atmosphere of the Sun, like a spoon standing in a glass of water. But the "lensing" expected several diameters away from the Sun is not observed.)
There's a lot of great sci-fi out there that had questionable or even fantastic "science" at the time of writing, and which becomes even more quaint with time. But that does not stop them from being great stories anymore than beloved sword and sorcery tales. It is those with a black-and-white, all-or-nothing attitude who must live boring lives.
Those that do usually hang out and discuss such in the Science and Tech forum further downstairs....
My snarky side suggests "Neutronium" could have simply been a brand name of some alloy.Of course, that would be out of character for Spock who'd prefer a peer reviewed and accepted scientific name.
SPOCK: Negative, Captain. Its hull is pure neutronium. There is no known way of blasting through it.
If Neutronium is a neutron particle, and if it is considered a noble gas (element 0 location on Antropoff's periodic table), then theoretically, under enough pressure (incredibly high) and/or low enough temperature (absolute zero?), Neutronium can be made solid. Somehow, the Doomsday Machine maintains these conditions for its hull, or once Neutronium is solidified, it becomes stable matter (since it doesn't "vaporize" once the machine is "dead", i.e. no power output).
As mentioned already, Peter David does great work connecting the Doomsday Machine to TNG in "Vendetta." It's a far better story than First Contact or any of the films. It has some epic sequences, including the E-D entering the space between the twin hulls of a Romulan Warbird and spinning while firing weapons to destroy it. I wish writers like Peter David and other novelists were asked to pitch stories or write screenplays for Trek movies.
Are you sure that's from Vendetta? It's been forever since I last read the book, but I don't remember that part.
Wasn't there a story that David submitted a script without his name on it to TNG and they picked it immediately? And then they found out it was him and (politely?) declined?
Then what is TNG doing in the TOS forum?
"Lighten up, Francis."
Similar threads
