Ensign, raise sh- *KABOOM*

[The Borg Queen]

Alas, before the captain had time to finish his sentence and the Ensign had time to act of the orders, the starship was destroyed.

If only there was some way for the Captain to have raised the shields himself without having to wait until telling someone else to do it...

 

[GodThingFormerly]

The original NCC-1701 was capable of automatic shield activation at least as far back as The Changeling.

TGT

 

[GreenBlood]

Sounds like more captains need the kind of mind-ship connection that Tom had with that rogue ship in one of the VOY episodes.
VOY fans, you know the one I mean, right?

 

[Timo]

"Alice".

To a degree, Trek space battles are scripted so that the "man in the loop" approach to combat management makes perfect sense. It does seem to take a finite time for the enemy to go from "He's charging weapons!" to "He's firing, damage on decks one through 42!". And there does seem to be a limit to how fast the enemy can pour out his fire, so that even if the first two seconds of the battle take the shields down to 80%, the battle is not over in ten.

It is actually relatively seldom that we have to endure a discrepancy between the speed of battle in VFX and the speed of battle in dialogue. Even when the M-5 is managing the battle, it doesn't proceed at lightning speed or anything.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vic Sixx]

Under Roddenberry the shields would come on automatically, but under Berman that was no longer the case.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Vic Sixx said:
Under Roddenberry the shields would come on automatically, but under Berman that was no longer the case.

I don't recall that happening in early TNG, but then I haven't seen a single episode of the show since 1994.

TGT

 

[Timo]

Early TNG did have at least one clear auto-shield instance: "The Arsenal of Freedom". The shields coming up on their own saved the ship when the cloaked drone made its first attack. Indeed, one might speculate that auto-shields in the post-TOS era are intended to defeat cloaked attackers, and are tuned to come up specifically when the computer senses something that might be a decloaking enemy. Shield response would be at the Captain's discretion in situations where the enemy is not cloaked and is thus sighted well in advance.

Also, in "We'll Always Have Paris", Data says that the shields "did not have time to respond", rather suggesting that they would have done that on their own if given the time. So there could be another setting protecting against navigation hazards and assorted spatiotemporal anomalies, much like there seemed to be in TOS.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[GodThingFormerly]

^ Thanks for the memoreeez...

TGT

 

[Unicron]

It's a dramatic thing. It makes sense for the shields to function automatically, but then potential threats would seem less exciting to the audience.

 

[Trekker4747]

Clearly unions are alive and well in the future.

 

[Nebusj]

The God Thing said:
The original NCC-1701 was capable of automatic shield activation at least as far back as The Changeling.

Even older -- the earliest reference I can find without working on it is in ``Errand of Mercy'', where the automatic deflectors pop on to deal with the very-nearly-qualifying attack by the Imperial Kingon Cruiser Wussy.

 

[Timo]

Which, given that it succeeded in surprising a Federation ship on alert for war, was probably performed with the help of a fairly high quality cloaking device.

There are some obvious drawbacks to shields that automatically raise themselves. If the enemy wants to provoke our heroes, and they get auto-provoked, there's much less chance for talking it through. Not to mention that auto-shielding appears cowardly to an enemy who wants to play chicken to get the measure of his opponent.

Then there's the problem of interrupted transporter operations: since first volleys seldom are lethal anyway, it might sometimes be a better idea to complete the transport. Sometimes not, though... So what one really needs is a quick-witted helmsman (and/or helmsman-augmenting AI) well versed both in Starfleet's rules of engagement and the Captain's grievances therewith. But even then, there's usually enough time to wait for the skipper to either yell "Shields!" or remain silent.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[GodThingFormerly]

^ If I may quote from the Sacred Text, namely Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek Writer & Director's Guide (Bible) dated April 17, 1967:

COMPUTER:
The logical scientific extention of a somewhat bulky and limited computer of our own 20th century. Deep in the heart of the vessel are rows upon rows of "computer banks", in effect a giant electronic brain, setting course on command, automatically maintaining it, operate the "life-support systems" which include atmopshere and gravity, warn and take action against unexpected dangers and so on.

I would assume that in the event of a catastrophic threat suddenly appearing during a transport, the computer can override the transporter operator and abort the cycle. If it is too late to retrieve the subjects then one may suppose that the computer has been explicitly programmed to sacrifice the beamies in order to safeguard the ship.

TGT

 

[FPAlpha]

Years ago i remember reading a TNG Enterprise Technical Manual book and i think they stated that tzhe various alert level have automatic effects on some systems.

I think yellow alert means automatic activation of the shields whereas red alert activates shields and weapons.

Now the writers sometimes ignored such logical things for plot and drama reasons but i can't believe that when a captain orders Red Alert he has to order every single important combat system to be activated.

Enterprise also had a kind of episode centered around that.. i can't remember which episode and what exactly happened but in it Reed and Archer (or was it Trip) talked about an automatic routine that whenever the captain orders red alert the hull plating would be automatically polarized to save time.
I took this as a subtle wink to TNG and later where this would be commonplace but during Enterprise they would have to come up with new things all the time because they don't have the experience yet.

 

[Timo]

Yeah, it was Reed and Archer in ENT "Singularity". The episode where everybody was behaving erratically and obsessively due to the spatial anomaly of the week, so we shouldn't take everything said by our heroes literally here...

I'd guess the degree to which the computer can wage war on behalf of the crew would be dictated by Starfleet's rules of engagement for the mission in question. And the Federation Flagship on a mission of diplomatic representation would most often have to set the automation to "Nonprovocative" rather than "Defensive" or "Aggressive".

I don't think we ever hear of shields being raised when the hero ship is merely at yellow alert - not unless the CO specifically also orders the shields to be brought up. OTOH, if Picards orders red alert, that's when Riker always feels the need to explicate that shields should be raised and weapons armed, without consulting with Picard.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Borg Queen]

Picard: "Red alert."

Riker: "Raise shields."

Ensign Borg: "Thank you for reminding me. After all my years of training at the Academy, I forgot the standard Starfleet protocol for a Red Alert situation. "

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Timo said:
I'd guess the degree to which the computer can wage war on behalf of the crew would be dictated by Starfleet's rules of engagement for the mission in question. And the Federation Flagship on a mission of diplomatic representation would most often have to set the automation to "Nonprovocative" rather than "Defensive" or "Aggressive".

Diplomatic mission or not, why would enemy provocation even enter into the computer's decision making process? It should be programmed to raise shields based strictly on the actual physics of a particular situation, in the sense that if it doesn't raise shields within 0.002 milliseconds (or whatever) the ship will either be destroyed or damaged to such an extent by the incoming space debris/enemy fire/whatever that an escape or a counterattack would no longer be viable options.

TGT

 

[xortex]

In Errand of Mercy Sulu said, shields just snapped on. Body approaching. It must be automatic when anything approaches.
Riker as the bible says is just a wound up automiton - a marrionette.

Oh and god is jelous too. An obvious foolish emotion.

 

[xortex]

Jelousy is also a sin, isn't it ?

 

[Alidar Jarok]

FPAlpha said:
Years ago i remember reading a TNG Enterprise Technical Manual book and i think they stated that tzhe various alert level have automatic effects on some systems.

I think yellow alert means automatic activation of the shields whereas red alert activates shields and weapons.

That's what I always thought (and I never had the tech manual, so I'm not sure how I got that impression).

Now the writers sometimes ignored such logical things for plot and drama reasons but i can't believe that when a captain orders Red Alert he has to order every single important combat system to be activated.

Enterprise also had a kind of episode centered around that.. i can't remember which episode and what exactly happened but in it Reed and Archer (or was it Trip) talked about an automatic routine that whenever the captain orders red alert the hull plating would be automatically polarized to save time.
I took this as a subtle wink to TNG and later where this would be commonplace but during Enterprise they would have to come up with new things all the time because they don't have the experience yet.

Yep. I had just read something about the original series (or maybe it was about Phase II) before seeing that episode. One of the ideas Rodenberry had (which relates directly to this thread, of course, and I think has been mentioned) is that, when there was a threatening situation, the ship would automatically go to Red Alert and the shields would come on. Reed's idea was basically the same idea (either automatically when the ship gets hit by something or by a command of the captain).