Ent 2.12 - The Catwalk

[Thorius]

So, I just started watching Enterprise Season 2, Ep 12, "The Catwalk". The setup for the show is that they are in orbit of a planet they were going to explore, but there's a neutron wave approaching their location.

Their trying to figure out what to do, since they can't move fast enough to outrun the wavefront, and they're talking about hiding in a catwalk.

So, I have to ask the obvious question - wouldn't you just move Enterprise "behind" the planet? Neutrons are NOT going to penetrate thousands of kilometers of water, rocks, and metals, unless the wave is so powerful it's going to completely destroy the planet.

Heck, at nuclear plants, they store spent reactor fuel rods in pools of water, because a few meters of water (about 20 feet) will block almost 100% of the radiation (Neutron, Gamma Rays, Alpha Particles and Beta Particles) from the fuel rods.

I suppose in Star Trek, we accept things don't always work the same way as they do in the real world, but generally the show's writers are pretty good about at least giving an excuse for why the OBVIOUS solution doesn't apply in the particular circumstance, but it seems like it never even occurred to them to try hiding behind the planet?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Judging by the VFX, they could have gone over or under it, too. Like Khan, the entire Enterprise crew forgot that space is three dimensional.

This frequent missing of obvious solutions was very frustrating for me, watching the first two seasons. And quite a bit of other Trek, too. Heck, my sister piping up with, "That's stupid. Why didn't they just take Edith to the future with them?" has forever tainted for me what many consider to be Trek's finest hour, "The City on the Edge of Forever"

 

[Thorius]

Judging by the VFX, they could have gone over or under it, too. Like Khan, the entire Enterprise crew forgot that space is three dimensional.

Yeah, that too. Although, I have to wonder - the neutron front was supposed to be moving at warp speeds, e.g. faster than the speed of light. How do you "see" something that is moving faster than light - wouldn't the storm reach you long *before* the photons from it, so that the storm is effectively invisible?

BTW, as to your sister's question about "City on the Edge of Forever", if you remember, part of the episode was trying not to change the past. Every time Star Trek has a time travel episode, the implied (and often stated) challenge is you do NOT change the past any more than is unavoidable, because you do not know what impact changing the past will have on the future. Removing Edith from her normal timeline might dramatically alter the future - maybe she, or one of her descendants which she *would* have had if you didn't remove her from the past, accomplishes something of historical significance - a great scientific discovery, a major cultural contribution (maybe she becomes a diplomat and stops a war which prevents the death of the great-grandmother of Zephraim Cochrane, who knows?).

So, we don't take people out of the past into the future, because that changes history.

 

[F. King Daniel]

^But Edith was supposed to die in a car accident - if she lived, her peace movement delays the US entry into WWII and the Nazis win. Now, if she disappeared (with Kirk, Spock and McCoy to the future) instead of died, the same result is achieved. The episode is "placate the time donut", which controlled if and when they returned, rather than "save history".

 

[MacLeod]

Well unless Neutrons can travel faster than light, they should have been able to out run it

 

[Mytran]

It was indeed a FTL cloud, as stated (somewhere) in the episode.

The 2-dimensional thinking is pretty silly however.