Fanwank reason for "Battleship Fights"

[Richard Baker]

Who designed those super-high voltage consoles anyway?
In TMP we see one opened up in Engineering and it is mostly fiber optic cables.

(I know it is for drama, having a battle rage on and people just looking at and casually tapping a panel does not lend itself the feeling of imminent danger as well as having the bridge blow up all around you)

 

[Maurice]

BZZZT. Wrong re exploding consoles. Sulu's panel blew up in "The City of the Edge of Forever", 15 years before TWOK.

 

[BillJ]

BZZZT. Wrong re exploding consoles. Sulu's panel blew up in "The City of the Edge of Forever", 15 years before TWOK.

Thanks. I knew we had an exploding console before TWOK but couldn't remember when.

Thinking back, doesn't the navigation console blow up in Gary Mitchell's face in "Where No Man..."?

 

[The Wormhole]

A further irritant: Voyager's consoles exploded at least the first time she landed on a planet. Which is something she was designed to do in the first place. Starfleet could anticipate the need for shocks to brace the landing struts for a massive vessel, but it couldn't anticipate circuit breakers and fuses for the consoles!

Didn't that planet have some funky atmospheric conditions which messed with the transporters and were hazardous to shuttles, necessitating the need to land the ship? Presumably it's said conditions which caused the consoles to explode. Not that that's much of an excuse.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

My biggest issue with Trek battles is the constantly exploding consoles, which all started with Wrath of Khan. I guess fuses are a lost technology in Trek's time.

IIRC, the exploding consoles were only used to help simulate the deaths of crewmembers, in the Kobayashi Maru, too

Yep. Crewmembers are supposed to die during that simulation, often in the quickest and most haphazard way possible. The sim is designed to kill everyone off quickly, just so the captain (cadet) will know what it's like to lose. Crew deaths and exploding consoles aren't supposed to be realistic - at least not in the sim. They're just supposed to go BOOM-BOOM-BOOM and bingo, everybody's dead.

 

[T'Girl]

... the Narada's cluster missiles.

Interestingly, these weapons were powerless to protect the targeted ship herself, but very effective at protecting a third party: both the Kelvin and the Enterprise were hit hard, but the Kelvin provided complete and effortless protection for the shuttles and ...

Perhaps Timo the Narada's cluster missiles could only protect themselves with their own "forward shields," but were defenseless from all other angles.

It would make sense if the missiles had limited shielding capacity, that the shield would be fixed to protect against fire from the targeted ship.

 

[publiusr]

Seeing this invention made me wonder about space battles:
http://breakthroughs.kera.org/r2d2-like-robot-joins-battle-against-hospital-infections/

Each time the beam is activated, you hear a slap/popping sound.

I'm thinking that a realistic space battle scene can be had by having the most washed out camcorder you can find, aim a timing light at a cardboard target with a lighter on the back side to char the model from behind, while emitting the same sound--as only heard on the attacking spacecraft as it watches a washed out monitor with harsh lighting.

Something like this old thing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PXL-2000

With this kind of look http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Burnt_Frost

Or the Progress TORU footage.

Casaba howitzers would pack a punch

 

[Timo]

It would make sense if the missiles had limited shielding capacity, that the shield would be fixed to protect against fire from the targeted ship.

...Assuming these were even weapons in the first place. If they are just mining ordnance, the reasons for them being strong at the "tip" might have to do with the realities of asteroid mining.

A more mundane reason for their odd mix of resilience and vulnerability might be that they go multi-warhead only at the very last second before impacting. If targeted at a starship, they thus split just before reaching phaser "range" (dictated by reaction speed, not by the actual range of the death ray) and pose an impossible task for the defender. But if targeted at a third party, they are still in one piece when the starship takes its potshots at them, and are easy prey.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[NOVE9]

Pretty sure there was an exploding console in TMP where Chekov burns his hand as well. It's all for drama anyway, if a little over done though.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Pretty sure there was an exploding console in TMP where Chekov burns his hand as well.

No, the console itself doesn't actually explode, but a bolt of energy (from V'Ger) does burn his hand.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Star Trek has many warp chase scenes, and none of them involve the chasing ship slowly gaining or losing ground.

Encounter at Farpoint, Q Who.

 

[mswood]

Several Enterprise Episodes as well, Fallen Hero, Future Tense were some of the better of those.

 

[Cyke101]

BZZZT. Wrong re exploding consoles. Sulu's panel blew up in "The City of the Edge of Forever", 15 years before TWOK.

But it didn't kill Sulu, either.

 

[eyeresist]

So you can't beam through a shield, is that right?

Mostly, no, but there's been times when suitably ingenious ways around that have been found.

Actually, in TOS, there didn't appear to be any "can't beam down through shields" rule. There was only a "can't beam up through shields" rule, starting with "Arena". Which makes sense - the ships can spit out weapons fire when shielded, so why not transportees? It's only the incoming stuff that needs to be protected against.

So, yes, it has happened.

Thanks. It does seem to me that if beaming through shields was possible it would become an important part of intership fighting. Why use external projectiles to try to cause a breach, when you could beam in explosives, or antimatter, or sleeping gas, or a boarding party. Or you could just beam the enemy bridge and gunnery crews out of their stations!