Finish what word?
It only got confusing when TNG came up with "The Alpha Quadrant". Before that the usage was clear.
How are planets defended in Star Trek?
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It only got confusing when TNG came up with "The Alpha Quadrant". Before that the usage was clear.
When you say "Quadrant", you usually mean ¼ of something.
So what unit of volume or area are they refering to?
The word is usually attached to something, not left by itself.
At least with TNG, and now that it's widely accepted.
The Quadrant is splitting our Milky-way Galaxy into 4x chunks from a Top-Down Orthographical PoV.
There's clarity in it's meaning.
That would be a phrase not a word.
The characters would have the context to understand what’s meant. If I say it’s the only one in the state, the person I’m talking to understands that it’s the state we are in. Just as the crew of the Enterprise understands which quadrant they are in if they are identified as “the only ship in the quadrant.”They don’t need to be told which quadrant it is.
As for quadrant of what? I’d say sector. The galaxy is divided into sectors and each sector is divided into quadrants.
Maybe TNG’s writers should have paid closer attention to how quadrant was used in TOS.
Or they have their reasons to change the meaning of the word.
And now it generally sticks in newer Trek productions.
That tends to be how it works.
It was never really consistent on the OG, but as a kid, I always assumed each sector was divided into quadrants.
As did I.
Me three.
Yes, it wouldn't be exactly like a starship's deflectors because a lot of the deflector's purpose is to push aside dust and pebbles in space. Even at high sublight speeds, hitting grains of dust would be bad.
I guess we should add the unnamed planet in "The Paradise Syndrome" to the list. (According to Memory Alpha, the planet was named Amerind in the script, a truly terrible name, a portmanteau, if you can see it.)
It had a deflector system in the obelisk built by the Preservers whose purpose was to protect the planet from asteroids.
In Whom Gods Destroy, they could blast through the field, but would risk destroying the colony dome, which would kill everybody on Elba II. They talked about taking out the field on the other side of the planet where it was weakest, but a team in EV suits would have to cover "thousands of miles through poisonous atmosphere before they'd ever reach the asylum." and they wouldn't be able to take anything with them heavy enough to breach the dome, and if they did breach the dome, everyone inside would die.
That part didn't actually make any sense, but whatevs. Season three silliness.
Transcript:
SULU: The force field is weakest on the far side of the planet. We can send down a shuttlecraft carrying a team in environmental suits.
MCCOY: It won't work, Scotty. They'd have to cover thousands of miles through poisonous atmosphere before they'd ever reach the asylum.
If they've managed to land a shuttle, why exactly couldn't it fly through the atmosphere around the planet? What, it's gonna crash when they break through the shield? If so, they glossed over that dangerous part. The shield prevents aircraft from flying above a certain, low altitude? Crickets. They don't even try to spell it out.
And how does taking out the shield on the other side of the planet damage the prison?
The Enterprise comes along
It doesn't, but for some reason they couldn't get to the prison from the other side of the planet, and if they could, they wouldn't be able to get inside except by breaching the colony dome. At least that was the dialog between McCoy and Scotty.
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