How Exactly Were The Narada's Torpedoes "Powerful"?

They knocked out the Kelvin's warp drive with a single shot, crippled the Enterprise's shields and caused Sulu to exclaim "We can't take another hit like that!".

Yet for all their supposed might, on closer examination the weapons of the Narada don't look all that imposing. They explosions they cause are pitiful - easily surpassed by standard munitions available today. They cause minor hull damage and scorch marks. Look at the final trailer and freeze-frame it when the torpedo hits the Enterprise's dorsal - the explosion is pathetic. I've seen better from an RPG. The photon torpedoes in the Kobayashi Maru simulator seemed far more impressive, with the ability to blast a starship to bits with a single hit.

How exactly are these things so formidable? Can we explain this?

 

Simple. Sci-Fi and movies in general always get yields wrong. Movie powerful and actual powerful are two very different powerfuls.

 

You'd think movies, with their tendency to want to inspire awe over depicting reality, would aim for the higher of the two powerfuls.

 

If you have as much experience with real weapons as you indicate, you should know they never, ever do.

 

Ahh, but why? Why would special effects guys intentionally make a shot look less impressive?

 

Well, in a lot of cases in films recreating more traditional ground-based warfare, weapons yields are underpowered because nobody would be able to survive battles as staged if they were really as destructive as they are in real life. For example, the supposed super-powerful aliens weapons in the first Transformers were less potent than most modern weaponry because the final close-quarters battle in Mission City would have killed everyone and leveled half the buildings if they weren't. Hollywood has a style for this kind of thing now--we "know" how explosions should look, how much punch they should have, and so forth, and that carries over to all kinds of media. They've always gotten it wrong, so they got it wrong in Star Trek, too.

 

We all have to accept that showing a nuke style massive flash of light on screen might not work very well as part of a movie. If the torpedoes are a kind of shaped charge then a lot of the energy could be aimed inwards, rather than the wide distribution of a modern day nuclear weapon.

Therefore all of that energy is focussed into those parts of the ship that are impacted, basically making the ships amazingly tough surviving even one hit without shields.

 

Movies are hamstrung, because they must engender the aura of jeopardy for the protagonists without actually blowing them to smitherines.

 

they had to give winona kirk enough time to escape. sometimes, as in the kobyashi maru, the weapons are more powerful and more believable.

 

I presume that, as a mining vessel, the Narada's torpedoes were really just 24th-century Romulan heavy mining ordinance, meant to blow asteroids into dust (which can then be collected electrostatically by all the surface area provided by those arms). The torpedoes are meant to pulverize rocky and metallic asteroids, not vaporize them or scatter a few radioactive molecules across a solar system, but with a good shot, they can very effectively inflict a lot of damage on another starship.

 

When have ST weapons ever been depicted consistently or realistically?

 

Agreed. According to the Countdown comic, didn't the Narada have Borg enhanced weapons and shields? It should have been able to repel almost all attacks instantly.

 

My guess is that with a hundred years plus advantage in technology, and Borgtech to boot, the torpedoes' main threat is the way they just ignore most shields and go straight to the hull. With shields down, one photon torpedo can blast a ship to smithereens. With shields up, the Narada's enhanced mining charges can still just sail on through, latch onto the hull, and blow lots of nasty little holes in a ship that otherwise would've been untouched until its big beefy shields got drained.

That, and maybe since there's Borgtech involved, the yield of the blast isn't the dangerous part of the Narada's munitions. Perhaps they're designed to do just enough damage to get through the hull plating, then Borgie-bits infiltrate and wreck merry havoc on ship's systems that they infiltrate.

Or. Maybe, the film-makers just aren't being anything near consistent, sacrificing common sense as well as any hint of plausible realism for some flashy visuals and a couple of dramatic-sounding lines.

Smart money says...

 

I don't know. Considering that the "E" is over 700m long that's a pretty impressive explosion to me.

 

That's something you have to forgive in sci-fi combat - and unshielded ship should actually be obliterated by even a low-yield torpedo. Heck, if shields are down, you could riddle it with holes via the use of good ol' kinetic weapons, or detonate a few nukes nearby to cook everybody aboard with neutrons, unless the hull itself is armored.

This doesn't make for very exciting combat though.

Part of the problem is that they started off the franchise with tech that's a bit too advanced, and it rather limits what you can do, drama-wise. I had hopes that Enterprise would be different - with no phasers, no shields, no tractor beam, etc. Unfortunately, 'hull plating is down to 25%!' sounds just like 'shields are down to 25%!' only makes less sense. What does that even mean anyway? The overall thickness of the plating has been reduced to 25% of its original thickness?

I very much enjoyed the way Battlestar Galactica handled the space combat. No lasers, no blasters, etc. Missiles, cannons, and guns. No shields, just thick-ass armor and point-defense guns for shooting down incoming fire. And throughout the course of the show, the poor Galactica looked more and more the worse for the wear.

 

In addition to the above, the actual effectiveness of real world weapons isn't readily apparent to observers. APDS rounds can drill through both sides of an AFV and decimate the crew, yet unless the ammo load detonates, observers might not see much more than a small amount of debris spalling off on impact and the AFV rocking. An M1 was mission killed by an AT hit on its flanks, and the only visible sign was a small hole near the tracks.

Similarly, everything from smart bombs to MIRVs have decreased in size and yield as their accuracy and ability to penetrate defenses has increased. Many targets that formerly were dealt with large yield weapons that nearby can now be neutralized with weapons that hit in or on the target. That allows more flexibility, reduced collateral damage, and increased cost effectiveness. So, the torpedoes might not be more powerful than your average PT (the yield of which is set via the "dial-a-plot" mechanism) but it might be more likely to punch through ECM, disrupt shields as it goes, accurately hit critical areas, etc.

 

I don't know - they definitely seem to have an affect on shields. After all it knocked the Enterprise's shields down to 38% with one hit.... yet it still impacted the hull... even though it seemed to do only superficial damage to the dorsal.

Depends on what scene you're looking at.

Impressive? No - an impressive explosion would be a blinding white flash/fireball indicative of high-yield munitions. I really don't see how the VFX guys can think having ships survive explosions like this due to the power of their shields wouldn't be impressive and visually spectacular.

 

Brings to mind one of my favorite background lines from George: "...are our shields even UP?"

 

I thought of that, too.... but then why would the Enterprise's shields go down to 38%? Damaged emitters? Power loss?