Guess because the design itself is at least eighty years old 'in universe', premiering in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. But you're right, Picard states in the film that it is twenty years old.
Issues with the Films
- Thread starter Bry_Sinclair
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Guess because the design itself is at least eighty years old 'in universe', premiering in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. But you're right, Picard states in the film that it is twenty years old.
Is that stated in the film? Hm, I'm going to have to go watch it again. If so, my argument against Riker loses a lot of weight. Well then, off to watch my Blu-Ray copy!
PICARD: They're just trying to decide whether a twenty year-old Klingon Bird-of-Prey can be a match for the Federation flagship.
I still don't get this idea that you'd go easy on the weapons on Ent-D because it's not primarily a battleship, or that it's a time of relative peace.
Let me return again to the family issue. I've always thought that this was an idiotic idea, but if they're going to do it, there's NO REASON to think that Federation enemies would be at all hesitant about attacking a ship just because it has families aboard. So for that reason alone, ships that have families should be armed to the teeth.
And since when do you reduce the weapons or capabilities of a ship in peace time? You don't. You may reduce the overall NUMBER of ships in a fleet as less may be needed, but ships in a defense force are still ships in a defense force. You don't skimp on weapons.
And finally, I'm not so sure it's such a peaceful time. Hadn't there been a recent conflict with the Cardassians just before TNG's time frame?
Also, this debate is answered by B'Etor herself when she tells Soren that the BOP is no match for a galaxy-class starship.
Riker should've just started unloading photon torpedoes on them, left and right.
Let me return again to the family issue. I've always thought that this was an idiotic idea, but if they're going to do it, there's NO REASON to think that Federation enemies would be at all hesitant about attacking a ship just because it has families aboard. So for that reason alone, ships that have families should be armed to the teeth.
And since when do you reduce the weapons or capabilities of a ship in peace time? You don't. You may reduce the overall NUMBER of ships in a fleet as less may be needed, but ships in a defense force are still ships in a defense force. You don't skimp on weapons.
And finally, I'm not so sure it's such a peaceful time. Hadn't there been a recent conflict with the Cardassians just before TNG's time frame?
Also, this debate is answered by B'Etor herself when she tells Soren that the BOP is no match for a galaxy-class starship.
Riker should've just started unloading photon torpedoes on them, left and right.
Agreed. The Galaxy class never seemed lacking in offensive or defensive capabilities.
Thanks to sloppy reuse of the miniature and stock footage, it's since become established that there are two different sizes of BoP that inexplicably look exactly identical despite being built on two entirely different scales. The smaller B'rel class holds about a dozen personnel and is the type seen in TSFS. The larger K'Vort class reportedly hold a crew of 1500 according to the DS9 Technical Manual (though I'm aware that's a controversial work) and is presumably far more powerful in its armaments. It's a silly idea that there are two different sizes of BoP, but it's kinda necessary given that TNG and DS9 generally treated the BoP as a much larger ship than TSFS did. (I wish they'd just used the K'tinga miniature instead. That's a beautiful design, while the BoP is an eyesore.)
Or Starfleet was run by people who had other priorities than killing things. It's a fundamental mistake to assume every Starfleet vessel is a battleship. That may be a valid way of thinking of the ships that were built after Wolf 359 or during the Dominion War, but it doesn't reflect the real-world philosophy of the people who developed TNG and designed the Enterprise-D, and thus it doesn't reflect the in-universe philosophy of Starfleet at the time the Galaxy class was designed and created.
No, but I'm not saying it's simply a matter of how many weapons a ship has. That would be a gross oversimplification. Even TNG's developers, working on the assumption that they were designing a ship of peaceful exploration, nonetheless made a point of establishing that it had formidable defensive armaments. Nonetheless, it stands to reason that Federation starship designers thinking of exploration first and seeing defensive combat as a necessary evil might not design ships that were as robust under combat conditions as Klingon starship designers who intend their vessels to be super-tough, macho killing machines and nothing else. It's not a question of relative firepower, it's a question of generalization versus specialization. If combat is the only thing a ship is made for, it stands to reason that it would be better at it than a multipurpose starship whose combat capabilities are geared toward defense and intended as a last resort.
But weapons aren't everything. It's not just a question of how hard you can hit, it's a question of how well you can take a hit. It doesn't matter how formidable your right hook is if you've got a glass jaw; a weaker opponent who gets in a lucky hit can still take you down. The E-D wasn't defeated because it was outgunned, but because the enemy found and exploited a gap in its defenses. This was what I intended to suggest above by pointing out the poor survival rate of the Galaxy class as a whole. I was suggesting that maybe the design has a glass jaw, that perhaps it wasn't made as robust and resistant to damage as it could've been.
It seems Generations throws a further wrench into this debate by identifying the Bird of Prey in question as a 'Class D-12'. So we have no idea what its capabilities are in comparison to the other two.
It just comes back to the simple fact that the Duras sisters got off a lucky shot and damaged some critical system.
Ilia and Decker along with Sonak were going to be main characters in Phase II so they had significantly more history written than traditional movies guest characters. They decided to kill of the Sonak character early and make the on going Decker Ilia love story a main plot of the movie. That story line was then resurrected in TNG for Riker and Troi. That being said, if Decker and Ilia had been kept around it would have been interesting.
Actually the Vulcan science officer character in Phase II was named Xon, and he was to be played by David Gautreaux, who ended up playing Commander Branch of Epsilon 9 in TMP. Sonak may have been based on Xon, but he wasn't quite the same character.
Picard finished that thought by saying that millions of lives were in danger if Soran couldn't be stopped. For a Starfleet officer, it doesn't matter if they know anything about the civilization that's in danger; all that matters is that there are lives to be saved. Picard also wisely appealed to Kirk's drive to make a difference.
If anyone was going to face disciplinary action for the loss of the Enterprise-D, it would've been Picard. As we know from his loss of the Stargazer, a court martial hearing is mandatory for any captain who loses a starship. As for Harriman, he did the best he could with the equipment and crew he had available.
We only saw the Enterprise fire on the Duras' BoP once, but they certainly continued doing so because there's a subsequent mention a minute later from one of the Klingon crew that "shields are holding."
I do, however, agree with you on this.
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Sonak was created for TMP to save David Gautreaux's well-researched Xon for use in a future film.
I'd have said that Soran was safely on the surface before they engaged the D.
The design of the BOP is 80+ years old, but that doesn't mean the ship itself is. There's no evidence the Excelsior is still on the go by 2371.
The design of the BOP is 80+ years old, but that doesn't mean the ship itself is. There's no evidence the Excelsior is still on the go by 2371.
I've just been watching the older movies for the first time, up to the Voyage Home. I've got to say it's the worst of first four. The premise that an alien ship comes to Earth searching for whales, and worse the idea that they had to travel back in time to find whales to bring to 'communicate' with the ship...just ridiculous. It almost made the time travel to stop the Borg in First Contact sound creditable...
Why is that ridiculous? Whales are highly intelligent. There's little reasonable doubt that dolphins, at least, are sapient beings, and other whales may be as well. As Spock said in the movie, it's arrogant to assume that we humans are the only Terrestrial species that could possibly be of interest to aliens.
Actually in an episode of TNG it was mentioned by name as one of the ships looking for Geordi's mom's ship.
^A ship named Excelsior was mentioned in TNG. It wasn't established whether it was NCC-2000 or a successor ship of that name.
