Phaser Fire in Conscience of the King

[maryh]

At the end of "Conscience of the King", the daughter Lenore accidentally hits her father, Kodos, with a phaser blast. He collapses and I assume he is dead. Shouldn't he have been vaporized if was killed? I thought killing with phaser fire vaporized the victim whereas, if the body still exists then it is just stunned. What don't I understand?

 

[TenLubak]

I think it depends on the level of setting of the phaser. That and or dramatic/artistic liscence.

 

[DonIago]

I know in one Trek story I read the vaporize setting had been removed because it was felt that it made killing too clean.

 

[maryh]

I know in one Trek story I read the vaporize setting had been removed because it was felt that it made killing too clean.

I just seem to remember that when they supposedly had set their phasers to "kill" the victim was always vaporized, with the exception of some odd life forms like a Horta.

 

[Christopher]

There were supposed to be three basic phaser settings: stun, kill, and disrupt. The highest setting disintegrates, and that was preferentially used in the show because of '60s TV censorship; it's "cleaner" if there's no body. But it's not the only lethal setting.

(They also eventually added a "heat" setting below "stun.")

 

[scotpens]

There were supposed to be three basic phaser settings: stun, kill, and disrupt. The highest setting disintegrates, and that was preferentially used in the show because of '60s TV censorship; it's “cleaner” if there's no body.

I don't think the TV censorship of the time had much to do with it. There were plenty of dead bodies shown in Westerns, cop shows and detective shows back then; you just saw little or no blood.

Once again I refer to my Bible, The Making of Star Trek:

The hand-carried weapons, called “phasers,” are pure energy weapons (as are all offensive weapons in the ship’s arsenal). All phasers emit a beam of energy similar to the light beam emitted by a laser, but of a pulsating nature that can be “phased” to interfere or interact with the wave pattern of any molecular form. Phaser beams can be fired steadily, in one long burst, or in intermittent “squirts” of “phased” energy. They can be set to dematerialize (converting matter to energy), disrupt (breaking down cohesion), heat (increasing molecular velocity), or stun (neural impact.)

Note that no mention is made of a “kill” setting per se, although setting phasers to kill was mentioned several times in the series. I suppose the “disrupt” setting would kill a living organism, though I have no idea what the physical result would be (a corpse, a puddle of organic goo, or a cloud of vapor?) The “heat” setting could certainly kill, but I imagine it would be a horribly painful death -- something like being cooked from the inside out. The “dematerialize” setting would consume a large amount of power, and would probably be rarely used, especially by crew armed only with type-1 phasers (the small, easily concealable “electric shaver” model).

Of course, we frequently saw objects, including human beings, apparently disintegrated by type-1 phaser fire -- depending on script requirements.

 

[Chrisisall]

Of course, we frequently saw objects, including human beings, apparently disintegrated by type-1 phaser fire -- depending on

if they were not phaser-resistant like the silicon-based Horta.

 

[Timo]

To be sure, TOS never suggested a specific number of settings in one episode, let alone contradicted that number in another.

We know of a setting called "heavy stun" in a couple of TOS episodes, so it's quite possible there would have been a "light kill", too. Completely making the opponent disappear might be the "humane" way of killing, and thus the preferred setting when disciplined Starfleet personnel operated the weapons in non-desperate situations calling for lethal force, but wartime kill settings would expend less energy and would leave corpses (like Captain Tracey's phaser massacre in "Omega Glory" left the battlefield littered with bodies).

One might also figure in the as such very sensible alarm system we learned of in ST6:TUC. An unauthorized firing of a phaser at a lethal setting would alert the system, perhaps triggering klaxons and flashing lights, perhaps just causing Uhura's console to buzz. Lenore Karidian might have known this, and would have used the possibly well-known trick of firing at heavy stun but at such close range that an old man would be instantly killed. (Of course, Lenore would have been planning of hitting her real target multiple times, or with a sustained beam, as in ST6:TUC, because that target wasn't a frail old man.)

Where else in TOS do we get kill phaser action aboard the ship? And specifically kill phaser activity that's unauthorized and unexpected? That is, in episodes like "The Changeling" it would all have been authorized: Kirk would expect his security personnel to fire their sidearms if necessary, so an alarm informing the entire ship of this would be unnecessary, although Kirk might get a notification.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

There were supposed to be three basic phaser settings: stun, kill, and disrupt. The highest setting disintegrates, and that was preferentially used in the show because of '60s TV censorship; it's “cleaner” if there's no body.

I don't think the TV censorship of the time had much to do with it. There were plenty of dead bodies shown in Westerns, cop shows and detective shows back then; you just saw little or no blood.

Well, yeah, that goes without saying. My point is that, in a science-fiction context where the option of complete disintegration exists (something that isn't the case in cop shows and Westerns), it would be seen as an even better way to avoid unpleasant depictions of death.

Once again I refer to my Bible, The Making of Star Trek:

Which was a good source, of course, but no more an inviolable gospel than any actual TV series bible would be, since any offscreen, behind-the-scenes material is subject to reinterpretation as it suits the needs of an episode. And the makers of TOS were, let's face it, making it up as they went along.

Here's what the actual TOS series bible says (a passage that was cribbed pretty much verbatim by The Star Trek Concordance):

Both the hand phaser and the phaser pistol have a variety of settings. The ones most often used are "stun effect", which can knock a man down and render him unconscious without harming him, and "full effect," which can actually cause an object to dematerialize and disappear. The phaser is also capable of being set to cause an object to explode, or to burn a clean hole through an object. In some stories we have used the phaser as a tool, such as a cutting torch.

I don't know if that "cause to explode" thing was ever used; the contents of a series bible are generally just a range of suggestions that scriptwriters may or may not choose to draw on.

Anyway, wherever I'm remembering the "stun, kill, disrupt" thing from, it's clearly not a primary source. Still, the one consistent thing is that a phaser has a range of settings, and stunning and disintegration are not the entirety of its options. Which is the answer I intended to convey to the original question.

 

[Forbin]

Anyway, wherever I'm remembering the "stun, kill, disrupt" thing from...

Wait, wasn't that "Crush, kill destroy"?

 

[T'Girl]

Wait, wasn't that "Crush, kill destroy"?

No, as I recall, the three settings were; Exterminate, exterminate and of course exterminate.

 

[ahkyahnan]

Anyway, wherever I'm remembering the "stun, kill, disrupt" thing from, it's clearly not a primary source.

I want to say that was in Franz Joseph's Technical Manual too, but I'm not certain. May check when I get home tonight.

Mark

 

[Christopher]

Nope, FJ's Manual lists stun, heat, disrupt, de-materialize, and overload. There's a pretty consistent pattern of "disrupt" being synonymous with "kill." My use of it as synonymous with "disintegrate" was apparently just poor recall.

(That's right -- someone online has just made the free, unprompted admission that he was wrong about something. The Internet may now proceed to implode.)

 

[Nerys Myk]

Nope, FJ's Manual lists stun, heat, disrupt, de-materialize, and overload. There's a pretty consistent pattern of "disrupt" being synonymous with "kill." My use of it as synonymous with "disintegrate" was apparently just poor recall.

(That's right -- someone online has just made the free, unprompted admission that he was wrong about something. The Internet may now proceed to implode.)

Whats the setting for that?

 

[DonIago]

Astound.

 

[Forbin]

Nope, FJ's Manual lists stun, heat, disrupt, de-materialize, and overload. There's a pretty consistent pattern of "disrupt" being synonymous with "kill." My use of it as synonymous with "disintegrate" was apparently just poor recall.

(That's right -- someone online has just made the free, unprompted admission that he was wrong about something. The Internet may now proceed to implode.)

Turn in your keyboard, mister!

 

[AtoZ]

In any case,should not a hole have been cut through the victim? For pete's sake,there was no apparent physical harm, nary a burnt fiber on his tunic. As far as phaser induced deaths go, this one has to rank as the worst on TOS

 

[Chrisisall]

nary a burnt fiber on his tunic. As far as phaser induced deaths go, this one has to rank as the worst on TOS

It was cheap, no denying.

 

[Christopher]

In any case,should not a hole have been cut through the victim? For pete's sake,there was no apparent physical harm, nary a burnt fiber on his tunic. As far as phaser induced deaths go, this one has to rank as the worst on TOS

Par for the course in 1960s television. Violence had to be sanitized. There are plenty of '60s Westerns, spy shows, cop shows, etc. where people supposedly get shot and killed by bullets, but there's no hole in the clothing, no blood, nothing but an actor pantomiming being shot.

At least with a phaser it can be justified by assuming that the lethal effect is not heat or electricity but some kind of neural disruption. It's a ray gun, so why not? So as sanitized deaths in '60s TV go, a bloodless death by phaser is an improvement over the norm.

 

[Chrisisall]

So as sanitized deaths in '60s TV go, a bloodless death by phaser is an improvement over the norm.

Yeah, I always hated the "got shot, cover-the-area" crap in TV. No blood, even.