Phasers

[All Seeing Eye]

Why is the Phaser the weapon of choice for Starfleet as both handheld and starship variety?
What is so much better about Phasers compared to Disruptors? What's the difference?

Was the phaser a Human invention? In ENT it seems to indicate that phase pistols the precursor weapon to phasers was a Starfleet/Earth/Human invention.

Is anyone aware of a species using Phasers as weapons that did not have previous contact with the Federation or Alpha Quadrant?

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think phasers are a bit more versatile. They can be used as much as tools as they can as weapons (they probably can produce a wide variety of different beams, IMO). But I also think a phaser basically becomes a disruptor at its higher settings though...

 

[Wingsley]

Tangent to I Am Legend's question would be to ask what "phaser" means in the first place. Keep in mind that what constitutes a "phaser" isn't necessarily set in stone, either.

I recall from Sternbach & Okuda's TNG writings (Writer's Tech Manual? TNG Tech Manual?) that there was at least the suggestion that a "phaser" was a shortening of "phased ray emitter"; whatever that would be.

Memory Alpha seems to suggest that phasers are particle beam weapons.

 

[Timo]

We don't know if there's a functional or otherwise fundamental difference between phaser and disruptor. Could be it's just two different names for the same thing, chosen for political reasons: "Their guns kill, maim and disrupt, our peaceful tools, umm, err, phase. Yeah, that's it, they phase!".

We have heard of phasers, disruptors, and phase disruptors so far. We've also heard of enemy weapons being referred to as phasers on occasion. The permutation we're so far missing is somebody calling a Starfleet gun "disruptor", but that might be in the wings somewhere.

If there's a functional difference, it might be something minimal in the practical sense, such as the difference between a rifle and a shotgun. Or a standard vs. rifled shotgun. Or a submachine gun vs. an assault rifle. Now these weapon categories have slightly different effects on target, slightly different range and so forth - but the difference could also be something like semiautomatic pistol vs. revolver, where the effect is identical but there's a subtle difference in the mechanism producing it.

Semantically, a revolver is a semiautomatic pistol, one variant of it, but most people still consider these two categories mutually exclusive in practice. Similarly, disruptor could merely be a type of phaser among dozens, but it's singled out because of some historical reason, rationale or excuse.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think to a certain extent when you say "phaser" you're generally talking about a weapon/tool used by the Federation and its allies. "Disruptor" seems to be used to refer to a weapon used by the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, etc. Inherently, both are "zap guns" or "zap cannons," but the difference between them could be indeed as simple as terminology or something that has never been really demonstrated onscreen.

If we go with ye old TNG Technical Manual though, phasers have many disruptor-style settings not too far beyond the "heavy stun" setting. It also lists the term "phaser" as being shorthand for PHASed Energy Rectification, which is just a fancy way of describing the process stored energy is converted into a variety of directed energy beams. Disruptors could be different from phasers in that the beams they produce may be of a more limited variety, which really wouldn't mean too much if someone was shooting at you with one, IMO...

 

[Timo]

We don't quite know yet whether the spectrum of settings in yer typical Starfleet phaser is due to the phaser phenomenon itself being flexible - or, perhaps, to the phaser featuring multiple different weapons in the same casing, emitting from the same orifice.

Perhaps the device that phases the target to another realm, wholly or in part, is the phase disruptor? Perhaps most bad guys settle for having this device, which they can ramp up and down for producing the desired level of death or pain. And perhaps the Feds use a different name for their sidearms because they always add another device, a stun gun that renders the person unconscious without phasing any part of him to another realm (slumberland doesn't count).

Remember the guns from "The Cage"? They had three distinct barrels, each rotatable in turn to the working position. One of these was called "laser" in the episode. The other two might have been "disruptor" and "stunner"... In TOS, the gun had one wide round barrel, with a narrow spire in the middle of it. Perhaps a non-rotatable, coaxial disruptor/stunner combo, dubbed "phaser"? STXI has a different take on this, reintroducing the rotating barrel and possibly reinforcing the idea that two different devices are integrated in the same frame. And ST:TMP and ST2 had those four-barrel sidearms, the four distinct beams being visible when Kirk kills the Ceti Eel.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[C.E. Evans]

I do tend to think that phasers are a bit more versatile than disruptors--but I also believe the terms become interchangeable depending on where you are in the Galaxy. The term "phase disruptor" could be simply the more formal term for disruptor--and it could support the idea that phasers and disruptors operate on the same basic principle, but maybe the beams produced might be slightly different (even if it's something neglible as a disruptor having one or two fewer settings or something like that).

As far as the laser guns in "The Cage/"The Menagerie," we don't really know how those operates or what those three emitter barrels actually represent. We don't even know if they were true lasers or simply a term used informally to describe a similar weapon used by Starfleet prior to the fleet-wide issuing of phasers.

Later phaser weapon models may simply have had different emitters and beam discharge styles unique to each model.

 

[Wingsley]

...or if the sidearms in "The Cage" were any different from those used in the rest of TOS.

In "Where No Man Has Gone Before", Spock draws one of the old "Cage" sidearms when Gary Mitchell becomes belligerent in the Delta Vega brig. Later, Scotty asks Kirk if they received the phaser rifle Mr. Spock asked for. If Starfleet were already issuing phaser rifles at that point, why can't we assume that the "Cage" pistols are already phasers as well?

 

[C.E. Evans]

It could be that Starfleet was still mostly using laser pistols at the time, and the phaser rifle was a recent addition to the Enterprise's armory (an improvement over the initial 22nd-Century phase weapons, perhaps?). "Where No Man Has Gone Before" could have shown the transition from lasers to phasers in that regard. Not too long after this episode (if not immediately afterward), laser pistols could have been discontinued as sidearms...

 

[Timo]

As far as the laser guns in "The Cage/"The Menagerie," we don't really know how those operates or what those three emitter barrels actually represent.

True. But amusingly enough, the barrels are used rather consistently. When the elevator door slams on our heroes, trapping Pike inside, Spock fires at the door from the longest and narrowest barrel. Tyler uses a squatter barrel at first, but then adjusts his gun to use the long barrel. Garrison seems to be using the longest barrel, too. So it's easy to speculate that this would be the most penetrating option available, and then to continue speculating that this is the laser Tyler was so agitated about.

When Pike breaks out of his jail cell, he first uses the long barrel in the top (firing) position, then the medium one. This is probably in keeping with the elevator scene: he'd first use the most penetrating beam (which would blast a clean hole into the cell wall), then seeing how this "does not work" he'd select the second-best alternative which might be the realm-phasing beam (blasting the large irregular hole in the wall).

To threaten the Talosian in the cell, he apparently continues to use the medium barrel, which thus probably isn't stun... The prop has twisted a bit more, tho, so perhaps he's actually using the shortest barrel here? Up on the surface, the gun remains in that position, with the two shorter barrels competing for the topmost position (which we know is the firing position, since that was consistently where the beams emerged from in the elevator-shooting scene, on all rotation settings).

So there's surprising (if probably mostly accidental) consistency to how the gun is used - consistency that makes me dare speculate that the long barrel is the laser, the short one is the stunner, and the medium one is the phaser. According to this Swiss Army Knife theory, that is.

Continuing with the fun, "Where No Man" uses the slightly modified prop so that when Spock guards Mitchell at sickbay, the shortest barrel is up. Valid for stun... When he threatens Mitchell with the gun down on the planet, the same situation obtains.

It then breaks down a little. In "Man Trap" we see the shortest barrel deliver whitish beams that collapse a rock column. We could well assume consistency here, though: Dr. Carter would no doubt try to use the stun setting against our heroes, as he is not a bad guy at heart. Even stun could topple the old relics, though (and I don't mean Kirk or Spock). Although we might also acknowledge that Carter could have used a blasting setting first, then turned his gun to stun after forcing our heroes into a corner. We only see Carter's setting close up after he has ceased firing the landscape-modifying beams, after all.

In "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", we get our first real deviation, as it is the long barrel that completely vaporizes the copy of Kirk, and later also Dr. Korby and his favorite sexbot. The medium one should do that if it's the putative phaser barrel...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[C.E. Evans]

...or the barrels could just represent intensity settings (light, medium, and heavy), with the beam type (lethal and non-lethal) determined by extending or retracting the housing.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

I seem to recall Phasers being said to emit Nadion particles.

 

[Unicron]

One suggestion I've seen is that the energy focusing works differently on a Klingon or Romulan disruptor compared to a phaser, and produces a bolt/beam that is intentionally less stable than what a typical phaser produces. When this bolt comes into contact with the target it is "disrupted" at a molecular level, so the shotgun analogy might be apt. It stands to reason in this case that the disruptor might have a higher damage ratio than a phaser on the same setting, because it's more likely to be used as a killing stroke.

I'll have to look that source up tomorrow. I'm tempted to say at the moment it's from the DS9 TM, but I can't recall exactly.

 

[Wingsley]

So, is it pretty much determined that "phaser" means a highly refined, adjustable particle beam? And "disruptor" is simply a less-refined particle beam weapon intended strictly to killing and destructive effect?

 

[C.E. Evans]

^^^
I don't think there's any canonical or onscreen evidence to confirm it, but it seems to be how they're generally presented, IMO.

But I do think there's been at least one oscreen mention or implication of a disruptor having a stun setting though--I recall Quark having one in his past. A phaser may have up to sixteen different settings, while a disruptor could have as few as two--stun or kill (Klingon disruptors may not even bother with a stun setting)...

 

[Timo]

In "Sons of Mogh", Odo is sceptical about hiring Kurn as a deputy, and asks him whether he even knows how to use the stun setting of a disruptor...

However, that might be sarcasm on several levels, perhaps based on the putative in-universe fact that disruptors are famous for not having stun settings.

We could also read this as supporting the opposite cause: Kurn would of course be wielding a Bajoran gun in his job as a deputy, and we know that Bajoran guns have stun settings. We simply learn here that they are considered "disruptors" by Odo, even if some others speak of them as "phasers".

So, not a piece of solid proof either way.

Timo Saloniemi