Praxis explosion wierdness

[Deimos Anomaly]

I was thinkin this... if the Praxis explosion could toss the Excelsior around like that when it was several lightyears away, there shouldn't have been a single living thing left on Q'nos, in fact the planet itself would probably have been reduced to a molten slagball, if not disintigrated entirely.

What gives?

 

[Anwar]

Plot hole.

 

[Smiley]

Don't try to bring logic into STVI. Just enjoy the ride.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I would hope the homeworld of any technologically advanced race would have a very powerful shield in place to deflect asteroids, nearby explosions, bombardments, and yes, exploding moons.

If you recall, it was mentioned in the movie itself that Qo'nos' atmosphere was critically damaged, which was the impetus for the entire peace process. That would be consistent with the planet having a shield that worked against most threats, but wasn't quite powerful enough to fend off the full force of an exploding moon.

 

[Timo]

OTOH, we never hear of or see a planetary shield of such strength in action. The closest thing is the shield around Elba II in "Whom Gods Destroy", but that is only said to prevent transporting, not to block weapons fire or protect from exploding moons.

Then again, we know the Praxis explosion was highly directional, disintegrating only one half of the moon and then spreading out in a (faster than light) planar wave (that also leaked into the slower-than-light realm). It's quite possible that the direct blast effects simply missed Qo'noS altogether. We don't even know whether Praxis orbited the Klingon homeworld, or perhaps another planet in the same or nearby system...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Well, we know for sure it was somewhere near Qo'nos, as it inflicted "deadly radiation" on the homeworld's atmosphere. And the President speechified about evacuating Qo'nos within a 50-year span. It couldn't have been too far away, or surely other planets would have been affected.

 

[Timo]

Who says they weren't? If Sulu's ship could be affected across all those lightyears, Qo'noS could suffer atmospheric effects from an explosion in the next star system over. So could a dozen other Klingon planets, but those might not be important centers of habitation, or have breathable atmospheres to begin with.

As for the exact nature of the effect, Spock says that the explosion caused "deadly pollution of their ozone". That could either mean it depleted the ozone layer, thus letting in deadly radiation (from sources other than Praxis) - or that it caused deadly pollution by creating lots and lots of ozone in the lower atmosphere of Qo'noS, potentially a much more harmful effect (but perhaps less congruent with Spock's use of the word "theirs").

In any case, the explosion would be a "flash effect": it would only affect one hemisphere of Qo'noS for a couple of seconds and would be unlikely to cause lingering effects unless it could "contaminate" something. Transforming much of the oxygen on the Praxis side of the atmosphere into ozone would be a plausible lingering effect, although something that dramatic would probably also flash-sterilize half the surface of Qo'noS. Then again, who says half the planet wasn't sterilized?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Good points, as always, Timo. All this makes me think there would have been much more dramatic impact from actually seeing this devastated Qo'nos, even if only for a few seconds.

 

[Timo]

Indeed. The AC Crispin novel Sarek has sequences taking place on the devastated planet, and might have been graphically interesting...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Anwar]

Which makes you wonder, is the Qo'nos in TNG+ a new world they renamed after their homeworld, or did they just find a way of cleansing the planet in the interim?

 

[TeutonicNights]

I'd say the latter. It isn't specified, but since Spock says the Klingons lack the resources to do it, I'd say the Federation (who could afford it) evacuated Kronos, fixed the damage to the ozone layer and the Planet was then repopulated.
The disply on the Excelsior screen after the explosion shows part of the moon (a "Klingon moon" most likely was supposed to mean : a moon of Q'onoS) was still intact, so the explosion might have expanded in one direction,
away from the Planet.

Maybe the Klingons cleverly set up the mining facility on the back ide of the moon (if it is like the Terran moon)...

 

[MyCylon]

Interesting. I've seen this movie quite a few times now (my Trek movie favorite) but never asked myself this question.

I suppose one reason is what's already been stated here i.e. that there's mention of damage to the Klingon homeworld's atmosphere.

I think the other reason is that the scene of the Excelsior getting hit just totally 'works' for me. The way it's all set up, you really feel something incredible has happened and there's a LOT more still to come. I love the way they basically start building the tention like that right from the start.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

If the Federation did help fix their homeworld, it's too bad they didn't put some kind of "kill switch" in place, in case the Klingons ever became a problem again. "Hey, remember when we fixed your planet for you? We can screw it up 10 times worse with the push of a button, so behave."

Would've made the DS9 Klingon War very short.

 

[FPAlpha]

Or it would have immediately started a war when the Klingons discovered the "kill switch" (for drama reasons they often appear to be dumb brutes but i can't imagine they're all like that)

 

[DanTheGrey]

I had assumed that the blow out was originating from a single point on Praxis and radiated outward in a conical fashion, catching the Excelsior. That would of course be dependant on that side not facing the planet, and (since I don't know how many other moons orbit Qo'nos, maybe Praxis was further out).

Of course for plot holes from the novels is the comments that the Hu'rq had basically plundered the resources of Qo'nos before being driven off. I wonder how they would have missed the moon unless they had another power source or thought doing whatever energy production the Klingons would later do wasn't worth it.

 

[Alisium]

My problem is:

How fast was that friggin wave traveling?!!!! It made it all the way from the Klingon homeworld to somewhere in Federation space in a matter of moments!

Some one said, don't try to inject logic into Star Trek VI. Well you put too many words in there. Leave out the VI.

LOL

 

[Timo]

The wave could have been traveling way faster than light in some weird subspace realm (one that formed a nice, planar channel of expansion for it), but "leaking" to normalspace all the time, too. The slower-than-lighspeed wavefronts would then have been interference patterns of this leakage. We observe something like this with radio waves, which form standing or slowly creeping waves out of lightspeed wavefronts.

Alternately, the wave first blew out to deep space at high FTL, then lost enough of its energy to drop back to sublight before encountering the Excelsior. Remember the doubletalk in TNG Tech Manual about how unboosted subspace signals degrade into lightspeed ones after a certain distance (about 22 ly in that case)? The same could have happened to the Praxis wave.

As regards the resources left on Praxis, we don't really know what was on that moon. It was a "key energy production facility", but most nuclear plants aren't built on top of uranium mines; and few coal or oil plants sit next to their fuel sources, either. Perhaps the Klingons simply had an incredibly big powerplant on the dark side of their moon, using imported fuels in a fashion that would have caused lots of pollution or other risk if done planetside.

Praxis succumbed to "overmining". Doesn't necessarily mean that fuel was being mined from the depths of the moon. Could be that the engineers dug one tunnel too many when creating undersurface fuel depots, and collapsed something. Or then the Security Division got too zealous in applying anti-intruder mines on the corridors.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Stardate]

What gives?

It was Nick Meyers movie. plot holes and continuity errors are the norm in his Star Trek movies. If you want to talk about weirdness, who came up with the big ugly alien that had his genitals in his knees yes you didn't misread ,,in his knees,,

 

[MyCylon]

^
To be fair, that way of creating a supposedly alien being is well in line with the way Trek has usually done it. Think of green blood, two hearts, bumpy foreheads, you name it. It's a very simplistic and wildly unlikely means of doing it but it's really mean Trek's way most of the time.
I don't think this example is any different.

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

I'm waiting for the spin off "Praxis: 2299", where the Klingon moon, helmed by Martin L'ndau, spins off for adventures of its own.