Shield Mussings.

[Johnny]

This has been bugging me for the past few days.
Ships have shields. Shields are designed to stop you from being able to, for example; beam someone unexpectidly off the ship, or allow phasers/torpedos to hit. I'm guessing that they also would stop you scanning inside the ship, so you couldn't figure out how many people were on board, or how many torpedos you had left.

So, you've got an oval shaped shield surrounding a ship, the sensors can't penetrate it, and the viewscreen is a visual interpretation of what the sensors are reading, then why don't we just see a solid oval object flying through space...???

 

[AlxxlA]

I bet that shields protect against subspace scanners, but not EM scanners.

 

[JuanBolio]

Don't muss my shields, please.

Star Trek is infamously inconsistent about its technology. There's an energy field for everything, and usually they work in them most dramatically convenient way possible. The cloaking device, for instance, wouldn't prevent an enemy ship from picking up your heat signiture, and if it did your ship would probably melt.

Treknological answer to your question - shields produce interference that confuses scanners that have to deeply penetrate a hull to pick up lifeforms, weapons, etc. Regular EM wavelengths such as visible light are unaffected.

 

[Timo]

Alternately, shields block all types of threat - but only when needed. If the enemy scans at subspace, the image of the ship becomes momentarily blurred in subspace frequencies as the sensor beams glance off the shields. If the enemy fires phasers, the image of the ship becomes momentarily blurred at visible frequencies as the phaser beams glance off the shields.

If the enemy had the potential to do some real damage with EM wavelengths, the shields would block that damage - but only when under attack. The rest of the time, the shields would remain neutral and would not blur the image. It just happens that there are very few ways an EM attack at visual wavelengths would be a threat: mere visual scanning typically reveals nothing of worth and a shield can't be bothered to block it.

The one type of visual EM threat that warrants shield action is a laser attack. And when a Borg visual laser lashes out, we would probably see the shields flare to opaqueness - if not for the fact that the Borg typically manage to collapse the shields long before the camera joins the laser action.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

Pulsed phasers can muss up your shield something awful.