So was Saavik's eye colour, which changed from green to brown between ST and ST III. (And the slant of her eyebrows. And the appearance of her whole face.)
Ships have blue phasers???
- Thread starter MangiPangi
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So was Saavik's eye colour, which changed from green to brown between ST and ST III. (And the slant of her eyebrows. And the appearance of her whole face.)
I caught that too. Strange.
Lazarus
Fleet Captain
Um, you do know that was a different actress don't you?
Lazarus
Fleet Captain
Oh, don't be ridiculous
Obviously there is a marked different between the viewscreen tactical display you describe and a shot taken from outside the ship looking at the action - you describe a scenario of invisible/near invisible beams that are depicted on the viewscreen of a vessel as being brightly-coloured in order to facilitate the bridge crew's assessment of the battle.Oh, don't be ridiculous. Clearly this would not be the case when looking through viewports or looking at the battle from an external perspective - only those looking at a computer-enhanced version of events on a viewscreen would see the blue/red phaser beams.
Um, you do know that was a different actress don't you?
Sure, so why can't phasers be attributed different colours?
Um, you do know that was a different actress don't you?
Sure, so why can't phasers be attributed different colours?
Because, that would be racist!
Oh, don't be ridiculous
Oh, don't be ridiculous. Clearly this would not be the case when looking through viewports or looking at the battle from an external perspective - only those looking at a computer-enhanced version of events on a viewscreen would see the blue/red phaser beams.
I don't know what the intent of your post is, so I'm trying to avoid taking offense. My point is that the situation presented onscreen, if taken literally, is ridiculous, because it's a physical impossibility. The less ridiculous interpretation is that it's poetic license, a figurative representation for the benefit of the audience. By analogy, it would be ridiculous to assume that the characters in a show actually hear the background music or see the credits hovering in midair.
After all, within the reality of the story, there is no camera hovering in space watching the battle. It's an omniscient audience point of view and thus doesn't necessarily reflect anything about the in-universe "reality." Can you cite an example where a character in the story, as opposed to the television viewer, has been unambiguously shown as seeing a beam in the vacuum of space through a window rather than on a viewscreen? If not, then there's certainly room for interpretation and it's just plain rude, as well as bizarre, to tell someone that they're being "ridiculous" for favoring a plausible, revisionist interpretation over a slavishly literal but physically ludicrous one.
In addition... the very first lasers were red, as they used rubies as the amplifiers (hence the Daleks' weapons were dubbed 'Ruby Ray Lasers' during the 1960s).
So that's the assumption that the first FX techs to use lasers went with, and it flows through. Death ray lasers are red, regardless of the science.
Yeah, that could be. Kinda like how cartoons treat all radiation as a green glow because that was the color of radium clock dials back when people were unwise enough to coat clock dials in radioactive paint. Never mind that it wasn't actually the radium that glowed green but the fluorescent zinc sulfide crystals in the paint that were excited by the (invisible) radium emissions.
explain green death ray lasers in Star Wars then, smartypants
They have Kryptonite in them.
CANON VIOLATION!
At least there aren't any green stars in Trek. As far as I know.
I think in some of the multicolored starscapes of TOS you could see the occasional green star. Not sure, though.
"It's not easy... being green..."
It has been a while since I've seen it, so I'm sure I'm mis-remembering, but what about when Daniels took Archer on-board the Enterprise-J during some sort of battle and showed Archer what was going on outside through a window, including beam weapons? Of course, that was a possible future, so who knows what technology actually was in use in that battle?
Yes, they saw a battle going on, but was there anything in dialogue to verify that they actually saw the beams the way they were depicted for the viewers' benefit? Here's the transcript of the episode. The Enterprise-J scene is about a third of the way down. At no point in the scene does either Archer or Daniels say anything to the effect of "Hey, look at that bright blue phaser beam." They don't mention beams at all. There's no direct commentary on the battle they're watching, only about the overall context in which it takes place. So there's no evidence of what they're "actually" seeing within the context of the fiction.
And if we are talking about future technology, it stands to reason that their more advanced beams would be more efficient and less likely to waste energy by radiating light out to the sides. Realistically, the beams would be invisible, or at most extremely faint.
Think of it like sound in space. You accept that space is actually silent, right? That what you're hearing in a space battle isn't something that the characters in the story would actually hear, but just an embellishment for the audience like background music? So why is it so hard to accept that the same is true of the visible beams?
And if we are talking about future technology, it stands to reason that their more advanced beams would be more efficient and less likely to waste energy by radiating light out to the sides. Realistically, the beams would be invisible, or at most extremely faint.
Think of it like sound in space. You accept that space is actually silent, right? That what you're hearing in a space battle isn't something that the characters in the story would actually hear, but just an embellishment for the audience like background music? So why is it so hard to accept that the same is true of the visible beams?
To me, the main evidence the characters can see phaser beams as visible light is the general way they act around hand weapons...
I'd have to pay closer attention to this aspect of their behaviour in episodes to cite some specific examples, though.
I'd have to pay closer attention to this aspect of their behaviour in episodes to cite some specific examples, though.
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