So I was just watching The Chase

[Vandervecken]

And thinking, wow, this plasma weapon:


WORF: We are about to enter the Indri system, sir.
RIKER: Riker to Picard. We are approaching Indri Eight.
PICARD [OC]: On my way.
DATA: Sensors are picking up severe atmospheric fluctuations on the planet.
RIKER: Assume a high orbit.
PICARD: On screen, Mister Worf.
(a pretty blue green planet is turning a nasty orange-brown)
WORF: Some kind of plasma reaction is consuming the lower atmosphere.
PICARD: Can we stop it?
WORF: No, sir. The reaction is global.
DATA: All life on the planet is being destroyed, sir



The Klingons deployed this. And we never hear any more of it. Seems like a damned powerful terror weapon!

 

[Finn]

Probably something all powers in the quadrant are capable of doing. One of the main characters said that the Enterprise could easily level all cities on a planet, cause widespread earthquakes, things like that.

Probably nothing a couple of photon torpedoes can't do...

 

[DS9forever]

Like The Obsidian Order & Tal Shiar in The Die is Cast.

 

[Finn]

They were gonna fire phasers at the Great Link...Not the same thing....No different from firing phasers at a starship...​

 

[Timo]

The thing is, we don't know how much effort is involved in setting up that reaction.

Say, toppling the World Trade Center with demolition explosives would be wholesome carnage. But it would take weeks of labor, truckloads of resources and kilometers of wiring to install those explosives, and eventually somebody would tap you on the shoulder and ask whether you have a permit to do that.

Tactically, this is useless. Far better to topple the towers with carpet knives that deliver an unstoppable destructive blow in a matter of seconds, resulting in an unstoppable fire that destroys everything in a matter of hours.

But that in turn is tactically useless if the enemy comes prepared and uses his well-known resources for shooting down your giant improvised cruise missile. Which is when actual weapons of war enter the picture: a determined attack of multiple modern fighter-bombers or true cruise missiles will face a determined defense of SAMs and interceptors.

What the Klingons did to that planet probably wasn't a valid military attack. It would have been stopped with trivial ease if attempted against Earth, say (it's simple to shoot down a single starship, and not too complicated to shoot down a hundred, either). But at Indri VIII, there was nobody to resist the Klingons.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vandervecken]

Well I did call it a terror weapon, Timo. But then we still don't know if, in fact, it was that tough to set up. It might have been 1 2 3.

 

[RAMA]

I figured it was something that took time to do launch or prepare for, so it wasn't useful during a conflict where the planet was defended.

 

[UnknownSample]

Invent a superweapon , it gets mislaid, everyone forgets, happens all the time.

I have a tape of raw footage shot for this episode. They all seem SO bored ... but they make them repeat scenes over and over so they can separately dub in everyone's lines. It's crazy.

They had problems pronouncing "Indri". Patrick S comes down on M Dorn at one point for forgetting a line...

 

[RAMA]

Almost any set where they are filming seems boring. Most actors feel the process is waiting around most of the time. Actual shooting is only a fraction of the filming time.

A super weapon like this is only useful if you can get to a biosphere. If you can't get past the defenses, it's useless. The planet was defenseless.

Invent a superweapon , it gets mislaid, everyone forgets, happens all the time.

I have a tape of raw footage shot for this episode. They all seem SO bored ... but they make them repeat scenes over and over so they can separately dub in everyone's lines. It's crazy.

They had problems pronouncing "Indri". Patrick S comes down on M Dorn at one point for forgetting a line...