Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x10 - "New Life and New Civilizations"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
We learned The Gorn weren't "pure evil monsters" in Terrarium.
Sorry to dig this out... but, its possible because SF is generally not in the business of annihilating everything in its path, they tend to in most encounters use 'just enough' to diffuse the situation while minimizing casualties, etc. - this is why we seldom (aka, almost never) see the 'true power' of Trek ship's capabilities. They are IMPLIED, and seldom seen in some extra ridiculous feats, but otherwise, not NORMALLY seen.
As for Veridian III in Generations - didn't Soren have a force-field on the surface protecting his launch site? That thing was likely also scattering the targeting scanners, so it would be difficult to get a precise lock - and you don't want to annihilate the planet either (plus, the BoP was still there).
Ships in Trek are likely designed to withstand such massive power outputs via shield modulations (plus their hulls aren't slouches either- those can seemingly be modified as well) - as we saw, you can have pretty weak shields, but if you tune them correctly, you can become pretty much immune to various weapons if you find out how to counter them.
In the case of the Planet Killer, as you noted, the thing was made from Neutronium which is impervious to most conventional weapons like phasers (granted, it was also THICK, so the sensors had issues and phasers were ineffective).
It's not just the power output that matters in Trek, its the TYPE of energy being released.
Phasers are powered by the ship's plasma that's running through the ship via the EPS grid - so, they ARE plasma weapons. Phasers emit highly destructive beams of nadion particles in the form of forced plasma which disrupt molecular bonds.
And because they operate on the basis of frequencies, and their phase states can be modified on the fly it seems, they are extremely versatile tools - but some alloys such as say Neutronium (at least Trek based Neutronium) would be impervious to such 'conventional' weapons - however, it wouldn't surprise me if SF found a way to eventually make phasers effective against Neutronium too.
Bottom line is, I think most of the time what we see is the galaxy through Starfleet's eyes... and they are bent on exploration and diplomacy - violence is used as a last resort - and even then at minimum levels.
Plus, I'm not surprised.
Trek actually has a history of excess power generation that isn't accounted in baseline figures.
For example, the fusion reactors are in the TW range, BUT, the Warp core (on the ENT-D) was rated at 12.75 EW in True Q ( that's about a million times more than what a fusion reactor is capable of outputting)... implying the fusion is used for impulse engines mainly, and emergency power (probably).
The ENT-D also has a large tank for Deuterium, and also for anti-deuterium (antimatter)... but its not infinite.
If the ship was generating 12.75 EW via standard methods of M/AM annihilation, the ENT-D would exhaust its AM reserves in minutes or hours at most.
To me this implies that there's another factor in play. Subspace technology. We've seen its used in pretty much all SF technology, and that it can also be used to massively amplify the power outputs well below baselines.
So, even if we heard figures like GW, or TW, and even EW (well, EW wasn't mentioned, but that's what it comes out to from True Q because it mentioned: "twelve point seven five billion gigawatts per
(an alarm goes off)" - granted, the script was supposed to say 'second', but you don't really put energy generation like that... instead, you lose the per second and just say 12.7 billion gigawats - or 12.7 Exawatt), then its reasonable to surmise those figures are real, but they are mere 'baselines'... pre-augmentation.
If you recall, a fleet of 20 odd ships in DS9 was able to destroy 30% of planetary crust in an opening volley - implying Petaton level outputs per ship - which is consistent in the range of Yottawatts - roughly - not 384.2 Yottawatts likely (which is the total output of a sun), but probably below it.
Veridian III was uninhabited and Soran's launch would've destroyed inhabited Veridian IV. So actually destroying Veridian III to the point it's atmosphere is toast ironically probably was the best life-saving option as even Soran at his shielded launch site isn't going to last long once the rest of the planet's atmosphere is ignited and depleted of oxygen etc.
Perhaps, but as I said, SF is not usually in the business of destroying planets if they can help it.
If you look at the transcript from Generations movie, Picard was trying to go for diplomacy to convince Soran to not launch his missile - tat said, the ENT-D at the time did not know the location of the launch site (the BoP or Planet), which is why the Klingons beamed Picard down to the planet themselves (and it was an exchange, Picard for Geordi).
When he was on the surface, the ENT wouldn't fire and kill Picard in the process - and they were under attack by Lursa and Betor (by having their shield frequencies).
As I said, SF respects life, and goes out of its way to avoid a confrontation. The ethics and the timing of everything else would have prevented them from doing this.
That said, I do agree that a BoP even with ENT-D shields down couldn't have done too much damage - Riker was basically a moron for not unleashing all phasers and Sierra pattern of torpedoes onto the BoP - if nothing else to quickly slap them down and disables them - though disabling ships requires precision - so that can be tricky sometimes.
Yup, they're just instinct controlled monsters that can randomly flip between fine and murderous depending on what the local sun feels like doing.
Or if they're lonely.
Begun, the Gorn redemption arc has.
If SNW had more seasons, I've no doubt we'd see Gorn crew lizards.
By the 24th century there's Gorn chef's on Starfleet stations.
Chef Boyargee.
IOW, so much more human than they first appeared.
Our species can learn much from one another.
That's just a term of politeness.
They're more like giant, scaly green civet monkeys.
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