Strangeness in "Cause and Effect"

[SD70ACe]

Just rewatched the ep last night, as I'm going through Season 5 in order. (That, and it's one of my all-time favorites!)

There's one thing I always thought was strange in this episode. When the Enterprise is destroyed, in every* explosion shot the port nacelle explodes first, then the rest of the ship quickly follows suit. However, the starboard nacelle is the one that suffered a direct hit from the Bozeman.

(* Except for the final explosion shot, which shows the explosion spreading out from the warp core.)

Weird, huh? I don't think it can be chalked up to the effects crew not knowing which nacelle was hit in the script, since in a few shots, the starboard nacelle is clearly sparking and smoking, yet the port one still explodes first.

Any thoughts? A massive power surge across the EPS conduits, perhaps?

 

[Bishop76]

Sure, that works.

 

[indolover]

Probably the systems across the ship were affected, and the critical point was in the port nacelle.

 

[Tom Riley]

Because the pyrotechnics in the model happened to blow there first?

In universe, perhaps the systems in the starboard nacelle locked down and all warp plasma was being channeled into the one port nacelle and overloaded it? Who knows.

 

[Christopher]

It can't be taken literally anyway. An antimatter explosion in a starship in vacuum wouldn't look a think like a liquid-fuel explosion in a miniature in atmosphere. It would be a blinding, split-second flash of light, no more than a single frame of video in duration. So it would really be kind of a moot point where the explosion happened first.