Stuff that make you wonder but not own thread worthy

[Oddish]

I doubt that Starfleet will ever try the phasing cloak again. It's just not worth the risk.

But it's right up Section 31's alley: morally dubious, but addresses a severe threat to the Federation. And I think if the treaty ends, and S31 or one of their proxies tells Starfleet "hey, we have this great phase cloak thingy, and we worked out the bugs so it works, and it's legal now"... yeah, they'll use it.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I'm not talking politics or legalese, I just meant not worth the risk of life. If it ended in disaster back then, it could do so again. The technology itself is just too dangerous.

And honestly, what's the real value in a phasing cloak anyway? If you can cloak a ship and hide it anywhere you want, does it really MATTER if you can hide it inside an existing object? There's plenty of open space out there which won't kill you if the cloak malfunctions.

 

[Oddish]

A phased cloak is also probably immune to enemy weapons fire. Remember Ro putting a phased disruptor to unphased Riker's head and shooting him, and he went right on blowing that trombone like nothing happened.

Normally I like calling Riker's trombone a 'bone, like he did... but it wouldn't have worked in that sentence!

 

[at Quark's]

I'm not talking politics or legalese, I just meant not worth the risk of life. If it ended in disaster back then, it could do so again. The technology itself is just too dangerous.

And honestly, what's the real value in a phasing cloak anyway? If you can cloak a ship and hide it anywhere you want, does it really MATTER if you can hide it inside an existing object? There's plenty of open space out there which won't kill you if the cloak malfunctions.

There's a difference between technology that is inherently dangerous and technology that's just dangerous because it hasn't been sufficiently well developed yet. I guess the first steam or internal combustion engines wouldn't cut today's safety standards for them. I would think the very first transporter prototype was fairly dangerous, with the potential to thoroughly scramble your molecules and a perhaps immature version of the pattern buffer, yet in the 24th century it's considered perfectly safe.

So, just the fact that this first prototype failed doesn't mean it will be very risky once the technology is further perfected. And the phase cloak may be useful for other things, e.g. investigating the inner structure of planets.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I imagine that there'd be a large portion of Starfleet personnel who, just on general principles, won't serve on a ship with a phased cloak.

 

[Oddish]

I imagine that there'd be a large portion of Starfleet personnel who, just on general principles, won't serve on a ship with a phased cloak.

Maybe. But cloaking seemed basically accepted by 2400 or so, at least in the "All Good Things" timeline, when tri-nacelle Enterprise D shimmered into visibility and had Klingon cruiser for lunch.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ That was a regular cloak, not phasing (that we're aware of).

I have no problem with cloaking devices as such. It's the phasing part that flummoxes me. I just don't see the need for it.

 

[Farscape One]

Solid objects, like torpedoes, pass right through you. Phasers probably do, too.

You can even phloak (I am calling the phasing cloak this) inside an enemy installation, like a Dominion starbase, and see what new technology and weapons they are developing.

You can do planetary research inside a planet.

There are a number of uses and advantages.

 

[Mojochi]

And Maxwell? He was LUCKY, not right. If you walk out your front door, shoot a random person in cold blood, and it turns out they were a serial killer, are you "right"? No? Then neither was Maxwell.

He wasn't shooting randomly. He was using the vast resources of a Starship & crew to conduct a mission to track Cardassian arms shipments that were being shipped with high energy, sensor jamming subspace fields, (So no one could ever figure out what they were transporting) en route to what they claim was a science research station, that just happened to be of no real use except to be near 3 Federation sectors, in what could potentially be a highly effective launching point for an offensive against the UFP.

Now, no one would dispute that how Maxwell responded, by destroying the station and a cargo freighter, and anyone else that tried to stop him from that, those were wrongs, and probably fueled by some PTSD impaired judgement, & a sprinkling of bureaucratic cowardice or indifference about his findings from above, when he tried to get them to act, BUT his findings were almost certainly correct, even if not openly proved in the episode, as is made perfectly clear by Picard to Macet at the end of the episode, when he outright warns Macet.

What Maxwell was telling them was right. What he was doing about it was wrong, & because no one wanted to go to war over it, they damned him for it, to keep the peace. Picard deliberately chose to NOT investigate Maxwell's claims because no matter what he'd find, his primary order was to preserve the peace, & therein only chose to issue a warning.

So a better analogy imho would be if my neighbor, who is a recently released registered sex offender, starts clocking my movements when I pick my kid up from school, but I'm the only one noticing him, and my pleas to law enforcement go unanswered, and it's become clear to me from his actions that he's prepping material and equipment for what looks like an attempt to abduct my kid, & I just decide to go over there & bludgeon him into raw hamburger before that happens, then I am 100% wrong for doing that, but I'm not wrong about him & what he's up to, or for thinking it, & trying to prevent it, least of all if there's evidence, & I can prove it, but for one reason or another no one wants look at it.

That's Ben Maxwell

 

[Unimatrix Q]

Considering what is revealed in S3 of Picard, i really.wonder how far Bevery and Jean Luc went in "The Naked Now" and if they maybe had sex all the time over the entire run of the show and the movies.

 

[Oddish]

Given the events of "Attached", doubtful.

 

[somebuddyX]

Is there a space forklift in the cargo bay? Or is that a workbee?

 

[Oddish]

It probably works via anti-grav, but undoubtedly there are the 24th century equivalent of forklifts. If a barrel is heavy enough to smash Worf's spine to paste when it falls on him, it's too heavy to lift easily.

 

[Mojochi]

Geordi makes mention of the anti-grav units in Disaster, when he & Bev need to move some barrels of thruster pack fuel called Quaratum. Apparently, they can't be trusted for use in the presence of errant radiation.

Before that he mostly is attempting to move stuff via the transporter. I don't even know why you'd need a forklift type thing, when mostly you just transport stuff

 

[Farscape One]

Probably certain hazardous materials can't be transported, so they need anti-grav units to move those barrels.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

It saves energy if you only transport things when you absolutely have to. Shifting a box around in a cargo hold, vs loading onto another ship entirely.

 

[Mojochi]

^ Right, hence the anti grav units, which is what I assume replaces your average loaders like a forklift. I'd also add that transport is likely more than just onloading & offloading cargo. It probably gets used for relocating from one cargo bay to another or into any kinds of permanent storage that isn't in the initial hold.

 

[somebuddyX]

Geordi makes mention of the anti-grav units in Disaster, when he & Bev need to move some barrels of thruster pack fuel called Quaratum. Apparently, they can't be trusted for use in the presence of errant radiation.

Before that he mostly is attempting to move stuff via the transporter. I don't even know why you'd need a forklift type thing, when mostly you just transport stuff

I'm sort of half serious on that mainly because I like joking that if I worked on the Enterprise I would just be driving the space forklift in the cargo bay with Ensign Ricky, and then I wondered if that was really a job.

 

[Disposable_Ensign]

Does the typical estimate of 1,000 to 6,000 crew include the Cetacean crew members?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

MB doesn't know either, but apparently, Bev even hosts the symbiont herself for a bit. https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Odan