The apparent fragility of the Enterprise-D

[Timo]

...Especially as just nine years prior to "Aquiel", it was standard practice for these Klingon "allies" to raid UFP installations!

I don't recall the E-D or other Galaxies having major problems with Klingon disruptors. The alt-universe E-D in "Yesterday's Enterprise" was pre-damaged and refused to maneuver. The final fight of "our" E-D involved a major Klingon cheat. The few times lone BoPs in TNG acted in a hostile manner (say, "Matter of Honor"), our heroes didn't appear concerned - nor when facing an old K't'inga in "The Emissary" or any of Gowron's Vor'chas.

"Rascals" really stands out here... But giant BoP-lookalikes like that gave pause to Romulan warbirds in "The Defector", too!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

The D blew up a Klingon Negh'var Class and sent another in fast retreat in "All Good Things..."

Only after flagrantly violating the Treaty of Algeron.

 

[Timo]

Also, the timeframe is one where one-woman shuttles can send Negh'vars running in abject terror. The E-D performing well isn't a surprise there - the fact that a hospital ship didn't blow those two assailants to smithereens outright is!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

The D blew up a Klingon Negh'var Class and sent another in fast retreat in "All Good Things..."

Only after flagrantly violating the Treaty of Algeron.

I don't imagine that treaty having any worth after the seeming collapse of the Romulan Star Empire.

 

[Arpy]

Also, the timeframe is one where one-woman shuttles can send Negh'vars running in abject terror. The E-D performing well isn't a surprise there - the fact that a hospital ship didn't blow those two assailants to smithereens outright is!

Timo Saloniemi

...a one-woman shuttle with Borg-acquired tech. The events of VOY altered the future. The D was blowing up Negh'vars before it was cool.

 

[Unicron]

When USS Yamato goes up, I seem to recall a discussion about such a warp core breach being basically impossible on a Galaxy-class starship due to the amount of safety features. I think they even had a discussion about something like that happening to Enterprise and mentioning it would take a very extreme set of conditions for all the safety features to fail enough to blow the ships up. Yet Enterprise keeps encountering these problems during her 7 or 8 years in commission.

According to the dialogue from "Contagion" the type of breach that destroyed the Yamato wasn't impossible, but normally highly unlikely because of the number of safeguards built in. The chambers which divide the matter and antimatter are magnetically sealed to prevent uncontrolled mixtures, and the Galaxy was designed with an emergency release for the antimatter should the seals fail. In the Yamato's case, that system actually started to work but didn't complete its operation because of the Iconian program, which froze it in place while the seals fell apart. Hence a big boom.

 

[Timo]

It's not as if anybody ever claimed that Galaxy class ships couldn't lose containment if somebody were shooting at them! Malfunction-based kabooms were supposed to be the rare thing.

And indeed whenever the TNG ships suffered malfunctions outside combat, the heroes or sidekicks got suspicious. When the TOS ship malfunctioned, Scotty just got to work, and everybody else thought this is how the ship ought to behave. Even when they did have every reason to be suspicious!

Say, phasers overheating and shutting down after just a few shots in "Balance of Terror"? Doesn't that justify Stiles' rantings about spies aboard? No, that's just the standard quality of Starfleet guns, apparently.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

When USS Yamato goes up, I seem to recall a discussion about such a warp core breach being basically impossible on a Galaxy-class starship due to the amount of safety features. I think they even had a discussion about something like that happening to Enterprise and mentioning it would take a very extreme set of conditions for all the safety features to fail enough to blow the ships up. Yet Enterprise keeps encountering these problems during her 7 or 8 years in commission.

According to the dialogue from "Contagion" the type of breach that destroyed the Yamato wasn't impossible, but normally highly unlikely because of the number of safeguards built in. The chambers which divide the matter and antimatter are magnetically sealed to prevent uncontrolled mixtures, and the Galaxy was designed with an emergency release for the antimatter should the seals fail. In the Yamato's case, that system actually started to work but didn't complete its operation because of the Iconian program, which froze it in place while the seals fell apart. Hence a big boom.

But then it happens in "Generations" just because the Klingons busted their coolant system.

 

[Unicron]

Plot weapons are always dangerous, unfortunately.

 

[Ithekro]

When USS Yamato goes up, I seem to recall a discussion about such a warp core breach being basically impossible on a Galaxy-class starship due to the amount of safety features. I think they even had a discussion about something like that happening to Enterprise and mentioning it would take a very extreme set of conditions for all the safety features to fail enough to blow the ships up. Yet Enterprise keeps encountering these problems during her 7 or 8 years in commission.

According to the dialogue from "Contagion" the type of breach that destroyed the Yamato wasn't impossible, but normally highly unlikely because of the number of safeguards built in. The chambers which divide the matter and antimatter are magnetically sealed to prevent uncontrolled mixtures, and the Galaxy was designed with an emergency release for the antimatter should the seals fail. In the Yamato's case, that system actually started to work but didn't complete its operation because of the Iconian program, which froze it in place while the seals fell apart. Hence a big boom.

But then it happens in "Generations" just because the Klingons busted their coolant system.

Same damage that was doing to blow up the Enterprise-D in "Yesterday's Enterprise" before the Enterprise-C made it back to when she came from. And that damage was also caused by Klingon weapons.

 

[Timo]

The "Contagion" dialogue seems to deal with a spontaneous failure exclusively - that is, the thing being excluded would be the consequences of armed attack or other external force.

The very fact that LaForge had to deal with "ticking clock" type failures as the consequence of combat more often than Scotty may simply be survivor bias, proof that the E-D had superior durability to the E-nil. Had Scotty's engines been subjected to the same sort of punishment, that weaker ship would have gone up in flames without a countdown. That the E-nil did survive just means she got off lightly (never being fired upon by more than one Klingon ship, say).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shark]

That the E-nil did survive just means she got off lightly (never being fired upon by more than one Klingon ship, say).

Timo Saloniemi

Or a Planet killer...

 

[Go-Captain]

According to the dialogue from "Contagion" the type of breach that destroyed the Yamato wasn't impossible, but normally highly unlikely because of the number of safeguards built in. The chambers which divide the matter and antimatter are magnetically sealed to prevent uncontrolled mixtures, and the Galaxy was designed with an emergency release for the antimatter should the seals fail. In the Yamato's case, that system actually started to work but didn't complete its operation because of the Iconian program, which froze it in place while the seals fell apart. Hence a big boom.

But then it happens in "Generations" just because the Klingons busted their coolant system.

Same damage that was doing to blow up the Enterprise-D in "Yesterday's Enterprise" before the Enterprise-C made it back to when she came from. And that damage was also caused by Klingon weapons.

Warp core breach also happens when the Enterprise-D's nacelle is tapped over and over in a time loop, yet in DS9 when the Odyssey is shot in a nacelle is survives 10 minutes, without shields, in combat against multiple Jem'Hadar fighters. It doesn't breach until rammed in the deflector and its other nacelle gets hit by a piece of exploding debris which busts the Bussard collector.
http://www.trekbbs.com//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/

 

[Timo]

Supposedly, Starfleet or Galaxy nacelles do not have a reputation of being "glass jaws" that can be targeted for quickly blowing up the victim, though.

After all, no known enemy has targeted the nacelles specifically! Except for the wily Cardassians in "The Chase", and they specifically wanted to disable rather than destroy.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shark]

Supposedly, Starfleet or Galaxy nacelles do not have a reputation of being "glass jaws" that can be targeted for quickly blowing up the victim, though.

After all, no known enemy has targeted the nacelles specifically! Except for the wily Cardassians in "The Chase", and they specifically wanted to disable rather than destroy.

Timo Saloniemi

The Tamarians targeted the Enterprise-D's engine specifically. And knocked out their warp drive with, I think, three shots.

 

[Timo]

Hmm. The shots we saw (one of them!) did not fall on the nacelles, but on the secondary hull. Yet dialogue specifies that there was also a direct and thus supposedly deliberate hit on the starboard nacelle (possibly the third and final shot), and that one seemed to be associated with the fact that warp was knocked out.

When our heroes "target their engines", do we see nacelle shots? Or does "engines" actually mean "warp powerplant", either because nacelle hits would be too likely to be fatal, or because nacelle hits would be too unlikely to have much effect?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

In the temporal loop with USS Bozeman, Enterprise has basically lost power when she is rammed. The nacelle explosion seems to send the ship spinning out of control. Without power the stress likely broke a bunch of things including the warp core. Then, Boom.

Odyssey took a beating before being rammed directly into the warp core.

Enterprise twice gets destroyed by Klingon weapon's fire that causes damage to the warp systems resulting in a coolant leak that LaForge is unable to shut down. The leak results in a warp core breach. They have two minutes, yet they don't eject the core. In Yesterday's Enterprise they were going to go down fighting in an effort to change the past. In Generation? Shouldn't the safety systems have preserved the ship rather than needing a saucer separation? Ejecting the warp core, or just the antimatter pods?

Maybe that class of starship's engine systems are susceptible to Klingon disruptor or torpedo fire? Though one figures the Yesterday's Enterprise version would have been in combat with the Klingons several times in her career.

 

[Timo]

Ejecting the core might be a means of killing the crew rather than saving it: there would be far too many valves to seal to prevent fatal antimatter release.

Instead, core ejection might be a means of saving the ship alone, preventing it from exploding with enough force to create harm beyond the deaths of the crew. Which is why successful core ejection almost invariably happens in fights like Wolf 359, resulting in near-intact wreckage rather than dust and small shrapnel.

When flying solo, the E-D would have no reason to eject the core, as there would be no collateral to worry about. Except in ST:GEN and the saucer there...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[USS Firefly]

So it's all Laforge's fauld

 

[SWHouston]

I forgot the name of the Episode, but, our Heroes were caught in a Time Loop, and had a collision with another SF Vessel. Which was sort of a fender bender on a Nacelle, that caused the destruction of the Enterprise. It just didn't seem serious enough to have completely destroyed the ship. But, before that, just getting near the Loop, took out almost every system.
Another example of the writers portraying the equipment as faulty/unreliable.