The Pegasus...

[Timo]

But that's the problem: we saw this very device perform its second-ever cloaking of a starship, and there was no indication of an uninterruptable countdown.

Who turned the device on and why remains an open question. Might be the ship was already cloaked when Pressman made his escape, of course - due to the firefight, he never got a chance to turn it off. The mutineers in turn flipped the switch immediately after gaining control of the device, which was a stupid mistake because they happened to be inside rock at the time - but it's probably understandable that they wouldn't have stopped to coordinate with Bridge at that point, especially if Bridge was still in Pressman's hands when the mutineer group set out to storm Engineering.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DonIago]

To be fair, the second time it was activated nobody tried to abort it either.

We definitely don't have enough information as to what specifically happened though. Pressman's people could have activated the device intentionally or accidentally, the mutineers could have activated the device accidentally or (unlikely IMO) intentionally, or the device could have spontaneously activated. Hard to imagine anyone would have intentionally steered them into the asteroid at that point, unless the mutiny began while they were already inside the asteroid belt...

My guess is that they might have been approaching the asteroids with the intention of field-testing the device, and once the device was activated the ship was unintentionally steered into the belt.

 

[Timo]

Well, how to field-test whether this new device can make a starship fly through solid rock? By testing it at solid rock, of course.

The proximity of the asteroids was most probably by careful design. And given how dense the belt was in the visuals, an attempt to steer the ship clear of the rocks would be more or less as likely to take her into a rock as an attempt to steer the ship into a rock on purpose...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[velour]

I could well see a situation where Pressman tells the crew to proceed; somebody realizes "Hey, this is a cloak. This is treason!"; Pressman punishes the fellah for speaking out of turn; somebody rises to his defense; the inevitable "This is not a democracy!!" issue is raised; and by the time the XO tries the "You are under arrest, Sir!!!" stunt, there are already three exclamation marks there. So, stun guns.

Maybe that was what happened. However, I don't know how plausible it would be for a crew to mutiny exclusively because of a technical point of a treaty.

I don't know if the rank-and-file crew members would even be aware, or be thinking, of the legal status of the test. According to what Riker told Picard, the mutiny started after the test went awry and shit happened. It may be that there were officers who had reservations about the test -- before or while -- it was taking place but went along until things went wrong and the crew became endangered; and then they mutinied. But the mutineers still had the excuse of the illegality of the cloak experiment as their rationale and defense.

Perhaps the next ST movie should be about the Pegasus mutiny. Or maybe better yet, don't mess with it and just leave it to the viewer's imagination.

Two stories from other Trek episodes made me wonder about how plausible it would be for a crew to mutiny exclusively because of a potential treaty violation. In DS9 "For the Uniform", the crew did not mutiny, or even objected, when Sisko ordered biogenic weapons to be fired on innocent human civilians. In "The Enterprise Incident", the crew -- or officers -- did not mutiny when they found out that Kirk stole the Romulan cloaking device (an illegal act) and thus put the Enterprise in danger and could have potentially started a war.

 

[Markonian]

Has anyone, ever, cut "The Pegasus" and TATV and assembled all scenes in chronological order? I'd love to see it as one big episode (even if the ratio keeps alternating).

 

[DonIago]

In DS9 "For the Uniform", the crew did not mutiny, or even objected, when Sisko ordered biogenic weapons to be fired on innocent human civilians. In "The Enterprise Incident", the crew -- or officers -- did not mutiny when they found out that Kirk stole the Romulan cloaking device (an illegal act) and thus put the Enterprise in danger and could have potentially started a war.

They weren't innocent human civilians though; they were Maquis who'd been given advance warning of Sisko's intentions and assumed he was bluffing.

I suspect the crew would have objected if the weapons Sisko deployed were immediately lethal, but he gave them a reasonable chance to abandon the planet.

If I'm overreacting I apologize, but it really irks me when I see the situation being spun as "Sisko almost killed a whole bunch of people and poisoned a planet!" when the reality is that he did no such thing.

I also apologize for veering off-topic.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Original idea of saucer is it's where the civilians go in times of danger.

I'm not sure separating makes more sense here than all the other times they didn't. If anything, they should have had small fighter craft which could handle this kind of cover situation.

 

[Timo]

That there would actually have been an explosion or other such trouble aboard the Pegasus before the mutiny started is made extra dubious by the fact that we see the cloaking device later on, and it has not exploded or made stuff explode in its immediate vicinity.

It's possible that phasing the ship may have made some components go kaboom far away from the device itself, perhaps even on the bridge where they'd cause the greatest alarm among those the likeliest to act. But it's more probable that the explosion part was but a lie - I could well see the phasing spooking some of the crew even if its practical effects were relatively harmless.

As for the bombarding of the Maquis planet, it's a bit like firebombing Tokyo. Every man, woman, child and pet poodle down there was an enemy combatant by official status, largely to make it psychologically easier for the bomber crews to kill them. When the audience suddenly learns that there are "Maquis planets" where every man, woman, other, child and pet moonbat is a criminal, it need not follow that Sisko's crew would be facing a sudden relevation as well: they may have known of this policy for months already. And bombarding entire planets to various types of death is part of Starfleet's mission and should raise no eyebrows as such.

On the other hand, the only way to make the people down on that "Maquis planet" actually launch an evacuation would be if some of them started dying, very visibly and publicly. As far as the storyline goes, Sisko's message of warning never even reached the planet, as it was supposed to be relayed by Eddington who of course would do no such thing. But if there were fatalities, there's nothing in the storyline about those having been illegal fatalities - Sisko's decision may have been politically iffy, as per the later dialogue with Dax, but its legality was never called to question.

So where would crews draw the line? Our heroes are always violating the Romulan Neutral Zone, thus committing a carefully explicated act of war. But is it illegal to commit acts of war? Apparently not very. Neither the heroes nor the Romulans ever face legal consequences (or declare war) as the result of the repeated mutual violations. How should this cloaking ban be different, considering it concerns the very same set of adversaries and its violation theoretically carries the very same consequence of war (even if it's not actually defined as an act of war)?

An escalation of tensions as the result of "seemingly illegal actions" (such as those of Kirk in the beginning of the "Enterprise Incident" adventure, as opposed to those towards the end) might lead to the mutiny on an already tense secret mission, even if the actions themselves were not a sufficient trigger. But neither extremity appeals to me: neither the "just scary explosions" model nor the "just legal issues" one appears plausible alone.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[velour]

From what I can remember, there was no official Starfleet policy that called for or authorized starship captains to use biogenic weapons against the Maquis. There was no precedent for it. As far as I know, Sisko was the first to do so. And he did so without authorization.

I believe the firebombing was part of official policy and strategy.

By the way, again from what I remember, when Sisko ordered the biogenic torpedoes to be fired, the reaction of Worf was of discomfort and dubiousness. Even he had the sense that Sisko's order was out of the ordinary.


Getting back to the mutiny, in my previous post, I mentioned the stories from "For the Uniform" and "The Enterprise Incident". In both instances, I found the crew's reaction believable, in that they carried out the order or rallied behind the captain. I would guess that a ship's crew would almost always give the captain the benefit of the doubt if they were ever to face a dilemma.

That is why I wondered if it was plausible that the Pegasus crew would mutiny merely because an officer might have knew the finer points of a treaty; and therefore mutinied exclusively because of the possible wording of a treaty.

I suspect that Pressman would have been given the benefit of the doubt (by those doubters if there were any), of course, until a snafu happened. Besides, in the Pegasus case, there was no order to fire on innocents or even on an enemy. It was a freaking test, as far as they knew.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Didn't Sisko deliberately pick a poison that was slow to kill, so all the Maquis on the planet had ample time to evacuate? Granted it wasn't a proper Starfleet thing to do, but let's get the death toll right.

 

[Mojochi]

Real world precedent abounds. Sometimes A and B both agree to stop wielding something very useful (such as defensive missiles that can stop nuclear Armageddon) because agreement prevents war. Sometimes A agrees to stop doing one thing (Soviet missiles won't be introduced in Cuba) while B agrees to start doing another (US missiles will be withdrawn from Turkey). Sometimes A dictates stuff to B; need not necessarily be that A is stronger than B, merely that B thinks agreeing is better than disagreeing (say, giving up something trivial helps with sustaining something useful).

Well put. I'd say it's obvious that the notion of UFP cloaking tech is something that would play into an escalation of adversarial technologies. "Well, you got it, & we are going to have it too, so we can do the things we think you're doing to us, vis-à-vis, spying, & infiltration" . At a time, after the Tomed Incident, when they wanted to de-escalate, it was a rather easy concession to make, given that they'd never before used the tech as a standard practice, and that it is also a pretty easy benchmark in their overall political platform of insisting on never being the aggressor in combative situations. If the UFP's claim is that they will never instigate a war, then wtf do you need covert technology for? Spying on someone is aggressive. Infiltrating undercover is even more so. I could be wrong, but I remember hearing that Gene thought the UFP shouldn't have it as well. I agree. It goes against their very charter.

I still don't understand why such a treaty violation would cause half the ship to mutiny against the lawful captain?

It was also an unproven technology. The ship suffers some explosions, in all likelihood, because they didn't properly monitor their intercooler levels, after routing the impulse engines through the warp plasma conduits, which caused plasma relays to blow, igniting the plasma in space, making it look like the whole ship blew up.

It's fair to assume things got a little dicey when they activated this thing, (Because apparently they didn't have Geordi & Data on hand lol) and some of the command crew (I would have to think the 1st officer especially) decided that what they might've learned of the illegality of their current mission, coupled with the apparent endangerment of the crew was reason enough to mutiny. Systems & components are blowing up around the ship. They already know the captain is breaking some treaty stipulations by doing this in the 1st place. They decide it isn't the worth risk to lives. Arguing ensues, tensions mount, weapons are drawn, the captain & his few supporters escape. During the fracas, the current technological crisis aboard worsens, such that by the time the mutineers have the ship, it's disabled them badly, in a phased state. The phase cloak fails, the ship materializes in an asteroid, & that's all she wrote. Everybody else just waits to die

 

[Qonundrum]

Hello all. First off I wanted to introduce myself, I'm new to the forum. I don't know why I have waited so long to join a ST forum. I've watched every episode of TNG at least a dozen times, probably like everyone else on here. I'm also a fan of Voyager, but not like TNG. Never cared much for DSN, but to be honest I've never gotten past the first season so maybe I need to give it more of a chance.

So anyway, on with this thread. My favorite episode in TNG is probably The Pegasus, or its at least in my top 5. But there is something about the episode that has always bothered me, I wanted to get some other opinions on this. When the decision is made to take the Enterprise into the asteroid, why didn't someone suggest separating the saucer section??? It seems so logical given the circumstances at the time. They could take the drive section into the asteroid and leave the saucer outside. They would have much more space to maneuver in the asteroid plus the saucer section could keep a lookout for the warbird. I think the writers overlooked that possibility. Is there any reason why they shouldn't have done that?

With DS9, season 1 is the weakest but later seasons build up and execute new ideas, and s4-6 have some truly epic tales along with a tighter format. Otherwise what I'd say about "Pegasus" fits into my reply to gillmanjr below:

Data recommends against a shuttlecraft because of the possibility of the gravitational forces inside the asteroid overpowering a shuttlecraft's engines.

I'd hope the same problem would be for the saucer section sans drive section, but that would also mean the denouement and resolution would have to be changed. And given how awesome "Pegasus" is, having dark stuff like this had to be told. Ronald D Moore is pretty much the best, and DS9 - especially in seasons 4-6 but seasons 2 and 3 do set the stage for what happens later on - which didn't stop me from skipping over those to season 4 directly but don't tell anybody that - pretty much do some stuff "Pegasus" does but on a much grander and broader scale.

 

[Qonundrum]

P.S. I'm new here too, glad you found this place!

 

[cgervasi]

According to what Riker told Picard, the mutiny started after the test went awry and shit happened. It may be that there were officers who had reservations about the test -- before or while -- it was taking place but went along until things went wrong and the crew became endangered; and then they mutinied. But the mutineers still had the excuse of the illegality of the cloak experiment as their rationale and defense.

That's how I image it. The junior officers and enlisted people certainly wouldn't have known the details of the treaty. Many of them could have been aware of the danger and if Pressman was continuing the tests when they were getting very dangerous. They might have been grumbling that they didn't understand the urgency. Why not do this at a research lab equipped for this type of experiment? He's asking us to put our lives on the line, but I don't see the immediate need. At the same time the senior officers would be aware that it violates a treaty and that there had been no secret orders from the top brass or civilian leadership. I imagine them being inclined to give the captain leeway until the experiment started putting the lives of the crew in jeopardy.

 

[Kor]

It's interesting that we saw glimmerings of phased cloak technology a couple seasons before this in "The Next Phase," and then it turned out that Starfleet renegades were already working on the thing years before!

Kor

 

[trekshark]

Maybe Geordi had no issues installing and using the device due to his prior experience leading him to read up on the theories involved. He also got an inside look at the Romulans similar device. What I always found odd about Pegasus was that there was no mention of the events from Next Phase

 

[Prax]

Oh, there ain't nuthin to it. You simply take your plain ol cloaking device, slap on a phase converter, and hook that thing up to your warp reactor, and main comp. Good2go! I mean, everyone's doin it. The Klingins, the Romalins, the earthimins,....everyone.

 

[gillmanjr]

The thing is, there is zero need to think otherwise. There is nothing to be won by claiming that the saucer lacks warp drive, because Star Trek never features the claim that the saucer would lack warp drive.

What episodes? "Escape" happens a lot, and there's no need to separate the ship for that - the whole ship can escape at will. But the saucer is only separated in about four episodes, and the two that do feature an "escape" also make it clear that the saucer does have a warp drive - it uses that drive (or other form of faster-than-light drive, but why call it anything else but warp?) in order to make the escape happen.

The Picard Doctrine is never to separate until it's too late to use separation as an escape maneuver...

Indeed, we never really learn why the ship was built to separate in the first place. The two times when the saucer is used for escaping from a battle seem to surprise even the heroes themselves! Is Picard innovating in "Farpoint" when suggesting a maneuver Data declares "unsafe at any speed"? And is Riker in "Heart of Glory" wondering whether Picard wants to innovate again (even if that's a bit of a contradiction in terms), and finding out that Picard wants to stick to the regulations and to the putative intended way of operating the saucer this time around - and thus never asking the silly question again?

Timo Saloniemi

Getting back to the saucer separation discussion for a moment. I just started reading the TNG books from the beginning. I've had most of them in a box in my garage for years, which includes every single numbered book, but I haven't read them all. I started with the first numbered book, called Ghost Ship, and there is a separation sequence in it. Prior to the separation there is basically a detailed description of why the Enterprise D was given that capability, and the saucer section does NOT have warp drive. FYI the events of this book supposedly take place shortly after Heart of Glory in the timeline.

I don't have it in front of me at the moment so can't quote directly, but I will when I get a chance. However, what they were trying to accomplish in this instance was to "hide" the saucer section (and most of the people with it) from danger. They knew they couldn't get the saucer far enough away from the danger (the Ghost Ship) but they were hoping to hide the saucer and use the drive section to lure it away. The strategy failed and they ended up reconnecting a short time later, but they tried it.

 

[Jedman67]

IIRC, the novelization of Farpoint established that the saucer only had "impulse" but was still able to travel hundreds of light years only a few hours slower than the star drive section.
So therefore, we know for a fact that A) The saucer section does not have warp drive, and B) the saucer section does indeed have warp drive.

#TNGTechFacts

 

[DonIago]

I've always assumed B worked much like photon torpedoes, in the sense that if you "fire" the saucer off while traveling at warp, it can remain at warp, but it can't create a warp field on its own.