The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with it??

[Christopher]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

My problems with the planet-killer's scale are more from the concept and description than the visuals. I mean, a planet is a huge thing. Earth, for instance, is about 12,750 kilometers in diameter. If the PK is only 13,300 feet long -- i.e. about 4 kilometers -- then how the heck is it supposed to do more than take a small chunk out of a planet? It's like claiming that a mosquito goes around devouring whales.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

My problems with the planet-killer's scale are more from the concept and description than the visuals. I mean, a planet is a huge thing. Earth, for instance, is about 12,750 kilometers in diameter. If the PK is only 13,300 feet long -- i.e. about 4 kilometers -- then how the heck is it supposed to do more than take a small chunk out of a planet? It's like claiming that a mosquito goes around devouring whales.

That was another problem that was on my mind, too. I didn't mention it only because there're probably multiple handwavium-based explanations under which even a relatively small machine could compress and suck up planetary chunks, and I just didn't/don't feel like coping with that on any sort of serious level. As to why the Enterprise, the Constellation, or the shuttle weren't getting compressed when they were getting swallowed, the comeback might be, "Oh, the machine could tell they would fit in the maw," and that just led to "Ugh!" in my mind.

But, if we do seriously propose that the planet-killer is much larger, then the question of whether one H-bomb generally aimed down its neutronium-based throat (as opposed to one shot through the small thermal exhaust port right below the main port) is sufficient to take it down. Again, ugh.

I always thought it was interesting that Decker said it had 'a maw that could swallow a dozen starships'. It's like he unintentionally was onto the very idea that would eventually destroy the machine!

That's a great catch. Maybe he'd been pondering it in his despair. I never noticed that before.

 

[Tarek71]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

I would prefer something quite different if they ever encounter it in NuTrek. I could see an alien Death Star killing machine, but preferably much larger and not one that looked like a chiseled Stone Age stake tool. It should certainly be harder to take out than basically launching a nuke down its "throat". And I would have it so that it primarily targets planets with life, since that would make more sense for a weapon that was designed to exterminate an alien enemy.

Also, if captured, the Federation should learn something about it, including it's weapons, and armor. There is no way they captured this thing and did not try to reverse engineer some aspects of it.

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

My problems with the planet-killer's scale are more from the concept and description than the visuals. I mean, a planet is a huge thing. Earth, for instance, is about 12,750 kilometers in diameter. If the PK is only 13,300 feet long -- i.e. about 4 kilometers -- then how the heck is it supposed to do more than take a small chunk out of a planet? It's like claiming that a mosquito goes around devouring whales.

This one's a weird case (the episode...not you, Christopher! ).

Sometimes one shouldn't think about a story too much, lest it wither under the shadow of scrutiny. On the other hand, the time may turn out well-spent, rewarded with increasing boxes-within-boxes of implications and possibilities.

The whole idea that the doomsday machine is indeed a device created to be a doomsday weapon. That is complete supposition on Kirk's part. He may, in fact, be right.

But, what if it was alive?

"What was it? Was it a machine, or is it alive, or..."
"Both. Neither, I don't know."

And nether do we! Take the machine itself: was the funnel some natural formation which was utilized, or was it made to be shaped that way? It's rough surface makes it really hard to imply one way or the other. Technologically, that would suggest stupefyingly advanced technology. You'd think that kind of power utilization itself would be far more destructive than the machine they were building. So what would make the doomsday machine all that imposing, when they already have power which could most likely destroy a sun, at the very least??

It's "inner mechanism" was never defined beyond those two words. There was no access to its workings, no scene of Decker or someone tinkering with an access panel, ala Gary Seven.

With all those questions, I'm still open to the 'alive' possibility.

Just think if another doomsday machine popped up on the original series. That could have been the 60's equivalent to The Best of Both Worlds.!

In it's own way, though, it actually kind of is anyway!

 

[publiusr]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

It left a fair amount of debris, so we know it is a messy eather. And no one ever side the planet's mass no longer existed, just that the planets were gone. Gone means destroyed or scattered.

If most of the mass was eaten, then I have this image of an accretion disk leading to the maw, with beams breaking up larger chunks.

Now we will never get neutronium to hold a non-spherical shape, but this (big) pdf does talk about an idea called nuclear matter. Maybe it is also handwavium, but who knows?

http://vixra.org/pdf/1403.0928v1.pdf

 

[Wingsley]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

My problems with the planet-killer's scale are more from the concept and description than the visuals. I mean, a planet is a huge thing. Earth, for instance, is about 12,750 kilometers in diameter. If the PK is only 13,300 feet long -- i.e. about 4 kilometers -- then how the heck is it supposed to do more than take a small chunk out of a planet? It's like claiming that a mosquito goes around devouring whales.

That was another problem that was on my mind, too. I didn't mention it only because there're probably multiple handwavium-based explanations under which even a relatively small machine could compress and suck up planetary chunks, and I just didn't/don't feel like coping with that on any sort of serious level. As to why the Enterprise, the Constellation, or the shuttle weren't getting compressed when they were getting swallowed, the comeback might be, "Oh, the machine could tell they would fit in the maw," and that just led to "Ugh!" in my mind.

But, if we do seriously propose that the planet-killer is much larger, then the question of whether one H-bomb generally aimed down its neutronium-based throat (as opposed to one shot through the small thermal exhaust port right below the main port) is sufficient to take it down. Again, ugh.

I always thought it was interesting that Decker said it had 'a maw that could swallow a dozen starships'. It's like he unintentionally was onto the very idea that would eventually destroy the machine!

That's a great catch. Maybe he'd been pondering it in his despair. I never noticed that before.

I would prefer something quite different if they ever encounter it in NuTrek. I could see an alien Death Star killing machine, but preferably much larger and not one that looked like a chiseled Stone Age stake tool. It should certainly be harder to take out than basically launching a nuke down its "throat". And I would have it so that it primarily targets planets with life, since that would make more sense for a weapon that was designed to exterminate an alien enemy.

Also, if captured, the Federation should learn something about it, including it's weapons, and armor. There is no way they captured this thing and did not try to reverse engineer some aspects of it.

In dialog, Decker said it was "miles long," in a manner which suggested significantly more than two. How are you coming up with your figure in feet? Based on screencap analysis?

Yep. Did that back in 1989. I even did the math to figure out its volume and how much it would weigh if made out of neutron star material. It's in my files someplace.

Yeah, my remarks above were based on the assumption that the machine was larger than you're saying based on screencaps, vis-à-vis "miles long". As fun as the VFX were in the original,* they were, as you essentially pointed out, obviously bogus in terms of scale in at least some shots, such as when the shuttlecraft is going in. Also, it's often the case in TOS (if not usually the case) that it makes more sense to consider the VFX as suggestive than as something to take literally; that begins right with the stock shots of the Enterprise orbiting in a noticeably curved path around a planet that's seemingly turning faster on its axis than it would, were the situation operating according to celestial mechanics as they do IRL.

It's worth noting I think that inside of the machine it might have been even denser than neutronium (neutron star material), say if it had a black hole in the reactor; while the machine was in operation, they couldn't scan inside.

* - This isn't meant to imply that the effects in TOS-R were an improvement.

I want to echo some of the concerns expressed here, especially Christopher's, about the size of the Doomsday Machine.

Here's how I see it:

We do not know what the original intent of this alien machine was, or precisely where it came from. Did it come from another galaxy? If so, how did it cross the intergalactic medium with nothing to snack on?

SPOCK: She was attacked by what appears to be essentially a robot, an automated weapon of immense size and power. Its apparent function is to smash planets to rubble and then digest the debris for fuel. It is, therefore, self-sustaining as long as there are planetary bodies for it to feed on.

Spock's quote suggests that this machine has a ravenous appetite. It also makes it a mystery as to how such a machine could travel that far without something to eat. (Did the machine fall into a "Is There in Truth No Beauty?"-style intergalactic time continuum, or is there a star in our galaxy that is technically "outside"?

Back to the size. I like the mosquito-versus-whale analogy. A machine only a couple of miles in length is going to have an awful time eating the smallest of planets even if it does so slowly and methodically.

Has anyone considered the possibility that the machine's original function was not as a weapon? I showed this episode to a friend in the early 1990s, and she suggested that it could've been a mining implement for uninhabited asteroids or planets. This might explain the size issue, otherwise the machine would have to be at least 100 miles long.

 

[Maurice]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Spock is speculating, of course, based the the machine's path. Assuming it did come from "outside" it could have drifted at high sublight speed for 20 million years, idling until it got to its target, then restarted and resumed munching.

I assumed its job was to be effectively a self-sustaining Death Star: take planets apart, and nibble as needed to keep itself fueled up.

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Has anyone considered the possibility that the machine's original function was not as a weapon? I showed this episode to a friend in the early 1990s, and she suggested that it could've been a mining implement for uninhabited asteroids or planets. This might explain the size issue, otherwise the machine would have to be at least 100 miles long.

That's what I was saying in my post above, that its purpose and history is all supposition. I've even cited the 'alive' possibility, because it's actually a simpler answer to the questions surrounding it. As I said, the power used in creating it (if it was indeed created) far exceeds the power of the machine itself. And why, in effect, would a civilization who can build atomic bombs turn to making an M-80 as a weapon? It just doesn't make sense.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Also, it's often the case in TOS (if not usually the case) that it makes more sense to consider the VFX as suggestive than as something to take literally

The same could be said of Decker's dialogue...he was a little off his rocker and wasn't above embellishing the DM's attributes...or are we also to take his word for it that the DM was literally the devil?

Decker sounds a bit crazy. I am not sure that we can take what he says literally.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Also, it's often the case in TOS (if not usually the case) that it makes more sense to consider the VFX as suggestive than as something to take literally

The same could be said of Decker's dialogue...he was a little off his rocker and wasn't above embellishing the DM's attributes...or are we also to take his word for it that the DM was literally the devil?

Decker sounds a bit crazy. I am not sure that we can take what he says literally.

.... or take his word that when they found the machine, it was hovering over L-374 IV slicing out chunks of it with a force beam ...

... or that the crew died on L-374 III ....

Ugh.

Let me put it this way. If we can't believe the things that Decker says that dovetail with what we know or with what the characters can discern from analyzing the Constellation's micro-tapes, then the episode wastes a lot of its time and our time by having us pay attention to what he's saying. No, the narrative structure of the episode implies that Decker is delivering exposition to familiarize us with the machine and its capabilities before we encounter it, for backstory and to assist the viewer in what's happening while it's on screen. His recounting is peppered with the crazier references so we also know that he's losing it. The crazier references are those that don't dovetail and that neither we nor the characters could even in principle verify.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

But to de- things a bit...this was specifically concerning his description of the size of the machine as "miles long"...over two miles is indeed miles long. You believed that this implied more...yet Decker was clearly in a mental state that made him prone to exaggeration.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

But to de- things a bit...this was specifically concerning his description of the size of the machine as "miles long"...over two miles is indeed miles long. You believed that this implied more...yet Decker was clearly in a mental state that made him prone to exaggeration.

That's all fair. And, it's certainly true that no specific number is given. I completely agree that, when it's all said and done, we really have no idea what the intended size was (if any), except that it was quite a bit bigger than the Enterprise.

But, can we at least agree that, if Decker is exaggerating to the effect of many miles, then his delivery is indeed meant to imply many miles, but the issue is that he may not be credible?

If you'll go back and read what I said, I never completely sided with what Decker said anyway. I made it quite clear that the possibility of the machine having a sun-sized mass or more was based on the assumption that Decker's apparent inference about the size was being given weight, even after all I had said in the first place was that it "could be" that large and heavy based on what we heard. Even that was under an additional assumption about what the dampening field would evidently have had to have done (which while without direct foundation in the episode is the sort of thing that's consistent with how subspace fields are in retrospect known to operate; see "Deja Q"), involving what was just an alternative that I didn't even see fit to mention outside of a footnote in the first place; the main body of that post is stated under the assumption that the machine is quite a bit smaller and lighter.

All I was trying to do in the first place in that footnote was point out an extreme possibility that was nevertheless consistent with the dialog, that I thought was sufficiently interesting to warrant mention.

In any case, whether or not Decker is even making such a suggestion about the size, I really don't think it's worthwhile to doubt the things that he says that clearly serve the function of narrative exposition, just because we know that he's losing it. All that does is render a good bit of dialog both meaningless and superfluous.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

But, can we at least agree that, if Decker is exaggerating to the effect of many miles, then his delivery is indeed meant to imply many miles, but the issue is that he may not be credible?

Absolutely. Whatever its actual size, Decker's personal monster had taken on exaggerated proportions in his mind.

 

[Marsden]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

But, can we at least agree that, if Decker is exaggerating to the effect of many miles, then his delivery is indeed meant to imply many miles, but the issue is that he may not be credible?

Absolutely. Whatever its actual size, Decker's personal monster had taken on exaggerated proportions in his mind.

I think it was pretty bad without exaggeration. He wasn't claiming a guppy is a shark and it's really a barracuda, which is a really bad analogy, but it really is bad. It's huge and destroys whole planets, it's only weakness is it's single minded and even a busted up starship was enough to confuse it, one starship couldn't handle it alone. So, if there was some embelishment, it was negligible in my opinion.

But that doesn't give us any dimensions to measure and play with. I think even if it is a mosquito compared to a planet, that planet destroying beam would make up for it. And what is in a planet that would really help power that? Maybe only core elements? Maybe it absorbs the heat energy in a planets core and the material itself isn't that important, or maybe it uses radioactive elements in planets, like Uranium. I don't think these need to be answered to enjoy the show as it was. The size difference really doesn't matter that much, it clearly doesn't consume the whole planet, or it wouldn't leave so many asteroids/meteors, whatever you would call those chunks.

 

[Christopher]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Spock is speculating, of course, based the the machine's path. Assuming it did come from "outside" it could have drifted at high sublight speed for 20 million years, idling until it got to its target, then restarted and resumed munching.

Quite right. It's Earthbound thinking to assume something needs fuel to travel a great distance. You'd certainly need fuel to travel at warp for a great distance, but any spacegoing object could coast indefinitely at sublight until something stopped it.

And of course, the nearest galaxy isn't that far away. People tend to assume Andromeda is closest, but it's only the closest large spiral galaxy. There are nearly 3 dozen small dwarf, elliptical, or irregular galaxies closer than M31/Andromeda, including the various satellite galaxies of the Milky Way (such as the Magellanic Clouds), most of which are a few hundred thousand light-years away.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Has any Vulcan Star Trek character or someone like that ever made some statement like, "Humans don't care for solid facts. They care for grand tales."

 

[Vandervecken]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Also, if captured, the Federation should learn something about it, including it's weapons, and armor. There is no way they captured this thing and did not try to reverse engineer some aspects of it.

Why not? They didn't do anything (canon) with the Kalandan tech.

 

[Tarek71]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Also, if captured, the Federation should learn something about it, including it's weapons, and armor. There is no way they captured this thing and did not try to reverse engineer some aspects of it.

Why not? They didn't do anything (canon) with the Kalandan tech.

The why not is the production team of the show decided not to do that. Maybe it didn't occur to them that the Federation should actually learn from the alien tech that they come across and would naturally study it and implement whatever was useful. Or at least, it didn't occur to them in every case.

 

[Timo]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Maybe he'd been pondering it in his despair.

...Maybe he had already tried it once?

I mean, it makes no sense to send the crew down to a planet when a planet eater is threatening the ship - unless the maneuver will somehow terminate the threat. Decker may have tried to pilot his ship down the throat of the machine in a suicidal move, allowing his crew to survive, but was helpless to do so because the machine knocked out his engines soon after the beam-down.

That'd make him a bit more guilty of the deaths of his crew, and a bit more insane as the result. And what alternatives do we have? The crew beaming down to their doom voluntarily? They aren't idiots; the Constellation witnessed the planet-eating antics firsthand, and it's unlikely all 429 of the crew besides the skipper would have been left in the dark about the facts. The crew panicking? They wouldn't be able to beam down, then, not all of them, probably not even half - see "This Side of Paradise" for how difficult such a thing is to organize. The crew being beamed down at gunpoint or as the result of offensive use of transporters? This would take more than just Decker, and what would be his motivation for the mass murder?

When given access to a starship that still had working guns, he'd push the ramming plan aside, only to return to it later on when all he had was a shuttlecraft.

Spock is speculating, of course, based the the machine's path.

But he only knows about a very short stretch of that path - a dozen star systems at the very most. And that can't be a beeline, as the machine has been devouring all these systems, and the systems cannot form a beeline.

So Spock cannot justifiably even say which exact direction the DDM came from, and certainly cannot argue that it was coming from distance X and had never made a sharp turn before. "Coming from outside the galaxy" is either an unjustified statement, then, or is based on something else than what is known of the object's course. (Possibilities abound; since the Trek galaxy has a "fence" at the border, perhaps the DDM shows "barb wire scratches"?)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vandervecken]

Re: The Planet Destroyer from 'Doomsday Machine'. Wha'd they do with i

Also, if captured, the Federation should learn something about it, including it's weapons, and armor. There is no way they captured this thing and did not try to reverse engineer some aspects of it.

Why not? They didn't do anything (canon) with the Kalandan tech.

The why not is the production team of the show decided not to do that. Maybe it didn't occur to them that the Federation should actually learn from the alien tech that they come across and would naturally study it and implement whatever was useful. Or at least, it didn't occur to them in every case.

That's what I meant. Why (not) that they can do nothing.

Too many negatives.