The Planet Killer a creature? Hmm...

[Winterwind]

I know that wikis are often inaccurate but I just had a good laugh at the entry for Matt Decker on Memory Alpha. Whoever edited the article referred to the planet killer as a "creature" and that it "died" when Kirk took the Constellation down it's maw.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Matt_Decker

Decker was killed in the attempt. While the attack failed to cause significant damage - the Planet Killer had lost a small amount of power - it did demonstrate to the Enterprise crew how to disable the creature. Kirk drove the Constellation into the maw of the Planet Killer, which died when it was unable to handle the energy released by the Constellation's exploding impulse engines.

 

[Timo]

Well, the thing exhibited survival instinct and a sense of purpose, which already give it creaturelike character. We don't know if it was artificially constructed or not, but that may not be significant in defining a "creature" in the near future where artificiality seeps into all biological processes...

The one thing that's certain is that nothing about the DDM is certain. Kirk and Spock speculate on its nature without evidence: Kirk claims it's a vengeance weapon, while Spock claims it came from outside the galaxy. But Kirk has no basis for his claim whatsoever (the thing could instead be a berserker, a preemptive rather than reactive weapon), while Spock only knows a very short stretch of the beast's trajectory, and odds are against this trajectory being anything like a beeline, and in any case against it following a trajectory that could be backtracked or predicted at all.

None of this matters much in the end, because our heroes and semi-villains alike agree that the DDM has to be killed/destroyed rather than studied or outguessed. It's a bit funny, though, that Sulu is so dead certain that he knows where the beast is headed next...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gil T.Azell]

The "planet killer" was featured a in several non-canon productions.

from memory Alpha= Peter David's novel Vendetta featured another "planet killer" that was believed to have originated as an ancient race's (perhaps the Preservers) last resort weapon against the Borg. According to David's story, the planet killer encountered by the Enterprise was an automated prototype, sent on a course that would have eventually carried it to Borg space,

 

[T'Girl]

I never considered until now that the DM might actual be a natural creature, as opposed to being a construction. But all things are possible.

After Kirk's attack using the Constellation, Spock did pronounce the DM "dead."

We could postulate a creature, an energy field creature, that after it's birth gradually forming a neutronium shell around itself, similar to the way a sea creature does the same, the segments in it's length showing stages of growth. The DM lived inside this shell. We seen other space creature species on Star Trek who could move themselves through space.

It's might begin it's life as a near microscopic sized organism feeding on space dust, then asteroids and comets, and only consuming planets when it reaches full maturity.

Spock said that the Enterprise's power generation attracted the DM, the DM might have seen the Enterprise, and the Constellation before her, as a rival, a competitor in it's territory and a threat to it's grazing land.

Or the DM might have been attracted to the starships as possible mates, on Earth courtship rituals among animals (and some Humans) do involve mild attacks. The starship were just too fragile to take it's "loveplay."

 

[Winterwind]

It's been a while since I've seen the episode so I can't quote directly but Kirk and Spock did have the discussion about doomsday devices, speculating that this was left over from a long forgotten war and the episode is titled "The Doomsday Machine" so to me, that established that it was a device, not a living being.

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

Saying a device is dead doesn't mean it's alive. I've killed plenty of copiers in my time, and right now at the shop, one of them is quite dead. Just a question of semantics. Is the Doomsday machine sentient? Doesn't seem to be. Doesn't seem to be remarkably intelligent either.

 

[Therin of Andor]

It's on a wiki, Josan. You are allowed to change anything you believe is incorrect, although others may change it back again.

Or, you can add to the Talk pages attached to questionable entries.

 

[Winterwind]

I could indeed if I were inclined to register. I'm not. I just brought it up as a point of interest and I find it interesting that some members are making intriguing cases for it being sentient. I disagree, as does the episode itself but still, always fun to speculate about possibilities.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

I never considered until now that the DM might actual be a natural creature, as opposed to being a construction. But all things are possible.

After Kirk's attack using the Constellation, Spock did pronounce the DM "dead."

We could postulate a creature, an energy field creature, that after it's birth gradually forming a neutronium shell around itself, similar to the way a sea creature does the same, the segments in it's length showing stages of growth. The DM lived inside this shell. We seen other space creature species on Star Trek who could move themselves through space.

It's might begin it's life as a near microscopic sized organism feeding on space dust, then asteroids and comets, and only consuming planets when it reaches full maturity.

Spock said that the Enterprise's power generation attracted the DM, the DM might have seen the Enterprise, and the Constellation before her, as a rival, a competitor in it's territory and a threat to it's grazing land.

Or the DM might have been attracted to the starships as possible mates, on Earth courtship rituals among animals (and some Humans) do involve mild attacks. The starship were just too fragile to take it's "loveplay."

Or, since it has a neutronium shell, it could be a life fom that originates in collapsed stars. Or perhaps the mother creature lays its eggs in them.

 

[Red Ranger]

The DM may have been a sophisticated cyborg, although I always thought of it as a robot, designed only to destroy. While Kirk's theory might have been wrong, it also made sense, particularly when Spock reveals it came from outside our galaxy.

 

[Timo]

Why would a vengeance weapon from another galaxy enter the Milky Way, though? There would be nothing to avenge here. Plus, the critter seemed to have real trouble moving from one planet to another, let alone from one star system to another; getting from one galaxy to another shouldn't even occur to it...

Was it even intent solely on destruction? It left half the L-374 system undestroyed in the end... Perhaps it was merely eating its way towards a destination and didn't realize the mites infesting its smaller companions had a problem with that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

I always had the impression that the war the doomsday machine was designed for took place in another galaxy, and that it had been on a predetermined programmed course that it wasn't going to veer from. Like I said earlier, its actions are not very intelligent.

 

[Captrek]

Why would a vengeance weapon from another galaxy enter the Milky Way, though? There would be nothing to avenge here. Plus, the critter seemed to have real trouble moving from one planet to another, let alone from one star system to another; getting from one galaxy to another shouldn't even occur to it...

Was it even intent solely on destruction? It left half the L-374 system undestroyed in the end... Perhaps it was merely eating its way towards a destination and didn't realize the mites infesting its smaller companions had a problem with that.

Timo Saloniemi

I agree with Potemkin Prod. This isn’t an intelligent being looking for vengeance in the Milky Way and it didn’t care one way or the other about the mites infesting the planets and ships it destroyed.

Imagine I set up a riding mower to mow without anybody on it. It cuts a swath through my lawn, then continues off my lawn, over a walkway, and onto my neighbor’s lawn. The mower doesn’t have anything against my neighbor’s grass and it’s not failing to “realize” that it’s on somebody else’s lawn or that my neighbor might have a problem with that. It’s just a simple machine with nobody at the wheel.

I think the Doomsday Machine is similar. Decker may have called it a “devil... right out of hell,” but that’s just a response to the terror it invokes. It shouldn’t be taken as a statement that the machine has been analyzed and determined to have any kind of cognition beyond its simple programming.

Indeed, if Kirk’s speculation is correct, that it’s the kind of device that “could destroy both sides in a war,” then it may not have any capacity to distinguish between friend, foe, innocent bystander, and inanimate object. It just has its simple program: Find fuel, go to it, consume it, find more fuel, go to it, consume it, etc. It also has some rudimentary self-defense features — if something shoots at you, destroy it, unless it goes away and leaves you alone, in which case resume course — which, along with the primary “find, consume, repeat” program, completely determine the machine’s behavior.

 

[Keith1701]

I know that wikis are often inaccurate but I just had a good laugh at the entry for Matt Decker on Memory Alpha. Whoever edited the article referred to the planet killer as a "creature" and that it "died" when Kirk took the Constellation down it's maw.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Matt_Decker

Decker was killed in the attempt. While the attack failed to cause significant damage - the Planet Killer had lost a small amount of power - it did demonstrate to the Enterprise crew how to disable the creature. Kirk drove the Constellation into the maw of the Planet Killer, which died when it was unable to handle the energy released by the Constellation's exploding impulse engines.

This has always been the best episode of second season from TOS.

 

[Winterwind]

I know that wikis are often inaccurate but I just had a good laugh at the entry for Matt Decker on Memory Alpha. Whoever edited the article referred to the planet killer as a "creature" and that it "died" when Kirk took the Constellation down it's maw.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Matt_Decker

Decker was killed in the attempt. While the attack failed to cause significant damage - the Planet Killer had lost a small amount of power - it did demonstrate to the Enterprise crew how to disable the creature. Kirk drove the Constellation into the maw of the Planet Killer, which died when it was unable to handle the energy released by the Constellation's exploding impulse engines.

This has always been the best episode of second season from TOS.

Indeed. In fact, I think one of my first posts in this forum was about how Decker's "Don't you think I know that?" scene was one of the most emotionally gripping in the entire series.

 

[timelord1010]

The Doomsday Machine could be just as alive as V'Ger or Data is (or was). It could be a living machine traveling thru space like Tin Man but one that "eats" planets for fuel, Like Galactus.

 

[timelord1010]

Sorry, my computer double posted.

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

Either way, I think it's disturbing that the entry as posted is calling the macine a "creature" when there's just as much evidence to show it's not.

 

[Winterwind]

Yeah. Which is why I started this thread.

But seriously, I can't fathom how someone could be a big enough fan to write the article and not be tuned in to the blatantly obvious: That everything in the episode, including the title itself, indicates it's a machine.

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

It's one of the reasons I shudder when someone tells me that "this point in your story is WRONG because of some listing or another." Wikis are full of stuff like this.