Unless I misremember, they used the port and starboard thrusters, not the engines. I guess thrusters are not on the same engineering thing?
TNG "Booby Trap"
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
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Unless I misremember, they used the port and starboard thrusters, not the engines. I guess thrusters are not on the same engineering thing?
Were the thrusters chemical based? If so they would be immune to anything that drains electrical energy.
It's never really stated what powers them, so... um... yeah, that's the ticket. Sometimes (especially now with my writing fan fiction), I go backwards when I explain or describe something that I need for the story. Like: Okay, in Booby Trap, the engines were being drained, but they were able to use the thrusters...How would that work? And then, like you just surmised, in order for that episode to make sense, the maneuvering thrusters would need to be an independently-powered, non-electrically based bit of tech.
They didn't get moving by using the thrusters - they only used those for minimalist course corrections, and once also for facilitating a "gravity slingshot" maneuver around one of the bigger rocks (although it was grossly exaggerated, or then the rock was made of compressed black holes).
What the trap did was take a functional, fully fueled starship and prevent it from using its energy resources to engage its main drive while simultaneously draining those resources. And while helpless to do anything about the drain, our heroes found a way to trick the part that prevented the use of the drive - essentially they first tried by swinging back and forth like any stuck driver would, but then LaForge realized, counterintuitively, that gunning forward and then putting their "car" on neutral would do the trick.
We might say the enemy dug a mud pit for the heroes' jeep, and the jeep was slowly sinking while the wheels were spinning - and LaForge found the mud did have traction for a split second, and that all the remaining power should be put in that one brief acceleration.
The rest, with the steering thrusters, was just steering while the "car" was on neutral and skidding out of the mud.
Timo Saloniemi
What the trap did was take a functional, fully fueled starship and prevent it from using its energy resources to engage its main drive while simultaneously draining those resources. And while helpless to do anything about the drain, our heroes found a way to trick the part that prevented the use of the drive - essentially they first tried by swinging back and forth like any stuck driver would, but then LaForge realized, counterintuitively, that gunning forward and then putting their "car" on neutral would do the trick.
We might say the enemy dug a mud pit for the heroes' jeep, and the jeep was slowly sinking while the wheels were spinning - and LaForge found the mud did have traction for a split second, and that all the remaining power should be put in that one brief acceleration.
The rest, with the steering thrusters, was just steering while the "car" was on neutral and skidding out of the mud.
Timo Saloniemi
No they used the impulse engines, I remember it. I believe they actually show the impulse engines fire up from outside the ship. It doesn't make sense because previous to that they aren't even able to activate the engines AT ALL. Watch the episode again, I'm pretty sure they don't even have helm control and then all of a sudden they are firing the impulse engines to get moving. Its a gap that is not explained by Geordi's work during the episode. His work explains how they can coast out and use the thrusters to steer but not how they get the ship moving in the first place.
His technobabble outburst that's supposed to explain it is this:
They can use their engines. They have been using them all the time. It just gets them nowhere, and meanwhile the assimilators drain their reserves.
But if they give one big burst and then go superquiet, LaForge seems to be saying the "mud" will no longer notice them. It can stop their progress when they're making progress under engine power, but it won't notice it should be doing that when the heroes shut down the engines and pretend not to be a spacecraft at all.
Now, every time they use those thrusters (or anything energetic), the trap will try and grab them again. But weak thrusters, weak grabbing, and only for brief moments. And then they're out. But had they tried to push with thrusters strong and long enough to get moving, that, too, would have been thwarted. Supposedly.
Timo Saloniemi
They can use their engines. They have been using them all the time. It just gets them nowhere, and meanwhile the assimilators drain their reserves.
But if they give one big burst and then go superquiet, LaForge seems to be saying the "mud" will no longer notice them. It can stop their progress when they're making progress under engine power, but it won't notice it should be doing that when the heroes shut down the engines and pretend not to be a spacecraft at all.
Now, every time they use those thrusters (or anything energetic), the trap will try and grab them again. But weak thrusters, weak grabbing, and only for brief moments. And then they're out. But had they tried to push with thrusters strong and long enough to get moving, that, too, would have been thwarted. Supposedly.
Timo Saloniemi
I liken the thrusters having too low an energy output to be noticed. But... what I feel was improperly depicted in the episode is that the thrusters would've been needed at such a low output level that it would've taken more time to move the ship than the power reserves they had left. In deference to solving the episode problem, I think a little physics license was OK.
How I'd rather they have solved the problem would've been more creative. Arm a few probes with high yield explosives and deploy them with minimal thruster power. Position them near each of the devices, then detonate. In the end, they would've disarmed the trap and freed the very cool spacecraft relic. Double-win.
This episode was one of my "go to" episodes. It showed off the new dynamism and photography of the 3rd season.
Good points:
The ancient The Promelian battlescruiser...space archaeology, I love it.
Picard's enthusiam for the mission.
Geordi using some real scientific method to solve a problem and also getting a little character development. Here we see an engineer problem solve and not just create something as a "miracle". Quite an advance from TOS.
The music, including a faux-Goldsmith selection from "Patton".
Good points:
The ancient The Promelian battlescruiser...space archaeology, I love it.
Picard's enthusiam for the mission.
Geordi using some real scientific method to solve a problem and also getting a little character development. Here we see an engineer problem solve and not just create something as a "miracle". Quite an advance from TOS.
The music, including a faux-Goldsmith selection from "Patton".
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Geordi's never going to be thought of as a miracle worker acting like that.
Imagine if he'd solved it using his own engineering team instead of hiding away in the holodeck. Then he could have developed a crush on Barclay or Gomez or such instead.
lol......
Part of the problem wasn't that they couldn't move, it was that the power used to move them would kill them before they escaped. The trap used to counter their movements, or if it fails to do that, irradiate them to death anyway. The thrusters were used to reduce the amount of power the trap could used to irradiate them. The single boost to break inertia before the trap countered the effect, as they found there was a slight delay in the trap's reaction time, but it wasn't a lot. Their simulations were to use computer controls to rapidly change how they were boosting so the trap didn't have time to counter their momentum, but the energy usage would increase the radiation to the point it would kill the crew before they escaped....are at least it did in some of the simulations. That was why they didn't want to use the computer to do the run...not every simulation came out with them living, and for whatever reason, the slow human controlled run was seen as the higher chance of survival than the computer controlled run, due to the radiation caused by the power systems. The computer controlled run added more power to the trap's radiation field and reduced the time they had to live to a level that wasn't adequately simulated. Sometimes the computer could make it and sometimes it couldn't, possibly because their were too many variables in the field they were in. Moving rocks, moving parts of the trap setup in those rocks. And variable power needed due to theses shift causing a variable amount of radiation each run. One minute they might make it, but if they started a minute later, the factors could be too much and they'd die. With a human controlled run, the crew had at a known time limit for them to escape without getting even more rads thrown at them by their own power usage. It was still risky, but it had less variables that could result in their death than the computer run.
Also humans seem to like to put their possible deaths in their own hands rather than let it be something they can't predict. If the computer controls the whole run...they might make it, they might not...and they have no control if it start to not work....they just die from the radiation while the ship cruises out with over a thousand dead. Potentially leaving a Galaxy-class starship open for salvage rights to any race in the region.
Also humans seem to like to put their possible deaths in their own hands rather than let it be something they can't predict. If the computer controls the whole run...they might make it, they might not...and they have no control if it start to not work....they just die from the radiation while the ship cruises out with over a thousand dead. Potentially leaving a Galaxy-class starship open for salvage rights to any race in the region.
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