To Beam or not to Beam...

[2 of 10]

In Prophecy during the final scene when the Klingons try to take over Voyager, they manage to beam most of the crew off Voyager, however, when they try to beam the crew off the bridge they can't because they had erected a force field around the bridge. But, they manage to beam ONTO the bridge through the force field, one would think that the field works both ways, can't beam off and/or on to a area protected by a force field, what gives???

 

[nx1701g]

^ Plot device. What is interesting though was that in the Voyager Writer's Bible it was written that the transporting through shields problem had been rectified by that time.

 

[Akiraprise]

Prophecy is one of those episodes I like, but at the same time it's kind of dumb. :shrugs:

 

[cyph]

Easier to push in than pull out?

 

[Cyke101]

I just rewatched the episode; what amazes me is that the decades-old, clearly inferior and outdated ship brought down Voyager's shields to 50% with a few blasts. The Klingons must have a ton of plot device weapons!

 

[Deks]

I just rewatched the episode; what amazes me is that the decades-old, clearly inferior and outdated ship brought down Voyager's shields to 50% with a few blasts. The Klingons must have a ton of plot device weapons!

Or pretty good engineers in terms of weapons.
Remember that Klingons would focus more weapons compared to defenses and this partially explains on why Voyager's shields were brought down to 50% quickly.

At the same time though, I blame most of these issues on idiotic writers because Voyager went through various advances/upgrades by that time already and the Klingons really shouldn't have damaged the shields so easily.

 

[Cyke101]

At the same time though, I blame most of these issues on idiotic writers because Voyager went through various advances/upgrades by that time already and the Klingons really shouldn't have damaged the shields so easily.

That's what I'm saying, ultimately. It has to be the writers and nothing else. Technology can be updated only so much on a single platform before you hit a wall, and we've seen more advanced ships than the D7 inflict less damage on ships as superior as Voyager.

A case could be made for Mirandas, Constellations, and Excelsiors as proof of being able to somewhat compete with the newer models, but they had an entire organization behind them to improve their technology (in some cases, necessitating major design changes), unlike the D7 that Voyager encountered. I simply can't see how Klingons removed so far from their Empire could upgrade their own outdated technology with no assistance and damage one of Starfleet's most advanced ships so badly. Unless the D7 somehow commandeered Borg technology, and considering 23rd century technology, I think that's even less plausible.

 

[Bacl]

Exactly! There's no way their weapons should have been able to so much as scratch Voyager.

I mean, you'd never buy that a half-century old Bird of Prey could blow up the Enterprise-D, flagship of the entire Federation, would you??

That'd just be insanity and...huh...what?

Oh.

Nevermind.

 

[Cyke101]

Exactly! There's no way their weapons should have been able to so much as scratch Voyager.

I mean, you'd never buy that a half-century old Bird of Prey could blow up the Enterprise-D, flagship of the entire Federation, would you??

That'd just be insanity and...huh...what?

Oh.

Nevermind.

The big difference is, the D7 didn't play dirty with Voyager, whereas the Duras sisters and the Bird of Prey did. With that logic, we could say the Enterprise-D beat the far superior Borg Cube in a straight firefight, completely ignoring the fact that Data and Crusher tinkered with Locutus (and therefore "cheated").

On the side, the pre-Wolf 359, pre-metaphasic shielding Enterprise-D faced an obsolete Klingon vessel from the 23rd century, and she was barely scratched (if I recall correctly). So how come, more than a decade later, the more advanced and Borg-improved Voyager gets slammed by similar technology?

This all ties back to how lazy the writing was in this episode, whether it be bridge forcefields or obsolete weaponry on obsolete ships.

 

[Timo]

To be sure, the E-D was a big bad mother, and the Klingons in "The Emissary" fired from their maximum range. The Voyager is among the smallest known Starfleet ship types, and the Klingons fired at point-blank range.

We haven't seen how Klingon weapons of the TOS era (to which this ship was native) fared against their Starfleet counterparts, because there was no straight-out firefight where the Klingons wouldn't have been pulling their punches. Okay, in the remastered version there was - the originally invisible ship of "Errand of Mercy" was transformed into a D-7 and her failure to destroy the hero ship might thus be counted. But ignoring TOS-R, we might argue that a Klingon battle cruiser could destroy her Federation counterpart with a single volley; the opposite appeared to be true as well. The performance of the Voyager would thus mean 100% improvement in shield protection... And, as we saw, it was tactically decisive in allowing the Federation ship to triumph over her similarly sized counterpart.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Grim Ghost]

What made even less sense was the idea of them making it so far out in the 1st place. Voyager almost got destroyed on a weekly basis, how did this crappy outdated Klingon ship survive for so long? Even with a cloaking device it doesn't seem possible.

 

[Bacl]

What made even less sense was the idea of them making it so far out in the 1st place. Voyager almost got destroyed on a weekly basis, how did this crappy outdated Klingon ship survive for so long? Even with a cloaking device it doesn't seem possible.

Meh. I find it more unlikely that every single week Voyager is nearly getting destroyed.

Space is BIG. There's a reason the Federation as (had) no information on the Delta Quad, no contact with its races...space is BIG. So big that the Delta QUad could be full of advanced space-going races and all their signals and communications would never reach the Alpha or Beta Quad.