TOS Phaser batteries
- Thread starter Wingsley
- Start date
Well, we don't know how these turrets move exactly when firing - because in reality, they don't move at all, doh! Supposedly, the ENT turrets had to extend quite a bit to get off a shot, but again in reality they didn't extend at all. In fact, even the gunports didn't actually open.
A centered emitter inside the turret-top ball could be pointed at any direction within the hemisphere allowed by the surrounding hull if the ball simply rose a bit more from its oft-witnessed position. Conversely, one wonders whether those ball turrets also "still" can depress to rest completely within the hull, with cover plates sliding in place to hide them from our view - a maneuver seldom performed for whatever reason.
Then again, why should the emitter inside the ball be a "gunbarrel" at all? For all we know, the turrets don't need to rotate or yaw at all in order to point the beam; it's all done in "phased array" manner, the beam tilting up and down, left and right on its own.
Yet does the beam actually emerge from the turret to begin with? Or does the turret just help generate the beam at some distance from the hardware? TOS would have us believe the latter - the beams very seldom actually touch the hull!
Timo Saloniemi
A centered emitter inside the turret-top ball could be pointed at any direction within the hemisphere allowed by the surrounding hull if the ball simply rose a bit more from its oft-witnessed position. Conversely, one wonders whether those ball turrets also "still" can depress to rest completely within the hull, with cover plates sliding in place to hide them from our view - a maneuver seldom performed for whatever reason.
Then again, why should the emitter inside the ball be a "gunbarrel" at all? For all we know, the turrets don't need to rotate or yaw at all in order to point the beam; it's all done in "phased array" manner, the beam tilting up and down, left and right on its own.
Yet does the beam actually emerge from the turret to begin with? Or does the turret just help generate the beam at some distance from the hardware? TOS would have us believe the latter - the beams very seldom actually touch the hull!
Timo Saloniemi
In "Requiem for Methuselah", Flint says that the Enterprise is "bristling with weapons". It is likely that the TOS Enterprise is covered with phaser gun emitters that are powered off her four phaser banks.
The emitters could be placed in the same places as her future movie locations. Or in TOS' time she was "bristling" with them and much more dispersed and then in the movies they were consolidated into the pairs that we see. For example, she had six forward torpedo tubes in TOS but then reduced to two visible ones in TMP. She could have them in all the locations seen in the original fx scattered across her hull, plus the midships and aft weapons mentioned in dialogue.
The emitters could be placed in the same places as her future movie locations. Or in TOS' time she was "bristling" with them and much more dispersed and then in the movies they were consolidated into the pairs that we see. For example, she had six forward torpedo tubes in TOS but then reduced to two visible ones in TMP. She could have them in all the locations seen in the original fx scattered across her hull, plus the midships and aft weapons mentioned in dialogue.
Well, According to the FJ plans (if I am not missing something), Enterprise (post pilot refit) had no aft weapons....but did have phasers that could fire aft (2-4 emitters). If we go with the possibility (I think supported by onscreen evidence) the weapons ports are "ports" and a phaser port can also double as a photon port we can widen the weapons array a bit. This would kinda imply photon torpedoes are in the TOS era are energy weapons or at least mainly energy weapons (a small physical device could conceivably be involved.). I.E. "uncased".
"Bristling" is a relative term BTW. And one does not simply stick phaser emitters onto a starship an walk into Mordor. The FJ plans say 6 and maybe 8. All on the primary hull.
I really can't think of the need to put emitters all over the ship to explain what is in dialog. Do you have some examples? I certainly don't have the series memorized. I can't recall breakfast.
If you watch the escape scene in "In a Mirror Darkly' it does kinda look like something pops out just before the phasers fire. Its quick, and there's a lot of glare, so I can't be certain.
Here's another (minor) eye-opener.
The "Star Trek: The Motion Picture Official Blueprints" on Sheet #3 of 14, list some general specifications for the newly refit Starship Enterprise. Note that this spec sheet inventories the ship's weapons: "12 phaser banks (18 phasers)". How could this be? Well, if you look at the saucer, all phasers are obviously rigged in pairs; 3 pairs on topside, 3 more pairs on the ventral side. That's 6 banks of 2 each, or 12 phasers. One the secondary hull, phasers are arranged symmetrically, but not clearly in paired. There are 4 phasers on the belly of the hull, and two more atop the hangar bay, for a total of 6 more phasers. 12+6= 18. So the phasers on the secondary hull must not be paired; each is its own phaser bank.
Of course, one of the ironic Goddenberryanisms to come out of the TNG era was that Mr. Roddenberry had his assistant and personal manservant, Richard Arnold, announce that all of the old blueprints, including these ones and FJ's, were all "officially" non-canon. (Yep, that's what he did.)
I prefer to think that, as with TOS, at least some TMP-era weapons were typically concealed. If there were at least four torpedo banks (I suggest there were six, possibly eight), then some were "under cover" most of the time. Same with phasers: the secondary hull has almost not firing arcs and the saucer has no aft firing arcs at all. Concealed weapons would make that possible.
The "Star Trek: The Motion Picture Official Blueprints" on Sheet #3 of 14, list some general specifications for the newly refit Starship Enterprise. Note that this spec sheet inventories the ship's weapons: "12 phaser banks (18 phasers)". How could this be? Well, if you look at the saucer, all phasers are obviously rigged in pairs; 3 pairs on topside, 3 more pairs on the ventral side. That's 6 banks of 2 each, or 12 phasers. One the secondary hull, phasers are arranged symmetrically, but not clearly in paired. There are 4 phasers on the belly of the hull, and two more atop the hangar bay, for a total of 6 more phasers. 12+6= 18. So the phasers on the secondary hull must not be paired; each is its own phaser bank.
Of course, one of the ironic Goddenberryanisms to come out of the TNG era was that Mr. Roddenberry had his assistant and personal manservant, Richard Arnold, announce that all of the old blueprints, including these ones and FJ's, were all "officially" non-canon. (Yep, that's what he did.)
I prefer to think that, as with TOS, at least some TMP-era weapons were typically concealed. If there were at least four torpedo banks (I suggest there were six, possibly eight), then some were "under cover" most of the time. Same with phasers: the secondary hull has almost not firing arcs and the saucer has no aft firing arcs at all. Concealed weapons would make that possible.
It is very problematic to mix FJ plans with onscreen evidence. FJ's blueprints (while inspirational) is not very accurate to what was shown onscreen from a functional or appearance standpoint.
If we went strictly onscreen, the only evidence we have from the original FX is that there are multiple points on the lower saucer that fired phasers and torpedoes. Onscreen evidence also provides us with dialogue indicating that the Enterprise had phasers all around but unlikely had aft torpedo tubes.
I like to think of these hidden ports housing phaser guns and torpedo tubes. It could go either way with the torpedo casing/caseless technology.
There isn't any technical reason why the ship can't have a spread out concealed phaser gun emplacement though. Sure we can chalk it up to wonky FX work but even the TOS-Remastered FX got it wrong too with the phasers firing from the forward rim
Just hypothetically, the saucer could have the majority of phaser guns, with a few in the engineering hull as the "midship" weapons and a lone phaser gun in the rear. All powered by four phaser banks, IMHO.
From "Arena":
CREWMAN: Aft phaser to Bridge. Alert status. All weapons at operational ready.
From "Balance of Terror":
TEC 1: Port weapons show ready.
TEC 2: Starboard and midship weapons show ready.
From "Requiem for Methuselah":
FLINT: You would tell me that it is no longer cruel. But it is, Captain. Look at your starship, bristling with weapons.
Thanks for the quotes, blssdwlf.
According to "on-screen" TOS canon, Enterprise does have at least one aft phaser. TMP blueprints indicate at least two aft phasers, and if you include the aft-most phasers on the ship's underside, that she has four aft phasers. If we further include the Starship Defiant's appearance in ENT's "In a Mirror, Darkly", then it is clear that TOS-era Constitution-class starships had at least two aft phasers and at least one aft torpedo launcher. (I know that some would dismiss ENT entirely, and it was never conclusively shown that the Defiant shown in that ep was actually the same one as seen in TOS "The Tholian Web", but for sake of argument, we can at least conclude that Constitution-class vessels of both the TOS and TMP eras had aft weapons.)
According to "on-screen" TOS canon, Enterprise does have at least one aft phaser. TMP blueprints indicate at least two aft phasers, and if you include the aft-most phasers on the ship's underside, that she has four aft phasers. If we further include the Starship Defiant's appearance in ENT's "In a Mirror, Darkly", then it is clear that TOS-era Constitution-class starships had at least two aft phasers and at least one aft torpedo launcher. (I know that some would dismiss ENT entirely, and it was never conclusively shown that the Defiant shown in that ep was actually the same one as seen in TOS "The Tholian Web", but for sake of argument, we can at least conclude that Constitution-class vessels of both the TOS and TMP eras had aft weapons.)
I think that was due to a tizzy he had with FJ? GR signed the plans after he reviewed them and CBS approved them - and the technical manual. So for me at least they are canon. You can't have a temper-tantrum and undo what is done by your own hand and CBS/Paramount in the end did not denounce the products. But that is just me.
I will check that out....thanks
CBS had nothing to do with Star Trek in that era. It was just Paramount.
No, this was a TNG-era thing.
Once upon a time (late '80s and into the '90s), I corresponded with a man who lived in Canada, geographically close to where Mr. Arnold was originally from. My Canadian contact had some occasional face-to-face and written communications with Mr. Arnold over a period of three or four years. The accounts I have were detailed discussions with my Canadian contact, and another person who lived in California not far from Los Angeles. My Canadian and L.A. contacts kept in touch, both with me and with each other for over a decade.
The story I was told was that Mr. Roddenberry complained that he had been somehow deprived of his rights and royalties over STAR TREK. Whether this meant that he was somehow alleging that he was cut off from his ties to TOS, or to subsequent works in the 1970s (Franz Joseph Schnaubelt's literature, TAS, other novels, etc.), or a combination of the two, was never made entirely clear. It seemed like he was claiming all-of-the-above. Mr. Roddenberry, working with his attorney, made strict rules during the first couple of years of TNG; this would be a 1987-89 time frame. Among these many rules, Roddenberry asserted that certain continuity with pre-TNG works would be considered invalid. This included all FJ technical works, all of TAS, and even the TMP blueprints that bore Roddenberry's signature. Among these rules was the now-infamous "Warp 10 equals infinity" rule, which obviously conflicted with the content of several TOS episodes and even TMP's blueprints.
In the end, Mr. Roddenberry was having the last hurrah after Paramount turned over control of the STAR TREK "franchise" to Harve Bennett after TMP. Roddenberry was asserting himself creatively, legally and in terms of denying the validity of many things that he claimed were not under his direct control (and also some things that obviously were). This was essentially his way of asserting himself in the internal office politics inside the studio.
In a sense, Mr. Roddenberry's apparent attitude was understandable. When Paramount Pictures did divert control of the post-TMP feature films to Mr. Bennett, it would be as natural as the sun rising that Mr. Roddenberry would feel the need to re-assert himself. But the way he used the new TNG (through his lawyer) to do it has been very controversial, both back then and since the details about his lawyer were more recently revealed.
I have never met Mr. Arnold, but the combination of his public comments and what I learned about him through private channels through my contacts was both disheartening and offensive. The quote my California contact shared with me (and my Canadian contact corroborated) that Mr. Arnold said in full public view during a TREK convention was to the effect of "If you want to play in my sandbox, don't throw any sand on me and don't try to play with my toys." It's been about 25 years, so the quote is not exact but you get the idea. Again, I never met either Mr. Roddenberry or Mr. Arnold. But this and other less-than-kind things said about them decisively informed my desire to never have anything to do with them.
Sorry if this seems like it's a little off-track, but that's what I came away with.
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This is one way to explain how at least three out of four "phasers" are shown firing from the very same location at the saucer underside in "Paradise Syndrome". But it's an odd usage of "bank", both because the episode never mentions that word, and because the other episodes where the concept of "phaser bank" actually is mentioned, it is a piece of technology that does its own targeting, apparently independently of other banks.
Why does Spock order phasers one through four to be fired at first in sequence, then simultaneously? If that's "phaser banks" (even though the dialogue doesn't mention the concept), is he giving four crews the opportunity to try their best aim, and then picks the winner, or what?
We could speculate that there are four emitters very close to each other at the underside of the saucer - perhaps a "Gatling" arrangement of some sort. The same may go for every point of phaser beam emergence on the ship. And a single emitter can only produce a beam that lasts about a second, so a sustained beam is always a case of the multiple emitters "cycling" in the Gatling fashion, with three cooling as one fires. Except when Spock orders the unhealthy mode of firing all four beams at once...
...The refit then replaces each of the quartets of lesser emitters with a single bigger one. Which also means that the formerly invisibly small guns now become visible to the audience!
Timo Saloniemi
SOrry - - my sloppiness - CBS approved the manual...and GR may never of had anything to do with it. But Paramount approved the plans as did GR and copies were even sent to the National Air and Space Museum.
Not at all.
I was under the impression that there was a personal conflict.
Very enlightening.
But does that then mean he was saying TOS didn't count? And canon would start with TNG?
If you're asking for what I walked away with...
At the time, I referred (privately) to Mr. Roddenberry's (and Mr. Arnold's) pontifications on the subject of TREK continuity and gratuitous rulemaking as "Goddenberryanisms". To this day, my attitude is "If the shoe fits..." From my perspective (admittedly distant), the notion of "canon" was just more internal politics. You couldn't win, even with TNG unto itself. Fortunately, Mr. Roddenberry went into retirement and Mr. Arnold eventually left the studio. (CINEFANTASTIQUE magazine claimed Arnold was fired, apparently after Mr. Roddenberry passed away.) So, the whole thing was a politicized mess and now it's left up to the fans to try to make sense of it. I guess that's where "personal canon" comes into the picture.
At the time, I referred (privately) to Mr. Roddenberry's (and Mr. Arnold's) pontifications on the subject of TREK continuity and gratuitous rulemaking as "Goddenberryanisms". To this day, my attitude is "If the shoe fits..." From my perspective (admittedly distant), the notion of "canon" was just more internal politics. You couldn't win, even with TNG unto itself. Fortunately, Mr. Roddenberry went into retirement and Mr. Arnold eventually left the studio. (CINEFANTASTIQUE magazine claimed Arnold was fired, apparently after Mr. Roddenberry passed away.) So, the whole thing was a politicized mess and now it's left up to the fans to try to make sense of it. I guess that's where "personal canon" comes into the picture.
What? You just reiterated that CBS approved something. CBS didn't own Star Trek prior to this century.
First, I apologize. I edited that original post before I put it up because it sounded snooty (and it was too long) - and in doing so I cut out some explanation.
Current edition of the TOS Tech manual was released in 2006 - copyrights owned by CBS (not FJ - though he retains rights to previous editions). In other words they actively approved the content as part of the ST Universe (at least the part they had rights too). That was well after GR denounced FJ's work (and apparently basically all of TOS) as non-canon. Don't know if I deleted it from that post - but originally I said I could understand the tech manual maybe not being canon since I don't think GR actually saw it (but maybe he did) before it was originally printed - even though CBS authorized it after his decision. But the plans GR signed off on.
Anyways - is that more clear?
Though now that I think about it, if it was all about politics and rights - then when CBS re-released it, wouldn't be canon again? Plus, the reboot is canon, and it defacto establishes the original timeline as as part of the ST universe - and thus once again TOS becomes canon.
Man, it's kinda depressing. There was a time before I realized GR was human that I respected him as a highly enlightened person. These days I see him as a progressively thinking person who was a product of his time and profession.
