Sure you can
TOS and TOS Movies pretty much ignored Enterprise. But then again, TOS and the TOS Movies could be their own continuity as well 
TOS Shuttles... Armed?
- Thread starter Cmdr_Blop
- Start date
Sure you can
TOS and TOS Movies pretty much ignored Enterprise. But then again, TOS and the TOS Movies could be their own continuity as well 
I don't think "ignored" is the correct term here. If something was said to the effect of "we don't have the technological know-how to mount a phaser on a shuttle" during TOS then yes it would be a retcon to have them 100 years earlier in ENT (like ENT did with cloaking devices). But absence of evidence is no evidence. Why didn't the shuttles fire phasers when they might have been useful during TOS? For the same reason shuttles were never considered during rescue attempts in "The Enemy Within"
FWIW, STXI gave us a shuttle with an on-board transporter in (alternate) 2258, something previously considered confined to the realm of the TNG era. Again, nothing said such things didn't exist in that era, they simply were never seen until now.
To be sure, the STXI shuttle was fairly large in comparison with the TOS one. Nothing there to say TOS didn't have larger shuttles somewhere offscreen; we certainly saw some in TAS, and no indication was given that these would be brand new technology for Kirk and friends.
It's not particularly difficult to find real-world analogies for this. That is, even though we have had armed, armored and heavy-lift helicopters since the 1950s, it is still a viable military approach to have a helicopter that is neither armed, nor armored nor capable of heavy lifting. Indeed, the combination of the three is quite rare, even though any two capabilities are often found together.
Downgrading is also a common phenomenon in the military reality; naval gun caliber, range and lethality has been going down for the better part of a century, with the strongest main guns of today comparing unfavorably to the humdrum tertiary guns of the 1940s. On the winning side, the guns are cheaper, lighter, and more nimble in anti-aircraft applications, removing the need for a range of dedicated heavy and medium AA guns (and sometimes even covering for the lighter AA artillery, even though separate point defense AA is typically present in any decent-sized warship of today).
From the Trek point of view, we have never been given the impression that either phasers or transporters would be particularly bulky or energy-hungry devices. There's nothing to treknologically preclude their installation aboard a small craft, or even inside a spacesuit for that matter. Their lack in one application is countered by their presence in another, suggesting that the lack is due to doctrinal choices rather than tech hurdles.
OTOH, there may be some treknological difficulty in creating really small shields, because we never see effective personal shields (even the TAS life support fields are transparent to stun phasers). We might argue that small shuttlecraft cannot be shielded in the TOS and ENT eras, then, and that the presence of shields in the TNG era indeed is a new development. Or is there an example of UFP/Earth small craft forcefield shielding in the preceding eras?
Timo Saloniemi
It's not particularly difficult to find real-world analogies for this. That is, even though we have had armed, armored and heavy-lift helicopters since the 1950s, it is still a viable military approach to have a helicopter that is neither armed, nor armored nor capable of heavy lifting. Indeed, the combination of the three is quite rare, even though any two capabilities are often found together.
Downgrading is also a common phenomenon in the military reality; naval gun caliber, range and lethality has been going down for the better part of a century, with the strongest main guns of today comparing unfavorably to the humdrum tertiary guns of the 1940s. On the winning side, the guns are cheaper, lighter, and more nimble in anti-aircraft applications, removing the need for a range of dedicated heavy and medium AA guns (and sometimes even covering for the lighter AA artillery, even though separate point defense AA is typically present in any decent-sized warship of today).
From the Trek point of view, we have never been given the impression that either phasers or transporters would be particularly bulky or energy-hungry devices. There's nothing to treknologically preclude their installation aboard a small craft, or even inside a spacesuit for that matter. Their lack in one application is countered by their presence in another, suggesting that the lack is due to doctrinal choices rather than tech hurdles.
OTOH, there may be some treknological difficulty in creating really small shields, because we never see effective personal shields (even the TAS life support fields are transparent to stun phasers). We might argue that small shuttlecraft cannot be shielded in the TOS and ENT eras, then, and that the presence of shields in the TNG era indeed is a new development. Or is there an example of UFP/Earth small craft forcefield shielding in the preceding eras?
Timo Saloniemi
The shuttle in "The Immunity Syndrome" had a shield and science gear added in about 15 minutes so it's possible a TOS shuttle can get it modified to mission needs.
Let me toss something out here... using a modern analogy.
"Are modern helicopters armed?"
The answer is... sure, sometimes. And sometimes, no, they're not.
The fact that some modern helicopters lack weapons is not because we don't have the ABILITY to put weapons on them. Merely that we only put weapons on helicopters whose mission profile requires weapons.
You could say "well, we're not talking about civilian helicopters, we're talking about MILITARY helicopters." But then again, there are many military helicopters, used for combat purposes, which are not armed. Say the blackhawk, just for example.
Armed, or not armed?
Depends on the mission profile.
Maybe TOS shuttles could be retrofitted with "strap on weapons" or even with "strap on lifeboat-support umbilicals" or whatever else they may have needed. The fact remains, we never saw any of that.
So... NO TOS SHUTTLES WE EVER SAW WERE ARMED.
But I'm sure that many TOS-era small auxiliary craft were armed, and most likely, armed heavily in some cases.
"Are modern helicopters armed?"
The answer is... sure, sometimes. And sometimes, no, they're not.
The fact that some modern helicopters lack weapons is not because we don't have the ABILITY to put weapons on them. Merely that we only put weapons on helicopters whose mission profile requires weapons.
You could say "well, we're not talking about civilian helicopters, we're talking about MILITARY helicopters." But then again, there are many military helicopters, used for combat purposes, which are not armed. Say the blackhawk, just for example.
Armed, or not armed?
Depends on the mission profile.
Maybe TOS shuttles could be retrofitted with "strap on weapons" or even with "strap on lifeboat-support umbilicals" or whatever else they may have needed. The fact remains, we never saw any of that.
So... NO TOS SHUTTLES WE EVER SAW WERE ARMED.
But I'm sure that many TOS-era small auxiliary craft were armed, and most likely, armed heavily in some cases.
Well, my suggestion... look at those various "vents" up front on the TOS shuttle. What if those are access panels, where "accessory packs" can be connected? A targeting system or a low-yield phaser pack might bolt on there once you pull off those covers.Only one way to settle this. I'm going to put an armed shuttle in my next TOS book and see if CBS objects!
(This isn't an academic issue. I could actually use one in this book.)
Or maybe there are "strap-on" phaser cannon which can be mounted on the top surface of the "winglets" and connect to the system through some feature underneath the winglet (which we just never could see on-screen)?
Or perhaps some were, but only in situations where the armaments were ultimately not needed.
Say, "The Galileo Seven" mission didn't originally involve anything that would have called for weapons, so this particular shuttle might have been missing its "door pintle Minigun", an omission the Seven would soon regret. OTOH, the shuttle searching for the Seven might have been heavily armed for protection against the natives, but never got to fire its weapons.
The arming might be invisible if it consisted of installing something beneath those access panels but not altering the panels themselves; they might be "phaser-transparent" to begin with. Or some of the surface features might be permanent phaser emitters, and what would normally be missing would be the heavy and bulky internal power generators for those.
Timo Saloniemi
Painted in jungle camoflage...Oh, god, I wish PL would rerelease the AMT shuttlecraft JUST so I could make one with a door pintle minigun!
ASpockalype Now?
Oh, god, I wish PL would rerelease the AMT shuttlecraft JUST so I could make one with a door pintle minigun!
Why not a nose gun like on the Apache (or are you trying to keep it more along the lines of the military tech of the time - the Huey and its door guns)?
I think we can all expect this when (not if - when) we get the rerelease.
Oh, god, I wish PL would rerelease the AMT shuttlecraft JUST so I could make one with a door pintle minigun!
Why not a nose gun like on the Apache
Because that's not what Timo said. Ya see, when you're making a joke or wise crack that relates to another person's comment, you should keep your joke or wisecrack recognizable as referring to that comment. Humor. It's a difficult concept.
<Slaps head> it is indeed.Oh, god, I wish PL would rerelease the AMT shuttlecraft JUST so I could make one with a door pintle minigun!
Why not a nose gun like on the Apache
Because that's not what Timo said. Ya see, when you're making a joke or wise crack that relates to another person's comment, you should keep your joke or wisecrack recognizable as referring to that comment. Humor. It's a difficult concept.
Gotta read these posts more carefully.
My interpretation of screen canon is that Enterprise is only in the past of nuTrek - the result of changes stemming from the events of Star Trek: First Contact. So there is no conflict in TOS shuttles not having armaments - they are from the untampered-with timeline.
Interesting theory, but I don't think that's the official interpretation. I believe we're meant to treat ENT as part of the old Prime timeline of TOS, TNG, DS9, and VOY.
The new movies are their own thing.
Meanwhile, another question: where did Kirk's Enterprise keep the other shuttles when they weren't on the hangar deck? Did we ever see both shuttles at the same time? And suppose an visiting dignitary arrives by his or her own shuttle? Are the Enterprise's shuttles somewhere else?
Oh, I'll admit it is fully debatable (and has been, amongst my friends and me), but there was an episode of Enterprise ("Regeneration") that features Borg and Borg ship debris that would only have been present on Earth after the events of First Contact. Which, to me, means that the Cochrane that we saw in the first episode was temporally tampered with. As were the Vulcans - which might even explain why they seemed to be uncharacteristically dominated by a military culture (response to the Borg, which Cochrane and Sloan told them about and perhaps they even got sensor readings of), and so convinced it was a REALLY bad idea (as opposed to perhaps just a bad idea in the original timeline) that mankind go wandering out into space. All of those clues combined with the mention of Porthos in the nuTrek movie add up to my interpretation - IMHO, of course.
I dunno, I'm even a bit more extreme thinking that the Trekverse is much more fractured as individual universes/continuities per series
I mean, what's the official interpretation for Kirk's death? Did he die according to "Generations" twice by getting zapped into the Nexus and then falling to his death or did he live past Scotty's accident on the Jenolan in "Relics"? Which timeline is Voyager on given how many times they've come back from the future to alter their trip home? And which timeline was Enterprise on given all the Temporal shenanigans or was it just a badly written holodeck story crafted by Riker for his own entertainment?
Given the dialogue there is a flight deck and a hangar deck. I did a mockup of that here (start at post 158):
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=119751&page=11
The shuttles would be parked below in the hangar deck. The ready launch one is the one they walk up to that gets lifted up on the elevator to the flight deck for launching.
