TOS Weaponry Question

[BolianAuthor]

Okay... there's something I've been wanting to ask TOS experts, and while it is a technical question, it specifically pertains to TOS and TOS only, so I am putting it here. To it...

Throughout TOS, the colors of the Enterprise's weapons oft changed, and I was wondering if there was ever any "canon" statement about what color the Enterprise's phasers and torpedoes REALLY are, and should be. And I am talking about ship-mounted weapons in particular, not personal hand weapons. If there is no canon source, what is the fanon consensus... are the Enterprise's phasers and torpedoes orange or blue or red?

I'm interested to hear what you think about this matter.

 

[bullethead]

Throughout TOS, the colors of the Enterprise's weapons oft changed, and I was wondering if there was ever any "canon" statement about what color the Enterprise's phasers and torpedoes REALLY are, and should be. And I am talking about ship-mounted weapons in particular, not personal hand weapons. If there is no canon source, what is the fanon consensus... are the Enterprise's phasers and torpedoes orange or blue or red?

In a Mirror, Darkly has the Defiant, a Constitution class ship, fire blueish torpedoes and phasers, if I recall correctly.

 

[BolianAuthor]

^

Yeah, you are correct about IaMD... the Defiant's weapons are blueish.

 

[TOS Purist]

The torpedoes were ALWAYS silvery pure-energy blobs of death. The only exception was in "Arena," when the torpedoes were red; this was mostly due to the fact that "Arena" was an early first-season episode, and not EVERYTHING was fully developed, the special effects being one of them.

TOS-R got it wrong, of course, by making all the torpedoes red. But they're supposed to be silvery blobs; as Bullethead pointed out, even ENT got this right by giving the TOS Defiant bluish-silvery torpedoes.

Phasers were a different matter. Starship phasers were normally blue, and most people's mental image of TOS phasers is correctly blue. In a few exceptions ("Who Mourns for Adonais," "The Apple," and "The Doomsday Machine") the phasers are red, which might indicate a higher phaser setting; with the hand phasers, only red beams caused disintegration or disruptor effects.

Interestingly enough, the ship's phasers in TOS could be set to stun, in which case they were green ("A Piece of the Action"). However, like the green-beam stun setting on the hand phasers, you don't see a beam; it's more of a dispersed field or green haze that bolts out of the emitter (check out "Journey to Babel" for the hand phaser green-beam stun effect).

So in summary:

Ship's Phasers: BLUE (occasionally red, possibly for higher settings, green for stun)
Ship's Torpedoes: SILVERY BLOBS

 

[Warped9]

Isn't blue indicative of something hotter than red? Then wouldn't blue be a higher setting than red?

 

[TOS Purist]

Of course, that's what I've always thought. But you know TOS even better than I do, Warped...have you ever seen blue beams disintegrate a target in TOS? Only the red ones do...and they only ever used red beams for orbital bombardments (except for in "The Alternative Factor," but that might just be because they were shooting at a tiny target and wanted to keep the collateral damage to a minimum).

 

[Timo]

We could rather well argue that the color scale of phaser beam power goes like this, from low to high:

green (stun with TOS hand phasers and "Piece of the Action" ship phasers)
orangish (hurt or kill with ST3 hand phasers, some damaged TOS ship phasers)
red (kill or disintegrate with TOS hand phasers, some TOS ship phasers, ST2 ship phasers when intended to wound or when damaged)
blue-white (kill with ST6 hand phasers, many if not most TOS ship phasers)

TOS-R would merely remove examples of Kirk showing mercy with his ship phasers, or of said phasers being damaged in a particular fight.

The main exception would then probably be ST5, where our heroes storm Paradise City with blue-white phasers while stun setting would be implied. That, and of course the TNG era where all phasers are yellow.

Perhaps Starfleet between TOS and TNG learned how to manipulate beam lethality without needing to manipulate its power and hence its color?

(And perhaps the beams in ST5 really were greenish rather than blue-whitish, but them being fired in darkness fooled our eyes?)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TOS Purist]

I think BolianAdmiral is only asking about TOS weaponry, not TOS-Movie weaponry (since it's a different technology than on TOS).

 

[Captain Robert April]

Who want to be the poor shlub to dig through trekcore.com and dig up every picture of a phaser firing?

 

[GSchnitzer]

Who want to be the poor shlub to dig through trekcore.com and dig up every picture of a phaser firing?

I'm on it, dude. Photon torpedoes already done.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Isn't blue indicative of something hotter than red? Then wouldn't blue be a higher setting than red?

Why does it have to be a matter of "heat"?

Maybe one beam is maybe of Unobtainions which look red and another beam is made of Blergions which look blue?

 

[BolianAuthor]

Who want to be the poor shlub to dig through trekcore.com and dig up every picture of a phaser firing?

I'm on it, dude. Photon torpedoes already done.

LOL... awesome.

Well, yes, I am really asking about TOS ship-mounted weapons in particular. I just want to know what color the phasers and photons are supposed to be, as a general rule... I realize that the settings aside... the variations can be chalked up to change in FX people and budget, but that's why I'm asking.

 

[TOS Purist]

Who want to be the poor shlub to dig through trekcore.com and dig up every picture of a phaser firing?

I don't need to - I've got an encyclopedic knowledge of TOS.

I would have mentioned the purple phasers from "Journey to Babel," but that's just due to odd image processing and isn't meant to be an "official" colour.

 

[Timo]

...Perhaps a bit of blueshifting due to the way they were fired against a high-warp target?

What happened in "Doomsday Machine" originally? Why were the phasers there so crappily drawn, in unusual colors? Was the starship-VFX load of this episode so high that they hired outside help that didn't quite deliver?

(That's one episode where I hate the TOS-R "improvements" with passion. Yeah, those blue beams are prettier, and the 3D movement of the ships finally does justice to the story. But the beams look so toyish and impotent when they just skim over the DDM surface, shooting out in a set angle and never doing any tracking or dwelling.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Robert April]

It all depended on which effects house was doing the opticals that week. Some did an outstanding job, some sucked. The houses that did the effects for "Arena" and "The Doomsday Machine" fall in the latter category.

 

[TOS Purist]

(That's one episode where I hate the TOS-R "improvements" with passion. [...] the beams look so toyish and impotent when they just skim over the DDM surface, shooting out in a set angle and never doing any tracking or dwelling.)

I also hated how their impact points were just shiny little balls, pretty much; at least the original effect had energy "shrapnel" (for lack of a better term) flying off from the impact point. I think that would have looked really cool with the proper effects, but I guess it just showcases the lack of creativity and talent that went into TOS-R.

It all depended on which effects house was doing the opticals that week. Some did an outstanding job, some sucked. The houses that did the effects for "Arena" and "The Doomsday Machine" fall in the latter category.

That might be why in "Arena" they have red photon torpedoes (when they're supposed to be silver). That's another area where TOS-R messed up; they "remastered" Arena and gave it red torpedoes to make it consistent (not realizing that it was a flub to begin with), and then kept the red torpedo effect throughout the rest of their bastardized episodes in spite of the silver torpedo effect that it should have been. THAT really annoys me.

 

[BolianAuthor]

...Perhaps a bit of blueshifting due to the way they were fired against a high-warp target?

What happened in "Doomsday Machine" originally? Why were the phasers there so crappily drawn, in unusual colors? Was the starship-VFX load of this episode so high that they hired outside help that didn't quite deliver?

(That's one episode where I hate the TOS-R "improvements" with passion. Yeah, those blue beams are prettier, and the 3D movement of the ships finally does justice to the story. But the beams look so toyish and impotent when they just skim over the DDM surface, shooting out in a set angle and never doing any tracking or dwelling.)

Timo Saloniemi

Well, this is one thing that always irked me, not because of any difference from TNG or beyond, but just because it shows a lack of knowledge about science...

You should not be able to fire phasers, lasers, or any other form of "photon/light-based" weapon while at warp... if you are going FASTER than light itself, how in the world would a light-based beam weapon ever work? The beam could not even form, because the ship itself is traveling faster than light itself is. This is why TNG never used phasers at warp (or at least tried very hard never to do so).

And if someone offers some BS excuse about extending a warp field around the phasers, I'm gonna scream... seriously... phasers ought not be usable at warp velocities.

 

[Timo]

What the hell? Why should phasers be lightspeed? They are generic scifi "beams", like sensor beams or communications beams. And this form of scifi presupposes that such beams, as well as starships, be perfectly capable of FTL velocities.

It might be impossible to have FTL beams in the real world, yes. But it's assuredly impossible to have Star Trek in the real world. That should not stop us from having Star Trek. It's a different reality, one where FTL is possible - and singling out phasers as the one thing that cannot do FTL is beyond silly.

Significantly, nobody and nothing in Star Trek has ever suggested that phasers would have anything to do with light, least of all be "light-based". Their behavior is in every way contrary to what lasers do: they glow in vacuum, they move either slowly enough for the eye to see or fast enough to catch FTL starships, they splatter when hitting a target, they stun or dissolve their hapless victims instead of drilling holes in them or cooking them...

I don't think TNG ever made an effort not to show phasers at warp. It's just that they made an effort not to show warp, because the effect was so damn expensive. Stock shots for uneventful cruising (and firing of aft torpedoes) existed, but using those for phaser fights would have been pretty awkward.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Joker]

Okay... there's something I've been wanting to ask TOS experts, and while it is a technical question, it specifically pertains to TOS and TOS only, so I am putting it here. To it...

Throughout TOS, the colors of the Enterprise's weapons oft changed, and I was wondering if there was ever any "canon" statement about what color the Enterprise's phasers and torpedoes REALLY are, and should be. And I am talking about ship-mounted weapons in particular, not personal hand weapons. If there is no canon source, what is the fanon consensus... are the Enterprise's phasers and torpedoes orange or blue or red?

I'm interested to hear what you think about this matter.

Good guys are a nice, passive, peaceful blue colour.

Bad guys are an evil, angry red colour.

Kirk & Co. were naturally the villains in most of the movies.

 

[BolianAuthor]

What the hell? Why should phasers be lightspeed? They are generic scifi "beams", like sensor beams or communications beams. And this form of scifi presupposes that such beams, as well as starships, be perfectly capable of FTL velocities.

It might be impossible to have FTL beams in the real world, yes. But it's assuredly impossible to have Star Trek in the real world. That should not stop us from having Star Trek. It's a different reality, one where FTL is possible - and singling out phasers as the one thing that cannot do FTL is beyond silly.

Significantly, nobody and nothing in Star Trek has ever suggested that phasers would have anything to do with light, least of all be "light-based". Their behavior is in every way contrary to what lasers do: they glow in vacuum, they move either slowly enough for the eye to see or fast enough to catch FTL starships, they splatter when hitting a target, they stun or dissolve their hapless victims instead of drilling holes in them or cooking them...

I don't think TNG ever made an effort not to show phasers at warp. It's just that they made an effort not to show warp, because the effect was so damn expensive. Stock shots for uneventful cruising (and firing of aft torpedoes) existed, but using those for phaser fights would have been pretty awkward.

Timo Saloniemi

I suggest you watch TNG again then, because they made an effort never to show phasers at warp, and the TNG tech manual states that phasers cannot be fired at warp. VOY showed phasers being fired at warp, but then again, VOY was a crap show that threw all continuity out the window.

It is not silly for phasers to be regarded as light weapons that can't be used at FTL... the fact that you consider it silly is not my problem... the fact remains that they are beam weapons based on light, just as a laser is. Yes, the energy is "phased" or whatever, but it is still a light-based weapon. Even IF you could pull some BS about having a warp field around it or whatever, it still has to leave that field, and enter warp space when it impacts with the target, and at that point, the beam would fail.