Unknown Romulan shield dampening weapon TNG The Mind's Eye

[Ebuntor]

Hi everyone,

At the beginning of the TNG episode The Mind's Eye, the one where Geordi is brainwashed by Romulans, I noticed that for some reason the shields of Geordi's shuttle suddenly failed. As soon as he sees the Warbird he says:

GEORDI:
"Computer -- sequence zero one zero. Maximum power to shields. And kill the music..."

He tries to contact the Enterprise and Risa and suddenly the computer reports:

COMPUTER VOICE
"Warning... shield failure..."

And he's beamed out. No indication of weapons fire but the shields do apparently fail for some reason. Could this have been some kind of unknown Romulan shield dampening weapon that only works on small vessels?
In DS9 "Improbable Cause", when Garak and Odo encounter a Warbird two Romulan soldiers are beamed on board their runabout, perhaps this is another example of that weapon. Although there's no mention of the shields I assume they raised them because they did have time to try and send out a distress call.

What's your take on this?

 

[Plecostomus]

Re: Unknown Romulan shield dampening weapon TNG The Mind's E

Perhaps the Romulans have their own version of the Breen device. One or the other could have stole it from one or the other... or maybe they each have their own independently developed version.

Another thought. Maybe they knew the flightplan of the shuttle (LaForge's shuttle that is) in advance and they had some of the control codes as well? Hm.

 

[Timo]

Re: Unknown Romulan shield dampening weapon TNG The Mind's E

We know that Borg tractor beams have a shield-draining effect. Indeed, they seem to be the primary Borg weapon, at least after "Q Who?" where separate shield-draining pulses are used. OTOH, we know that shields help protect from getting grabbed by a tractor beam.

We could speculate that all tractor beams drain the shields they grab to some degree. The strong combat shields of starships don't really suffer from this effect much, not when mere Alpha Quadrant starships are applying those tractors. But a tiny shuttlepod's shields quickly collapse when the craft is grabbed by a Warbird.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ebuntor]

Re: Unknown Romulan shield dampening weapon TNG The Mind's E

Plecostomus said:
Perhaps the Romulans have their own version of the Breen device. One or the other could have stole it from one or the other... or maybe they each have their own independently developed version.

Perhaps, although as I mentioned in my previous post there isn't any indication of weapons fire. The Breen weapon had a very clear effect on the inside and outside of ships.
If it was a purely Romulan weapon why didn't the shuttles systems seem to fail? The computer and comm systems were still working before he was beamed out.

Plecostomus said:
Another thought. Maybe they knew the flightplan of the shuttle (LaForge's shuttle that is) in advance and they had some of the control codes as well? Hm.

Doesn't seem unlikely considering how much they knew about LaForge and the high amount detail they could recreate Ten Forward on their holodeck.

 

[Ebuntor]

Re: Unknown Romulan shield dampening weapon TNG The Mind's E

Timo said:
We know that Borg tractor beams have a shield-draining effect. Indeed, they seem to be the primary Borg weapon, at least after "Q Who?" where separate shield-draining pulses are used. OTOH, we know that shields help protect from getting grabbed by a tractor beam.

We could speculate that all tractor beams drain the shields they grab to some degree. The strong combat shields of starships don't really suffer from this effect much, not when mere Alpha Quadrant starships are applying those tractors. But a tiny shuttlepod's shields quickly collapse when the craft is grabbed by a Warbird.

Timo Saloniemi

Interesting theory. However there's no indication of a tractor beam as far as I can tell.
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s4/4x24/themindseye008.jpg

Besides IIRC on every occasion where a shuttle or runabout was grabbed by a tractor beam we could clearly "hear" the beam and/or the ship would shake.

 

[Vanyel]

Re: Unknown Romulan shield dampening weapon TNG The Mind's E

Ebuntor said:

Timo said:
We know that Borg tractor beams have a shield-draining effect. Indeed, they seem to be the primary Borg weapon, at least after "Q Who?" where separate shield-draining pulses are used. OTOH, we know that shields help protect from getting grabbed by a tractor beam.

We could speculate that all tractor beams drain the shields they grab to some degree. The strong combat shields of starships don't really suffer from this effect much, not when mere Alpha Quadrant starships are applying those tractors. But a tiny shuttlepod's shields quickly collapse when the craft is grabbed by a Warbird.

Timo Saloniemi

Interesting theory. However there's no indication of a tractor beam as far as I can tell.
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s4/4x24/themindseye008.jpg

Besides IIRC on every occasion where a shuttle or runabout was grabbed by a tractor beam we could clearly "hear" the beam and/or the ship would shake.

Doesn't Data's examination of the shuttle confirm tractor beam type stress.

 

[Ebuntor]

Re: Unknown Romulan shield dampening weapon TNG The Mind's E

Vanyel said:

Ebuntor said:

Timo said:
We know that Borg tractor beams have a shield-draining effect. Indeed, they seem to be the primary Borg weapon, at least after "Q Who?" where separate shield-draining pulses are used. OTOH, we know that shields help protect from getting grabbed by a tractor beam.

We could speculate that all tractor beams drain the shields they grab to some degree. The strong combat shields of starships don't really suffer from this effect much, not when mere Alpha Quadrant starships are applying those tractors. But a tiny shuttlepod's shields quickly collapse when the craft is grabbed by a Warbird.

Timo Saloniemi

Interesting theory. However there's no indication of a tractor beam as far as I can tell.
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s4/4x24/themindseye008.jpg

Besides IIRC on every occasion where a shuttle or runabout was grabbed by a tractor beam we could clearly "hear" the beam and/or the ship would shake.

Doesn't Data's examination of the shuttle confirm tractor beam type stress.

Yeah he does, in fact we later see the shuttle being held by a tractor beam.
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s4/4x24/themindseye026.jpg

However I was talking about the moment the shuttle's shields failed and LaForge was beamed out.