Vapourised!

[Timo]

It does raise the question of how to solve a murder involving a disintegration if there were no witnesses. By the time someone's reported missing the evidence may have blown away.

It also raises the question of why no more murders are performed that way. Why was there a corpse left in "In the Hands of the Prophets"? After being shot with a phaser AND placed in an active plasma conduit! Is it just a question of the murderer trying to avoid triggering the weapon sensors at the murder location? (But DS9 doesn't seem to have much in that department.)

The TNG Companion suggests that money/time was indeed the big issue in the diminishing number of disintegrations, not audience sensibilities. See the entry on "Face of the Enemy".

In-universe, we might say that disintegration uses more power and thus is not used much in wartime, but that Starfleet people use it as often as possible in peacetime because it's more humane than burning holes in the victim's chest. Or that it requires some fine-tuning to achieve a good kill without going for all-vape, and TOS era phasers lacked that finesse.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[VulcanJedi]

votd said:
In TOS we see people (and even ships) get vapourised by phasers/weapons quite often - Im trying to remember whether anybody got vapourised in the newer shows; it seems like they just cry and fall down. I know it was mentioned in First Contact, but do we see it?

I think "vapourising" is one of these horrific elements from the Original Show that made it so much more dramatic and terrifying. Something that was lacking from the later incarnations.

 

[Deks]

Well, disintegration is not exactly a favorable option for SF to begin with.
They prefer to immobilize the target and resort to kill or vaporizing settings if left with no other option.

I agree that some of the murders could have been done through vaporizing, but it's possible such a high energy discharge would trigger various sensors on DS9 (just like anywhere), while a lower powered setting (enough to kill) and modification is not enough to trigger an alarm (and we know that such detection is hardly avoidable on Federation starships unless sensors are disabled, with DS9 being the only possible exclusion given it's Cardassian in origin).

Vaporizing does consume more power than lower settings, but with regenerable power cells it's not an issue.
24th century phasers have 16 settings and can produce better finesse in comparison to it's 23rd century counterparts.

Still, even vaporization wouldn't prevent a possible murder investigation from finding a killer.
Phasers (regardless of a setting) or just about any weapon leaves a trace in one manner or another, and given their technology, it wouldn't be impossible to solve such a crime.

As for ships being vaporized.
Well, most of the ships from races comparable to the Feds tech level or above are constructed with materials that can probably resist a 100% vaporization.
Some core explosions can vaporize an entire vessel or just segments of it while destroying everything else.
Depends on the circumstances of the explosion, hull materials in use and a bunch of other factors.