The Jem'Hadar suicide attacks made short work of the USS Odyssey, as well, which may have been the first shots fired, and the first Federation casualties of the Dominion War.
Vengeance vs Narada
- Thread starter xvicente
- Start date
The Jem'Hadar themselves claimed in the episode that they had "scored" several Starfleet ships prior to doing the Odyssey. OTOH, several years of uneasy peace followed that ship's destruction...
That's just it, though - USS Galaxy was unharmed by those beams. What they caused was the type of gasoline explosions that, ever since "A Call to Arms", have denoted a successfully shield-deflected shot; whenever a firecloud dissipated, the hull beneath was revealed to be intact.
This is the cheap way to do things, of course: fireballs are also the most common way for ships to be destroyed, that is, they completely disappear after being covered by a fireball. Yet the Akira and Excelsior CGI models in the same episode were shown being gutted by the beams, as was the Miranda model. Why did the Galaxy CGI model get filmed as if it were an "indestructible" physical model? I can only surmise it was a dramatic choice, although why it would be dramatically satisfactory to show the Galaxy as invulnerable, I can't readily tell.
Incidentally, the only prominent capital ship "kill" in the entire war, a Galor pummeled by two Galaxies simultaneously in "Sacrifice of Angels", is also a gasoline explosion "non-kill": the Cardassian vessel simply descends out of view amidst fireballs, displaying no hull damage.
Timo Saloniemi
That's just it, though - USS Galaxy was unharmed by those beams. What they caused was the type of gasoline explosions that, ever since "A Call to Arms", have denoted a successfully shield-deflected shot; whenever a firecloud dissipated, the hull beneath was revealed to be intact.
This is the cheap way to do things, of course: fireballs are also the most common way for ships to be destroyed, that is, they completely disappear after being covered by a fireball. Yet the Akira and Excelsior CGI models in the same episode were shown being gutted by the beams, as was the Miranda model. Why did the Galaxy CGI model get filmed as if it were an "indestructible" physical model? I can only surmise it was a dramatic choice, although why it would be dramatically satisfactory to show the Galaxy as invulnerable, I can't readily tell.
Incidentally, the only prominent capital ship "kill" in the entire war, a Galor pummeled by two Galaxies simultaneously in "Sacrifice of Angels", is also a gasoline explosion "non-kill": the Cardassian vessel simply descends out of view amidst fireballs, displaying no hull damage.
Timo Saloniemi
On the subject of Kelvin vs Narada, someone already mentioned that Nero was disoriented and not expecting a fight with anyone other than Spock and the Jellyfish, but there's also the probability that the Narada was damaged from its trip through the singularity - does any of the dialogue address this?
There is no specific mention of damage, not there and not after we specifically see the Kelvin ramming result in some (was it ever repaired?), or after Kirk and Sulu damage the drill with their captured rifles (was that one repaired, or swapped for a spare?), or after Spock destroyed the drill over Earth.
Might be the Narada was so big and her crew so small that there was no damage control, merely absorption of damage and subsequent ignoring thereof. Might be her state constantly deteriorated. But it might also be that she was indeed damaged by the timehole passage, and was repaired to be more powerful in her subsequent fights. Personally, I find it dramatically more interesting to think that Nero was slowly running out of everything in his quest for vengeance... Starfleet would soon be back from Laurentius, his ship was gradually falling apart, he was expending his missiles and his red matter and his drill bits, and he lacked resources to do anything about his losses. But he could take down several UFP worlds before succumbing, and that's what he wanted to do: both get his vengeance, and die doing so.
Timo Saloniemi
Might be the Narada was so big and her crew so small that there was no damage control, merely absorption of damage and subsequent ignoring thereof. Might be her state constantly deteriorated. But it might also be that she was indeed damaged by the timehole passage, and was repaired to be more powerful in her subsequent fights. Personally, I find it dramatically more interesting to think that Nero was slowly running out of everything in his quest for vengeance... Starfleet would soon be back from Laurentius, his ship was gradually falling apart, he was expending his missiles and his red matter and his drill bits, and he lacked resources to do anything about his losses. But he could take down several UFP worlds before succumbing, and that's what he wanted to do: both get his vengeance, and die doing so.
Timo Saloniemi
No, you can see the hull breach remaining in the saucer and engineering section even after the explosion over that area has mostly dissipated.
(click to enlarge)
http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=158&page=16
It's the same effect we see on the Romulan Warbird moments earlier in the same battle, and it's the same effect we see on the Miranda that gets destroyed in Sacrifice of Angels, among other examples.
Wow, you live and learn. I just took that for yet another gasoline cloud among gasoline clouds.
Since the ship leaves the frame so quickly, it's not only difficult to spot the damage - it's difficult to tell whether it had as much effect on the ship's fighting ability or survival as in those other two cases. I guess that Galaxy might have been toast, what with so many of the sats tracking her.
Timo Saloniemi
Since the ship leaves the frame so quickly, it's not only difficult to spot the damage - it's difficult to tell whether it had as much effect on the ship's fighting ability or survival as in those other two cases. I guess that Galaxy might have been toast, what with so many of the sats tracking her.
Timo Saloniemi
Yeah, there's another Galaxy Class ship present at the battle that can be seen unscathed just seconds after the first Galaxy is badly damaged, and then later on after they disable the weapons platforms.
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owP8rodvksA[/yt]
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owP8rodvksA[/yt]
Don't worry, "U.S.S. Galaxy NCC-70637" is part of the task force supposed to meet up with the Enterprise in Nemesis, so she survived well past the Dominion War. Compared to what was happening to other ships (except for Defiant), getting a couple of hull breaches was nothing.
Yep, and once the war started, the Galaxy-class is still one of the few classes to never have a ship destroyed on-screen during the war, so there's still that.
That's interesting. I guess after the non-wartime destruction of the Yamato, the Enterprise-D, and the Odyssey, Starfleet Engineering figured out how to sturdy up the ship class, lol.
Well, for all we know, once the war ended and the peace treaty was signed, the Galaxy class went back to getting blown up routinely
Given most of them turned up to see Voyager home and help destroy the sphere when she turned up two years after the war, nope.
Same registries and everything (yes I know that's because they used the same damn CGI models before someone with a mile sized stick up their ass points that out).
Same registries and everything (yes I know that's because they used the same damn CGI models before someone with a mile sized stick up their ass points that out).
``Well, that's the funny thing,'' said LaForge. ``We looked back at our telemetry and found that here, on the structural integrity panel, line 29 here? These ships come from the factory set on 'wussy'. Turns out if you switch it to 'beefy' these ships'll take anything you dish out instead.''
Well, eight. All with their shields down, supposedly.
She failed to make much of a dent in the Enterprise (Pike felt he was in a good position to fight back), and never managed to knock out the engines of the Kelvin. She even had great trouble keeping the Kelvin deprived of weapons: the crew restored those twice, once during the initial battle already...
I wonder how many of those eight lost ships were suffering from having inexperienced crews aboard? Cadets and the like were needed to beef up those crews, yes, but not all the ships can have been completely incapable of action to start with. For all we know, the lead ship Truman was fully crewed and simply died because of adhering to regulations that did not call for raising shields when approaching a planet in distress. When cadets get their assignments back at the Academy hangar, nobody appears to be sent to serve on the Truman...
Timo Saloniemi
Although Sulu made it sound like the Enterprise's shield wouldn't be able to another hit from the Narada, and the one hit they did take managed to get enough damage through to damage a deck enough to kill McCoy's predecessor and from the looks of it cause damage in the med bay.
The story tries real hard to present Kirk's genius as the factor that saved the ship: supposedly, nobody else had shields up at arrival (as it took major convincing to get Pike do that, and Pike was presented as more gung-ho as the average Starfleet leader, actively promoting gungholiness and drafting rebels and whatnot).
Yet did the shields make a difference? The story somewhat undermines that, as we see that even with shields up, Sulu manages to damage the ship in a simple low speed collision. Perhaps this means shields here are Dune style, stopping high speed impacts but allowing low speed ones to penetrate? But then Nero is wielding knives rather than bullets, with his shrapnel-spewing missiles...
What is probably significant is that Nero never engaged in a battle against a starship. He just took potshots at those. Robau never fired at Nero. George Kirk never fired at Nero. Pike never fired at Nero. Jim Kirk never fired at Nero. Sulu never fired at Nero. Spock never fired at Nero!
Yet every attack against Nero's assets was a success. Two rammings went home easily enough. Once they got to it, both George Kirk and Sulu had 100% success at shooting down missiles that Nero had fired against some third party. It was child's play to first damage and then destroy Nero's drill heads. And Nero's shields never were a factor in stopping rammings, weapons fire or transporter activity.
It's a nice way to construct a villain: if he's all offense and no defense, he can do a lot of damage, but OTOH he is forced to operate so that he avoids contact and conflict with the main good guy forces, allowing the unlikely heroes to shine.
Timo Saloniemi
Yet did the shields make a difference? The story somewhat undermines that, as we see that even with shields up, Sulu manages to damage the ship in a simple low speed collision. Perhaps this means shields here are Dune style, stopping high speed impacts but allowing low speed ones to penetrate? But then Nero is wielding knives rather than bullets, with his shrapnel-spewing missiles...
What is probably significant is that Nero never engaged in a battle against a starship. He just took potshots at those. Robau never fired at Nero. George Kirk never fired at Nero. Pike never fired at Nero. Jim Kirk never fired at Nero. Sulu never fired at Nero. Spock never fired at Nero!
Yet every attack against Nero's assets was a success. Two rammings went home easily enough. Once they got to it, both George Kirk and Sulu had 100% success at shooting down missiles that Nero had fired against some third party. It was child's play to first damage and then destroy Nero's drill heads. And Nero's shields never were a factor in stopping rammings, weapons fire or transporter activity.
It's a nice way to construct a villain: if he's all offense and no defense, he can do a lot of damage, but OTOH he is forced to operate so that he avoids contact and conflict with the main good guy forces, allowing the unlikely heroes to shine.
Timo Saloniemi
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