What is the Tantalus field?

[Vandervecken]

Anyone?


I mean, if it's just some sort of molecular disintegrator, how is it different from the transporter? The transporter could be used as a disintegration "beam" (and has been, see NOMAD; plus I don't see why a pad is needed). As I got older and watched Mirror, Mirror over and over, it bugged me that there was no explanation of this thing. Maybe it creates some sort of instant wormhole?

Also, it's a pretty nifty surveillance device. But can it function across ships as surveillance device or annihilation weapon or both? Can it "destroy" more that the matter in one person? Kirk said it would make mirror Spock "invincible." Would it? If its effects are confined to the interior of one ship, that is one huge overstatement.

Also, why would an alien scientist choose a name from earth's Greek mythology? I guess maybe he or she was a fan--all I can come up with.

 

[Timo]

I think "Tantalus Field" is just the trade name for a weapons system - one combining shipboard surveillance systems and shipboard transporters through customized software. The "alien scientist" could have been a contemporary and a loyal subject of the Empire (just referred to in the racist terms of said Empire), the "pillaged lab" a Starfleet facility dealing with Starfleet transporter systems...

Moreau was incredulous that Kirk could hope to actually defeat his enemies, even with the device - that it should make its user "invincible" is just what Kirk tells to Spock to get him off his back at a crucial moment, thus most probably but a lie.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nebusj]

Also, it's a pretty nifty surveillance device. But can it function across ships as surveillance device or annihilation weapon or both? Can it "destroy" more that the matter in one person? Kirk said it would make mirror Spock "invincible." Would it? If its effects are confined to the interior of one ship, that is one huge overstatement.

Also, why would an alien scientist choose a name from earth's Greek mythology? I guess maybe he or she was a fan--all I can come up with.

Obviously it doesn't make the possessor invincible. The logical thing for it to be is a device that ``happens'' to be bootable. It presents the appearance of being a way to vanquish enemies. The foolish officer who gets one might get it in his head this is his key to the throne and make premature moves. The real powers then know who this is and can cut him down before he does something dangerous to the status quo. Meanwhile, the officers who get one and are cautious about their steps --- who see the prize but don't grab at it too fast --- are marked as having ambition and sense, and can be brought into the real channels of power. At least while they don't grab too far above their station. Look at the name of the device. The warning's there for anyone not too blinded by ill-considered plans to see.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I mean, if it's just some sort of molecular disintegrator, how is it different from the transporter? The transporter could be used as a disintegration "beam" (and has been, see NOMAD; plus I don't see why a pad is needed). As I got older and watched Mirror, Mirror over and over, it bugged me that there was no explanation of this thing. Maybe it creates some sort of instant wormhole?

I personally LOVE that there's no explanation of what exactly the Tantalus Field Device does. It's all the more mysterious and spooky that way. Who knows if it outright disintegrates people or if it transports them to the other side of the galaxy? All we know is that it gets people out of Kirk's way & no one knows where his enemies keep disappearing to.

Also, it's a pretty nifty surveillance device. But can it function across ships as surveillance device or annihilation weapon or both? Can it "destroy" more that the matter in one person? Kirk said it would make mirror Spock "invincible." Would it? If its effects are confined to the interior of one ship, that is one huge overstatement.

If I had to guess, I'd say that it probably doesn't have much range beyond the Enterprise, if any. More limited of a weapon, sure, but also much easier to keep secret. Notice how Marlena disposes of Sulu's henchmen one by one and then leaves Sulu alone. Is that the way she chose to do it, or could the device only get rid of one person at a time? Maybe it had to recharge after disposing of three people in quick succession?

Also, why would an alien scientist choose a name from earth's Greek mythology? I guess maybe he or she was a fan--all I can come up with.

We don't know that the alien scientist chose that name. It could very well have been chosen by Mirror-Kirk or Marlena. In "The Greater Good," a short story written by Margaret Wander Bonanno in Shards and Shadows,

Spoiler: Plot Point from "The Greater Good"

Kirk steals the device from the Tantalus Colony seen in "Dagger of the Mind."

I thought that was a really clever extrapolation.

I think "Tantalus Field" is just the trade name for a weapons system - one combining shipboard surveillance systems and shipboard transporters through customized software. The "alien scientist" could have been a contemporary and a loyal subject of the Empire (just referred to in the racist terms of said Empire), the "pillaged lab" a Starfleet facility dealing with Starfleet transporter systems...

That contradicts pretty much everything we're told or shown about the device in the episode. If the Tantalus Field Device is something that's commercially available, no one would be confused as to why Kirk's enemies have a mysterious habit of "disappearing," as both Spock and Sulu say. They'd just say, "Oh, he's got a Tantalus Field." Spock in particular would be an idiot for not knowing what it was, and the Spock we're shown in "Mirror, Mirror" is no idiot. It's obviously something has Kirk has that no one else in the Empire does (outside of Marlena), something that's given him a clear tactical advantage over his enemies. ("It made you Captain.")

 

[Vandervecken]

I personally LOVE that there's no explanation of what exactly the Tantalus Field Device does. It's all the more mysterious and spooky that way. Who knows if it outright disintegrates people or if it transports them to the other side of the galaxy? All we know is that it gets people out of Kirk's way & no one knows where his enemies keep disappearing to.

Do you know what I always thought the Tantalus field was? I kind of thought it was a way to at least apparently beat the first law of thermodynamics. That it actually, to any sensors, destroyed matter.

Did you ever read The Unreasoning Mask by Farmer? I thought of the ether disruptors as that. Maybe involving conservation across universes. Or maybe somehow altering the texture of spacetime so that matter no longer emerged from its warp and woof. Something like that.

Obviously it doesn't make the possessor invincible. The logical thing for it to be is a device that ``happens'' to be bootable. It presents the appearance of being a way to vanquish enemies. The foolish officer who gets one might get it in his head this is his key to the throne and make premature moves. The real powers then know who this is and can cut him down before he does something dangerous to the status quo. Meanwhile, the officers who get one and are cautious about their steps --- who see the prize but don't grab at it too fast --- are marked as having ambition and sense, and can be brought into the real channels of power. At least while they don't grab too far above their station. Look at the name of the device. The warning's there for anyone not too blinded by ill-considered plans to see.

This is great. But do you mean that the Tantalus field isn't a Kirk-only secret, that it's been put out there by maybe Sec 31, that they laid down the corridor plan, so to speak? I don't see that--I can see the corridors being there, just not the Tantalus field being this device laid out there for the best up-and-comers to find in unusual situations. Huh would have been great if Hoshi found it too but also found the Defiant and was smart enough to avoid being channeled? I have to believe Kirk would have seen that too (eventually? soon?), but then, I am biased in Kirk's favor. (Hate Ent, but has to be taken into account in canon, and I did like In a Mirror Darkly, always excluding the execrable-in-Ent Bakula.) Could Sec 31 or whatever no-such-agency be so good that they could expect to control all such instances, and then would they dare leave it out there? Although it is a hell of a book idea I'd say--just not sure I see it in Mirror, Mirror, although it is a great extrapolation.

But Kirk would be the one in a million I think. Kirk without ethical or civic constraint. The Caesar, the one they can't channel or control.

Why Kirk is truly better suited for command than Spock.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Do you know what I always thought the Tantalus field was? I kind of thought it was a way to at least apparently beat the first law of thermodynamics. That it actually, to any sensors, destroyed matter.

Did you ever read The Unreasoning Mask by Farmer? I thought of the ether disruptors as that. Maybe involving conservation across universes. Or maybe somehow altering the texture of spacetime so that matter no longer emerged from its warp and woof. Something like that.

No, I'm not familiar with that work, but the thought of the Tantalus Field actually breaking the first law of thermodynamics and destroying matter... WOW! I've never thought of it in those terms before, but that is something to contemplate! That IS a formidable device!

A discovery like that could revolutionize science in the Mirror U, and Mirror-Kirk is just using it to destroy his enemies. What a great illustration of his lack of vision! WOW!

 

[Vandervecken]

No, I'm not familiar with that work, but the thought of the Tantalus Field actually breaking the first law of thermodynamics and destroying matter... WOW! I've never thought of it in those terms before, but that is something to contemplate! That IS a formidable device!

A discovery like that could revolutionize science in the Mirror U, and Mirror-Kirk is just using it to destroy his enemies. What a great illustration of his lack of vision! WOW!

Ha you're right! Never thought of it like that. If it was that, it would indeed point out starkly that mere rulership would be trash and finally tedious administrative duty compared to the godlike power of transforming a civilization! (Even assuming power is your motivator, one's vision would have to be severely myopic to value rulership above that. Hate thinking of The Kirk that way, me and NOMAD best buds...this would suggest that real-Kirk rose to just where the Peter Principle needed him, unless there was some bone-deep difference between him and Mirror Kirk, which maybe there was, maybe there wasn't. Not happy thinking that...grr.)

 

[Drone]

I think "Tantalus Field" is just the trade name for a weapons system - one combining shipboard surveillance systems and shipboard transporters through customized software. The "alien scientist" could have been a contemporary and a loyal subject of the Empire (just referred to in the racist terms of said Empire), the "pillaged lab" a Starfleet facility dealing with Starfleet transporter systems...

Moreau was incredulous that Kirk could hope to actually defeat his enemies, even with the device - that it should make its user "invincible" is just what Kirk tells to Spock to get him off his back at a crucial moment, thus most probably but a lie.
Timo Saloniemi

As with JonnyQuest037, I don't see how you're arriving at some of these observations. Where is the reference or inference that would explain that the device could have possibly come from a Starfleet lab? How? There's nothing suggested in the episode that would suggest MU Kirk had any idea of where he was, and the supposition from MU Spock was that this encounter was not of a kind that he had any past familiarity with. Also, Kirk didn't need to get MU Spock off his back, the latter was as insistent that that the transfer take place, as the landing party was. "You must return to your universe. I must have my captain back." You also mean to say that their dialogue, one of the most memorable in TOS, for my money, was not meant by Kirk to actually inspire Spock to take the actions he is suggesting, and further hoping that Spock would succeed because of the esteem he has for him, but was just some counterfeit spiel with no feeling behind it? It certainly didn't seem that either character interpreted it that way at the moment.

Obviously it doesn't make the possessor invincible. The logical thing for it to be is a device that ``happens'' to be bootable. It presents the appearance of being a way to vanquish enemies. The foolish officer who gets one might get it in his head this is his key to the throne and make premature moves. The real powers then know who this is and can cut him down before he does something dangerous to the status quo. Meanwhile, the officers who get one and are cautious about their steps --- who see the prize but don't grab at it too fast --- are marked as having ambition and sense, and can be brought into the real channels of power. At least while they don't grab too far above their station. Look at the name of the device. The warning's there for anyone not too blinded by ill-considered plans to see.

Well, non-canon as it is, the novel Sorrow of Empire, rather convincingly shows how MU Spock very decisively used the device, to dispose of Fleet Admiral Garth and the Empress, amongst many others, and in concert with his meticulously thought out long term strategy, was fairly quickly successful in taking over the Empire, and by steps, leading it to its destruction, only to be long afterwards ingeniously be supplanted into a benevolent culture through a calculated inflitration of those that had destroyed it. Very well conceived and engaging direct extension of the episode, IMO.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Where is the reference or inference that would explain that the device could have possibly come from a Starfleet lab? How?

In fact, Marlena specifically says, "How many enemies have you simply wiped out of existence by the touch of a button? Fifty? A hundred? Now, I always thought that was funny, The great, powerful Captain Kirk who owes everything to some unknown [emphasis mine] alien scientist and a plundered laboratory."

To my mind, that suggests that Kirk either plundered the lab after everyone in it was dead (very likely, considering the mores of the MU), or else he found the device in an abandoned laboratory. Who knows? Maybe that unknown alien scientist invented the device several hundred years before Kirk found it! I think it's safe to say that Kirk likely didn't know what he was getting at first and figured it out through trial and error.

Also, Kirk didn't need to get MU Spock off his back, the latter was as insistent that that the transfer take place, as the landing party was. "You must return to your universe. I must have my captain back." You also mean to say that their dialogue, one of the most memorable in TOS, for my money, was not meant by Kirk to actually inspire Spock to take the actions he is suggesting, and further hoping that Spock would succeed because of the esteem he has for him, but was just some counterfeit spiel with no feeling behind it? It certainly didn't seem that either character interpreted it that way at the moment.

Yeah, that final speech loses all of its bite if it's just Kirk making up stuff "to get Spock off his back." If he cared that little, he'd have just let MU Spock die of that head wound.

Very well conceived and engaging direct extension of the episode, IMO.

Yes, I was very impressed with Sorrows of the Empire. It was a very nice extrapolation from what we knew. I especially liked the role that

Spoiler

the mind-meld between Mirror-Spock and McCoy

played in the plot. It was wonderfully logical, but that interpretation had never occurred to me in 30+ years of watching the episode.

 

[Vandervecken]

Another thought: maybe use of the Tantalus field was connected to the crossovers of the landing parties. That is, it wasn't just the ion storm. Maybe the Tantalus field's constant poking of "holes" of some kind made mirror Enterprise a "thin spot" between the universes.

I don't think any such connection was ever intended in the episode as written and portrayed, but, well we do this sort of thing all the time. Or maybe that was originally the idea, but scenes got cut? Once it occurred to me, it seemed obvious to connect the two phenomena.

 

[UnknownSample]

Odd that we also have the Tantalus Colony, from Dagger of the Mind. I'm losing interest in my Google search about the Greek myth to see what connects the two, though.