Why does it seem that in major engagements, our brave heros, or their blood enemies, decide to fight with no shields on? The assault on DS9, none of the Cardassian or Dominion ships had their shields on. The First Battle of Chin'Toka, Klingon and Federation ships ripped to shreds by Cardassian orbital weapons because of no shields. The list goes on, I'm just too lazy to remember specifics. Did they decide that they're going to die anyway so they'd rather not prolong the fight? I would understand if their was maybe a budget constraint but the SFX for shields can't be that expensive. And if the shields were just absolutely, 100% ineffective against all weapons then it seems like it would be more prudent to not include shields at all and just have ships with 5m thick hulls like conventional armor. Thoughts?
Where are the shields?
- Thread starter rajrajmarley
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Fleet Captain
By the time of the dominion war, ships had skin-tight shields.
As to why dominion weaponry (or cardassian weaponry enhanced with dominion tech) was ripping federate/klingon ships to shreads - that's a testament to the dominion military technology; dominion weapons were just that good.
If shields couldn't stop dominion weapons, 5m thick hulls would have no chance to do so.
Of course, federation/klingon weapons at maximum charge proved they can match the dominion's firepower.
As to why dominion weaponry (or cardassian weaponry enhanced with dominion tech) was ripping federate/klingon ships to shreads - that's a testament to the dominion military technology; dominion weapons were just that good.
If shields couldn't stop dominion weapons, 5m thick hulls would have no chance to do so.
Of course, federation/klingon weapons at maximum charge proved they can match the dominion's firepower.
The shields are there, it's the bubble shield graphic that is missing. I have read comments to the effect that this may have been a budgetary choice, but at any rate I think it is a smart choice visually.
If you take a battle like the one in Sacrifice of Angels and you cover every ship in the battle with a little glowing bubble every time it is hit by an attack, then that would start to look ridiculous, and the battle overall would look a lot less epic than it does.
Also, as with a lot of other Trek clichés, the DS9 writers seemed to realize that making a fetish of the shields and spending a lot of time talking about what percent they are at and so on gets old fast.
I had never heard that the shield configuration had been adjusted from an imaginary Trek-tech point of view to account for this visual distinction, but that is interesting to note.
Basically there is nothing about the imaginary concept of "deflector shields" that suggests there needs to be a bubble graphic, though that is how the shields were often depicted previously on Trek.
If you take a battle like the one in Sacrifice of Angels and you cover every ship in the battle with a little glowing bubble every time it is hit by an attack, then that would start to look ridiculous, and the battle overall would look a lot less epic than it does.
Also, as with a lot of other Trek clichés, the DS9 writers seemed to realize that making a fetish of the shields and spending a lot of time talking about what percent they are at and so on gets old fast.
I had never heard that the shield configuration had been adjusted from an imaginary Trek-tech point of view to account for this visual distinction, but that is interesting to note.
Basically there is nothing about the imaginary concept of "deflector shields" that suggests there needs to be a bubble graphic, though that is how the shields were often depicted previously on Trek.
I seem to recall reading in the DS9 Companion the production staff felt explosions look better. I think the ablative armor on the Defiant replaced the need for the shield effect, at least for that ship.
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In the ST: Movies, the shields seem to fail earlier but the hull/armor was more robust.
Reliant v Enterprise brought this out.
Or their shield/hull tech far outweighed their phaser power
The Dominion's Breen allies also used an energy-dampening weapon at certain points that robbed the allied powers of their shields; that's how the original Defiant was lost.
I think that "Call to Arms" was the only major battle of the series where we saw someone use both hull contouring "invisible" shields and the more familiar bubble shields. A bubble shield appeared in one scene around the central core of the station when a damaged Hideki slams into the shields...also one of the few times we see shields shrug off an impact of a starship.
In the TOS movies, the shields weren't the bubble shields they were the skintight shield-type being described here. But the hull was stronger, which sort of contradicted the idea that once shields were gone you were dead (phasers and torpedoes being enough to rip right through the hull like a hot knife through butter).
That the shields were tight into the hull doesn't really explain their lack of effectiveness against all weapons fire and though I agree that a shield doesn't necessarily have to have any specific kind of visual effect when impacted it seems a prerequisite that it actually stop weapons fire from impacting the ship itself, which it did not do in many of the engagements. I understand that Dominion weapons tech was more advanced than Starfleet's at the beginning of the engagement, I believe that by the time of the engagements at Chin'Toka and Cardassia, the shields had been upgraded so they were effective against those weapons. Also, the fact that Dominion war tech was superior to the Federation's at some point doesn't explain why Cardassian and Dominion ships were directly damaged by DS9 during that battle. I have a similar argument against the lack of obvious shielding in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek. How exactly does the shield lessen the impact of the Narada's weapons? I can begin to understand how a particle beam may be attenuated before it strikes the hull but the Narada was using physical torpedoes that exploded on impact, exactly what does the shield do but possibly slow their momentum (and not by much, using visual reference).
Think of the shields as like an invisible layer of plating on the hull. The weapons appear to strike the hull, but they are not penetrating the shields or doing any damage to the actual hull of the ship, as long as the shields' power holds. Or less damage anyway, though there would still be "shipshakes" and exploding consoles and the like, just as with bubble shields.
On the outside of the ship, you see an explosion.
I'm not sure what they are supposed to be doing in imaginary tech terms, but then one might ask the same question for bubble shields. I guess dissipating the energy of the explosion. Or something.
The obvious in-universe explanation would be that Jem'Hadar beams cut through bubble shields like a hot knife through soap bubbles. So shields had to be adjusted somehow, and apparently they became skintight in the process. It probably didn't bring the effectiveness anywhere close to "normal", though, explaining why ships get more easily wounded in late DS9 than in early TNG.
A bubble shield might still be useful against "conventional" threats such as kinetic impacts, which is why we see it in "Call to Arms". But since the Jemmies don't fire torpedoes (most of the time), we don't see bubble activity in the other battles.
Timo Saloniemi
I always find it funny that some people will debate why a ship doesn't have visible shields during a battle sequence and yet are perfectly fine with a ships making noises in a vacuum.....
Perhaps the em field the dominion ships were emitting had something to do the with the lack of shields.
damn it.... i just couldn't help myself.
Perhaps the em field the dominion ships were emitting had something to do the with the lack of shields.
damn it.... i just couldn't help myself.
I think that little fact has just been present since the inception of space dramas that we tend to accept it.
I don't know if this adds anything to the discussion, but would I be right in commenting that the Enterprise-E is the only ship in the fleet that we saw with both bubble (First Contact) and form-fitting (Nemesis) shields?
The Defiant has been seen with a visible bubble shield, but I don't believe we ever saw the form-fitting one; It was always the invisible kind.
The Defiant has been seen with a visible bubble shield, but I don't believe we ever saw the form-fitting one; It was always the invisible kind.
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