Hm, I haven't posted in here in a while.
To be precise, I don't mind questioning if all the emitters are functional. I believe they are. What you're saying is that these pods in the rectangles represent one emitter. Problem is we know from
TMP that they are actually two emitters. We have
Enterprise and Reliant proving they are twin emitters. Despite the FX in DS9 the common denominator is the physical model which hasn't changed. So is the glove don't fit you must...
. No that not right. Still This is a VFX mistake.
OHSHI-
I really wish you'd mentioned that earlier.
Still, I see where that divergence came from. I'll admit, I haven't seen TMP or TWOK in ages, and I wasn't even thinking of those during our earlier discussion/argument/slug fest. So yus, as you point out, the rectangular banks on the saucer CAN fire two beams each. But, as I mentioned in one of my other posts, in "Paradise Lost", the beam basically jumps up from the middle of the thing (at least, it looks that way; it's fuzzier than a movie, obviously, and it's hard to be certain), and of course there is only one beam at a time. Going ONLY by DS9, I was interpreting the rectangles as capable of firing only one beam each (which, as you point out, is incorrect if you take the TOS movies into account). However, the reasoning behind the visual discrepancy may not be so simple. Your thought on the matter was:
You could say this a DS9 development. In other words cheap FX. The multiple salvo shots from TWOK would have been expensive to recreate and we know Trek is cheap.
and that is certainly a possibility (though I'd say it's a "TNG development that carried over into DS9", since it was TNG that established single, long phaser beams as more common than the old TOS/TWOK style of multiple, shorter beams). But I do wonder how much more expensive 2 phaser beams vs. 1 would REALLY be, given how many other effects were crammed into those few seconds... Perhaps it wasn't FX cheapness as much as FX
consistency.
Think about it: up to this point, in TNG and DS9 (and VOY as well, really), phaser beams DO work this way. The array powers up and fires a single beam. It's possible that in-universe, the properties of phasers changed between the 23rd and 24th century so that firing multiple beams in succession during a single volley, as in TWOK, no longer provides any advantage. Even a ship that uses banks rather than arrays is still equipped with modern, 24th-century
emitters, and these too would support the single-beam volley. So even though the external configuration of the Excelsior's phaser banks hasn't changed visually, the actual hardware being used means that it's still not going to fire the rapid twin phaser shots like in the "old days." It may be that the only reason to fire multiple beams in a single volley is if one is trying to target specific points on an enemy ship to disable them, rather than simply trying to indiscriminately blow holes in it (and this might be exactly what those two Galaxies were trying to do in "Sacrifice of Angels" when they carved up that Galor, which was one of the few instances of multiple beams firing from a single array simultaneously in 24th century Trek. They prioritized taking out weapons and perhaps impulse engines in order the render the Galor unable to continue fighting; blowing it completely to smithereens was less important than removing its combat capability, then moving on to the next target.
All speculation, really (on both our parts), but at least we're not clawing each other's eyes out over this anymore.
I probably should have stuck to what I said a couple posts ago, and stayed "done". But I let myself get dragged back in.
Still, we seem to be at loggerheads, and I don't see that changing, so eh.
I just assume it's just miss-communication.
Well, partly that; certainly, I wasn't thinking of TMP or TWOK at all in regards to the Excelsior phasers. But to some degree, I think there is also just a flat disagreement. I don't mean the Excelsior, since I wasn't arguing that it SHOULDN'T have that many phaser banks (and in fact, personally think it SHOULD, especially when paired with how I interpret the tangible differences between "banks" and "arrays"), just that it DIDN'T in canon visuals (going only by DS9, anyway). That, certainly, was caused at least in part by miscommunication.
But where I think we simply don't agree - and never will - is on the Akira. I believe it's a high-end combat vessel commissioned around 2370 or so, with an unusually low registry number due to a lengthy design process (and that was shortchanged out of universe by the FX guys and designers who only gave it 3 arrays for some stupid reason
). Hard, definite
in-universe conclusions about a lot of this stuff can never be drawn, due to how much information we don't (and will never) have, so it boils down to differences in how we examine and interpret what's on screen.
^
In fact I'm pretty sure we only see three Federation ships ever destroy a Jem'Hadar vessel through the entire run of DS9, the Defiant and the Valiant and amazingly the third is the Rio Grande. So there really is nothing to work with.
The Rio Grande.
That's completely ridiculous.
I guess you're right.
This is what I mean when I say Trek's "ship power tiers" (and DS9's in particular) are just all over the place. I mean, ok, so there is some kind of weak spot in the shields up there, but still... Then again, there are other times when Jem'Hadar bugs have seemed to actually be rather weak defensively, despite their powerful weaponry... except during instances where they AREN'T weak defensively in the least. So... yeah.
Speaking of hero ships... the
Rio Grande is canonically unkillable. Screw
Defiant,
Rio Grande is the REAL hero ship!
You know... it's interesting that - as
Jono pointed out - the
Rio Grande did carry Sisko and Dax into the wormhole for the first time. Maybe the ship really WAS touched by the Prophets!
It's very strange that we never see regular Starfleet ships destroy a Dominion ship.
Just the Defiant class and that's it.
Of course, in order for the war to make sense it had to have happened, but in every episode we don't see it.
Maybe it was a mind game to make the Dominion look more menacing, and in a way it worked, but it looked awkward too.
It's also strange to introduce these 'improved and more powerful ships' and then do little more than have them get blown away a lot on screen.
This always bugged me, to be honest. I
love DS9, and I love the DW story, and I love the fleet battles, but... argh.
What's weird is that it's just "Dominion Ships." We see
Cardassian ships being taken out by other Starfleet vessels several times, but for some reason, Jem'Hadar ships... nope. And again, to see Starfleet ships not named
Defiant even
open fire was a relative rarity. Again, I love the battles for the most part, but... seriously, what the hell
Going back to the original question (it seems so long ago now) it occurs to me that the Defiant's very nature as a warship may have prevented mass production. In the essentially pacifistic Federation there would be a great deal of resistance to the notion of a pure military ship. In the aftermath of the Borg attack that resistance would be lessened, allowing such projects to go ahead. But with no follow up attack that fear would diminish, as would support for the project. Eventually the plug was pulled, leaving the prototype mothballed until Sisko required it.
Despite Sisko's wording in "The Search" (he mentions the Borg threat becoming less urgent
, then the design flaws as an "Also..." Personally, I'd think the "almost tore itself apart" would receive top billing in the list of reasons why the project was shelved), I think the design flaws were the primary reason the thing was put aside. And I think Starfleet and the UFP
tries not to make "pure military" ships, but reality has dictated something else (though the idea of this as a tonal shift from the relatively peaceful period leading up to TNG, to the sudden increase in hostilities from multiple directions during TNG and DS9, is an interesting one).
But I
still say the Defiant-class WAS "mass-produced", anyway. We saw 8 distinct ships besides the original
Defiant. If we assume that none of those 8 were the same ship seen at different times, and then take into account the realities of television production and war (we didn't see EVERY major engagement, nor did we see EVERY ship that participated in even the engagements we DID see, such as "Sacrifice of Angels" or "Tears of the Prophets"), there could be several more "behind the scenes", as well. Couple this with the (very sound, I think) theories on why Defiant production would be much slower than normal for a ship her size (said theories are detailed here, in a post you made ages ago,
Badger:
http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=4751280&postcount=15), and the answer emerges: it
was mass-produced. It's just the
number produced during the war wasn't "massive".
