When the NX class Enterprise was launched, what weapons did the ship carry?
James
James
NX Class Weapons
- Thread starter James Wright
- Start date
Were the torpedoes upgraded to photonic torpedoes, seems like I remember Archer ordering photonic torpedoes be fired in an episode which I can't remember the name of?
James
James
Are photonic torpedoes an early version of photon torpedoes, or is photon short for photonic?
James
James
I hope desperately, as I do with "phase cannons" versus "phasers," that they are meaningfully different somehow.
Rick Berman gave all those speeches prior to the Enterprise premiere about how fun it would be for fans to watch the familiar Trek tech develop "from its infancy." Then the show was criticized for changing one letter to make the phase weapons different from phasers. So for photonic torpedoes, they shifted into overdrive and changed TWO letters. Problem solved!
I like the fact that it showed continuing development in torpedoes and that the NX class must have recieved an upgrade to its' torpedo launching systems.
James
James
The spatial torpedo prop had a cool retro flair...
...so it was disappointing when the photonic torpedo prop was just a repainted photon torpedo case from previous Treks set later in the continuity.
Because the spatial torpedoes were still seen sitting around after the photonic torpedoes were first mentioned, it appears that NX-01 did not fully replace her complement of torpedoes with the new photonic models, but kept both in stock throughout the later seasons.
...so it was disappointing when the photonic torpedo prop was just a repainted photon torpedo case from previous Treks set later in the continuity.
Because the spatial torpedoes were still seen sitting around after the photonic torpedoes were first mentioned, it appears that NX-01 did not fully replace her complement of torpedoes with the new photonic models, but kept both in stock throughout the later seasons.
But we are forgetting something here aren't we?
The thing on why spatial torpedoes were replaced with the photonic ones was because of the Xindi attack.
The NX also encountered threats that were able to easily neutralize their spatial torpedoes to begin with ... and given the fact that these spatial torpedoes were in fact probably in use long before the NX was launched, it stands to reason they would be replaced sometime during her service time-frame.
It's a possibility that the TCW changed this for example.
The Spherebuilders did prompt the Xindi to attack Earth which essentially caused 7 million deaths and the NX was recalled to Earth.
For all we know, had the Spherebuilders or the Xinid did not interfere in such an agressive fashion, there is possibility that the NX wouldn't have received these upgrades until the Earth-Romulan war began.
And besides, humans were already familiar with anti-matter reactions ... plus the Vulcans were there to help out (although very slowly).
And the NX crew did come across a Klingon raptor ship which contained Photon torpedoes.
Reed was an expert on weapons systems back in those days (obsessive as well), so he might have gotten an idea on how the Klingon torpedoes worked.
Enough to transmit the telemetry to SF and let them work on the weapon.
As for phase cannons ... well, I agree that they could have left the plasma cannons in use from Broken Bow (and introduce the phase cannons in season 3 at the very least) ... although, setting up their own phase cannons as a result of the silent enemy threat they faced was a good setup to begin with.
In regards to the names of the weapons ... while I agree that changing the 2 letters was unimaginative at best ... I would argue that there is a pretty large difference between actual phasers and phase cannons (same goes for photonic vs photon torpedoes).
Base technologies that proved to be highly effective in the early days of SF (plus the NX-01 was experimental to begin with as was the NX-02) and continued regular use later on.
Phase cannons are likely: less powerful/capable/effective compared to phasers.
Photonic torpedoes are likely: less powerfu/capable/effective compared to photon torpedoes.
Just think of it like that.
The thing on why spatial torpedoes were replaced with the photonic ones was because of the Xindi attack.
The NX also encountered threats that were able to easily neutralize their spatial torpedoes to begin with ... and given the fact that these spatial torpedoes were in fact probably in use long before the NX was launched, it stands to reason they would be replaced sometime during her service time-frame.
It's a possibility that the TCW changed this for example.
The Spherebuilders did prompt the Xindi to attack Earth which essentially caused 7 million deaths and the NX was recalled to Earth.
For all we know, had the Spherebuilders or the Xinid did not interfere in such an agressive fashion, there is possibility that the NX wouldn't have received these upgrades until the Earth-Romulan war began.
And besides, humans were already familiar with anti-matter reactions ... plus the Vulcans were there to help out (although very slowly).
And the NX crew did come across a Klingon raptor ship which contained Photon torpedoes.
Reed was an expert on weapons systems back in those days (obsessive as well), so he might have gotten an idea on how the Klingon torpedoes worked.
Enough to transmit the telemetry to SF and let them work on the weapon.
As for phase cannons ... well, I agree that they could have left the plasma cannons in use from Broken Bow (and introduce the phase cannons in season 3 at the very least) ... although, setting up their own phase cannons as a result of the silent enemy threat they faced was a good setup to begin with.
In regards to the names of the weapons ... while I agree that changing the 2 letters was unimaginative at best ... I would argue that there is a pretty large difference between actual phasers and phase cannons (same goes for photonic vs photon torpedoes).
Base technologies that proved to be highly effective in the early days of SF (plus the NX-01 was experimental to begin with as was the NX-02) and continued regular use later on.
Phase cannons are likely: less powerful/capable/effective compared to phasers.
Photonic torpedoes are likely: less powerfu/capable/effective compared to photon torpedoes.
Just think of it like that.
The very first shot from the newly installed Phase Canon on the NX-01 destroyed an entire mountain on a moons surface. Much the same way the 1701's main Phaser banks were apparently capable of blasting surfaces with the same force. Not much difference except the NX-01's Warp reactor didn't yet have the power to keep supplying the Phase canon with that much energy.
Why? The revolver was invented a hundred years before Dirty Harry wielded one, yet said movies were pretty enjoyable nevertheless. Swords and bows were really old news for all of Erroll Flynn's heroic characters. Why would Kirk's photon torpedoes and phasers have to be spanking new inventions? It makes no dramatic sense.
Timo Saloniemi
"The Cage" "The Menagerie" "Balance Of Terror"
They don't have to be brand new, but we already knew they weren't in use in the 22nd century.
They don't have to be brand new, but we already knew they weren't in use in the 22nd century.
1. As I already said, one reason is because the show was promoted as if the tech was going to undergo a significant development. "Dramatic sense" is exactly what it would make to have a prequel display actual differences in this regard. For a prequel, there would be nothing dramatically sensible about the choice to have tech that was visually and functionally the same and employed in the same way as in the hundreds of hours of franchise television that came before. What you are suggesting is rather that it might make a form of technical sense for them to have basically similar operating principles, which brings me to:
2. I think Worf has stated on screen that there were no phasers in the 22nd century in the TNG episode guest starring Matt Frewer. And as pointed out above, it appears that lasers were the Starfleet system in this role in "The Cage," and reference to "atomic" weapons for the Romulan War a century earlier was made in "Balance of Terror." There is a sense of technical continuity in place about this, and in fact I will praise the design of the spatial torpedo and EM-33 pistol props as well, both of which are not radically different but are noticeably so and seem to fit the history. Yet there was no real development, but rather a hurry to replace the plasma weapons with something visually and functionally indistinguishable from phasers within the earliest episodes of the series, and the same with the torpedoes halfway through. Fans find ways to make sense of this for themselves, for example by making Pike's laser a kind of nickname to differentiate it from "true" phasers that have been introduced elsewhere but not yet on his ship, but this kind of thing is precisely what I mean when I say that I hope the operating principles are different.
3. You're being glib to say "spanking new." I didn't suggest this, as there is over a century in between the TOS setting where phasers were first mentioned and Enterprise. It is rather the Enterprise series that insisted on introducing tech that is "spanking new" to the characters but doesn't feel very new at all to the viewers, and in this case that is half of what bugs me, the other half being the fact that they were in no way required to give the earlier tech almost identical names or make the VFX for it virtually identical to what had been seen in the past.
A different name, a simple but carefully researched line suggesting some incorporation of laser principles that might have helped connect to the Pike references somehow, making the beams...blue or something (E^2 had blue ones), or perhaps actually caring about and documenting the location and function of the plasma cannons that appeared in the pilot (did they ever appear, or even get mentioned, again?)...any or all of these might have represented something of the tech development angle claimed in the publicity as one of the advantages of doing a prequel in the first place. This is before I even suggest that the battle scenes could have been written very differently and felt more fresh if the tech had not functioned so similarly to that of the other Treks. I had heard writers complain about the "shields at 72%" sort of battle dialogue with my own ears, and yet they introduced the polarized hull plating concept and then treated it no differently.
And then it underwent exactly that: Earth spaceflight transitioned from pre-phaser to phaser era, making deep space exploration survivable for the first time. So what's there to complain?
The show didn't reveal to us how it was before Kirk-style adventures became possible (except for the pilot episode). It revealed to us how Kirk-style adventures became possible - apparently through the adoption of phasers, photon torpedoes and modern warp drives. A sound dramatic concept IMHO, and in keeping with what was promised (although I'd consider such promises irrelevant in general, as they are completely external to the fictional Star Trek universe that is my main interest here).
The exact question Worf was answering (even though it wasn't addressed to him, but to Riker) was "What do you see as the most important example of progress over the last two hundred years?". It would be valid for Worf to answer "Phasers, because they were developed during the past two centuries: they didn't even exist yet when the 22nd century began".
Really, Riker's babbling about the warp coil being a post-2150s invention is the more worrisome thing about that episode ("A Matter of Time")...
Possibly. However, phasers were also available in that era, as "Obsession" establishes: they were the weapon system that Kirk hesitated in operating, back when the Farragut was attacked by the dikironium cloud. Lasers could have been limited to sidearm role only - or they could have been an "extra blade" in the Swiss Army sidearm of the day, parallel to the phaser "blade".
More specifically, to "primitive" atomic weapons - as if Kirk and Spock were flying a ship armed with advanced atomics. But granted, the choice of giving Archer something that appeared non-primitive in relation to Kirk's stuff and then establishing that Archer's adventures preceded the Romulan Wars was in spiritual contradiction with this TOS episode.
I really don't get this part of the argument. What possible point would there be in giving a misleading name or appearance to what clearly is a phaser? If the point was to show that this is how Kirk-style adventures were made possible, then the connection between Archer's phasers and Kirk's should be as blatant as they could make it.
The show could have taken a different dramatic tack, yes. But on the tack it took - of directly associating Earth's first deep space forays with the introduction of "Kirk tech" - did not require and really did not allow for misleading terminology or visuals.
I don't think we can count that against ENT. They were pretty clever about it: they gave the ship 13 visually distinguishable weapons ports, and the writers and VFX wizards were then told they could place whatever they wanted behind those ports. The writers/VFXers apparently used two topside ports for the original plasma cannon, and never reused them for anything else, so that angle is covered. They did mistake the "turbocharger caps" on top of the hull booms for additional weapons ports, but then again, the caps were never established to be anything else, either. They did look like somewhat larger gunports...
Timo Saloniemi
And what possible point would there be in 1.) setting the show a century before TOS in the first place and 2.) in changing the name just a little if it "clearly is a phaser?" If the goal is to establish the tech is not meaningfully different, how does this realize the potential of a prequel, even aside from the publicity about how the tech would undergo a meaningful development? If you're arguing the aim was to depict a weapon that "clearly is a phaser," dull as this would be, then why the name change at all? Are photonic torpedoes also clearly photon torpedoes? Can you enlighten me as to the creative intent behind the name change?
I feel compelled to reverse-engineer the NX-01 tech so it is as different from what came later as is possible within the guidelines set by what they showed me, helping me to believe in a credible evolution. I objected to the barely-altered names and VFX because they make this more difficult, as they hampered the producers in their goal of making Trek look and feel new and different by setting it in an earlier era.
I'd argue that there was no name change: "phase gun" and "phaser gun" are the very same thing, allowing for a century of wear and tear in the mouths of the users.
For me, it sounds logical that a ship equipped with "pre-Kirk" technology simply couldn't survive a deep space mission. Nobody else was "pre-Kirk" in ENT: all had at least TOS-level technology, and had probably had it for millennia. The reason Archer could have meaningful adventures, without having been preempted by somebody in a slightly slower Earthship a few years before, would be that Archer was past a threshold: he had what was needed, which is what Kirk had.
If lesser gear did suffice, much of the good stuff in ENT couldn't come to be: the Vulcan hindering of Earth exploration attempts; the well-established Starfleet having no experience in exploration; the bad guys being clearly superior to the good guys.
Timo Saloniemi
Vulcan being all big and advanced was a result of Ent, as well as most everyone having superior TOS-y tech. A little brain bug in the Trekverse is that the whole local area of space is going to be at the same technological level at the same time. You can have "primitives" flying around with tin cans stuffed full of mass drivers and nukes interacting and conflicting with "more advanced" types. Every civilization develops at a different rate, obviously.
Earth would certainly get technology boosts from making first contacts... but would they have the scientific knowledge to quite yet make a phaser? Or shields? (Another Star Trek writer brain bug: anything can be reverse-engineered in a period of time less than a year. Development projects are short. Deploying new equipment to the fleet takes the blink of an eye). Could a science team from WW1 build an F-22? Not likely (At least not within a decade of starting the project). Not even if they had a working example to work off of (though it would improve their understanding of many a thing... but mostly perplex them).
They didn't have to replicate the dramatic shield percentage countdown with the hull plating. Hell, they could have had point-defensive guns mounted all over Enterprise in the stead of shields. And taking into account more realistic combat considerations like dissipating heat from your weapons (a big problem with lasers or even "phase guns", I'd imagine), you could make it more interesting than cloning the shield readout reports from TNG and VOY.
Earth would certainly get technology boosts from making first contacts... but would they have the scientific knowledge to quite yet make a phaser? Or shields? (Another Star Trek writer brain bug: anything can be reverse-engineered in a period of time less than a year. Development projects are short. Deploying new equipment to the fleet takes the blink of an eye). Could a science team from WW1 build an F-22? Not likely (At least not within a decade of starting the project). Not even if they had a working example to work off of (though it would improve their understanding of many a thing... but mostly perplex them).
They didn't have to replicate the dramatic shield percentage countdown with the hull plating. Hell, they could have had point-defensive guns mounted all over Enterprise in the stead of shields. And taking into account more realistic combat considerations like dissipating heat from your weapons (a big problem with lasers or even "phase guns", I'd imagine), you could make it more interesting than cloning the shield readout reports from TNG and VOY.
I don't want to sound hostile to the decisions made on Enterprise regarding the weapons; not only would the fact that the show wasn't the overwhelming success that was hoped for make this equivalent to beating a dead horse, but I also suspect that the creators came under certain pressures to make some elements less distinctive to the new series and more similar to the Treks the audience had already seen. It is interesting that Brannon Braga says he likes the EM-33 better than the phase pistol in his commentary for the pilot.
Though there are few clues, it may be possible to interpret some sort of evolution for the beamed weapons. Phase cannons were described by the Klingons as "particle cannons" in "Judgment," and while TNG-era phasers use nadion particles in part of the firing process, it does not appear from the Tech Manual description that they are actually emitting particle beams. "Phaser" is also described there as a "holdover acronym" for "Phased Energy Rectification" that obviously applied to an earlier version of the system as well. In "In a Mirror Darkly," the cartoonishly evil characters of the alternate universe are impressed by the capability of the phaser pistol to disrupt someone completely, something that it seems a phase pistol cannot do. One interesting reference is to the Kallisko in "Silicon Avatar," which is described as having "particle phasers" that are insufficient to defend itself against the Crystalline Entity.
So maybe phase weapons are some form of advanced scalable particle weapon and the first ones capable of the multi-settings our heroes need on their adventures...
...TNG phasers are plasma-initiated and juiced by the interaction of fictional subatomic particles with a fictional type of superconducting crystal and capable of achieving a "phaser effect" that can disrupt targets without superheated vapor blasting all over the place (they are "transitioning out of the continuum," or being converted to exotic particles, or something)...
...and TOS phasers are some middle ground deserving of the name, capable of what we recognize as the "phaser effect" but using some sci-fi principle to achieve it different from that used in TNG (and maybe not traveling at the speed of light)...possibly what was meant by "particle phasers?"
The Pike laser references are still tricky, but can be wedged in somewhere.
Though there are few clues, it may be possible to interpret some sort of evolution for the beamed weapons. Phase cannons were described by the Klingons as "particle cannons" in "Judgment," and while TNG-era phasers use nadion particles in part of the firing process, it does not appear from the Tech Manual description that they are actually emitting particle beams. "Phaser" is also described there as a "holdover acronym" for "Phased Energy Rectification" that obviously applied to an earlier version of the system as well. In "In a Mirror Darkly," the cartoonishly evil characters of the alternate universe are impressed by the capability of the phaser pistol to disrupt someone completely, something that it seems a phase pistol cannot do. One interesting reference is to the Kallisko in "Silicon Avatar," which is described as having "particle phasers" that are insufficient to defend itself against the Crystalline Entity.
So maybe phase weapons are some form of advanced scalable particle weapon and the first ones capable of the multi-settings our heroes need on their adventures...
...TNG phasers are plasma-initiated and juiced by the interaction of fictional subatomic particles with a fictional type of superconducting crystal and capable of achieving a "phaser effect" that can disrupt targets without superheated vapor blasting all over the place (they are "transitioning out of the continuum," or being converted to exotic particles, or something)...
...and TOS phasers are some middle ground deserving of the name, capable of what we recognize as the "phaser effect" but using some sci-fi principle to achieve it different from that used in TNG (and maybe not traveling at the speed of light)...possibly what was meant by "particle phasers?"
The Pike laser references are still tricky, but can be wedged in somewhere.
