I thought the planet that Kirk chased the cloud to at the end of the episode WAS the same world where the cloud killed the crew of the USS Farragut? 
JB
JB
Obsession Question
- Thread starter Vger23
- Start date
Spot on!I thought the planet that Kirk chased the cloud to at the end of the episode WAS the same world where the cloud killed the crew of the USS Farragut?
JB
KIRK: Lieutenant Uhura, contact Starfleet and the USS Yorktown.
UHURA: Frequency open and clear, sir.
KIRK: Inform them that we are pursuing the creature to planet four of that system. That's the location of its attack on the USS Farragut eleven years ago.
SPOCK: I do not understand, Captain.
KIRK: In Garrovick's quarters, I said the scent of the creature was somehow different. Something in my mind said home.
This was another good episode.
But (this might be a bit of a nitpick) I was bemused and amused that Kirk had to wait until the creature was nearly on top on him and the antimatter bomb before he gave the simultaneous beam up and detonation order.
Really, couldn't Kirk have given the beam up and the detonation order when the creature was merely 5 to 10 meters away. Wouldn't the explosion have vaporized the creature at that distance just as well?
Besides, wouldn't the antimatter explosion have screwed up the transporter beams more so than what was actually shown. Complete the beam up and then detonate. Maybe a second or two before detonation would have insured a safe beam up. The creature wasn't going anywhere fast.
Earlier Garrovick mentioned that the antimatter in the bomb was more powerful than 10,000 cobalt bombs (whatever that is). In the final scene as the Enterprise was leaving orbit, you can see (at least, the remastered version) that a humongous portion of the planet was totally devastated by the blast. I assume the creature would have been obliterated even if it was hovering 10 meters away from the bomb.
It was good drama, I get it. In any case, Kirk had the flair for the dramatic.
But (this might be a bit of a nitpick) I was bemused and amused that Kirk had to wait until the creature was nearly on top on him and the antimatter bomb before he gave the simultaneous beam up and detonation order.
Really, couldn't Kirk have given the beam up and the detonation order when the creature was merely 5 to 10 meters away. Wouldn't the explosion have vaporized the creature at that distance just as well?
Besides, wouldn't the antimatter explosion have screwed up the transporter beams more so than what was actually shown. Complete the beam up and then detonate. Maybe a second or two before detonation would have insured a safe beam up. The creature wasn't going anywhere fast.
Earlier Garrovick mentioned that the antimatter in the bomb was more powerful than 10,000 cobalt bombs (whatever that is). In the final scene as the Enterprise was leaving orbit, you can see (at least, the remastered version) that a humongous portion of the planet was totally devastated by the blast. I assume the creature would have been obliterated even if it was hovering 10 meters away from the bomb.
It was good drama, I get it. In any case, Kirk had the flair for the dramatic.
Kirk's plan was to take no chances. He was willing to die to kill that thing if necessary. But we have to assume that the risk of the plan was carefully calculated by Scott and spock. We can also assume that data was available to indicate that the creature might survive a near miss. Remember that it can travel at warp speed and even nuclear explosions travel at less than the speed of light.
Steven and Henoch sure are on point lately. I was just coming in here to point out that the creature could travel at multiwarp speeds and was impervious to both phasers and deflectors - apparently because of some sort of ability to move itself in and out of time, only hinted at in the script - so Kirk was absolutely not going to take any risks with the antimatter device. The script also hints that the creature is vulnerable when feeding.
And this really points up one reason why I really, really like Obsession. The script honestly could have been long enough for a three-hour movie, with many more details about how the creature operates and exists as well as its history and more details concerning its attack on the Farragut. But Art Wallace and the staff writers and editors managed to leave (or take) all of that stuff out while still delivering an action-packed story heavily laden with character development, and as a bonus, the omitted material doesn't irritate, but rather leaves room for thought and discussion. It's honestly just a near-masterpiece of an episode.
And this really points up one reason why I really, really like Obsession. The script honestly could have been long enough for a three-hour movie, with many more details about how the creature operates and exists as well as its history and more details concerning its attack on the Farragut. But Art Wallace and the staff writers and editors managed to leave (or take) all of that stuff out while still delivering an action-packed story heavily laden with character development, and as a bonus, the omitted material doesn't irritate, but rather leaves room for thought and discussion. It's honestly just a near-masterpiece of an episode.
I love this technobabble weapon used to destroy the creature: the all powerful antimatter bomb! First used against the space ameba in The Immunity Syndrome, S2E18. It's handling, storage and transport is very dangerous, so, you wouldn't want to over use this plot device. The vast energy unleashed was not what destroyed both creatures, rather the direct interaction/reaction with antimatter itself. In both cases, the creatures' atoms were annihilated by antimatter.
If they had done this in the Kelvinverse, wanna bet it would be an early anti-Augment experiment circa the Eugenics wars, only to be taken out of cold storage on some distant planetary lab and sic'ed on poor Kirk as it had a taste for Augment blood (Khan's transfused blood)?
I'll never forgive them for ending the Gaseous Cloud
Never
Never
What does that even mean? It has to be the energy unleashed. It's the energy released by the mutual annihilation of opposite particles that is what makes a matter-antimatter reaction powerful. Antimatter is no more volatile or dangerous than matter so long as it's not in contact with matter, and once it is, POW! said mutual annihilation and "vast" energy release. So I am unclear on what you are suggesting.
SPOCK: The guilty party has his choice. Death by electrocution, death by gas, death by phaser, death by hanging.
MUDD: The key word in your entire peroration, Mister Spock, was, death.
I think Henoch means that the creatures were offered two methods of execution - death by bomb, or death by being the bomb.
In general it does not make much difference; but, for the cloud creature, it may be the critical reason why the bomb should not be detonated by delayed fuse. Consider that the creature can travel at warp speed and may have evolved faster-than-light sensor abilities since it travels space where nuclear reactions could pose a threat. It senses the matter-antimatter reactions at a short distance away, and warps away from the "light-speed-limited" blast wave. However, if the creature's matter is what begins the reaction, it may sense it too late, or lose the ability to sense it as it is being consumed.
I think this is a interesting idea that I never considered before Henoch's comment.
MUDD: The key word in your entire peroration, Mister Spock, was, death.
I think Henoch means that the creatures were offered two methods of execution - death by bomb, or death by being the bomb.
In general it does not make much difference; but, for the cloud creature, it may be the critical reason why the bomb should not be detonated by delayed fuse. Consider that the creature can travel at warp speed and may have evolved faster-than-light sensor abilities since it travels space where nuclear reactions could pose a threat. It senses the matter-antimatter reactions at a short distance away, and warps away from the "light-speed-limited" blast wave. However, if the creature's matter is what begins the reaction, it may sense it too late, or lose the ability to sense it as it is being consumed.
I think this is a interesting idea that I never considered before Henoch's comment.
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Kirk said:
Earlier, they hit the creature with both phasers and photon torpedoes with no effect. I theorize that just an explosion from a matter-antimatter reaction, massive as it was, would not affect the creature as suggested in the episode:
KIRK: We must get it to the antimatter.
Why must they get the creature to the antimatter? Would a few feet really matter? Kirk wanted the antimatter bomb inside the creature when it blew. I envision the bomb's purpose is to first finely disperse antimatter throughout the environment so that the antimatter reacts with the molecules/atoms of the creature, annihilating the creature and everything else in the vicinity. Then, the reaction generates the immense energy which blows away half the planet's atmosphere and makes a huge crater.Earlier, they hit the creature with both phasers and photon torpedoes with no effect. I theorize that just an explosion from a matter-antimatter reaction, massive as it was, would not affect the creature as suggested in the episode:
SPOCK: Captain, the creature's ability to throw itself out of time sync makes it possible for it to be elsewhere in the instant the phaser hits.
Kirk's decision does not seem to be any more complicated than that. He usually destroys threats by cutting it very close in order to maximize the chances of success. Spock does not protest too much, so he probably realizes that the thing is slippery and might have a few tricks to get out of the trap.
One reason we sometimes delve deeper is because people often object to Kirk's actions saying that the blast that nearly obliterates a planet does not need to be that precisely detonated, and Kirk is stupid to take unnecessary risks. So, we can speculate on ways the creature could have slipped away from a less aggressive adversary than Kirk.
One reason we sometimes delve deeper is because people often object to Kirk's actions saying that the blast that nearly obliterates a planet does not need to be that precisely detonated, and Kirk is stupid to take unnecessary risks. So, we can speculate on ways the creature could have slipped away from a less aggressive adversary than Kirk.
Well, here's not a lot of technical explanation about why the decision to use antimatter to kill the creature:
A lot of dialog is given to the antimatter unit/container, and it is never referred as a matter-antimatter unit/container/bomb. The antimatter unit consists of: 1. slightly less than one ounce of antimatter; 2. a spherical container to hold the antimatter in a magnet vacuum field; 3. a detonator; and 4. a two-man, anti-grav unit to transport it. On the surface, the description implies that there is no matter fuel component contained in it which I assume to mean that the matter is provided by another source. The detonator could do: 1. controlled injection of the matter component to set off the antimatter to cause the explosion (KISS solution); or 2. set off an explosive charge to rupture the container and spread the antimatter into the environment to react explosively; or 3. a little of both. I prefer options 2 and 3 to meet my conditions that antimatter kills the creature. (I thought of another off take to option 2, but it was not supported by the dialog. The antimatter itself is atomically fused via implosion into an anti-energy nuclear explosion (the round container could be an implosion shape). The anti-energy plus resulting antimatter particles are released over a kilometer size zone, then results in a highly-energized matter-antimatter interaction resulting in a more massive blast. Kind of like a two-stage effect.)
Bottom line: The antimatter unit is detonated, big explosion, the creature is dead (because Kirk said so?), light moment, and they fly away never looking back. YMMV.
SPOCK: Doctor, evidence indicates the creature is here to spawn. If so, it will reproduce by fission, not just into two parts, but thousands.
KIRK: Antimatter seems our only possibility.
SPOCK: An ounce should be sufficient. We can drain it from the ship's engines and transport it to the planet surface in a magnetic vacuum field.
KIRK: Contact medical stores. I want as much haemoplasm as they can spare in the transporter room in fifteen minutes.
GARROVICK: Yes, sir.
MCCOY: I presume you intend to use that haemoplasm to attract the creature?
KIRK: We must get it to the antimatter. It seems attracted to red blood cells. What better bait could we have?
SPOCK: There is still one problem, Captain.
KIRK: The blast, yes.
SPOCK: Exactly. A matter-antimatter blast will rip away half the planet's atmosphere. If our vessel is in orbit and encounters those shock waves.
...SPOCK: It will require two men to transport the antimatter unit....GARROVICK: Just think, Captain, less than one ounce of antimatter here is more powerful than ten thousand cobalt bombs.KIRK: Let's hope it's as powerful as man will ever get. Detonator.
...KIRK: Antimatter container positioned and armed.
I read into the brief exchange that antimatter itself will kill it, not a matter-antimatter explosion. In a seeming afterthought, Kirk and Spock are concerned about the aftereffects of the matter-antimatter blast as it affects the planet, the ship and anyone transporting during the explosion. Garrovick also marvels about the explosive power of the antimatter, but is he thinking this will be the factor that destroys the creature or is he just commenting on the size of the explosion for us plebes. Unclear to me.KIRK: Antimatter seems our only possibility.
SPOCK: An ounce should be sufficient. We can drain it from the ship's engines and transport it to the planet surface in a magnetic vacuum field.
KIRK: Contact medical stores. I want as much haemoplasm as they can spare in the transporter room in fifteen minutes.
GARROVICK: Yes, sir.
MCCOY: I presume you intend to use that haemoplasm to attract the creature?
KIRK: We must get it to the antimatter. It seems attracted to red blood cells. What better bait could we have?
SPOCK: There is still one problem, Captain.
KIRK: The blast, yes.
SPOCK: Exactly. A matter-antimatter blast will rip away half the planet's atmosphere. If our vessel is in orbit and encounters those shock waves.
...SPOCK: It will require two men to transport the antimatter unit....GARROVICK: Just think, Captain, less than one ounce of antimatter here is more powerful than ten thousand cobalt bombs.KIRK: Let's hope it's as powerful as man will ever get. Detonator.
...KIRK: Antimatter container positioned and armed.
A lot of dialog is given to the antimatter unit/container, and it is never referred as a matter-antimatter unit/container/bomb. The antimatter unit consists of: 1. slightly less than one ounce of antimatter; 2. a spherical container to hold the antimatter in a magnet vacuum field; 3. a detonator; and 4. a two-man, anti-grav unit to transport it. On the surface, the description implies that there is no matter fuel component contained in it which I assume to mean that the matter is provided by another source. The detonator could do: 1. controlled injection of the matter component to set off the antimatter to cause the explosion (KISS solution); or 2. set off an explosive charge to rupture the container and spread the antimatter into the environment to react explosively; or 3. a little of both. I prefer options 2 and 3 to meet my conditions that antimatter kills the creature. (I thought of another off take to option 2, but it was not supported by the dialog. The antimatter itself is atomically fused via implosion into an anti-energy nuclear explosion (the round container could be an implosion shape). The anti-energy plus resulting antimatter particles are released over a kilometer size zone, then results in a highly-energized matter-antimatter interaction resulting in a more massive blast. Kind of like a two-stage effect.)
Bottom line: The antimatter unit is detonated, big explosion, the creature is dead (because Kirk said so?), light moment, and they fly away never looking back. YMMV.
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Nothing is complicated if you ignore the details. How complicated is a modern day nuclear bomb? There is a lot that goes into it. One would expect an antimatter bomb to be sophisticated at least to this level and probably much more. How was the device built? Was it a standard device/design, or was it improvised for this particular purpose? Is the antimatter directed in a particular way via magnetic fields to spray out to the creature before it touches the bottle or other matter? Remember, people caught by the cloud could not breath, so even the normal air may not be there when the cloud surrounds the device?
Nobody knows because it is not a real thing, but we can speculate about it. Maybe the writers put some thought into it and we can figure out what they were thinking. Or, maybe no thought went into it and it was just a device that goes kaboom at point blank range. But, if so, why the unusual description in the script that is not so clear? How is it that Kirk is the one saying "antimatter" is the only possibility and why does he say that? There are other methods of going kaboom without antimatter. And, he says it is a "possibility" meaning even that may not work. If the creature reproduces by fission, then the creature can control nuclear reactions of normal matter. It has other tricks too, as mentioned. This might be why antimatter is the only possibility. It is a material foreign to the creature since it is not something it normally encounters on the planet or in space travel.
Nobody knows because it is not a real thing, but we can speculate about it. Maybe the writers put some thought into it and we can figure out what they were thinking. Or, maybe no thought went into it and it was just a device that goes kaboom at point blank range. But, if so, why the unusual description in the script that is not so clear? How is it that Kirk is the one saying "antimatter" is the only possibility and why does he say that? There are other methods of going kaboom without antimatter. And, he says it is a "possibility" meaning even that may not work. If the creature reproduces by fission, then the creature can control nuclear reactions of normal matter. It has other tricks too, as mentioned. This might be why antimatter is the only possibility. It is a material foreign to the creature since it is not something it normally encounters on the planet or in space travel.
In-universe, and in the greater context, we are supposed to think that the creature has already shrugged off an antimatter attack, because it has shrugged off a photon torpedo attack. But in the context of the episode alone, we may instead say photon torpedoes are not antimatter weapons, and Kirk may simply be choosing the last weapon in his arsenal that has so far gone unused - either hoping to take the creature by surprise (that is, use a new weapon whilst luring the entity into vulnerable "physicality" by prompting it to feed, something he couldn't do with an old weapon that would make the critter wary) or then hoping to use a weapon that works despite the creature's apparent ability to dodge into other dimensions (that is, antimatter kills in other realms besides ours).
Alas, Trek is a whole fictional universe now, and neither of those explanations remains available to us as such. But we may still handwave and say that antimatter elsewhere in Trek indeed has some "broad-spectrum" effects, possibly defeating the dodging abilities of the creature when used in combination with the bait that makes it temporarily a bit more vulnerable. It's just that without that bait, the photon torpedoes didn't stand a chance. And that even with the bait, phasers or machine guns would not work, being too "narrow-spectrum".
(Also, Kirk still seems to harbor some doubts after Spock says "An ounce ought to suffice". Perhaps he simply then told Scotty to prepare five hundred pounds, just to be ever-so-slightly on the safe side with this only shot of theirs? The blast that threatens to hurt the ship is already a factor anyway, and the response to that is simply to adjust the distance of the ship - or the not to, counting on good timing, as the heroes ultimately do.)
Timo Saloniemi
Alas, Trek is a whole fictional universe now, and neither of those explanations remains available to us as such. But we may still handwave and say that antimatter elsewhere in Trek indeed has some "broad-spectrum" effects, possibly defeating the dodging abilities of the creature when used in combination with the bait that makes it temporarily a bit more vulnerable. It's just that without that bait, the photon torpedoes didn't stand a chance. And that even with the bait, phasers or machine guns would not work, being too "narrow-spectrum".
(Also, Kirk still seems to harbor some doubts after Spock says "An ounce ought to suffice". Perhaps he simply then told Scotty to prepare five hundred pounds, just to be ever-so-slightly on the safe side with this only shot of theirs? The blast that threatens to hurt the ship is already a factor anyway, and the response to that is simply to adjust the distance of the ship - or the not to, counting on good timing, as the heroes ultimately do.)
Timo Saloniemi
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How long do they have to work out the details of the plan and build their bomb?
So it will take about 0.85 days, or about 20.4 hours, or about 1,224 minutes, to reach planet Tycho IV and Scott & co. have about that long to make the bomb.
And later, perhaps after a cut:
So Spock suggests an ounce of antimatter, and later estimates that the annihilation of an ounce of antimatter and an ounce of matter will produce enough energy to rip away half the planet's atmosphere and throw it into space with enough force to batter the Enterprise.
Oops. It seems that they are already "here" at Tycho IV when the antimatter bomb is suggested. Therefore they could have only minutes or a few hours to work out the details and build the bomb. What were they doing for 20 hours when en route to Tycho IV?
I assume that Spock says half the atmosphere because the other half might be shielded by the planet or something.
it should be fairly simple to calculate the total energy released when two ounces are converted into energy and how that compares to atomic bombs.
It seems to me that if the gamma rays and charged particles produced by the annihilation are not enough to kill the creature, and it takes the loss of body matter to kill it, an ounce of antimatter might not be enough. Only an ounce of the creature's body mass would be annihilated by an ounce of antimatter. Most of us here in this forum could survive losing an ounce of body mass, or even many ounces, if not taken from a vital organ. Some of us might actually have survived such losses. So depending on the total mass of the creature, and how vital its blood-sucking organ is, it seems quite possible that an ounce of antimatter might not seem enough on second thought, and they might have later decided off screen to increase the amount of antimatter in the bomb during almost a day it took to reach Tycho IV.
But increasing the antimatter would increase the danger that the blast posed to the ship and to someone being transported.
Later on the surface of Tycho IV:
Garrovik's words do not state how much antimatter is in the device, but merely compare the power in less than an ounce of antimatter with 10,000 cobalt bombs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb
Cobalt bombs would not have bigger blasts than other nuclear bombs, but would produce more radioactive fallout. So presumably cobalt bombs could be built with blast yields anywhere between 0.02 kilotons (Davy Crockett) and 100 megatons (Tsar Bomba configured for maximum yeild).
Therefore, if Garrovik was talking about 20th century theoretical cobalt bombs, ten thousand cobalt bombs should have a total yield of between 200 kilotons and one million megatons.
If annihilation of two ounces would not produce a blast yield within that range, there are in universe and out of universe answers.
In universe either Garrovik miscalculated and should take refresher courses, or the Enterprise crew used a different unit of mass that was mistranslated into 20th century English as "ounce".
Out of universe it would be an an example of https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WritersCannotDoMath and also an example of https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SciFiWritersHave/NoSenseOfEnergy.
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And to think that the ship has even more antimatter stored in its pods. It's good that it is not configured to explode all at once during an accident. 
If so configured for a self-destruct device plus mix in a little corbomite then maybe it could result in the destruction of the Enterprise and all matter in a two hundred thousand kilometer diameter and establish a corresponding dead zone (TDY). Good thing the good guys are not so mean to actually build the device. I just realized that if real, then this would destroy anything out to one hundred thousand kilometers which is usually the maximum weapon range for most alien races, hence why the bluff worked on the Romulans in TDY. The Romulan retreated to outside their weapon range then the Enterprise zipped away. The corbomite maneuver works again.
If so configured for a self-destruct device plus mix in a little corbomite then maybe it could result in the destruction of the Enterprise and all matter in a two hundred thousand kilometer diameter and establish a corresponding dead zone (TDY). Good thing the good guys are not so mean to actually build the device. I just realized that if real, then this would destroy anything out to one hundred thousand kilometers which is usually the maximum weapon range for most alien races, hence why the bluff worked on the Romulans in TDY. The Romulan retreated to outside their weapon range then the Enterprise zipped away. The corbomite maneuver works again.Similar threads
