Phaser settings

[Delta Vega]

What are they ?

Stun

Heavy stun

Kill...........................where does vapourise fit in ?

Do we assume this means terminate with extreme prejudice ?

 

[Timo]

"Obsession" features a setting called "disrupt-B" or "disrupter-B"...

...And no episode features any sort of a limit on how many settings the TOS weapons might have had, or which sort.

Probably there are at least two and perhaps three variables that may be adjusted to create the desired effects. One might ramp up the total power to kill a tough opponent, but it might be easier to just increase the degree of phase disruption, and to set the stun charge to zero because it won't add anything to the mix. In order to stun the opponent, one might ramp down the power - or then slide power and stun charge to full and completely turn off phase disruption. Etc.

Depends a bit on how you see the phasers working. But only two props appear to have had the sort of switches and toggles that we might readily associate with specific functions: the ENT phaser and the STXI phaser have a special button for flipping from stun to kill and back. In all the others, it's a combination of nondescript buttons, rollers, slides or switches, with or without some sort of a display that tells the uninitiated very little.

In my personal little delusionverse, phasers are basically weaponized transporters - both are based on the same fictional "phasing" phenomenon that removes matter from this reality and takes it to another, thereby cleverly circumventing several laws of physics. The transporter-like nature of the beam also allows it to deliver physical substances, such as nanoprobes in VOY "Microcosm" or Jem'Hadar poisons in DS9. Stun effect might thus simply be the transportation of powerful sedatives to the victim, or then the transportation of a debilitating electric charge. One can then choose whether to transport these stunning elements in the beam, and in what quantity; or one can transport "sheer power" that creates heat in the target. Or one can settle for transporting out chunks of the victim, or the entire victim.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Delta Vega]

"Obsession" features a setting called "disrupt-B" or "disrupter-B"...

...And no episode features any sort of a limit on how many settings the TOS weapons might have had, or which sort.

Probably there are at least two and perhaps three variables that may be adjusted to create the desired effects. One might ramp up the total power to kill a tough opponent, but it might be easier to just increase the degree of phase disruption, and to set the stun charge to zero because it won't add anything to the mix. In order to stun the opponent, one might ramp down the power - or then slide power and stun charge to full and completely turn off phase disruption. Etc.

Depends a bit on how you see the phasers working. But only two props appear to have had the sort of switches and toggles that we might readily associate with specific functions: the ENT phaser and the STXI phaser have a special button for flipping from stun to kill and back. In all the others, it's a combination of nondescript buttons, rollers, slides or switches, with or without some sort of a display that tells the uninitiated very little.

In my personal little delusionverse, phasers are basically weaponized transporters - both are based on the same fictional "phasing" phenomenon that removes matter from this reality and takes it to another, thereby cleverly circumventing several laws of physics. The transporter-like nature of the beam also allows it to deliver physical substances, such as nanoprobes in VOY "Microcosm" or Jem'Hadar poisons in DS9. Stun effect might thus simply be the transportation of powerful sedatives to the victim, or then the transportation of a debilitating electric charge. One can then choose whether to transport these stunning elements in the beam, and in what quantity; or one can transport "sheer power" that creates heat in the target. Or one can settle for transporting out chunks of the victim, or the entire victim.

Timo Saloniemi

I`ve always had a problem with the guy in The Omega Glory making reference to thousands of bodies after using all his phaser power.
In my dellusionverse, KILL on the TOS phaser meant vapourisation, and therefore no body.
Maybe I`m wrong

 

[Timo]

Might be the vaporizing of a body is a luxury that Starfleet can only afford in peacetime. Merciful, instant death without a mess to clean up, and all that, but it takes a lot of power, and the battery can only hold so much.

Thus, the very same weapon type when applied in war (say, in "Omega Glory" or DS9) kills by only vaporizing a pound of flesh inside the victim. Much more economical, so you can kill a thousand instead of just a dozen with one battery clip!

Or then we might argue that good old Captain Tracey left thousands of stunned bodies on the battlefield. After all, from "Errand of Mercy" we learn that when Starfleet declares open war on an enemy, the phasers go to stun!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[C.E. Evans]

I don't know where I got it from for the life of me, but I always thought there were ten settings on a TOS phaser and that they ranged from light stun to heavy disrupt (the aforementioned Disrupt-B, perhaps?).

But I think there are inbetween settings in which the phaser can fire an invisible welding laser beam, a heat ray, and even a beam that causes a certain amount of rock to explode rather than dematerialize...

 

[AtoZ]

"Obsession" features a setting called "disrupt-B" or "disrupter-B"...

...And no episode features any sort of a limit on how many settings the TOS weapons might have had, or which sort.

Probably there are at least two and perhaps three variables that may be adjusted to create the desired effects. One might ramp up the total power to kill a tough opponent, but it might be easier to just increase the degree of phase disruption, and to set the stun charge to zero because it won't add anything to the mix. In order to stun the opponent, one might ramp down the power - or then slide power and stun charge to full and completely turn off phase disruption. Etc.

Depends a bit on how you see the phasers working. But only two props appear to have had the sort of switches and toggles that we might readily associate with specific functions: the ENT phaser and the STXI phaser have a special button for flipping from stun to kill and back. In all the others, it's a combination of nondescript buttons, rollers, slides or switches, with or without some sort of a display that tells the uninitiated very little.

In my personal little delusionverse, phasers are basically weaponized transporters - both are based on the same fictional "phasing" phenomenon that removes matter from this reality and takes it to another, thereby cleverly circumventing several laws of physics. The transporter-like nature of the beam also allows it to deliver physical substances, such as nanoprobes in VOY "Microcosm" or Jem'Hadar poisons in DS9. Stun effect might thus simply be the transportation of powerful sedatives to the victim, or then the transportation of a debilitating electric charge. One can then choose whether to transport these stunning elements in the beam, and in what quantity; or one can transport "sheer power" that creates heat in the target. Or one can settle for transporting out chunks of the victim, or the entire victim.

Timo Saloniemi

I`ve always had a problem with the guy in The Omega Glory making reference to thousands of bodies after using all his phaser power.
In my dellusionverse, KILL on the TOS phaser meant vapourisation, and therefore no body.
Maybe I`m wrong

Agreed, especially in light of the fact that Captain Tracy vaporized a red shirt with nary a hint of fiber left at the scene.

Moving back some, I never liked how the phaser supposedly killed Anton Karidian in Conscience of the King - he was hit point blank without so much as a burn mark on his blouse, an open wound, nothing.

In The Naked Time, and again later with the space hippies, Scotty seemed to have his phaser set to a sort of "torch" setting so as to penetrate a bulkhead.

Fun topic

 

[Timo]

he was hit point blank without so much as a burn mark on his blouse, an open wound, nothing.

Would be consistent with ST:TUC and "Samaritan Snare": the way to kill somebody with a phaser and not immediately get caught is to use the stun setting and either shoot at close range or then multiple times, or both.

Although Lenore would have her phaser set this way for another reason anyway - she grabbed it from a guard, who wouldn't have it on "kill". She certainly knew her way around phaser settings, though, as evidenced by her setting one on self-destruct. So she could have quickly toggled it to stun so that she could stun everybody and then escape. That's the sort of semi-rational thing the poor gal might be considering at a time like that: the witness-elimination scheme failed, so escape is now the one remaining way to protect dad.

But stun would be great for killing Kirk in a crowd, too: no need to worry about "collateral". Except that stun at close range would still be plenty enough to kill her frail old father!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

What's the epsiode where they stun a group of people with one shot? That's a good setting. So's the TNG one in "Frame of Mind" which Riker says "will destroy half this building"

It's a pity no-one remembered that phasers can do all this stuff in episodes like "The Siege of AR-558"

 

[Timo]

Wide stun with hand phasers was done in "Return of the Archons"; the same thing with orbital phasers, "A Piece of the Action".

Realistically, wide stun would probably fail to stun a certain percentage of the targets - or, if ramped up, would kill the weak among the victims. Which is why it's of limited tactical value: the baddies would no doubt always be better protected than the innocent babies with their kittens and bunny rabbits. "A Piece of the Action" is a welcome exception for our heroes because all the people on the streets are by local custom burly men of great physical strength, and all are out in the open. "Return of the Archons" is a fairly desperate situation in which the victims may have suffered some fatalities for all we know - but OTOH Landru may have given them superhuman powers of protection or at least resilience.

Thankfully, we seldom saw phasers used in classic infantry combat. We hear of them being highly effective in, say, "Omega Glory", though. And we can always pretend that the Jem'Hadar would have shrugged off a wide angle blast thanks to body armor, the scaly skin or whatever, necessitating the single-shot "tactics". But the damning issue is the typical landing party skirmish, where our heroes need not plan for weeks of siege or anything. They could, and really should, remove mountains if that made it easier for them to get a clear shot at the enemy - even if that shot then was doctrinally dictated as a stunning one!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Doug Otte]

I've always regretted how the versatility of phasers has been lost over the decades. In Star Trek, it had many uses, from a benign tool to various levels of a weapon. In TNG, it was still sometimes used as a benign tool or even as a surgical scalpel, but as a weapon, it seemed to be used to kill or vaporize more than to stun. By the time we got to DS9, it was used more like a contemporary projectile weapon, shooting short bursts (or "shots") to kill. In the JJ universe, it actually sounds like a Western pistol with the corny "ka-pew" sound effect. Before you respond, I acknowledge that The Man Trap also had that sound.

Doug

 

[Captain Tracy]

Just off the top of my head, TOS references:

HEAT
CUTTING TORCH
STUN
HVY. STUN
HVY. STUN - WIDE FIELD
DISRUPT
KILL
OVERLOAD

 

[AtoZ]

Just off the top of my head, TOS references:

HEAT
CUTTING TORCH
STUN
HVY. STUN
HVY. STUN - WIDE FIELD
DISRUPT
KILL
OVERLOAD

You forgot Kirk's favorite setting when dealing with a wayward female;

CARESS

 

[Captain Tracy]

Just off the top of my head, TOS references:

HEAT
CUTTING TORCH
STUN
HVY. STUN
HVY. STUN - WIDE FIELD
DISRUPT
KILL
OVERLOAD

You forgot Kirk's favorite setting when dealing with a wayward female;

CARESS

LOL!! That's with his 'other weapon' LOL!

 

[Timo]

Although that one also no doubt features the "heat", "stun" and "overload" settings...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Delta Vega]

There is no duplicity about the KILL setting in What Are Little Girls Made Of, and its vapourise

 

[Satyrquaze]

For what its worth Memory Alpha has this to say on the subject.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

For what its worth Memory Alpha has this to say on the subject.

Yeah, I was going to cite that - until I realized that unfortunately the description of TOS phaser settings is intermingled with the description of TNG phaser settings. Many of those numeric levels for the settings are not from TOS (though some are, e.g. one-quarter, although the fact that one-quarter is a TOS kill setting is IMO unclear in The Man Trap; clearly it is inferred to be dangerous, though).

 

[TOSalltheway]

Dont forget Man Trap when Kirk tells Spock to set his phaser to "one quarter"

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Dont forget Man Trap when Kirk tells Spock to set his phaser to "one quarter"

Yeah, I was just discussing that.

To clarify what I meant, nothing in the episode that I recall indicates that getting hit by a phaser at one-quarter causes instant death; for all we know, maybe it just burns and kills only after some prolonged exposure.

Somehow whoever wrote the Memory Alpha article jumped to a conclusion that one-quarter is a kill setting based on evidence that they don't really cite IMO.

 

[WRStone]

It's probably just me, but I always assumed that the "disrupt" and "kill" settings are identical. Disrupt on a high setting would naturally cause tissue damage that would/could lead to death.

This is different from the disintegrate setting, which totally disintegrates a target.

Again, that may just be me. I always figured that there was basically an analog potentiometer that controlled strength. Low settings could heat rocks; the highest disintegrated the target.

For purposes of ease of use, approximate setting strengths were referred to as "stun" or "kill."

Again, maybe it was just me.

Dakota Smith