Photonic Missiles
- Thread starter cwl
- Start date
What makes a missile different than a torpedo?
I think the phrasing is the only difference in the trek case. They didn't want to use photon torpedoes in ENT, they wanted to somehow say these were different/more primitive I think.
I think the phrasing is the only difference in the trek case. They didn't want to use photon torpedoes in ENT, they wanted to somehow say these were different/more primitive I think.
I actually think the reference to Photonic Missiles is from Voyager, the Delta Flyer has them I think.
Exactly right, they were a Borg weapon that Tom Paris and Seven of Nine included on the Delta Flyer. The concept of the Photonic Missile dates back a wee bit further though, as the fourth Doctor expressed great concern that the Sontarans would bombard Earth with Photonic Missiles in the 15th season episode The Horror of Fang Rock. It would seem, on the surface at any rate, that someone involved with the production of ST:Voyager was a Doctor Who fan aswell. Pretty cool.
...So, is it possible to derive some sort of a distinction between the terms, no matter how unintended by the writers?
Trek missiles:
- The A4 lookalike fired at Kirk's ship in "Patterns of Force"
- The cluster of munitions fired at Kirk's ship in "For the World is Hollow"
- The Ferengi thing fired at the wormhole in "The Price"
- The Maquis interstellar things, reputedly cloaked, in "Blaze of Glory"
- The Cardassian Dreadnought from her titular ep
- The photonic missiles
Apart from the Maquis and Cardassian devices, all of these were exclusively witnessed operating in sublight mode.
Apart from those and the Nazi A4, all were fired in ship-to-ship mode.
Apart from the photonic missiles, all were operated by the enemies of Starfleet; even the photonic ones were enemy tech.
Apart from the photonic ones, all appeared to have some sort of guidance and maneuverability.
...Looks hopeless.
Timo Saloniemi
Trek missiles:
- The A4 lookalike fired at Kirk's ship in "Patterns of Force"
- The cluster of munitions fired at Kirk's ship in "For the World is Hollow"
- The Ferengi thing fired at the wormhole in "The Price"
- The Maquis interstellar things, reputedly cloaked, in "Blaze of Glory"
- The Cardassian Dreadnought from her titular ep
- The photonic missiles
Apart from the Maquis and Cardassian devices, all of these were exclusively witnessed operating in sublight mode.
Apart from those and the Nazi A4, all were fired in ship-to-ship mode.
Apart from the photonic missiles, all were operated by the enemies of Starfleet; even the photonic ones were enemy tech.
Apart from the photonic ones, all appeared to have some sort of guidance and maneuverability.
...Looks hopeless.
Timo Saloniemi
I did think it was weird when they put these missiles into the Delta Flyer for its first ep and forgot about them in every subsequent ep the DF was in combat. (But hey, that's Voyager eh?)
It's like every time the ship was at Warp it was supposed to have extending pylons like the mothership, but I think this too was only shown once before being forgotten about.
You'd think when it went up against the Borg Cube they'd be saying "The Borg have adapted to the primary weapons, switching to the Photonic Missiles" as a new angle or whatever, but no.
It's like every time the ship was at Warp it was supposed to have extending pylons like the mothership, but I think this too was only shown once before being forgotten about.
You'd think when it went up against the Borg Cube they'd be saying "The Borg have adapted to the primary weapons, switching to the Photonic Missiles" as a new angle or whatever, but no.
Maybe you meant that they were immature enough that they acted like they had not yet emerged from the amniotic sack?
Well...I've heard the theory that the reason that Photon Torpedo's are called as such is because they have their sheilding units charged to overload which causes the shields to glow, or emit photon's....there is an episode in TOS in which they overload the shields and they glow I believe....that may be to increase it's survival rate while en route to it's target... This would explain why it's called a photon torpedo when the actual destructive capabilities don't depend on photon's. In other words, the name is arbitrary to the scientists that created the weapon. If it were me I would've called them A.M. Torpedo's or something a little more specific, but that's just me.
Photonic Missiles also glow as well, probably related to the same thing...but that doesn't denote what type of warhead it has necessarily...Perhaps it was a high yield nuclear weapon or a lower yeild antimatter slug that the Borg didn't need to use but stored the information anyway upon assimilating another culture. Or perhaps in the culture it came from it was simply a missile defence measure, like that "laser defense" thing my country came up with (not one of our finer moments...)
All we know is they are small, probably with some type of advantage over a micro photon torpedo (or why wouldn't have voyager equipped them with those instead considering they seem to have the ability to use their industrial replicator to create shuttles...)
Another reason to support the fact that it has an unknown type of warhead, or more specifically different that a M/AM warhead, is the fact that Voyager has to use the antimatter it DOES find or create (using their antimatter generator) to replenish their own MK6 torpedo's. The generator creates antimatter, sure, but expends more energy than it gets from the antimatter it creates...and finding antimatter seems to be harder than finding matter that's for sure...so it would makes sense they'd reserve their antimatter reserves for the ship and it's own weapons rather than a small weapon for one shuttle...why not use some different type of warhead. It just so happens this particular weapon overloads it's shields just like a photon torpedo (again probably to increase survival rate en-route to a target).
Photonic Missiles also glow as well, probably related to the same thing...but that doesn't denote what type of warhead it has necessarily...Perhaps it was a high yield nuclear weapon or a lower yeild antimatter slug that the Borg didn't need to use but stored the information anyway upon assimilating another culture. Or perhaps in the culture it came from it was simply a missile defence measure, like that "laser defense" thing my country came up with (not one of our finer moments...)
All we know is they are small, probably with some type of advantage over a micro photon torpedo (or why wouldn't have voyager equipped them with those instead considering they seem to have the ability to use their industrial replicator to create shuttles...)
Another reason to support the fact that it has an unknown type of warhead, or more specifically different that a M/AM warhead, is the fact that Voyager has to use the antimatter it DOES find or create (using their antimatter generator) to replenish their own MK6 torpedo's. The generator creates antimatter, sure, but expends more energy than it gets from the antimatter it creates...and finding antimatter seems to be harder than finding matter that's for sure...so it would makes sense they'd reserve their antimatter reserves for the ship and it's own weapons rather than a small weapon for one shuttle...why not use some different type of warhead. It just so happens this particular weapon overloads it's shields just like a photon torpedo (again probably to increase survival rate en-route to a target).
They're called Photonic Missiles because they explode into a pretty fireworks display upon impact.
Photonic Miss Isles.
A holographic version of the Miss World contest, based around a small archipelago.
A holographic version of the Miss World contest, based around a small archipelago.
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