Tholian Web Question...

[geotrek]

This may have been discussed before, but while watching this episode last night it struck me... what is the shape of the entire web? I've always thought it was a circle. Is that right?

Also, the space suits look oddly like a picture of the circulatory system in some old biology textbook.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

As a kid, the first glimpses of the web on the bridge viewing screen were confusing to me because I didn't realize the filament circled around the back of the ship before coming around front again. It seems silly now, but I couldn't figure how the Tholian ships were putting that thing up.

 

[Push The Button]

Probably a sphere.

 

[Vorpal_Blade]

I thought it was circular shaped also. Kind of hard to tell since they didn't show the whole thing. My heart goes out to Loskene though. All of that hard work and the Enterprise was able to escape. lol

 

[geotrek]

Yes, it was confusing. It never shows the whole shape, right?

Was it supposed to be like:

 

[Christopher]

Naturally it had to be a geometric solid of some sort, something that would surround the ship in three dimensions, not just two. I always figured that it was a sphere and that the "straight" lines we saw were actually arcs of circles going all the way around.

The one in "In a Mirror, Darkly" looked like the one in the image posted above, essentially a flattened icosahedron.

 

[geotrek]

^^ Yeah, me too! But, I thought maybe someone somewhere had made the original design, without it ever being utilized for the show, and possibly someone somewhere on the forum might know something about it.

 

[UnknownSample]

Always took for granted it was a sphere. Maybe like a Fuller dome, with a lot of little flat facets, making up basically a sphere.

 

[Timo]

Whatever keeps a network of wires from collapsing would dictate its ultimate shape. If the filaments themselves are rigid but capable of assuming any shape, then all bets are off. If there's some sort of self-repelling charge in the as such flexible filaments, they would balloon themselves into a sphere or other ovoid all right. If there are nodes that pull outward (by whatever means), and the soft filaments hang from the nodes, then the Tholians might go for a minimum number of those nodes, creating weird-looking things like the one in the image above. Or perhaps nicely curving saddle surfaces instead of flat faces, in case you can't dangle a filament from a filament and therefore can't have sharp edges, only sharp vertexes.

Nothing as such contradicts the ENT visual take where there are nodes and flat faces. But the TOS episode seems to outright contradict the idea of "filaments" of any physicality, as Spock quickly renames the structure an "energy field" after a more careful analysis. And the ENT visuals are in better agreement with the energy field than with the filament, as the destruction of a node makes all the lines emanating from it disappear altogether and at once.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[geotrek]

Happy to know I'm not the only one who imagined it spherical.

 

[Nebusj]

I had always assumed it was spherical, or at least an approximation. It is geometrically interesting that we only see the web formed with vertices that have six edges coming out of them, though. To cover a sphere with a mesh that has only six-edged vertices is impossible. There have to be at least twelve vertices with only five edges coming out. We can suppose that dozen didn't happen to be on-screen, though, given how little of the web we did see.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I had always assumed it was spherical, or at least an approximation. It is geometrically interesting that we only see the web formed with vertices that have six edges coming out of them, though. To cover a sphere with a mesh that has only six-edged vertices is impossible. There have to be at least twelve vertices with only five edges coming out. We can suppose that dozen didn't happen to be on-screen, though, given how little of the web we did see.

I feel like the makers of the episode never went that deep into the geometry involved. The filaments are probably meant to be circular, wrapped around and around like a spider wrapping up a kill to save it for later. Probably nobody working on the show talked about vertices or "covering a sphere."

 

[Timo]

The "alternating hexagons and pentagons" thing is only necessary if you want to use identical, symmetric shapes for said polygons. It's easy to do a sphere with nothing but hexagons (or squares or triangles) if you are allowed to distort them.

In the TOS layout, we observe parallel horizontal lines. For all we know, the ship is surrounded by a sphere where there are straight "latitudes" and then a series of lines that would be at certain fixed angles (45 or 60 degrees or whatever) at the "equator" but get increasingly distorted towards the "poles".

Of course, the TOS VFX suggests a very small net - the faraway triangles are barely smaller than the ones close to the camera. But the Tholians would probably want to keep their distance, meaning the "poles" would be conveniently off camera. Dialogue suggests the net is "just beyond phaser range", but since the Enterprise has just lost power, that range might be 100 meters for all we know (and as suggested by the visuals!).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ZapBrannigan]

One plot hole is that spinning such a web is impractical if the enemy ship can just move aside, and it's unnecessary if the enemy has lost propulsion.

Maybe the web technology is normally used to capture and redirect asteroids or something.

 

[Timo]

Why would this be a plot hole? The purpose of the net would appear to be to tow the Enterprise away as a war prize. Destruction is a highly unlikely purpose, because the Tholians have conventional guns for that, and the heroes would be unable to respond to those.

It's a fan idea and likely misconception that the web would be a weapon. It won't destroy the ship, not per episode dialogue. It will merely ensure that the heroes "shall not see home again", which is unusually poetic coming from Spock, and for that reason already potentially likelier to refer to internment rather than interment.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[geotrek]

wrapped around and around like a spider wrapping up a kill to save it for later.

Right. But if the power supply converters hadn't been fused (and Kirk hadn't been trapped), the web would have no chance of taking prisoners or sealing the Enterprise's tomb. They could have hauled ass. Regardless, for it to work, the Tholians would have to ensure that they disabled their prey before using it.

This is interesting: http://www.startrek.com/database_article/tholian-ship
It states that the web eventually contracts to destroy the vessel in it, and that the web itself has "interphasic properties." Never knew that.

 

[Tenacity]

The slow speed the web was being constructed may have been atypical, one of the Tholian ships was damaged.

And I always have imagined the web's final shape as a cube.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

This is interesting: http://www.startrek.com/database_article/tholian-ship
It states that the web eventually contracts to destroy the vessel in it, and that the web itself has "interphasic properties." Never knew that.

The item is anonymous and non-canonical. I don't frequent star trek dot com all that much. Do they feel studio-entitled to write new material and consider it canon?

The episode doesn't say if the web will contract, be a towing device, or just trap you in place. It never says that the Defiant was webbed. The Tholians aren't said to exploit the interphase phenomenon until "In a Mirror, Darkly" on ENT, and for me, that's a wonderful but separate other canon that TOS itself is not bound by. ENT might be somewhat bound by TOS, but the reverse is a different proposition.

 

[Timo]

In the ENT mirror universe episode, we get little idea what that version of the Tholian web is supposed to achieve. There is no dialogue mention of its purpose or effects.

All we learn is that its deployment mode is different: multiple Tholian ships serve as deployment nodes, creating a polyhedron that instantaneously surrounds the ship and then begins to contract. The contracting may serve a destructive role, or then not: the Evil Enterprise was under constant Tholian bombardment and the Tholian guns may have been the true reason for the ship blowing up shortly before the web contracted enough to touch the hull. IOW, the web may have served purely to keep the victim ship immobile until destruction by conventional means.

The second time the web is erected there, it apparently is intended to obstruct the escape path of the Defiant. It's two-dimensional there, doesn't contract, and is dissipated by destroying the node ships.

So "In a Mirror, Darkly" certainly doesn't contradict "Tholian Web": it features a different web, but OTOH this different system may still have a purpose identical to that of the TOS one.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kemaiku]

Tholians do have the ability to knock out ships propulsion, we see a pack of them attack the Vulcans and NX-01 in season 2, only bothering to build a web around the now crippled ship if they want it.

It's likely a way to keep the disabled ship in place until even more Tholians arrive and start carving it up, like they seemed to start doing to the Vulcan cruiser (or would have done if they weren't after the Time Pod more).

I think we can take it from TOS and ENT that they prefer to work in numbers, with multiple Webspinners traveling together to act in a small swarm to overwhelm larger ships. They were doing this long before Krall turned up.