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Post by andrewlee on Feb 1, 2009 20:15:21 GMT -6
In this episode, the Enterprise-D finds and old derelict ship a 1000 years old. The ship was a Promellian battle cruiser in a field of asteroids. The Promellians had fought a war with a race called the Menthar. This war caused the extinction of both species. The asteroids thousands of them had devices in them that would capture energy and send it back as lethal radiation. This interfered with the Enterprises warp and impulse propulsion systems. They got out just in time!!!.....more on this later.
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Feb 2, 2009 8:48:58 GMT -6
This is the one where Geordi "met" Dr. Leah Brahms! And there was that scene in the transporter room, just as they're about to beam over. Picard makes what he thinks is a witty reference to "ships in bottles", but nobody gets it. "Didn't any of you build ships in bottles when you were boys?" Worf says, "I never played with toys." And Data says, "I was never a boy."
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Post by andrewlee on Feb 2, 2009 9:59:11 GMT -6
After this Picard, Data , and Worf beam over to the Promellian battle cruiser, Chief O Brian says he really did build ships in bottles to Commander Riker. Captain Picard was absolutely thrilled to visit that old ship. After he came back, Troi remarked about rarely seeing this side of Picard's personality. One question lingers in my mind about not using thrusters to get out of the booby trap since they used them to finally escape.
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Post by Atoz 77 on Feb 4, 2009 12:08:34 GMT -6
That's a good point. Evidently there was a microsecond time lag between the time they applied power to the thrusters and the energy field kicked in and absorbed the energy. They just used that time lag. Like you, I was a little confused. That would have the first thing I tried. They could have done that while Geordi was messing around on the holodeck with Leah, and they still had some power to spare!
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Post by andrewlee on Feb 4, 2009 21:01:48 GMT -6
Atoz. If It were me in that situation, I would have tried the thrusters right after the warp and impulse engines were offline as well. I liked the scene when they were escaping when Captain Picard used a large asteroid to gain acceleration and "Sling-shotted" themselves out of the booby trap. Its too bad they destroyed that ship. They could have later found a way to disable/destroy the devices in the asteroids and retrieve the Promilian ship for study and then put it in a museum.
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Feb 6, 2009 8:32:01 GMT -6
Yes, I didn't get the point of destroying the battle cruiser, either. I suppose it was the easiest way to be sure no one else fell into the trap.
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Post by andrewlee on Feb 6, 2009 9:35:29 GMT -6
Atoz I thought of this to about destroying the ship so no other ships would get caught in the booby trap. I wonder why they didn't they place some warning beacons near the area to warn others of the booby trap?
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Post by Atoz 77 on Feb 9, 2009 9:18:28 GMT -6
I guess theoretically the devices would have eventually found the beacons and drained them as well. No, wait -- they detected the battlecruiser's distress beacon, didn't they?
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Post by andrewlee on Feb 9, 2009 10:46:55 GMT -6
Yes They did Atoz. As I recall they shut it off. Picard said something about ending their last call for help!
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Post by Atoz 77 on Feb 13, 2009 8:44:42 GMT -6
I would have thought that, once outside the range of the devices, they could locate them and destroy them, thus freeing up the ship to be taken back to a museum. But I suppose there were too many of them, like a mine field.
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Post by andrewlee on Feb 13, 2009 10:14:50 GMT -6
Atoz. There were many thousands of these devices in the asteroid field. I still believe, even though there were so many of these devices in the asteroids, they still could have disarmed/destroyed them. It would have taken some time.
Since the booby trap was a 1000 years old, I wonder why the asteroids with the radiation emitting devices stayed together considering the orbits of the asteroids could over time be dispersed. I wonder how they could have stabilized their orbits to make them stay together like this?
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Post by Atoz 77 on Feb 16, 2009 8:45:08 GMT -6
That's a good question. They wouldn't have needed to intentionally stabilize the orbits because they most likely weren't thinking the war would last 1,000 years. I would think it was an unintended byproduct of the booby trap itself, but I'd have to think about it some more.
I don't think we actually saw one of the devicesin the episode, but I imagine them as small mines, too small to show up on sensors, probably mass produced. All they do, essentially, is take any energy directed at them and convert it into deadly radiation, which they redirect towards the center of the trap. Presumably the absorption area extends in a wide radius around them. We saw that phasers only fed the things, but I'd bet a torpedo would blow them to bits, because of the concussion. The problem would be getting close enough.
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Post by andrewlee on Feb 16, 2009 13:33:50 GMT -6
Atoz. I also think photon torpedo's could have worked against the radiation emitting devices in the asteroids. The problem with this is that there were far more of these devices in the asteroids than the number of photon torpedo's the Enterprise had in their arsenal. Targeting them would have been a problem to since even sensors use and send out energy that would be re-directed back at the Enterprise in the form of deadly radiation. The radiation could also have interfered with their targeting sensors. They could have fired all of them to one area of the asteroids to weaken the booby trap and used thrusters to escape!
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Post by Atoz 77 on Feb 20, 2009 8:50:01 GMT -6
Notice that the devices didn't absorb ALL the energy from the battlecruiser, because as we've already agreed, the distress beacon still worked (and the captain's log, etc.). The trap was probably deliberately designed that way -- after all, if a distress beacon remains active, that's a sure way to lure another ship, most likely from the same race, into the trap! The simplest way to do that would be to program the devices to monitor the life signs on the enemy ship and stop once all the enemy are dead.
It does seem a shame to waste a photon torpedo on a small mine. Maybe they could design some mini-rockets, perhaps carried on a pilot-less shuttlecraft.
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Post by Luke on Mar 11, 2009 10:48:31 GMT -6
If you think aobut it the peolpe who set the trap had to have some way to disarm it didnt they? it would just be a matter of hutning for the right access code.
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