BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: ↑Tue Mar 09, 2021 2:01 amI think my favorite though has to be Quark showing them who's taking advantage of the honor system through basic accounting. What a house of cards.
That was truly a magical scene.
When they let Quark be a real Ferengi and show just how sharp they should be depicted if they weren't usually relegated to being comic relief, it's a thing to behold. His conversation about the price of peace with the Maquis Vulcan was brilliant as well. Highlighting the strategical focus the Ferengi mind has in anything that can be put in terms of a game-theoretic calculation of outcomes and their assigned values... ah what could have been. Nog's expert navigation of the Great Material River is a favorite runner-up demonstration too.
And those scenes highlight how easily you can still mine that brilliance for comedy without making the characters to be jokes themselves.
Which episode was that? It sounds familiar but its been ages sicne I watched the whole series.
Not sure which one you're asking about, so I'll just cover them all (in addition to the Nog one already being answered for you):
here the thing with melee weapons in a starship. Particular if you are in one and you don't wear armor. First ballistic weapons and i think even weapons like phaser tend to put hole in thing. Starships don't fly well when they got holes leading outside, put too many holes and you may not have any star ship. Also there a lot of very important machinery that if damage (especially in the bridge or engineering ) could end a boarding very quickly. One way to avoid accidentally hitting a very important piece of equipment with an explosive effect would be melee weapons. in fact star ship crew should be carrying swords instead of phasers.
There are some science fiction where they do this. Swords, knives, and even pikes for some defenses. I could even see riot shields being useful. However, with stun settings being wide spread. Why would you limit yourself to a melee weapon?
Blades have a weird place in fiction - they often seem to be flat out superior to ray guns. Its one of Chuck's oldest jokes that phasers on stun seem more likely to give you cramps than they are to kill you.
Although I will say though that phasers in Kirk's time were beasts; often gunning down a whole street instantly with a wide beam. ''Bread and Circuses'' even implies that a hundred men with phasers could wipe out the combined armies of Rome - and hey, wide beam on kill is basically a machine gun nest so why not? Its only in the VOY/ENT era that phasers do shit. (Seriously, WTF happened to the wide beam setting by VOY? ''Cathexis'' where Tuvok was mind-controlled and took the whole bridge down proved that it exists, but no one ever seemed to want to use it outside of this episode).
Canonically I can't answer you. Meta = Bad writing. TOS you could use stun on a ship mounted phaser. Yes only done once but they did do it. If I had to give an excuse? Kirk saw himself as a soldier not a diplomat. His weapons had some useful settings. Stun, wide, and heat in addition to being able to kill. But Star Fleet took the whole 'we are not military' to the extreme. So phasers are not weapons. They are tools. So they kept getting made with more and more settings to do things other than to fight. It might even explain Janeway using phasers for pretty much every scientific bit of work. Extra dimensional hole in space time appearing on your bridge? We have a setting for that.
I would also say TOS used more raw power to everything. The transporters seemed like they could beam through more. The tractor beam could rip apart a jet fighter etc.
here the thing with melee weapons in a starship. Particular if you are in one and you don't wear armor. First ballistic weapons and i think even weapons like phaser tend to put hole in thing. Starships don't fly well when they got holes leading outside, put too many holes and you may not have any star ship. Also there a lot of very important machinery that if damage (especially in the bridge or engineering ) could end a boarding very quickly. One way to avoid accidentally hitting a very important piece of equipment with an explosive effect would be melee weapons. in fact star ship crew should be carrying swords instead of phasers.
There are some science fiction where they do this. Swords, knives, and even pikes for some defenses. I could even see riot shields being useful. However, with stun settings being wide spread. Why would you limit yourself to a melee weapon?
Blades have a weird place in fiction - they often seem to be flat out superior to ray guns. Its one of Chuck's oldest jokes that phasers on stun seem more likely to give you cramps than they are to kill you.
Although I will say though that phasers in Kirk's time were beasts; often gunning down a whole street instantly with a wide beam. ''Bread and Circuses'' even implies that a hundred men with phasers could wipe out the combined armies of Rome - and hey, wide beam on kill is basically a machine gun nest so why not? Its only in the VOY/ENT era that phasers do shit. (Seriously, WTF happened to the wide beam setting by VOY? ''Cathexis'' where Tuvok was mind-controlled and took the whole bridge down proved that it exists, but no one ever seemed to want to use it outside of this episode).
Canonically I can't answer you. Meta = Bad writing. TOS you could use stun on a ship mounted phaser. Yes only done once but they did do it. If I had to give an excuse? Kirk saw himself as a soldier not a diplomat. His weapons had some useful settings. Stun, wide, and heat in addition to being able to kill. But Star Fleet took the whole 'we are not military' to the extreme. So phasers are not weapons. They are tools. So they kept getting made with more and more settings to do things other than to fight. It might even explain Janeway using phasers for pretty much every scientific bit of work. Extra dimensional hole in space time appearing on your bridge? We have a setting for that.
I would also say TOS used more raw power to everything. The transporters seemed like they could beam through more. The tractor beam could rip apart a jet fighter etc.
Maybe it like when you have too many apps your phone it quality goes down.
BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: ↑Tue Mar 09, 2021 2:01 amI think my favorite though has to be Quark showing them who's taking advantage of the honor system through basic accounting. What a house of cards.
That was truly a magical scene.
When they let Quark be a real Ferengi and show just how sharp they should be depicted if they weren't usually relegated to being comic relief, it's a thing to behold. His conversation about the price of peace with the Maquis Vulcan was brilliant as well. Highlighting the strategical focus the Ferengi mind has in anything that can be put in terms of a game-theoretic calculation of outcomes and their assigned values... ah what could have been. Nog's expert navigation of the Great Material River is a favorite runner-up demonstration too.
And those scenes highlight how easily you can still mine that brilliance for comedy without making the characters to be jokes themselves.
Which episode was that? It sounds familiar but its been ages sicne I watched the whole series.
Not sure which one you're asking about, so I'll just cover them all (in addition to the Nog one already being answered for you):
clearspira wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 8:55 pm
Blades have a weird place in fiction - they often seem to be flat out superior to ray guns. Its one of Chuck's oldest jokes that phasers on stun seem more likely to give you cramps than they are to kill you.
Although I will say though that phasers in Kirk's time were beasts; often gunning down a whole street instantly with a wide beam. ''Bread and Circuses'' even implies that a hundred men with phasers could wipe out the combined armies of Rome - and hey, wide beam on kill is basically a machine gun nest so why not? Its only in the VOY/ENT era that phasers do shit. (Seriously, WTF happened to the wide beam setting by VOY? ''Cathexis'' where Tuvok was mind-controlled and took the whole bridge down proved that it exists, but no one ever seemed to want to use it outside of this episode).
Canonically I can't answer you. Meta = Bad writing. TOS you could use stun on a ship mounted phaser. Yes only done once but they did do it. If I had to give an excuse? Kirk saw himself as a soldier not a diplomat. His weapons had some useful settings. Stun, wide, and heat in addition to being able to kill. But Star Fleet took the whole 'we are not military' to the extreme. So phasers are not weapons. They are tools. So they kept getting made with more and more settings to do things other than to fight. It might even explain Janeway using phasers for pretty much every scientific bit of work. Extra dimensional hole in space time appearing on your bridge? We have a setting for that.
I would also say TOS used more raw power to everything. The transporters seemed like they could beam through more. The tractor beam could rip apart a jet fighter etc.
This is supported by the text in "Deep Space 9" (I do not know the name of the episode, but it is right after Dukat gets his Bird of Prey).
Kira is showing Ziyal a rifle from the Federation and the Cardassians and she talks about how the Cardassian rifle is sturdy, has only two settings and is pretty much a weapon of war. Then she says the Federation rifle has like 15 settings and is prone to breaking.
This makes sense if you have a military run by mad scientists. They want to be able to kill whatever monster, cosmis space being, or giant energy ghost they come across... But a soldier? What are we Klingons!?
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Yeah the ferengi were often portrayed rather stupidly. Even in DS9 we get the idea that ferengi children aren't even taught to read or given a basic education. Not just that rom couldn't afford to educate him but rather that the ferengi were philosophically opposed to education for their children. Putting aside the obvious problem of an illiterate spacefaring civilization. A society that focuses on gaining any possible advantage would covet education. I could far easier see a uneducated child growing up in the hippie dippie federation than in the ferengi alliance. I feel like the ferengi were like a girl having a fat best friend so she looks better by comparison.
When however the ferengi are allowed to behave as people instead of as a joke about how much the writers hated capitalism they are actually very interesting and should really be able to fly circles around the federation.
drewder wrote: ↑Sun Mar 21, 2021 11:00 pm
Yeah the ferengi were often portrayed rather stupidly. Even in DS9 we get the idea that ferengi children aren't even taught to read or given a basic education. Not just that rom couldn't afford to educate him but rather that the ferengi were philosophically opposed to education for their children. Putting aside the obvious problem of an illiterate spacefaring civilization. A society that focuses on gaining any possible advantage would covet education.
They should absolutely covet education, but you just know that Ferengi would have no public schools, only private, and the entire system is beyond corrupt requiring bribery and connections to even get your application submitted.
drewder wrote: ↑Sun Mar 21, 2021 11:00 pm
Yeah the ferengi were often portrayed rather stupidly. Even in DS9 we get the idea that ferengi children aren't even taught to read or given a basic education. Not just that rom couldn't afford to educate him but rather that the ferengi were philosophically opposed to education for their children. Putting aside the obvious problem of an illiterate spacefaring civilization. A society that focuses on gaining any possible advantage would covet education.
They should absolutely covet education, but you just know that Ferengi would have no public schools, only private, and the entire system is beyond corrupt requiring bribery and connections to even get your application submitted.
It is capitalism at work and generational conflict too, the smart invest in an education to keep them on top [but not too much, because who wants their kid stabbing them in the back for profit if they get smart enough]. The cheap, the poor, and the short-termists don't bother and save a strip of latinum today at the expense of a bar tomorrow. But at least their kids will have to do what they are told and won't out compete them. And the former sure make sure that the latter never question the idea, because it cuts down on the competition. On a social systems level, it works. You know how I know it works, it basically how the world works right now. The rich buy good education for their kids, and invest in anti-intellectualism for the masses.
