is the golden age of space sci-fi coming to an end ?

posted on January 28th, 2011, 10:43 pm

Im thinking that you couldn't replicate all the parts for photon torpedoes is so that you can't use them to mass produce weapons. the feds really dont like that kind of thing

posted on January 28th, 2011, 11:18 pm

Yes but what the feds like versus what Janeways wants is two different things.....if janeway is willing to trade fed tech for coffee then what the hell....

Tuvok, Kim!!! Pry out the parental control circuts out of our replicators so we can make more torpedos!!

posted on January 29th, 2011, 12:17 am

It already started coming to an end when the first of the Star Wars prequels came out (the great 90s series were over, and Star Wars movies started sucking), it was definitely over by the time SG-1 ended.

Star Wars: ended with the prequels movie wise, and the 'vong invasion in the EU. They said screw the fanbase, lets be 'kewl' and get a new generation.

Star Trek ended a few seasons into Voyager when they went for tit size over plot. Crappy script writers that destroyed a shuttle every other episode (and dont forget the magic shuttle bay that changed size multiple times), and to be honest that decline started in TNG with ILMs inability to decide what scale at which to render various ships, from the Klingon BoP to the Defiant and DS9. And when trek started to do TNG movies, each being worse than the previous, the downfall accelerated. Then Enterprise took that downfall to another level ( the cast did good I think, but the material was at best sub par ) and Star Trek officaly went off of life support and flat-lined when J.J. was allowed to release that travesty of a movie with Kirks Enterprise being offically bigger than a Galaxy class (but it was designed to be almost exactly the same size of the original..... they just had ILM double its size, resulting in it looking sillier).

Stargate ended when SciFi channel decided to bring in cast from Farscape and focus on trying to get as many people as possible to watch, rather than try to have a plot worth watching. That was a real shame too, cause the farscape guys were exellent (especilly Mitchell. He can rival RDA's snark factor if not surpass it at times, he deserved to replace RDA) but were given pretty crap scripts to work with.

The problem is anything mainstream turns to crap. Stargate started on a pay per view TV channel that (at the time) was mostly known for having semi decent softcore porn (hence nudity in the pilot episode's full cut). Babylon 5 was viewed as filler at first, and a gamble at that, but became epicly popular. But soon as the sequel came out, the creators lost real control, and the thing wasnt even aired in order and the mistake was knowingly transfered over to the DvDs even. Star Wars focused on a yougner audiance and Lucas purposley decided to figurtivley give the finger to the old fans by purposly coming close to contradicting many aspects of the EU, or at least ignoring very easy ways in which to tie it into the movies. The games that have came out since the prequels have also been of sub par quality and filled with forced and poorly done refrences to the prequels (the Age  of Empires 2 corperate mod released as a SW game being one key example).

List goes on, but what it boils down to is series are going away from actualy keeping true to the spirit of what made them great, and either just ignoring the past bits of the series, or starting from scratch and doign so poorly.

And dont forget the 'Sci Fi' channel (oh excuse me, 'Sy Fi' as they call themselves now) that cancels real Sci Fi programing for wresteling ...

Basicly, dont expect anything good in sciecne fiction unless its a 1shot lower budget project. And if it goes into sequels or more than 1-2 season expect it to get shitcanned randomly or have 'provocative' changes forced upon the plot/cast which make it suck.

posted on January 29th, 2011, 12:04 pm

They probsbly replicated them with a Deflector pulse... or something Deflector-related.

posted on January 29th, 2011, 11:12 pm

I know we're talking fairly sarcastically here....but wouldn't it be impossible to replicate torpedos?
Well...I suppose you could replicate the torpedo, but you couldn't replicate the anti-matter inside. I mean...replicators change energy into matter, right? I think I remember reading somewhere that you can't replicate anti-matter, nor could you transmit anti-matter because they use a matter beam. Or a matter transfer beam...or something like that.

Anyway, I just remember reading that replicating/transporting anti-matter was impossible.

posted on January 29th, 2011, 11:41 pm

The warhead is the same as the fuel used by the Matter/Antimatter Warp Core, it should be possible to use the ships fuel for a torpedo like NX-01 did with its old Antimatter torpedoes; they were supplied by the ships reserves.

That would have the obvious problem of causing trouble for the Warp Core later, though, and it probably would be better to just stick with phasers alone in the long run if your trapped far from home.

posted on January 30th, 2011, 3:46 am

I know we're talking fairly sarcastically here....but wouldn't it be impossible to replicate torpedos?
Well...I suppose you could replicate the torpedo, but you couldn't replicate the anti-matter inside. I mean...replicators change energy into matter, right? I think I remember reading somewhere that you can't replicate anti-matter, nor could you transmit anti-matter because they use a matter beam. Or a matter transfer beam...or something like that.

Anyway, I just remember reading that replicating/transporting anti-matter was impossible.

Not really there in circuitry ect inside torps, guidedance chips and other such balls, starfleet can modify torps and things like that but they could not create torps from stratch you would need a specialist for that.

I doubt the replicator could create a super advanced motherboard with all the needed stuff on it, so each individual part wold have to be created and for this you would need specialist knowledge that i doubt any starfleet engineer has.

posted on January 30th, 2011, 4:45 am

The replicators are based off of the transporter technology and that is used to move an entire human/alien body i think they should be able to make (relatively) simple motherboard.

posted on January 30th, 2011, 5:34 am

I like Tyler's response.  If you can't make it conventionally, just shoot it with an inverse tachyon beam from the deflector.

posted on January 30th, 2011, 11:09 am

[img width=350]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3126/3243474194_b761ec8af8.jpg[/img]

posted on January 30th, 2011, 2:26 pm

The replicators are based off of the transporter technology and that is used to move an entire human/alien body i think they should be able to make (relatively) simple motherboard.

Quoted for truth.

As I understand the way transporters are supposed to work (at least when the writers aint changing how it works) MOST materials can be replicated, but some classes of elements and chemicals (such as latnum) cannot be (tho since it CAN be transported, I'd imagine that latnum being replicated is pretty close to occuring as well, which would really screw up the Ferangi culture, or force them to adopt something else.

So unless one of those un-replicatable elements/chemichals were to be in the composition of the torpedo casing (and you'd have to assume that those would be smaller parts that they would carry in bulk so they could resupply themselves in the field) they could reproduce virtually the entire casing, and with the staff they have they could simply trade for or mine for the remaining components.

As for the anti-matter, IIRC fed starships (at least it was in one of the TNG manuals I used to have) also carry antimatter generators for emergency use (they suck up power/fuel from the auxillary reactors and/or impulse engines however). You'd assume that this was used as Voyager never mentioned even being low on antimatter that I recall, but I DO recall that they were often low on the deuterium slush tanks that fueled the impulse engines (which I would assume is becasue they were using them to power the replicators and the antimatter generator).

It actually would have been a great chance for a sensable script, or even a whole sub plot running a few episodes, have Tuvok mention that while they can replace the bulk of a casing or even produce an unguided photon torpedo with limited functionality, they were running low on widgetX because it required material that cannot be replicated, causing them to have to trade with some people or survey asteroid fields/planets to mine for it.

Of course, they would have lost half a dozen shuttles in the mining AND ended up contracting some local miner to help, only to have his ship phase thru the hull to land in the shuttle bay despite being larger than the shuttlebay door.

posted on January 30th, 2011, 2:34 pm

deuterium being rare was silly as earth's ocean contains plenty of the stuff. its pretty common material. replicating it should be no trouble. but due to conservation of energy, they wouldnt use the power from deuterium to replicate more deuterium.

maybe if they sat next to a star and used solar collectors to replicate deuterium.

posted on January 30th, 2011, 2:37 pm

Replicating the stuff would be easier if they simply turned the Bussard collectors on every so often...

posted on January 30th, 2011, 2:43 pm

the bussard colletors were there to collect hydrogen fuel and deuterium. if they picked up 1kg of deuterium and had 100% efficient replicator/power systems they could use that 1kg to replicate a maximum of 1kg, so it wouldnt help them make more lol.

getting deuterium that is laying around is the best thing to do. since u can get enough to generate more energy than u spent collecting it.

the problem was they said it was a rare substance, when its abundant in the universe.

posted on January 30th, 2011, 3:20 pm

the problem was they said it was a rare substance, when its abundant in the universe.

The problem was most of the writers were idiots.