Battle of Veridian III (split off topic discussion)

[Brother Gabriel]

posted on July 16th, 2010, 2:21 pm

Last edited by Brother Gabriel on July 16th, 2010, 2:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Core Ejection is a last resort, normally only used if everything else has already failed and you're getting desperate. Tactics like that are rarely the most reliable ones available.

Geordi said there's nothing he could do, so it was probably off-line, anyway.

On a side note: Has anyone noticed that when they're evactuating the ship, the red alert lighting turns yellow for a single flash?

u know that its better to emergency eject the core than to let the section getting blown up? Also it might be noted that splitting the ship is way more complicated and easier to disturb than a simple eject system which is in every Starfleet ship.
most probaly they ignored the fact that the ship has such a system, to create more and visual impressive drama.

about the alarm lights: i nevah noticed it, but its true

[Tyler]

posted on July 16th, 2010, 2:28 pm

Last edited by Tyler on July 16th, 2010, 2:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Core Ejection is very unreliable compared to Seperation, making it a worse choice for a Core Breach (unreliable methods are even worse with civilians and children aboard). The best thing they should have done was use Escape Pods and Shuttles, which would have been alot faster than seperation because all people go to the nearest one and launch as it's ready instead of getting everyone into the Saucer and waiting until it's about to explode to leave (maybe seperating with the people currently in the saucer and picking up the pods after the explosion).

Partly for drama, partly to get the Galaxy out of the way to show off their shiny new Sovereign.

posted on July 16th, 2010, 2:48 pm

I agree that escape pods and shuttles could be faster, but wouldn't the saucer be safer? Assuming the blast from the core breach hadn't forced it into Veridian III's atmosphere, the saucer would have provided protection, i.e. phasers, shields (if they were online), replicators, quarters, more efficient triage capabilities, etc.

posted on July 16th, 2010, 2:52 pm

That's why I suggested seperating with the people already in it and picking the pods up after. The saucer was forced to crash because it couldn't get out of the blast range in time, seperating right as the breach was reaching peak.

posted on July 16th, 2010, 3:37 pm

what i never got was why they had to crash. i mean why point the ship at the planet, why not just fly more through space? it appears most of the damage was caused in the crash and not by the explosion.

[Tyler]

posted on July 16th, 2010, 3:44 pm

Last edited by Tyler on July 16th, 2010, 3:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Two possibilities I can think of:
1. The explosion knocked them off course (I'm sure I saw the ship start to flip during the second we saw it from the outside) and the engines were too damaged to turn.
2. Deanna's just that bad at piloting, she's drawn to accidents like a moth to a flame.

It would probably be salvagable if it didn't crash. 18 of the crew probably wouldn't have died, either (novel version of the film).

posted on July 16th, 2010, 3:49 pm

Thrusters were offline due to the blast, Impulse Engines were offline due to the blast and it knocked them off course and gravity did the rest... they were still in Low Orbit as they were attacked...

posted on July 16th, 2010, 3:56 pm

the blast appeared to push the ship though, so if calamity troi had just pointed the ship away from the planet (which seems sensible) then they would have been pushed into open space.

[Tyler]

posted on July 16th, 2010, 4:01 pm

Last edited by Tyler on July 16th, 2010, 4:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It started to flip. I don't think it turned much, but considering they changed direction (presumably to try and avoid the planet) after seperating it was probably enough to get them caught.

I've been looking around the background section of Generations on Memory Alpha and found this:

Regarding some of the oft-mentioned plot discrepancies within the film, Ronald D. Moore commented:

"Our reasoning (and it's admittedly thin) is that Picard didn't want to go back any further in time than absolutely necessary since he knows the extreme dangers of unexpected results from any tampering with the timeline. Okay, it's not much, but there it is." (AOL chat, 1997)

posted on July 16th, 2010, 4:24 pm

Core Ejection is very unreliable compared to Seperation, making it a worse choice for a Core Breach (unreliable methods are even worse with civilians and children aboard).

So your saying that the Federation, when designing their ships, made the ship more reliable at splitting into two pieces (for that one-off emergency where it is somehow a good idea to leave behind the better part of the ship so a much less powerful part can escape) that have to be connected about 99.99% of the time than at ejecting a thing that can EXPLODE AND DESTROY THE WHOLE SHIP KILLING EVERYONE  .

No, this movie had horrible writing, I'm pretty sure stoners can write a more logical script, while high. I think RedLetterMedia put it best when describing the part where Picard beams down and we see a Federation transporter effect even tho the Klingons were supposed to transport him from their ship: (may be paraphrasing a little) "Someone noticed and didn't care." Also: "Fuck you, Rick Berman." Tho the movie can't be entirely Berman's fault. A failure this bad is hard to accomplish with just one person.
I'd rather this movie be removed from canon than Voyager or Enterprise, at least they were occasionally good.

posted on July 16th, 2010, 4:29 pm

Tha

So your saying that the Federation, when designing their ships, made the ship more reliable at splitting into two pieces (for that one-off emergency where it is somehow a good idea to leave behind the better part of the ship so a much less powerful part can escape) that have to be connected about 99.99% of the time than at ejecting a thing that can EXPLODE AND DESTROY THE WHOLE SHIP KILLING EVERYONE  .

That's rather irrelivant. It's an argument about Warp Cores being dangerous, it hasn't got anything to do with the ejection system not being reliable.

posted on July 16th, 2010, 4:32 pm

It would probably be wise if you rewatched TNG and actually remembered just how many times the Enterprise and other ships had issues ejecting the Warp Core. Almost every time they needed to eject the core it failed, in fact destroying at least two Galaxy-classes (one in an alternate reality). Funny enough, the saucer separation never failed. If you hate the movie you're going to find all sorts of really silly reasons to remove it from canon in your eyes. However, at least watch the series before stating things that are clearly in line with previous filmed sequences.

Quick, start nit-picking the utter inanity of First Contact or Wrath of Khan! Oh wait, you mean you actually suspended disbelief when Borg torpedoes were like small hand-grenades, a Borg Cube was suddenly centralized, 'thinking in 3d' was beyond a superman, among the million or so other things that were inane? How unbelievable.

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on July 16th, 2010, 4:40 pm

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on July 16th, 2010, 4:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If you had a power source that could explode and kill you, wouldn't you design the system that prevents it from killing you to be reliable?

The episode where the Yamato exploded said the warp core breach to be rare (and the failure of the ejection system was called a design flaw, apparently one they hadn't known about before), but in later episodes the writers thought of it as an easy way to put the ship in danger. One of the things I don't like about TNG was the tendency for the writers to make the ship almost explode seemingly every other episode. I recently laughed at one episode when the ship was about to be destroyed by a little girl's imaginary friend.
The hand grenade thing was in Star Trek Five (aka Shatner and his enormous ego make a crappy movie), but yes the 3 dimensional thinking was a bad excuse. I also am not fond of what First Contact did to the Borg. The targeting of the waste extraction system was the same brand of crap we got in Generations.
I can suspend disbelief for only a little bit, and only if the movie makes up for it a lot in other areas. Generations was way too much to suspend disbelief for.

posted on July 16th, 2010, 4:49 pm

Well, hate to tell you this, but Star Trek is unrealistic. Glad we got to that point. Rule of cool, and rule of plot beat out realism, especially when you realize that if Star Trek were to be realistic, there would be no star, just one long trek.

Oh, and lastly, real life is apparently unrealistic. 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, and about 100 other nuclear accidents should be case in point. Not to mention the recent exploding fireball that was a certain derrick in a certain gulf, nor any of the myriad of coal power plant explosions, oil power plant explosions - or wait, engines onboard ships that seem to explode - oh wait, Apollo 13 - oh wait... yes, if we had a power source that could explode and kill us, it obviously should be reliable. Except its not. Of course, since this is the future, everything is bright and shiny and perfect, except when it's not.

[Tyler]

posted on July 16th, 2010, 4:52 pm

Last edited by Tyler on July 16th, 2010, 5:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There is a reliable system in place, it's called saucer seperation. Starfleet's abilities are limited and they can only do so much to make it safe, with ejection being the last resort option incase all other safeties fail.

The 'design flaw' was either a full-scale system wide failure or a failure and the Warp Core's containment. It was later proven false by the discovery that the probe was the cause.

That little girl (who wasn't actually a little girl) wasn't the problem, it was the massive army of aliens outside.