There's a big problem with saying the phaser vaporizes via heat: the phaser is a narrow beam. A blow torch doesn't melt an entire slab of metal, just the narrow area its focused on. No matter how hot a beam of whatever is, it can only heat the local area it immediately touches, any spreading of that...

That, or the new trek ship has a more realistic weight. Look at a floating steel block, the super carrier USS Nimitz ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_%28CVN-68%29 ), it's longer than the original connie (not as high, however), and only 103,000 long tons in weight when fully loaded (or 104,6...

Didn't they say "Port shields down to 32 percent" or some such after being hit by one of the Narada's weapons in that scene? Perhaps the shields are integrated into the hull ala ENT, rather then the traditional bubble. So we don't see any visible sign of them. Actually, integrated skin sh...

Thanks for the welcome to the site! ^^ Graham: This is all just my opinion, observations, and thoughts of course, but... On the one hand, without a clear conceptual framework on how shields work (per era,too), it's hard to say much, regrettably. On the other hand, we know that the nConnie's shields ...

Hm, for that matter, why did Graham give the new connie such a horribly low shield rating? (the new connie also seemed to be quite maneuverable for its size, especially when it popped out right into a grave yard) Err, not to get off topic >.> Remakes? Nah. Allusions to while having completely new ad...