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What's so bad about Enterprise using phase pistols? Sure, TOS has lasers in the first episode, but who's to say that TOS is the correct? When you think about it, lasers really aren't that good a weapon, it was just used back then because people thought it would sound cool. The producers quickly realised the limitations placed on them by lasers as evidenced by their rapid change to phasers.

Also, who's to say that the term "laser" wasn't just a slang term for a phase pistol anyway?

Let's not say that they must have used lasers just because 1 or 2 episodes of TOS use the word. We've discounted things before that were mentioned even more often.

It was specifically stated in TNG's "A Matter of Time" that there were no phasers in the 22nd century. Missing off a single constanant does not convince me that phase pistols are not, in fact, some form of phaser, particularly since they seemed to behave in exactly the same way.

Oh god yes. For those not in the know, the Culture is uber-peaceful most of the time. They build warships with names like "Dubious Use of Resources". One ship which was eighty kilometres long was called the "Size Isn't Everything"...

Am I misremembering, or was there also a ship called Meatfucker in one book?
Great books.

Any particular title or author I could look up in my library?

Rochey wrote:Am I misremembering, or was there also a ship called Meatfucker in one book?
Great books.

Yeah. Once they got into a shooting war, a lot of the ships started to pick names that were rather more... disturbing.

Mikey : Iain M. Banks is the man. Consider Phlebas is probably a good introduction to the scale of the Culture universe. My personal favourite is called Use of Weapons... but be warned, it's got a rather strange structure. Banks is on record as saying all books should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order.

GrahamKennedy wrote:Yeah. Once they got into a shooting war, a lot of the ships started to pick names that were rather more... disturbing.

They still had something of a sense of humour though - the GSV that destroyed Vavatech Orbital was operating under the temporary name Eschatologist.

How have I not heard of these?! I'm going to have to put off my continuing delvings into the Black Library.

BTW -

Tiberius wrote:What's so bad about Enterprise using phase pistols? Sure, TOS has lasers in the first episode, but who's to say that TOS is the correct?

TOS was first in RL, so what was said in it is the establishment of the universe. TOS had no prior story to try to maintain; ENT had one which it chose to ignore.

Bump.

Yeah, I'm relatively back, and I gotta say I'm just not feeling this one. It's a nice attempt but just doesn't seem "trek" to me.

Bump. Question about the ship...does it have shields?

I'm thinking not.

GrahamKennedy wrote:I'm thinking not.

Why not? Shield technologies are already in developement *right now*, so why wouldn't the NX-01 have a rudimentary shield?

The shield tech in development now is nothing like Trek shields though.

SuperSaiyaMan12 wrote: Why not? Shield technologies are already in developement *right now*, so why wouldn't the NX-01 have a rudimentary shield?

It is? Can you provide a link?

Cpl Kendall wrote:

SuperSaiyaMan12 wrote: Why not? Shield technologies are already in developement *right now*, so why wouldn't the NX-01 have a rudimentary shield?

It is? Can you provide a link?

We were told it is in the 'How Star Trek changed the World' special on the History Channel.