Who here thinks Riker was an idiot for making Deanna, Miss lets state the alien's obvious intentions, take the helm of the saucer section just as the battle section's warp core exploded in Generations?
quote: Fate protects fools, little children, and ships named Enterprise- Commander William Riker
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Could someone refresh my memory, who else was on the bridge at the time?
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
A bunch of extras, Data and Worf. IIRC, everyone else was busy fighting the Klingons and wetting themselves.
He could've taken the helm himself, but he was in command and needed to focus on the whole situation not one job. Deanna was really the only choice. And apparently she knew the basics of the job.
Posted by Wes1701E (Member # 212) on :
what an utterly usesless thread.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
On the bridge were Riker, Troi, Worf, Data, and extra man at tactical, and another one or two people at the portside stations. When the helm console shorted, the helmswoman was thrown backwards. The officers at the starboardside stations helped move her out of the way and (presumably to Sickbay). The aft station officers likewise did the same for whomever fell back there.
It was not a bad choice to have Troi take the helm. She had just passed her bridge officer certification test a year or so earlier. She was a full commander. She knows the basics of flight control, and Riker wasn't planning on special maneuvers. He wanted to retreat to a safe distance and (later) move the saucer away from the stardrive section.
Now, the movie made the crash seem like Troi's fault. I have also read the novelization of Generations, and there it is not Troi's fault. The Enterprise had not made it that far away from Veridian III. When the core breached, the shockwave damaged the saucer's attitude control and thrusters. This caused the saucer to be picked up by the planet's gravity well and be brought crashing down to the surface. Watching Generations now, I can see that this was attempted to be conveyed in the movie with lines like "Rerouting lateral thrusters" and "Attitude control offline." The movie just didn't make it clear enough, plus Veridian III disappeared during the separation sequence and parts of the battle sequence.
In short, the crash was no one's fault and could not be prevented, in my opinion.
Posted by Michael_T (Member # 144) on :
Sure, blame a woman on crashing the Galaxy Class saucer! But I've always imagined that the saucer was moving to orbit when the stardrive section blew up. The shockwave just destablelized the orbit and threw the ship in for one fun ride.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
That's exactly what was going on by the novelization. Troi was moving the saucer into orbit and trying to get behind the planet to shield them (if I remember correctly). She just didn't have the time to do with the damaged equipment available.
Of course, you won't believe the number of times I've gone a critique of Generations and read the exclamation: where the hell did that planet come from that Troi crashed the ship on!?
::sigh::
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
I never thought the movie made it seem like it was Troi's fault. I thought that was just something that came up when someone made the old "see what happens when you let a woman drive?" joke.
If anything, Troi was the one who saved them. Do you really think they would have done as well if the saucer had landed on its rim and flipped end over end a few times, rather than just sliding across the ground?
Posted by Stingray (Member # 621) on :
Really people, do you honestly think that anybody actually piloted the thing down?
Your talking about an ellipse hundreds of meters across coming in from orbit. Not to mention that the saucer is not a lifting body - in fact its almost the opposite of a lifting body.
Maybe Troi was in control while still outside the atmosphere perhaps - but for a large part of the descent, there wasn't even a helm console left.
Astronauts today take years to learn how to bring down the shuttle in a detailed checklist. I'm willing to concede unimaginable advances in computer technology, but not in the piloting skills of newly flight certified psychiatrists.
The computer brought her down - Troi was just an in joke.
[ August 14, 2001: Message edited by: Stingray ]
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
To make it more clear everything was off line - they should have had Troi continually punching in commands into the helm control - with that buzzer noise that happens when something isn't working and then actually banging her fists on the panel in desperation, to show that it was a hopeless situation! It just looked as if she let it sorta happen - not that she did it was just that she just sat there?? I loved it when Deanna took the helm it fitted in nicely with what we had seen just a year earlier. With FC and Insurrection it has been as if they are separate movies to the series!
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Uh...last I checked, they were seperate movies. I can't see a four hour "First Insurrection" doing well at all.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
Sol, I think Andrew means that the TNG movies seem detached from The Next Generation series. There was a feel of wholeness from The Original Series into the TOS movies (not all of them, certainly). Generations did manage to carry some of the TNG spirit with it onto the big screen, but that's kind of been lacking a bit with the last two.
Anyway, Andrew, I agree that the entire fifteen minutes of the movie in that area should have been reworked for better flow and better understanding of what was happening. What you suggest would have done a bit to stop people from thinking Troi is a bad driver. However, there would still be people going, "TroI sux she crashd da saucer n is a bad pilott. Butt i like her TITTITTTTITTTITITIIIIES!"
Posted by Wes1701E (Member # 212) on :
quote:Originally posted by TSN: Do you really think they would have done as well if the saucer had landed on its rim and flipped end over end a few times, rather than just sliding across the ground?
shit that would be cool as hell. lets say they used the escape pods then the hull went flying downward dumbling into pieces, knocking down small mountains on its way down... sweet
Posted by Michael_T (Member # 144) on :
That sounds like something that should have happened in Voyager's Timeless episode. The last few posts got me into thinking though that Deanna should have punched a few more LCARS buttons to make her look like she was doing something. As I recall, she just looked at the readouts as if the saucer was the one doing the thinking...that or Data.
[ August 15, 2001: Message edited by: Michael_T ]
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
The only thing that probably kept the saucer section from flipping end-over-end wiping out mountains and forests was that after entering the atmosphere, Data managed to get the lateral thrusters back online and use them to level their descent.
Posted by PopMaze (Member # 302) on :
I think the best course of action upon finding out that a core breech was going to happen was to separate the saucer immediately and get it to safety. Everyone left in the stardrive would abandon via escape pods and shuttles. You save the crew and the saucer. And they actually had the time to do this as they waited for everyone from the lower depths of the stardrive to climb through the Jeffries Tubes all the way up the the saucer before separating it. Wasn't it only around five minutes before the warning and the actual explosion?
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
I suppose that they could have done that, but the saucer was designed with separation with the purpose of getting the entire crew to safety whether the danger is a battle or core breach.
There was evidently time for the crew in the stardrive section to make their way either down to the lifeboats (which are on the ventral side of that hull) or up to the saucer. I don't think shuttlecraft were a viable alternative.
One of the stardrive shuttle bays (I think it was 3) had it's door blasted. You can see this when the saucer seperates. Then, you only have Shuttle Bay 2. Add to that the time needed to prep all the shuttles for launch, raise them from the hangar to the bay, and to load the shuttles, then I think you exceed the five minute limit.
We saw how massive the explosion was how it damaged the saucer's reaction control system. What would that have done to the crew members who had to climb from deck 25 in the neck down to deck 40 to reach the lifeboat? The lifeboat would have been caught in the same explosion and (quite probably) may not have withstood the explosion.
Taking all of this into account as well as Geordi's five minute warning, he believed it was a prudent move to go ahead and move the crew to the saucer because it can withstand more than the lifeboats. Had there not been the time to do it, he probably would have ordered the saucer to immediately detach and have the stardrive crew try and save themselves. A lot of people (probably including the school children) would not have made it.
Posted by Michael_T (Member # 144) on :
Ok, why would the children be on the stardrive section of the ship. I imagined them being on Decks 11 or 12 of the saucer so they had to evacuate like the rest of the crew.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
The children looked like they were being ushered out of a school room. When they first show the kids, there's one adult with the group, and she strikes me as a teacher-type person. Then she disappears when Geordi and his assistant come upon them.
Of course, the other possibility is that the teacher-type person was a crewmember of some sort or a civilian who was going from quarters to quarters in the neck of the ship pulling out the children. It could have been her evacuation duty as practiced in the drills.
Posted by Tahna Los (Member # 33) on :
You know, something really bugs me regarding the destruction of the Ent-D. Why didn't they simply eject the core? Unless the ejector controls were destroyed, but they didn't say that.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
I think the destruction of the ejector systems is a given. Geordi said, "We have a new problem. We're about five minutes from a warp core breach. There's nothing I can do."
By saying that, I gather that the ejector system was damaged or destroyed. I also gather that this means the regulator controls for the injectors were also damaged or destroyed since it seems a simple matter of shutting off the flow of fuel. It's possible. The Enterprise got hit pretty hard on the stardrive section with no shielding.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
The failure of the system that ejects the core is too common. I would have prefered that they said something like "The exterior hull plate is fused. We can't eject the core." Just my opinion. But if wishes were horses, as they say, I'd be knee deep in...well...whatever.
But, yes, I've always assumed that the controls were off-line too.
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
"Core ejection system is offline" is only second to "remodulate shield frequency/harmonics" as a plot device. You'd think they would have built a little more redundency into a key system like that.
Personally I blame the destruction of Ent-D on Riker, he would have gone all out against that BoP, phasers and torpedoes blazing.
Posted by Jack_Crusher (Member # 696) on :
Why the Hell was the saucer section using the thrusters instead of the impulse engines, anyway?
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
After the (I believe) second shockwave hits the saucer section, the computer makes the announcement that helm control is offline. This means that all ability to control the flight path and propulsion means of the saucer were temporarily fried. We see in the FX sequence that the shockwave causes the saucer to bounce and it looks like that it points the saucer into the atmosphere. If the engines were still running, that could have forced to continue full-tilt into the atmosphere.
On the other hand, the shockwave also could have conceivably damaged the saucer's impulse engines as well. In this case, with impulse engines and thrusters offline (thrusters because Data had to reroute control and/or power to get the lateral ones working again) the gravity of the planet would simply pull the saucer in after the shockwave changed the saucer's trajectory and damaged the propulsion systems.
Posted by Stingray (Member # 621) on :
Nevermind how celestial mechanics really work...
Posted by Woodside Kid (Member # 699) on :
My question on the explosion is, how much physical damage would it do to the saucer at that distance? After all, a good portion of the damage in a nuclear blast is caused by the shockwaves travelling through the atmosphere. Up in orbit, the only physical contact between the blast and the saucer should be the impact of whatever parts of the stardrive section that weren't destroyed outright.
I've always thought a better reason for the crash whould have been to have the ship's control circuitry fried by the electromagnetic pulse of the blast. You could argue that that's what really happened, except the visuals make it pretty explicit that the physical damage of the shockwave blew the saucer out of orbit.
Posted by Jack_Crusher (Member # 696) on :
Woodside, you idiot. The Enterprise does not use nuclear reactions to provide warp power. Matter and Antimatter annihilating parallel into a dilithium crystal, producing an energetic plasma. Nothing nuclear here, baby. Antimatter, when one atom of it comes into contact with regular matter, annihilates immediately, destroying itsself and the matter atom.. Think what trillions of billions of atoms of antimatter could do if it all came loose from the magnetic fields containing all of it.
Posted by mrneutron (Member # 524) on :
Crusher's calling Woodside an idiot was really uncalled for, especially considering that his question was reasonable. Woodside wasn't saying the Enterprise was nuclear powered per se, but just making an analogy about blasts in an atmosphere as opposed to in (the near vacuum of) low orbit.
And, he's right. Shock waves per se don't propogate in a vacuum, no matter how powerful the blast. And while matter-antimatter reactions do release a lot of energy, they do so mostly in the form of energetic radiation. Within the confines of the ship, this would be hellish, and very much like a nuclear explosion to the nth-power. But across a vacuum where there's no atmosphere to heat up or otherwise react with, the result would be a rapidly dissipating sphere of debris and energized particles, the impact of which would fall off to almost nothing right away.
Even if the whole stardrive were unifomrly vaporized, it didn't have enough mass to result in the kind of saucer-whacking shockwave shown. The only stuff that should have "hit" the saucer were a) radiation b) unvaporized hunks of the stardrive section and c) any stray antimatter particles that didn't contact matter in the explosion.
A star blowing up would be another matter. The same physics apply, 'natch, but the blast front would be pretty nasty at great distance just fron the massive volume matter that would be scattered by the blast.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Well...space may be a vacuum, but an exploding ship does have an atmosphere of sorts to work with. Namely, the one created by its air being released and the materials of the hull being vaporized by the explosion. Not enough to give you a typical shockwave, but I suspect the results would be interesting, if fleeting.
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
Naw to all of that, it was probably the mysterious "subspace shockwave", which is generated by the unfortunate demise of warpcores and have a tendency to vary in strength depending on the plot.
Posted by Wolf359 (Member # 700) on :
you cant blame troi for craching the saucer it's not that easy to when you dont got the thrust to escape a planets gravity
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
20 posts and already calling someone an idiot...sigh...
Posted by Woodside Kid (Member # 699) on :
quote: The Enterprise does not use nuclear reactions to provide warp power. Matter and Antimatter annihilating parallel into a dilithium crystal, producing an energetic plasma. Nothing nuclear here, baby.
In point of fact, a matter/antimatter reaction is a nuclear reaction. It is the most efficient one possible, since it converts 100 percent of the available mass into energy. By comparison, the fusion reaction at the core of the sun releases less than one percent of the potential energy.
Posted by MeGotBeer (Member # 411) on :
Well, Crusher seems to be quite set in the "idiot" category.
Albane, what, you haven't seen any of Omega's posts lately? He calls people idiots much faster ...
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
No, I meant Mr. Crusher there only had 20 posts here at Flare. Not that there were 20 post in the thread.
Usually people wait until they've been around for awhile before becoming antagonistic. Usually.
Posted by Dr Phlox (Member # 680) on :
After watching Generations many times I don't see how Troi crashed the Enterprise-D. I agree the gravity and atmosphere had some effect on why the swan like vessel crashed. Another factor was Paramount trying to make money like in ST:III when the "real" first ship to bear the name was destroyed.
Posted by Jack_Crusher (Member # 696) on :
I take back what I said about Woodside. I thought he meant nuclear reactions as in fission and fusion nuclear reactions, not other types of nuclear reactions. I have read in the January 2001 of Star Trek: The Magazine, that the fusion reactors that power the impulse engines use proton-antiproton fusion reactions for power, and in a diagram on page 44, there is an antimatter storage pod on the right side of the page. So, at least from technical drawings I've seen, when the warp core exploded, the antimatter tanks directly below it were vaporized, creating a more powerful explosion, and the the antimatter pods in the impulse engines in the battle hull were vaporized, adding to the explosion(s). And then, probably the stored photon torpedoes also exploded, since they too contain antimatter. So it is reasonable that the Enterprise's battle hull could have been completely destroyed by the core breach.
Posted by Michael_T (Member # 144) on :
It does kinda make sense. The engineering hull had the 250 photon topredoes along with the antimater tanks. Not to mention all the conbustable liquids and vapours. That and the production crew wanted a corridor set that they can easily film in.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Photon torpedoes aren't stored loaded.
What are we talking about, anyway?
Posted by The Red Admiral (Member # 602) on :
I made an Mpeg of the Enterprise saucer crash for my site not that long ago, and while reviewing the footage again, and some of the other ensuing dialogue, it basically goes as follows:
Riker: "REPORT!" Troi: "Helm systems are offline!"
then
Data: "I have rerouted auxilary power to the lateral thrusters, attempting to level our descent."
That's pretty much all, with the exception of what others have already said. The other anomaly with the evacuation of the stardrive section is we see Crusher rushing everyone out of sickbay. To my knowledge sickbay was always in the Saucer section anyway.
Posted by MeGotBeer (Member # 411) on :
"Arsenal of Freedom."
Geordi seperates the saucer, and returns to Minos to rescue the Away Teams: Picard, Crusher, Riker, Data and Yar. After he and Worf destroy the probes, the Away Teams are beamed up and sickbay reports to the Battle Bridge that Dr. Crusher will make a full recovery.
The only suitable explanation -- and this is rather an easy one to make -- is that sickbay is in both the Battle and Saucer sections. Makes sense, doesn't it? You would want the most essential of facilities (you know, like the bridge) duplicated between both halves of a seperating starship.
Posted by Stingray (Member # 621) on :
So where's the saucer's main engineering?
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Presumably, that would be the impulse control room.
Posted by Michael_T (Member # 144) on :
I doubt that there was a replica of sickbay on the battle section. In the semi-canon TNG Blueprints, there were copies of the bridge, ready room, and conference lounge. But that was all. I think there were rooms refered to as medical stations placed all over the ship from the saucer to the engineering hull.
Posted by StyroFoam Man (Member # 706) on :
quote:Originally posted by Michael_T: As I recall, she just looked at the readouts as if the saucer was the one doing the thinking...that or Data.
TROI: I thought you had the controls!
DATA: No, I clearly heard Riker give you the controls.
TROI: But I thought you were flying the ship... Isn't that your job?
DATA: No. That was YOUR job...
TROI: Ohhhhh darn...
Posted by StyroFoam Man (Member # 706) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tahna Los: You know, something really bugs me regarding the destruction of the Ent-D. Why didn't they simply eject the core? Unless the ejector controls were destroyed, but they didn't say that.
IIRC if a nuclear-powered ocean-going vessel took that amount of damage THE FIRST thing the crew would do is take the reactor off-line and switch to backup desiel generators. That was LaForge's major mastake. As soon as the BOP was blasted he should have reached over and hit the Big Red Button marked E-STOP and kicked in the backup power systems.
A nuclear power-plant shuts itself down if the Reactor Protection System THINKS somthing might be wrong, I don't see why the Computer didn't read "E1P1A1: Faulty Containment Generator-Failure Probable" and trigger a shut-down.
And where the hell were the backup cooling systems? Our local Nuclear Reactor (Ginna Station) has three redundant backups, one of which is fail-safe. It could be argued that they were running on the backups do to the damage though...
As for not ejecting the core... Prehaps after the Yammato blew up the policy was changed to "Step One: Abandon Ship... Step Two: Run Like Hell... Step Three: Attempt to eject the core by remote."
/end rant-and-rave mode... :
Posted by The Red Admiral (Member # 602) on :
We know from various episodes such as Contagion that the antimatter containment systems have a number of backups, and the liklihood of failure is very slim. But, the Enterprise here was heavily damaged, and all systems, it would seem were not operational and offline.
Posted by Michael_T (Member # 144) on :
It seemed rather strange how Geordi couldn't eject the warp core when needed. But I guess you can always do a future Trek episode on why this didn't happen; a time travel episode like "Trials and Tribble-ations" type of a thing.
Posted by Michael_T (Member # 144) on :
It seemed rather strange how Geordi couldn't eject the warp core when needed. But I guess you can always do a future Trek episode on why this didn't happen; a time travel episode like "Trials and Tribble-ations" type of a thing.
Posted by StyroFoam Man (Member # 706) on :
Prehaps the core was too un-stable to eject? Or maybe standing policy changed after the loss of the Yammato, as stated above.
Personaly, I think he needed to do more to save the ship, at least they should have added more dialog rather than just "fuc# it, we're doomed. Lets run and get another ship!"
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
It's Yamato.
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
He say Yammato, you say Yamato, let's blow the saucer off. . .
Posted by StyroFoam Man (Member # 706) on :
quote:Originally posted by Harry: It's Yamato.
Thanks!
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
That Damn Fish got into the reactor core, that's why.
Posted by Michael_T (Member # 144) on :
That or those Cardassian vole rats...
Posted by Dr. Jonas Bashir (Member # 481) on :
No, please... not That Damn Fish (TM), here too...
SPOILER! TREK X SPOILER! BEWARE...
Highlight between brackets to see: [It seems that there will be a similar scene in Trex X: Deanna Troi will take the helm again, but nothing will happen (ie: no crash this time). Talk about running out of ideas...]
Posted by Jack_Crusher (Member # 696) on :
If I were Picard, I wouldn't even allow Troi anywhere near the bridge after the crash. She only states the alien's obvious intentions anyway...
Posted by StyroFoam Man (Member # 706) on :
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Dr. Jonas Bashir: [QB]No, please... not That Damn Fish (TM), here too...
That Damn Fish is a registered Trademark Of WEsaySO, INC.
Well, you brought it up, Doc!
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
And I thought that spoiler was going to be about Picard's fish appearing in Star Trek X. ( (If it did - it'd probably end up with more screen time than Beverly, Geordi, Troi and Worf combined!)
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Actually, Livingston was in First Contact and Insurrection, or at least some of his fishy breathren were. The ready-room fishtank on the Ent-E was rather cool looking but I can't remember it really getting much by way of screentime. (on that note, I wonder where Livingstone went after Generations finished filming?)
Both of Picard's ready-rooms have to be the best-decorated sets ever on Trek... some truly nifty stuff there that covers pretty much every angle of the Picard character. There's nothing by way of memorable decoration in Janeway's room, and aside from the baseball nothing in Sisko's office ever really seemed relevant to the man. (OK, so he had a Saratoga model too, but are we supposed to believe he was a buff of the history of malformed starships and never-built space stations?) What's especially cool about Picard's rooms the much stuff Picard/the production team carried over from one to the next.
Posted by Michael_T (Member # 144) on :
I agree, I do like Picard's ready room since it feels like someone really is using it. I'm not too crazy about Janeway's and Sisko's since there aren't too many things that represent each. Then again, the crew quarters also need something that shows people actually call it home and not just a room to sleep in.
( (If it did - it'd probably end up with more screen time than Beverly, Geordi, Troi and Worf combined!)