quote: [QUOTE] 4./5. The thing didn't work from the start (they used protomatter; it worked, but it all collapsed after a short time).
Well, the Genesis Cave experiment seemed to work just fine. We don't know how long before the movie the Phase Two experiment had been started, but it probably was at least a couple of months prior, because the Marcuses wouldn't have begun the search for a Phase Three planet until they knew their device worked. Timo Saloniemi
It's possible that the cave experiment was just a test of the lifeform creation capabilities though nad not re-arrangment of life itself or that protomatter actually works as intended on a very limited scale: the cxave could not have been more than a few hecacres at most after all.
I'd think Starfleet would have monitored the cave very closely after the Genesis planet blew though (assuming it-or Regula one) survived at all).
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I di admire the attempt to be ultra-modern and hip, but still..."hectares".
Also, the Star Trek III novelisation talks about the cave. It's been a while, but I seem to recall that they go there at the beginning of the book (before the actual "movie" stuff starts), and they notice a few odd things happening (in a subtle foreshadowing sort of way), but don't think much more of it.
I'm sure another novelisation, possibly Star Trek VI also mentions the cave, but in that it has survived. Something to do with some rare element in the structure of the planetoid keeping the protomatter stable.
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Hmmm....how far away could Regula have been from the nebula though? The Enterprise creeps into the nebula at (quarter?) impulse after making a run from behind Regula....so not very far at all. The moon's orbit must have been radically altered by the formation and then destruction of the Genesis planet at the very least.
I always considered the matte painting used to represent the cave to be kinda cheesy: it seems to have been created for something else and the light source looks farther away than the cave's roof could place it.
Mabye Genesis failed so quickly because it expended so much energy making the matter from nebular gas and nothing "pre-existing". ...or it's just a story element and not meant to be scrutinized.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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OTOH, the Genesis planet could have simply been the pre-existing Regula IV, terraformed from a lifeless body with minimal fuss. As said, this is what the Genesis device was *supposed* to do. And Khan could hardly have altered the settings, considering the Marcuses "couldn't cram another byte" into the programming.
It is even possible that the Genesis planet was the original Regula asteroid transformed...
In any case, it seems that Mutara nebula was basically *within* the Regula star system, perhaps in the process of being sucked into it. This would nicely explain its seeming high density and the high energy phenomena raging within.
And yeah, admittedly, the Genesis Cave matte was cheesy. Fortunately, the set didn't hinge on that: the vegetated ledge on which the characters stood, with the waterfall on the background, was IMHO enough to support the illusion of them being in the cave, even if we only saw the matte for three seconds or so. But if the resourceful Starfleet engineers spent ten months digging the cave, it probably was BIG. Big enough to justify the lighting angles at least.
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Wow I leave this thread alone for a couple days and look at all the replies. Good Stuff Good Stuff lol. I'll be posting when I have time, starting new discussions when I feel like... etc lol. Mostly reading though.
The omega episode... I remember watching it but don't remember the Genesis reference. Thanks.
The Genesis torpedo has got to be the most powerful planet-killing weapon ST has. Biogenic weapons? Well kills all life on the planet, but what if you want to actually destroy everything on it as well? Blowing up a sun? Maybe there's a couple planets you want. The thought of seeing a single photorp with some sort of genesis destroy a planet is pretty funny. Not to mention the "temporal police". Ugh. Star Trek sure has its superweapons, but some of them are a little too unbelievable.
I'm more inclined to lean towards the Genesis device being common knowledge among military circles at the very least, if not the general Federation/Klingon/etc citizen. If the briefing was showed in the UFP Council meeting, wouldn't the ambassadors have been scared shitless about the possibility of a planet being destroyed by a single torpedo shot? Would have made it to the history textbooks, if not standard military reading in training academies.
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I dont think the tech for building a Planetkiller is available yet: it's Neutronium hull may have been a requirment for that mega-anti-proton beam.
making Neutronium seems beyond Trek's capabilities: if you dropped a chunk of Neutronium and Anti-Neutronium onto a planet, it's destroy the world as easily as anything else in sci-fi.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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Oh yes, the Planet Killer. One wonders whether or not the Feds will eventually be able to use Neutronium. The Think Tank did it... eventually, why not the Vulcans?
Neutronium seems to be a cop out, a plot device that is used when some species needs some sort of impenetrable hull. So don't really expect to see Trek ships flying around with Neutronium soon... they'd have to invent another word for some invincible hull! (lol)
One wonders whether those ships attacking the "Think Tank" had any effect on the Neutronium hull. Obviously they did, given that the think tank was taking enough damage to have its holographic projection system disabled. So Trek weapons do exist that can "damage" Neutronium hulls... although we don't know anything about the Think Tank's armor other than it is based on Neutronium.
(edit) I do remember now. Janeway said their hull was made of "pure neutronium". So perhaps the strength of neutronium is based on its mass and density? ie 2 inch neutronium, maybe a couple dozen of those ships, a few meters of neutronium like the planet killer and it would take all of starfleet to penetrate the hull!
(edit 2) or another possibility exists... that neutronium is effective against phasers and photorps, and not whatever weapons that hunter species were using.
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"Based on" is a far cry from the real thing though. Neutronium would be so super-dense that no ship could concievably manuver with even a milimeter's worth of it covering the hull. We're talking millions of tons per square inch.
I figure the PK had a huuuuge internal warp drive to even allow it to move at sublight speeds: also explainig why it needed to consume planets: to convert it all to antimatter to fuel the drive. The Constilation's explosion caused an inbalance in the anti-m flow or something and it just stalled. It would be intresting if Starfleet placed it's Memory-Alpha inside the PK's hull though: there'd be no place safer from attack.
The Iconians OTOH may have used their gateway technology to shunt the majority of their neutronium ziggurat's mass somewhere far far away (off planet).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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(It occurs to me ((or, OK, I stole this from somewhere else)) that Star Trek III is about a preemptive Klingon invasion to put a stop to the development of WMDs, or, OK, maybe just programs that could lead to the development of WMDs, but still, look, we did it, and anyway the Genesis planet is now free of Federation cultural tyranny, so there; and sure, things there may be a little rocky today, a little, let's be frank, up in the air, but there's no reason to think that we can't get it back together again, with a little help from gravity, allowing us to kronosform it within, our best scientists say, no more than four or five hundred thousand years.)
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So the easliy-despensed with USS Grissom represents UN resolutions, with indecisive Capt. Estiban standing in for Kofi Anon...?
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