I was having a discussion with a friend one day about the Dominion War and eventually, the USS Odyssey. He had never seen the episode where the ship was destroyed so I told him the basic facts of how the ship got destroyed. The main issue was that Captain Keogh, finding shields ineffective against the Jem Ha'dar fighters, transferred power from the shields to the phasers. However, as the Odyssey retreats, a lone fighter makes a run for the giant ship and rams right into it.
After some thinking my friend brought up this question: Shouldn't the Captain have kept the shields on to prevent the fighter from running into the hull?
At first, I thought there would be some way to put this off, but now that I think about it, I don't know. Had Captain Keogh kept the sheilds up, would the fighter just bounce off, or at least not lead to such a devastating collision? It is after all, metal (or something like that) and not a type of energy weapon.
posted
I've thought about this before too. The complete destruction of the Odyssey seemed reasonable considering that it would have had its shields lowered.
But later in "Tears of the Prophets" we see the Jemmie attack ships ramming the Klingon vessels and its pretty obvious that the Klingons would've had shields raised. I would've thought that shields would make a difference but in those cases it didn't.
Yet, earlier in "Call to Arms" we see a Cardassian Hideki-class vessel run into the shields of the station and the small vessel is completed obliterated, with no obvious damage to the station. In the episode it appears that the Hideki lost shields prior to the collision.
------------------ "Forgive me if I don't share your euphoria!" (Weyoun to Dukat, Tears of the Prophets) Dax's Ships of STAR TREK
posted
In TotP, the klingon vessels shields were probably weakened by Jem Hadar fire before that point. A kamakazi attack should be enough to at least take out shields that haven't been damaged. Shields operating at a lower capacity might not be able to absorb enough of the explsion to save the ship.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
What about the Tragedy of the Yamato! 1000's of people... dead!
Also, if the Jem'Hadar could counter the Fed shields with their weapons - then i'd say that they could get through with their ships... also look at the Jem'Hadar on DS9 - it walked straight through the containment field.
Andrew
------------------ "This is cooling, faster than I can..." Tori Amos "Cooling"
posted
I think that a Keogh made the mistake of not diverting energy to shields, with the klingons however i think the Jem'Hadar have som kind of countermeasure.
The USS Odyssey was not a total loss, most of the non-essential personal was evecuated to DS9...
posted
Really? IIRC, Dax smugly asked him if he was planning on offloading the families, and Keogh's equally smug response was something to the effect of "Of course."
posted
Why not just seperate the dammed saucer? Sheesh. They should've gone for the "headless" look in that ep, IMHO.
------------------ Star Trek Gamma Quadrant Average Rated 6.83 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux *** "Oh, yes, screw logic, let's go for a theory with no evidence!" -Forum Member Who Shall Be Nameless. 11:48am, Jan. 19th, 2001
posted
Aw, but THAT wouldn've meant that they'd have to use the 6-foot E-D model, which was likely over at ILM at the time being spruced up and digitized for "Generations". If anything, the DS9 production crew was stuck with the four-foot model (which was likely in real demand at the time, since it got changed into the Dreadnought-edition of the E-D for "All Good Things..." at about the same time.
Anyway, I'm glad they kept the saucer on, if only for that really neat effect of the exploded saucer spinning away from the rest of the ship when it went boom.
Mark
------------------ "Why build one, when you can build two at twice the price?"
posted
Does anyone have screencaps of the explosion?
------------------ "Oh for fuck's sake, stop your moaning, If you fancy a threesome at this time of night, you can't get start getting choosey about which particular three! -Queer As Folk, UK
posted
I'm rather sure Keogh evacuated all the nonessentials. Dax and Keogh clearly had some kind of a personal history of distrust. Perhaps Dax really believed Keogh would waste lives if not reminded of the alternatives. But later, in the battle, we hear Dax suggest shield rotation to Keogh, and he replies that OF COURSE he has already done that. Perhaps Dax simply was in the habit of always pointing out the obvious to Keogh to annoy him, instead of actually thinking that Keogh would needlessly risk the lives of the "nonessentials".
As for ramming shielded targets... We saw in "The Hunted" that some solid objects will bounce off the shields, but the "object" there was a minuscule escape pod. Riker and Worf have both considered ramming a Borg cube with their starships, but then again the Borg have weird shields that sometimes let shuttlecraft pass while deflecting weapons fire. DS9 may have withstood the ramming hit of a Hideki, but the station did have mightly shielding and in some battles shrugged off weapons fire that would probably have shredded a Galaxy class ship. And the station in "The Maquis" did weather the proximity explosion of the Bok'Nor right next to one of the pylons, well inside the outer shield perimeter, and in a situation where shields weren't raised beforehand.
So we don't have good yardsticks here. The Klingon ships that were rammed could have been shielded, shieldless, or partially shielded, depending on Klingon arrogance or preceding battle damage. Even the Odyssey might have survived the ramming if not for the piece of debris that hit the nacelle - one of the shortcomings of using models for VFX is that it's difficult to show damage, and the initial hit to the engineering hull fails to show believable damage if you go through the scene frame by frame...
posted
I think the point about the shuttlecraft flying through the Borg's shields was that they were only set to stop energy fire, and didn't anticipate anything else - because they were going by Picard's opinion of what Starfleet in general, and Riker in particluar, would do.
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posted
Smaller objects can probably bounce off the shields if they are at the right angle. The Hidecki that blew up on DS9's shields was flying straight into them.
------------------ "A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx
posted
The reason the Odyssey exploded was because the Jemmie ship had destroyed the main Deflector and some of the Antimater pods-thus leading to a major warp core breach!! As for the Klingon ships:- The reason they expolded is that their sheilds were probally at 10% due to sustained Jemmie ship weapons fire and the Jemmie ships did ram them at the end of the ships where the warp cores are so each ship had a warp core breach. Sheilds at above 70% would probally have deflected the jemmie ships but would have considerably weakened the sheilds
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