War and Weapons in Star Trek

Greetings, friends, and all those out there on

my command deck. This is Mike the Birdman Dodd,

and you are listening to Future Impervance. And

I am joined by my competent comm officer, my

second in command, my very own XO... Steve Megatron

Phillips. So, yes, guys, I have returned from

the Bajoran wormhole. I am back from my away

mission. And I gotta say, subspace is looking

clear and all sensors report nothing out of the

ordinary. Space dust is the only thing showing

up on sensors right now. So yes guys, we are

back here for thisweekengeek .net's Future Imperfect

brought to you by SFI .org, Starfleet, the world's

largest Star Trek online fan club, as well as

gamergrub .com and gameaccess .ca. All these

wonderful people help make This Week in Geek

and Future Imperfect possible for all of you.

Now, one small announcement off the top of the

Unfortunately, the replicator is still down at

this time as I don't have new supplies from ThinkGeek

to provide you with your latest Star Trek fix,

but stuff is in the mail. We should hopefully

have that by next show, which I think you guys

will be of particular interest. I'm not going

to tell you what it is just yet, but in this

show, we're going to be talking about the future

and weapons and war and basically the... conflict

in Star Trek as it's been presented on TV, the

Apocrypha, and just how the face of combat has

changed in the Star Trek universe. I mean, it's

interesting from transphasic torpedoes and all

that stuff we're going to talk about when we

hit the L -Cars section of our show to, you know,

basically the war against the Borg, the Dominion,

the Maquis, and even stuff like the Eugenics

War, and even touching on why that affected the

Klingons a little bit later on, which I didn't

know until earlier this evening, which I find

tremendously interesting. So Steve, you've been

taking the show. Last show, you worked with Leo,

aka that sci -fi guy. What was that experience

like for you? That was, once we kind of got into

it a little bit, it got more easier to get through,

just because, well, I... Basically once you found

your kind of groove, right? Yeah, more so that

I initially it was like, okay What the hell and

then so after that I we were doing pretty well

and get into a free -flowing conversation on

it, but I Feel overall it went pretty well Good

to hear, good to hear. I mean, I'm really glad

that Leo is a friend of the show because he does

do a lot of awesome work over on ThatGuyOfTheGlasses

.com. Check his stuff out. He's under that sci

-fi guy. Some of the best people on there, I

think. Him and his team. So guys, let me see.

Where are we going to go? Well... I guess kind

of talk about where the show is going to be going

in the next little bit. I know we've been taking,

you're getting it usually at least two episodes

a month, and I do apologize the fact that we

have been spacing them out a little bit more,

but now that the summer season is coming up and

I should hopefully get my PlayStation back so

I can watch more Star Trek, my PlayStation died

a couple of weeks ago and I'm waiting for Sony

to send it back. We should have it back tomorrow

I think. So hopefully I'll get back to watching

DS9, powering through that, and eventually getting

to Enterprise. Which the more I read about it

the more I'm interested to be honest with you

Which is something surprising because I don't

know why that series got such a bad rap I think

it had more so to do with the fact that One it

came after all the other ones and was a prequel

to the original series and also because it happened

to For me anyway, and it kind of alienated me

with the the franchise Not only because quantum

leap was the captain of the enterprise But because

they kind of screwed up some of these Star Trek

lore of they never encountered, you know, up

close to Klingons or the Romulans and, you know,

the Borg appear and, you know, which was kind

of done later on in the franchise and then kind

of, you know, that's how they ended up in the

past. But so, I mean, I think that more so is

what kind of killed it for me. Although after

talking with. the guy's last episode that has

piqued my interest enough to actually start to

sit down and watch the show. Yeah, because I've

heard that basically they screwed up the timeline

so bad that Enterprise exists in a quasi new

universe. So I guess it kind of got people ready,

at least in my mind, that the new Abrams universe

has kind of taken things off into its own direction.

And with principal photography wrapping up on

that, there is talk. of a new Star Trek series,

which is what we're gonna talk about on the next

show, basically the future of Trek. Why isn't

this on television now? because now would be

a great time for it, considering there aren't

a lot of big sci -fi series left. Fringe being

the only one I can think of right now, because

it's the only one that got picked up by Fox for

next year. So who knows? Maybe we'll be leaving

Planitia Utopia eventually sometime in the near

future. But guys, we have rambled on for enough.

Also, in the show, we're going to have an interview.

And actually, I guess we'll, I don't know, Steve,

do we want to go to Elkar's first and then go

to our interview? Yeah, we can do that. All right,

then. So we're going to throw things over to

our computer. And this is LCARS, which ties into

our topic this week of war and conflict in Star

Trek. This is the LCARS computer network. This

computer terminal provides full access to the

LCARS computer net. It can be operated both by

voice and keypad commands. Initiating update.

Hello and welcome to another edition of L Cars.

I'm your host Steve Megatron Phillips and in

this particular episode we're covering the war

and weapons of Trek. So it's only fitting that

we talk about one of the most used weapons of

Trek being the torpedo. Now altogether there

are 12 different kinds of torpedoes and they

all range... in different use by alien cultures

and whatnot. Whether it be antimatter, chronotron,

gravimetric, photonic, plasma, pulse wave, series

5, spatial, stratospheric. But I'm not covering

any of those that I just listed. The only three,

in my opinion, that need due coverage are the

photon torpedo, the quantum torpedo, and the

Transphasic Torpedo. Now, the Photon Torpedoes

are the most commonly used torpedo through all

of the Star Trek series with the exception of

Enterprise. They were warp capable, tactical,

matter, anti -matter weapons commonly deployed

aboard Starships and Starbases by various organizations.

The photon torpedoes are often abbreviated as

photons, were used mostly up until the point

of 2371, and this is getting into the creation

of the quantum torpedo. The quantum torpedo contained

a plasma warhead, as it was described in DS9.

It is also a tactical quantum weapon that utilized

a plasma warhead deployed aboard starships. The

Quantum Torpedoes were used by several galactic

powers including the United Federation of Planets,

the Cardassian Union, and in the Mirror Universe,

the Terran Rebellion. There is a difference between

the two, however. The Photon Torpedoes come out

in an orangey tint when they are fired, whereas

the Quantum Torpedoes come out in a blue. Not

jumping into too much detail in this Elcarce,

I'm going to jump into the Transphasic Torpedo.

Now what is that you ask? Well you wouldn't know

what that is unless you watched the last episode

or Voyager Endgame. When Admiral Catherine Janeway

of an alternate timeline brings this Borg destroying

technology back into the past to help... the

actual prime timeline of Voyager. She basically

goes back in time through Temporal Rift, not

jumping into too much detail, and she brings

this special torpedo, which the Borg have yet

to adapt to. So it, in essence, causes the Borg's

transwarp network to collapse upon itself. So

this is a highly destructive torpedo. With one

shot, they took down the entire Bork network.

So between the three, I would say those are the

most prominently and strongest torpedoes out

of all of them. And I would have to say that

still my favorite would be the Quantum Torpedo,

but that's just because I love the name. Transphasic

sounds cool as well, but it's, I don't know.

It was so barely touched upon, it's hard to talk

about it. But the definition of the transphasic

torpedo in any case was an advanced type of torpedo

weapon of an unprecedented destructive potential

used by Starfleet. These torpedoes could be launched

from standard Starship mounted torpedo launchers

and a single torpedo was capable of destroying

a Borg Cube. This weapon technology was acquired,

as I said before, in the USS Voyager from Admiral

Catherine Janeway from the Alternate Timeline.

and to date there's only a few starships that

actually carry this as or did carry this as a

last resort I think that about does it here on

Elcar so stay tuned till next time for another

interesting fact now back to the show please

confirm deactivation request deactivation complete

now disconnected from this terminal And we're

back with future imperfect. Yeah, so that that

was the the general rundown of the histories

and