I’m watching some TNG reruns and aside from noticing how badly it has aged (and how terrible the special effects look) I began to wonder why the guns miss.
They have ray guns in the 24th century and miss? How? How can there are no aiming aids?
In Insurrection they have this bazooka thingy with sigths and yet miss and they can’t reliably hit the relatively slow-moving drones. Don’t get me started into why they never use sweeping motion.
Canon: The intended target takes “evasive maneuvers.” Realistic fanon: Most of the various crews would be dead if their opponent’s weapons did not miss.
Point a flashlight at someone and see how hard it is to “miss” them with the beam of light it shines. Then reconcile that to the numerous scenes though out the series when weapons with no recoil are aimed at opponents, even in ambush situations, and they miss.
Roddenbery states that: Weapons will only hit protagonists (or antagonists) when it advances the plot.
You’re exactly right about the sweeping stuff. It’s like missing with a flashlight. Not to mention we’ve seen that phasers can be set for kill on wide beam. Not to mention maximum can take out the side of a building.
The only fan excuse I can use is for one of the shows. I suppose we could argue that anything less than a concentrated ‘shot’ is going to be ineffective in taking out a Jem’Hadar.
That doesn’t excuse firefights where one shot should have blown away any cover people had.
Phasers on stun cause no damage to structures. Phasers on “kill” or “dematerialize” cause damage - e.g - The Enemy Within from TOS, when Spock pinches the evil Kirk.
Still, they never address the “sweep” issue. We’ve seen crewmen use a phaser to cut through a door, so the things are capable of cranking out quite a bit of energy for a sustained period. So why did no-one ever just chop up their target ala lightsaber?
Vernor Vinge, in The Peace War, posited the ability to create force field bubbles (called “bobbles”) that were essentially impenetrable, and time stopped inside them. A “cute” way to get rid of someone was to encase him in one, and let a few centuries go by.
I asked him once why not simply use one to cut someone in half. He said, “That isn’t the kind of story I want to tell.”
I’d be mightily surprised that there aren’t several ocassions where that has happened. Even if in a lower setting, there isn’t even a smudge on the wall.
in Balance of Terror the Romulans have nukes that normally are only used for self-destruct but I think they shot one at the Enterprise as a last-ditch effort
of course the Federation is too advanced to use such weapons anymore
I can help but compare Star Trek to other settings. In Mass Effect, a capital ship’s point defense weapons don’t miss. Well, they don’t miss the first wave of attackers (missiles, drones, or manned bombers); the second wave can get a few hits in while the point defense weapons recharge and/or cool down.
Phasers really do seem to be vastly inferior to bullet-based firearms. In Firefly (and numerous other settings) they had bullet-based guns in large part because they’re scarier; a phaser blast will knock you over, but a bullet will kill.
On Babylon 5, the PPK pistols that were used were employed specifically because they couldn’t cause a hull breach, but could still kill/injure a person.