# Protomatter in \_Star Trek\_ **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 24, 2004, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852 "2004-02-24T07:17:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/41 "2004-02-26T02:49:52Z")
> [@tracer](#): > > Of course, the “sunrise” over the newly-formed Genesis Planet implies that the Genesis Planet was created very close to a star (i.e. around 1 A.U. away from a star). The star could’ve been the same sun that the Regula One planet was orbiting. Either that, or the Genesis Device created not only the Genesis Planet out of the material in the Mutara Nebula, but the star as well! :eek: In the book, anyway ( the adaptation of the script by Vonda N. McIntyre ) it says that upon detonation, the Genesis Device looked for an existing star and, not finding one, utilized it’s Star creation subroutine. Any device that counts _creating a whole frickin’ star from scratch_ as a subroutine is pretty damn powerful in my book. ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/42 "2004-02-26T02:55:37Z")
Vonda McIntyre is a hack. Did you ever “The Entropy Effect”? In the ending of the book, the Federation had intergalactic starships. _ **INTERGALACTIC** _ starships. I practically threw the book across my room when I read that. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/43 "2004-02-26T03:06:24Z")
I wonder if anybody has compiled a list of every “particle of the week” that has ever been used in Star Trek. You all know what I’m talking about: They need to get Picard off of some alien’s ship, but the alien has his shields up. Fortunately, Geordi points out that if they reconfigure the deflector array to emit anti-neutrinos, then the enemy’s shield will resonate at its characteristic frequency, and by syncronizing the transporter beam to that frequency, they can penetrate the shield and rescue the captain :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/44 "2004-02-26T03:42:11Z")
> [@Aesiron](#): > > Vonda McIntyre is a hack. Did you ever “The Entropy Effect”? In the ending of the book, the Federation had intergalactic starships. _ **INTERGALACTIC** _ starships. > > I practically threw the book across my room when I read that. Oh, I dunno. As I recall, that was the very first original novel after TMP, you gotta give her a bit of a break because there wasn’t the huge supply of background mythos in the Trek universe there is now. There was nothing in the cannon at the time that said there couldn’t be intergalactic ships, plus there was the TOS episode _By Any Other Name_ in which the Kelvans stole _Enterprise_ and reconfigured the engines to take them to the Andrometa Galaxy (talk about technology of the week that amazingly disapeared), indicating intergalactic travel was possible (if a 300 year journey). Also, unless I recall wrongly, they (McIntyre’s intergalactic ships) were special ships crewed by either very long lived races or they were generational ships, nothing too shocking about that. Besides, Diane Duane sent our intrepid heros to the Andromita Galaxy and back in _The Wounded Sky_, and nobody would call her a hack, she wrote some of the best Trek novels out there. Her treatement of the Romulans, and creation of their back story, was far and away superior to that which the TV shows eventually adopted. ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/45 "2004-02-26T03:58:28Z")
The first Trek novel was _Spock Must Die!_ by James Blish but yes, _The Entropy Effect_ was the original \*\*Pocket Book \*\* novelization of Trek. Anyway, nitpick aside, I don’t recall anything in the book that said the crew of the ship was really long lived… so far as I remember, it was crewd by normal humans. I could check it personally but I left all my books at home in a recent move. And to use TOS as an example that McIntyre isn’t a hack isn’t a good move with me. 🙂 I’m an ardent TOS hater and intensely hate its pseudoscience mumbojumbo even more than Voyager’s. It probably has a lot to do with my getting into Trek in the early nineties but I cannot stand any TOS episodes or most of the earlier books. They just make my brain pucker. Moving on, I don’t remember much about _The Wounded Sky_ (and again can’t check it) other than it had some sort of sentient glass jellyfish something or other that tinkered with the engines a la TNG’s The Traveller and that was what propelled them to wherever the hell they went. And yes, Duane’s portrayal of the \*Rihannsu \* (I’m a \*\*\*huge \*\* \* Romulan fanboy) is light years beyond the scant detail that TNG, DS9, and VOY have given them. I can’t tell you how pissed I was when Nemesis came out and I realized that while the Romulans were the enemy ostensibly, they were actually taking on a human and a bunch of Remans. God, it pissed me off so much. I’d been waiting ten years to finally get a Romulan movie after all the movies showed Klingons (sans VIII and IX) and I got that dreck. It was almost enough to make me scream. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/46 "2004-02-26T06:25:46Z")
> [@Weirddave](#): > > plus there was the TOS episode _By Any Other Name_ in which the Kelvans stole _Enterprise_ and reconfigured the engines to take them to the Andrometa Galaxy (talk about technology of the week that amazingly disapeared), indicating intergalactic travel was possible (if a 300 year journey). The Kelvans also modified the _Enterprise_ somehow to be able to survive going through the energy barrier around the rim of the galaxy (which we first saw in “Where No Man Has Gone Before”). At the time they left the galaxy, the Kelvan-modified _Enterprise_ had reached or surpassed warp 12 (which would be somewhere around warp 9.3 on the TNG warp scale). But of course, that pales in comparison next to the “tune up” that Nomad gave to the _Enterprise_’s engines – the ship reached warp 14 (TNG warp 9.8) before the engines were shut off. Oh, and speaking of the geek tradition of nitpicking: It’s spelled _Andromeda_. With no “t”. ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2004, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/47 "2004-02-27T05:25:55Z")
> [@Aesiron](#): > > The first Trek novel was _Spock Must Die!_ by James Blish but yes, _The Entropy Effect_ was the original \*\*Pocket Book \*\* novelization of Trek. Since you’re nitpicking, didn’t you notice that I said the first post TMP novel(which was when Pocket got the contract)? I’m well aware of the Bantam novels, even the putrid offerings by _shudder_ Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath. In fact, I own all of them. > [@Aesiron](#): > > And to use TOS as an example that McIntyre isn’t a hack isn’t a good move with me. 🙂 I’m an ardent TOS hater and intensely hate its pseudoscience mumbojumbo even more than Voyager’s. It probably has a lot to do with my getting into Trek in the early nineties but I cannot stand any TOS episodes or most of the earlier books. They just make my brain pucker. That’s just stupid. The Fx may be laughable, and there were enough stinker episodes to point at, but TOS had, on the whole, better actual stories told than any other Trek series except DS9. They are still watchable today, 40 years later, while lots of TNG episodes, for example, already feel dated in a late 80s “touchy feely I’m-OK-You’re-OK” morass of sacherine storytelling. Bergman has destroyed the franchise with his “I’m proud that I never watched TOS” garbage, I’m suprised that you buy into it. A tree with the arrogance to cut off it’s own roots dosen’t survive long. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2004, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/48 "2004-02-27T07:56:50Z")
I dunno, I think a lot of TNG episodes are still carried pretty well by the cast performances. (That, and decent set and costume design. You’d be surprised how much that counts. You really would.) ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2004, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/49 "2004-02-27T08:33:54Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > This discussion is reminding me…I’ve been thinking of starting a thread about cool Star Trek technology that Starfleet/the characters never remember to use. Starting with wide-field phaser beams; and setting a _ship’s_ phasers to Stun, and zapping crowds of people on a planet’s surface. 🆒 So … dow’s that thread coming? I was thinking of throwing together a similarly-themed webpage of “Ignored Treknology” – starting with protomatter weaponry, of course. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2004, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/50 "2004-02-28T00:02:14Z")
> [@Aesiron](#): > > I’d been waiting ten years to finally get a Romulan movie after all the movies showed Klingons (sans VIII and IX) and I got that dreck. Well, technically _a_ Klingon appeared in the eighth and ninth films: Worf. And though Klingons are referenced (somewhat improbably) by Khan, they don’t actually appear anywhere in the second film, unless you count the fictional Klingon warships during the _Kobayashi Maru_ simulation. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2004, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/51 "2004-02-28T01:34:21Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > And though Klingons are referenced (somewhat improbably) by Khan, They **are** , after all, a dish best served cold. ---
**Author:** ![c42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a87d85/32.png) [@c42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/c42)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2004, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/52 "2004-02-28T01:58:35Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > I wonder if anybody has compiled a list of every “particle of the week” that has ever been used in Star Trek. You all know what I’m talking about: They need to get Picard off of some alien’s ship, but the alien has his shields up. Fortunately, Geordi points out that if they reconfigure the deflector array to emit anti-neutrinos, then the enemy’s shield will resonate at its characteristic frequency, and by syncronizing the transporter beam to that frequency, they can penetrate the shield and rescue the captain :rolleyes: [Scarily enough there is such a listing.](http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/quickref/particles1.htm) In fact the whole Ex Astris site is brilliant. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2004, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/53 "2004-02-28T02:30:38Z")
Brilliant, if a tad obsessive. E.g., from [http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies1b.htm:](http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies1b.htm:) > [@](#): > > Given all this evidence, there is absolutely no way for the TNG Trills and the DS9 Trills to be the same species. The only thing they have in common is that they are both living in symbiotic relationships. But otherwise the two Trills are quite obviously not closer related to each other than humans to Klingons, for instance. On the other hand, why should two different species, who only have in common that they consist of a host and a symbiont, coincidentally have the same name? I don’t have a clue. This is just awfully bad continuity. When TPTB insisted on DS9 Trills looking different, they had better given Jadzia’s species a different name too. It sounds like he’s saying that it’s not the _differences_ between Trills in TNG’s “The Host” and Trills in DS9 that’s the inconsistency here, it’s the fact that the creatures in DS9 and the creatures in TNG’s “The Host” are both called “Trills”. Because “obviously” they “must” be different species. ---
**Author:** ![c42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a87d85/32.png) [@c42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/c42)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2004, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/54 "2004-02-28T02:35:40Z")
> [@tracer](#): > > Brilliant, if a tad obsessive. E.g., from [http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies1b.htm:](http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies1b.htm:) > > It sounds like he’s saying that it’s not the _differences_ between Trills in TNG’s “The Host” and Trills in DS9 that’s the inconsistency here, it’s the fact that the creatures in DS9 and the creatures in TNG’s “The Host” are both called “Trills”. Because “obviously” they “must” be different species. Well…yes. The gist of that particular article was no different to having a TV series whose spin off has the same character’s name, but it radically different (different height, sex, race et al). He’s exposing sloppy writing and story telling. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2004, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/55 "2004-02-28T04:12:44Z")
> [@c42](#): > > [Scarily enough there is such a listing.](http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/quickref/particles1.htm) > > In fact the whole Ex Astris site is brilliant. Cool! I’ve bookmarked that page so I can read them all later. (Yeah, I know: I’m a geek :o ) ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2004, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/56 "2004-02-28T04:22:27Z")
> [@Weirddave](#): > > That’s just stupid. The Fx may be laughable, and there were enough stinker episodes to point at, but TOS had, on the whole, better actual stories told than any other Trek series except DS9. They are still watchable today, 40 years later, while lots of TNG episodes, for example, already feel dated in a late 80s “touchy feely I’m-OK-You’re-OK” morass of sacherine storytelling. Bergman has destroyed the franchise with his “I’m proud that I never watched TOS” garbage, I’m suprised that you buy into it. A tree with the arrogance to cut off it’s own roots dosen’t survive long. Where did I mention the special effects of the series? My problem with the show is that the resolution of every episode was always solved by Scotty fixing the engines in time (just like Geordi in TNG), McCoy devising some sort of vaccine that looked like blue raspberry kool-aid to reverse some improbable disease (just like Crusher, Bashir, et al), or Kirk convincing some god or god-like machine that humans really aren’t so bad after all while Shatner chewed the scenery. I’m glad that Roddenberry created the show and I’m happy that Bjold Trimble saved it but that does not mean I like it or even have to pretend to do so… it is not anything I would ever choose to watch after having tried (and failed) repeatedly to do so. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2004, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/57 "2004-02-28T04:48:45Z")
> [@tracer](#): > > So … dow’s that thread coming? I was thinking of throwing together a similarly-themed webpage of “Ignored Treknology” – starting with protomatter weaponry, of course. Thanks for the vote of support…I’ll try and get that thread up and running by this evening. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2004, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/58 "2004-02-28T17:06:14Z")
> [@](#): > > Where did I mention the special effects of the series? My problem with the show is that the resolution of every episode was always solved by Scotty fixing the engines in time (just like Geordi in TNG), McCoy devising some sort of vaccine that looked like blue raspberry kool-aid to reverse some improbable disease (just like Crusher, Bashir, et al), or Kirk convincing some god or god-like machine that humans really aren’t so bad after all while Shatner chewed the scenery. It seems that the Star Trek franchise has never been very good at social commentary. I roll my eyes any time the Next Generation crew launches into one of their “look how primitive and barbaric the people of 20th Century Earth were” spats of mental masturbation. TOS did the same thing with 1960’s society, and it looks ever more absurd today. Still, there are a suprising number of TOS episodes that have held up quite well. (Even if we are left wondering why 23rd Century spaceships are still using rheostats 😉 ) ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2004, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/59 "2004-02-28T18:47:34Z")
Taste is taste, and someone can like TOS or not. But, TOS was groundbreaking TV. And the amazing popularty of those “lacking” shows are what enabled the Trek franchise to exist in the first place. Just like _All In The Family_ for sitcoms (mixing humour with social commentary) completely changed a genre (for American TV anyways), one wonders what modern sci-fi TV (or even movies) would be like if Captain Pike had never gone to Talos IV. I want my Trek Smily back! ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2004, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852/60 "2004-02-28T19:28:32Z")
> [@Aesiron](#): > > I’m glad that Roddenberry created [ST:TOS] and I’m happy that Bjold Trimble saved it but that does not mean I like it or even have to pretend to do so… it is not anything I would ever choose to watch after having tried (and failed) repeatedly to do so. But … but … but, Mr. Spock is just so darn **cool!** [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protomatter-in-_star-trek_/230852.md?page=4)