Cattle are not all especially aerodynamic. In fact I think it’s fair to say that cattle are not remotely aerodynamic. That is what aerodynamic and cattle mean.
Obie could conquer Earth instantly, with no shots fired, no damage. Why, everyone would just know that Earth had always been under his control and it was the most natural thing in the world.
Not really. When Enemies of the State start disappearing, it’s a pretty good bet who’s doing it, and why.
And when you want someone disappeared but not dead, for whatever reasons (they were a spy in an anti-Occupation group, they have information you’re going to use your Betazoid to pull out of their head before killing them, whatever), it’s a lot easier to make it less obvious that you’ve still got them alive if you haven’t been leaving bodies all over the place.
Hm. So far the only really tricky one is the Tardis. Options include:
The doctor’s approach #1 - “Okay, reeeally, the main thing here is to convince them that we can take over for long enough for them to put down their weapons and see reason. I’m just going to chat with them until they realize that I’ve already reprogrammed the computers and taken over the world ten minutes ago.”
The doctor’s approach #2 - “I’m the Doctor. Be afraid of me. Do what I say.”
Roses’ approach - Look into the heart of the Tardis, become one with the time vortex, kick ass.
The Master’s approach - Ally yourself with aliens/future humans/ intelligent fungi and have them do the hard part.
Jack’s approach - Lie. If that doesn’t work - Screw.
I think you need a ship capable of producing a bioweapon to introduce to the air/water world-wide, as well as the agent that will keep it dormant. Better yet, a series of 10 different fatal diseases and their blockers, introduced in such a way that you catch one and you are immune to the other nine. Ideally, you end up with roughly a tenth of the population of earth for each infection. Rebellion is met by withholding one of the blocking agents, resulting in 10 percent of the population at random dying in some visually nasty way as a lesson to the other 90%. Also, if some bright person actually destroys the ship (or orbiting lab or whatever) that creates the blocker, everyone dies.
So, would the Enterprise D have the medical/biological chops to pull this off?
In one of the opening scenes of The Mote In God’s Eye, Blaine gets his ass chewed out for taking the ground troops on a raid to take out a rebel world’s shield station. He was successful, forcing the rebels to surrender – but if it had been a trap the fleet would have been left with no option but to nuke the planet from orbit, and the admiral in charge was pissed at being put at risk of being forced to give that order.
Given sufficiently precise intel and the ability to hack into computers, you could do something along the lines of one Arthur C. Clarke short-short story, in which the aliens made pinpoint raids on a few Swiss banks, read their records, and then needed only to send out a few thousand registered letters to finish their conquest.
I believe you mean a CLAC. LAC is Light Attack Craft, CLAC is a carrier thereof. A single LAC would have a hard time with logistics. Although, if we’re talking extended occupation, I think either a CLAC or superdreadnought would have logistics problems, too. I doubt there’s much infrastructure for replacement parts on Earth.
For claws-on-the-ground, I nominate a Tyranid Leviathan Hive Ship. Not only can it carry thousands of troops, it can also just dump spores on the planet and grow more. No need to win hearts and minds when you can just eat everyone and grow your own.
I would imagine they could do it, myself. The Captain would give the order, then the Doctor would combine [technobabble] with [technobabble] and they’d be set.
There is a late second season or early third season show where the Enterprise-D evacuates a planet, and their livestock, and beams them into the cargo hold using the cargo transporters. You might remember it as the one where Riker shtups the farmer’s daughter, but no shotgun appears.
In a first season TOS show Kirk threatens to blow up a planet, so even that Enterprise seems to have planet buster technology - though randomly beaming world leaders seems like a more effective way of conquering Earth.
As for nuclear missiles, the Nazi planet sent some to destroy the Enterprise, which pretty much laughed them off. They got wiped out by one phaser shot.
I’m surprised no one mentioned the mother ship from Independence Day - assuming they get rid of the Apple software running on their computers, that is.
On the cargo bay thing I checked and they are actually normally set for non living materials but can be switched to a mode that allows them to transport people. They just aren’t as efficient at it. I thought I had read in the STTNG Tech Manual that they couldn’t do it. My bad.