At least put surge protectors into consoles, most fatalities are exploding console cases
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
I have NEVER heard of a starship assigned to planetary surveys being destroyed. Only when they encounter hostile forces or unknown spatial phenomena during the charting/exploration of space does it all go wrong so far as I'm aware. Which would suggest that the safest career path in Starfleet is the likes of botany, anthropology, geology, etc.
So, never boldly go seems to be the lesson here...
USS Exeter lost its whole crew on a survey; not technically destroyed, due to a virus. Friendly war games badly damaged the Excalibur and Lexington, the Defiant in one alternate reality crashed when trying to leave orbit around a planet (admittedly spatial phenomenon in that case, but they were investigating the distortions deliberately and still got into trouble)
The older USS Essex was apparently destroyed when the planet it surveyed turned out to be a penal colony. Enterprise-D was nearly destroyed from a non-organic life form aboard an asteroid it destroyed to help a colony.
On the goofier side, spores caused the crew of the NCC-1701 to abandon her.
To quote Q: " If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid. "
See, it's a case of close, but not quite the voyage of the damned...
I mean, you could argue the dangers of Riker getting attacked on one planetary survey by the cannibal plant and it's almost lethal thorn...which was only cured by "nightmares"? Weird, but OK. But that's the point again; one person amidst the thousand nearly died to a plant. Compare that to the prospect of everyone dying when you engage an enemy or investigate a spatial phenomenon and I can the wisdom of a sort of tamer version of exploration and understanding of the universe.
Actually, now I feel like the Vulcan advisory council during Enterprise...
It's a case of caution preceding a sort of excitable haste and insatiable desire...that invariably leads to disaster. I dunno, make what you will of such words I guess...
At least put surge protectors into consoles, most fatalities are exploding console cases
Maybe those are the surge protectors exploding?
Or phase out the explodium consoles
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
My headcanon for the exploding consoles is that it isn't actually the console but the shrapnel from an EPS conduit that is exploding. According to franchise lore they use super-conductive gas to carry electricity around the ship, which makes sense due to heat restrictions of physical conductors. They use electromagnets to contain the superheated gas, so any power fluctuations from battle could result in the gas melting through the conduit, which would then pour out with explosive force sending a shower of shrapnel ripping through any consoles in the vicinity.
As for the lack of proper safety mechanisms... I'm a little more concerned about when the safety mechanisms routinely do nothing. Such as manual overrides that never work, physical door releases that jam, and a general lack of redundancy when vital systems fail. The writers constantly forgetting that shuttles have their own power supplies, sensors, and communication systems is also confounding at times. I know if my ship suddenly lost power to its vital systems I would be sending somebody to man the shuttles so the ship isn't blind and deaf. The amount of times the Enterprise-D suffered an internal communications failure is utterly rediculous.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
My headcanon for the exploding consoles is that it isn't actually the console but the shrapnel from an EPS conduit that is exploding. According to franchise lore they use super-conductive gas to carry electricity around the ship, which makes sense due to heat restrictions of physical conductors. They use electromagnets to contain the superheated gas, so any power fluctuations from battle could result in the gas melting through the conduit, which would then pour out with explosive force sending a shower of shrapnel ripping through any consoles in the vicinity.
As for the lack of proper safety mechanisms... I'm a little more concerned about when the safety mechanisms routinely do nothing. Such as manual overrides that never work, physical door releases that jam, and a general lack of redundancy when vital systems fail. The writers constantly forgetting that shuttles have their own power supplies, sensors, and communication systems is also confounding at times. I know if my ship suddenly lost power to its vital systems I would be sending somebody to man the shuttles so the ship isn't blind and deaf. The amount of times the Enterprise-D suffered an internal communications failure is utterly rediculous.
To be fair, most of the times that they're needed, the ship is already SEVERELY damaged, to such an extent that there may be physical problems keeping them from working (manual overrides having lost connection to systems, doorframes being warped or blocked by structural debris, etc). As to the shuttles, the issue is normally risk. Yes, shuttles might have all that equipment, but they're also very, VERY vulnerable targets. Stray weapons fire, sheared debris, etc, and the shuttle is a floating tomb. At least on the main ship, they still have more resources and are (relatively) safer.
Hm - the Miranda is arguably a lot worse off than the Oberth. I mean:
USS Reliant: commandeered, used to attack the Enterprise and subsequently destroyed by damage from the Enterprise + genesis device detonation
USS Brattain: Trapped in a tykens rift
USS Lantree: Destroyed by the Enterprise due to contagion aboard the ship which caused crew to age rapidly.
USS Sitak and USS Majestic: Wrecked by Cardassian/Jem Hadar ships during 'Operation Return'.
USS Saratoga (NCC-1887): Rendered inoperable by whale-probe. Presumably decommissioned at some point (not necessarily due to the whale probe incident though) due to the existence of:
USS Saratoga (NCC-31911): Destroyed at Wolf 359
USS ShirKahr: Destroyed(?) - took MASSIVE damage to her primary hull from weapons platforms in the first battle in the Chin'toka system.
Obviously a few were more lucky but on the whole I'd say that these are ships which were in service for a looong time, probably in large numbers, so not really surprising that many of them were unlucky.
In fairness when you compare the number of screen named ships that are destroyed of each class even the mighty Galaxy class is not exactly well off is it?
Odyssey - blown up due to being rammed by JHAS.
Yamato - blown up due to infection with Iconian virus.
Enterprise - blown up/crashed onto planet due to Klingon attack (and Troi's shoddy piloting )
That's 3 out of the known named ships of that class. Pretty poor going for such a massive and powerful ship
That and I believe Gene Rodenberry was noted (in the 50th Anniversary Star Trek Encylopedia) regarding the Galaxy class to have said there were only 6 in commission at the time. That's a 50% sorta fail rating for the class of starship...
From the tech manual at the time, 12 were built but 6 were empty starframes kept in reserve. Sacrifice of Angels had at least ten in it, and there were at least seven in range to respond to the transwarp conduit near Earth in Endgame. So there were certainly a lot more than the original 6 at this point.
They fared pretty well after the initial run, too. There's one possible destroyed Galaxy seen in the background when the Defiant is destroyed, but other than that, no more are destroyed on screen.
At least put surge protectors into consoles, most fatalities are exploding console cases
The rest are caused by there not being any seat-belts.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Comments
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
See, it's a case of close, but not quite the voyage of the damned...
I mean, you could argue the dangers of Riker getting attacked on one planetary survey by the cannibal plant and it's almost lethal thorn...which was only cured by "nightmares"? Weird, but OK. But that's the point again; one person amidst the thousand nearly died to a plant. Compare that to the prospect of everyone dying when you engage an enemy or investigate a spatial phenomenon and I can the wisdom of a sort of tamer version of exploration and understanding of the universe.
Actually, now I feel like the Vulcan advisory council during Enterprise...
It's a case of caution preceding a sort of excitable haste and insatiable desire...that invariably leads to disaster. I dunno, make what you will of such words I guess...
These are the voyages of the U.S.S. Pioneer...
My character Tsin'xing
Or phase out the explodium consoles
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
As for the lack of proper safety mechanisms... I'm a little more concerned about when the safety mechanisms routinely do nothing. Such as manual overrides that never work, physical door releases that jam, and a general lack of redundancy when vital systems fail. The writers constantly forgetting that shuttles have their own power supplies, sensors, and communication systems is also confounding at times. I know if my ship suddenly lost power to its vital systems I would be sending somebody to man the shuttles so the ship isn't blind and deaf. The amount of times the Enterprise-D suffered an internal communications failure is utterly rediculous.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
To be fair, most of the times that they're needed, the ship is already SEVERELY damaged, to such an extent that there may be physical problems keeping them from working (manual overrides having lost connection to systems, doorframes being warped or blocked by structural debris, etc). As to the shuttles, the issue is normally risk. Yes, shuttles might have all that equipment, but they're also very, VERY vulnerable targets. Stray weapons fire, sheared debris, etc, and the shuttle is a floating tomb. At least on the main ship, they still have more resources and are (relatively) safer.
From the tech manual at the time, 12 were built but 6 were empty starframes kept in reserve. Sacrifice of Angels had at least ten in it, and there were at least seven in range to respond to the transwarp conduit near Earth in Endgame. So there were certainly a lot more than the original 6 at this point.
They fared pretty well after the initial run, too. There's one possible destroyed Galaxy seen in the background when the Defiant is destroyed, but other than that, no more are destroyed on screen.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
I thought the rest was caused by standing too close to a main character when a baddie is demonstrating his willingness to kill, honestly.
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