Even the closest to a "safe" weapon design is the Romulan disruptors and Bajoran phasers of the 24th century. And those trigger guards are not only designed along the entire grip length, but are almost far enough from the said grip for an elephant to fire.

The safety culture died a short, early, painful death in the Alpha and Beta quadrants.

Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".

Probably fell to its death from an inadequately handrailed catwalk.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

The committee's newest member, that guy from Bajor, is clearly having far too much fun with it. I'm still sorry they shot down his suggestions of Sufficiently Advanced Technology and Series of Unlikely Explanations.

>Frankly, even the holsters were regarded as something of a grudging
>compromise; they ruined the lines of the pants, you know.
>
>They didn't quite take this to the point of total madness; stuff
>still, you know, worked.

Then the 'pyjama pants' incident happened. According to the stories I've heard, the idea originally involved smart-fabrics that were still in the design phase at the time. When the fabrics turned out to A) Not work as intended, and B) Cost an absolute fortune on top of that, the idiots behind it all went ahead with a budget version that quickly earned the hatred of almost everyone in Starfleet. Some near-human species apparently couldn't even put it on without assistance. The backlash was so bad that it killed almost every last bit of control the 'fashion!' movement had over Starfleet uniforms until the 2350s started the problem all over again.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

Was that Banek Yan? The guy who said that Starfleet needed a touch of culture, but later resigned due to what he called 'special circumstances'?

It's funny, really, because I didn't set out to do that. I've always liked the pre-TNG pistol phasers, particularly the Star Trek III/IV type (as seen here), so I just thought it would be a cute gag to get a toy one and do a straight-faced GotW about it. But when I sat down to get the pictures and figure out what I was going to say about it, I started handling it like an actual weapon, and I immediately realized that as a weapon, the design is garbage. In any world where whether you hit the target, or commit a negligent discharge, or even get the thing to work at all is determined by factors other than what it says happens in the script, a Star Trek phaser would be a hopelessly compromised solution.

I know this is not exactly a dramatic revelation. Star Trek's technology has always been more about how it looks than what it's supposed to do, because at its core, Star Trek is basically high fantasy with the magic dressed up like technology. We all knew this, and it isn't necessarily a bad thing in itself. I'd just never considered this particular bit of in-story technology in this light before, so it was a bit of a surprise.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Which, indeed, is part of the problem. It's designed to serve the story (unlike most firearms in TV/movies), and to look "cool". It doesn't necessarily follow that it would make sense. Having the pistol grip boost the endurance/output of the Cricket (that was the nickname for the TNG Type 1) looks cool, doesn't necessarily play out as logical because it, at least, adds another potential point of failure. Also, in at least one episode of the original series, a phaser is shown being destroyed, and about the only reason not to try to use the Type 1 that was part of it was possibly the damaging of the emitter.

>I know this is not exactly a dramatic revelation. Star Trek's
>technology has always been more about how it looks than what it's
>supposed to do, because at its core, Star Trek is basically
>high fantasy with the magic dressed up like technology. We all knew
>this, and it isn't necessarily a bad thing in itself. I'd just never
>considered this particular bit of in-story technology in this light
>before, so it was a bit of a surprise.

Most of the Trek universe is like that. Like wandering around in shirt sleeves right next to the antimatter reactor; no real-life organization is going to let any crewmember near that thing without serious anti-hazard measures taken, on account of the slight chance its going to "spring a leak" (TNG: Drumhead, where when the hatch blew off, if proper safety protocols were being followed I doubt they would have had engineering crew in for radiation burns). You just happened to find an avenue that I haven't seen most people exploring in print, so to speak, although I'm sure some other firearms people have noticed how garbage the design is from a usability and safety standpoint.

Ha, I'd forgotten that TNG had the keyring-flashlight model as well as the dustbuster. Least visually satisfying prop ever.

Also, semi-relatedly, I've just remembered that (at least on the original TV series) the pistol grip does make the phaser more powerful as well as longer-lasting. It's a plot point in the episode with the Horta ("The Devil in the Dark").

>Most of the Trek universe is like that. Like wandering around in shirt
>sleeves right next to the antimatter reactor; no real-life
>organization is going to let any crewmember near that thing without
>serious anti-hazard measures taken, on account of the slight chance
>its going to "spring a leak"

To be fair, the engineering crewmen do wear radsuits in the movies. In the TNG era, the fact that emergency forcefields were pretty much instantaneous and ubiquitous was used as the justification to save all that money omit specialized engineering PPE. Which is an idea that got kicked around for the original series—in the episode where spacesuits first appeared, the script called for some kind of handwave about personal forcefields instead, but the producers decided it would require too extreme a suspension of disbelief. Which may have been the only time anyone involved in the production of Star Trek ever said that. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

And they stopped using it for precisely that reason. It could tend to look like the phaser blast was coming from the actor's fingers unless they made it a point to refer to/show the phaser being drawn.

>Also, semi-relatedly, I've just remembered that (at least on the
>original TV series) the pistol grip does make the phaser more
>powerful as well as longer-lasting. It's a plot point in the episode
>with the Horta ("The Devil in the Dark").
>
>>Most of the Trek universe is like that. Like wandering around in shirt
>>sleeves right next to the antimatter reactor; no real-life
>>organization is going to let any crewmember near that thing without
>>serious anti-hazard measures taken, on account of the slight chance
>>its going to "spring a leak"
>
>To be fair, the engineering crewmen do wear radsuits in the movies.
>In the TNG era, the fact that emergency forcefields were pretty much
>instantaneous and ubiquitous was used as the justification to save
>all that money omit specialized engineering PPE. Which is an idea
>that got kicked around for the original series—in the episode
>where spacesuits first appeared, the script called for some kind of
>handwave about personal forcefields instead, but the producers decided
>it would require too extreme a suspension of disbelief. Which may
>have been the only time anyone involved in the production of Star
>Trek ever said that. :)

I actually do miss the radsuits from the movies; they made a lot of sense. They'd have still made sense even in the TNG force field omnipresence. Kind of like I wouldn't want to be standing in an open shuttlebay in anything less than a full-on spacesuit, even as reliable as Trek Tech is. :)

Back to the Type 1 phaser. In the original series, it didn't have a pushbutton trigger. It actually was fired by pressing a dial from one end to the other. The Christmas ornament they put out a number of years ago of the TOS Type 1 actually replicated the raising panel and that it wouldn't "fire" until you reached the end of the dial travel. It made a LOT of sense from a "you want to be sure you're going to fire" and "not firing when it's bumped or dropped" standpoint.

Here's a pic of the "firing position". https://www.yourprops.com/movieprops/original/yp_510ed8d5375214.75401370/Star-Trek-The-Original-Series-Type-1-Phaser-1.jpg?x

>
>--G.
>-><-
>Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
>Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
>zgryphon at that email service Google has
>Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I have to wonder if what changed was FX technology and budget.

It probably wasn't that hard for them to add the shield shimmer effect that would indicate "a shield is here" or "the shield is under stress because something like a phaser is hitting it" to various scenes in post-production in TNG, which meant that when you said "there's a force field" the viewers at home could see the force field, have a sense of its presence and effect.

That sort of stuff was a hell of a lot harder in TOS, when saying "there's a force field" would often mean either "take our word for it, it's there" or additional and potentially tricky work in post.

-Merc
Keep Rat

In the end, three factors finally caused a groundbreaking shift in phaser technology that has gradually made its way into firearms utilized by all the major Alpha Quadrant species. These were, in rough order of priority:

1) The first true industrial replicators came online, greatly reducing the difficulty of procurement and logistics and reducing the cost to near-zero - Starfleet could now roll out new equipment to its officers by, essentially, releasing a software update;
2) Improvements in sensor and CPU technology that permit heuristic image processing in real time, with the development of extensive rulesets around target identification.
3) Mounting horror over the pain and suffering caused by these weapons sheerly by accident led the Vulcan Science Academy to relax its usual proscription against weapons research in this one instance. The VSA convened a special task force made up of its best and brightest and gave it a truly difficult mission: find a way to make phasers safer... that humans will actually accept.

In the end, the solution the Vulcans presented was unique. Rather than building a conventional sight, trigger guard and safety into the weapon, they proposed taking care of the entire matter in the traditional Vulcan way: with software. The prototype they eventually offered Starfleet reflected the design aesthetic of Vulcan engineers who preferred to deemphasize the phaser's weaponized nature and give it the appearance of something more like a tool. The Vulcans succeeded so brilliantly that one of the Starfleet officers noted its strong resemblance to a form of handheld cleaning appliance once popular on Earth before janitorial bots became ubiquitous. As for its safety and aiming systems, the Vulcans provided a complex but comprehensive solution in a surprisingly robust package: a sophisticated wide-field sensor suite embedded in the muzzle of the weapon tied to a threat analysis and detection system that veered dangerously close to true AI alongside a variable-geometry emitter array that could fire a full-power particle beam anywhere in a 90 degree cone in front of the weapon.

The results in testing were dramatic. By simply pointing the weapon *in the vague direction of the target* and pressing the trigger button, the weapon would actually correctly detect the intended target using its pattern matching heuristics and calibrate the energy required to produce a certain effect on that particular target to achieve extremely consistent effects across materials, then direct the beam in the appropriate direction - and even track and hold the beam on target as it evaded, all without requiring effort on the part of the user. This effect can often be seen when studying recordings of Starfleet officers in combat during the period. For instance, here is an archival photo of then-Commander William Riker demonstrating the correct shooting stance with a Type I 'Cricket' using the new targeting system:

Note how the muzzle of the weapon is tilted upward while the beam fires at the target directly ahead. Commander Riker aims upward in order to give the phaser's targeting sensors, which are located just below the emitter, a complete view of the intended target so that it can attempt to detect the optimal point of impact.

Upon deployment of the Type I 'Cricket' and Type II 'Dustbuster' phasers, negligent discharge rates dropped by 90% overnight (thanks to a fingerprint sensor and drop safety added to the trigger) and friendly fire incidents dropped to almost zero with the weapon itself gaining the ability to detect friend from foe. The project was deemed an overwhelming success, so much so that the Romulans quickly stole and adopted similar technology. (The Klingons, of course, thought that - like most Vulcan ideas - it took all the fun out of life).

That's not to say the initial revision was without problems. The Vulcan scientists who developed the new targeting system neglected to consider cases where the definition of 'friend' and 'foe' becomes hazy, and as such the new phasers initially refused to fire on people wearing Starfleet uniforms - which poses significant problems in a galaxy that includes tailors trained by the Obsidian Order, not to mention all manner of mind-controlling, shapeshifting, and just plain weird lifeforms out there in the black.

Fortunately, the new replicators allowed Starfleet to push revisions to the design out rapidly (and coincidentally gave birth to a revolution in Starfleet uniform design, leading to a series of major revisions to the duty uniform over the course of just ten years, a process that would have previously taken that long for just one single change to be made). The design has since been deployed throughout the Federation and well beyond, seeing success in service from the front lines of the Omega Quadrant to the unknown reaches of Delta. The latest Starfleet service phaser incorporates adaptive emitter technology gleaned from the Borg, who are beginning to grow concerned that they, not the Federation, may soon be assimilated.

The 'dustbuster' form factor is a lot friendlier to nonhumanoid manipulation apparatus. I mean, sure, it's still not great for, say, a Sulamid, but it's a lot better than a Mk IV. Have you ever watched a Sulamid try to manage a pistol grip with its tentacles? I'd think long and hard about coming in line of sight of one armed with a Mk IV hard-locked to setting 1, let alone any of the higher ones.

-----
Iä! Iä! Moe fthagn!

Well, yeah, but nobody on Star Trek has that, so the point is a bit moot. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

And a number of the nonhumanoid species in Starfleet really don't need a phaser. I mean, can you see a Horta using one of those things?

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

Emergency rations?

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

This has increasingly been bothering me for some time now - the very fact that the consoles -can- explode on the command deck indicates that they have vastly more power running to those specific endpoints than is at all appropriate. This is not a safe situation!

A much more sane design from a safety standpoint would be to have low power control consoles that link via optoisolators to the various systems that they control - that way, a "flashback event on the plasma conduits" or whatever would burn out a chunk of wall someplace -other- than "right next to a critical crew member" and would have zero possibility to propagate up to their console to blow up in their face and kill them.

I've had a few folks moot the notion that the explosive consoles are somehow intentional to 'inform' the captain of the state of damage of the ship - but this is nonsensical; when the ship is critically damaged is precisely when you'd need your crew to be most capable, rather than writhing on the floor with burns and such. A "health bar" style display on the main screen would do that job just fine without the need for exploding consoles.

And this also brings up another fun notion - the likelihood of a false-positive signal on a ship going on an ostensible peaceful five-year mission is going to be non-negligible. So the Enterprise is ticking along past a perfectly normal nebula at Warp 5 when all of a sudden the nav console gets hit by a stray cosmic ray and decides to blow up - now you've got Kirk sounding red alert and firing phasers and photorps all over to eliminate a threat that doesn't exist, on a ship that can no longer navigate.

I don't know what kind of lunatics they had doing health and safety reviews in starfleet, but they should have been fired.

(I had the same problem with all those "Black Ice" countermeasures in cyberpunk novels. Not ONE decker thought of putting a circuit breaker between the deck and his brain?)

Inside the torpedo casing, or duct-taped to the outside...? <eeeeeeevil grin>

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

;-)

Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".