Re-Evaluating the Doomsday Machine

[Crossroads Inc.]

It is a bit of a joke these days in Sci-Fi.. The great and terrifying "Doomsday Weapon" of OST was disabled by what amounted to a small thermonuclear bomb disrupting its internal systems. And the great Planet Killer could not even destroy the Enterprise with it's mighty weapon.. Ho-Hum...

But lets back up a bit, and consider a few things.. Let us start but a few things that arn't in dispute...
The episode opens with Kirk saying he is investigating the disappearance of Several planets

SULU: Sir, we're now within the limits of System L-370, but I can't seem to locate
SPOCK: Captain, sensors show this entire solar system has been destroyed. Nothing left but rubble and asteroids.
KIRK: But that's incredible. The star in this system is still intact. Only a nova could destroy like that.
SPOCK: Nonetheless, Captain, sensors show nothing but debris where we charted seven planets last year.

So first fact, while we do not have a time fram, we know that at the very MOST< it destroyed SEVEN planets within a year, and it may have been far less time then that. We also have the following.

KIRK: Matt, your log stated that the fourth planet was breaking up. You went in to investigate.
DECKER: We saw this thing hovering over the planet, slicing out chunks of it with a force beam.

Along with:

ECKER [OC]: Captain's log, stardate 4202.1. We are now entering system L-374. Science Officer Masada reports the fourth planet seems to be breaking up. We are going to investigate.

Now while it is never said in the episode, it is recorded that the episode takes place at StarDate 4202.9 So once more, at the very least it was able to destroy the Fourth planet within a matter of a few days. Also Decker visibly observed it "slicing chinks" out of the planet, this implies that the process is at least fast enough that you can observe it quite easily. It also seems to have no trouble dismantling planets as well.

Now let us pause a moment. According to various Scifi sites, the Doomsday Weapon is "about" 2700 meters. In the grand sense of things, this is ridiculous small... Several Trek built ships pass the 1000 meter size and a few get up to 1500 meters. So, we have another indisputable fact... This ship, which is barley larger then an ISD, puts out enough Energy to "Slice chunks" form a planet and eventually reduce it to rubble. The time frame for destroying a single planet may also be as little as Eight to Nine days, for a 2700 (or so) meter ship, that is DAMNED impressive.

Now let us move on.

Let us discuss the Beam in question... Decker refers to it as "Pure Anti Protons" Now then, this is where I may be putting my foot in it... Put that to me seems to be describing basically, an Anti-matter gun... Protons are found in every Atom in the universe, logical, if you had a Beam that fired Anti-Protons, it would result in mutual annihilation of Any Mater it came in contact with. Putting this into perspective with the effect it would have upon a Planet would make it ideal for indeed 'slicing chunks' form it.. A beam that continuously annihilates mater in all its forms would blast easily through the rock and magma of planets.

So, so far, considering the above observations and logical assumptions, Thus far the Doomsday Machine is rather impressive one would say. However we come to the Nut of the problem. Once agin, a fact that cannot be in dispute is that the explosion of a Small starships core was enough to disable it. Further more, the "Anti Proton Beam" fired on both the Enterprise as well as the Constellation and did minimal damage, with the Constellation having at the worst, Hull damage to parts of the saucer and Engine nacelles. These item has been the primary cause of Scorn and Derision to the Machine for quite some time. My own personal belief is simply the Machine was old, Very Very old, and that it's internal machinery was in a state where the explosion was enough to disable it. As for the ships? ll I can say is plot, perhaps the shields in Trek are able to neutralize such a beam, perhaps under normal circumstances such ships would have been annihilated, but Writers fiat and Chairchter shields prevented such an occurrence.

however the Machine may eventually deal with Starships, it's effectiveness at Destroying planets cannot be questioned, and perhaps deserves mre credit and respect then it other wise gets.

Thank you.

[Broomstick]

Hmm.... don't star ships like the Enterprise have energy force fields for defense? Such a shield may be resistant to anti-matter (not being matter at all) and could account for the survival of ships over planets, which do not have defensive force fields.

Also - the Doomsday Weapon is itself made of matter as far as I can tell, so presumably it's "anti-proton beam" is somehow generated and controlled by machinery of some sort. The key word here being controlled - and exploding star ship, assuming a matter/anti-matter explosion, would an uncontrolled energy release that damages essential mechanisms. Even if the Doomsday Weaon is entirely composed of anti-matter such an energy release, again, disrupt its interior mechanism.

Thus, a planet-killing anti-matter spewing machine that can slice up planets may not be as effective against force-field protected space-ships, and can be rendered inert by a sufficiently large explosion inside of it.

[Patrick Degan]

It could be that for a target such as a starship, the weapon is programmed to employ less than full power to its beam weapon. No necessity to ramp up to full blast on an object of considerably less than planetary mass. Alternatively, it could be the case that the weapon must do a considerable degree of work over an extended period of time to break a planet apart, requiring multiple shots of its beam weapon if it is not powerful enough to disrupt the planetary mass with one strike. It might also, as is likely, employ tractor beams to start hauling up chunks of the planet to refuel itself while it's also attacking the target world, so the beam weapon is not enough in itself to do the job. To take Commodore Decker's statement at face-value, it certainly is not simply blasting a planet apart with a single shot, as the debris is not even accelerating at standard escape velocity from the centre of mass.

[Vympel]

Given the Doomsday Machine fuels itself from the mass of the planets it destroys, it'd be extremely counter-intuitive IMO to assume that it fired anywhere close to maximum firepower at the Enterprise. It wouldn't get back what it put in to eat it.

[Mr. Tickle]

Given the Doomsday Machine fuels itself from the mass of the planets it destroys, it'd be extremely counter-intuitive IMO to assume that it fired anywhere close to maximum firepower at the Enterprise. It wouldn't get back what it put in to eat it.

You could suppose that the machine would use a certain level of firepower based on the size/mass of the object it was hitting for maximum optimal energy usage.

[Batman]

Given the Doomsday Machine fuels itself from the mass of the planets it destroys, it'd be extremely counter-intuitive IMO to assume that it fired anywhere close to maximum firepower at the Enterprise. It wouldn't get back what it put in to eat it.

You could suppose that the machine would use a certain level of firepower based on the size/mass of the object it was hitting for maximum optimal energy usage.

And NOT compensate for the object being shielded, exactly. It's entirely possible the Doomsday Machine was designed to deal with celestial bodies and celestial bodies ONLY and none of the designers ever thought to see to it that the machine would know what to do when the M/AM reaction effect of the antiproton beam didn't take hold.

[Stark]

It's possible the nature of its weapons precludes firing full power at anything that isn't totally predictable like a planet. Its snap shots might be extremely limited in output, or perhaps it slowly ramps up power in sustained fire against planets, which is impossible with quick shots against ships.

[dworkin]

The mistake is thinking of it as a weapon when it's real function may well of been to clear out a solar system so you can then build your dyson sphere.

It puts me in mind of a crane with a wrecking ball. It's big, is good at it's job but it's 'weapon' isn't a real threat to something with actual armor / shields and it isn't really heavily armored itself. It's built well and to last but that's not really the same thing.

[Sea Skimmer]

The mistake is thinking of it as a weapon when it's real function may well of been to clear out a solar system so you can then build your dyson sphere.

It puts me in mind of a crane with a wrecking ball. It's big, is good at it's job but it's 'weapon' isn't a real threat to something with actual armor / shields and it isn't really heavily armored itself. It's built well and to last but that's not really the same thing.

Yeah. We don’t know that the Doomsday machine was ever meant as a weapon. It may have just been a giant autonomous resource harvesting device built by an advanced civilization to go out and harvest planets for a long time, then come home with the leftover energy. Designing it so it doesn’t easily destroy shielded ships would then be a safety feature, ensuring you could get close enough to disable it if it malfunctioned and ran amok. I doubt any civilization which could build a giant neutronium spacecraft actually needed such a craft to destroy planets in warfare.

[Anguirus]

NON-CANON ALERT:

I do like Peter David's take on this concept in the novel Vendetta. The Doomsday Machine as encountered by Kirk was a somewhat-functional testbed prototype of a ship that was being built to fight the Borg, sent off on a long-term revenge mission because the Borg destroyed the builders' homeworld. Doomsday Mk. II is bigger, has point-defense anti-proton beams all over it, can indeed survive a starship exploding inside of it (a Borg cube no less) and at one point flies into a star and out the other side.

Wankish? Sure. But a fun read. The Voyager character Seven of Nine was also unmistakably ripped off from a far darker character that appears in this book (which was set and I believe written during the 4th season of TNG).

[Simon_Jester]

Thus, a planet-killing anti-matter spewing machine that can slice up planets may not be as effective against force-field protected space-ships, and can be rendered inert by a sufficiently large explosion inside of it.

Yeah. Being able to manipulate extreme energies doesn't guarantee that you can survive an explosion in the middle of delicate machinery. There are lots of places where a kilojoule-range (hell, possibly even joule-range) jolt of unexpected energy could ruin the LHC, even though it handles a beam that carries about as much kinetic energy as a freight train, up in the high megajoule range.

[Patrick Degan]

The mistake is thinking of it as a weapon when it's real function may well of been to clear out a solar system so you can then build your dyson sphere.

It puts me in mind of a crane with a wrecking ball. It's big, is good at it's job but it's 'weapon' isn't a real threat to something with actual armor / shields and it isn't really heavily armored itself. It's built well and to last but that's not really the same thing.

"This machine seems to have a programmed defensive sphere. Any energy source entering that sphere is immediately subject to attack" as Spock observed. The fact that the thing attacked the Enterprise as soon as it was within range and began to turn on the Constellation after Kirk fired her one working phaser suggests that the machine might have been a weapon. But there is still very little extant evidence as to what the true purpose of the planet killer may have been.

The idea that it was actually an industrial machine that got out of control is a rather amusing one when you think about it. Imagine the conversation at the dockyard on the day it happened:

"Where's the Demolisher?"

"Well... I activated it for the initial test sequences but it must have malfunctioned, because it left the dock. I've put in a call to spacecraft retrieval—"

"ZERG, YOU IMBECILE! Do you realise what you've done?! The limiter circuits and IFF system haven't been installed yet!"

"I thought they were already connected. There was a memo about the components arriving yesterd—"

"And another memo mentioning the delay in shipment from the factory! THAT SHIT WON'T BE HERE UNTIL TUESDAY!"

Sensor alarms sound, and the viewscreen at dock control shows the machine approaching the planet, it's inner mechanisms glowing hungrily.

All colour drained out of the supervisor's face, and his voice sounded hollow in his throat. "Fuck you, Zerg. You've killed us all."

[dworkin]

Good point. I havn't seen the episode in a long while. Still, you might put something like that if your worried about evironmental protesters, rivals or idiot civilisations that can't be bothered going a few light years to find out about the proposed demolition.

[Wing Commander MAD]

Doesn't the Trek have some wonky wildlife, I certainly know that SFC/SFB had critters that were threats to starships. We've also seen some in TNG I believe too. The whole defensive sphere bit might be to keep wildlife from screwing with it.

I would say its a pretty safe bet that its simply a piece of industrial equipment sent out to harvest energy/materials, and will work with that assumption. Really, even with Star Treks myriad planets full of life, the ratio of planets with life to "lifeless rocks" has to be astoundingly large. Isn't the Doomsday Machine supposed to be pretty old as well (like really really ancient old). It could be it was launched long before most life evolved (or was seeded as TNG would have us believe)in the galaxy. assuming it's not extragalactic in origin. Regardless, the odds of it actually hitting an inhabited planet have to be extremely small, even in Kirks time, to begin with. Do we know anything about its propulsion capabilities? Even if it is capable of processing any one particular planetary body fairly quickly, if it's not particulary nimble or capable of rapid acceleration/deceleration it may take a long time to process a system. Since the craft appears to fuel itself via the mater ingested, it makes even more sense to not utilze any energy intensive movements/manuevers during basic harvesting, even if it is capable of such feats. If you consider the amount of matter in a star system like ours, and just how spread out it is, I could see DM taking years or maybe even centuries to completly harvest a system of all available energy while maximising the amount harvested versus the amount expended. That would perhaps explain why this device wasn't encountered sooner, or if there are more why they haven't proven a problem or at least their actions havinig been observed as well. The main problem with this idea of a liesurly approach to processing matter, is of course the amount of time between when you send out the device to when you get what you sent it out to collect and just how worthwhile harvesting non planetary sized bodies would be. There's also I suppose the question of energy storage, just how much energy can it store given its size, which would directly affect the turn around time for any particular harvesting operation. Unfortunately, the answers to such questions are impossible to know.

[aieeegrunt]

NON-CANON ALERT:

I do like Peter David's take on this concept in the novel Vendetta. The Doomsday Machine as encountered by Kirk was a somewhat-functional testbed prototype of a ship that was being built to fight the Borg, sent off on a long-term revenge mission because the Borg destroyed the builders' homeworld. Doomsday Mk. II is bigger, has point-defense anti-proton beams all over it, can indeed survive a starship exploding inside of it (a Borg cube no less) and at one point flies into a star and out the other side.

Wankish? Sure. But a fun read. The Voyager character Seven of Nine was also unmistakably ripped off from a far darker character that appears in this book (which was set and I believe written during the 4th season of TNG).

That novel kind of pissed me off, it's like the whole fucking universe just has to involve the Borg somehow.

[Anguirus]

^ Well, the Borg are a pretty bad enemy. Or rather, they were.

Somehow Peter David's Borg-wank is always much more fun than the Voyager-era Borg-wank. Although even I didn't bother reading the one where they went nuts and ate Pluto or whatever.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Given the Doomsday Machine fuels itself from the mass of the planets it destroys, it'd be extremely counter-intuitive IMO to assume that it fired anywhere close to maximum firepower at the Enterprise. It wouldn't get back what it put in to eat it.

You could suppose that the machine would use a certain level of firepower based on the size/mass of the object it was hitting for maximum optimal energy usage.

And NOT compensate for the object being shielded, exactly. It's entirely possible the Doomsday Machine was designed to deal with celestial bodies and celestial bodies ONLY and none of the designers ever thought to see to it that the machine would know what to do when the M/AM reaction effect of the antiproton beam didn't take hold.

Considering that the Machine was armored instead of shielded, and if it was a weapon presumable designed to fight enemies of a similar tech level, perhaps it wasn't designed to deal with shields because it wasn't a technology they used anymore. Phasors didn't work at all; I believe Spock commented they were about as likely to penetrate the armor as matchsticks. So they may never have even tested it against shields ( much less programmed the Machine how to deal with them) , any more than we test a modern tank gun against a knight's suit of armor.

[RedImperator]

I like the idea of a piece of heavy industrial equipment run amok. It explains its vulnerability perfectly, and in a way it's scarier than a weapon--"Somewhere out there, there's a civilization that demolishes entire planets for construction projects. They're so powerful even one of their out of control Space Bulldozers is a potential threat to you, and you have no idea who they are. Sleep tight." It fits what Q said to Picard in "Q, Who"*, which for my money sums up Trek better than any other line of dialog in the entire franchise.

*"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."

[Luke SW]

If as you say it fired pure antiprotions the beam would need to hit matter to be fully effective, as such it would be very weak against energy shields.