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How does Cannon hold up in Star Trek. I ask because i found evidence of a BDZ opperation in a book i read. It was in one of the Mirror Universe books written by Shattner. In it the combined Alliance fleet amasses over earth and wipes out all live on Earth. According to the book the operation took 300 Warships 3 days. Is this applicable.

Darth Pounder wrote:How does Cannon hold up in Star Trek. I ask because i found evidence of a BDZ opperation in a book i read. It was in one of the Mirror Universe books written by Shattner. In it the combined Alliance fleet amasses over earth and wipes out all live on Earth. According to the book the operation took 300 Warships 3 days. Is this applicable.

Only the movies and TV shows are canon for Star Trek. But 300 warships needing 3 days to do a BDZ operation on a planet is probably a fairly reasonable number. Pathetic by SW standards but reasonable. Did they say how much of the planetary surface was destroyed?

We get a claim in TOS that one Starship can sterilize a planet in a fairly short time ("Mirror, Mirror).

We also had a claim in DS9 ("Broken Link") that the Defiant could have effectively wiped out the Founder homeworld in a matter of moments. Garak seemed to think that if he could open fire on the planet with all of the Defiant's weapons, he would wipe out the Founders before the nearby Jem'Hadar bug ships could stop him.

Then there's the infamous claim/incident from DS9's "The Die is Cast". This is the only incident in which the intent was known to be as comprehensive as BDZ.

We actually saw a Klingon starship sterilize a planet using biological weapons in a TNG episode ("The Chase").

Star Trek books have zero value

In the book the Klingon Fleet vapourised the oceans and the Cardi fleet took it upon themselves to lay waste to the rainforests. The atmosphere was burned off and while the crust wasn't molten it was a very unhealthy brown. Iowa, where Tiberious was born, was vapourised first. When i get the chance i'll hunt the book outta the loft and get the exact passage.

One of the funny things about Star Trek is how the stated effects of their weapons are often impressive, then the visuals are not, and then stated numbers for firepower by characters is stupidly pathetic (and impossible-total energy in watts? Hello!)

If you want to know how effective their BDZ is, you first have to know how important it is to the plot.

Star Trek BDZ depends on what episode or book you're talking about. There's the example of the destruction of all life on Earth done by 300 ships in three days in the novel. But there is also the example from the DS9 episode, "The Die is Cast" where a fleet of twenty Romulan and Cardassian ships destroys thirty percent of the crust of a planet in around a minute.

Darth Pounder wrote:Iowa, where Tiberious was born, was vapourised first.

Sheesh that's like the US Military using their cruise missles on a remote iraqi sand dune rather than military installations.

Any word on wether or not they hit my high school?

Well they where mostly aiming for the farm where Kirk/Tiberius was born. I did a wee bit of checkign last night. The book was Spectre Of The Past and the combined Alliance fleet was 200 Klingon Warships and 100 Cardasian ships minus what ever the Terran Imperial Fleet took out of them. Best guess is between 100 and 150 warships involved in the BDZ.

Star Trek doesn't have an equivalent to a base delta zero operation. Remember, a BDZ must wipe out any usable resource. Mike used melting the surface as a very conservative estimate, but the required firepower would be orders of magnitude greater because the planet is rendered totally unusable, even to a society as advanced as the one in Star Wars.

Other effects of a BDZ include the atmosphere being blown off (unsurprising), topsoil being atomized, complete devastation of the biosphere, both on land and water and raging firestorms on the planet's surface as long as sixty (I think, feel free to correct me) years after the event.

As far as I know, Star Trek has never indicated weapon firepower even remotely capable of a feat like this. All we saw in TDiC was the beams making ripples in some sort of dense cloud layer, which wouldn't even exist had they actually vaporized 30% of the crust due to the massive heat release.

Needless to say, a firestorm is impossible without an atmosphere.

Star Trek is incapable of producing a BDZ, although it is capable of planetary destruction via destruction of stars and the now-lost Genesis device.

Sea Skimmer wrote:Star Trek books have zero value

Perhaps in a discussion relating to or involving canonicity or canon events, sure, but I daresay they have some value in providing an interesting read, as well as a fresh perspective on the universe from another writer's point of view.

Hell, I daresay a good Star Trek book is worth more than ten times any B&B production.

Howedar wrote:Needless to say, a firestorm is impossible without an atmosphere.

Actually, the gases released by the vaporization and atomization of so much surface material would actually contribute to the formation of a new (extremely uninhabitable) atmosphere over the course of time. I'd imagine it might be something like Venus or primordial Earth. Firestorms and other violent atmospheric activity would not be surprising in a volatile atmosphere like that.

Darth Pounder wrote:Iowa, where Tiberious was born, was vapourised first.

Well, shit. Ain't that just a kick in the Mean Bean Machine...

Darth Pounder wrote:The book was Spectre Of The Past

What the hell? Did it come with "Vision of the Future," too?

Zahn should sue their asses!

Darth Garden Gnome wrote:

Darth Pounder wrote:The book was Spectre Of The Past

What the hell? Did it come with "Vision of the Future," too?

Zahn should sue their asses!

Who even cares? The books are inadmissible as evidence.

Darth Garden Gnome wrote:

Darth Pounder wrote:The book was Spectre Of The Past

What the hell? Did it come with "Vision of the Future," too?

Zahn should sue their asses!

It'd never hold. The phrase 'spectre of the past' is a bit of a cliche, and common knowlage

both on land and water and raging firestorms on the planet's surface as long as sixty (I think, feel free to correct me) years after the event.

Considering how much of the planet's surface would be outright vaporized, how would there concieveably be anything combustable left after a few hours, let alone sixty years?

HappyTarget wrote:

both on land and water and raging firestorms on the planet's surface as long as sixty (I think, feel free to correct me) years after the event.

Considering how much of the planet's surface would be outright vaporized, how would there concieveably be anything combustable left after a few hours, let alone sixty years?

"Firestorms" could describe just about any violent activity on the surface, I suppose.

Darth Garden Gnome wrote:

Darth Pounder wrote:The book was Spectre Of The Past

What the hell? Did it come with "Vision of the Future," too?

Zahn should sue their asses!

First off, it's not 'Spectre of the Past', it's 'Spectre', period.

Second, it was NOT a complete BDZ. It says that it took three days to vaporize the GREAT LAKES, not all of the oceans. It also took three days to burn the rainforests. And after all that, the sequel reveals that there's still breathable atmosphere in Iowa.

Aye that was it iggy, it has Spock with a Romulan Disrupter rifle on the cover.

A single starship should be able to distroy a planet, even in kirks time. The Starfleet Directives include a General Order (16 I think....) that alows *A* starship captain discresion to distroy a planet. 1 captain, not a fleet, so it follows that 1 starship can do it without any help, the rest of the fleet was proboly to fight off the Teren Empire's fleet.

Also the part about earth getting distroyed in the Mirrior universe, is, I belive, cannon. I think it was mentioned in a DS9 epasode.

In "A Taste of Armageddon" Kirk gives General Order 24, which, if I recall correctly, means the Enterprise was to destroy the inhabited surface of Eminiar 7. I don't know if it's possible, but the fact that they could have such an order suggests that it is.

Thats it, General Order 24. It's a real order it's been mentioned in other shows. If he gives the order to distroy the planet then one starship must be able to distroy a planet by itself.

Ajaz50 wrote:Thats it, General Order 24. It's a real order it's been mentioned in other shows. If he gives the order to distroy the planet then one starship must be able to distroy a planet by itself.

Actually, if you watch the episode, Scotty says he's targeting all of the major cities in order to comply with the order, so General Order 24 is obviously a surface destruction attack, and probably not even a comprehensive one. If you had enough firepower to completely melt the surface of the planet or blow it apart, you wouldn't need to bother targeting individual cities.