Tech and Culture Info from Nemesis (Large Spoilers)

[Cej4096]

Given the nature of this site, it seems like it would be a good idea to start a general thread collecting information on the technology and other interesting aspects seen in ST:X.

1. Right at the beginning of the film, the majority of the Romulan Senate is assinated, when a Romulan commander apparently brings in, and then later leaves, a device which delivers lethal radiation. This seems an odd lack of security, especially considering they recently finished a war against shapeshifters. After the device begins emitting radiation, the senators merely sit and watch it, and don't even call for security until it stops.

2. The radiation mentioned above is stated to destroy everything biological at the subatomic level. It is said that a microscopic amount of this magic radiation could kill everyone on the Enterprise. A ship mounted version of the emitter was said to be able to destroy all life on a planet, but takes seven minutes to prepare to do so. It is never used against any shielded target.

3. Throughout the movie it is obvious that Picard believes that a significant, and possibly the most important thing in determining who someone becomes, is genetics. It seems also that he might think are either good or bad from birth.

4. Janeway is now an Admiral... I thinks that pretty much speaks for itself.

5. At one point during the final battle, the bridge hull breachs where the main view screen is. It takes many seconds for a force field to activate. It seemes like it may have actually been manually activated as one person looked like they may have been struggling to reach a control.

6. After battle with the Enterprise and two Romulan Warbirds, and disabling the warbirds, the "Uber-Ship" Scimatar still has shields at 70 percent. It is then rammed by a incredibly slow moving Enterprise, which slams through its shields like they aren't there.

7. When preparing to ram, Picard orders all power to the engines, even taking it from life support. A console then indicates that this is full impulse. Enterprise then starts to accelerate very slowly. It is however badly damaged at the time so this isn't the best source to use for speed.

8. Data had a protype personal transporter, about the size of a comm-badge. It is capable of transporting a person. It seems to be an independant device, not dependant on the ship's transporters, since when it was used the Enterprise's transporters were down. It is never said where Data got it or why he had it.

That is most of the major info that I can remember right now, but I'm sure there is lot else. Please add anything you you feel is important from the film.


P.S. This is my first post here, so be kind.

[Master of Ossus]

Excellent post. I would add that the capabilities of the dune buggy were not particularly impressive, though the phaser mounted in the rear demonstrated considerably more firepower than I expected.

[Uraniun235]

Given the nature of this site, it seems like it would be a good idea to start a general thread collecting information on the technology and other interesting aspects seen in ST:X.

1. Right at the beginning of the film, the majority of the Romulan Senate is assinated, when a Romulan commander apparently brings in, and then later leaves, a device which delivers lethal radiation. This seems an odd lack of security, especially considering they recently finished a war against shapeshifters. After the device begins emitting radiation, the senators merely sit and watch it, and don't even call for security until it stops.

2. The radiation mentioned above is stated to destroy everything biological at the subatomic level. It is said that a microscopic amount of this magic radiation could kill everyone on the Enterprise. A ship mounted version of the emitter was said to be able to destroy all life on a planet, but takes seven minutes to prepare to do so. It is never used against any shielded target.

3. Throughout the movie it is obvious that Picard believes that a significant, and possibly the most important thing in determining who someone becomes, is genetics. It seems also that he might think are either good or bad from birth.

4. Janeway is now an Admiral... I thinks that pretty much speaks for itself.

5. At one point during the final battle, the bridge hull breachs where the main view screen is. It takes many seconds for a force field to activate. It seemes like it may have actually been manually activated as one person looked like they may have been struggling to reach a control.

6. After battle with the Enterprise and two Romulan Warbirds, and disabling the warbirds, the "Uber-Ship" Scimatar still has shields at 70 percent. It is then rammed by a incredibly slow moving Enterprise, which slams through its shields like they aren't there.

7. When preparing to ram, Picard orders all power to the engines, even taking it from life support. A console then indicates that this is full impulse. Enterprise then starts to accelerate very slowly. It is however badly damaged at the time so this isn't the best source to use for speed.

8. Data had a protype personal transporter, about the size of a comm-badge. It is capable of transporting a person. It seems to be an independant device, not dependant on the ship's transporters, since when it was used the Enterprise's transporters were down. It is never said where Data got it or why he had it.

That is most of the major info that I can remember right now, but I'm sure there is lot else. Please add anything you you feel is important from the film.


P.S. This is my first post here, so be kind.

1) It is possible that the device was manufactured to be similar to a device for keeping a record of the Senate meetings. It is also possible that the commander had collaborators within Security, and that the Remans were able to simply construct a device that defeated all of Security's detection technology.

4) There are two possibilities:
This is Public Relations at work.

You have a captain popular with the public. The public only knows that a ship thought lost for years has returned from the other side of the galaxy, led by said captain. Starfleet Command knows the truth through the captain's logs and reports, and desperately wants her out of the captain's chair. You can't fire her; the public would be angered. So promote her, put her behind a desk.

Or, there's deeper implications.

Captain Janeway has been falsifying reports and logs. What Starfleet Command sees is not the full truth and they are unaware of her incompetence.

6) The Enterprise-D massed, IIRC, 4.5 million metric tons. That's a lot of mass, and even at a relatively slow speed it will still be a formidable force. Of course, it didn't even look like the Scimitar's shields responded to the ram... make of that what you will.

7) This only indicates that the E-E was so badly damaged that it lumbered forward like it did; it was shown to be much more agile earlier in the movie, as well as in other movies.

8.) Good. I for one am glad we do not have to hear a briefing on how they've aquired each new gadget they got. Incidentally, I don't know who's responsible, but I really like the tighter feel of this movie.

[Ender]

1) Where's that old thread in the STvsSW forum that dealt with abunch of stuff from the script; could be good for here.

2) On the ramming bit: I would take that as evidence of their shields being optomized to reflect energy, and a reliance on SIF against kinetic attacks. So the shields literally werenmt there as far as the ship was concerned, explaining away the problem.

[Kamakazie Sith]

8. Data had a protype personal transporter, about the size of a comm-badge. It is capable of transporting a person. It seems to be an independant device, not dependant on the ship's transporters, since when it was used the Enterprise's transporters were down. It is never said where Data got it or why he had it.

Data said that it was a prototype and he received it from LaForge. Data took it with him so the Captain would have a way of the Scimitar.

[Dark Primus]

8. Data had a protype personal transporter, about the size of a comm-badge. It is capable of transporting a person. It seems to be an independant device, not dependant on the ship's transporters, since when it was used the Enterprise's transporters were down. It is never said where Data got it or why he had it.

Data said that it was a prototype and he received it from LaForge. Data took it with him so the Captain would have a way of the Scimitar.

They have already shown personal transporters before all the way back to TNG "BOBW"

[Chris OFarrell]

Given the nature of this site, it seems like it would be a good idea to start a general thread collecting information on the technology and other interesting aspects seen in ST:X.

1. Right at the beginning of the film, the majority of the Romulan Senate is assinated, when a Romulan commander apparently brings in, and then later leaves, a device which delivers lethal radiation. This seems an odd lack of security, especially considering they recently finished a war against shapeshifters. After the device begins emitting radiation, the senators merely sit and watch it, and don't even call for security until it stops.

Remember this was a coup that was done with the knowledge and approval of large parts of the military and security forces in full knowledge. Its not hard to speculate that they simply controled the security and were able to get it in OR knew how to get around it OR knew how to make the device in question look utterly harmless to a scan or inspection.

2. The radiation mentioned above is stated to destroy everything biological at the subatomic level. It is said that a microscopic amount of this magic radiation could kill everyone on the Enterprise. A ship mounted version of the emitter was said to be able to destroy all life on a planet, but takes seven minutes to prepare to do so. It is never used against any shielded target.

All true as far as I have heard.

3. Throughout the movie it is obvious that Picard believes that a significant, and possibly the most important thing in determining who someone becomes, is genetics. It seems also that he might think are either good or bad from birth.

I havn't seen the movie so I can't realy comment but from what I heard, I think it was simply mostly an effort to turn the guy away from his course saying 'I am you, look what you can be, you don't have to be what you are!'

4. Janeway is now an Admiral... I thinks that pretty much speaks for itself.

Well from what I see, she appears to very much be a desk jocky. The most logical explenation is the ancient but true idea of promoting someone into a position where they can do no harm. Consider. Janeways blunders and decisions are almost certianly highly clasified, the public does not know of them. They see her after seven years finaly getting home against all odds, blowing a Borg ships away to boot. After the Dominion war, they suddenly have a hero the Federation needs. Starfleet is terrified at say giving her the latest Starfleet hot ship out of Utopia, the President would be rather annoyed to learn they are at war with the Cardasians, Romulans, Dominion and Klingons all within twelve hours...

So they give her a big promotion....where she does absoloutly nothing but apparently pases on orders. Perhaps she works in the science department, she is a scientist and apparently not a bad one, even if a pathetic Captian. The public are happy, Starfleet command is happy and Janeway is too stupid to realise what happened.

5. At one point during the final battle, the bridge hull breachs where the main view screen is. It takes many seconds for a force field to activate. It seemes like it may have actually been manually activated as one person looked like they may have been struggling to reach a control.

Probably a lack of power or result of the battle damage. In "Year Of Hell", the forcefield on the Bridge of the Voyager activated instantly when her forward bulkhead was ripped away. Given that he E-E had very little power left, its possible it simply took a while for the computer to seal the breach. Or given that the autodestruct was offiline, the computer was damaged to an extent that a manual control HAD to be activated as suggested.

6. After battle with the Enterprise and two Romulan Warbirds, and disabling the warbirds, the "Uber-Ship" Scimatar still has shields at 70 percent. It is then rammed by a incredibly slow moving Enterprise, which slams through its shields like they aren't there.

Unless I am mistaken, they were not there. Shiron lowered his shields expecting Picard to beam over, instead Picard rams him good. Further, the ship was heavily damaged, without enough power for even a single phaser strike left (given that in ST9 the impulse engines alone can power shields and phasers, this realy speaks of how little power they had left in the engines) and as such, the ship was moving quite slowly (the E-E was sure as hell moving much faster earlier in the battle from what I saw). And IIRC that sceen might have been played in slow motion to a large degree.

7. When preparing to ram, Picard orders all power to the engines, even taking it from life support. A console then indicates that this is full impulse. Enterprise then starts to accelerate very slowly. It is however badly damaged at the time so this isn't the best source to use for speed.

See above.

8. Data had a protype personal transporter, about the size of a comm-badge. It is capable of transporting a person. It seems to be an independant device, not dependant on the ship's transporters, since when it was used the Enterprise's transporters were down. It is never said where Data got it or why he had it.

It doesn't HAVE to be explained away :p Too much backstory is anoying. Bloody impresive tech though, a full scale transporter no bigger then a Comm Badge. Even if its only a single use device, its very cool.

[Chris OFarrell]

8. Data had a protype personal transporter, about the size of a comm-badge. It is capable of transporting a person. It seems to be an independant device, not dependant on the ship's transporters, since when it was used the Enterprise's transporters were down. It is never said where Data got it or why he had it.

Data said that it was a prototype and he received it from LaForge. Data took it with him so the Captain would have a way of the Scimitar.

They have already shown personal transporters before all the way back to TNG "BOBW"

No, BOBW had them using the shuttles transporter, but using the armbands to send a single strong enough to cut through the Borg jamming or something for it to lock onto.

[Dark Primus]

No, BOBW had them using the shuttles transporter, but using the armbands to send a single strong enough to cut through the Borg jamming or something for it to lock onto.

My misstake.

[seanrobertson]

Given the nature of this site, it seems like it would be a good idea to start a general thread collecting information on the technology and other interesting aspects seen in ST:X.

Indeed, and welcome. I'll just tack my own notes onto this.

1. Right at the beginning of the film, the majority of the Romulan Senate is assinated, when a Romulan commander apparently brings in, and then later leaves, a device which delivers lethal radiation. This seems an odd lack of security, especially considering they recently finished a war against shapeshifters. After the device begins emitting radiation, the senators merely sit and watch it, and don't even call for security until it stops.

It was actually a Romulan senator that left the device in the Senate,
I think (not that such really makes any difference).

Still, as was said in "Legacy," security can usually "afford"
being lax at the very heart of your defenses, where no
one expects an attack (let alone from a fellow senator).
Shapeshifter detection would do no good in this case;
evidently, neither would ordinary scanners (like one that might
pick up a gatling gun under a senator's robe ). The radiation
attack was a pretty good way to slip under the covers,
even if the senate's reaction was somewhat dull.

2. The radiation mentioned above is stated to destroy everything biological at the subatomic level. It is said that a microscopic amount of this magic radiation could kill everyone on the Enterprise. A ship mounted version of the emitter was said to be able to destroy all life on a planet, but takes seven minutes to prepare to do so. It is never used against any shielded target.

Correct, which as some have said indicates:

1--Earth has no "planetary" style shields; at best, no planet-wide
shields that could be raised in seven minutes (IOW, *no*
such shields...they're never THAT slow to be raised, even
to full power.)

2--A ship even with Scimitar's firepower, comparable to
a Sovereign and two Romulan warships at least, can't
blow away a planetary population in seven minutes or less.
Otherwise, the radiation gun would be utterly pointless.

This sets a firm upper-limit on the abilities of three big, honking
Alpha Quadrant ships' firepower vs. a planet. By extension,
one ship can't do the job in over 20 minutes, and so on.
Nothing we didn't already know but it's interesting.

3. Throughout the movie it is obvious that Picard believes that a significant, and possibly the most important thing in determining who someone becomes, is genetics. It seems also that he might think are either good or bad from birth.

Hmm...that might be a bit of a stretch. KIM the context; i.e., his
curiousity about Shinzon in general.

4. Janeway is now an Admiral... I thinks that pretty much speaks for itself.

As much as I hate her, and as I understand what you're saying,
as far as Starfleet is concerned, she made a 70 year trip in
a tenth of that time, successfully fought the Borg, made lots
of first contacts, and so on...not an unreasonable basis for
a promotion.

5. At one point during the final battle, the bridge hull breachs where the main view screen is. It takes many seconds for a force field to activate. It seemes like it may have actually been manually activated as one person looked like they may have been struggling to reach a control.

Yep. As others have said, the ship was very low on power at that
point, though. Under normal circumstances forcefields do seem
to operate at least semi-autonomously ("Year of Hell").

6. After battle with the Enterprise and two Romulan Warbirds, and disabling the warbirds, the "Uber-Ship" Scimatar still has shields at 70 percent. It is then rammed by a incredibly slow moving Enterprise, which slams through its shields like they aren't there.

For full impulse, that WAS the slowest-ass looking approach I've
ever seen. I don't know that Scimitar *did* have shields
up at that point, though...they certainly had time to raise them,
as Shinzon had time to yell, "Hard to port!", but there were no
shield effects visible.

My guess is that the E-E's full impulse was so slow because, again,
they were struggling to maintain power; as I think Chris pointed
out, they couldn't even fire a fractional phaser burst. Earlier,
undamaged, the ships were zipping around with much better
acceleration, so the damage/low power thing probably fits.

It still doesn't explain or address the damage done to the
Reman ship, though.

7. When preparing to ram, Picard orders all power to the engines, even taking it from life support. A console then indicates that this is full impulse. Enterprise then starts to accelerate very slowly. It is however badly damaged at the time so this isn't the best source to use for speed.

Agreed. Earlier, she was moving at a better clip, though I don't
think we saw anything in excess of 1 km/sec.

A few other notes:

1--E-E does fire quantum torpedoes, but only from her specialized
fwd. launcher. She also seems to expend her inventory very
quickly, though lots of torpedoes were wasted by gaping
misses and, no doubt, offscreen use.

2--The new Romulan Warbirds are much wider than the D'Deridex,
but they're not much longer than the E-E if at all. My first thought
was that the Valdore and her sister ship might be light
cruisers, not truly replacement battleships. However, why would
Donatra take two weaker ships to oppose the Scimitar?!
So I guess the LC idea goes out the window.

3--E-E takes a lot more punishment than the new Romulan ships,
indicating that the Sovereign has improved upon the
TNG-era GCS's defensive specifications markedly.

BUT...

This conclusion may be skewed by the fact that Shinzon wasn't
trying to kill the E-E outright. Based on the total no. of disruptor
hits on the E-E vs. Warbirds, I think it's actually a decent observation...
but were the individual shots of the same calibre?

4--E-E's shields withstand an impact from a Warbird's wing.
Velocity, possible volume and then, mass, anyone?

To my knowledge, that's the biggest physical impact that
a Starfleet ship has survived, especially after damage. (Hopefully
no one will take this out of context and start going on about
ISDs and asteroids...just for starters, I seriously doubt the
ST:N impact approached 500 terajoules!)

Purely for a Starfleet ship, though, I thought it was
pretty impressive.

5--Shinzon's Warbird was faster than the E-E, and could
travel from Romulus to Earth in two DAYS. That doesn't
bode very well for the size of the Romulan fleet, as I recall
a discussion with Ossus from months ago...(oy!). Either
the two ships in question are ridiculously fast beyond
standard Romulan ships, or...

6--The Scimitar carried "Scorpion-class assault
craft," two-man shuttles with a dinky disruptor. These
apparently didn't have the firepower to threaten Fed
or Romulan capships.

7--E-E's transporters can beam something the size of
the Reman shuttle.

8--Reman tractor beams are very, VERY slow.

9--Federation sensors and targetting computers are...odd.
In spite of Shinzon's "perfect cloak," you could SEE the
shots from his ship as they were fired through the cloak.
Why couldn't the E-E's computers work with THAT?! At
least in Trek VI, Chang's BoP wasn't a huge target to track...

10--We see hull plating being put on the E-E at the very
end and get a pretty good look at the ship's superstructure.
Plates aren't very thick. But then we knew they could only
be of a certain size thanks to--ta-da!--windows and perspective.

11--The old tactic of slamming the breaks to let your enemy
fly over you worked for the film well enough, but why haven't
starship COs caught onto this? I *know* it's been done before...

12--Reman disruptors can't blast through a door very quickly, though
they can be used to fuse the door shut.

13--The semblance between Scimitar and Dominion cruisers
is uncanny. Shinzon fought 12 engagements in the DW and
supposedly built the Scimitar in secret...could she at least
partly be the result of Dominion technology?

14--Pulsed-fire beam weapons are heavily favored over
sustained shots, from the E-E, Reman, and Romulan ships.

15--Romulan (or Reman ships at least) are moving toward
lots of individual weapons emplacements, though
they STILL seem to only focus most fire in the fwd.
arc.

[Mad]

Further, the ship was heavily damaged, without enough power for even a single phaser strike left (given that in ST9 the impulse engines alone can power shields and phasers, this realy speaks of how little power they had left in the engines) and as such, the ship was moving quite slowly (the E-E was sure as hell moving much faster earlier in the battle from what I saw).

I don't recall any mentioning of severe damage to engines or power that would drastically cripple the E-E's speed. The E-E still had phaser power left. The phasers were nearly dry from prolonged usage, but they had 4% phaser power left, and Picard wanted to fire it all in one final continuous shot instead of multiple final shots. But the Scimitar had 70% shields left, so it wouldn't have done anything.

And IIRC that sceen might have been played in slow motion to a large degree.

Given the reaction and dialog of those onboard the Scimitar, it wasn't in slow-motion. The healthy Scimitar couldn't dodge, either. They had time to bring their 70% shields at least partially back up if they wanted (assuming they were even down).

And then, after the collision, with enough power to activate their superweapon and probably fire weapons (the weapons were offline, but nothing was said about not having enough power), the Scimitar's "full reverse" was slow, too.

[Mad]

12--Reman disruptors can't blast through a door very quickly, though they can be used to fuse the door shut.

I was thinking that stormtroopers would've gotten through the door while watching how these guys couldn't.

Picard's phaser rifle took out the door to the Reman bridge later in the film, though, possibly making Federation phaser rifles much more powerful than the Reman weapons. (Depends on how reinforced the hangar bay doors were compared to the bridge door.)

[Typhonis 1]

Hmmm this concentrion on the forward arc makes sense when you can cloak and hide our movements from an enemy .It allows you to set up your shots with impunoity specially if you can fire while cloaked

[Ender]

2--The new Romulan Warbirds are much wider than the D'Deridex,
but they're not much longer than the E-E if at all. My first thought
was that the Valdore and her sister ship might be light
cruisers, not truly replacement battleships. However, why would
Donatra take two weaker ships to oppose the Scimitar?!
So I guess the LC idea goes out the window.

Speed. He had to get there as fast as possible, and a LC is typically faster then a battleship. So they could be LCs if you consider that he could have made the choice for speed.

[Master of Ossus]

12--Reman disruptors can't blast through a door very quickly, though they can be used to fuse the door shut.

I was thinking that stormtroopers would've gotten through the door while watching how these guys couldn't.

Picard's phaser rifle took out the door to the Reman bridge later in the film, though, possibly making Federation phaser rifles much more powerful than the Reman weapons. (Depends on how reinforced the hangar bay doors were compared to the bridge door.)

Possible but unlikely. Remember that the door the Remans were trying to blast through with their weapons was a blast door to a hangar. The door Picard destroyed using his phaser rifle was a simple, ordinary door to the bridge.

[Kamakazie Sith]

8. Data had a protype personal transporter, about the size of a comm-badge. It is capable of transporting a person. It seems to be an independant device, not dependant on the ship's transporters, since when it was used the Enterprise's transporters were down. It is never said where Data got it or why he had it.

Data said that it was a prototype and he received it from LaForge. Data took it with him so the Captain would have a way of the Scimitar.

They have already shown personal transporters before all the way back to TNG "BOBW"

Not personal transporters the size of a quarter.

[Anarchist Bunny]

My current theory on why the Sci's shields didn't stop the E-E's ramming attack was that it's secondary shields were at 70% and the primary shields were out, and that the secondary shield are only ment to protect the ship from the burst of energy that get through the shields while the shields are still up, but not designed to protect from physical attack that would be stoped by the primary shield.

[DocMoriartty]

The Romulans have an entire slave race working for them a fact that has never bothered the Federation and in fact is of such minor significance that Spock completely ignores it while attempting to reunite Romulans and Vulcans.

[Durandal]

Possible but unlikely. Remember that the door the Remans were trying to blast through with their weapons was a blast door to a hangar. The door Picard destroyed using his phaser rifle was a simple, ordinary door to the bridge.

And besides, the majority of times we see phasers hit walls or doors, there's a shower of sparks, but no observable damage to the actual structure. Not even a scortch, in some cases.