A debate with a friend that could have huge ramifications

[Kamakazie Sith]

Actually, to help Alyeska out, I do have a pretty good idea what he means.

Borg cubes are canonly known to be 28 cubic kilometers in volume, which is over 3 kilometers per side. This is of course based solely upon dialogue stated in STVOY "Dark Frontier".

SFX has sometimes shown cubes fluxuate is size significantly. One example off the top of my head is in BoBW where the Enterpise D's width is almost the same width as the "massive" cube, even though the Enterprise is far in the background. We know the Enterprise D is much smaller than the cube. So far as I know, the size of a Borg cube is not disputed and generally accepted at these dimensions.

Naturally, I easily dismiss these "size comparisons" as simply visual errors.

But I'd still submit that is the exception rather then the rule.

Do you have some screen shots? I'd like to see that......

[Chris OFarrell]

Trying to explain away Dialouge / Visual contradictions by saying 'Oh the people must be WRONG' is something that simply can't work'.

In many (in fact most) of the situations, there could not possibly have been a time cut long enough for the ships to move the said distance. In others, we get a given range (say 10,000 klicks), then we see an external shot of them 10 klicks at best from each other. Then we head back inside and they say they have closed to 8,000 klicks, que another external shot showing them a bit closer....unless the enemy ship is jumping thousands of kilometers forward for a shot to the invisable camera man, jumping back, jumping forward, it simlpy CAN NOT work. It go's against all logic to even CLAIM its a reasnoable answer.

People who say that the crew are simply mistaken also fall into similar catogories of idocy. Would someone like to tell me if their distance numbers are off by ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE how in the hell they are able to plot intercept courses, target weapons with any kind of accuracy, transport people or ANYTHING where distance is a function?

Some examples off the top of my head are Equinox, where multi tens of thousands of kilometers ranges are given and tens of kilometers distances are shown, even after multiple close shots distances are still supposed to be vast. Or Voyager 'The Swarm' where they get super long ranges as they close, intercut with FAR closer shots and repeated long ranges. Or VOY "Hunters" where Seven and Tuvok in a shuttle are being attacked by a Hirogen ship. And we keep intercutting out and in with ranges in the thousands of kilometers and visuals in the singles.

In short, you can't accept them as anything but direct contradictions to dialouge. And so here we are.

[omegaLancer]

I think that the real argument is the intent of the Romulan and Cardassian. Apparently they were not going to destroy the founder home world in manner of the Deathstar. They were going to sterilize the world, insuring that all life was destroy. They were going to BDZ it!

Even if we take in account that the Attacking force was fooled in to thinking that they were inflicting damage on the founder home world, the planners of the attack would have design the mission around known weapon parameter, so a BDZ destruction of a inhabited world using the resources assign would at least in their belief been possible.

In this case it required 20 Capital warships 1 hour (if you consider destroying the crust the same as BDZ) to perform what it take a single ISD. At Best, that saying that the most powerful ship of the Romulan and Cardassian has 1/20 the firepower of an ISD.

This is not taking into account that to perform the destruction of the Founder home world that both the Romulan and Cardassian did not load up on specially design Planet bustering Photon torpedoes, or the fact that the operation of performing only 1/30 of the operation left the fleet drain and unable to defend itself.

Now the real question, was the world that attack really the founder home world, and or how was the effect of Romulan and Cardassian weapons negated, since in at least the minds of the Romulan and Cardassian their weapons should have been able to render the planet uninhabitable. Do the Founder have Planetary shields, were the Weapons on board the Warship jury rig to do little to no damage to the planet ? Or was the Planet itself a decoy?

[PainRack]

Trying to explain away Dialouge / Visual contradictions by saying 'Oh the people must be WRONG' is something that simply can't work'.

In many (in fact most) of the situations, there could not possibly have been a time cut long enough for the ships to move the said distance. In others, we get a given range (say 10,000 klicks), then we see an external shot of them 10 klicks at best from each other. Then we head back inside and they say they have closed to 8,000 klicks, que another external shot showing them a bit closer....unless the enemy ship is jumping thousands of kilometers forward for a shot to the invisable camera man, jumping back, jumping forward, it simlpy CAN NOT work. It go's against all logic to even CLAIM its a reasnoable answer.

People who say that the crew are simply mistaken also fall into similar catogories of idocy. Would someone like to tell me if their distance numbers are off by ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE how in the hell they are able to plot intercept courses, target weapons with any kind of accuracy, transport people or ANYTHING where distance is a function?

Some examples off the top of my head are Equinox, where multi tens of thousands of kilometers ranges are given and tens of kilometers distances are shown, even after multiple close shots distances are still supposed to be vast. Or Voyager 'The Swarm' where they get super long ranges as they close, intercut with FAR closer shots and repeated long ranges. Or VOY "Hunters" where Seven and Tuvok in a shuttle are being attacked by a Hirogen ship. And we keep intercutting out and in with ranges in the thousands of kilometers and visuals in the singles.

In short, you can't accept them as anything but direct contradictions to dialouge. And so here we are.

Then we go into which is more accurate, visuals or dialogue?

E1701 stand is that dialogue will always represent a more accurate picture of the author intention. My rebuttal then was simple. An infinitely more effort is put into visuals than in dialogue, ergo, it stands to reason that the one that has more effort, more time and more money invested in it is more representative of the author representative.

[PainRack]

He then laughed and said, and this is a direct quote, “The yields in Episode II contradict the yields presented in the E2: ICS. Which is higher? The movie. There may have been a reason for the Republic to hold back, but there was no reason for the Separatists to hold back. It’s the same double standard that I’ve seen in many Star Trek versus Star Wars debates.

Show me a single incident where the Seperatists open fire with a turbolaser on the Republic and he might be right.
The only evidence for low turbolaser firepower is the SPHAT, and I addressed this specific issue on SB.

It is my stand, that the belief by many warsies that the SPHAT firepower is larger than a capital ship mounted turbolaser, is based on an errorneous reading of the quote in databank.

I will like to argue that the common assumption that SPHAT turbolasers are more powerful than the Accalamator weapons is not valid.




quote:
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The turbolaser assembly was designed first, and it being the most power-intensive, dictated the design specifications of the walker carriage assembly. The prolonged blast stream of this turbolaser design necessitated a gargantuan reactor core. The cannon's power and support equipment requirements are so robust that it prevented its use aboard large starships.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



databank



The above statements have been used to support the theory that a SPHAT turbolaser is so powerful, that it can't be used onboard large starships. Ignoring the fact that we do see HTLs the size of SPHAT on ISDs, making that statement only mildly valid for ships of that era, the assumption is based on the belief, that the cannon power and support equipment are so power-intensive, so powerful, etc etc etc, that it can't be used onboard large starships.



I believe there is an alternative explaination. We notice that SPHAT turbolaser blasts are of much longer sustained duration than equivalent blasts in the Imperial era. Is it not more probable, that the longer duration of its blasts and more rapid ROF, suggests that its heating requirements and power(not energy) requirements are larger than the ship mounted equivalent?

WEG suggests that the ISD turbolasers rapidly overheat and are inactive 85% of the time, something backed up by the canon ANH novelisation where a replacement of crews and overheated turbolasers were noticed on the Death Star. As such, I will like to suggest that capital grade turbolasers are focused more on firepower as opposed to the longer and faster ROF SPHAT has, and that it is uneconomical for ships to mount reactors that has the power rating for SPHAT, as well as the cooling systems to dissipate heat, especially when tactical doctrine vis a vis capital ships focus more on high firepower, slow recharge and short duration blasts as opposed to the SPHAT faster recharge and longer duration blasts.

[Ghost Rider]

He's full of shit.

Visuals are always the most objective piece of evidence in the Sci-Fi world. If we believe dialogue then the ENT-D can barely do a TeraWatt of power.

No, you are full of shit. There are repeated examples in Trek where visuals contradict the quoted dialogue when it comes to range. This isn't the only example, but the range issue is one of the biggest. When it comes to TDIC, dialogue clearly takes presidence over visuals unless you can come up with a compelling argument.

Amazing that you didn't actually read but instead assumed.

What did I write down?

Visuals are always the most objective piece of evidence in the Sci-Fi world

Unless we're altering the scheme of thought of how one takes the idea of Suspenison of Disbelief wherein everything visually exists and we have to mesh why things happen. Say when someone on Trek explains an additional effect of why such a low yield weapon had a much higher effect...etc.

Amazing how you rewrote what I did to say visuals override dialogue, thanks for the strawman.

[Robert Walper]

Overall, visual evidence is superior to dialogue. The reasons for this are numerous and logical enough to understand for anyone.

That said, visuals are not 100% indisputeable, and can be overruled by dialogue if the dialogue makes more logical sense then the visuals.

As I said, referring to the BoBW example, it's far more logical to assume a Borg cube is if fact a static size, particularily given the nature in which the size was determined(a direct sensor scan read off by a scientist). Going solely by visuals would suggest a cube that shrinks and grows vastly in magnitude, which frankly IMO, is ridiculas.

Another infamous example is the Birg of Prey from ST "The Voyage Home" which fluxuated is size by orders of magnitude.

To sum it up, generally visuals are the superior evidence, but sometimes they can be overruled for the sake of consistency and rationality.

[Ghost Rider]

Overall, visual evidence is superior to dialogue. The reasons for this are numerous and logical enough to understand for anyone.

That said, visuals are not 100% indisputeable, and can be overruled by dialogue if the dialogue makes more logical sense then the visuals.

As I said, referring to the BoBW example, it's far more logical to assume a Borg cube is if fact a static size, particularily given the nature in which the size was determined(a direct sensor scan read off by a scientist). Going solely by visuals would suggest a cube that shrinks and grows vastly in magnitude, which frankly IMO, is ridiculas.

Another infamous example is the Birg of Prey from ST "The Voyage Home" which fluxuated is size by orders of magnitude.

To sum it up, generally visuals are the superior evidence, but sometimes they can be overruled for the sake of consistency and rationality.

And I never said which is superior, I said which is more objective.

Unless you can show me under the thought of Susupension of disbelief that dialogue is a more objective frame of thought, this is still trying to distort my statement.

[Robert Walper]

Overall, visual evidence is superior to dialogue. The reasons for this are numerous and logical enough to understand for anyone.

That said, visuals are not 100% indisputeable, and can be overruled by dialogue if the dialogue makes more logical sense then the visuals.

As I said, referring to the BoBW example, it's far more logical to assume a Borg cube is if fact a static size, particularily given the nature in which the size was determined(a direct sensor scan read off by a scientist). Going solely by visuals would suggest a cube that shrinks and grows vastly in magnitude, which frankly IMO, is ridiculas.

Another infamous example is the Birg of Prey from ST "The Voyage Home" which fluxuated is size by orders of magnitude.

To sum it up, generally visuals are the superior evidence, but sometimes they can be overruled for the sake of consistency and rationality.

And I never said which is superior, I said which is more objective.

Unless you can show me under the thought of Susupension of disbelief that dialogue is a more objective frame of thought, this is still trying to distort my statement.

Since objectivity is the goal of analysis, visual evidence is generally superior relartive to dialogue in that regard. I'm agreeing with you...

[YT300000]

I think that the real argument is the intent of the Romulan and Cardassian. Apparently they were not going to destroy the founder home world in manner of the Deathstar. They were going to sterilize the world, insuring that all life was destroy. They were going to BDZ it!

Even if we take in account that the Attacking force was fooled in to thinking that they were inflicting damage on the founder home world, the planners of the attack would have design the mission around known weapon parameter, so a BDZ destruction of a inhabited world using the resources assign would at least in their belief been possible.

In this case it required 20 Capital warships 1 hour (if you consider destroying the crust the same as BDZ) to perform what it take a single ISD. At Best, that saying that the most powerful ship of the Romulan and Cardassian has 1/20 the firepower of an ISD.

Keep in mind, that an orbital strike far weaker than a BDZ is capable of making a planet uninhabitable.

[Slartibartfast]

He then said that in his debate circle, dialogue is considered to be greater than visuals, especially in Sci-fi debates because visuals can be wrong and because dialogue contains the writer’s intent.

Intent is irrelevant. What counts are results. If the show's production utterly failed to represent the writer's intent, too bad.

And the Writers aren't the ones who determine the capabilities, upper limits, etc, it's the franchise. Roddenberry, the Executives, whoever you want. Writers in Star Trek are a dime a dozen, and everyone wants their own pet "technologies" to be prominent in the show - that's worthless, since they are supposed to OBEY the premise of the show about upper limits, not their own whims.

[Darth Wong]

Their argument is that visuals do not provide useful information, since they apparently do not consider them to be evidence. Visuals are only evidence in their eyes if they support what they already believe to be true from dialogue, which is really just a fancy way of saying that they are not evidence at all (if a piece of evidence must be consistent with other evidence in order to receive consideration, then it is obviously not considered evidence in its own right).

With that in mind, I must ask: do they believe they would have a more accurate picture of Star Trek if they watched the show with a blindfold on?

Also: they keep talking about "writer's intent". Do they not realize that the writer is but one element in the production process, and can be overridden by other personnel down the line including producers, directors, and even actors? Do they realize that they're talking about a TV show, not a TV adaptation of a novel?

[Chris OFarrell]

Then we go into which is more accurate, visuals or dialogue?

E1701 stand is that dialogue will always represent a more accurate picture of the author intention. My rebuttal then was simple. An infinitely more effort is put into visuals than in dialogue, ergo, it stands to reason that the one that has more effort, more time and more money invested in it is more representative of the author representative.

My position (and I know a lot of people disagree with it) is simply that we have to use our brains and take each situation on a case by case basis. A ground rule saying ONE is inherently more accurate then another is clearly stupid.

[omegaLancer]

I think that the real argument is the intent of the Romulan and Cardassian. Apparently they were not going to destroy the founder home world in manner of the Deathstar. They were going to sterilize the world, insuring that all life was destroy. They were going to BDZ it!

Even if we take in account that the Attacking force was fooled in to thinking that they were inflicting damage on the founder home world, the planners of the attack would have design the mission around known weapon parameter, so a BDZ destruction of a inhabited world using the resources assign would at least in their belief been possible.

In this case it required 20 Capital warships 1 hour (if you consider destroying the crust the same as BDZ) to perform what it take a single ISD. At Best, that saying that the most powerful ship of the Romulan and Cardassian has 1/20 the firepower of an ISD.

Keep in mind, that an orbital strike far weaker than a BDZ is capable of making a planet uninhabitable.

Yes but the planners of the attack were not planning an obrital strike. they wanted to leave the founder home world a lifeless husk. They wanted to insure that there was no way that any founder could have survive.

[Sarevok]

Yes but the planners of the attack were not planning an obrital strike. they wanted to leave the founder home world a lifeless husk. They wanted to insure that there was no way that any founder could have survive.

So you are implying that the joint Romulan and Cardassian battlegroup seen in "TDiC" was capable of a Base Delta Zero operation ? Even if this is proven true the average firepower power of trek ships will remain low since it took them an entire fleet to do what a single Imperial Star Destroyer could do.

[Robert Walper]

Then we go into which is more accurate, visuals or dialogue?

E1701 stand is that dialogue will always represent a more accurate picture of the author intention. My rebuttal then was simple. An infinitely more effort is put into visuals than in dialogue, ergo, it stands to reason that the one that has more effort, more time and more money invested in it is more representative of the author representative.

My position (and I know a lot of people disagree with it) is simply that we have to use our brains and take each situation on a case by case basis. A ground rule saying ONE is inherently more accurate then another is clearly stupid.

That generally would be my opinion as well, although visual evidence is simply more objective in the majority of cases.

[Agent Fisher]

probally going to be flamed for this.

It seems to me that Wars fans do hold a LA LA LA I AM NOT LISTENING TO YOUR COUNTER ARGUMENT-kind of view.

[Robert Walper]

probally going to be flamed for this.

It seems to me that Wars fans do hold a LA LA LA I AM NOT LISTENING TO YOUR COUNTER ARGUMENT-kind of view.

Acutally, I find it's more of a problem of them hating Star Trek so much as opposed to their arguements not being decisive. This at times can lead to some really...curious...conclusions and interpretations of evidence.

[Stark]

Given the assumptions made by this board (read the website people), visuals are superior evidence. This board uses a specific approach to the media, one in which people are fallible and events are not (as IRL). This is evident to anyone who's read the site, and is explicitly stated there.

There's no need to have a sharp divide for many issues... borg cubes could indeed be different sizes, the battle ranges probably *are* short, because we've seen their long-range tactical displays, and the TDiC dude didn't say 'vaporise'. I think the more correct conclusion flows from the evidence, and not the other way around.

To make a point, what of the examples in trek and wars where characters are plainly talking through their asses? Harry and his blowing up a small planet, or Solo and his claim that the Empire couldn't destroy a planet... these are both wrong, but if dialogue is a higher level of evidence, then the destruction of Alderaan didn't happen and Voyager can crack planetoids at will.

[TrekWarsie]

I was just wondering, do any of you knpw what the Trek producers consider to be the higher source? If it is dialogue, then Col. Stele's friend may have a point, he just used a fallacy in the way he presented it. If it is indeed visuals, then his whole argument goes down the drain.

[dacis2]

probally going to be flamed for this.

It seems to me that Wars fans do hold a LA LA LA I AM NOT LISTENING TO YOUR COUNTER ARGUMENT-kind of view.

I think this goes both ways, an unbiased observer is mostly required, like in real debates.

[Ghost Rider]

probally going to be flamed for this.

It seems to me that Wars fans do hold a LA LA LA I AM NOT LISTENING TO YOUR COUNTER ARGUMENT-kind of view.

And you mind backing that up other then just going "post count+1"

Literally I could say that for either side, and it's doesn't hold water except for the most extreme cases.

I was just wondering, do any of you knpw what the Trek producers consider to be the higher source? If it is dialogue, then Col. Stele's friend may have a point, he just used a fallacy in the way he presented it. If it is indeed visuals, then his whole argument goes down the drain.

Given we never argue what the Producers think but instead what is canon policy of both companies(if we went by what the producer think should be...why not use novels, and anything that bears each other's names for a free for all), it really doesn't apply.

[Darth Servo]

They weren’t saying, “Uh oh, the sensors say that the crust is destroyed, but the screen says otherwise. Let’s do a diagnostic on the sensors.”

And NO ONE on the bridge in "Survivors" questioned Worf's 400 GW quote that Trekkies insist is far too low.

He says that the their ship’s sensor readings weren’t contradicted by the others. In fact, they were confirmed, as far as the lifeform readings go, but if there was a discrepency in the amount of crust destruction, it would have been stated.

It was stated that they were receiving false sensor readings.

My friend also says that the seeming contradiction isn’t that great, and we also didn’t see all of the ships fire. He also says that Photon torpedoes are DET weapons so that even if disruptor yields can’t be found, the torpedo yields can, and from the torpedo yields we can guess the disruptor yields.

Is there any actual evidence that Roms and cardies use Federation torpedos or something similar?

He then goes on to say that maybe the studio didn’t have the money to make the SFX just as they wanted, or that the SFX guys weren’t physicists so they didn’t know that there should be ejecta from the planet.

This is the biggest load of BS your debating opponent has spewed so far.

1) Every Trek spin-off series is born with a silver spoon in its mouth. Voyager and Enterprize are more than enough proof of this.
2) In the TNG episode "Pen Pals" they show a planet with a highly disrupted surface proving that the FX department DOES know what it should look like and it IS within the budget.
3) Why would a blinding white light be MORE expensive and time consuming than the dullish brown rings that they obviously DID have the time and $$$ to show?
4) If the people who did the new BattleStar Galactica mini-series could tell what megaton range explosions should look like then the (supposedly) scientifically accutate Star Trek should too.
5) Any ignoramous should know what 30% of something should look like. Even a grade school kid can estimate 1/3 of something. Yet we didn't see ANY surface destroyed like we did in "Pen Pals" This is clearly NOT an FX mistake, it was most certainly deliberate.

He says that these are some things to consider and this is why he and his friends view dialogue as higher than the visuals in this case.

The same dialogue writers who think that a black hole can have a crack in its event horizion?
The same dialogue writers who think you can come to a full stop in outer space?
The same dialogue writers who made an order of magnitude goof in a simple spherical area calculation in Relics?
The same dialogue writers who think "evolution" involves transformations in a single organism rather than gradual change from one generation to the next?
The same dialogue writers who think you can achieve "300% efficiency" in TNG's The Masterpiece Society?

[Darth Wong]

My position (and I know a lot of people disagree with it) is simply that we have to use our brains and take each situation on a case by case basis. A ground rule saying ONE is inherently more accurate then another is clearly stupid.

So in real life, you figure that the methods of all the world's historians and scientists are "stupid". Gotcha

[Darth Wong]

Trying to explain away Dialouge / Visual contradictions by saying 'Oh the people must be WRONG' is something that simply can't work'.

Or you are deliberately trying to make it not work.

In many (in fact most) of the situations, there could not possibly have been a time cut long enough for the ships to move the said distance. In others, we get a given range (say 10,000 klicks), then we see an external shot of them 10 klicks at best from each other. Then we head back inside and they say they have closed to 8,000 klicks, que another external shot showing them a bit closer....unless the enemy ship is jumping thousands of kilometers forward for a shot to the invisable camera man, jumping back, jumping forward, it simlpy CAN NOT work. It go's against all logic to even CLAIM its a reasnoable answer.

Care to provide a video clip to demonstrate an example of this happening?

People who say that the crew are simply mistaken also fall into similar catogories of idocy. Would someone like to tell me if their distance numbers are off by ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE how in the hell they are able to plot intercept courses, target weapons with any kind of accuracy, transport people or ANYTHING where distance is a function?

The computer does it for them. They're just reading displays. Real-life people often say "megabyte" when they mean "gigabyte"; it doesn't mean they don't know how to use a computer. Hell, people often don't even bother to correct them.

Some examples off the top of my head are Equinox, where multi tens of thousands of kilometers ranges are given and tens of kilometers distances are shown, even after multiple close shots distances are still supposed to be vast.

And yet, oddly enough, Voyager couldn't fire on Equinox without following it into a planetary atmosphere, even though the atmosphere couldn't be more than a few hundred km thick. Not a good example to use if you want to prove that they were engaging at very long range.

Or Voyager 'The Swarm' where they get super long ranges as they close, intercut with FAR closer shots and repeated long ranges.

Got a clip?

Or VOY "Hunters" where Seven and Tuvok in a shuttle are being attacked by a Hirogen ship. And we keep intercutting out and in with ranges in the thousands of kilometers and visuals in the singles.

Got a clip?

In short, you can't accept them as anything but direct contradictions to dialouge. And so here we are.

Of course they are direct contradictions to dialogue. My problem is your assertion that even when the FX were deliberately made that way, they should be considered a "mistake".