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There's a thought....the tractor beam is for pulling stuff towards you, it was a plot point in TNG's second episode that it would take weeks of re-wiring to make it repel things.

Eternal_Freedom wrote:There's a thought....the tractor beam is for pulling stuff towards you, it was a plot point in TNG's second episode that it would take weeks of re-wiring to make it repel things.

Seemed to push the Bozeman away well enough, just not fast enough. I think they made the re-wiring permanent.

It pushed them aside...then pulled the Bozeman in to hit the nacelle so it clearly wasn't just pushing.

Borgholio wrote:

Eternal_Freedom wrote:There's a thought....the tractor beam is for pulling stuff towards you, it was a plot point in TNG's second episode that it would take weeks of re-wiring to make it repel things.

Seemed to push the Bozeman away well enough, just not fast enough. I think they made the re-wiring permanent.

True, but Wesley also showed that it was perfectly possible to reverse the force of the tractor beam using just console commands. It wouldn't be much of a surprise for that function to be programmed in for later use. We see the beam used similarly in "The Battle" to stop the Stargazer.

That incident is just weird, anyway. The "temporal anomaly" disables the engines and shields, but the tractor beam (of all things) works normally? What is it about Federation technology that makes random components of the ship fail in any peculiar situation that comes along?

Yes, yes... it's the writers pulling drama out of their nether regions... I know.

Well, we don't know for sure if the Bozeman was affected similarly, and either way IMO the tractor beam overrode whatever the Bozeman crew were doing enough to have caused the collision. It's more likely that without the tractor beam's interference the Bozeman was able to maneuver out of the way on its own, and the depressurization of the shuttlebay was just a reflexive need on the E-D crew's part to do something. Even if it was, in hindsight, something that was pretty much useless.

I wonder how many gold-shirts got flushed out with the atmosphere? Given it was an emergency and all that, and Data had no time to contact anyone before opening the doors

Add that to the list of things a Federation starship should have in emergencies. When impulse and warp reactors are down, basic chemical reaction thrusters to at least move you away from danger.

While I don't think they ever specify whether or not they're chemical, there's several mentions of maneuvering thrusters in Trek, and the E-D definitely has them in 'Booby Trap'.

Batman wrote:While I don't think they ever specify whether or not they're chemical, there's several mentions of maneuvering thrusters in Trek, and the E-D definitely has them in 'Booby Trap'.

Yep, but they never think to use them to just coast slowly out of the area when they sense danger. They wait until the very end after they're about to succumb to radiation poisoning.

In "Booby Trap", you'd think they could have just found the shortest clear path out of the asteroid field early on and not needed to do any maneuvering. It's not like it was that dense.

You would also think that Picard would simply leave a warning buoy rather than blowing up the ship. I'm sure they could have figured out some way to get it.

Yeah that ship was a historical relic. They could have sent in a small towing vessel with minimal power out put, latched on a few cables, and pulled it out.

It's rather silly that the derelict Promellian ship was still there, since they should have been able to escape easily using the same methods we've just given for the Enterprise.