@@chrismsmalley2626 It is a combination of multiple phaser emitter elements to make one stronger beam. That's why the array type phasers were more powerful and more useful than the old style ball turrets you saw on the Enterprise A and Excelsior classes.
One unmentioned use: they can be an emergency power/fuel supply. In the TOS episode "The Galileo 7" Scotty was able to drain the phasers to refuel the shuttlecraft engines.
In TOS type 1 phasers fit into type 2 as this provided an upgrade in power. Common knowledge if the producers of this clip had spent two minutes on google. 🤦♂️
The "transporter phaser" was also used in the DS9 episode Inter Arma Enem Silent Leges to get Sloan off of Romulus while making it appear as if he had been vaporized.
No in Deep Space Nine thay beamed him out at the same time he was vaporized. "ROSS: He was supposed to be beamed away a split second before the phaser beam hit him. Whether it worked or not, I couldn't say."
@@Alexander_Stern1 Or maybe it was something similar? This was done by a very shady coalition between a select few people (both Human and Romulan working together) so who knows how they pulled it off. I doubt Admiral Ross knew exactly how it was all done when he explained it to Bashir. I suppose it is possible the dirsuptor used could have been rigged in such a way as to trigger a transporter and then wait just long enough for a beam to grab Sloan before firing, making what just happened imperceptible to any observer.
@@GSBarlev Not really they hated them even that actors made jokes about them being a stupid idea....How long between shots do you have to wait so it doesnt kill you all of the actors got hit many many times by them that made the 2 kill shot thing being a timed effect. they also hated the way it had to pop up before you could use it, which was why after a while they tried not to use them on the show
Ships Phasers are also more commonly used as 'tools' more than weapons. They can be modulated to provide power to other ships, stop or create storms, vaporize ice on a comet, or even feed space animals.
B'Elanna also used a phaser along with a piece of the Delta Flyer to create a makeshift forcefield when there was a small hull rupture (I'm wanting to say it was something like an EPS part, manifold or something) - Voyager S5, Ep 3 "Extreme Risk"
I think in the first season of TOS they were confused between Phasers and Photon Torpedoes, because the Phasers being fired were actually Photon Torpedoes. The Show took some time to evolve.
In Balance or Terror, a great episode the Phasers fired at Romulans are what became Photons later on. Just took them some time to figure it out.@@TheJadeFist
I read in one Star Trek tech manual that Phasers got their name because they were a "phasing" of Laser tech and Particle Beam tech. The phasing of the two types of tech created a synergistic effect making the Phaser much more powerful than either of other two techs were individually.
Funny, everything has power levels. G.O.D. lasers in 'Babylon 5' could blow away an area as wide as 1,100 miles. It could vaporize Enterprise-E with shields up full power. The energy output is so insane the only defense is total evasion.
I thought the Omega Glory did a great job of highlighting how powerful phasers were. After Captain Tracy came back from the Yang attack he described how they came at them, hundreds if not thousands and despite his killing most of them, the were overrun. While they lost the battle due to sheer numbers, one hand phase decimated that many before they had to retreat.
@@SiXiam thing how would a p person who ever used the weapon know about stun and why would a someone so filled with hate for thier enemy even care. It was practical based on the mindset just vaporize
@@0011peace I guess the best reason to not use vaporize even if you hate your enemy is it uses a lot more power. So you can kill more of your enemy at a lower setting.
The combo of the type one and type two was a promotional product idea for toys. The type one was the control portion. Allowing the settings controls. The type two portion was for all a power pack. This increased range, duration and number of shots.
Another aspect of the stun feature is that the heavy stun setting can be fatal if a prolonged, close range beam is used. In Star Trek 6, Valeris used this to bump off the two crew members she’d convinced to beam aboard Gorkon’s flagship and assassinate the chancellor, so that the Enterprise alarm systems wouldn’t go off, because apparently it’s no big deal to the sensors if someone just fires a phaser on stun aboard the ship.
I remember that one too. But it's cool in real life how it could convert a laser with other technology to possibly do most of what was said. But I think rifle size would be first or maybe on a battleship. At first till we can make it smaller. 😊 just a thought.
In the original Star Wars movie, the stormtrooper incapacitated Leia with a stun setting on his blaster. That sounds like Star Trek's phaser in that the shot stunned her.
@@willvgo2950 Funny you'd say that about the movie in which forensic evidence by General Kenobi concluded the shots were too accurate for Sand People, only Imperial troops were that precise.
And that the stun setting works by causing a nervous system overload. It /hurts so bad it knocks you out/. So getting a phaser stun really, really, REALLY suck, and section 31 probably uses it as a torture technique.
Funny thing about #1: the type 2 “assault phaser” from Final Frontier and Undiscovered Country WAS designed to be more like firearms, as per William Shatner’s desire to make them less dainty looking and more “like a .45” (caliber) pistol. To wit they had “power packs” that were like magazine clips, and the move to check the power was to rack the “Slide” like on a semi-automatic pistol. (There are slight differences between the “assault phasers” made in the first batch, and the replicas made for the next film (as they needed to make a lot more of them.)
Great video and I was getting bugged by how Roddenbury's philosophy of 'I don't want them using 'guns'' wasn't mentioned then bam...it's the number one point. Great stuff, set phasers to 'good job'.
What Rod wanted and what the broadcasters wanted were two different things. He wanted a utopia where problems were solved with science where as a tv show meant to entertain non utopian humans needed conflict, drama, and the occasional explosion to be interesting.
I have a TOS type 2 Phaser prop used on the actual show. It one of my prized Star Trek props right along side my Tea / Coffee cup from TNG that was actually used by Marina Sirtis / Deanna Troi in the show.
Props for mentioning "Making of Star Trek" amazing book that is STILL out of print. Oh, and The Motion Picture showed the transporter a couple times at the beginning, but phasers were never used in that movie. Two Star Trek staples!
Number 11 - Phasers induced temporary amnesia on the user, often making them forget a really, really handy setting they previously used but somehow forgot in the moment. 😂
Tbe crickets plugged into the Type 2 as a means of boosting the cricket's power supply and "handling," I assumed. I can't imagine the crickets having a lot of energy as compared to the Type 2.
I have had a copy of the Star Trek The Next Generation Technical Manual for over 30 years. Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda did an excellent job on that one. They made it sound almost real, while pointing out the technical mistakes in various episodes.
hand phasers in TNG was weird. I remember in one episode they showed that the computer is able to detect and deactivate them at will but that feature was never used again in any other episode even though that would have been a game changer for just about every incident.
@@richardlahan7068 I wasn't referring to the transporter. As for the transporter itself, it can both disable and entirely remove weapons in transport, that's a function demonstrated across series. What I was referring to was something different, an episode where a fake time traveler was steeling equipment from the Enterprise, including a hand phaser. Picard monologues that the computer was able to locate all the stolen equipment when the door to his time travel craft was open, including the phaser and deactivate it. This happens within seconds as the door was only open was several seconds.
According to Riker, you can destroy half a building from the inside with a hand phaser on wide spread and power level 14. Also, said building was a mental health hospital* - it was a strange episode but a good one. But also - you can destroy buildings with phasers. *Without spoiling too much - that's what it's supposed to appear as at least.
Phasers can also be used to make beautiful carvings! Tom Riker, William T. Riker's 'clone' used his phaser to make a stone carving for Deana. I forgot which episode .
Plus, Firearms are quite effective at non-violent deescalation, being that most malcontents and ruffians aren’t looking to get shot during the commission of their crimes.. The prospect of getting shot is quite the crime deterrent for most people.
The 1966 class 1 phaser has limited power settings and limited "battery" life. When you insert it into the class 2 phaser "body" the power settings double and the "battery" life is almost tripled. All of this info is online if TrekCulture would do some research.
The funny thing about phasers disintegrating people by disrupting the bonds in atoms? They are, in effect, miniature "reality bombs", as in the weapon developed by the Daleks in series 4 of Doctor Who. They work the same way
At 0:34 Phaser names and origins.... At the time Star Trek originally came out, "Lasers"we're relatively new and weak. However, "Masers" where a device that gave off radiation and were well known and quite powerful. "Phasers", were originally thought of as a new maser....but more powerful. They were originally photonic masers.... They have since been "retconned"into particle beam weapons....
The only time I've ever heard of "Maser" was from the Godzilla universe, with those vehicular weapons that were deployed against the Gargantuas, Gigan, and Megalon in 3 separate movies.
@@user-roninwolf1981 It was a device in the 50's and 60's that gave off radiation. I never looked up what they were though. I read about this in a Star Trek magazine in the 90's....before the word "retconed" was coined I think....
One thing I loved about Firefly and Battlestar Galactica is that they still used Projectile weapons and Galactic used Nukes. The Crew of Firefly still used Fire arms because that might have been the best technology. I would rather have a .44 Magnum than a phaser because I know that thing is going to blow a hole in someone. As for ship to ship, think of the vast distances in space even in a space battle. In the final scene were Pegasus rescues Galactice, Pegasus come in with all guns blazing, firing large rounds at the base stars and ripping chunks off them. When that did not work they just nuked a Basestar. Even the Enterprise has photon torpedoes, which are just like regular missiles. Any beam of energy dissipates over distance, even lasers.
@@Thornbloom ships don't battle ar q warp usualy adnd at sub light speeds its not that close. no evasive manuvers at warp when bove the speed of light no left or right
You forgot to mention: - Phasers can be Calibrated to produce a Forcefield as seen in Voyager where b'elanna torres uses one to prevent the Delta Flyer from fully rupturing. - Phasers can be used as an alternate power source (A battery)
One other thing. In ST:VI we found out that a phaser at stun setting, if held close to a person (ie right against their head) can kill with out disintegrating the body. Oh and that kitchen, er galley, staff can use them as makeshift barbeque braisesers.
Yeah, which begs the question, how many running fire-fights do they have in the ship's kitchen? How often does it come up that the chefs and porters have to arm up and get amongst it? Why would anyone be in the kitchen if there's a firefight ON THE SHIP?
@STSWB5SG1FAN Yes. The title is 'Galley', the function is 'The Kitchen'. The latter is the generic functional term for a place in a location where food is stored and prepared. Not a great place for a shooting gallery!
@@RealScotticus Not many ye'd hope. But It makes sense for working compartments to have a small arms locker in case of emergency, like if the ship gets boarded or something.
As much as I love the TOS phasers (they’re my number 3 favorite sci-fi weapon, behind the Carnifax from ME, and the Assault Rifle from Halo) the season 1 TNG TV remote- looking phasers ( not the cricket one, the one that looked like a cable remote) look soooo good idk why
This phaser shot 10:10 always bothered me because it implied you could just duck out of the way, when a phaser was shot at you, which is off course ridiculous!
i wonder how many people died in Piece of the Action, from getting hit with a phaser on stun while in a dangerous position like driving a vehicle or working over a stove or grille. That's the real danger of using ship's phasers to stun a while area. it's not selective about it.
Type 1 fitting into Type 2s is how they worked in TOS, the Type 2 was just a frame and the type 1 powered it. Fitting a Type 1 to a 2 makes it as you said more combat oriented, and also makes the phaser more powerful.
1:36 No red shirts died it's a disposal tube, ejection chute, very similar to a trash tube. But its dispose of objects by ejecting them into space. Also in Star Trek Enterprise season 4 Unite. They set a Phase pistol to overload. 8:20 yeah Captain Kirk mentioned type 1 phases were less powerful than type 2 phases & sometimes ordered people to take type 1 Phasers if they needed to be concealed more. 8:49 I know it's not a Phaser but lower decks also had a medical rifle. Number three disruptors I think some can be set to stun. Number two she says wide beams and phasers sweeps. But the screen says wide beams and Phaser beams.
On TOS, a type 2 phaser does not include an energizer circuit and uses a type 1 phaser as an energizer to initiate the reaction that generates nadion particles.
Disruptors can also be set to stun, the Romulans do it all the time (Geordi mentions it twice in TNG), and its noted in Commader Korgs history that he only has used it a handfull of times.
Near the end she said starfleet using phasers in a stun setting is a nonviolent way to end a conflict. Just because you don't die does not mean getting shot is non-violent.
One thing I didn't know (I'm not versed in the tech manual). Surprised they didn't switch a common one out for the ability for phasers to generate forcefields.
#6 reminded me of a great drinking game that my buddy Johnny taught me. Anytime they use science words & then explain it with a simple analogy, you drink... for the entire time they're explaining things : D Almost as good as the Simpsons drinking game...
I expected a mention of the time in TNG when somebody drew a picture on some metal with a phaser. I think it was a picture of a waterfall for Beverly Crusher. Not many people would expect that use.
one thing you didnt mention i recall them saying in DS9 and other series, was the recharge, which tells me not all hand held phasers needed power packs batteries to make them work so long as they had the time it took them to recharge, now its possible those components needed replacing after a short time but i would have liked to have heard more about it sadly you didnt even mention it
Definitely seems bizarre to default to the narrow beam mode and miss constantly when you can just wide beam the entire room/area and accomplish your goal of hijacking that ship, protecting the away team from onslaught, breaking your buddy out of prison, etc. But way less fun to watch, I suppose.
It always seemed like the range was much more limited on the wide-beam setting. Unless you were in a limited space, probably more reliable to use the narrow beam.
"Laser" stands for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation." I thought I remembered in either The Making of Star Trek (which was referenced in the vid) or The World of Star Trek, it was said "Phaser" stood for "photon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation." But I suppose I might be remembering it wrong...
I don't know what its canonicity status is, but John M. Ford's Trek novel "The Final Reflection" has a brief description about the disruptors on a Klingon ship functioning by rapidly suppressing and restoring the molecular bonds of its target, which would explain why they don't have a 'stun' setting, and that the shipboard disruptors were sometimes referred to as 'The Sound of Destruction'. In a nod to the limitations of automated translations, there is a briefing scene where Krenn is reporting on the sale of weapons to another race, noting that the weapons are all just cheap sonics, but that the Federation translator devices render all "vird'dakaasei" (presumaly, 'names of weapons', although it's not explained in the book) as 'disruptor', regardless of their actual mode of operation, implying that it allows them to get away with selling cheaper and less powerful weapons.
I remember seeing somewhere that phasers are also auto-targetting, or have a targeting assist mode. Plus, phasers can be deactivated when on a ship. In "A Matter of Time," when Berlinghoff Rasmussen (Matt Frewer) opens the door of the time ship, all the tech he stole is bricked. Also, I read somewhere that phasers have some sort of location sensing, so that unless properly overridden, when aboard a starship, the phaser's setting is limited to heavy stun. Now, why they didn't make the phasers user imprint specific is a bit of a quandary. That way, if on an away mission, some hostile takes your phaser it would not operate. I guess lots of the less than safe uses of phasers can be chalked up to "it's more fun TV."
I have been wondering for a long time that nobody ever try to aim a phaser, nor there’s anything on it that seems to help you aim. Everyone always point it like a TV remote, sometimes the beam even came out from the phaser at an angle, which I’m not sure should I think of it as a special effect limitation or did it actually “pitch”. Also, how does a phaser do auto targeting? AI? Well it might be relatively easy to auto target the closest being around where it was pointed at, but what about the countless times when someone pointed it at inanimate objects? TBH this bother me much more than anything mentioned in this video!
I also like your idea that phasers should have some kind of “user permission” safety. I vaguely remember in TNG, a guest to the Enterprise fell onto a control console and thought they triggered something accidentally, responsible for something bad happened. Then someone explained to them that all control consoles recognise who’s touching it and only authorised officers could use them anyway. I thought that was very clever, and now it’s almost close to possible in the real world too (touch screens with under screen finger print sensor across the whole screen?). Now, a finger print sensor on every buttons on a phaser is surely possible, even in this real world.
That was "Hero Worship," where a young boy aboard his parent's ship that is in distress inside a "black cluster" and being violently buffeted about, falls against a console when the ship is coincidentally severely damaged. The boy mistakenly thinks his contact with the console caused the damage. @@lokon1979
And in the 80s and 90s when the beams were rotoscoped in, the shooting angles were all off. The actor wasn't pointing the prop at the right target, so the beam was crazily angled to hit the target in a straight line. I remember that being so annoying ;)
I remember the scene in TOS "A piece of the action", where one of the mob thugs, picked up a cricket phaser, (not knowing, what it was) looked right down the barrel, and accidentally vaporized himself.
I think Worf refereed to that shoulder mounted weapon in Insurrection as an, "Isomagnetic Disintegrator" or something to that effect. So that one wasn't a phaser.
fun fact: on star trek online (the pc and console mmo, in which the odyssey class was created btw) the 'phaser strips' are called 'phaser beam arrays', which i myself prefer, sounds better
Hi there, your stuff about phasers is very funny. What I want to know is more important. What about these miraculous gimmicks in the sickbay: the transcutaneous syringes, the medical tricorders, the fabulous LED-light for body scan. And most important: the allrounder of medication: inoprovaline. My question: have they changed over the, episodes years and series? May be a video worth! 😇
I love it how the stun setting "just works"(tm) despite the vastly different tolerance levels or reaction levels between humans, which can vary not only from person to person but from moment to moment, so let alone alien species... so yeah, if those "non lethal" stun guns they use today have a high potential to kill, a stun phaser is almost certain to. I wouldn't call it a stun setting, it's more of a legal setting, just as those stun guns of today. "Thy police officer is innocent, he did not know, they told him it's a stun gun, non lethal, he's definitely not a murderer, you may go..."
If I'm not mistaken, O'Brien did something similar to that in Empok Nor to disable Garak. he even admitted that killing him was actually his intention. Not that he wasn't pleased that he survived once he returned to normal but he did pose a serious threat.
My headcannon always was that disruptors and phasers are based on the same technological idea. The difference is just that disruptors disrupt molecules while phasrs rectify them.
My biggest problem with phasers is that they are so powerful over a tiny area that they should initiate localised fusion reactions in whatever they hit. Maybe I'm just over thinking this!
I mean, if we're going to go for full realism; every handheld directed energy weapon in Star Trek would either incinerate the user up to their shoulder at the very least, and/or lethally irradiate everyone in the room. But then, this is why we call the genre, science *fiction* lol.
In a similar vein, the Warp Core of the Enterprise D was at one point stated to be capable of outputting 12.75 billion Gigawatts of power. For comparision, the real world total in 2021 was about 20 Terawatts. Pretty damn impressive for something the size of two semi trucks
@@TwinPeaksIndustries the largest Nuclear plant is 8GW and 1 billion GW is 1 sexawatt or 1000 terawatts so 12.75 sexawatt so nearly 2000 more than the 2021 . But if the output increases steadily to 23 it would be about 24TW
I like how while showing #7 Power Levels, it showhe Borg have Personal Shields in The Next Generation. Thats something I havent seen in most future series. Instead of the Borg usually just stop "selling" that theyve been hit. No longer having Personal Shields is something that I think led to the decline of the Borg from nearly invincible to just a nano-virus that can be solved with various anti-virus solutions.
Keep in mind phasers are spacer tech, not some crude industrial-era energy projector. If anything phasers are underpowered the thing should be an autonomous weapon platform that unerringly judges what is and isn't a threat to its owner. While we are at it add interwoven armor and integrated muscle fibers to the redshirt uniforms
I knew most of these and while I certainly like trick, I am definitely not a walking trek encyclopedia, so I would say you guys are kind of dropping the ball because many of the things on the list are actually common knowledge.
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6:48...Will ALWAYS be my favorite Star Trek effect. Love it when the Enterprise phasers power up along the track & fire👍
Right?? I don't know who conceived of that effect, but I want it to be real someday!
It’s my favorite special effect from the TNG series!
Very " Deathstar " of them to do a combined laser to make a stronger beam.?
@@chrismsmalley2626 It is a combination of multiple phaser emitter elements to make one stronger beam. That's why the array type phasers were more powerful and more useful than the old style ball turrets you saw on the Enterprise A and Excelsior classes.
One unmentioned use: they can be an emergency power/fuel supply. In the TOS episode "The Galileo 7" Scotty was able to drain the phasers to refuel the shuttlecraft engines.
They dealt with that when they showed how Danar used it to power the transporter in TNG
Yeah, it's funny when they show it without mentioning it.
Kind of did mention it by saying Phaser can power things.
In TOS type 1 phasers fit into type 2 as this provided an upgrade in power. Common knowledge if the producers of this clip had spent two minutes on google. 🤦♂️
Thing is this video was craftily titled things you didn't know. Since you knew those things they didn't have to be included. Catch 22.
The "transporter phaser" was also used in the DS9 episode Inter Arma Enem Silent Leges to get Sloan off of Romulus while making it appear as if he had been vaporized.
Was it? I was under the impression that Sloan was beamed away at the precise moment he was shot (with a Disruptor, no less) by some third party.
in Gambit part 1 or 2. the phasers were set up to beam people and artifacts away. i wrote the comment before i watched the video...so nevermind.
No in Deep Space Nine thay beamed him out at the same time he was vaporized.
"ROSS: He was supposed to be beamed away a split second before the phaser beam hit him. Whether it worked or not, I couldn't say."
@@Alexander_Stern1 Or maybe it was something similar? This was done by a very shady coalition between a select few people (both Human and Romulan working together) so who knows how they pulled it off. I doubt Admiral Ross knew exactly how it was all done when he explained it to Bashir. I suppose it is possible the dirsuptor used could have been rigged in such a way as to trigger a transporter and then wait just long enough for a beam to grab Sloan before firing, making what just happened imperceptible to any observer.
Basically, phasers are a magical weapon that does whatever the script calls for at the moment.
I loved how directly _Stargate_ lampshaded this with the _Zat'nik'tel:_
- One pulse to stun
- Two to kill
- Three to vaporize
I was just about to mention Zat’nik’tels, but someone beat me to it!
Phasers are wands
@@GSBarlev Not really they hated them even that actors made jokes about them being a stupid idea....How long between shots do you have to wait so it doesnt kill you all of the actors got hit many many times by them that made the 2 kill shot thing being a timed effect. they also hated the way it had to pop up before you could use it, which was why after a while they tried not to use them on the show
Like a sonic screwdriver, but less sonic
Ships Phasers are also more commonly used as 'tools' more than weapons. They can be modulated to provide power to other ships, stop or create storms, vaporize ice on a comet, or even feed space animals.
also used them to drill holes a few times
And make ice cream sundaes.
Fold laundry, very useful.
B'Elanna also used a phaser along with a piece of the Delta Flyer to create a makeshift forcefield when there was a small hull rupture (I'm wanting to say it was something like an EPS part, manifold or something) - Voyager S5, Ep 3 "Extreme Risk"
I think in the first season of TOS they were confused between Phasers and Photon Torpedoes, because the Phasers being fired were actually Photon Torpedoes. The Show took some time to evolve.
Ya, I remember as a kid, seeing them fire beams and torpedoes even when Kirk told them to do the opposite and laughing at bad it was.
In Balance or Terror, a great episode the Phasers fired at Romulans are what became Photons later on. Just took them some time to figure it out.@@TheJadeFist
I read in one Star Trek tech manual that Phasers got their name because they were a "phasing" of Laser tech and Particle Beam tech. The phasing of the two types of tech created a synergistic effect making the Phaser much more powerful than either of other two techs were individually.
PHASed Energy Rectification
=
PHASER
Worf: "They are pointing 𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙚𝙧𝙨 at us!?!"
Riker: "Lasers? They won't even penetrate our navigation shields."
Funny, everything has power levels. G.O.D. lasers in 'Babylon 5' could blow away an area as wide as 1,100 miles. It could vaporize Enterprise-E with shields up full power. The energy output is so insane the only defense is total evasion.
Phasers are better, because we know how superior Photons are to mere light.
A SWVSST classic.
@@PocketBrainWas that a thing from early Next Generation weirdness? because phasers don't use photons for causing damage.
Was that from "Conundrum"? Dialog like that from that episode is what came to my mind.
I thought the Omega Glory did a great job of highlighting how powerful phasers were. After Captain Tracy came back from the Yang attack he described how they came at them, hundreds if not thousands and despite his killing most of them, the were overrun. While they lost the battle due to sheer numbers, one hand phase decimated that many before they had to retreat.
He could have used the Wide beam stun setting, and not massacred all those people needlessly.
@@colinleat8309 He sure could have but he did not.
@@rscottdjr Written by Gene Roddenberry also for the people that always say he was totally pushing for no violence and war.
@@SiXiam thing how would a p person who ever used the weapon know about stun and why would a someone so filled with hate for thier enemy even care. It was practical based on the mindset just vaporize
@@0011peace I guess the best reason to not use vaporize even if you hate your enemy is it uses a lot more power. So you can kill more of your enemy at a lower setting.
The combo of the type one and type two was a promotional product idea for toys. The type one was the control portion. Allowing the settings controls. The type two portion was for all a power pack. This increased range, duration and number of shots.
The grip of a type two was also a swappable power cell.
Another aspect of the stun feature is that the heavy stun setting can be fatal if a prolonged, close range beam is used. In Star Trek 6, Valeris used this to bump off the two crew members she’d convinced to beam aboard Gorkon’s flagship and assassinate the chancellor, so that the Enterprise alarm systems wouldn’t go off, because apparently it’s no big deal to the sensors if someone just fires a phaser on stun aboard the ship.
Did anyone else know or at least partially know most of this list?😅
The biggest surprise was a ships stun setting.
i even knew of the stun setting, in effect, a ships phaser is just as capable as the hand held versions, its just bigger and potentially more powerful
I remember that one too. But it's cool in real life how it could convert a laser with other technology to possibly do most of what was said. But I think rifle size would be first or maybe on a battleship. At first till we can make it smaller. 😊 just a thought.
Now for polaron, disruptor, plasma, antiproton, and tetryon weapons....also, for my personal favorite, the Cardassian spiral wave disruptors.
:P
In the original Star Wars movie, the stormtrooper incapacitated Leia with a stun setting on his blaster. That sounds like Star Trek's phaser in that the shot stunned her.
Apparently, it is weakened to a non'-lethal level if you make the discharge disperse wide enough that even a stormtrooper could hit a target.
@@willvgo2950 Funny you'd say that about the movie in which forensic evidence by General Kenobi concluded the shots were too accurate for Sand People, only Imperial troops were that precise.
"[Phasers have been used to] hunt for food..." Shows clip of phaser utterly vaporizing an animal
You didn't even mention the "stun setting at point blank range" as was used in Star Trek VI... which is apparently lethal.
And that the stun setting works by causing a nervous system overload. It /hurts so bad it knocks you out/. So getting a phaser stun really, really, REALLY suck, and section 31 probably uses it as a torture technique.
I love this video on the Sonic Screwdriver!
Funny thing about #1: the type 2 “assault phaser” from Final Frontier and Undiscovered Country WAS designed to be more like firearms, as per William Shatner’s desire to make them less dainty looking and more “like a .45” (caliber) pistol. To wit they had “power packs” that were like magazine clips, and the move to check the power was to rack the “Slide” like on a semi-automatic pistol. (There are slight differences between the “assault phasers” made in the first batch, and the replicas made for the next film (as they needed to make a lot more of them.)
“It’s not a Phaser. It’s a … It’s a little light bulb that blinks.” 😂
If only real life weapons were that harmless and shootIng was just something you did in a videogame to laugh with your friends.
@@MLBlue30 same are ever hear of blo dart also ga gins cna an be non lethal
Great video and I was getting bugged by how Roddenbury's philosophy of 'I don't want them using 'guns'' wasn't mentioned then bam...it's the number one point. Great stuff, set phasers to 'good job'.
When I was a kid, the phaser was the one thing from the show that I wanted more than anything. Funny we got mobile communicators instead.
What Rod wanted and what the broadcasters wanted were two different things. He wanted a utopia where problems were solved with science where as a tv show meant to entertain non utopian humans needed conflict, drama, and the occasional explosion to be interesting.
I have a TOS type 2 Phaser prop used on the actual show. It one of my prized Star Trek props right along side my Tea / Coffee cup from TNG that was actually used by Marina Sirtis / Deanna Troi in the show.
Props for mentioning "Making of Star Trek" amazing book that is STILL out of print. Oh, and The Motion Picture showed the transporter a couple times at the beginning, but phasers were never used in that movie. Two Star Trek staples!
10 things i already knew about phasers...
Number 11 - Phasers induced temporary amnesia on the user, often making them forget a really, really handy setting they previously used but somehow forgot in the moment. 😂
Wow I had forgotten how hot Ro was lol.
Tbe crickets plugged into the Type 2 as a means of boosting the cricket's power supply and "handling," I assumed. I can't imagine the crickets having a lot of energy as compared to the Type 2.
Also the TOS crickets did not have a dilithium focusing crystal that would boost the power.
@akihitokoizumi2474 I was today years old (almost 54) when I learned about the focusing crystal on the type 2. Thank you.
You can play TAG with those transporter phasers 😁
I have had a copy of the Star Trek The Next Generation Technical Manual for over 30 years. Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda did an excellent job on that one. They made it sound almost real, while pointing out the technical mistakes in various episodes.
hand phasers in TNG was weird. I remember in one episode they showed that the computer is able to detect and deactivate them at will but that feature was never used again in any other episode even though that would have been a game changer for just about every incident.
Probably why it got dummied out.
The transporter only deactivates "illicit" weapons in transport.
@@richardlahan7068 I wasn't referring to the transporter. As for the transporter itself, it can both disable and entirely remove weapons in transport, that's a function demonstrated across series.
What I was referring to was something different, an episode where a fake time traveler was steeling equipment from the Enterprise, including a hand phaser. Picard monologues that the computer was able to locate all the stolen equipment when the door to his time travel craft was open, including the phaser and deactivate it. This happens within seconds as the door was only open was several seconds.
@@richardlahan7068 The TNG episode with the time traveler was season 5, episode 9, A matter of time.
@@MacTX Oh. OK!
According to Riker, you can destroy half a building from the inside with a hand phaser on wide spread and power level 14. Also, said building was a mental health hospital* - it was a strange episode but a good one. But also - you can destroy buildings with phasers.
*Without spoiling too much - that's what it's supposed to appear as at least.
10 things we supposedly didn't know about phasers, then proceeds to explain all the common stuff that has happened in multiple episodes. WTF?
Came here to say this
I love phasers, but yeah, bottom line is: Whatever the plot line requries from them, they do.
even bigger oplot hole wa transporters only added before CGI to save budget on shuttle mock ups every week
The double red alert explanation was helpful. 😂
Phasers can also be used to make beautiful carvings! Tom Riker, William T. Riker's 'clone' used his phaser to make a stone carving for Deana. I forgot which episode .
Pretty sure a phaser set to stun is still using force on someone else, hence violence. It’d be more accurate to say non-lethal than non-violent.
Smiliar to a blow dart
Plus, Firearms are quite effective at non-violent deescalation, being that most malcontents and ruffians aren’t looking to get shot during the commission of their crimes..
The prospect of getting shot is quite the crime deterrent for most people.
The 1966 class 1 phaser has limited power settings and limited "battery" life. When you insert it into the class 2 phaser "body" the power settings double and the "battery" life is almost tripled. All of this info is online if TrekCulture would do some research.
The funny thing about phasers disintegrating people by disrupting the bonds in atoms? They are, in effect, miniature "reality bombs", as in the weapon developed by the Daleks in series 4 of Doctor Who. They work the same way
At 0:34
Phaser names and origins....
At the time Star Trek originally came out, "Lasers"we're relatively new and weak. However, "Masers" where a device that gave off radiation and were well known and quite powerful. "Phasers", were originally thought of as a new maser....but more powerful. They were originally photonic masers....
They have since been "retconned"into particle beam weapons....
The only time I've ever heard of "Maser" was from the Godzilla universe, with those vehicular weapons that were deployed against the Gargantuas, Gigan, and Megalon in 3 separate movies.
@@user-roninwolf1981
It was a device in the 50's and 60's that gave off radiation. I never looked up what they were though.
I read about this in a Star Trek magazine in the 90's....before the word "retconed" was coined I think....
I do love that the Babylon 5 typeface (Serpentine Medium) was used for this vid!
One thing I loved about Firefly and Battlestar Galactica is that they still used Projectile weapons and Galactic used Nukes. The Crew of Firefly still used Fire arms because that might have been the best technology. I would rather have a .44 Magnum than a phaser because I know that thing is going to blow a hole in someone. As for ship to ship, think of the vast distances in space even in a space battle. In the final scene were Pegasus rescues Galactice, Pegasus come in with all guns blazing, firing large rounds at the base stars and ripping chunks off them. When that did not work they just nuked a Basestar. Even the Enterprise has photon torpedoes, which are just like regular missiles. Any beam of energy dissipates over distance, even lasers.
This is why I always roll my eyes at hard sci-fi insisting that space combat is gonna happen at distances of light-seconds.
@@Thornbloom I think the BSG reboot had some of the best space battles. I love when Adama says "Fire everything, and then start throwing rocks."
@@Thornbloom ships don't battle ar q warp usualy adnd at sub light speeds its not that close. no evasive manuvers at warp when bove the speed of light no left or right
Oh how I'd love to have a functioning phaser....
You forgot to mention:
- Phasers can be Calibrated to produce a Forcefield as seen in Voyager where b'elanna torres uses one to prevent the Delta Flyer from fully rupturing.
- Phasers can be used as an alternate power source (A battery)
One other thing. In ST:VI we found out that a phaser at stun setting, if held close to a person (ie right against their head) can kill with out disintegrating the body.
Oh and that kitchen, er galley, staff can use them as makeshift barbeque braisesers.
Yeah, which begs the question, how many running fire-fights do they have in the ship's kitchen? How often does it come up that the chefs and porters have to arm up and get amongst it? Why would anyone be in the kitchen if there's a firefight ON THE SHIP?
@@RealScotticus It's called the galley.
@STSWB5SG1FAN Yes. The title is 'Galley', the function is 'The Kitchen'. The latter is the generic functional term for a place in a location where food is stored and prepared. Not a great place for a shooting gallery!
@@RealScotticus Not many ye'd hope. But It makes sense for working compartments to have a small arms locker in case of emergency, like if the ship gets boarded or something.
@@PreceptorGrant In the same way _Voyager_ had a small arms locker in Engineering.
As much as I love the TOS phasers (they’re my number 3 favorite sci-fi weapon, behind the Carnifax from ME, and the Assault Rifle from Halo) the season 1 TNG TV remote- looking phasers ( not the cricket one, the one that looked like a cable remote) look soooo good idk why
the disruptors had totally cool, badass sound effects.
This phaser shot 10:10 always bothered me because it implied you could just duck out of the way, when a phaser was shot at you, which is off course ridiculous!
Great coverage of what phasers are capable of.
i wonder how many people died in Piece of the Action, from getting hit with a phaser on stun while in a dangerous position like driving a vehicle or working over a stove or grille. That's the real danger of using ship's phasers to stun a while area. it's not selective about it.
The Varon-T disruptor from the "STTNG episode The Most Toys" That was scary!
A hand phaser was one of the many Star Trek toys I had from the TNG line.
Type 1 fitting into Type 2s is how they worked in TOS, the Type 2 was just a frame and the type 1 powered it. Fitting a Type 1 to a 2 makes it as you said more combat oriented, and also makes the phaser more powerful.
1:36 No red shirts died it's a disposal tube, ejection chute, very similar to a trash tube. But its dispose of objects by ejecting them into space. Also in Star Trek Enterprise season 4 Unite.
They set a Phase pistol to overload. 8:20 yeah Captain Kirk mentioned type 1 phases were less powerful than type 2 phases & sometimes ordered people to take type 1 Phasers if they needed to be concealed more. 8:49 I know it's not a Phaser but lower decks also had a medical rifle. Number three disruptors I think some can be set to stun. Number two she says wide beams and phasers sweeps. But the screen says wide beams and Phaser beams.
On TOS, a type 2 phaser does not include an energizer circuit and uses a type 1 phaser as an energizer to initiate the reaction that generates nadion particles.
I knew basically all of this but I still loved the video :3
What about the portable photon torpedo launcher from Elite Force?? Yes torpedoes but man that thing was sweet!
I remember when they were called "ray guns".....
Disruptors can also be set to stun, the Romulans do it all the time (Geordi mentions it twice in TNG), and its noted in Commader Korgs history that he only has used it a handfull of times.
the Type II phaser is my favorite ❤
In TNG, they are phaser "arrays" not strips. And really not an improvement of the previous phaser banks as far as firing arcs
Near the end she said starfleet using phasers in a stun setting is a nonviolent way to end a conflict. Just because you don't die does not mean getting shot is non-violent.
I assume they meant non-lethal
Unexpected compliment, that i know all this and more
One thing I didn't know (I'm not versed in the tech manual). Surprised they didn't switch a common one out for the ability for phasers to generate forcefields.
Encounter at Farpoint: feeding energy to the lifeform that was being used as a station
#6 reminded me of a great drinking game that my buddy Johnny taught me. Anytime they use science words & then explain it with a simple analogy, you drink... for the entire time they're explaining things : D
Almost as good as the Simpsons drinking game...
I expected a mention of the time in TNG when somebody drew a picture on some metal with a phaser. I think it was a picture of a waterfall for Beverly Crusher. Not many people would expect that use.
one thing you didnt mention i recall them saying in DS9 and other series, was the recharge, which tells me not all hand held phasers needed power packs batteries to make them work so long as they had the time it took them to recharge, now its possible those components needed replacing after a short time but i would have liked to have heard more about it sadly you didnt even mention it
Definitely seems bizarre to default to the narrow beam mode and miss constantly when you can just wide beam the entire room/area and accomplish your goal of hijacking that ship, protecting the away team from onslaught, breaking your buddy out of prison, etc. But way less fun to watch, I suppose.
It always seemed like the range was much more limited on the wide-beam setting. Unless you were in a limited space, probably more reliable to use the narrow beam.
Not really as the wide range hits more people and the tighter the beam the stronger. Jusrt a laser is strong than a flash light
"Laser" stands for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation." I thought I remembered in either The Making of Star Trek (which was referenced in the vid) or The World of Star Trek, it was said "Phaser" stood for "photon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation." But I suppose I might be remembering it wrong...
I don't know what its canonicity status is, but John M. Ford's Trek novel "The Final Reflection" has a brief description about the disruptors on a Klingon ship functioning by rapidly suppressing and restoring the molecular bonds of its target, which would explain why they don't have a 'stun' setting, and that the shipboard disruptors were sometimes referred to as 'The Sound of Destruction'.
In a nod to the limitations of automated translations, there is a briefing scene where Krenn is reporting on the sale of weapons to another race, noting that the weapons are all just cheap sonics, but that the Federation translator devices render all "vird'dakaasei" (presumaly, 'names of weapons', although it's not explained in the book) as 'disruptor', regardless of their actual mode of operation, implying that it allows them to get away with selling cheaper and less powerful weapons.
Phaser is also a siren tone on some emergency vehicle siren systems
They had some sort of phaser grenade launcher in the TOS episode with the Gorn.
Phasers are boxes that you stomp on to make your guitar go "whoosh"
I remember seeing somewhere that phasers are also auto-targetting, or have a targeting assist mode. Plus, phasers can be deactivated when on a ship. In "A Matter of Time," when Berlinghoff Rasmussen (Matt Frewer) opens the door of the time ship, all the tech he stole is bricked. Also, I read somewhere that phasers have some sort of location sensing, so that unless properly overridden, when aboard a starship, the phaser's setting is limited to heavy stun. Now, why they didn't make the phasers user imprint specific is a bit of a quandary. That way, if on an away mission, some hostile takes your phaser it would not operate. I guess lots of the less than safe uses of phasers can be chalked up to "it's more fun TV."
I have been wondering for a long time that nobody ever try to aim a phaser, nor there’s anything on it that seems to help you aim. Everyone always point it like a TV remote, sometimes the beam even came out from the phaser at an angle, which I’m not sure should I think of it as a special effect limitation or did it actually “pitch”. Also, how does a phaser do auto targeting? AI? Well it might be relatively easy to auto target the closest being around where it was pointed at, but what about the countless times when someone pointed it at inanimate objects? TBH this bother me much more than anything mentioned in this video!
I also like your idea that phasers should have some kind of “user permission” safety. I vaguely remember in TNG, a guest to the Enterprise fell onto a control console and thought they triggered something accidentally, responsible for something bad happened. Then someone explained to them that all control consoles recognise who’s touching it and only authorised officers could use them anyway. I thought that was very clever, and now it’s almost close to possible in the real world too (touch screens with under screen finger print sensor across the whole screen?). Now, a finger print sensor on every buttons on a phaser is surely possible, even in this real world.
That was "Hero Worship," where a young boy aboard his parent's ship that is in distress inside a "black cluster" and being violently buffeted about, falls against a console when the ship is coincidentally severely damaged. The boy mistakenly thinks his contact with the console caused the damage. @@lokon1979
Great video 👍👍👍
3:48 The Romulan disruptor that was used to fake Sloan’s death in Deep Space 9 could’ve been configured in the same way.
The phaser is a gun and a taser combined into one handy little device.
And in the 80s and 90s when the beams were rotoscoped in, the shooting angles were all off. The actor wasn't pointing the prop at the right target, so the beam was crazily angled to hit the target in a straight line. I remember that being so annoying ;)
I knew about all these things
I remember the scene in TOS "A piece of the action", where one of the mob thugs, picked up a cricket phaser, (not knowing, what it was) looked right down the barrel, and accidentally vaporized himself.
Worfs "shoulder cannon" was a tetryon pulse launcher. So exactly what it looked like. A Trekyfied RPG.
I think Worf refereed to that shoulder mounted weapon in Insurrection as an, "Isomagnetic Disintegrator" or something to that effect. So that one wasn't a phaser.
and then Worf fires a purple space bazooka
fun fact: on star trek online (the pc and console mmo, in which the odyssey class was created btw) the 'phaser strips' are called 'phaser beam arrays', which i myself prefer, sounds better
One of the Klingon names for their disruptors literally means "the shake-it-until-it-falls-apart weapon."
Hi there, your stuff about phasers is very funny. What I want to know is more important. What about these miraculous gimmicks in the sickbay: the transcutaneous syringes, the medical tricorders, the fabulous LED-light for body scan. And most important: the allrounder of medication: inoprovaline. My question: have they changed over the, episodes years and series?
May be a video worth! 😇
No mention in this video about phasers in general, what powers the handheld & rifle-type phasers, whether power cells, or power packs,.. etc.
I'm surprised you didn't mention when Ro Laren made a phaser overload in Ten Forward.
Even showed a clip from that episode.
@@TheCorpsehatch time stamp?
@@Vicki_Benji 9:09 From that episode where Ro and Geordi were phase shifted.
@@TheCorpsehatch thank you! I thought they would have put that part at the beginning.
That was a Romulan disruptor.
I love it how the stun setting "just works"(tm) despite the vastly different tolerance levels or reaction levels between humans, which can vary not only from person to person but from moment to moment, so let alone alien species... so yeah, if those "non lethal" stun guns they use today have a high potential to kill, a stun phaser is almost certain to. I wouldn't call it a stun setting, it's more of a legal setting, just as those stun guns of today. "Thy police officer is innocent, he did not know, they told him it's a stun gun, non lethal, he's definitely not a murderer, you may go..."
I don't think I'm a trekking but I dod know 9 of those phaser tricks already
Photon Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. That's what we thought it meant back when TOS first came out.
Didn't Tuvok also use a phaser overload to kill the holographic Seska when she took over his training holo deck program?
If I'm not mistaken, O'Brien did something similar to that in Empok Nor to disable Garak. he even admitted that killing him was actually his intention. Not that he wasn't pleased that he survived once he returned to normal but he did pose a serious threat.
My headcannon always was that disruptors and phasers are based on the same technological idea. The difference is just that disruptors disrupt molecules while phasrs rectify them.
I kinda thought the same thing to a degree. Both disrupt molecules, it's just how they do it exactly, is what makes them differ slightly.
My biggest problem with phasers is that they are so powerful over a tiny area that they should initiate localised fusion reactions in whatever they hit.
Maybe I'm just over thinking this!
I mean, if we're going to go for full realism; every handheld directed energy weapon in Star Trek would either incinerate the user up to their shoulder at the very least, and/or lethally irradiate everyone in the room. But then, this is why we call the genre, science *fiction* lol.
We like to overanalyze, it's what we do when we're Science minded Trek fans. 🤘😁🖖🇨🇦
In a similar vein, the Warp Core of the Enterprise D was at one point stated to be capable of outputting 12.75 billion Gigawatts of power. For comparision, the real world total in 2021 was about 20 Terawatts. Pretty damn impressive for something the size of two semi trucks
@@colinleat8309 Absolutely! 😄
@@TwinPeaksIndustries the largest Nuclear plant is 8GW and 1 billion GW is 1 sexawatt or 1000 terawatts so 12.75 sexawatt so nearly 2000 more than the 2021 . But if the output increases steadily to 23 it would be about 24TW
I like how while showing #7 Power Levels, it showhe Borg have Personal Shields in The Next Generation. Thats something I havent seen in most future series. Instead of the Borg usually just stop "selling" that theyve been hit.
No longer having Personal Shields is something that I think led to the decline of the Borg from nearly invincible to just a nano-virus that can be solved with various anti-virus solutions.
Keep in mind phasers are spacer tech, not some crude industrial-era energy projector. If anything phasers are underpowered the thing should be an autonomous weapon platform that unerringly judges what is and isn't a threat to its owner. While we are at it add interwoven armor and integrated muscle fibers to the redshirt uniforms
I knew most of these and while I certainly like trick, I am definitely not a walking trek encyclopedia, so I would say you guys are kind of dropping the ball because many of the things on the list are actually common knowledge.
Well I’m a Trek nerd and knew all this still, a good watch
@8:50 'Lower decks' is canon. If it is in lower decks, it is in startrek.
When phasers are set on stun thats amazing. Thats interesting about phasers electro magnetic energy & beams.