Star Trek 10 Things You Didn't Know About Phasers
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00:00Phasers have been a staple of Star Trek since the original series. They may look
00:05similar to typical laser weapons seen in a lot of sci-fi, but they're actually
00:09much more powerful and complicated. Starting with archaic lasers, Starfleet
00:14weapons evolved into early phase pistols and phase cannons in the 22nd century,
00:19which led to the standard handheld and ship-mounted phasers that we've seen
00:23since. If you ignore the laser weapons that Pike's crew used in the first
00:27pilot, though, you can argue that laser was just used at this time as an
00:32anachronism for phaser, similar to calling them guns. These devices have
00:38been made in many different varieties and have several interesting features
00:41that rarely come up in the franchise. Here, we're going to look at some of the
00:45most outstanding facts about phaser technology and learn everything we can
00:50about Starfleet's main weapon along the way. With all that being said, I'm Brie
00:54from Trek Culture, and here are 10 things that you didn't know about phasers.
00:59Number 10, phaser overloads. Phasers require a huge amount of energy to
01:06function, and if one is configured to release all of its stored energy at once,
01:10it will overload, emitting a high-pitched noise and exploding violently. Someone
01:15attempted to assassinate Captain Kirk by hiding a phaser set to overload in his
01:19cabin in the episode, The Conscience of the King. Upon hearing the distinctive
01:23sound, Kirk began ordering an evacuation of the whole deck and calling for a
01:28double red alert, which is like twice as bad as a normal red alert. Kirk was
01:33eventually able to find the overloading phaser and proceeded to drop it in a
01:37waste chute in the corridor, likely murdering several unfortunate redshirts
01:40in lower decks. Later in the episode, That Which Survives, Kirk's phaser had its
01:46overload triggered while in his hand, forcing him to throw it away like a
01:49grenade. An overloading phaser even showed up in the Next Generation episode,
01:53The Hunted, where a man named Roga Donar tried to use them as bombs aboard the
01:58Enterprise-D. Number 9, phasers as survival tools. Starfleet hand phasers
02:04have many uses as survival tools. Of course, stranded officers could use them
02:09to hunt for food, but they could also be used to heat up rocks, as Wesley did in
02:13the episode, Final Mission, to keep himself and Captain Picard warm, as well
02:18as several other examples. If the phaser was turned up to a higher setting, it
02:22could completely vaporize the rock, allowing officers to drill themselves
02:26out of a cave if the entrance is collapsed. They could also be used in
02:30more unique survival situations. In Discovery's first episode, Captain
02:34Georgiou used a phaser to reopen a well, letting the water flow again. La Forge
02:39used one to melt silver ore into climbing equipment in the Next Generation
02:43episode, The Enemy, to get himself out of a pit. Aside from their use as tools,
02:48Starfleet hand phasers got their energy from small power cells, which could be
02:52used to power communications equipment and other machines. Number 8,
02:57transporter phasers. In the final episode of Star Trek Picard, The Last Generation,
03:02Seven and Rafi's team came up with a new phaser modification. They were able to
03:07retake the bridge of the Titan A by connecting their phasers to the
03:11transporter systems. Anyone who was shot was sent to the transporter buffer. A
03:15standard gun setting probably wouldn't have worked well on these drones, so that
03:19was a great way to incapacitate their assimilated crew members without harming
03:23them. After retaking the bridge, Seven joked that they may have just invented
03:27the portable beam me up, but this actually wasn't the first time we've
03:31seen something like this in Star Trek. In the Next Generation episode, Gambit,
03:35Picard was captured by mercenaries who shot him with a transporter connected
03:39phaser to make it appear as though he was vaporized. The crew of the Enterprise
03:44all mourned his death before discovering that he was actually still alive. Number
03:497, power levels. Hand phaser power levels range from a light zap, enough to clean
03:55graffiti off of ships walls or cause slight skin irritation, all the way up to
04:00total vaporization. In between the two extremes, phasers could also burn targets,
04:04but more interestingly, the famous stun setting allows users to harmlessly
04:09incapacitate most species when in combat. A phaser would need to be modulated
04:14carefully to a very specific frequency depending on the mission's requirements.
04:18For example, in the DS9 episode, Homefront, they found a frequency that was low
04:23enough to cause no permanent harm, but high enough to force a changeling to
04:27revert to their liquid form. Many may not know that starship phasers can actually
04:32be set to stun as well, allowing a ship to stun an entire city in one blast.
04:37However, we've only seen this in action once in the original series episode,
04:41A Piece of the Action. Number 6, the science of phasers. The exact way phasers work has
04:48only been explained on screen through sparse references to beam intensity,
04:53nadion particles, and other confusing technobabble, but the Star Trek Next
04:58Generation Technical Manual from 1991 went into a bit more detail. According to
05:04the reference book, the term phaser was short for phased energy rectification,
05:08and a phaser beam was generated by a complicated interaction between plasma
05:13and superconducted lithium copper that would cause a so-called rapid nadion
05:17effect, dissolving the strong nuclear force in the plasma. From there, a stream
05:23of energy would then be fired in pulses through a special superconducting
05:26crystal in the emitter. The intensity and frequency of these pulses would
05:30determine the effect of the blast, from heating to disintegration. All of this is
05:35consistent with what we've seen on screen, apart from the fact that phasers
05:39are generally referred to as particle beam weapons, which fire fictional rapid
05:44nadion particles rather than a beam of electromagnetic energy. People have gone
05:49into a lot of work trying to describe the way phasers function, but the way
05:53they originated was much less scientific. In The Cage, the first Star Trek pilot
05:58featuring Captain Pike's crew, Starfleet used laser weapons. These were changed to
06:03phasers two days into filming the second pilot, and in the reference book The
06:07Making of Star Trek, released in 1968, Gene Roddenberry explained that the
06:12reason was that he knew people would be yelling lasers can't do that at their
06:15screens whenever the weapons were used for fantastical things like stunning
06:19people or vaporizing targets without damage to the surrounding area. By
06:24creating an entirely fictional technology, they were able to avoid
06:27scientific inaccuracies by just making it all up. Number five, ship phaser
06:33variants. In The Next Generation, we got to see a new evolution of the starship
06:38phasers in the form of phaser strips. Phaser strips are long lines of large
06:43numbers of phaser emitters that run all across a ship's hull. Energy would travel
06:48along these lines and converge on the best possible spot for targeting. A
06:53galaxy-class ship like the Enterprise D came equipped with 12 separate phaser
06:57strips, allowing them to fire in almost any direction. We don't know when exactly
07:02Starfleet switched from primarily using phaser banks like those on Kirk's
07:07Enterprise to phaser strips like in The Next Generation, but the earliest ship
07:12we've seen with phaser strips is the Ambassador-class Enterprise C from the
07:16year 2344, which we saw in The Next Generation episode Yesterday's
07:21Enterprise. Some ships, such as the Defiant, came equipped with pulse phaser
07:25cannons which rapidly fired concentrated bursts, as opposed to the steady beams of
07:30particles that shoot from standard phaser arrays. Number four, handheld phaser
07:35variants. Handheld Starfleet phasers can generally be classified into three main
07:41types. Type 1 phasers are the smallest variants resembling remote controls and
07:46are referred to as cricket phasers in the Trek community. Type 2 phasers, on the
07:51other hand, more closely resemble the design of a pistol, and type 3s were more
07:56like rifles in appearance. Different phaser types have different power levels
08:00and firing modes, but all were capable of both stunning and disintegrating targets.
08:05In addition, all types could fire either a steady beam or concentrated blasts. The
08:11TV remote design of the type 1s reinforces the idea that these devices
08:16are tools as well as weapons, and the type 2s are apparently more combat
08:21focused, explaining the gun-like look. In the original series era, type 1 phasers
08:26could actually be slotted into type 2s, for some reason. Type 3 rifles seemed to
08:33be employed mostly in times of war. They showed heavy use both during the
08:37Dominion War and the Federation's engagements with the Borg. All three
08:41types of hand phasers have been redesigned countless times in Trek
08:44history, but they usually stick to these categories. A phaser bazooka also
08:50appeared in a holographic program in the Lower Decks episode Crisis Point, but
08:55these probably aren't a real thing despite how cool they would be. Although
08:59there was that one shoulder cannon that Worf sported in Star Trek Insurrection.
09:04Number three, the difference between phasers and disruptors. Phasers and
09:10disruptor weapons differ in several key ways. For starters, a phaser can be set to
09:15stun, whereas a disruptor is a purely lethal weapon. This difference was an
09:20easy way to show the contrast between the violence of alien empires like the
09:24Klingons and the comparatively humane Federation. Also, as mentioned earlier,
09:29phasers fire pulses of fictional particles called Nadions, whereas
09:33disruptors seem to be much more blunt, simply disrupting the molecular bonds of
09:38their targets. And while both phasers and disruptors are capable of
09:43disintegration, disruptors often do so in a much slower and more painful way.
09:48However, Starfleet still used disruptors occasionally. In the original series
09:53episode Obsession, we learned that type 2 Starfleet phasers actually have a mode
09:58called the Disruptor Beast setting, suggesting those specific weapons
10:02combined both phaser and disruptor tech. Number two, wide beams and phaser
10:08sweeps. Hand phasers are typically seen firing one narrow, highly accurate beam,
10:14but they could be configured for many more firing patterns. By adjusting the
10:19width and height of their spread, phasers could actually shoot wide beams or a
10:23cone-shaped phaser sweep. Wide beams, also called full spread, could be used to
10:28quickly take out a whole room of opponents. Phaser sweeps, however, were
10:31most effective when you needed to hit every single part of a room. Starfleet
10:36used phaser sweeps throughout DS9, in episodes like Homefront and The
10:40Adversary, to locate changeling infiltrators. As we mentioned earlier,
10:44these sweeps were set to a specific frequency that would cause any changelings
10:48disguised in the room to revert to a liquid. It's likely that these settings
10:53aren't typically used in large-scale firefights, like the Siege of AR-558,
10:57simply because they consume way more power than a direct beam. Number one,
11:03they're totally not guns. In Volume 2, Issue 12 of Star Trek the Magazine,
11:09Herman Zimmerman explained that Gene Roddenberry took issue with how some
11:13phasers looked similar to guns, specifically the rifles and the pistol
11:18grips of the Type 2 phasers. Presumably, he preferred the aesthetics of the Type
11:221 crickets. This all tracks with Gene's history of promoting non-violence in the
11:27franchise. However, logically, it's all a bit confusing, seeing as even Type 1
11:32phasers were vastly more dangerous than even a modern military tank, despite
11:37looking like something you'd use to unlock your car. Of course, the stun
11:42setting allows Starfleet officers to non-violently resolve conflicts in a way
11:46that a gun never could, but in the wrong hands, they have the potential to cause
11:50unimaginable destruction. After all, a single misplaced phaser could disrupt
11:56the power balance of an entire pre-warp civilization. Those were 10 things that
12:01you hopefully didn't know about phasers. If you enjoyed this video and you want
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12:27and prosper.