Long range firing?

[Mr. Oragahn]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZknfQx0oDKc

[Mike DiCenso]

I'd say probably is an example of long range shooting. When the unknown alien ship started towards the NX-01 at 60,000 km distance, the time to intercept was 10 minutes, or 6000 km per minute. The last stated range was 8,000 km and closing for the unknown alien, so still about minute before it started firing on the Enterprise, or about roughly 6,000-7,000 km. Within seconds of that last call out, the alien ship first starts shooting, thus a long range shooting example.
-Mike

[Trinoya]

I believe the most impressive thing in this fight is that the alien ship shoots down a missile, perhaps showing why missiles are not in use.

[Mike DiCenso]

Well, more conventional missiles, like the Triton class spatial torpedoes anyway. It would explain why shields were put into use on the photonic torpedoes, and similar weapons. But it is not the first time missiles have have been shot down in Trek. As far back as TOS' "Patterns of Force", the Enterprise shoots down a missle. Later in season three of TOS, the E-1701 shoots down a group of missiles in "For the World is Holllow and I have Touched the Sky". In TNG, we have a Ferengi missile getting shot down in "The Price" (at 1:18). In ST:Generations, the crew comtemplates having to shoot down Soren's missile fired from the surface of Veridian III, or from anywhere in the rest of the star system from the Duras sisters' BoP.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

Notice also that they fired two Phaser "pulses", not beams.
Pulses that closely resembled the ones fired by the Reliant on Enterprise in TwoK...

[Mike DiCenso]

Who's "they"? The E-D shooting down the Ferengi missile, or the unknown vampire aliens?
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

The E-D when it fired at the missiles...

[Mr. Oragahn]

Another one.

In Voyager's "Non Sequitur" episode, we have this:


KIM: Overriding initialisation codes. Main power coming on-line.
PARIS: Let's get those engines going.
KIM: Powering up main fusion reactor.
COMPUTER: Intruder alert. Unauthorised launch in progress.
PARIS: Space doors closing.
KIM: Warp core and main propulsion are on-line.
PARIS: Releasing docking clamps. Moorings clear. Here we go. We're clear.
KIM: I'm entering the co-ordinates of the time stream into the main computer.
PARIS: Adjusting course to match. Going to full impulse.
KIM: We've got a starship on our tail. Nebula-class.
PARIS: I'll try to lose 'em Harry, but they're a lot faster than we are.
Voice: Attention runabout Yellowstone. Power down your engines or we will open fire.
KIM: They're going to try to do everything they can to stop us. They think we're trying to steal this prototype.
PARIS: They're closing to five thousand kilometres.
KIM: Shields down to 70 percent. 50 percent. 29 percent.
PARIS: I thought you said this ship was new and improved.
KIM: It is, but it looks like they haven't finished working on the defensive systems. In fact, some of the safety interlocks aren't even in place. A few more of those hits and I don't. We're losing antimatter containment. Attempting to stabilise the field.
PARIS: We're approaching the co-ordinates of the time stream.
KIM: The containment field is weakening. We could be looking at a core breach.
PARIS: The ship's closing to three thousand kilometres.

Not bad I guess, shooting a ship as small as a Runabout at such a distance.

[KirkSkyWalker]

Another one.

In Voyager's "Non Sequitur" episode, we have this:


KIM: Overriding initialisation codes. Main power coming on-line.
PARIS: Let's get those engines going.
KIM: Powering up main fusion reactor.
COMPUTER: Intruder alert. Unauthorised launch in progress.
PARIS: Space doors closing.
KIM: Warp core and main propulsion are on-line.
PARIS: Releasing docking clamps. Moorings clear. Here we go. We're clear.
KIM: I'm entering the co-ordinates of the time stream into the main computer.
PARIS: Adjusting course to match. Going to full impulse.
KIM: We've got a starship on our tail. Nebula-class.
PARIS: I'll try to lose 'em Harry, but they're a lot faster than we are.
Voice: Attention runabout Yellowstone. Power down your engines or we will open fire.
KIM: They're going to try to do everything they can to stop us. They think we're trying to steal this prototype.
PARIS: They're closing to five thousand kilometres.
KIM: Shields down to 70 percent. 50 percent. 29 percent.
PARIS: I thought you said this ship was new and improved.
KIM: It is, but it looks like they haven't finished working on the defensive systems. In fact, some of the safety interlocks aren't even in place. A few more of those hits and I don't. We're losing antimatter containment. Attempting to stabilise the field.
PARIS: We're approaching the co-ordinates of the time stream.
KIM: The containment field is weakening. We could be looking at a core breach.
PARIS: The ship's closing to three thousand kilometres.

Not bad I guess, shooting a ship as small as a Runabout at such a distance.

Er, 3000km is only 1% of a starship's phaser-range. Likewise, weapons have to be accurate in order to be lethal.

[Mike DiCenso]

This example is from VOY's "Basics, Part 1":

PARIS: Here we go.

TUVOK: They are randomly detonating torpedoes in our flight path.

KIM: Shields are holding. No damage.

JANEWAY: Hold your fire, Mister Tuvok. They may have torpedoes to waste. We don't.

PARIS: Thirty seconds to intercept.

JANEWAY: Take us out of warp.

PARIS: Engaging impulse engines.

JANEWAY: Power to all weapon systems. Stand by phasers.

TUVOK: Kazon vessel ten thousand kilometres off our starboard bow.

JANEWAY: Not yet.

TUVOK: Six thousand kilometres.

JANEWAY: Not yet.

TUVOK: Five thousand, three, two thousand.

JANEWAY: Now.

PARIS: Initiating evasive manoeuvres, beta sequence.

TUVOK: Two more Kazon ships approaching.

KIM: Shields at ninety percent.

JANEWAY: Janeway to Torres. Initiate holo-programs.

They were being fired on before 10,000 km with photon torpedoes, and Janeway tells Tuvok to hold fire until they are within 2,000 km of the Kazon ships, indicating they could have easily fired well before that.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Oh by the way, I looked up VOY's "Non Sequitur" to make sure it was not one of those scenes where the character says the two ships are thousands of km apart, but the visual FX shows them only a few hundred meters to a few km apart. I was pleased to find out it was not so as the video here at 3:18 onwards. When it fires on the runabout Kim and Paris is in the phaser beam goes off into an infinity point with the Nebula nowhere to be seen at 3:31, and the NCS only appears a second later at 3:32 appearing rapidly from out of the infinity point! Great job by the FX team. If only they did this kind of thing more often.
-Mike

[Who is like God arbour]

I always liked the visuals of Babylon 5 as far as the distance between fighting ships is concerned, especially in this video.

There you believe that their weapons have a range of several hundred thousand kilometers and are able to cover a whole a planetary system.

And that's how the distances between ships should have been shown in Star Trek.

The insignificance of a tiny ship in space, in orbit of a huge planet and the distances between objects in space, that's a feeling that Star Trek could never convey.

Even the scene in VOY's "Non Sequitur" does not really convince me. You can see, how big the ships are and how fast they are flying by. From there, I do not get the feeling, that they are thousands of kilometers apart.

I'm sure, one could even calculate from that scene their relative velocity and from there the distance between both ships. I'd be surprised if it were more than thousand kilometers.

[Mike DiCenso]

Even the scene in VOY's "Non Sequitur" does not really convince me. You can see, how big the ships are and how fast they are flying by. From there, I do not get the feeling, that they are thousands of kilometers apart.

I disagree, it not only gives sense of great long distance (the phaser beam disappearing off to infinity), but the incredible speed of these two ships. The Nebula helps mostly in that we know it is about the same width across the saucer section as it's near-sister class the Galaxy. So the the fact that when the first beam fires the nearly half kilometer wide ship is not even visible as a tiny dot indicates at least a thousand kilometers between the two ships. This is way better than Star Wars, where the best potential ship-to-ship range we have seen to date is around 200 km. So we have visual as well as spoken dialog confirmation of long range here.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

I always liked the visuals of Babylon 5 as far as the distance between fighting ships is concerned, especially in this video.

There you believe that their weapons have a range of several hundred thousand kilometers and are able to cover a whole a planetary system.

And that's how the distances between ships should have been shown in Star Trek.

The insignificance of a tiny ship in space, in orbit of a huge planet and the distances between objects in space, that's a feeling that Star Trek could never convey.

Even the scene in VOY's "Non Sequitur" does not really convince me. You can see, how big the ships are and how fast they are flying by. From there, I do not get the feeling, that they are thousands of kilometers apart.

I'm sure, one could even calculate from that scene their relative velocity and from there the distance between both ships. I'd be surprised if it were more than thousand kilometers.

Quite right, the whole thing looks weird in fact.
I guess they just scaled the Nebula up to make it look like it approached, because it's clear that at the relative speed the Runabout passed by, you would certainly not expect the ship to ever become visible: we'd say the camera was moving almost as fast as the Runabout, but then it would be impossible for the Nebula to ever appear at all.
But it does, and that while the beam isn't even finished and just after the Runabout has left the screen's frame, just like if the Benula had suddenly closed the distance to a very few kilometers and hit the brakes. Yet dialogue says they're thousands of km away (3000 km). It just doesn't work well with visuals.
It's particularly misdone since the beam is visible while the ship is not, clearly giving a huge range, which just enhances the weird zoom effect with the Nebula suddenly growing on the screen.

A rationalization would have be to claim that just as soon as the beam stops, the camera slams the brakes and gets close to the Nebula, just before the Nebula fires again.
With no point of reference other than the ships, the audience couldn't know that the camera moved that way.
Obviously a non-intuitive way of tackling a classical problem of visuals vs dialogue.