Species 8472 blowing up a planet...

[Praeothmin]

I was perusing a website, and they started talking about Voyageré,s scorpion, in which a planet gets attacked by the Borg's greatest enemies.

Their conclusion was that the camera wasn't staying long enough with the exploding planet for them to believe that the entire planet had been blown apart.

One of them remarked that he couldn't see any planetary form amid the rubble being blown in space (I looked closely, but couldn't see anything semblence of planetary mass anywhere), but the general concensus was that it could have only been part of the planet that exploded.
They then compared that evidence with the Klingon moon Praxis, which exploded due to overmining.

Now since the site I was perusing is only filled with highly intelligent and educated people, I was wondering what was the concensus here on that incident... :)

[Mr. Oragahn]

My consensus :) is that it's a Death Star slowed down.

Like the Xindi, or near, a lot of energy is directly put into the planet, but there's not enough evidence that the complete obliteration was the result of DET from the beam.
That said, did they argue that the planet didn't fully explode or something?

[Kazeite]

How convienient! This is my concensus as well! :D

[Mike DiCenso]

The planet clearly explodes:

http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... 56&pos=300

http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... 56&pos=303

Compare the two images above; the planet just prior to the explosion, glowing intensely internaly while most of the crust is breaking up and molten. The second image you can see enough of the energy and debris have dissipated that where the planet should be, there is now mostly empty space. This would be more apparent if the Trekcore images had the complete number of frames from the scene.
-Mike

[Jedi Master Spock]

It is also worth noting that the Borg have stated that eight planets have been destroyed.

Usually destroyed does mean destroyed.

[Mike DiCenso]

for a point of comparison, here's a Memory Alpha screencap of Praxis:

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Image:P ... ed2293.jpg

Had the Borg planet survived in even that fraction, we would still expect to see a significant amount of the disk visible through the nearly dissipated explosion.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Has anyone tried to calc at least the portion that can be considered DET in that planet busting weapon?

[Mike DiCenso]

I presume that you mean this scene here:

http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... 56&pos=299

Teraton-range, at the very least, since we see significant disruption and glowing (melting?) of the planet's crust hundreds to thousands of km away from the intital energy beam's impact point.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

That said, did they argue that the planet didn't fully explode or something?

No, what they said amounted to:
"We don't have any proof that the planet fully exploded, and most (if not all) the damage done was from chain reactions, even the ejecta at the beginning"
Or something close to that effect.

Teraton-range, at the very least,

Impossible, of course, since most of the damage comes from chain reactions... ;)

[Mike DiCenso]

Which is highly amusing, not to mention hypocritical as usual, since they whined that the TDiC bombardment lacked ejecta and the disruption of the Founder's homeworld's crust. When they get that here in "Scorpion", they're still trying to claim CR. Of course, when we don't see that or other proper DET effects with the destruction of Alderaan by the Death Star, they don't care, and are quick to claim DET. Nice double-standards. ;-)
-Mike

[SSFPhoenix]

But don't you see DET did happen to alderaan just like alderaan Clearly has a planetary shield.

I still can't understand how they think alderaan has planetary shields.

[Mike DiCenso]

Because some books in the EU says it does (never mind that the secondary canon of the RoTS novelization shows us otherwise), and because it lets them claim uber-power generation capablilities by having the imaginary shield wink for a fraction of a second against a 1e38J Death Star superlaser beam, never mind that the glow they claim is a shield follows mysteriously along the shape of a large bank of clouds.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

There is an EU source that clearly says that if a Death Star beam hit a planetary shield, it would only scorch continents. Clearly disagreeing with the whole planetary shield idea.
The fact that the novelisation makes no mention of the shield, but on the contrary, clearly identifies the planet's defense systems as weapons and nothing more, once again, we're left with some kind of brainbug which did make its way through many EU products. I mean, if Alderaan can have such a shield, why not other planets?
And that's how now every major planet has planetary shields, and how Coruscant even has multiple layers of shields - put in contrast with their utter absence in ROTS, as per the novelisation.

[Jedi Master Spock]

And yet other EU sources tell us that the smaller superlasers (as I've been discussing on ST.com) penetrate planetary shields, but "only" scorch continents and break into the crust otherwise.

[Mr. Oragahn]

And yet other EU sources tell us that the smaller superlasers (as I've been discussing on ST.com) penetrate planetary shields, but "only" scorch continents and break into the crust otherwise.

Ah, it's the smaller superlasers, not the Death Star's one?
Ok, nevermind, they're said to be 2/3 the power of a Death Star beam.

On the S8472 beam weapon, Poe says that this video proves that the planet did not completely explode, I got to conclude that he's on seriously brain burning crack.

Look at 3:00.

He even claims that the camera doesn't fix the scene long enough. The hell. It does remains here more than enough to know that

Don't forget to forcefully remind them that we have NEVER ONCE seen 8472 destroy a WHOLE planet. They may have blew chunks out of the side of the planet facing the camera, but we NEVER saw the whole planet destroyed.

Thank Mike for that one!

When the screen gets clear, we don't see any consequent glowing remnant.
You know, like a huge super continent sized glowing debris for example.

And his deformation of canon words:

Funny how the opening crawl (the highest form of canon) says the Death Star itself has the power to blow up planets.

Destroy planets, not blow up planets. Someone needs to remind him that as a defender of the Alderaan shield idea, he must consider those many issues which they're just too glad to skip, simply because arguing for an alderaanian planetary shield raises much more problems than it creates solutions.