Daystrom Institute

3451 readers

1 users here now

Welcome to Daystrom Institute!

Serious, in-depth discussion about Star Trek from both in-universe and real world perspectives.

Read more about how to comment at Daystrom.

Rules

1. Explain your reasoning

All threads and comments submitted to the Daystrom Institute must contain an explanation of the reasoning put forth.

2. No whinging, jokes, memes, and other shallow content.

This entire community has a “serious tag” on it. Shitposts are encouraged in Risa.

3. Be diplomatic.

Participate in a courteous, objective, and open-minded fashion. Be nice to other posters and the people who make Star Trek. Disagree respectfully and don’t gatekeep.

4. Assume good faith.

Assume good faith. Give other posters the benefit of the doubt, but report them if you genuinely believe they are trolling. Don’t whine about “politics.”

5. Tag spoilers.

Historically Daystrom has not had a spoiler policy, so you may encounter untagged spoilers here. Ultimately, avoiding online discussion until you are caught up is the only certain way to avoid spoilers.

6. Stay on-topic.

Threads must discuss Star Trek. Comments must discuss the topic raised in the original post.

Episode Guides

The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Why was the Galaxy class saucer separation ability so rarely used? (startrek.website)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The Galaxy class starship was designed with the ability to separate the saucer from the stardrive section, so that the "floating city" part of the ship could be left somewhere safe while the rest of the ship galavants off to do something risky. We see this happen precisely once, in the season one episode Arsenal of Freedom. We also see saucer separation deployed for a handful of tactical and or emergency uses (such as against the Borg in The Best of Both Worlds, or to escape the breaching warp core in Generations).

So, this seems like a useful ability to have, and the Enterprise is constantly being sent into dangerous situations. Why not use this ability more frequently?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

They highlighted the tactical disadvantages in The Best Of Both Worlds. In a battle situation, the saucer section’s phaser banks, impulse drive, and fusion generators are of high importance.

There are also alternatives. In DS9’s episode introducing the Jem’hadar, The Odyssey simply dropped off their families before heading to the Delta quadrant.

I’m the event a hostile force is encountered, it is likely the saucer section would just be pursued and destroyed, as it could only flee on impulse or sustain a low warp is released at warp.

So they really only used it the only times it was practical: facing Q, facing the arsenal of freedom (as the automated system only attacked ships in orbit), and as a life raft after the star drive was destroyed as in Generations.

It might also be noted that prior Enterprises had the ability to separate the saucer on an emergency. It was just never used on screen, and also would probably require a spacedock to reassemble.

I personally think it was just an experiment that didn’t work out. Perhaps they just reverted to emergency separations.