Quote:
Originally Posted by justjackrandom
Haven't posted in a while (haven't been on in a while...), but I saw this and had to weigh in. I agree that there is a good deal of written drama for the sake of drama in this episode, but I do not think that cutting open the hull with Viper fire is more realistic. My reasoning:
The Vipers mount WEAPONS...not variable-setting instruments. First, the canonical evidence we have shows us that the gun controls are fairly simple...on - off - arm - safe - and of course fire. Thats it. There are no other gun controls in that cockpit.
Second, it is obvious from what is shown on screen that we are not looking at true lasers in the strict definition of the word. I personally have come up with the theory that the bolts are a relativistic plasma that create intensity gain by population inversion. This make them lasers in the modern scientific sense of the word if not in the original sense. In which case, it really IS a cannon ball.
And regardless of what you believe they actually fire, they were never intended to be used "carefully". Talk about dangerous and random. That would be like using a hellfire missile to breach a wall for police entry in a hostage situation.
The use of carefully placed configurable charges makes much more sense, at least to me.
My tuppence...
--JJR
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We all have our own thoughts about how stuff went down in the Galactica universe. And discussing that is part of the entertainment value of this forum. I don't believe that our two points are mutually exclusive. Why wouldn't you be able to manage the settings on a weapon that produces a relativistic plasma blob emitter? Would the colonial military be so shortsighted as to make a completely non-discriminatory weapon?
That sounds too careless for a people that have been at war for 1000 years.
Absolutely NO other gun controls in the cockpit? You sure? Unless Glen Larson posted somewhere and explained every last switch and dial on the control dash of a Viper, who's to say there isn't such a control there that was never actively used in a story? I mean, it's all fiction, right? We must assume there are atmospheric controls in a Viper cockpit as well, but they were never actively pointed out in the show. Readouts, yes. Controls, no.
Your analogy to a canon ball isn't quite on the money. You are assuming that, in order for a canon to function (I'm assuming you're talking about a black-powder pirate-y type canon?) that it must be packed to the maximum with gunpowder every time it is fired. A true canoneer would beg to differ. It is quite a skillset to know how much powder and wadding you need to send a ball a particular distance with a particular force. And they did. So in essence, a traditional canon IS adjustable.
I guess my point is that since we're all making guesses from incomplete data about a nonsensical fictional universe, we could declare that what comes out of a viper canon isn't energy at all but very dangerous incandescent raspberry jam and we'd still be just as correct as any other theory.
-Gordon
