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I couldn't find this in a quick search, apologies if it's been asked before.

Can ship phasers be set to stun in Star Trek, for purposes of nonlethal air/space to surface fire, etc? Any episodes in which this is done?

it's been done once in TOS but never before that or since (I can't remember the name of the episode atm but I think it was the one with planet of gansters ) Enterprise used a widebeam stun setting to stun everyone in the open though Kirk was uneffected due being inside a building that looked like a normal 20th century office building so it probably wasn't armored.

I beleive it was done once in TOS. But I don't know the episode. And in at least one noncanon novel I know of.

It would make sense if it wasn't possible (that single outlier aside); we know that hand phasers on stun can still be lethal, it could be that ship-mounted phasers just have too much raw power to be dialed back to be able to reliably stun.

Lord Revan wrote:it's been done once in TOS but never before that or since (I can't remember the name of the episode atm but I think it was the one with planet of gansters ) Enterprise used a widebeam stun setting to stun everyone in the open though Kirk was uneffected due being inside a building that looked like a normal 20th century office building so it probably wasn't armored.

The TOS episode was "A Piece Of the Action." Kirk had Scotty use the ship's phasers to wide-angle stun Jojo Krakow's mobsters.

Yes, they do indeed have that ability.



Brought to you by the official CBS channel, no less. Skip to 3:20.

The power issue could still be a consideration by the time the show reaches TNG though. We can not be sure that advances in phaser power have by that point not made a stun setting too dangerous to use.

Or they might just not had a desire and scenario in which it was necessarily beneficial in the rest of the shows; much simpler as an explanation. Kirk is only really doing it here to show off his power, after all; Star Trek doesn't generally revolve around large scale urban pacification.

I have no doubt that in 200-300 episodes there would have been some situations where it came in handy...

It sort-of happened in Voyager, in "Thirty Days" Tom tells Seven to dial down the phaser power on the Delta Flyer to sort-of stun a bigass sea creature. That's as close as I can think of beyond the already-mentioned TOS example.

Simon_Jester wrote:I have no doubt that in 200-300 episodes there would have been some situations where it came in handy...

Like the entirety of the dominion war? Might have come in handy now and then there...

Thanks. I remember that episode, but I had forgotten that they stunned people with the phasers.

If the non-reuse needs explanation, I think the easiest is that, like other less-lethal weapons, phaser stun can still cause harm (kill small animals; injure or children, the elderly, and the infirm; cause injury or death from falls and accidents resulting from sudden loss of consciousness; etc). Kirk using phasers to clear streets full of gangsters firing indiscriminately with automatic weapons in a densely populated urban area is easily justified, but that level of moral clarity can't be very common.

LastShadow wrote:

Simon_Jester wrote:I have no doubt that in 200-300 episodes there would have been some situations where it came in handy...

Like the entirety of the dominion war? Might have come in handy now and then there...

When exactly would have 'stun' come in more useful than 'kill/burn/NDF away'? Most of the time we see ground combat in the Dominion war there ARE no starships to provide fire support.

we know for a fact that close range stun setting shot from a hand phaser can still kill the target, it was used to kill the assassins in TUC, so it's not at all impossible the much more powerful ship phasers could cause the same effect at even greater distance.

we also know that stun setting from ship phasers is rather easy to protect from, in the clip Kirk said "block radius from these cordinates" the context implies his cordinates meaning Kirk and the other people with him in that room were in essence at "ground zero" for the stun blast but were uneffected and as I said the building looks like a fairly typical 20th century office so it's not likely to be heavily fortified.

and that's ignoring that falling down from being stunned isn't harmless even the stun effect is, since can cause you to hit your head on a hard surface or fall from a great height both which can be very leathal.

Batman wrote:

LastShadow wrote:

Simon_Jester wrote:I have no doubt that in 200-300 episodes there would have been some situations where it came in handy...

Like the entirety of the dominion war? Might have come in handy now and then there...

When exactly would have 'stun' come in more useful than 'kill/burn/NDF away'? Most of the time we see ground combat in the Dominion war there ARE no starships to provide fire support.

Anytime they invaded an area a good stun before hand could have sped up the process.But nonetheless the point was, it would have come in handy then, which was the point.

Im not saying it was always available, or always useful. But it WOULD have been handy.

LastShadow wrote:Like the entirety of the dominion war? Might have come in handy now and then there...

Perhaps the Feds decided to optimize their starships for killing power. Certainly, I think the Defiants were optimized for this, and I doubt their pulse phasers could deliver a stun blast.

U.P. Cinnabar wrote:

LastShadow wrote:Like the entirety of the dominion war? Might have come in handy now and then there...

Perhaps the Feds decided to optimize their starships for killing power. Certainly, I think the Defiants were optimized for this, and I doubt their pulse phasers could deliver a stun blast.

I think it would also be rather difficult for the Defiant to really manage to do it, unless they pulled a BoP strafing maneuver.

Lord Revan wrote:it's been done once in TOS but never before that or since (I can't remember the name of the episode atm but I think it was the one with planet of gansters ) Enterprise used a widebeam stun setting to stun everyone in the open though Kirk was uneffected due being inside a building that looked like a normal 20th century office building so it probably wasn't armored.

A Piece of the Action.

They also did it (I think) in the episode with the flying pancakes that don't like UV rays... didn't they blast the planet with phasers on that? I can't remember.

LastShadow wrote:

U.P. Cinnabar wrote:

LastShadow wrote:Like the entirety of the dominion war? Might have come in handy now and then there...

Perhaps the Feds decided to optimize their starships for killing power. Certainly, I think the Defiants were optimized for this, and I doubt their pulse phasers could deliver a stun blast.

I think it would also be rather difficult for the Defiant to really manage to do it, unless they pulled a BoP strafing maneuver.

The Defiant has beam phasers as well as the pulse phasers. The Pulse phasers also have off bore capability. ("Homefront" is a good example of these in use)

Regarldess for orbital bombardment it wouldn't need to strafe. It just need to point down while in orbit, space being what it is.

Prometheus Unbound wrote:

Lord Revan wrote:it's been done once in TOS but never before that or since (I can't remember the name of the episode atm but I think it was the one with planet of gansters ) Enterprise used a widebeam stun setting to stun everyone in the open though Kirk was uneffected due being inside a building that looked like a normal 20th century office building so it probably wasn't armored.

A Piece of the Action.

They also did it (I think) in the episode with the flying pancakes that don't like UV rays... didn't they blast the planet with phasers on that? I can't remember.

No, they deployed a bunch of satellites that gave off a bunch of UV radiation. How that managed to kill the pancakes that were hiding in the shade is beyond me, but that's another issue...

Lord Revan wrote:we know for a fact that close range stun setting shot from a hand phaser can still kill the target, it was used to kill the assassins in TUC, so it's not at all impossible the much more powerful ship phasers could cause the same effect at even greater distance.

Better than "not impossible", it's been demonstrated, in Galaxy's Child - Picard tried to shoo off a space whale with a minimum-power phaser shot and ended up killing it.

Captain Seafort wrote:

Lord Revan wrote:we know for a fact that close range stun setting shot from a hand phaser can still kill the target, it was used to kill the assassins in TUC, so it's not at all impossible the much more powerful ship phasers could cause the same effect at even greater distance.

Better than "not impossible", it's been demonstrated, in Galaxy's Child - Picard tried to shoo off a space whale with a minimum-power phaser shot and ended up killing it.

I while I think the adult creature was weak to begin with as in injured or malnourished yeah, I had forgotten about that. Killing the mother was what forced the Ent-D crew to cry c-section with phasers to save the child. Clearly shows that even low power phasers aren't harmless.

Given that phasers essentiallly work on magic I'm leery of assuming it's simply a question of power levels but since a) even kill level shots from hand phasers can be stopped by...pretty much everything and Kirk could avoid being stunned by simply being indoors, maybe ship gun stun is moderately useless the moment the intended target has any kind of cover?

Crazedwraith wrote:

LastShadow wrote:

U.P. Cinnabar wrote:
Perhaps the Feds decided to optimize their starships for killing power. Certainly, I think the Defiants were optimized for this, and I doubt their pulse phasers could deliver a stun blast.

I think it would also be rather difficult for the Defiant to really manage to do it, unless they pulled a BoP strafing maneuver.

The Defiant has beam phasers as well as the pulse phasers. The Pulse phasers also have off bore capability. ("Homefront" is a good example of these in use)

Regarldess for orbital bombardment it wouldn't need to strafe. It just need to point down while in orbit, space being what it is.

Valid

Captain Seafort wrote:

Lord Revan wrote:we know for a fact that close range stun setting shot from a hand phaser can still kill the target, it was used to kill the assassins in TUC, so it's not at all impossible the much more powerful ship phasers could cause the same effect at even greater distance.

Better than "not impossible", it's been demonstrated, in Galaxy's Child - Picard tried to shoo off a space whale with a minimum-power phaser shot and ended up killing it.

Worf kept firing even after it broke off its own radiation field. He fired for too long. Plus it was giving birth