Deflector Shields: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Star Trek]]'' has lots of shields and force fields. On ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise|Star Trek Enterprise]]'', we even get to watch these get invented. ''Enterprise'' (NX-01) herself did not have shields (except in a [[Flash Forward]]), but appears to have had some kind of "navigational deflector" to avoid being pierced by space dust. According to Treknobabble, the solidity of holograms in the [[Trek Verse]] is the result of their being surrounded by a highly specialized force field. The abundance of [[Tim Taylor Technology]] coupled with the availability of force fields has led some to theorize that, in fact, ''all'' Federation technology is [[Reinforce Field|held together by tiny force fields]].

** NX-01 ''Enterprise'' instead had "polarized hull plating" which, though it was routinely charged before a battle, proved almost useless against advanced energy weapons. One wonders just how flimsy their hull would be ''without'' its hull plating polarized.

** The navigational deflector has been a canonical part of ''Trek'' since ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek the Original Series]]'', and explains why the ship isn't flayed apart when going exponentially faster than light. It was just never properly mentioned until a certain famous episode in ''The Next Generation'', but ever since then, it stopped being a deflector and became a general-purpose power emitter. You can use it to blast things, hold open or close rips in time, jump-start somebody else's ship, or hell, maybe punch open wormholes for all we know. Voyager briefly goes to low warp with the navigational deflector offline in the episode 'Year Of Hell' and takes damage as a result.

** The novel ''Federation'' features a wonderful interplay of cloaking, shields, antimatter containment fields, and Captain Picard that results in Picard taking out a Romulan ship by flying the ''Enterprise'' through it, sustaining almost no damage, and watching as the Romulans [[Critical Existence Failure|suddenly stop being there]].

** Almost every ship also has a structural integrity field, which holds the ships's structure together, necessitated by the size of some of the larger ships and also to minimise structural stress from acceleration and damage. This, however, qualifies not as a Deflector Shield but as a [[Reinforce Field]].

** There's also an additional field on top of that called an [[Inertial Dampening|inertial damper]] - which essentially prevents the crew from turning into blood splotches on wall upon rapid acceleration and deceleration. whenever the [[Star Trek Shake]] is employed, this is because the inertial dampening systems are capable of compensating for the ship's movements, but not always for the massive excess energy imparted by weapons fire or impacts.

* ''[[Farscape]]'': Energy barriers are rare in the Farscape [[The Verse|'verse]], but they do exist. Our heroes salvage one in "PK Tech Girl", though it breaks the very next time they use it.

** There are also the personal force shields they find in that freedom fighter base -- they activate only when hit by blaster fire, but then will protect the wearer from pretty much anything, up to and including lava. Unfortunately, apart from one use in the next episode, the few that our heroes manage to salvage are never used again after "I Shrink Therefore I Am," presumably because [[Bounty Hunter|Axicor]] had them destroyed the moment he discovered them.

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'': The aliens from ''[[Made for TV Movie|Thirdspace]]'' have those. {{spoiler|They had them on ships and on the gate. To go through the gate from one side, the protagonists concentrated fire on the other side.}}

** While it wasn't stated onscreen, background materials reveal that among the younger races, only the Abbai have deflector shields. Abbai technology isn't really anything special in most regards, but their entire military mindset is based on defense rather than offense, so they're ahead of the curve in this regard.

 

 

* ''[[The World Ends With You]]'' has [[Insurmountable Waist High Fence|invisible walls that cut you off from certain paths]]. Some can be disabled by meeting a Reaper's condition; others are just erected, and no condition will satisfy.

* In ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]]'', energy shielding is a regular part of space combat, though unlike many other universes shielding hasn't been miniaturized enough to protect personnel. There's a constant struggle between shields and weapons to penetrate them, with some games having shields impenetrable by anything other than a special torpedo on the larger warships, while other games allow any weapon to cause damage. This is averted in the capital warship game of ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]] Arena'', where the players are flying fighters that are either attacking or defending huge battlecruisers that have massive amounts of armor, but no shielding to free up energy for their guns.

* In ''[[Sins of a Solar Empire]]'', most ships have this, with absence being the exception.

* In ''[[Free Space]]'', the Terran and Vasudan ships initially have no deflector shields, and the shielded Shivan fighters are nigh-invulnerable to their weapons. Fortunately, observation of Shivan technology allows the good guys to develop both shields and more effective weapons in short order.