You need only four settings on any futuristic gun: 1. stun. 2. kill. 3. overkill. 4. pocket death star.

Holographs are described as "forcefields and photons", so it would make sense for it to impact the forcefield part.

On the AR-558 issue. I would suspect that using wide beam would consume a lot of power, where as individual shots would not. Sisko had limited supplies and did not know when relief would be coming. More over in this unspecified time, more Dominion troops could land. So if Sisko blasted away with wide beam, using half a power pack per shot, they would be out of packs in no time. Alternatively, main line type three rifles didn't actually come with Wide beam during the dominion war, potentially to prevent excessive use of the mode. There's a historical precedent for this. The British bought semi-automatic FN-FALs to prevent their troops from going full auto in the heat of battle and wasting their ammo. Or it could just be a cost cutting measure by the studio *BLEEP*

TOS had at least ONE example I can clearly remember of it being used as a tool. When Sulu was stuck down on the freezing cold planet, he used them to heat rocks to keep him and the rest of the landing party warm.

Lore, stop it. An Oberth would have to know how to shoot to know what shots fired meant. Oberth's don't shoot, they explode defensively.

Whoa! Changing phaser frequencies DOES change how the beams look. In ST: TNG when fighting the Borg, Commander Shelby told Data to vary the phaser frequencies. The phasers then shot out more like pulses and the beams changed from their normal orange to yellow, white, and blueish.

Oberths have Phasers so Oberths are Dangerous. My logic is super effective.

It was an invisible Phaser that killed the redshirt in the Gorn episode. There was even an episode where they heated a stone with a phaser and Kirk considered to dig holes in the rock to find the silicon creature.

I personally prefer the older phaser models. They look like weapons and not a TV remote.

You can see a type one hand phaser mounted on top of the type two pistol phaser. In essence, the type two had extra power cells and enhanced output systems, but the functional beam generator from a type one was used to make it a useful weapon. Beta cannon from an original series tech manual: the type one on top of the type two was removable and could be used as a separate functional weapon. Also, the type one had half the settings, and setting 2 was "heavy stun"; used for tougher humanoid targets like Klingons and Vulkens, while setting one was for Humans and others of similar durability.

The Oberth was a very dangerous ship............to it's crew!

I love your presentation and hosting style. Very enjoyable!

In TOS Scotty uses the phaser as a phaser torch to cut through the bulkhead outside engineering after O'riley lock himself in. Episode the naked time.

in The Enemy Within (Star Trek: The Original Series). Phasers are also used as a Tool, the area team used them to heat rocks to provide warmth during the freezing cold until they ran out of power.

As Scotty once said, a phaser drains fast (when it's power cell is used to fuel a shuttle craft). A few honorable mentions. "Corbomite Maneuver"/"Enemy Within"/"A Private Little War" : heating coffee or rocks. "A Piece of the Action" :shipboard phaser banks can be set to stun. "Conscience of the King"/"Man Trap"/Undiscovered Country" :close range kill setting, non disintegrate "Squire of Gothos" :kill setting, disintegrate "Mark of Gideon" :phaser disposal units for infected corpses (source-"Worlds of the Federation" book by Shane Johnston) "Ensigns of Command" : positronic upgrade within a radiation dampeing field, making a smartphaser (before Androids & smartphones! Chekov would have needed that with his hand held Klingon disruptor in "Voyage Home") "Enterprise" episode when a phased pistol was used to change spinning axis of a disabled floating shuttle pod. Numerous final season episodes of "Voyager" :iMod (infinite modulation) phaser rifles- to rotate frequency for constantly adapting Borg shields.

I have a theory Lore: TOS era phasers were Blue Colored, TNG modified phasers to kill Borg were also Blue, urgo, I think TOS era Phasers were set to highest resonance frequency possible for a more militaristic Starfleet that would destroy foes like Klingon ships or romulan attack ships. As pacifism came into practice across the post Klingon Cold War era, Starfleet adopted a less kill on sight principle and reduced their weapons settings and phaser power accordingly.. This would explain why Miranda and Constitution class starships even in the TNG era could still pose a powerful punch, because TNG era warships were nerfed in the cause of peace aka Galaxy pre-dominion war variant was weaker than Constitution class in offensive capability by design..

When you're standing on an icy world only wearing your Starfleet T-Shirt (hopefully not Red).... What else is better to heat up a pile of rocks & roast marshmallows?

Phaser Type I is the black portion on top, detached from the pistol grip and held in the palm of the hand (less power, more concealable). Phaser Type II is what is pictured: The palm-held black portion cradled on top of the pistol grip (more power, less concealable).

colllimate: In radiology colllimation is the effect of attenuating the x-ray beam by using lead shutters in the aperture. There are four lead strips in the collimator. Two two go lengthwise and two widthwise, It's like the shutters in a camera. I'm guessing that in theory, Phasers could be collimated in the same way. Open it wide up and it's a fan beam, close it down, it's like a narrow beam.

In the original series, Scotty used a phaser to cut through a wall to get into the auxiliary bridge which was locked from the inside by what turned out to be some anti-starfleet hippies they had rescued, McCoy used a phaser to heat up rocks to warm up a cave where Kirk was suffering the effects of an animals venom, Kirk used a phaser to try and dig a hole in the surface of what turned out to be an artificial planet whose surface was made of a phaser resistant material.

Also, the way the settings go is 1 for normal stun, 2 for heavy stun on things that don't stun easy, and then various settings of kill such as: 'kill' 'medium rare' and 'fried to a crisp'

@5:00 because it was the mid 90's and re-watching recordings of a tv show on-demand well after its original broadcast was a new concept, so there was no guarantee anyone had ever seen any prior episodes - or ever would.

A phaser type one fits in the palm of the hand. Snap it onto the "pistol grip" handle, and it becomes a Type 2. (It's not just a handle, there is some sort of energy enhancer in it) As you said, Type 3 is the rifle.

Regarding how everyone has phasers there is the fact that as you said most of the time they nothing in common with each other except the "phase" part, that indicates that they can change the frequency (something absolutely needed if you want to shoot trought shields). After that phasers vary from phased lasers to phased anti-proton beams.

I think the writers use Phasers like a Swiss army knife to fill plot holes.

I think what set the "heat" setting apart was that rather than firing particles that were meant to cause damage, it did something different that would just transfer kinetic energy into the target

You know with all of the ways to nullify a phaser, you'd think Starfleet would also keep ballistic weapons around. All you have to do is load a clip/mag, make sure the weapon is maintained and you won't have to worry about silly damping fields or different types of radiation that render energy weapons useless. Also as it was demonstrated in First Contact, not even the Borg could adapt to a good old Tompson SMG

I'm pretty sure United Earth also had plasma weapons before transitioning to phasers. For starters, the farmer at Broken Bow in the pilot episode was said to be using a "plasma rifle". The Enterprise crew started out using pistols that looked like they fired plasma bolts before switching to phase pistol prototypes; and the MACOs, as well as the security teams, used mostly compact plasma rifles (the same props used by the Jem h'dar and a few other groups from DS9 and I think TNG as well).

RECOLLIMATE: As Collimate means to align lenses to remove aberrations in a beam (in RL of Light) along line of sight, to Recollimate is to do so again after something, in this case radiation, adds aberrations or mis-aligns the lenses. Basically, it means that there is something in a phaser that focuses the beam and can be realigned to account for whatever aberration the addition of radiation has on the beam. A Wide Beam setting would be purposefully unfocusing the beam, usually along one axis. A Multi-Beam would be splitting one beam into multiple beams, again through the same focusing mechanism. So the utility of a Phaser isn't inherent to the beam, but the focusing mechanism which may be what's unique to Federation Phasers.

THANKS REALLY INTERESTING

In the original series, Yoeman Rand heated up some coffee with phasers when some of the Enterprise's power went out. I can't remember which episode. And from what I recall the phaser settings as of the TNG era are: *1:* Light stun *2:* Medium stun (risk of death with prolonged exposure at close range) *3:* Heavy stun (risk of death at close range, and can boil 1 cubic centimetre of water per second, I guess this is the coffee reheat setting) *3.4:* Make Odo bitch about being a labrat *3.5:* Probably good enough to dissuade Odo's family dropping by for Christmas *4 - 6:* Heat settings, serious injury if misused as a weapon (rather than tool) setting *7:* Kill a humanoid, leave a corpse *8:* Why not simply... waporise him? *9 - 16:* ∗ Overkill (I mean, sometimes you might wanna shoot down a shuttle or disintegrate a huge cliff face) ∗ _Only available on Type II and III phasers._

I have a thought on the level 1 stun being lethal at close enough range. It's something we see with modern day weapons that are designed not to kill. They still have the ability to do so in the right circumstances. It could be that various settings are for how much energy gets to the target. A certain amount of energy will overload the nervous system and render you unconscious while more energy will burn a hole through your sternum. If you are too close, the beam still has too much energy and is lethal.

I love the Firefly image!

Nope, in star trek movie where Kirk was blamed for killing Gorkon there was a brief scene in the dilithium mine where there was a 3 barrel mining laser that fired red lasers-phasers that was being used to cut rock by a prisoner...this was only seen for about 5 seconds, and was seen cutting through rocks...

I always figured kill was when they just got a hole or wound if it didnt hit a vital organ and maximum is when they get vaporized

In the original concept, the hand Phaser was equipped with it's own shielding feature to protect the shooter from incoming fire.

They DID change the effect for the phasers that were remodulated to combat the Borg adaptations. They went from a solid color beam with hued layers to a sort of dashed line of multiple colors.

Also, Type 2 pistol style also came in different variations. TOS type 2a--"continuous beam", Wrath of Khan type 2b integrated--"Rapid pulse beam..." Search for Spock---"Pulse Beam..." UnDiscovered Country type 2c Heavy Assault phaser---"Continuous Beam...Removable Magazine style powerpacks..." TNG utility style phaser type 2---"streamed beam..." Then Kelvin Timeline *(blaster like.)* Type 1b tactical " Burst/Pulse Bolt..." [Note: Never elaborated if this type of Phaser was capable of disintegration...] STD type 2/1 combo..."Burst/Beam modes..." [Note: some have removable type powerpacks or batteries...Or TNG self-regenerating type....]

Phasers, specifically the type 2 phasers from TNG, are personal weapons that are too smart for their operator's own good in some ways so their physical design is suitably dumb to compensate. First, the tool & weapon combo idea sounds good on paper, but the added complexity would probably hinder the function of a phaser's weapon aspect. Trying to keep track of which setting your phaser is on in a firefight makes an already chaotic situation more so. The design is atrocious for a weapon platform. Aesthetically it is pleasing but that's where it stops. I'll start with the most glaring flaw: the complete lack of a safety mechanism. One errant finger press and you've got a hopefully only stunned cadet to clean off of the deck. That's assuming that it wasn't set to "Oberth" by accidentally banging up against a handrail during a ship-rattling space battle. At least install a grip safety so the damn thing doesn't go off without positive pressure on the handle. Speaking of the placement of the buttons, why in Q's black space would you put the beam configuration controls right above the fire button? And again on a weapon that does not have a designated safety? Want to go from stun to kill during a tense situation in which, due to an elevated heart rate, your fine motor control has been blasted out of an airlock? Great! Just be sure to not accidentally press the fire button conveniently placed underneath both adjustment keys! No danger there! I'm starting to think all these refits are "minor" because constantly patching up bulkheads due to negligent weapon discharges is more tedious than completely rearranging the ship's layout. Starfleet could probably save a lot of time, lives, and resources by moving those buttons to either side of the phaser's casing. Finally, how are you supposed to aim a phaser with anything approaching precision? I understand that they apparently have some sort of targeting sensor placed near the beam emitter, but trusting a potentially lethal weapon to aim itself in a universe with spotty AI and hackable FFI is a real recipe for disaster. Phaser and compression rifles have sights so surely Starfleet's most ubiquitous weapon might benefit as well. Maybe a small holoprojector on top that displays a crosshair or something? It would certainly help with those a-little-too-frequent for comfort hostage scenarios.

Based on episodes of TOS, small arms phasers had four settings; stun, heavy stun, kill and insensitive beam for cutting through metal and boaring through rock..

I think the reason they did not use the wide setting at the Battle of AR-558 (probably got that wrong) was because it uses a LOT of power from the phaser's energy cell. given that they were on their own and power was not readily available, it would make sense that starfleet would try to conserve their energy supply to last as long as possible.

Phaser class 1 is the little black thing on top of the phaser pistol - it comes off and is a small, handheld phaser unit. The class 2 is basically a class 1 plus additional energy pack and amplifier.

Will you do more tech lore videos? This would be amazing

Love the whole Phasers a lazy writing for lasers cuts added in the video. Also Kirk tried to dig a grave with a phaser for a dead red shirt on an away team.

In TOS ‘The Galileo Seven’ Scotty adapted hand phasers as a backup power supply for a shuttlecraft.

1 green light, good for heating soup and starting campfires, 3 green welds that loose plate, 5 green subdues sober guy, 8 green subdues meth head, 2 yellow kills a man, 4 yellow kills a bear, 1 red vaporizes small objects, 3 red vaporizes large obstructions, 5 red vaporizes Cthulhu, continue to tap after 5 red turns Phaser into grenade, throw towards enemy or be reduced to giblets within 10 seconds.

What about when Captain Archer and Lieutenant Commander trip had to survive out in the cold desert? Set phasers to campfire LOL. Considering how goofy the Next Generation got from time to time, I'm surprised Wesley Crusher didn't try to find a phase or setting that could properly toast a marshmallow😆

My guess about the double kill settings is that the 3 is more or less "handgun" while the 10 is "40 mm cannon", depending on how dead you need something.

James, good video as always, though what about the Phaser Knife?

TOS Scotty once used a phaser to cut through a wall to get to internal circuitry to open a door to the secondary bridge that had been taken over by an hostile humans.

One of SFDebris most long-running jokes is just how shitty a weapon the phaser is. This is a weapon without sights, without a trigger guard, has a holster without a strap and as such is prone to falling out, is frequently blocked by obstacles that a modern bullet would be able to penetrate, is unreliable, can be rendered useless using technobabble, has a slow firing rate, is cumbersome to hold, and even at point-blank range full in the chest it often produces nothing more than a flesh wound and some flashy pyrotechnics. It got so bad in one episode of Enterprise that he mused that one man with an old hunting rifle could probably slaughter the entire Away Team without effort. And I don't buy this weapon's inconsistent results being due to it having multiple settings as we see this weapon frequently do nothing even in the hands of bad guys with no reason to hold back.

Semiconductor lasers are collimated optically with glass or plastic lenses to generate a narrow beam with minimal spread, so the term "collimation" is meaningful, and would most likely be applicable to phaser technology. Changing the resonant frequency would not necessarily change the color noticeably. It would depend how much it was necessary to change it to defeat the borg shields.

Most of the technical/physical stuff where you just shrugged is actually lifted pretty much straightforward from current day laser technology. You can buy tunable lasers right now where the output wavelength (the color) can be changed on the fly by (very precisely) changing the size of the optical cavity within the laser, in other words, by changing its resonant frequency. A collimator is a device that focuses light (laser or otherwise) into a parallel beam, so it's pretty clear what "recollimate" could mean. It isn't obvious why the beam color doesn't change when they rotate frequencies against the borg, but this could simply mean that the frequency changes are actually only pretty minute (say a few gigahertz or so), which wouldn't change the color as perceived by humans at all. For visible light, if you change the frequency by a couple dozen gigahertz, some people with very good color vision might be able to tell a very slight hue difference in a direct comparison, but for the light to change into a completely different color, you would need frequency changes of tens to hundreds of TERAhertz. Compare it to lasers: while you can build lasers for all sorts of different wavelengths (frequencies), a single given tunable laser can only be tuned over a narrow range. For most types the limit is plus/minus a few nanometers (basically imperceptible for humans), but for some types it can be as large as 50nm or so, which, while easily perceptible, is still basically within the range of a single primary color.

i believe it was the "alcohol" disease episode around the ice planet... Scotty uses a hand phaser as a precision cutting tool to access the engine room that was sealed off by Lt. Reilly.

The Phaser has a hidden secret setting : Tickle ! 👽💚

Type 1 was usually referred to as Cricket Phasers & were derringer sized, Type 2 were the gun shaped Phasers in TOS to the TMPs only to made into the Phaser wands of TNG through to Nemesis, & Type 3s were always vaguely to precisely rifle shaped in configuration.

If an Oberth could be survive long enough to shot it could be dangerous...let Oberths dream.

Lore Reloaded: about the phasers changing frequencies in BOBW, both the hand units, and ship mounted phasers changed colors. They were a red/pink/blueish color when the away team boarded the cube, and also when the Enterprise freed itself from the tractor beam and hid in the nebula.

The phaser is a plot device. It can be programmed... I mean adjusted. Through a keypad, touch screen or a dial, it can be made to do just about anything. It is the Star Trek "This weapon can give energy in any way, usually a weapon but can be a tool" weapon. I like it. It is the ultimate in human flexibility reduced to being mostly a weapon, a way humans usually use said energy. The phaser is humanity in a weapon. Need I say more?

Since you showed a TOS phaser I was surprised you didn't mention the fact that the "Type 2" TOS phaser was a "Type 1" TOS phaser (the unit on top) that was attached to a more pistol like grip that somehow made the phaser even better (the grip apparently was a power storage device).

The only time I saw a phaser used as something besides a weapon was when Chekhov shot a boulder, temporarily turning it into a space heater for cold weather survival on the surface of a planet while the captain was leading an away team below.

Lore Reloaded: Roasting the fuck outta the Oberth since the 23rd century.

4:50 They might have told people to set the phasers to change frequencies as a moral boosting exercise. Just giving out some basic advise they should know by heart at the start of a battle against a fearsome foe as a show of preparedness and confidence by the senior officers to calm the junior crewmen's nerves.

I don't know, I remember in TOS they used them to heat up rocks and stuff in cold environments. Only example springing to mind though! ED: They also repaired a shuttle with a battery pack for one but that's a different situation..

I loved the Assault phaser pistols as seen in Star Trek 6.

I thought phasers was like a catch all word like blasters, in Star Wars like other species might not necessarily call them phasers but they’re phaser like so somebody’s gonna be like “he’s got a phaser!”

If I had a ship going into deep space, it and my crew would always have old fashioned kinetic energy weapons(ie: guns) as a back-up just in case we ran across something that was resistant to energy weapons(plasma, radiation, particle, etc) you know...in case of Borg!

2:39 no they do use phasers as tools from time to time in TOS. On two occasions they used them to heat up rocks for warmth.

Originally the disruptor was from the original series was a sonic disruptor using sound waves like that of a microwave that’s what they were explaining I remember one episode where they said that they used disruptors and it was a sonic disruptor that was at 10 to the power and it would’ve been disrupted if they did not have the screens up with our shields so that was the story I do not know what episode but it was that’s how it was explained I was told that those disruptors were sonic and uses soundwaves which I thought was a pretty good concept

I always figured they had to tell them to cycle the frequency was because constantly doing so would place much more strain on the weapon. Its not like its easy to have a weapon change its core operating modulation... or whatever they were trying to call it... in a firefight. The drain on the energy storage of the unit would lukely also be impacted, so why use it when not needed?

Considering how many times phasers are "set to MAXIMUM stun!" it wouldn't be out of the question that all the settings between 1 and 3 are considered different stun levels.

So it is simple, just open the type 2 owners manual for the setting list. Setting1: Stun setting2:Heavy stun setting3:kill Setting4: Kill 2, with a vengenceSetting5:Thermal effect Setting6: Shake and bakeSetting7: I want to keep your ashes on the mantel setting8: Delete buttonSetting9: enough to get the job done but not as fun as 10 Setting10:Screw you and the ugly ass couch you are sitting on.Setting11: The spinal tap settingSetting12: you are almost a teenagerSetting13:Not to be used on Fridays Setting14: I want you and your friends all grease stains so stand together. Setting15: you are pushing your luckSetting16: She'll be coming through the mountain when she comes and she's pissed.

Do disruptors please. The difference between these weapons is subtle but interesting.

Good stuff LR. I guess I imagined that using energy weapons would be more cost effective than using the ballistic ammo.

i like to see my self the difference between like a type 10 and type 12 on star ship and all the different numbers they used vs like the ones on the defiant cannons

Or to save eight and a halfish minutes. Phasers: Good guy weapons that fire a glowy beam. Disruptors: Bad guy weapons that fire a glowy ball.

Just a thougjt on why sisko wouldnt use that setting if it can take down buildings wouldnt it heavily damage the station behind the jem hadar possibly leading to hull breaches?

+Lore Reloaded You should consider differentiating between Enterprise-era, TOS-era, and TNG-era phasers and settings. I know it's more complicated, but I think there are some key differences between the settings. Enterprise-era "Phase pistols" had 2 settings. Stun and kill. I don't know much about TOS-era phasers. Never watched TOS. I know, blasphemy right? TNG-era "type-2 phasers" have 16 power settings ranging from light-stun to vaporize, as well as various beam width settings ranging from a narrow beam to "wide-dispersal". I believe it was Riker who set a type-2 phaser to "level 16, wide-dispersal" expecting it to "vaporize half this building" in some kind of dream state. A possessed Tuvok used one of these to stun everyone else on Voyager's bridge in one blast (thank you for pointing out the Siege of AR-558, terribly written episode).

This may have been commented on since I'm so late but the phaser beam does change color when they change frequency well at least the Enterprise beams do. See best of both worlds when the enterprise encounters the borg. Cmdr Shelby tells data to re-modulate the phasers you can see it change colors from red to blue even green.

From what I understand, phasers burn their targets like a microwave but more advanced. Disrupters I think damage and interrupt the electric synapses and nervous system of a being... In the simpler format, (I am open to say I might be definitely wrong in how it works.)

What do you think of the ships phasers as seen in Star Trek II, the visceral pulse ish ones

I would expect that phasers were always tools as well as weapons. The big phaser used on Talos would seem to be a tool more than weapon. Like many or most tools, it might well be used as one, of course. Plus, I feel an homage was made in Enterprise in the "Terra Prime" arc when a very similar phaser setup as used in "The Cage" was seen used on the Luna mining colony. Hence, with that in mind, the big phaser gun from "The Cage" probably WAS a cutting tool used for geologic surveys?

Giving a handheld weapon the ability to disintegrate a building in one shot is just stupidly overpowered, I don't blame the writers for not using that in the DS9 battles. It wouldn't make for a good battle scene and I guess they realised that it is just ridiculous.

in the Star Trek The next generation technical manual there's three. type 1 is the small hand phaser. (8 setting's) type 2 is the larger hand phaser (16 setting's) and type 3 the phaser rifle, (16 settings).settings 1,2 3 are stun settings setting 1 is 15 minutes on most life forms setting 3 its one hour. at highest settings, phasers only have a few shots ( 8 or less.) and have to cool down for 30 sec's to a minute.between shots. setting higher than 6 will kill most life forms. setting 9 and higher will vaporizes most life forms.

The recoil of any of those weapons would rip your arm of and create a sonic boom. For real because .. science

3:34 O.........M.........G........!!! Perfectly placed Sesame Street Count reference. I love it!

4:47 actually in BoBW you do see the enterprise's phaser shots vary in color, as well as the handheld phasers used when boarding the cube to get picard back. The abandoned that detail after that however

Reollimate sounds like it is keeping the beam from dispersing. From the word collimating wich means to make the rays or particles accurately parallel It sounds like the radiation causes the phaser beam to disperse.

I think - but have never been sure - that the phaser you show throughout most of this video is the type 2 phaser; the type 1 is actually part of the type 2; it is the removable black rectangular part with the silver strip that is set into the blue-grey part. Taken out on it's own it was less powerful hence type 1 but when connected to the rest it is more powerful and hence type 2. Then, as you say, the phaser rifle is type 3. I think! Interestingly (well, interesting to me!), this two-part arrangement was carried right through to the Assault phaser that was used in (deep breath!) Star Trek V. At one point I owned a prop replica of this and it had, indeed, a removable "type 1" style phaser that was much smaller than the full size "type 2" style unit.

I think that with the level of technology that the federation has, projectile weapons would be very effective. With our current level of technology we can make petty advanced weapons like the grenade shotgun rounds or the tazzer shotgun rounds. With replicators it would that there would be very few limitations to what could be made.

I figure phasers beat out bullets for one main reason: -censorship- weight. If you care about the mass of a ship in space situations, which, I mean, let's face it, you probably do, space flight is expensive, a single battery cell which can store 100 "blasts" is going to be better than a magazine from a bulky assault rifle. And even after space flight got cheap enough for a gun to theoretically come back, a phaser would still be cheaper for mass production.

Was that a Micromachines Borg Cube? Nice...I bought several sets of the MM Star Trek tng, tos & and movie toys when they were new...didn't keep them in their boxes though...I played with them. The amount of accurate canon detail was spectacular for their tiny scale. The ToS Enterprise looked fantastic/hilarious when put into the mouth of a Jurassic Park(tm) T-Rex dino-damage toy. As for phaser settings and canon inconsistencies...it's amazing the Enterprise could set it's ships phasers to stun(as used in "A Piece of the Action")...gotta wonder if some stray alley cats got stunned in the process? When a phaser gets shot at a stone wall & the wall disappears, what happened to the matter? I'd think there would be some major residual radiation in the area for quite some time... I could expand on this subject for an entire book over 300 pages long, but I'll leave it for now, seem as I have yet to suscribe and nobody will see this comment on a video several months old anyhow. :(

I know in a few episodes of the TOS they use the phasers to heat rocks to help them during cold nights.

Scotty used a phaser a few types to cut thru bulkhead walls in the show.

Lore Reloade: _"...which SIsko forgot about when fighting at the Siege of AR-558."_ Dude, the Sisko - supposedly a baseline human - was able to _successfully take on and defeat around a dozen Jem'Hadar_ - genetically enhanced super-soldiers - before one got smart and realized that you can't defeat The Sisko, you can only hope to contain him. The Sisko probably gave two shits about what phasers can and cannot do; his fists are ultimately more effective. The results speak for themselves.

Phaser = Phased Energy Rectification Laser = Light Amplification of stimulated emission of radiation Phasers are Much more powerful based upon energy output even in the vacuum of space.

Fun Fact: The Phaser Rifle used by Shatner's Captain Kirk isn't actually a rifle.

I just go with RE-CALM-INNATE... close enough. Basically constantly reconstruct the column of the beam I'm guessing. In reality, fancy technobabble for the win!

it'd work like a plasma cutting torch or a heliarc welder. those utilize plasma too. the phaser in star trek is just a talking up of a ammonia/plasma Maser, those really exist. Gene roddenberry took some creative license with Maser technology and came up with a phaser. a Phaser, like a Maser would use some form of modulated microwave energy to create the plasma. so yeah the phaser was based on a real life machine. The United States military also uses particle beam and directed energy weapons that are very much like phasers. the point we're at now is they're the size of rail cars. as time goes on, they'll be miniaturized,

In Star Trek TOS they used phasers to blow the top off of the elevator/turbolift on the Talos home world in The Cage. I’d say that’s an example of phasers being used as a tool not a weapon.