OK, but if it were merely a physical, matter-based barrier, why would their be any need to raise and lower it like shields? Voyager would have flipped it on once, and left the ship armored forever after. Also, I don't think any conventional armor material would have been so much more effective than ...

Oh, LOL! Armor made of hamburger. ;) One thing to consider, too, is that the armor isn't just the armor. I'm wondering if it isn't a sort of armor/shield hybrid -- that is, a shield so dense that it traps metal atoms between it's layers. Better still, it might be a material that's so tightly compres...

My impression about the "ablative armor generator" technology was that it wasn't simply transported into place, but replicated wholesale. Which means it combines the best aspects of normal ablative armor (a thick, physical barrier that absorbs the full impact of a weapon strike and carries...

Well, one thing that occurs to me that would make a fundamental difference is that the Z-axis of the warp coils on Voyager are no longer parallel like they would be in other Federation starships. That is, if you drew a line from the center of the top warp coil in a pair of coils, to the center of th...

I'd have to say my favorite episode from the older series would be "The War Games." It's probably one of the longest of the old serial-style episodes. It starts off like you would imagine a typical episode, but keeps escalating as a mystery until you reach the end of the episode, where we ...