There's an amazing exchange between Commodore Decker and Captain Kirk when Doctor McCoy revived Decker from the near-catatonic state of shock he was in. Kirk: Commodore Decker, where is your crew. Decker: The ship was lost. I stayed with the ship. The captain goes down with the ship. Kirk: Matt, *where is the crew!* Decker: I beamed them down to the third planet. Kirk: There is no third planet. Decker: *DON'T YOU THINK I KNOW THAT!?!* There was! The way the actor delivers that last line is haunting. He'd been just kind of staring off into the middle distance, as if he was dictating an official log, not really engaging with the people around him. On the last line, he suddenly turns his head and focuses intensely on Kirk, with the camera focusing tightly on his wide, haunted eyes.
William Windom knocked that performance out of the park. Catatonic, anguished, obsessed, arrogant, terrified... he did it all so convincingly. Probably the best guest star in Trek history.
@@woodrobin 100% agree! That segment always leaves me wondering where the hell Windom dug that performance up from...and who had hurt him so badly as to leave him with that in his acting arsenal.
I like the idea that it was a weapon of last resort from a long lost war that's going purely on autopilot and its original commands. Its a weapon that was unleashed and hasn't been told to stop. Its just a cool concept.
The idea that our final machinations continue on for years, even centuries after based on the garbled understanding of its last commands... really chilling stuff.
In my fan film, the planetkillers were from the same galaxy as the Bluegill parasites from TNG Conspiracy. The parasites had taken over many planets and caused interstellar war. A race built the planetkillers in a war of attrition. By destroying all planets capable of supporting hosts, they would eventually wipe out the parasites. They tried to recall the planetkillers, but they continued looking for M class planets and some crossed into other galaxies
@@HistoryVideoGamesMiscStuff i like my theory that it's not a weapon at all but simply construction equipment that went haywire or someone forgot to turn it off
The Preservers making the Doomsday Machine to defeat the Borg, then let it loose nowhere near the Borg, is why you leave unexplained mysteries like the machine.
In my fan film, the planetkillers were from the same galaxy as the Bluegill parasites from TNG Conspiracy. The parasites had taken over many planets and caused interstellar war. A race built the planetkillers in a war of attrition. By destroying all planets capable of supporting hosts, they would eventually wipe out the parasites. They tried to recall the planetkillers, but they continued looking for M class planets and some crossed into other galaxies.
God I hate the CGI re-edit of TOS. What an insult to the original production team. It's so unnecessary. So glad a high def version of the actual TOS still exists. Unlike the original Star Wars trilogy. :(
While I'll readily agree that this is one of the very best episodes of the series, the franchise, and even of all of sci-fi, I've always had an issue with the weapon itself. That much neutronium would have an incredibly strong gravitational field as its mass would cause a warping of the spacetime around it that would rival that of an intermediate-mass black hole. With gravity that strong, its mere presence alone would be enough to destroy even the most solid space body, negating any need for its antiproton beam.
@@surferdude4487 neutronium is already collapsed. While the material is still only hypothetical, I believe that the mathematics goes a long way to proving it's existence. When massive star no can no longer support it's own mass through fusion, generally it will undergo a type 2 supernova, and provided that the remaining core doesn't immediately collapse into a black hole due to its mass, it becomes a neutron star. This means that the matter is packed so densely that all of the space inside the boundaries of the atoms making up the matter becomes so condensed that the electrons merge with the protons in the nucleus creating what is known as "degenerate matter." The remaining core gets its name from the fact that it's essentially charge-neutral neutrons that make up the entire body. Neutronium, by it's very definition would be the strongest material possible in the universe, quite literally being indestructible. However, the resulting density would mean that even a teaspoon of degenerate matter would weigh many times that of Mt. Everest or even small planets like Mars. Furthermore, this also means that the neutronium plating covering Dominion HQ on Cardassia Prime would not have been possible because plating that large an area on a habitable planet would have destroyed the planet itself purely from the effects of gravity. Yeah, as you could probably tell, this is a rabbit hole I've been personally exploring for something like three decades now 🤣😂🤣
@@sethmaki1333 Yes, neutronium is ridiculous. Unless that doomsday machine is a sphere about 20 km in diameter, it doesn't have sufficient mass for the neutronium to maintain its collapsed state. It would slowly sublimate into ordinary matter. Given that the Constitution class was about 287 m in length and the Doomsday machine was about 10 x that length, roughly cone shaped and hollow, it was a tiny fraction of that mass. Either the engineers that designed it accepted that loss factor or they devised a field to keep the neutronium collapsed. Now that I think about it, the hull did appear to be scarred. If the neutronium kept its integrity, there would be no scarring. so, it looks like they didn't bother.
@@surferdude4487 ahh good. I'm glad to see that you're actually roughly as well versed in physics as I am. My apologies for assuming otherwise. It's not usually something that I find common ground with others.
I think William Windom, who played Decker did an amazing job portraying someone who understood the awful power the doomsday machine had. Also, Decker makes the right choice ethically in doing everything he can to stop it. (Been a while since I watched the episode, but that's the impression I got 🙂)
I always held the belief that the Doomday machine wasn't a weapon at all but was actually a piece of construction equipment by a unknown civilization that went awol due to a computer glitch or insufficient orders or activated during a disaster event and the civilization couldn't do anything about it given it was either reeling from the event and didnt bother to go waste resources tl hunt it down or got wiped out and the machine is a relic that survived. That it also probably looked very different too, instead of looking like a wierd snake like tube with a open maw it might have been more uniform and straight with the machine having covers to protect the maw from dangerous debris it couldn't ingest or avoid accidents. Looking more like the Behemoth from Wing Commander III which ironically was based on the Doomday Machine. The purpose of the Doomsday machine being it would be given orders to a construction or demolition site likely with a dead world or world rich in resources but not worth colonizing. The machine would fire destroying or carving up the world allowing smaller ships or construction and refinery ships to get access to the resources. The machine meanwhile would feed on resources required to keep it fueled for any additional work in that system. I don't believe it was intended to outright deathstar a world but blow or carve chunks out. This would conserve power and limit the risk of debris hitting the ship. This also would explain why the machine is so heavily protected with its hull. It was designed to withstand planetary debrie, and it would explain why the machine looks so misshapen and beat to hell when it was encountered cause it fires at full power instead of its safety limits causing planets to explode and it gets pummeled by near continent sized debris. So yeah I think it wasn't a weapon. Hell it didn't even have any defense weapons other than the hull. It would be ironic that perhaps one of the most dangerous things in the galaxy was probably a piece of construction equipment someone else forget to switch off after work
There was a novel where aliens steal Manhatten. inside the huge ship the people of Manhatten find a collection of cities from other planets. It turns out a former government of the city stealers had constructed a machine to harvest planets (or something like that) set it loose with no regard to other life forms. This government had been dethroned and now they were constructing a weapon to destroy the harvester. Meanwhile they sent a ship ahead to at least save the species of the planets the harvester was going to destroy.
The machine could make the journey between galaxies on a ballistic approach in low power sleep setting. That doesn't mean it is extra-galaxy, but that doesn't mean it isn't.
Great you did a video on this! "The Doomsday Machine" is one of the most discussed and argued of subjects amongst Star Trek Fans. In modern Trek, I would not be surprised if, "Section 31" still have the, "Doom Day Machine" for study and to perhaps duplicate it as a Star Fleet weapon. In classic and modern Trek, The Doomsday Machine would not have been simply left adrift in space.
There is a few lines in one of the Next Gen novels that Starfleet were considering reprogramming and reactivating the planet killer to fight the Borg but were afraid it would revert back to it's own mission or the Borg might assimilate it.
@thanqualthehighseer I'll add, for years now, there has been a theory amongst ST fans that the Doomsday Machine was created by another race of beings to fight the Borg.
The first time I watched "The Doomsday Machine", I remember thinking 'That damn thing looks like an old-fashioned ham.' and so it is remembered to this day as "The Flying Ham".
@adamlangston6752 most cigars don't taper down so radically, while if you look at a classic 'bone-in' ham, while they're shorter, that same taper is very apparent.
there was a fan film a few years ago where not only could the doomsday machine destroy planets but it could also use that planet as both fuel and as a way to make more of itself as well. can't find the film anymore maybe it got taken down
There is a video game appearance you missed. In the PS2 game Shattered Universe we see a mirror counterpart to the Doomsday Machine. The crew of the USS Excelsior who switch places with the ISS Excelsior, crosses into Klingon Space where they find out that the Terran Empire has gained control of the Mirror Planet Killer. They try to use it to destroy Kronos. The player has to fight the Terran Empire escorts and the Klingons to stop it.
There is also the FASA STRPG adventure "A Doomsday like any Other" where the PC's Starfleet vessel encounters another Doomsday machine close to the Romulan Neutral Zone (Romulan shenanigans ensue). The PC's are tasked with stopping the alien artifact (which if I remember correctly was on course to enter the Romulan Empire (Interstellar war anyone?) by any means necessary. Cool adventure, should be available on PDF (however it is NOT canon).
I keep imagining, now, some extra-galactic alien society, was sitting there going. "Remember that Planet Killer we were never able to locate and shut down? I wonder where it went?" all while the thing was cracking planets one galaxy over. I also have to wonder just how the thing was able to traverse the sheer unimaginable distance between said galaxies without fuel? How was it able to cross the Galactic Barrier at the edge of the Milky Way? I wonder if any other species encountered the Planet Killer? This Iconic doomsday weapon has so many questions and mysteries.
Ryan's Edit channel does an amazing job of Remastering the episode's textures. Regardless if you like the remastered or the original; the episodes unique music never gets old. 🖖
@@Alteringrealitystudios DDM would win against the crystal entity fairly easily. It didn't take the destruction of a starship to destroy the crystal entity.
It was the music and pacing of the episode that made the episode. It wasn't matched or surpassed until 1976's "Rocky" in the final or the overall fight scenes. We interrupt the very long commercial for another commercial.
*I think the klingon weapon was the Hargh'peng Torpedo, which you get as a reward earlier on in STO, and theres the Days of Doom 5 man instance where tou battle it.*
There was also the star trek 25 th anniversary game for the game boy that featured the planet killer as the final boss that got faster and faster the more you fired at it. Great game. Favourite episode of tos. Keep up the good work guys!
I'm glad they didn't go with Spinrad's original concept of an alien battleship bristling with weapons. The version we got, twisted and scarred from a million years of forgotten battles, reduced to little more than a barely-functional wreck running on 'safe mode' - but still an insatiably hungry maw and an apocalyptic end-times threat to any ship or planet it encounters - is a striking image in ways no collection of spikes and death rays could manage.
I always liked stories of weapons created by one side or another that took out both showing how conflict is futile and really just needs to be worked out.
Every time I see the design of it in full, it just makes me think someone on the production staff forgot to do their job the night before and just crumpled some tinfoil, handed it to the director, and went "there's your planet killer".
This was a great episode that held a lot of potential. Two or even three more episodes could have easily been written as a follow up and conclusion. follow up episodes could have been written for several others as well.
Simply not knowing for sure where this came from and what it was for makes it so much better. Definitive answers will never be as good as what the individual mind will come up with. Infinite possibilities
In the comic series The Q Conflict, the Enterprise-E is able to destroy another planet killer with Quantum torpedoes while other ships keep it occupied.
I don’t know if they would ever bring back to Star Trek enterprise but I wish they would. I know the old crew to the old Star Trek enterprise is dead or too old so why can’t they remake that show and put new characters in there and better enterprise?
@ what the Hecks wrong with the enterprise it’s like everybody hates the the Starship Enterprise cause nobody wants to remake that show so it looks to me like everybody hates the friggin enterprise and never wish it never existed and hated the show if that’s what you think because that is what it looks like to me
One thing nobody ever talks about: The DM has a neutronium hull, even if it was only 1mm thick, it would have a tremendous gravitational field, enough to disturb planets it didn't destroy from their orbits. The gravity would be enough to keep humans from going inside and resurrecting it. Leaving where it is, in the orbit of a sun of a destroyed solar system is the best thing to do with it's carcass.
I admit my headcanon is that the TOS Planet Killer was either the one that the Nakhul took to Galarndon Core or led B'vat to in STO. The time-travelling Nakhul would know where it was and might have developed a way to activate it.
About 28 years ago, when windows message boards were around, I came across a very well written story that was never put into print and i never found again. The story started out where Q was being attacked by some unknown being. Q thought of a safe place, Enterprise, and all of the sudden, ALL of the ships named Enterprise appeared at DS9. NX-01 wasnt there considering this story was about 5 years before that series. There HAS to be someone else out there that had read this. I am hoping someone here or someone at Trek Central is aware of it or can point me to where I can read it again.
The scale of the doomsday machine is way off (not that size matters as much). The pure power of its weapon alone should have left no trace of the Constellation at all let alone blowing up a ship in its maw. I mean it destroyed whole planets and consumed them a very fast rate. This scenario implies the power of a single warp core has enough power to blow a planet up or at least a large chunk of it off into space. It’s kind of like the scale of the Fesarius from the first federation. 1.6 Kilometers might seem big but look at the visual scale of it in the show.
Yep. Detonating a warp core would destroy an entire planet. But, what the Constellation detonated was a fusion reactor. It didn't have an operational warp core or active anti-matter when it was destroyed.
I love this episode, one of the best. What irks me about the way they wrote Commadore Decker's character, he was fighting an unknown planet destroying machine, so he beams down his whole crew to a planet!?!? Major plot hole. They should have been kept on board where they at least had a chance.
My headcanon says it was built by the Vor'Soth from Star Trek Elite Force. Hear me out... it's fueled by debris leftover from the planets it destroys, the Vor'Soth or "Harvesters" build and grow everything from their ships to their soldiers by recycling everything and everyone they can get their claws on... speaking of claws, the Planet Killer was originally designed with claws or tentacles. It's shell is made of some super tough stuff, one Harvester ship was able to take a direct hit from a weapon equivalent to the Planet Killer and its boarding crews still tore shit through Voyager's walls like Bugs Bunny on his way to Albuquerque. The Vor'Soth are also extra galactic and have gotten around, since you encounter alpha quad species ingame as well.
I read somewhere that if the crew of the Enterprise had thought about it, they would not have been able to give Decker command even if they wanted to. When Decker was found, he was in a state of shock so deep he did not even know there was anyone in the room with him. At least three people walked in, and he was oblivious to them. There has to be a Starfleet regulation somewhere that says someone in that condition can't return to duty without a full medical examination from head to toe. To say nothing of a someone in command of a starship in a combat situation. _Spock: "........Then your statement would not be considered valid."_ McCoy could have said something like, _"You are right Spock. But less than an hour ago, I found this man in a catatonic state so deep, I had to give him a shot to bring him out of it. And he almost lost it again as he remembered what happened. Now he wants to go after that thing again? As CMO I cannot allow him to take command under these circumstances until I do a full workup of his physical and mental state." Spock: "Commadore Decker, you are relieved of command"_ Of course, you would not have had that great bit with Kirk _"Blast regulations!!"_ But it would have made a bit more sense and Decker could still have stolen a shuttle later.
A mass of neutronium that big wouldn't need an anti-proton beam to destroy planets, just approaching one would be enough to tear it apart by the tidal effects of its gravity. That also raises the question of how exactly did the Starfleet Corps of Engineers tow an object with the mass of a star back to their home base? Also, young Jean-Luc needed to brush up on his astronomy, the density of matter drops off in intergalactic space, but there are still plenty of rogue stars and planets, especially if the Planet Killer was coming from one of the Magellanic Clouds, since there are star streams being teased off them by the Milky Way's gravity. As for the Galactic Barrier, that seems to be mostly psionic. An automated spacecraft without any minds onboard could pass through it easily, especially since all its vital systems would be wrapped in neutronium.
Its also more logical to me that the Doomsday Machine originated from another galaxy, and that it had more than enough energy/fuel to reach the Milky Way as it did. It may have entered other galaxies before finally reaching the Milky Way, having traveled for a very, very long time through deep space.
If nobody mentioned it yet, Fred Saberhagen might be considered the originator of the “Berserker” aka Doomsday Machine. His Berserker book series started in 1963, before Trek. The Berserker concept supposedly influenced the writing in this episode.
I want to say that the Doomsday Machine is closest Star Trek got to something having as much firepower power as the Death Star on screen (at least I don't remember there being something else that was obliterating planets like that) and with its weakness being an open port, we can tell Lucas and Star Wars fans that Star Trek did it first. 😀 As for who built the thing and for what purpose, I would prefer that to remain a mystery. It makes the Doomsday Machine more intimidating that way. The Borg became less threatening and less interesting the more we found out about them. Lets not make the same mistake with the Doomsday Machine.
Fans forget that its look is NOT how it was originally built. It had a smoother and rounder appearance with a bright coloring. The look we got in TOS is from centuries of in use. Its outer hull has been worn down from all sorts of things.
As fun as these origin stories are, they do tend to cause us to forget the social messages that Sci-Fi tells. The subtext was of course about the dangers of nuclear weapons and nuclear war. That said, it was a fun video 🙂
I always wondered why Decker attacked in the first place. I came up with a bit of a story that there was some pre-industrial civilization on the 3rd planet in that system. So the Constilation attacked in an effort to drive it away to save the millions of people that were on that world. He succeeds in driving it off but his ship was badly damaged and he beamed the survivors of his ship down to the 3rd planet and hoped for some rescue as the life support on the ship couldn't last with so many on board. But he made a mistake and the planet killer came back and then there was nothing he could do as it destroyed the 3rd planet and his crew. That would also be why he was so adamant on destroying it when the Enterprise came. For his crew as he was going to either avenge them or join them. Just an idea I had to explain why he attacked instead of moving out of the way and warning Starfleet. After all his science officer must have told him the same things Spock did.
Rogue planets are much more prevalent than you would believe. Young cadet Picard would be false in asserting that the space between galaxies is devoid of planets. There are plenty of planets, just no stars to illuminate them.
I can't help but nitpick whenever I hear of the doomsday machine. Neutronium isn't that hard to defeat. Just use an anti-neutron beam and annihilate it. Yes, I'm sure that it'll fight back and it might take a while, but that "1 target at a time" gimmick........
Count me as believing that the Doomsday Machine was a rogue, ancient cosmic bulldozer as opposed to some ultimate weapon. As powerful as the Borg are, their development as they continued to appear and history unfolded makes them relatively recent in the grand scheme of things. Tying them with the Doomsday Machine which is hypothesized as being extra-galactic and very, very old doesn't make sense. For me, the only reason to look at the Doomsday Machine as a weapon is it's more 'gentle' attributes. It's dampening field that cuts off subspace communication and deactivates antimatter. Even then, one might hypothesize some alien terrorists who stole a cosmic bulldozer from a megastructure construction site and installed the dampening field and programmed the dozer to go and do its thing. As for crossing intergalactic distances, well, the dozer could have just went on standby, and moved interstellar distances at sub-light for tens of millions of years or more.
Something nobody seems to think about, if it can destroy entire planets that means its main weapon is ridiculously powerful, like the Death Star. It should squash Star Ships like bugs. Also as far as it using planet remains as fuel, compared to a planet the Doomsday Machine is microscopic! It would literally take years to swallow that much debris..
The DM wouldn't need any weapons system. The intense hard radiation from neutronium hull would be enough to destroy any vessel within scanning range. How the vessel's internal systems survived this radiation is left as an exercise for the interested student.
I always thought it was ridiculous on its face, the claim that the Doomsday machine came from outside the galaxy, simply because it was heading away from the edge towards the center. How do they know it didn't start at the center of the Orion Arm headed outwards, reach the barrier and turn back?
I think the doomsday machine would've been great for a movie so maybe they could do a Kelvin timeline version of it that's even more powerful and even makes it so far that it ends up in the sol system and is on earths doorstep and there's dozens of federation ships trying to stop it like a kelvin version of the battle of sector 001
It could have come through a wormhole. Also, since there is no resistance in space it could have stretched its fuel just enough to make it to the Milky Way with little left in its tank which would explain why it was so ravenous in this galaxy.
I always thought that The Doomsday Machine was hauled off to some covert shipyard or orbital research facility. With the introduction of Section 31 to Star Trek canon I am positive that is where it ended up. TOS strove hard to make TDM to be from outside of the galaxy so I am going with that. I always thought that a good episode of the later Trek series or movies would have been TDM being reactivated and having to fight it with more advanced weapons and using a warhead specifically created to take out any other possible TDMs.
I would coin a new terminology and call it a weapon of total destruction. Mass destruction is too familiar with nukes, and nukes don't kill planets, only the occupants. If you would activate a planet killer, it would disrupt the whole solar system, and that is definitely called for a totally different type of weapon. Other suggestions are welcome
I think the measurement of space is quite unrealistic. In STO, you get out of range at +10 km. The majority of ships are several hundred meters long. How long is the range of a doomsday machine? Apparently 10 km. But they can still reach a planet's core and blast a planet into pieces to fuel itself.
I wonder if the exterior is misshapen and warped because neutronium is hard to forge, or because it’s so ancient that over millennia, even a neutronium hull will take damage Also this is one of the best examples of the CG replacement for TOS sticking out in a way that takes me out of the episode a bit. Like, it’s not *bad* CG, but it feels out of place against the grainy 1960s film of everything else, and it feels like a disservice to the people who did the original models and effects
Unfortunately this is about 10 years into the future for SNW I'd like to see a random encounter for Scotty with Mr Henghist first, seeing his suitability for possession
There's an amazing exchange between Commodore Decker and Captain Kirk when Doctor McCoy revived Decker from the near-catatonic state of shock he was in.
Kirk: Commodore Decker, where is your crew.
Decker: The ship was lost. I stayed with the ship. The captain goes down with the ship.
Kirk: Matt, *where is the crew!*
Decker: I beamed them down to the third planet.
Kirk: There is no third planet.
Decker: *DON'T YOU THINK I KNOW THAT!?!* There was!
The way the actor delivers that last line is haunting. He'd been just kind of staring off into the middle distance, as if he was dictating an official log, not really engaging with the people around him. On the last line, he suddenly turns his head and focuses intensely on Kirk, with the camera focusing tightly on his wide, haunted eyes.
William Windom knocked that performance out of the park. Catatonic, anguished, obsessed, arrogant, terrified... he did it all so convincingly. Probably the best guest star in Trek history.
@@woodrobin 100% agree! That segment always leaves me wondering where the hell Windom dug that performance up from...and who had hurt him so badly as to leave him with that in his acting arsenal.
I would guess Windom pulled that from ww2 first hand experience, as so many of that generation of performers, artists and writers did.
I like the idea that it was a weapon of last resort from a long lost war that's going purely on autopilot and its original commands.
Its a weapon that was unleashed and hasn't been told to stop.
Its just a cool concept.
The idea that our final machinations continue on for years, even centuries after based on the garbled understanding of its last commands... really chilling stuff.
I don't like the novel-verse attempt at making the Doomsday Machine an anti-Borg weapon, and prefer it as a forgotten extra-galactic weapon.
@@HistoryVideoGamesMiscStuff it was a great novel though.
Agreed. I always associate it's origins and nature with the Berserkers of Fred Saberhagen.
In my fan film, the planetkillers were from the same galaxy as the Bluegill parasites from TNG Conspiracy. The parasites had taken over many planets and caused interstellar war. A race built the planetkillers in a war of attrition. By destroying all planets capable of supporting hosts, they would eventually wipe out the parasites. They tried to recall the planetkillers, but they continued looking for M class planets and some crossed into other galaxies
@@HistoryVideoGamesMiscStuff i like my theory that it's not a weapon at all but simply construction equipment that went haywire or someone forgot to turn it off
IDIC
The Preservers making the Doomsday Machine to defeat the Borg, then let it loose nowhere near the Borg, is why you leave unexplained mysteries like the machine.
In my fan film, the planetkillers were from the same galaxy as the Bluegill parasites from TNG Conspiracy. The parasites had taken over many planets and caused interstellar war. A race built the planetkillers in a war of attrition. By destroying all planets capable of supporting hosts, they would eventually wipe out the parasites. They tried to recall the planetkillers, but they continued looking for M class planets and some crossed into other galaxies.
@@surplusgavids would like to see that
God I hate the CGI re-edit of TOS. What an insult to the original production team. It's so unnecessary. So glad a high def version of the actual TOS still exists. Unlike the original Star Wars trilogy. :(
While I'll readily agree that this is one of the very best episodes of the series, the franchise, and even of all of sci-fi, I've always had an issue with the weapon itself. That much neutronium would have an incredibly strong gravitational field as its mass would cause a warping of the spacetime around it that would rival that of an intermediate-mass black hole. With gravity that strong, its mere presence alone would be enough to destroy even the most solid space body, negating any need for its antiproton beam.
@@sethmaki1333 maybe that is part of its propulsion system
Yep, that hull would have a lot of mass. It would be fun to speculate on what technology would keep the neutronium in that collapsed state.
@@surferdude4487 neutronium is already collapsed. While the material is still only hypothetical, I believe that the mathematics goes a long way to proving it's existence. When massive star no can no longer support it's own mass through fusion, generally it will undergo a type 2 supernova, and provided that the remaining core doesn't immediately collapse into a black hole due to its mass, it becomes a neutron star. This means that the matter is packed so densely that all of the space inside the boundaries of the atoms making up the matter becomes so condensed that the electrons merge with the protons in the nucleus creating what is known as "degenerate matter." The remaining core gets its name from the fact that it's essentially charge-neutral neutrons that make up the entire body. Neutronium, by it's very definition would be the strongest material possible in the universe, quite literally being indestructible. However, the resulting density would mean that even a teaspoon of degenerate matter would weigh many times that of Mt. Everest or even small planets like Mars.
Furthermore, this also means that the neutronium plating covering Dominion HQ on Cardassia Prime would not have been possible because plating that large an area on a habitable planet would have destroyed the planet itself purely from the effects of gravity. Yeah, as you could probably tell, this is a rabbit hole I've been personally exploring for something like three decades now 🤣😂🤣
@@sethmaki1333 Yes, neutronium is ridiculous. Unless that doomsday machine is a sphere about 20 km in diameter, it doesn't have sufficient mass for the neutronium to maintain its collapsed state. It would slowly sublimate into ordinary matter. Given that the Constitution class was about 287 m in length and the Doomsday machine was about 10 x that length, roughly cone shaped and hollow, it was a tiny fraction of that mass. Either the engineers that designed it accepted that loss factor or they devised a field to keep the neutronium collapsed.
Now that I think about it, the hull did appear to be scarred. If the neutronium kept its integrity, there would be no scarring. so, it looks like they didn't bother.
@@surferdude4487 ahh good. I'm glad to see that you're actually roughly as well versed in physics as I am. My apologies for assuming otherwise. It's not usually something that I find common ground with others.
I think William Windom, who played Decker did an amazing job portraying someone who understood the awful power the doomsday machine had. Also, Decker makes the right choice ethically in doing everything he can to stop it.
(Been a while since I watched the episode, but that's the impression I got 🙂)
I always held the belief that the Doomday machine wasn't a weapon at all but was actually a piece of construction equipment by a unknown civilization that went awol due to a computer glitch or insufficient orders or activated during a disaster event and the civilization couldn't do anything about it given it was either reeling from the event and didnt bother to go waste resources tl hunt it down or got wiped out and the machine is a relic that survived. That it also probably looked very different too, instead of looking like a wierd snake like tube with a open maw it might have been more uniform and straight with the machine having covers to protect the maw from dangerous debris it couldn't ingest or avoid accidents. Looking more like the Behemoth from Wing Commander III which ironically was based on the Doomday Machine. The purpose of the Doomsday machine being it would be given orders to a construction or demolition site likely with a dead world or world rich in resources but not worth colonizing. The machine would fire destroying or carving up the world allowing smaller ships or construction and refinery ships to get access to the resources. The machine meanwhile would feed on resources required to keep it fueled for any additional work in that system. I don't believe it was intended to outright deathstar a world but blow or carve chunks out. This would conserve power and limit the risk of debris hitting the ship. This also would explain why the machine is so heavily protected with its hull. It was designed to withstand planetary debrie, and it would explain why the machine looks so misshapen and beat to hell when it was encountered cause it fires at full power instead of its safety limits causing planets to explode and it gets pummeled by near continent sized debris.
So yeah I think it wasn't a weapon. Hell it didn't even have any defense weapons other than the hull. It would be ironic that perhaps one of the most dangerous things in the galaxy was probably a piece of construction equipment someone else forget to switch off after work
@@Quetzalcoatl_Feathered_Serpent This is what I always thought.
That's an interesting take.
An interesting alternative to the standard, "race destroyed themselves through war and hubris."
There was a novel where aliens steal Manhatten. inside the huge ship the people of Manhatten find a collection of cities from other planets. It turns out a former government of the city stealers had constructed a machine to harvest planets (or something like that) set it loose with no regard to other life forms. This government had been dethroned and now they were constructing a weapon to destroy the harvester. Meanwhile they sent a ship ahead to at least save the species of the planets the harvester was going to destroy.
The mass of the Machine must be insane. The volume is a good fraction of a neutron star.
One of my favorite episodes.
The machine could make the journey between galaxies on a ballistic approach in low power sleep setting. That doesn't mean it is extra-galaxy, but that doesn't mean it isn't.
Great you did a video on this! "The Doomsday Machine" is one of the most discussed and argued of subjects amongst Star Trek Fans.
In modern Trek, I would not be surprised if, "Section 31" still have the, "Doom Day Machine" for study and to perhaps duplicate it as a Star Fleet weapon. In classic and modern Trek, The Doomsday Machine would not have been simply left adrift in space.
There is a few lines in one of the Next Gen novels that Starfleet were considering reprogramming and reactivating the planet killer to fight the Borg but were afraid it would revert back to it's own mission or the Borg might assimilate it.
@thanqualthehighseer I'll add, for years now, there has been a theory amongst ST fans that the Doomsday Machine was created by another race of beings to fight the Borg.
theres also the Star Trek Continues episode "Fairest of Them All", set in 3 time periods, with the same Planet Killer..
The first time I watched "The Doomsday Machine", I remember thinking 'That damn thing looks like an old-fashioned ham.' and so it is remembered to this day as "The Flying Ham".
A very angry ham that spits out anti-proton beams.
It reminded me of the snack food called BUGLES. In real life it was a windsock which was stiffened using starch. Or something like that.
Huh. I first watched this one over 40 years I ago and to me, it always, and still does look like a turd. That's pareidolia for you.
Cigar
@adamlangston6752 most cigars don't taper down so radically, while if you look at a classic 'bone-in' ham, while they're shorter, that same taper is very apparent.
there was a fan film a few years ago where not only could the doomsday machine destroy planets but it could also use that planet as both fuel and as a way to make more of itself as well. can't find the film anymore maybe it got taken down
I think it’s the fan series Star Trek: New Voyages
Technically a Starship is a weapon of mass destruction as it can destroy the surface of a planet. Good video.
There is a video game appearance you missed. In the PS2 game Shattered Universe we see a mirror counterpart to the Doomsday Machine. The crew of the USS Excelsior who switch places with the ISS Excelsior, crosses into Klingon Space where they find out that the Terran Empire has gained control of the Mirror Planet Killer. They try to use it to destroy Kronos. The player has to fight the Terran Empire escorts and the Klingons to stop it.
@@michaelhviper yeah I remember that game and it was a pain to play on hard mode but I did enjoy that game in the TMP era
space cornucopia or... space doobie!
@@DaveSomething appro since Thanksgiving is tomorrow here in the USA
I called it the Space Bugles
The Handwhich of Doom!
There is also the FASA STRPG adventure "A Doomsday like any Other" where the PC's Starfleet vessel encounters another Doomsday machine close to the Romulan Neutral Zone (Romulan shenanigans ensue). The PC's are tasked with stopping the alien artifact (which if I remember correctly was on course to enter the Romulan Empire (Interstellar war anyone?) by any means necessary. Cool adventure, should be available on PDF (however it is NOT canon).
Space wind sock.
This is what Joe Biden has been hiding in his depends adult undergarment.
I keep imagining, now, some extra-galactic alien society, was sitting there going. "Remember that Planet Killer we were never able to locate and shut down? I wonder where it went?" all while the thing was cracking planets one galaxy over. I also have to wonder just how the thing was able to traverse the sheer unimaginable distance between said galaxies without fuel? How was it able to cross the Galactic Barrier at the edge of the Milky Way? I wonder if any other species encountered the Planet Killer? This Iconic doomsday weapon has so many questions and mysteries.
Funny enough my favourite tos episode
Ryan's Edit channel does an amazing job of Remastering the episode's textures.
Regardless if you like the remastered or the original; the episodes unique music never gets old. 🖖
100% agree
I wonder 🤔 The DDM versus the Crystalline Entity 😅 Or that living nebula thing from Voyager.
@@Alteringrealitystudios DDM would win against the crystal entity fairly easily. It didn't take the destruction of a starship to destroy the crystal entity.
It was the music and pacing of the episode that made the episode. It wasn't matched or surpassed until 1976's "Rocky" in the final or the overall fight scenes. We interrupt the very long commercial for another commercial.
The doomsday machine came from a galaxy far far away and began its journey a long time ago.
*I think the klingon weapon was the Hargh'peng Torpedo, which you get as a reward earlier on in STO, and theres the Days of Doom 5 man instance where tou battle it.*
There was also the star trek 25 th anniversary game for the game boy that featured the planet killer as the final boss that got faster and faster the more you fired at it. Great game. Favourite episode of tos. Keep up the good work guys!
I'm glad they didn't go with Spinrad's original concept of an alien battleship bristling with weapons. The version we got, twisted and scarred from a million years of forgotten battles, reduced to little more than a barely-functional wreck running on 'safe mode' - but still an insatiably hungry maw and an apocalyptic end-times threat to any ship or planet it encounters - is a striking image in ways no collection of spikes and death rays could manage.
I always liked stories of weapons created by one side or another that took out both showing how conflict is futile and really just needs to be worked out.
The Doomsday Machine will always be my number one episode of the entire Star Trek Franchise
Every time I see the design of it in full, it just makes me think someone on the production staff forgot to do their job the night before and just crumpled some tinfoil, handed it to the director, and went "there's your planet killer".
This was a great episode that held a lot of potential. Two or even three more episodes could have easily been written as a follow up and conclusion. follow up episodes could have been written for several others as well.
Simply not knowing for sure where this came from and what it was for makes it so much better. Definitive answers will never be as good as what the individual mind will come up with. Infinite possibilities
Wm Windom was brilliant,,the anguish as his crew called for help..
Always loved it when the Enterprise crew beamed aboard another constitution class ship!
In the comic series The Q Conflict, the Enterprise-E is able to destroy another planet killer with Quantum torpedoes while other ships keep it occupied.
I don’t know if they would ever bring back to Star Trek enterprise but I wish they would. I know the old crew to the old Star Trek enterprise is dead or too old so why can’t they remake that show and put new characters in there and better enterprise?
Why? Yet another enterprise? If you want that era then just make it about the third NX class, after the columbia.
@ what the Hecks wrong with the enterprise it’s like everybody hates the the Starship Enterprise cause nobody wants to remake that show so it looks to me like everybody hates the friggin enterprise and never wish it never existed and hated the show if that’s what you think because that is what it looks like to me
... you're describing Strange New Worlds. That's exactly what it is. A show set on the original Enterprise.
One thing nobody ever talks about: The DM has a neutronium hull, even if it was only 1mm thick, it would have a tremendous gravitational field, enough to disturb planets it didn't destroy from their orbits. The gravity would be enough to keep humans from going inside and resurrecting it. Leaving where it is, in the orbit of a sun of a destroyed solar system is the best thing to do with it's carcass.
I admit my headcanon is that the TOS Planet Killer was either the one that the Nakhul took to Galarndon Core or led B'vat to in STO. The time-travelling Nakhul would know where it was and might have developed a way to activate it.
This was my favorite TOS episode. In retrospect, this device was far too small to cut up and eat planets on a human life time scale.
About 28 years ago, when windows message boards were around, I came across a very well written story that was never put into print and i never found again. The story started out where Q was being attacked by some unknown being. Q thought of a safe place, Enterprise, and all of the sudden, ALL of the ships named Enterprise appeared at DS9. NX-01 wasnt there considering this story was about 5 years before that series. There HAS to be someone else out there that had read this. I am hoping someone here or someone at Trek Central is aware of it or can point me to where I can read it again.
The scale of the doomsday machine is way off (not that size matters as much). The pure power of its weapon alone should have left no trace of the Constellation at all let alone blowing up a ship in its maw. I mean it destroyed whole planets and consumed them a very fast rate. This scenario implies the power of a single warp core has enough power to blow a planet up or at least a large chunk of it off into space.
It’s kind of like the scale of the Fesarius from the first federation. 1.6 Kilometers might seem big but look at the visual scale of it in the show.
Yep. Detonating a warp core would destroy an entire planet. But, what the Constellation detonated was a fusion reactor. It didn't have an operational warp core or active anti-matter when it was destroyed.
I love this episode, one of the best. What irks me about the way they wrote Commadore Decker's character, he was fighting an unknown planet destroying machine, so he beams down his whole crew to a planet!?!? Major plot hole. They should have been kept on board where they at least had a chance.
I've always loved this episode.
My favorite episode from all the way back to the 70's when I first discovered it.
I'd like to see that video of the Star Trek series that never came to be
Nice job on Doomsday Machine.
It could’ve been made by the Ionians and then teleported into whatever section of space it was sent into to do it job and they just forgot about it
My headcanon says it was built by the Vor'Soth from Star Trek Elite Force.
Hear me out... it's fueled by debris leftover from the planets it destroys, the Vor'Soth or "Harvesters" build and grow everything from their ships to their soldiers by recycling everything and everyone they can get their claws on... speaking of claws, the Planet Killer was originally designed with claws or tentacles. It's shell is made of some super tough stuff, one Harvester ship was able to take a direct hit from a weapon equivalent to the Planet Killer and its boarding crews still tore shit through Voyager's walls like Bugs Bunny on his way to Albuquerque. The Vor'Soth are also extra galactic and have gotten around, since you encounter alpha quad species ingame as well.
I read somewhere that if the crew of the Enterprise had thought about it, they would not have been able to give Decker command even if they wanted to. When Decker was found, he was in a state of shock so deep he did not even know there was anyone in the room with him. At least three people walked in, and he was oblivious to them. There has to be a Starfleet regulation somewhere that says someone in that condition can't return to duty without a full medical examination from head to toe. To say nothing of a someone in command of a starship in a combat situation.
_Spock: "........Then your statement would not be considered valid."_
McCoy could have said something like, _"You are right Spock. But less than an hour ago, I found this man in a catatonic state so deep, I had to give him a shot to bring him out of it. And he almost lost it again as he remembered what happened. Now he wants to go after that thing again? As CMO I cannot allow him to take command under these circumstances until I do a full workup of his physical and mental state."
Spock: "Commadore Decker, you are relieved of command"_
Of course, you would not have had that great bit with Kirk _"Blast regulations!!"_ But it would have made a bit more sense and Decker could still have stolen a shuttle later.
I want one. 🖖
A mass of neutronium that big wouldn't need an anti-proton beam to destroy planets, just approaching one would be enough to tear it apart by the tidal effects of its gravity. That also raises the question of how exactly did the Starfleet Corps of Engineers tow an object with the mass of a star back to their home base? Also, young Jean-Luc needed to brush up on his astronomy, the density of matter drops off in intergalactic space, but there are still plenty of rogue stars and planets, especially if the Planet Killer was coming from one of the Magellanic Clouds, since there are star streams being teased off them by the Milky Way's gravity. As for the Galactic Barrier, that seems to be mostly psionic. An automated spacecraft without any minds onboard could pass through it easily, especially since all its vital systems would be wrapped in neutronium.
Its also more logical to me that the Doomsday Machine originated from another galaxy, and that it had more than enough energy/fuel to reach the Milky Way as it did. It may have entered other galaxies before finally reaching the Milky Way, having traveled for a very, very long time through deep space.
One of the best TOS enemies. Thanks for the vid!
If nobody mentioned it yet, Fred Saberhagen might be considered the originator of the “Berserker” aka Doomsday Machine. His Berserker book series started in 1963, before Trek. The Berserker concept supposedly influenced the writing in this episode.
I want to say that the Doomsday Machine is closest Star Trek got to something having as much firepower power as the Death Star on screen (at least I don't remember there being something else that was obliterating planets like that) and with its weakness being an open port, we can tell Lucas and Star Wars fans that Star Trek did it first. 😀
As for who built the thing and for what purpose, I would prefer that to remain a mystery. It makes the Doomsday Machine more intimidating that way. The Borg became less threatening and less interesting the more we found out about them. Lets not make the same mistake with the Doomsday Machine.
Fans forget that its look is NOT how it was originally built. It had a smoother and rounder appearance with a bright coloring. The look we got in TOS is from centuries of in use. Its outer hull has been worn down from all sorts of things.
This is mentioned in the video :)
- Jack
Maybe crossing the galactic barrier is why it was randomly nuking aystems and not on a specific targetted trajectory
As fun as these origin stories are, they do tend to cause us to forget the social messages that Sci-Fi tells. The subtext was of course about the dangers of nuclear weapons and nuclear war.
That said, it was a fun video 🙂
I always wondered why Decker attacked in the first place. I came up with a bit of a story that there was some pre-industrial civilization on the 3rd planet in that system. So the Constilation attacked in an effort to drive it away to save the millions of people that were on that world. He succeeds in driving it off but his ship was badly damaged and he beamed the survivors of his ship down to the 3rd planet and hoped for some rescue as the life support on the ship couldn't last with so many on board. But he made a mistake and the planet killer came back and then there was nothing he could do as it destroyed the 3rd planet and his crew. That would also be why he was so adamant on destroying it when the Enterprise came. For his crew as he was going to either avenge them or join them. Just an idea I had to explain why he attacked instead of moving out of the way and warning Starfleet. After all his science officer must have told him the same things Spock did.
There was also the FASA Role-Playing Game supplement, "A Doomsday Like Any Other".
God forgot to put out his blunt before flicking it away out into space.
Rogue planets are much more prevalent than you would believe. Young cadet Picard would be false in asserting that the space between galaxies is devoid of planets. There are plenty of planets, just no stars to illuminate them.
I can't help but nitpick whenever I hear of the doomsday machine. Neutronium isn't that hard to defeat. Just use an anti-neutron beam and annihilate it. Yes, I'm sure that it'll fight back and it might take a while, but that "1 target at a time" gimmick........
Count me as believing that the Doomsday Machine was a rogue, ancient cosmic bulldozer as opposed to some ultimate weapon. As powerful as the Borg are, their development as they continued to appear and history unfolded makes them relatively recent in the grand scheme of things. Tying them with the Doomsday Machine which is hypothesized as being extra-galactic and very, very old doesn't make sense.
For me, the only reason to look at the Doomsday Machine as a weapon is it's more 'gentle' attributes. It's dampening field that cuts off subspace communication and deactivates antimatter.
Even then, one might hypothesize some alien terrorists who stole a cosmic bulldozer from a megastructure construction site and installed the dampening field and programmed the dozer to go and do its thing.
As for crossing intergalactic distances, well, the dozer could have just went on standby, and moved interstellar distances at sub-light for tens of millions of years or more.
Did you talk about "In Harms Way" the sequel to Doomsday Machine with William Windom actually as a guest star on TH-cam. Pretty good.
Something nobody seems to think about, if it can destroy entire planets that means its main weapon is ridiculously powerful, like the Death Star. It should squash Star Ships like bugs.
Also as far as it using planet remains as fuel, compared to a planet the Doomsday Machine is microscopic! It would literally take years to swallow that much debris..
The DM wouldn't need any weapons system. The intense hard radiation from neutronium hull would be enough to destroy any vessel within scanning range. How the vessel's internal systems survived this radiation is left as an exercise for the interested student.
The Doomsday Machine... a.k.a. The Cornucopia From Hell.
You're missing the planet killer in The Voyage Home.
More of a whale finder😊
@@JGG1701 still would have destroyed Earth if they didn't get a reply.
@@djlee79
This is true. 😊
I always thought it was ridiculous on its face, the claim that the Doomsday machine came from outside the galaxy, simply because it was heading away from the edge towards the center.
How do they know it didn't start at the center of the Orion Arm headed outwards, reach the barrier and turn back?
I think the doomsday machine would've been great for a movie so maybe they could do a Kelvin timeline version of it that's even more powerful and even makes it so far that it ends up in the sol system and is on earths doorstep and there's dozens of federation ships trying to stop it like a kelvin version of the battle of sector 001
It could have come through a wormhole. Also, since there is no resistance in space it could have stretched its fuel just enough to make it to the Milky Way with little left in its tank which would explain why it was so ravenous in this galaxy.
I always thought that The Doomsday Machine was hauled off to some covert shipyard or orbital research facility. With the introduction of Section 31 to Star Trek canon I am positive that is where it ended up. TOS strove hard to make TDM to be from outside of the galaxy so I am going with that.
I always thought that a good episode of the later Trek series or movies would have been TDM being reactivated and having to fight it with more advanced weapons and using a warhead specifically created to take out any other possible TDMs.
I always wanted to believe that it was created by the same beings that created the whale "ship" from star trek 4.
It started life as a simple airport windsock.🙂
Fred Saberhagen let Star Trek use his Berzerker idea, presumably for a few bucks..
I would coin a new terminology and call it a weapon of total destruction. Mass destruction is too familiar with nukes, and nukes don't kill planets, only the occupants.
If you would activate a planet killer, it would disrupt the whole solar system, and that is definitely called for a totally different type of weapon.
Other suggestions are welcome
I’d like to pit this against the entire Galactic Empire fleet ca. Battle of Vavin. 😅
I always thought it looked like a giant space spliff........
Star Trek Continues did an episode about the dooms day machine.
I think the measurement of space is quite unrealistic. In STO, you get out of range at +10 km. The majority of ships are several hundred meters long. How long is the range of a doomsday machine? Apparently 10 km. But they can still reach a planet's core and blast a planet into pieces to fuel itself.
The Doomsday bugle! 😂
I would like to see a video about proposed series.
Doomsday machine vs Vger, who wins?
I've defeated this thing like 30 times in STO!
I wonder if the exterior is misshapen and warped because neutronium is hard to forge, or because it’s so ancient that over millennia, even a neutronium hull will take damage
Also this is one of the best examples of the CG replacement for TOS sticking out in a way that takes me out of the episode a bit. Like, it’s not *bad* CG, but it feels out of place against the grainy 1960s film of everything else, and it feels like a disservice to the people who did the original models and effects
They really should have stuck closer to the writers vision, because the design makes no sense as a weapon.
space out the sponsor and stop melding them into 1 chapter atfer the intro. put it at the end of video if you respect viewers.
A ST series that was going to have a Doomsday Machine in it 😮...
Please do tell about that series
It looks like a spliff. I never noticed until now, lol. I'm a Trekkie and I feel dumb.
After the battle Kirk tells the crew: “Leave the constellation, take the giant space cannoli”
SNW should revisit this some how?
Unfortunately this is about 10 years into the future for SNW
I'd like to see a random encounter for Scotty with Mr Henghist first, seeing his suitability for possession
For some reason it looks like a wind sock dipped in cement 🤔
There is a doomsday machine in the xbox star trek shattered universe in the mirror universe as well.
Always reminds me of a sushi hand roll
Capton jack hi. I was wondering if u would be intrested in a space engineers on server bad goats
*My dogs farts are potential planet killers!!*
🖖🖖🖖😏😊😆🖖🖖🖖🍁
RLM does this better