Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Phasers 

Basically, phasers are a magical weapon that does whatever the script calls for at the moment.

One unmentioned use: they can be an emergency power/fuel supply. In the TOS episode "The Galileo 7" Scotty was able to drain the phasers to refuel the shuttlecraft engines.

6:48...Will ALWAYS be my favorite Star Trek effect. Love it when the Enterprise phasers power up along the track & fire👍

The "transporter phaser" was also used in the DS9 episode Inter Arma Enem Silent Leges to get Sloan off of Romulus while making it appear as if he had been vaporized.

Ships Phasers are also more commonly used as 'tools' more than weapons. They can be modulated to provide power to other ships, stop or create storms, vaporize ice on a comet, or even feed space animals.

B'Elanna also used a phaser along with a piece of the Delta Flyer to create a makeshift forcefield when there was a small hull rupture (I'm wanting to say it was something like an EPS part, manifold or something) - Voyager S5, Ep 3 "Extreme Risk"

Worf: "They are pointing 𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙚𝙧𝙨 at us!?!" Riker: "Lasers? They won't even penetrate our navigation shields."

I think in the first season of TOS they were confused between Phasers and Photon Torpedoes, because the Phasers being fired were actually Photon Torpedoes. The Show took some time to evolve.

Did anyone else know or at least partially know most of this list?😅 The biggest surprise was a ships stun setting.

The combo of the type one and type two was a promotional product idea for toys. The type one was the control portion. Allowing the settings controls. The type two portion was for all a power pack. This increased range, duration and number of shots.

I thought the Omega Glory did a great job of highlighting how powerful phasers were. After Captain Tracy came back from the Yang attack he described how they came at them, hundreds if not thousands and despite his killing most of them, the were overrun. While they lost the battle due to sheer numbers, one hand phase decimated that many before they had to retreat.

I read in one Star Trek tech manual that Phasers got their name because they were a "phasing" of Laser tech and Particle Beam tech. The phasing of the two types of tech created a synergistic effect making the Phaser much more powerful than either of other two techs were individually.

Another aspect of the stun feature is that the heavy stun setting can be fatal if a prolonged, close range beam is used. In Star Trek 6, Valeris used this to bump off the two crew members she’d convinced to beam aboard Gorkon’s flagship and assassinate the chancellor, so that the Enterprise alarm systems wouldn’t go off, because apparently it’s no big deal to the sensors if someone just fires a phaser on stun aboard the ship.

Now for polaron, disruptor, plasma, antiproton, and tetryon weapons....also, for my personal favorite, the Cardassian spiral wave disruptors. :P

10 things i already knew about phasers...

I love this video on the Sonic Screwdriver!

In the original Star Wars movie, the stormtrooper incapacitated Leia with a stun setting on his blaster. That sounds like Star Trek's phaser in that the shot stunned her.

10 things we supposedly didn't know about phasers, then proceeds to explain all the common stuff that has happened in multiple episodes. WTF?

"[Phasers have been used to] hunt for food..." Shows clip of phaser utterly vaporizing an animal

You didn't even mention the "stun setting at point blank range" as was used in Star Trek VI... which is apparently lethal.

Funny thing about #1: the type 2 “assault phaser” from Final Frontier and Undiscovered Country WAS designed to be more like firearms, as per William Shatner’s desire to make them less dainty looking and more “like a .45” (caliber) pistol. To wit they had “power packs” that were like magazine clips, and the move to check the power was to rack the “Slide” like on a semi-automatic pistol. (There are slight differences between the “assault phasers” made in the first batch, and the replicas made for the next film (as they needed to make a lot more of them.)

Great video and I was getting bugged by how Roddenbury's philosophy of 'I don't want them using 'guns'' wasn't mentioned then bam...it's the number one point. Great stuff, set phasers to 'good job'.

I knew most of these facts about phasers because I watched all the movies and most tv series.

“It’s not a Phaser. It’s a … It’s a little light bulb that blinks.” 😂

I have a TOS type 2 Phaser prop used on the actual show. It one of my prized Star Trek props right along side my Tea / Coffee cup from TNG that was actually used by Marina Sirtis / Deanna Troi in the show.

Tbe crickets plugged into the Type 2 as a means of boosting the cricket's power supply and "handling," I assumed. I can't imagine the crickets having a lot of energy as compared to the Type 2.

According to Riker, you can destroy half a building from the inside with a hand phaser on wide spread and power level 14. Also, said building was a mental health hospital* - it was a strange episode but a good one. But also - you can destroy buildings with phasers. *Without spoiling too much - that's what it's supposed to appear as at least.

The funny thing about phasers disintegrating people by disrupting the bonds in atoms? They are, in effect, miniature "reality bombs", as in the weapon developed by the Daleks in series 4 of Doctor Who. They work the same way

I love phasers, but yeah, bottom line is: Whatever the plot line requries from them, they do.

The double red alert explanation was helpful. 😂

Props for mentioning "Making of Star Trek" amazing book that is STILL out of print. Oh, and The Motion Picture showed the transporter a couple times at the beginning, but phasers were never used in that movie. Two Star Trek staples!

Phasers can also be used to make beautiful carvings! Tom Riker, William T. Riker's 'clone' used his phaser to make a stone carving for Deana. I forgot which episode .

Number 11 - Phasers induced temporary amnesia on the user, often making them forget a really, really handy setting they previously used but somehow forgot in the moment. 😂

Pretty sure a phaser set to stun is still using force on someone else, hence violence. It’d be more accurate to say non-lethal than non-violent.

In TNG, they are phaser "arrays" not strips. And really not an improvement of the previous phaser banks as far as firing arcs

hand phasers in TNG was weird. I remember in one episode they showed that the computer is able to detect and deactivate them at will but that feature was never used again in any other episode even though that would have been a game changer for just about every incident.

I do love that the Babylon 5 typeface (Serpentine Medium) was used for this vid!

I knew basically all of this but I still loved the video :3

Great coverage of what phasers are capable of.

Wow I had forgotten how hot Ro was lol.

What about the portable photon torpedo launcher from Elite Force?? Yes torpedoes but man that thing was sweet!

One other thing. In ST:VI we found out that a phaser at stun setting, if held close to a person (ie right against their head) can kill with out disintegrating the body. Oh and that kitchen, er galley, staff can use them as makeshift barbeque braisesers.

the disruptors had totally cool, badass sound effects.

The Varon-T disruptor from the "STTNG episode The Most Toys" That was scary!

You forgot to mention: - Phasers can be Calibrated to produce a Forcefield as seen in Voyager where b'elanna torres uses one to prevent the Delta Flyer from fully rupturing. - Phasers can be used as an alternate power source (A battery)

On TOS, a type 2 phaser does not include an energizer circuit and uses a type 1 phaser as an energizer to initiate the reaction that generates nadion particles.

the Type II phaser is my favorite ❤

As much as I love the TOS phasers (they’re my number 3 favorite sci-fi weapon, behind the Carnifax from ME, and the Assault Rifle from Halo) the season 1 TNG TV remote- looking phasers ( not the cricket one, the one that looked like a cable remote) look soooo good idk why

and then Worf fires a purple space bazooka

One thing I loved about Firefly and Battlestar Galactica is that they still used Projectile weapons and Galactic used Nukes. The Crew of Firefly still used Fire arms because that might have been the best technology. I would rather have a .44 Magnum than a phaser because I know that thing is going to blow a hole in someone. As for ship to ship, think of the vast distances in space even in a space battle. In the final scene were Pegasus rescues Galactice, Pegasus come in with all guns blazing, firing large rounds at the base stars and ripping chunks off them. When that did not work they just nuked a Basestar. Even the Enterprise has photon torpedoes, which are just like regular missiles. Any beam of energy dissipates over distance, even lasers.

A hand phaser was one of the many Star Trek toys I had from the TNG line.

Well done!

You can play TAG with those transporter phasers 😁

Definitely seems bizarre to default to the narrow beam mode and miss constantly when you can just wide beam the entire room/area and accomplish your goal of hijacking that ship, protecting the away team from onslaught, breaking your buddy out of prison, etc. But way less fun to watch, I suppose.

The 1966 class 1 phaser has limited power settings and limited "battery" life. When you insert it into the class 2 phaser "body" the power settings double and the "battery" life is almost tripled. All of this info is online if TrekCulture would do some research.

great commentary brie

One thing I didn't know (I'm not versed in the tech manual). Surprised they didn't switch a common one out for the ability for phasers to generate forcefields.

Unexpected compliment, that i know all this and more

My biggest problem with phasers is that they are so powerful over a tiny area that they should initiate localised fusion reactions in whatever they hit. Maybe I'm just over thinking this!

Thank you.

I remember when they were called "ray guns".....

Didn't Tuvok also use a phaser overload to kill the holographic Seska when she took over his training holo deck program?

Oh how I'd love to have a functioning phaser....

Disruptors can also be set to stun, the Romulans do it all the time (Geordi mentions it twice in TNG), and its noted in Commader Korgs history that he only has used it a handfull of times.

"Laser" stands for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation." I thought I remembered in either The Making of Star Trek (which was referenced in the vid) or The World of Star Trek, it was said "Phaser" stood for "photon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation." But I suppose I might be remembering it wrong...

Type 1 fitting into Type 2s is how they worked in TOS, the Type 2 was just a frame and the type 1 powered it. Fitting a Type 1 to a 2 makes it as you said more combat oriented, and also makes the phaser more powerful.

This phaser shot 10:10 always bothered me because it implied you could just duck out of the way, when a phaser was shot at you, which is off course ridiculous!

At 0:34 Phaser names and origins.... At the time Star Trek originally came out, "Lasers"we're relatively new and weak. However, "Masers" where a device that gave off radiation and were well known and quite powerful. "Phasers", were originally thought of as a new maser....but more powerful. They were originally photonic masers.... They have since been "retconned"into particle beam weapons....

one thing you didnt mention i recall them saying in DS9 and other series, was the recharge, which tells me not all hand held phasers needed power packs batteries to make them work so long as they had the time it took them to recharge, now its possible those components needed replacing after a short time but i would have liked to have heard more about it sadly you didnt even mention it

Near the end she said starfleet using phasers in a stun setting is a nonviolent way to end a conflict. Just because you don't die does not mean getting shot is non-violent.

When phasers are set on stun thats amazing. Thats interesting about phasers electro magnetic energy & beams.

They had some sort of phaser grenade launcher in the TOS episode with the Gorn.

Phaser Bazooka…nice!

#6 reminded me of a great drinking game that my buddy Johnny taught me. Anytime they use science words & then explain it with a simple analogy, you drink... for the entire time they're explaining things : D Almost as good as the Simpsons drinking game...

One of the Klingon names for their disruptors literally means "the shake-it-until-it-falls-apart weapon."

I expected a mention of the time in TNG when somebody drew a picture on some metal with a phaser. I think it was a picture of a waterfall for Beverly Crusher. Not many people would expect that use.

Phaser is also a siren tone on some emergency vehicle siren systems

fun fact: on star trek online (the pc and console mmo, in which the odyssey class was created btw) the 'phaser strips' are called 'phaser beam arrays', which i myself prefer, sounds better

Neelix's lungs were removed from him in the episode "Phage" with a phaser like weapon created by the Vidiians

The phaser is a gun and a taser combined into one handy little device.

Encounter at Farpoint: feeding energy to the lifeform that was being used as a station

I knew most of these and while I certainly like trick, I am definitely not a walking trek encyclopedia, so I would say you guys are kind of dropping the ball because many of the things on the list are actually common knowledge.

I don't think I'm a trekking but I dod know 9 of those phaser tricks already

Phasers are boxes that you stomp on to make your guitar go "whoosh"

Phasers are weapons used on away team missions. I'd like to have a functional phaser.

The defiant also had phaser banks, not only pulse cannons.

Type 1 TOS phasers are slotted into type 2 as power amplification. Extended power, use time and range.

Thanks. 🖖🏻

Worfs "shoulder cannon" was a tetryon pulse launcher. So exactly what it looked like. A Trekyfied RPG.

Keep in mind phasers are spacer tech, not some crude industrial-era energy projector. If anything phasers are underpowered the thing should be an autonomous weapon platform that unerringly judges what is and isn't a threat to its owner. While we are at it add interwoven armor and integrated muscle fibers to the redshirt uniforms

I remember the scene in TOS "A piece of the action", where one of the mob thugs, picked up a cricket phaser, (not knowing, what it was) looked right down the barrel, and accidentally vaporized himself.

I need that blue gill setting lol.

1:36 No red shirts died it's a disposal tube, ejection chute, very similar to a trash tube. But its dispose of objects by ejecting them into space. Also in Star Trek Enterprise season 4 Unite. They set a Phase pistol to overload. 8:20 yeah Captain Kirk mentioned type 1 phases were less powerful than type 2 phases & sometimes ordered people to take type 1 Phasers if they needed to be concealed more. 8:49 I know it's not a Phaser but lower decks also had a medical rifle. Number three disruptors I think some can be set to stun. Number two she says wide beams and phasers sweeps. But the screen says wide beams and Phaser beams.

Hi there, your stuff about phasers is very funny. What I want to know is more important. What about these miraculous gimmicks in the sickbay: the transcutaneous syringes, the medical tricorders, the fabulous LED-light for body scan. And most important: the allrounder of medication: inoprovaline. My question: have they changed over the, episodes years and series? May be a video worth! 😇

I think Worf refereed to that shoulder mounted weapon in Insurrection as an, "Isomagnetic Disintegrator" or something to that effect. So that one wasn't a phaser.

Photon Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. That's what we thought it meant back when TOS first came out.

And in the 80s and 90s when the beams were rotoscoped in, the shooting angles were all off. The actor wasn't pointing the prop at the right target, so the beam was crazily angled to hit the target in a straight line. I remember that being so annoying ;)

Well I’m a Trek nerd and knew all this still, a good watch

I'm surprised you didn't mention when Ro Laren made a phaser overload in Ten Forward.

I knew about all these things