The Doomsday Machine (Star Trek)
Mar. 21st, 2026 08:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eerietomIn the Star Trek original series episode “The Doomsday Machine”, the Enterprise and her crew encounter a giant robot that has destroyed the planets in several solar systems, and severely damaged another starship, the Constellation. Captain Kirk theorizes the machine is a “doomsday device”, an all-powerful weapon intended only to deter an attack upon whoever created it, which now is running independently, destroying everything in its path. It fuels itself by cutting up planets and literally consuming the pieces. It's one of my favorite episodes, and guest star William Windom's performance as the Constellation’s commander, Decker, who unwittingly sent his crew to their deaths when he beamed them down to a planet that was then destroyed by the machine, is tragic and harrowing.
Seeing the episode again recently, it made me wonder how this machine functioned. Judging by the photo of the Enterprise in front of the machine, remembering that starships like the Enterprise are 947 feet long, it looks like the machine is roughly 6150 feet long, or 1.16 miles. We never see it actually destroying a planet, but judging by the results of its attack upon the Constellation (which had defensive deflector shields), it seems it would take quite a while for the robot to destroy an entire planet. It would have to chip away at it, piece by piece—unlike the much larger Death Star from Star Wars, capable of destroying a planet with a single energy blast. Consider (and forgive me if my calculations are incorrect):
The maw of the machine is roughly 950 feet across, so for a piece of planet to enter the machine, it cannot be any wider that this.
The Earth is roughly 38.2 sextillion cubic feet in volume.
If the Earth were cut into 950 foot wide roughly spherical chunks, this would result in about 85 trillion pieces. It would take a considerable amount of energy just to cut it up, not to mention the energy required to either maneuver into position to swallow the pieces, or to use its tractor beam to draw the pieces in. Also, if we say for the sake of argument that the machine is able to consume one piece per second, it would still take about 2.7 million years to eat an entire Earth-sized planet.
It’s impossible to guess what the machine’s energy requirements are, but it would make more sense if it just chipped off a few pieces, digested them, then continued on its way. This would play havoc with a planet, perhaps killing all its life, but it would not completely obliterate it.
I also wondered: does the machine consume planets only when it needs fuel, or is it programmed to destroy all planets it comes across whether it consumes them or not?
But I do realize: Star Trek was intended to tell stories in an outer space setting, not realistically follow all the rules of science. If it did, there probably would be no transporters, no warp drive, no aliens capable of interstellar telepathy—or the audience would have to get physics degrees to follow the stories!
 Click image for larger view; opens in new window. Note: I was unable to screen grab a single shot of both the Enterprise and the entire length of the machine, so I had to make a composite shot to calculate its length. |
Seeing the episode again recently, it made me wonder how this machine functioned. Judging by the photo of the Enterprise in front of the machine, remembering that starships like the Enterprise are 947 feet long, it looks like the machine is roughly 6150 feet long, or 1.16 miles. We never see it actually destroying a planet, but judging by the results of its attack upon the Constellation (which had defensive deflector shields), it seems it would take quite a while for the robot to destroy an entire planet. It would have to chip away at it, piece by piece—unlike the much larger Death Star from Star Wars, capable of destroying a planet with a single energy blast. Consider (and forgive me if my calculations are incorrect):
The maw of the machine is roughly 950 feet across, so for a piece of planet to enter the machine, it cannot be any wider that this.
The Earth is roughly 38.2 sextillion cubic feet in volume.
If the Earth were cut into 950 foot wide roughly spherical chunks, this would result in about 85 trillion pieces. It would take a considerable amount of energy just to cut it up, not to mention the energy required to either maneuver into position to swallow the pieces, or to use its tractor beam to draw the pieces in. Also, if we say for the sake of argument that the machine is able to consume one piece per second, it would still take about 2.7 million years to eat an entire Earth-sized planet.
It’s impossible to guess what the machine’s energy requirements are, but it would make more sense if it just chipped off a few pieces, digested them, then continued on its way. This would play havoc with a planet, perhaps killing all its life, but it would not completely obliterate it.
I also wondered: does the machine consume planets only when it needs fuel, or is it programmed to destroy all planets it comes across whether it consumes them or not?
But I do realize: Star Trek was intended to tell stories in an outer space setting, not realistically follow all the rules of science. If it did, there probably would be no transporters, no warp drive, no aliens capable of interstellar telepathy—or the audience would have to get physics degrees to follow the stories!
