Why did the bozeman suffer such little damage when it collided with the enterprise?

In the Dominion War alone, Miranda-class assignment was a suicide run. I think the California-class is their direct replacement and is clearly an attempt to AVOID sending such ships into combat.

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Not a lot of the old girls survived the dominion war. I suspect that's why literally everything we see in Picard is newer. They even got rid of most of the Novas, Akiras and other ships they cranked out fast for the war because they weren't really suitable for peacetime assignments

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Unlikely-Medicine289@reddit

They even got rid of most of the Novas, Akiras and other ships they cranked out fast for the war because they weren't really suitable for peacetime assignments

The Akira's were blowing up too.

We see Novas on planetary defense/orbital patrol duty in a lot of Lower Decks, and that is post Dominion war.

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TomcatF14Luver@reddit

A lot of the Early War ships were also hundred year old holdover.

There comes a time when obsolete means obsolete and no refit will change that.

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Unlikely-Medicine289@reddit

The best picture of an Akira class on memory alpha used to be one doing a flaming cartwheel in the Dominion war. Everything blew up in the Dominion war, even the defiant. It just so happened that there were also A LOT of Mirandas

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MindlessNectarine374@reddit

In those masses of ships, you need to be interested in finding all fates to notice all the small ships. (I respect the ship counters who built all the databases and things like Memory Alpha.)

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Druidicflow@reddit

The Bozeman is a Soyuz class. It’s specifically referenced as such in dialogue.

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CG_Oglethorpe@reddit

And that explains it, the entire incident was their effort to tow the Bozeman out of the environment. And it almost worked.

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BigMrTea@reddit

Hahaha the front fell off

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

Well the front is not supposed to fall off, Brian

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BigMrTea@reddit

These boats are made to strict maritime standards

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

That might be part of the problem, as these are ... starships. I think we wanted strict interstellar standards. Yes I think we've found the issue.

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

How is it untypical????

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Festivefire@reddit

Well typically they're built so they don't blow up.

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Isgrimnur@reddit

Wasn’t this built so that the front wouldn’t fall off?

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TheDaedricImpaler@reddit

Please tell me you're referencing this: https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM?si=Hi3ouOEWFAikBcit

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

What?!?? What an insane coincidence!!!

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Isgrimnur@reddit

But of course.

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rat4204@reddit

Well obviously not, because it blew up

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Isgrimnur@reddit

Well there are a lot of these ships going around the galaxy all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen. I just don’t want people thinking that starships aren’t safe.

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Revolutionary_Pay_31@reddit

Without a doubt the Bozeman was destroyed as well, it just happened off screen.

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factoid_@reddit

If for no other reason than the enterprise's warp core exploding a few hundred yards away annihilated it.

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toadofsteel@reddit

Exactly. Look at how the warp core managed to knock the saucer section (itself much more massive than an entire Miranda class) out of orbit of Veridian 3 from a few hundred yards away.

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NutiketAiel@reddit

They don't build 'em like that anymore.

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AnnihilatedTyro@reddit

From Captain Bateson's nonchalant recap of events, we might infer that the Bozeman was not experiencing power failure or any emergency at the end of the time loop, so its structural integrity fields and possibly shields were at full power. The Enterprise was losing main power, had no shields, and most systems including attitude control and inertial damping were already offline. Without those last two systems, the crew was likely unable to perform a shutdown or ejection of the warp core after the impact even if there had been time to do so.

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dantheplanman1986@reddit

And why did the enterprise lose power? Why did it come back on sheet they moved out of the way? It's never made sense to me

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dantheplanman1986@reddit

Here's the question I've always had. Great episode, but.

Why did their power shut off for no reason? Why did it come back on immediately after they move out of the way?

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urabusazerpmi@reddit

Pretty sure the Bozeman did suffer damage. You could say it got its salads tossed, and eggs scrambled.

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Tmelrd275@reddit

I'm Captain Crane, and I'm listening....

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PaddleMonkey@reddit

gif

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Tmelrd275@reddit

Die cast construction. It's a lost art.

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AdamSonofJohn@reddit

You don’t know that it didn’t.

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That-Cover-3326@reddit

It's like old car vs new car, the old one takes little damage but the passengers get many injuries and the new car crumples easily but protects everyone inside

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GreatBarrier86@reddit

Well if the new car is the enterprise here, im not sure that fits. It blew up after all.

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That-Cover-3326@reddit

But it protected them from the collision

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GreatBarrier86@reddit

I’m not trying to be difficult here so I must misunderstand. How was the enterprise protected from the collision. It blew up. Lol

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ritteke518@reddit

Was gonna say this. Like when Marty in Back to the Future 2 suggests landing on Biff and Doc tells him his fifties car will cut them open like a tin can.

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FragrantExcitement@reddit

Those old starships didn't have crumple zones.

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marcusalien@reddit

Those old starships

So that is what TOS stands for 🤣

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Mega-Steve@reddit

"Hi! I'm the hologram of Bob Vila, and this is Those Old Starships"

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Brunt-FCA-285@reddit

In this episode, Norm Abram will build a shelving unit for blue barrels!

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MrZwink@reddit

I thought it was “those old scientists”

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Joe-Stapler@reddit

Or seatbelts.

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Mysterious-Alps-5186@reddit

Or my axe

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

Or my sword!

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theglobalnomad@reddit

Or an onion on the communicator, which was the style at the time.

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Throwaway_inSC_79@reddit

Because of the war.

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brachus12@reddit

no unibody construction here

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toadofsteel@reddit

r/shittydaystrom is that way

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AnnieBruce@reddit

A lot of details can be just right to cause a huge damage differential.

One car crash I was in- other guys passenger doors both basically destroyed, the b pillar damaged, rear axle bent, rear bumper ripped off.

My hood had a curner crushed in a little, a bent fender, and a shattered headlight. He struggled just to drive his car to the side of the road out of the way, I kept driving mine for years afterwards.i had no functional damage other than the easily replaced headlight.

If you're wondering, all people involved were fine.

Enterprise suffering fatal damage and Bozeman not is very plausible if angles and impact locations lined up right.

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Criton47@reddit

I always took at that they took damage from the D then were probably destroyed as well.

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Deepmidwinter2025@reddit

Plot didn’t require it

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SublimeApathy@reddit

Because it's a tough little ship.

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Clomer@reddit

We don’t actually know what happened to the Bozeman after the collision. The episode focuses on the Enterprise after, with no attention paid to the other ship at all.

My headcanon is that the Bozeman was, at best, crippled, and probably also outright destroyed.

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RedditorSlug@reddit

Protective layer of tossed salads and scrambled eggs

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Justin_the_Wizard@reddit

While it seems a design flaw for galaxies, there seems to be an inherent flaw in federation "transwarp" system design.

Loss of matter/anti matter containment would be catastrophic regardless of ship type.

Some head cannon the Excelsiors transwarp as the reason they changed warp scale from linear to logarithmic. The technology seems to be similar to the divide between diesel and nuclear power systems (since this is all submarines).

Direct damage to a nuclear system was often portrayed as a cataclysmic, nuclear bomb like explosions. We've since learned that it would take egregious damage to go passed local irradiation and complete melting of the nuclear setup. It's a dramatic effect borne of the 80s and 90s nuclear panic.

I'm still on the side of "tough little ship" but new tech seems to be more delicate.

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PianistPitiful5714@reddit

You’re just guessing? That seems like the Bozeman could’ve exploded too, for all you know. Why do you think it didn’t suffer any damage? This seems like you decided something that isn’t supported by the material…

Also, the Bozeman didn’t scrape the saucer, it clearly strikes the warp nacelle. You know, the giant thing that helps generate the warp field? The damage inflicted to that likely fed back into the warp engine and caused the catastrophic destruction you saw.

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Aufregend@reddit

Because the Boseman blowing up would have messed up the plot of the episode.

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Constant-Box-7898@reddit

Which time?

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FanMysterious432@reddit

It didn't collide. When Picard asks the Bozeman's captain what happened, the captain's reply included "We nearly hit you".

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Bklyn78@reddit

I think you should give that episode a good rewatch 🤓

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Bklyn78@reddit

It’s been a while since I’ve seen the episode, I thought The Bozeman only hit the starboard nacelle of the Enterprise ?

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Posatrocible@reddit

Thank you, I was looking for this

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JustaYnLivin@reddit

Yeah it hit the nacelle not the saucer. Chain reaction damage that went to the warp core.

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

It did

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VanDammes4headCyst@reddit

The bigger question is, what kept the Bozeman in their loop for 70 years if not the Enterprise?

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Raptor1210@reddit

It's pretty clear from the Bozeman's perspective they jumped forward in time as well as getting looped.

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Able_Resident_1291@reddit

But how and why? What's the instigating event there? Are they just trapped in a time loop of their own for 70 years where they only start seeing the Enterprise when the Enterprise joins the loop?

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Raptor1210@reddit

We've seen temporal anomalies any number times throughout the franchise. There generally isn't a firm reason on why a specific one happens. Presumably events from the Bozeman's perspective go something like this...

Bozeman is living its life doing it's surveys.
Bozeman gets pulled into a temporal anomaly to the future.
Bozeman hits the Enterprise.
Enterprise explodes resetting themselves and Bozeman to their previous states.
The loop restarts back to a time between #1 & #2.

Presumably the Bozeman's older systems and the lack of its own explosion means it doesn't get the same noise phenomenon that the Enterprise gets and they just get stuck with a vague sense of deja vu the the Enterprise does but without the necessary insight or technology it doesn't really clue them into what's happening so they're stuck.

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

Presumably the Bozeman's older systems and the lack of its own explosion means it doesn't get the same noise phenomenon that the Enterprise gets and they just get stuck with a vague sense of deja vu that the Enterprise does but without the necessary insights or technology they aren't really clued into what's happening, so they're stuck.

Respectfully, I think there's a better explanation here.

The Enterprise gets set back, what, a full day? I don't think we know, but that sounds reasonable. 24 Hours.

Well, where was the Bozeman at that same time? Now, if you asked the crew where they were 24 hours ago they'd tell you they were on a routine patrol a few weeks out of starbase. But that's not true, and we're not talking about relative time here.

They were in a temporal wormhole, proceeding to 2368 from 2278. They didn't appear to notice they were in a temporal wormhole -- at all! -- so presumably their transit time was a few seconds. Let's be generous and say the transit time was something they experienced in a single minute.

60 seconds.

Which means for every second in the wormhole, they came 18 months into the future.

When the Enterprise reset to the start of the loop, so did the Bozeman. But the Enterprise restarts each loop in real space, and the Bozeman restarts the loop while speeding through a temporal wormhole which is taking them through spacetime at a year and a half a second.

They may have some flashes of deja-vu, but were presumably so distracted by their actual collision with a mysterious starship that came out of nowhere, and then reset, that they hardly had the time to examine what was happening to them in the same way the Enterprise crew could.

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Ebullient_1972@reddit

This is the best explanation, thank you!

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Ryumancer@reddit

Enterprise lost 17 days as a result of the time loop.

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

Not sure what that has to do with my point. The Bozeman "lost" the same time but they spent the bulk of the time traveling in time so experienced it differently.

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Ryumancer@reddit

Not arguing against your point here.

I'm answering your question on how much time the Enterprise lost in that event.

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

Oh gotcha.

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Ryumancer@reddit

I think it was specifically 17.4 days.

Just re-watched the episode yesterday. lol

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Ryumancer@reddit

And the Bozeman also didn't have a Soong-type android as a slight Deus-Ex Machina that would've cut their 80 year trap down to 2 weeks. 😅

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

They weren't trapped for 80 years. They were trapped for the same amount of time the Enterprise was.

They came forward from the past, but the time-loop was caused by the collision. Ergo, they were only trapped so long as the Enterprise was trapped.

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Ryumancer@reddit

If true, the point doesn't quite change.

Not to mention, they could try the thing that Kirk's crew tried in the 4th movie and go back home that way.

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

I think you're conflating the time travel with the time loop. Related, but different.

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Ryumancer@reddit

Regardless, I'm surprised Data didn't suggest for the Bozeman to try that slingshot maneuver after the loop ended and both ships were flying peacefully.

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Intellectual_Wafer@reddit

Perhaps they were "sucked" in by the paradoxical anomaly that trapped the Enterprise? (Paradoxical because it was created by an explosion it caused in the first place).

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Revolutionary_Pay_31@reddit

Apparently, the writers didn't feel as if we needed to know that.

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Able_Resident_1291@reddit

"Somehow, the USS Bozeman returned"

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VariousPreference0@reddit

No, they leaped forward in time to the moment of encountering the enterprise-D. The loop is a section of time that is the enterprise journeying to the point of collision, hitting the Bozeman as it emerges from the anomaly, and resetting in the loop.

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Able_Resident_1291@reddit

Then what causes them to leap forward in time? They seem to have no awareness of it themselves

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

We don't know, and it's sort of irrelevant to the story. They only cycle through the loop as many times as the Enterprise does, and the collision and explosion in proximity to the temporal wormhole appears to be what causes the time loop. Which is to say, the loop itself doesn't extend for the entirety of the time the Bozeman is traveling into the future, only for the few seconds before it emerges (since the Bozeman is traveling rapidly forward through time, and the Enterprise is traveling normally).

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RecentExamination289@reddit

Yeah. I used to think the Bozeman crew were idiots to not figure out how to escape in 70 years what took the D crew a few weeks. But if the explosion is what triggers the loop it makes much more sense. My theory is that the Bozeman was stuck inside some sort of temporal stasis field until the enterprise entered and disrupted that same field allowing it emerge, but then they collide and trigger the time loop.

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Able_Resident_1291@reddit

Man that crew just cannot catch a break

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VanDammes4headCyst@reddit

Maybe, but it's never discussed in the show. In fact, it's implied that the Bozeman has also been "stuck" for 70 years, not that they simply leapt forward.

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ScienceAndGames@reddit

The whole reason the warp core explosion triggered a time loop was because they were right next to a temporal anomaly. That’s likely the cause for their 70 year displacement

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Distinct_Fennel_4033@reddit

Because the Bozeman and Miranda classes are the GOAT of Starfleet ships.

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NthRandomGuy@reddit

It was just a flesh wound

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ScienceAndGames@reddit

If I remember correctly didn’t the Soyuz hit their warp nacelle not the saucer section. That seems like a much more vulnerable structure

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Redbeardthe1st@reddit

The Bozeman didn't scrape Enterprise's saucer, it scraped the nacel.

Where is it stated that the Bozeman suffered little damage? We don't know anything about the Bozeman or what was happening with it until the time loop was broken by the collision being averted.

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Nonyabizzy123@reddit

It takes several phaser hits, and a photon torpedo direct hit, to remove a nacelle from a Miranda class. Older ships were tougher and over engineered.

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tommytraddles@reddit

"Marty, he's in a '46 Ford, we're in a DeLorean. He'd rip through us like we were tin foil."

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Republiconline@reddit

I wasn’t thinking fourth dimensionally!

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Wingnut8888@reddit

The Bozeman actually rated really high in Consumer Reports.

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Reasonable-Editor903@reddit

"I keeping saying: they don't make them like they used too." -Scotty

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TwoFit3921@reddit

because the soyuz-class is just cracked like that

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Zesty-B230F@reddit

They were still using ladder-boxed frames back then. Now a days, it's all crumple zones. Enterprise D nacells are designed to shear off in the event of a collision.

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Forward_Tie_9941@reddit

Why would you think that? Their nacelle hit the enterprise nacelle. I assumed the same thing happened to them

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ryu359@reddit

Mot necessarily. We see the miranda class from a similar ers survive their narcelled being shot off. So can be that the old ship survived that. Thinking about it the galaxy narcelled see to be a weakspot. Almost every time the enterprise blew up it was after a narcelle hit.

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Muted-Tea-5682@reddit

Well, it’s pretty hard for a nacelle to cause an explosion if it gets blown off.

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conditerite@reddit

The Bozeman had not yet retrofitted the explosive gases & rocks conduits in their bridge consoles and ceilings. s/

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Dry-Interaction-1246@reddit

Needed to save the model for other episodes.

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General-Reserve9349@reddit

“We don’t know… but I’m guessing very little damage… why?”

wtf

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spaghettibolegdeh@reddit

Side note: man I miss model ships in Science Fiction. Later TNG models looked incredible and this scene is one of the best.

I hate the noisy ass CGI we have now.

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

The Bozeman struck the Enterprise's nacelle, which is what caused the destruction of the Enterprise.

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Ryumancer@reddit

I find that odd considering a Klingon Bird of Prey shot its other nacelle in battle and it didn't explode (right away). LOL

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

Not every exploding nacelle is the same.

Wait. Are you talking about Generations? Yes it did!

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Ryumancer@reddit

Yeah Generations. lol

Though I think that was because of all those hits in general that the ship exploded that time. lol

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

Maybe after Cause and Effect they installed some surge protectors from the nacelles to the warp core

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Ryumancer@reddit

Yeah adding in redundancies after a design flaw is pretty normal for Star Trek.

That seems to be pretty much what a refit is. The original NCC-1701 and the Ent-E also went through one or a few.

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jer72981m@reddit

They don’t make starships like they used to

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Groundbreaking-Pea92@reddit

That class of ship was known to have been packed with explosive rocks and fireworks under every surface

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lyidaValkris@reddit

built like a 50s cadillac, fins and all, they could take a beating

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FlashHound@reddit

I think the Enterprise-D relies heavily on its shields when fighting. It's shields are far stronger than anything in the 23rd century and they just used different materials to continue to allow ships to travel faster which might be less durable. The warp scale changed between the 23rd and 24th centuries. It also explains why the Jem Hadar were able to destroy a galaxy with one attack craft. A lot of Miranda's saw action during the dominion war. The borg defense ships were built tougher with armor so they performed well.

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Unit_79@reddit

Tough little ship.

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Stackson212@reddit

Little?!?!

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ShortBussyDriver@reddit

If you look closely you see that Bozeman only glances the side of Enterprise's nacelle along the ventral length of its own nacelle, where it is most structurally strong. It's like a ski running on snow.

It probably only suffered minimal damage.

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Triad64@reddit

So who's fault is it, according to insurance?

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ShortBussyDriver@reddit

Oh shit! Good question.

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Fuzzy_Builder_2153@reddit

Kirk'1701A took 12 photon torpedoes and didn't blow up. Ent D took 1 hit from the same class and BLEW UP.

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AmphibianHaunting334@reddit

One, shields in a prepared combat state.
Two, no torpedos involved in TNG.

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Conscious_Quality803@reddit

You'd have to ask Lilith.

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Mysterious-Alps-5186@reddit

In the dominion war many old model Miranda class and a ton of constitution class ships were taken out of mothballs, upgraded and sent to the front lines. Because of how well they were built they were comming back with the level of damage that would have outright destroyed most newer ships. Those ships were built to last much like kirks genes spread across the galaxy lol

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MovieFan1984@reddit

It may very well have taken damage, but it just flew off screen, we focus on the Enterprise-drama.
Imagine being on the Bozeman and watching the Enterprise-D spin out of control until it explodes.

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afriendincanada@reddit

Considering they'd just jumped 90 years forward in time, they were probably trying to figure out what the heck they'd hit.

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MovieFan1984@reddit

They weren't even aware of the time jump. They just flew through a cosmic thing and scraped the engine of a giant starship. Imagine if the Bozeman is fine, and the bridge crew is on OH SHIT alert as they watch the Ent-D spin out of control and explode.

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