It seems like it has been an eternity since I’ve made any updates. I did have two new, substantial entries almost ready to go when my computer suffered a “fatal error.” And of course I hadn’t made any back-ups of the files in question. So unless Scotty himself works some miracle on my behalf, I will likely have to reconstruct them from memory.
In the meantime, here’s a quick addition to my ongoing fascination with the wide-angle phaser. I’ve identified two more references to the technology. In the Voyager episode “Worst Case Scenario” the holographic Seska threatens the crew with a phaser set to wide-beam dispersal.
The other reference pushes the technology back even farther in Star Trek lore. In the Enterprise episode “Carbon Creek” Mestral frees the miners by setting his phaser to a “seven-degree” dispersal pattern – in other words, the angle of Vulcan phaser beams during that era could be adjusted. So it’s no surprise that humans had managed to duplicate the technology by Kirk’s day at the latest.
