From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!duke!ucf-cs!whm Newsgroups: net.movies Title: ST in general--Phasering Article-I.D.: ucf-cs.650 Posted: Thu Jul 1 19:08:16 1982 Received: Wed Jul 7 00:57:20 1982 One thing that has always mystified me is how a phaser shot makes a person disappear. It seems strange that the phaser beam knows whats part of a person and what isn't. I would think that a shot from a phaser would leave a large gory smoking hole in a person rather than having them cleanly change colors and vanish. Perhaps a motivation for having the clean destruction was to avoid horrendously (sp?) gory scenes during the TV series. Does anyone have any details on how a phaser is supposed to work?