Phaser Pistol
(c. 29^th Century)

Standard sidearm in use with Starfleet in the 2800's.

Seen in Star Trek: Voyager's 3^rd-season "Future's End" and 5^th-season "Relativity." Obviously in the future more gun-like weapons will come back into fashion! That said, the new phaser appearing in Star Trek: Nemesis does seem to represent an intermediate step, with the banana phaser gaining a pointier emitter head. . .

One would have thought a double-episode set in present-day Los Angeles would perhaps have given them a larger budget for 29^th-century equipment such as Braxton's Aeon time-fighter, and his phaser. Unless, of course, the large amount of location filming, and Ed Begley Jr's salary, ate it all up! Whatever the reason, neither item represents a particularly innovative design - the Aeon is a basic starfighter shape, the pistol looks like a plastic handle salvaged from a vacuum-cleaner or something, with a bladelike leaf-shaped emitter crystal attached.

The use of the weapon to vapourise an entire automobile in 20^th-Century Los Angeles was supposedly meant to impress us with how much more powerful it is. Not entirely logically, though - the higher phaser settings on a 24^th-Century weapon could obviously do that! However, the vapourisation effect was different - faster, and occuring instantaneously instead of gradually as seen on 'contemporary' Trek. Also, the beam appears faster as well, with a white pulse running at regular intervals through the energy stream.