Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Phasers

10. Phaser Overloads

Phasers require a huge amount of energy to function, and if one is configured to release all of its stored energy at once, it will overload, emitting a high-pitched noise and exploding violently.

Someone attempted to assassinate Captain Kirk by hiding a phaser set to overload in his cabin in the episode The Conscience Of The King. Upon hearing the distinctive sound, Kirk began ordering an evacuation of the whole deck, and calling for a 'double red alert', which is like… Twice as bad as a normal red alert. Kirk was eventually able to find the overloading phaser and proceeded to drop it in a waste chute in the corridor, likely murdering several unfortunate red-shirted lower-deckers.

Later, in That Which Survives, Kirk's phaser had its overload triggered while in his hand, forcing him to throw it away like a grenade. An overloading phaser even showed up in the Next Generation episode The Hunted, where a man named Roga Danar tried to use them as bombs aboard the Enterprise-D.