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

Hand phaser power levels range from a light zap enough to clean graffiti off the ship's walls or cause slight skin irritation, all the way to total vaporisation.

In between the two extremes, phasers could also burn targets, but, more interestingly, the famous stun setting allows users to harmlessly incapacitate most species when in combat.

A phaser would need to be modulated carefully to a very specific frequency depending on the mission's requirements. For example, in the DS9 episode Homefront, they found a frequency that was low enough to cause no permanent harm, but high enough to force a Changeling to revert to their liquid form.

Many may not know that starship phasers can actually be set to stun as well, allowing a ship to stun an entire city in one blast. However, we've only seen this once, in the Original Series episode A Piece Of The Action.