No privacy curtains in sickbay?

Well, there is that line in early TNG (up the long ladder) about the 'ship cleaning itself'. I never thought of it in quite this way, though

 

Roddenberry's concept for TMP was quite different from what we actually saw on the screen.

Kor

 

Or, in First Contact, while grossing out Lily :

"In my century we don't succumb to a need for privacy. We have a more evolved sensibility."

 

The people of the Star Trek future are so advanced that they don't feel shame any more and therefore don't need any privacy.

@Kor: Roddenberry wanted them all half naked as often as possible, can that be?

 

Precisely, that's the kind of thing that we're supposed to overcome with time.

 

And there is nothing wrong about it!

There is no need for privacy in sickbay - except for the need for silence and protection from light and noises and disturbance from people running around you. But with TOS and TNG I have always considered the lack of privacy as a matter of saving prop-money, not so much as Roddenberry's vision.

But honestly: In the backwardy country I come from hospitalbeds don't have curtains either.

 

In polite society people would sooner avert their eyes than stare.

 

Probably mentioned before. Maybe the curtains dropped down form the ceiling. And they were either never seen when in use or always broken when needed.

 

They had holographic curtains.

 

To bloody blazes with "Roddenberry's vision". There will always be privacy, and the need (and desire) for it.

 

Yeah I mean who wants to be gawked at (or the feeling of being gawked at) during their annual prostate or vag exam? No one. And how convenient that on Voyager for an example, the EMH was rarely if never too busy to have one patient in the room at a time to allow optimal privacy (excluding emergency of course)

 

If Gene's novelization of TMP was any indication, all I can say is:

Thank God.

 

There's no way of knowing that. Not so long ago some people thought that women would always be treated as men's social inferiors for example. There will always be people incapable of foreseeing change no matter how ineluctable that change is.

 

Perhaps the curtains will be like those police mirrors, the patients can't see through them but people from outside can.

 

That assumes that shame is the only possible reason for anyone ever needing any privacy. Otherwise I suppose we'd be pooping on street corners, I suppose.

There's a world of difference between saying "I don't feel a need for privacy personally" and saying "No enlightened person should want any". That's too close to "I demand access to everything in life you consider your business."

 

I am guessing that it's mostly a question of education. If people didn't fear the judgement of others, because there were none to begin with, they'd have little motivation to want any privacy. "Privacy" is a relatively recent notion in human history. Only a few centuries ago, people had no idea that it even existed. Even the kings did everything in front of every one.

 

Yes, privacy is a luxury thing. The public toilets in Ancient Rome had to be public. In the middle Ages, when the food was much different from today farting and burping were quite normal and nobody cared about it.

Philippe Aries et al wrote the huge "history of the private life" some years/decades ago and it's amazing to read in it.

 

Again, shame or judgment can be irrelevant. Needing no privacy is like saying no one needs dignity or individuality, or any control over one's life.

Conditions were cruder many centuries ago. Now we have the option of more privacy.

(Editing for focus... I drifted away from physical privacy.)

 

Yes, it's amazing the number of things, that people tell you are impossible to imagine, that have already happened.

 

Yes, we always think that things were always the way they are today. I remember when my sweet 90+ grandma told us how she drowned kittens in 1920 and how normal that was.

If it comes to Star Trek I guess it also depends of what kind of ship you are talking about.

TOS showed us a very crowded ship (at least at first) and in Star Trek VI (or the VOY show with Takei) showed military quarters without any privacy either. So there is no problem with the sickbay (except for the number of beds perhaps).

TNG on the other hand was more of a luxury liner where patients might easily have some more private space.