How come theres never a queue for the Turbo Lift on the Bridge ?

Warp plasma gives hot pokers a whole new meaning.

 

Obviously, every turbo lift has a set of Spock's rocket boots strapped the bottom of the lift.

 

It's easy to understand why in TNG, because everyone is wearing a combadge and the computer would detect the movement of the entire ship population. For the crew, you assume that people have shifts that are logged with the computer system. When a crew member leaves their quarters and is scheduled to appear at a certain post at a particular time, you'd figure that the computer would sent a turbolift to their location or cause one traveling past to pause for him/her to get on board.

However, this is all a rather pointless exercise. Unless there would be a story element involved where two crew members need to have a dialog in semi-seclusion that would then be suddenly interrupted by someone appearing, like having them wait at a turbolift, there's no need to show people waiting for one. Thus, we are not shown it, when it's quite possible that turbolift queues happen all the time. We just don't get to see them. I think that's the simplest explanation.

 

That gives us statistics, though. And the statistics are in favor of there being no queues, like, ever.

Of course, those are the same sort of statistics that solidly establish that our 23rd century heroes no longer urinate...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Well, if the turbolifts are traveling with the same speed as the monorail car in your animation, I have no doubt that queues do happen all the time.

Bob

 

Oh, forgot to annotate that it's a slo-mo view.


Timo makes a good point. We don't see them use the toilet, so we just have to assume they do off camera. So it must go with the turbolift queues.

 

Oh? I meant that as sufficient proof that urination is outdated in the Trek era!

Timo Saloniemi

 

I have always wondered how fast a turbo lift is when transporting people? because I mean a ship like Enterpise is massive and yet they seem to get to places very quickly.

 

^ Quite fast. But you don't really "feel" it because they have their own built in inertial dampeners.

 

Actually, there used to be queues. Terrible queues. Eventually, most of the crew started using the stairs to avoid those terrible quoues. Now, aside from The Big Three and The Gang of Four, hardly anyone uses the turbolifts anymore.

 

They just beam it out.

 

Might simply be they take care of it the first thing in the morning, and future diets necessitate nothing more.

It is when they camp out that we run into plausibility problems. In episodes like "Basics", we never see them organize sanitation areas or as much as wash their faces in the morning. Then again, even in more benign conditions, we often see them sleeping in their normal day clothing - so perhaps the clothing has some sort of sanitation features?

Timo Saloniemi

 

If we're going to go by the "proof" that they haven't shown it, therefore nobody urinates or deficates in the future, then we have nearly 100% of all of the TV shows in history showing the same proof in their shows. By that reasoning, nobody did it in The Waltons, Brady Bunch, Growing Pains, All in the Family, I Love Lucy, How I Met Your Mother, WKRP in Cincinnati, Taxi, Cheers....

 

most likely storyline convinience

 

I must set the record straight here: All in the Family made TV history by making the "terlet" flush a running gag. I also remember an episode where Ma was looking for Archie and Mike said "He went upstairs and I think he's going to be awhile...he took the Daily News with him".

 

Al Bundy used his toilet with great frequency.

--Alex

 

The 4077th MASH had a latrine.

 

Well, maybe I messed up mentioning All in the Family, but I purposely left out MASH, since I remember many latrine jokes.

Still, most shows DON'T show people taking a dump. So the argument still stands. (or sits if you're a woman.)

 

^ No, it's cool.

The Brady Bunch had a shared adjoining bathroom separating the girls' and boys' rooms.

 

Of course, there was NO TOILET in their bathroom!