Beyond the Farthest Star vs. Once Upon A Planet

[Tallguy]

Timo wrote:

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For all we know, forcefields are less prone to catastrophic failure than mechanical suits. It's inconceivable that a forcefield would get punctured, for example. Just install a failure-proof power pack there; Starfleet must have plenty of those in stock, or else its starships would go kaboom at random when antimatter containment hiccuped...

Well, they don't trust their force fields so much that they don't put doors on their shuttle bays. As for catastrophic failure: Unless you run into the Squire of Gothos or some such, a space suit can't just be turned "off". Further evidence that they aren't such a swell idea is that both before and after TAS they used suits.

Some ideas from TAS caught on (holodecks, unfortunately) some didn't.

Didn't Space Academy use some kind of life support belt?

Someday someone will actually re-animate TAS in 3D or live action or whatever. It would be interesting to see if it could be re-edited to eliminate the belts.

Obviously Once Upon a Planet is way out of it's league on this one. Maybe we SHOULD match up Beyond the Farthest Star and One of Our Planets is Missing.

[Timo]

a space suit can't just be turned "off"

...Which makes it really inconvenient to use in boarding party duty. Perhaps the very reason our heroes chose the belts for their "BtFS" foray to the alien vessel?

OTOH, if life support belts were standard issue for boarding parties, we would have missed all the excitement in "The Naked Time". Instead of donning thermal garments that allowed contamination, our heroes would have worn airtight forcefields on Psi 2000. And the plot complication in "Omega Glory" would also have been removed, as the interior of the Exeter would have stood no chance of infecting them with the pulverizing disease.

While from the practical viewpoint there exist parallel niches for nifty but not so protective life support belts and clumsy but safe physical suits, Star Trek would probably become much less exciting if the belts really were utilized outside TAS. Although I'm quite convinced we saw them in ST:TMP still, as evidenced by those oversized belt buckles...

Timo Saloniemi