Engineering Digital Displays?
- Thread starter BillJ
- Start date
Well, that set piece was first seen in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" on the planet Delta Vega and has been seen in various other sets such as Baloks ship in "The Corbomite Manuever," in the transporter room in "Dagger of the Mind" before ending up in the engine room. So, it's always been there (somewhere).
Okay, this is killing me. I'm at work where the firewall is blocking your images. Could someone please put up links to the equivalent screencaps on Trekcore, which I would be able to view?
You know the board in question, Zap. It's about the size of a chalkboard and looks like the engineering panel in a power station, or railroad interchange. A few lighted nodes connected by grids or "circuit" traces. So, more of an analog "telegraph" status panel than anything truly digital.
Yes, feek61 put down enough bread crumbs for me to recall that wall piece, but was it seen in "Amok Time" per Billj?
If the selected images I can't see are along these lines...
then I'd have to agree that it was there from day one, very simply made, and not a product of CBS Digital. I would never have thought to call this a "digital display."
Anyway, thanks guys.
then I'd have to agree that it was there from day one, very simply made, and not a product of CBS Digital. I would never have thought to call this a "digital display."
Anyway, thanks guys.
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I was under the impression they were specifically talking about the little black rectangle towards the upper left with what looks like yellow lettering in it...but it doesn't look digital to me, it looks more like signage.
Yes, thanks. Now I'm home and can see the selected images. But is that Spock frame really from "Amok Time"?
No, I think the frame is from "Journey to Babel."
"Journey to Babel". My mistake.
I, likewise, am I firewaller. I miss out on about most pictures and then forget to go back an look them up when I get home.
The black thing with yellow lettering is likely to be a (backlit?) piece of fixed signage in studio reality - but it makes such a good impression of being a digital display that it should probably be interpreted as one in the Trek reality.
The other black rectangle, the one with the brightly colored squares in, at jaw height, should then definitely be a "display" as well, the same thing as all those bridge consoles. But in studio reality, neither type of black rectangle appeared to have any "life" to it: the supposed if illegible text apparently says the same thing in all the screencaps from all these different episodes...
Timo Saloniemi
The other black rectangle, the one with the brightly colored squares in, at jaw height, should then definitely be a "display" as well, the same thing as all those bridge consoles. But in studio reality, neither type of black rectangle appeared to have any "life" to it: the supposed if illegible text apparently says the same thing in all the screencaps from all these different episodes...
Timo Saloniemi
Nixie tubes were around, but would not have shown up under the brighter studio lighting. Also, many of the control panels for TV shows—another example would be VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA—had larger controls and indicators so that they'd show up on the lower res medium. I think a lot of indicators and controls were simply larger at the time, too.
Advanced controls and displays did not really start to turn up in sci-fi until a decade or two later as designers realized such things would change. Think of the crewman in "The Cage" receiving the hardcopy from the computer. A Graphical User Interface might have confused the audience. Or if the viewers understood what they were looking at, the wonder of it might have been too distracting.
Trek was actually advanced for its time, showing the main bridge viewer as more than a window-like view outside. Switching visual communications to that monitor might have raised a few eyebrows at the time. Very likely the electronic map in "Balance of Terror" looked futuristic.
In a movie today, audiences wouldn't blink—or might merely think, "Cool!"—to see a character pull out a smartphone-sized PDA to control a starship, or maybe pull up an internal HUD from an implanted device. Trek had a talking computer, but one didn't see anyone giving it actionable voice commands, like "raise shields" or "brew me a coffee."
If they'd had digital displays in TOS, they would have used one for Sulu's chronometer, rather than that roller thingie.
I've always liked the chronometer they used. It looks cool to me. I'm glad it wasn't a flip clock design.
I can hear the annoying alarm just looking at that thing...!
By the time this display board ended up in engineering that section was covered by a gray colered greeble and was no longer visible.
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