Classic tricorder

[starbuck]

Was rewatching Catspaw again and just noticed how spock was using the tricorder he looks down on it, we all know how they look 3 buttons lights and a tv screen but spock was looking like he was adjusting buttons on the rim

What is he looking at i know this pis is not from catspaw but he does it alot

 

[Redfern]

Spock is just so awesome that he can read a display both at an oblique angle AND upside down!

Seriously? I don't know. I wonder if someone decided, maybe the director, maybe Nimoy himself, it might seem more interesting to face the instrument panel toward the camera. However, that would make more sense if there existed a toy line during the active run of the series and they wanted to sell toy props. But as we know, the merchandising (not counting the model kit) came years later.

I admit it; I'm stumped.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

The tricorder design is a problem because you naturally want the interesting side to face the camera, but the character using it has to see that side. So he either has to tilt it away from his face somehow, or they'd have to shoot over his shoulder, requiring another camera set-up back in the days what that was a bigger deal, more time-consuming. Of course, the tricorder display couldn't show anything except with a matte shot, so to some extent it became like Spock's hooded viewer on the bridge: he sees it and you don't.

Communicator prop, same thing. Shatner would often tilt its face at least slightly toward the camera.

 

[Spock's Barber]

BTW, that looks like a scene from COTEOF.

 

[Tosk]

This always bugged me. It's like the X-Files how they always had the magnifier with the light shining in the actors faces instead of on the object they were looking at. And while we're at it, I hate when movies and TV have a character looking at themselves in the mirror and they're actually looking at the camera reflection instead of their own face. The geometry of it drives me up the wall.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

And while we're at it, I hate when movies and TV have a character looking at themselves in the mirror and they're actually looking at the camera reflection instead of their own face. The geometry of it drives me up the wall.

Yes. Some of vintage Hollywood's little tricks don't work, and even insult our intelligence.

 

[Mytran]

The Tricorder could always have a "flip screen" function like modern smartphones - no biggy

The design issue is more of a puzzle - where exactly are the sensor emitters? Spock holds it facing out most of the time, but not always with the middle door opened - is the door for maintainance only and the sensors work just fine going through it?
This is compounded by the fact that the Tricorder is sometimes held the other way around with no impairment on its function whatsoever!

Those 23rd century Tricorder omnidirectional sensors were really something...

 

[Timo]

I don't really see why the sensors would need to be directional. It's not as if they would have been established to use lenses or paraboloid mirrors or anything.

Perhaps the display screen is holographic, and Spock sometimes doesn't bother to rotate the object to be displayed when he can tilt the whole machine instead? OTOH, perhaps all the odd rubbing is an interfacing technique specifically for rotating the object in the display, akin to Spock's handwaving in "The Cage".

Of course it could be a Spock thing even more intimately, an interfacing method only available through touch telepathy. It's well established in "The Changeling" that Spock can speak Machine with his fingers, after all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

I don't really see why the sensors would need to be directional. It's not as if they would have been established to use lenses or paraboloid mirrors or anything

Yet by the 24th century they are decidedly directional - the flashy end of the tricorder always points towards what they are scanning, after all

 

[Kor]

I don't really see why the sensors would need to be directional. It's not as if they would have been established to use lenses or paraboloid mirrors or anything.

Perhaps the display screen is holographic, and Spock sometimes doesn't bother to rotate the object to be displayed when he can tilt the whole machine instead? OTOH, perhaps all the odd rubbing is an interfacing technique specifically for rotating the object in the display, akin to Spock's handwaving in "The Cage".

Of course it could be a Spock thing even more intimately, an interfacing method only available through touch telepathy. It's well established in "The Changeling" that Spock can speak Machine with his fingers, after all.

Timo Saloniemi

He also mind-melded with V'Ger.
But in those cases the machine had consciousness (whatever that means for a machine). The tricorder doesn't.

Kor

 

[Spock's Barber]

He also mind-melded with V'Ger.
But in those cases the machine had consciousness (whatever that means for a machine). The tricorder doesn't.

Kor

Sometimes I think my car has a mind of it's own like Stephen King's Christine.

 

[Gepard]

I wonder if someone decided, maybe the director, maybe Nimoy himself, it might seem more interesting to face the instrument panel toward the camera.

I can't recall where I read it, but that's exactly what it was. If Nimoy held the tricorder so that Spock could actually see the controls, the audience would be treated to a view of a big black rectangle. Aesthetics trumped reality.

(I imagine that's why the TNG-onward designs had big arrays of flashing lights on the part that faced the camera.)

 

[johnnybear]

BTW, that looks like a scene from COTEOF.

"And...NOW!!!"
JB

 

[publiusr]

Well--if I want to display the status of the health of the holder--the sensor will point towards you, after all. Turn it the other way, and listen to the sounds. My guess is that Spock was picking up on a symphony of sounds unheard by us.

 

[Mytran]

The tricorder wasn't just used by Spock thought - what do all those officers who lack hyper-sensitive hearing do to interpret the data?

 

[publiusr]

There is that. I've seen it pointed a dozen different ways--maybe vibration though the case...

 

[USS Triumphant]

I can see things just about as well upside-down as right-side up - including reading. That's probably child's play for a Vulcan. So maybe the screen doesn't rotate at all - Spock just doesn't care.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

The Tricorder could always have a "flip screen" function like modern smartphones - no biggy.

That's a good retcon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerometer
"Accelerometers are used in tablet computers and digital cameras so that images on screens are always displayed upright."

It accounts for Scotty, Chekov, and Palamas holding their tricorders funny in "Who Mourns..."

With accelerometers, you can hold it any way you want.

 

[Mytran]

Those pictures really are a good case for an ominidirectional sensor array.

Or at the very least, sensor emitters in many, many different locations -
"Now, your officers have ultimate choice in how they use their latest generation of Tricorders. Buy yours today!"

 

[F. King Daniel]

CHEKOV: I have no idea what I'm doing.