The Big E bridge: What changes WOULD you like?
- Thread starter Jadeb
- Start date
Pointless? Maybe among modern writers who don't seem to grasp exactly what a navigator is and treat it like a co-pilot (a problem Orville also seems to have), but having a separate navigator is in fact far more realistic representation of how ships work.
But then, we don't care about realism, do we?
Please tell me more about this. I've never really understood... any of this. But I know I don't know it!
It's called Redundancy...
Just like about 99% of all the systems on any technologically advanced ship/plane/spacecraft have.
Having a human "back up" for the Pilot just in case.
The fact that the Helm/Navigator Station is combined indicates to me that either side of the panel could probably do both jobs in a pinch.
Navigation is a very complex and specialized task that more or less requires an officer's full attention to properly execute. There's a lot of map work and other stuff involved. The very idea that it can just be rolled into the pilot's job is so laughable, it causes tears. After all, you don't see any navies or other maritime services combining navigation into the helmsman's duties, so why would that change on a spaceship?
Well, other than allowing the show to save budget by removing a character from its cast, of course.
No
Well you can already hear some of that on the Discovery and Shenzhou Bridges
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Because with 150+ years of improvement in computer technology they can automate all of that work away?
Yep. The bridge and it's crew is there for us viewers and for the drama and the story. That concept is good for most TV and movies no matter the subject matter. That said, I love the original TOS bridge layout anyway. You know, nostalgia and all that.
The idea of a console that could reconfigure itself for different tasks is a good one, but I too like tactile feedback.
Maybe a console that "grows" buttons? When the keys need to change, new bumpies rise up?
I love this idea. I always thought that the criticisms of the tactile buttons on the prime enterprise were a little unfair - they’re 23rd century buttons - we don’t know what they do or what the full range of their functions is. The same button could have multiple functions given the configuration of the panel. Not everything needs to be touchscreen - multiple options for actual buttons seems sufficiently futuristic to me!
Actually, our preferences line up almost exactly. I was looking for stuff I was "willing" to give on in the spirit of modernization (as though my opinion actually matters). But when it comes to what I'd like, I prefer more fidelity to TOS rather than less. Partly that's because Jefferies took such a thoughtful approach to the bridge design. Stuff like a panoramic viewscreen and massive control panels look cool on TV, but they wouldn't work very well in real life. It's already a pain having to reach some of the controls in my car.
In practical application, I would think that even if you had a massive, semi-panoramic viewscreen, everything important (magnification, on-screen displays, etc.) would take place in an area not much bigger than the original viewscreen. So you'd basically be looking at a viewscreen on a transparent wall.
Or maybe, after televisions have grown (even more) absurdly huge and retreated back in size, people will look back and wonder why we wanted such enormous screens. Who'd want to sit in an IMAX theater all day? If you want to admire the stars, go to the observation deck.
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Pilot itself is just the old word for navigator, in many ways it is the same thing...especially with ships. Humans just never make their mind up. The idea that a pilot chooses where the ship moves, and the navigator plots the course, is a thing that comes more from aircraft.
I think that helmsman term is the important differential here tbh. Sulu makes sure they can jink about when the Klingons fire, and maybe pushes the make it go button, but Chekhov is the one that works out how to get there basically. He probably includes service stations for coffee top ups.
No way in hell that would hold up under current hi-def video recording.
Unless you want to see plywood and brush strokes in the paint.
The Starfleet designers just made the duranium look that way. Skeumorphism makes it big again in the 23rd century. You didn’t think Tricorder screens were really tiny crts did you? Tch.
Don't forget about those highly sophisticated two U.S. missile destroyers that collided with those massive tankers out in the Pacific last summer. Still no official story on how their lookouts and navigation radar warnings failed.
Unofficial story is they were hacked. Obvious culprits, but who knows
It's interesting how quickly (and unavoidably) this discussion transitions from "what changes would you like" to "what changes would you tolerate."
I'm a technical director. My switcher has 1300 buttons on it (yes, I've counted), and I agree with you completely. When I'm in a show, the touch screen buttons that I also have are not easy to rely on.
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