Original bridge screen graphics lost?

[Doug Otte]

I think of the moire screen as a multi-functional display. It might display topography when scanning a planet surface; it might display asteriods within a sphere around the Enterprise; it might be some type of 3-dimensional graph when displaying data.

Don't ask me exactly what I mean by that last example. It's a half-baked idea that I haven't thought through!

 

[Maurice]

And what do the moires in the communicators do?

 

[ZapBrannigan]

And what do the moires in the communicators do?

They must serve as an indicator. When they're spinning, that means some setting is turned on.

 

[plynch]

Maybe they’re not a display, but a functioning thing that happens to be seen. Like watches you can buy now and see all the guts working.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

And what do the moires in the communicators do?

They were pretty hard to see on NTSC broadcast.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

And what do the moires in the communicators do?

Look pretty.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Maybe they’re not a display, but a functioning thing that happens to be seen. Like watches you can buy now and see all the guts working.

I'd be 100% for a clockwork Enterprise where the clockwork stuff is tiny machines what make a moire pattern while doing their thing.

 

[Phaser Two]

I believe there are moiré indicators on the tricorders as well. Which fits with the display at the library computer station. On the communicators, I guess that they too have a scanning function. Perhaps the device is scanning for signals or frequencies and letting the user know that.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I believe there are moiré indicators on the tricorders as well. Which fits with the display at the library computer station. On the communicators, I guess that they too have a scanning function. Perhaps the device is scanning for signals or frequencies and letting the user know that.

That's a good answer.

 

[Phaser Two]

I think it is called the Transtator as mentioned here, but never confirmed in canon that I remember.

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Hm, interesting take. I figured the transtator or transtater or whatever was some sort of fundamental internal component.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Hm, interesting take. I figured the transtator or transtater or whatever was some sort of fundamental internal component.

Yeah, like a transistor. Same, here.

 

[Christopher]

I know this is incredibly nitpicky -- which is totally on brand for me, let's face it -- but in the 1960s, would they even have referred to those status displays on the consoles as "screens?" I mean, a screen is a flat surface on which an image is projected. These were solid pieces of material with printed writing and cutouts with lights behind them. I'd think they would've probably been called panels or boards, something like that. Do any of our experts have, like, Matt Jefferies drawings indicating what the displays were called back then?

Hm, interesting take. I figured the transtator or transtater or whatever was some sort of fundamental internal component.

The term "transtator" was clearly inspired by "transistor," so it stands to reason that it was meant to be the foundation of their futuristic technology in the same way that transistors are fundamental to modern electronics and computers.

 

[shapeshifter]

^Makes sense, but...

transtator or transtater

A friend tells me it is the later, because ER usually represents a non-person.

So it is either grammatical or technological. I like OR because sen-oars. lol

 

[F. King Daniel]

I know this is incredibly nitpicky -- which is totally on brand for me, let's face it -- but in the 1960s, would they even have referred to those status displays on the consoles as "screens?" I mean, a screen is a flat surface on which an image is projected. These were solid pieces of material with printed writing and cutouts with lights behind them. I'd think they would've probably been called panels or boards, something like that. Do any of our experts have, like, Matt Jefferies drawings indicating what the displays were called back then?

"Bridge instrument face"

 

[alchemist]

^Makes sense, but...



A friend tells me it is the later, because ER usually represents a non-person.

So it is either grammatical or technological. I like OR because sen-oars. lol

It's transtator in the script.

 

[Christopher]

A friend tells me it is the later, because ER usually represents a non-person.

So it is either grammatical or technological. I like OR because sen-oars. lol

The dictionary disagrees with your friend.

-or2


a suffix forming animate or inanimate agent nouns, occurring originally in loanwords from Anglo-French (debtor; lessor; tailor; traitor); it now functions in English as an orthographic variant of -er1, usually joined to bases of Latin origin, in imitation of borrowed Latin words containing the suffix -tor (and its alternant -sor). The association with Latinate vocabulary may impart a learned look to the resultant formations, which often denote machines or other less tangible entities which behave in an agentlike way: descriptor; plexor; projector; repressor; sensor; tractor.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/or (scroll down to sense 7)

Since it's inspired by "transistor," it's naturally meant to be "transtator."

Also, "stator" is a word in and of itself. It's the counterpart of "rotor," the stationary part of a machine that has a rotating component. According to the TNG and DS9 Tech Manuals, Starfleet gravity generators use superconducting stators, although the manuals describe them as spinning, so that doesn't make a lot of sense. ("Stater" is a word too, but it's an ancient Greek coin, or, I guess, someone who states something. And I guess as an Ohioan, I'm a Buckeye Stater.)

 

[Phaser Two]

The term "transtator" was clearly inspired by "transistor," so it stands to reason that it was meant to be the foundation of their futuristic technology in the same way that transistors are fundamental to modern electronics and computers.

Even more directly, Spock's response in A Piece of the Action after McCoy's "confession" says as much. And Scotty makes a reference to transistor units in Space Seed, so they were on TBTP's minds to some extent.

 

[Christopher]

And Scotty makes a reference to transistor units in Space Seed, so they were on TBTP's minds to some extent.

They were on everyone's minds, because the transistor radio had only been introduced in the 1950s and really skyrocketed in popularity in the '60s. Communicators were no doubt inspired by transistor radios like this one. And replacing vacuum tubes with transistors allowed making all sorts of electronics smaller and more reliable. So people in the '60s would've been as aware of transistors as, say, people in the '80s would've been of computer chips (which, of course, are made up of lots of tiny transistors).

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I know this is incredibly nitpicky -- which is totally on brand for me, let's face it -- but in the 1960s, would they even have referred to those status displays on the consoles as "screens?"

Yes, they could have.

This is not a comprehensive search, but this is nevertheless a positive citation that supports my claim. Here is a television set advertisement from 1954 that refers to the "picture tube screen" and also refers to it simply as "the screen".

http://www.tvhistory.tv/1954-Admiral-C1617A-INFO.JPG (see lower left corner)
http://www.tvhistory.tv/advertising3.htm

 

[CorporalCaptain]

^ Also, they referred to "screens" in dialog. For example, from "The Menagerie" [http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/16.htm]:

MENDEZ: Present your evidence. Screen on.​

From "Friday's Child" [http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/32.htm]:

SCOTT: Well, let's put it on the screen.
(A small dot on the monitor above the science station.)​

Not to mention, they called the main bridge display the viewscreen, in dialog (also from "Friday's Child"):

SULU: I have it on the viewscreen now, sir. Still distant. Holding a position dead ahead, sir.​

I realize that this does not directly answer the question; references to the status displays in dialog are rare, if not nonexistent. In "Journey to Babel" when Kirk admonishes Uhura for having her sensor locator on a wide beam, he points to an indicator light but does not reference it directly in dialog.