Previously unwritten rules for depicting shipboard life/procedure

[A beaker full of death]

It's all about verisimilitude, friends, and TOS had it in spades.
So, in no particular order...

1. No use of communicators during normal shipboard situations. Use the intercom.
2. No sidearms carried or within reach during normal shipboard situations.

Next?

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

Would rule #2 extend to handheld equipment like tricorders etc? If we dip into DS9, tricorders drain power like 21st century equipment (if leaving it running was such a concern with regards power storage) and might need to be left in a specific place for charging.

 

[Outpost4]

- Talk into the communication device, be it on the wall, the armrest of the captain's chair or a communicator. I hate it when a movie actor holds the mouthpiece of a phone to his neck while he has a conversation.

- Press the same order of buttons on a console to take the same actions. Takei was especially good at this.

 

[Red Ranger]

No pockets allowed! LOL!

 

[alchemist]

Approach oncoming ships in the same physical plane as you.

 

[Tyberius]

Approach oncoming ships in the same physical plane as you.

At least in TWOK they addressed that!

 

[alchemist]

Approach oncoming ships in the same physical plane as you.

At least in TWOK they addressed that!

What Tyberius has said is unimportant, and we do not hear his words.

TWOK? What's that?



But seriously, you are right, of course, but I thought this was TOS sans movies. No?

 

[Timo]

I'd say Beaker's and Outpost's first points have been outdated by technology. Nobody today or tomorrow would bother to use fixed comm portals when portable ones are available, and nobody would bother to speak to the device when it can pick up the voice at a distance just as well.

TOS could be excused for retroing it, as their handheld communicators clearly are more capable than today's mobile phones. The big problem is, why don't the TOS folks have mobile phones in addition to their handheld interplanetary radio stations? Such coin-sized devices in the TNG realm ring far truer to today's audiences than the wall intercoms of TOS.

So, while such rules can be retroactively slapped on the aired material of TOS,
it might be a good idea to reserve judgement and keep hoping that future incarnations of TOS manage to slip in some real verisimilitude, if you pardon the expression. Perhaps the (from today's POV) nonsense rules we observed were in fact aberrations?

Aaanyhow... Other things that TOS got more right than the competition did (at least until future developments outdate such views):

1) Complex maneuvers such as orbital entry or antimatter powerplant management are dealt with using "verbal macros" such as "Standard orbit, Mr Sulu" or "Shunt everything you can spare to shields, Mr Scott".

2) Idle chatter, initiative and brainstorming is allowed on the bridge, outside alert situations. There is a dedicated brainstormer to advise the commanding officer during crises, a single mouthpiece to the expertise of the crew.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tyberius]

Approach oncoming ships in the same physical plane as you.

At least in TWOK they addressed that!

What Tyberius has said is unimportant, and we do not hear his words.

TWOK? What's that?



But seriously, you are right, of course, but I thought this was TOS sans movies. No?

Yes, it is. My apologies. But we can infer that the approach plane may have been just a courtesy and not something which was always used.

Was there a dogfight scene in TOS where limited sensor capability would have given an out-of-plane approach vector an advantage, yet the in-plane approach was used instead? <Edit> With full sensors, the approach plan in a dogfight would have mattered little as long as you were coming at them with main guns. </Edit>

Was the in-plane approach "always" used (I can't remember)

 

[NCC621]

Coffee served on the bridge.

Occasional live entertainment events for the crew - plays, concerts - sometimes broadcast by onboard video to crew members who can't attend in person.

 

[Outpost4]

I'd say Beaker's and Outpost's first points have been outdated by technology.

You missed beaker's point. I took off from his use of the word verisimilitude. What did the actors do that made the show seem real? And by that, I mean real to us. Maybe, in the 23rd century, the laws of acoustics will have been re-written, or the technology will have changed, so that people won't have to speak directly into comm panels. But that's not the point. What was done that made the show seem real to viewers in 1966 or even 2008? That's the point.

Let's say the technology has advanced so that in the future, folks can communicate without using visible mechanical devices. By the time of Star Trek, people have embedded microphones in their inner cheek, a speaker in their ear canal and the equivalent of wi-fi access in their skull. This would allow Kirk to walk down a corridor on the Enterprise and say, "Spock, meet me in the transporter room." Would that seem real to somebody today? I don't think so. Yet have Kirk stop at a comm panel and say the same thing, and we expect Spock to be in the transporter room when Kirk arrives.

As I read beaker's post, this was his point.

 

[A beaker full of death]

I'd say Beaker's and Outpost's first points have been outdated by technology. Nobody today or tomorrow would bother to use fixed comm portals when portable ones are available

I dunno. I never use my celphone in the office to talk to others in the office. I always use my desk phone, or look for a phone in a conference room or whatever, even though my cel is right in my pocket.

A couple more come to mind:
-people in the corridors and various departments are shown working, not just walking.
-people not on the bridge don't know what's been going on on the bridge
-various departments can be heard checking in with the bridge
-people don't always answer the intercom right away

 

[A beaker full of death]

As I read beaker's post, this was his point.

You are correct. I was thinking of what the directors and actors brought to it that shows them thinking of themselves on a ship, not a set. I just watched the latest "New Voyages" installment, and it got me thinking about such things.

Was there a dogfight scene in TOS where limited sensor capability would have given an out-of-plane approach vector an advantage, yet the in-plane approach was used instead?

Funny, this actually goes to my question in a basic way: those actors and directors would never refer to these ships as being in a "dogfight." That's a term for small aircraft, not massive ships.

 

[Timo]

Then again, I'd use the phone to talk to somebody in a different room on a different floor. I wouldn't walk to a "landline" phone to achieve that (especially if my mobile bill was paid for by my employer).

What was done that made the show seem real to viewers in 1966 or even 2008? That's the point.

I think I messed up the presentation of my point - which was that what appeared realistic for 1966 fails to achieve that effect in 2008, and in that sense serves to "date" the show.

Certainly the TOS adherence to, say, certain military practices against the wanton disregard in other contemporary scifi shows was "verisimilitude" back then - but in some ways, a scifi show is much better off when writing its own rules on a blank slate, and then sticking to those. The introduction and subsequent use of the imaginary transporter with its wholly imaginary strengths and limitations is a good example of that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Outpost4]

Another thing that added realism to Star Trek were the uniforms. They said, "this is a crew." Remember, at that time, it was more standard for each character to have his own uniform. Think of Lost In Space. Once they got out of their silver jumpsuits, they each had their own costume. Not Star Trek. Everyone dressed the same. There was even commonality between the male and female uniforms, although I'm grateful we never saw Spock in a mini-skirt.

Beyond that, and while these rules were often broken, each ship had its own chest insignia. Each department had its own color. The bell bottom pants, the boots, even the rankings on the sleeves, all said that Starfleet is an organization and this is its crew.

 

[Nebusj]

Was there a dogfight scene in TOS where limited sensor capability would have given an out-of-plane approach vector an advantage, yet the in-plane approach was used instead? <Edit> With full sensors, the approach plan in a dogfight would have mattered little as long as you were coming at them with main guns. </Edit>

Was the in-plane approach "always" used (I can't remember)

The Original Series bothered so rarely with having multiple ships in the same shot that I don't think anything could be said about relative orientations. Sometimes one ship would pursue another, in which case it makes sense for the ``forward'' or at least main weapons of one to be pointed at the other, but otherwise, we get about as much evidence as we do for the bridge's alignment relative ship's forward.

I think the only semi-definitive thing we might get is from ``The Enterprise Incident'', where pairs of ships aren't in the same plane, at least in the original effects.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I'd say Beaker's and Outpost's first points have been outdated by technology. Nobody today or tomorrow would bother to use fixed comm portals when portable ones are available, and nobody would bother to speak to the device when it can pick up the voice at a distance just as well.

Timo is Absolutely Right(TM).

The evolution of the hand communicator into an all-purpose personal communications device - whether on ship or off - was one of the things that TNG intuitively got right. This is the world we live in now, in which so many people choose never to be disconnected from the communications sphere long enough to use the bathroom or walk down the street to catch a bus. TOS came up with the idea of putting a flip-top on a walkie-talkie or telephone (although not to any purpose, in their case). The TNG folks grasped how such things would actually be used. Point goes to TNG.

 

[Maurice]

^^^Unless of course there's equipment on this ship that generates interference with "wireless" comm devices, hence the standard of using hard wired com panels. I mean, my mobile phone doesn't work everywhere, and it's possible communicators get interfered with on decks near subspace dohickusii.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Another thing that added realism to Star Trek were the uniforms.

I mean absolutely no disrespect when I say this, but . This has got to be the first time I've ever heard the concept of "realism" used in conjunction with the TOS uniforms.

 

[Gorn66]

Another thing that added realism to Star Trek were the uniforms. They said, "this is a crew." Remember, at that time, it was more standard for each character to have his own uniform. Think of Lost In Space. Once they got out of their silver jumpsuits, they each had their own costume. Not Star Trek. Everyone dressed the same. There was even commonality between the male and female uniforms, although I'm grateful we never saw Spock in a mini-skirt.

With the exception of Major Don West and Doctor Smith, (who wore a military uniform in early episodes) the "crew" of the Jupiter II were a civilian family on a colonization voyage.