Sarship ops - do they use tech enough?

[bn-7bc]

Well wat started me thinking about this was the Voyager episode where Janeway takes two crewmembers that has "slipped through the cracks" on an away mission (one of them works in power requsisjon),and nearky gets them killed

At the start of that episode Seven needs more power (I can't remeber for what), so she sends somenone with a pad to B'elana, who checksit over and sends somevone else with the pad to the guy in power req.

So what is so strange about that? Well on a starship that can communicate at least withing a quadrant of a galaxy, theay can't give pads the abiliti to communicate internally on a ship?

If you ask me a more logical sequence of events wold be: Seven send request for more power from her pad,B'elanas pad beeps, she reviews and confirms the request, Pad in power req berps with order for power transfer, and Seven gets confirmation that her request has been granted.

Well that was my GBP0.02 now over to the rest of you.Am knit picking or do I have a point?

Pardon the sketcu deyaols at the top, I'll goggle tomorrow and post the episode title (that is if I don't forget )

 

[bryce]

Yeah, I agree...there are little touches in Trek like that which make me feel that the writers don't always completely think out the implications of the tech...

 

[sojourner]

Yea, pretty much this goes down to visual story telling.

 

[SonicRanger]

That scene was stupider and just as scientifically/technologically naive than anything involving hyper-evolved salamander people.

 

[C.E. Evans]

It could be simply protocol. Certain orders may have to be physically verified, regardless if it can be done electronically.

 

[Timo]

To be sure, at least part of that sequence could make sense. It's not simple "orders" that are being sent from location to location: for the last leg, it's probably personnel, too.

That is, the engineer who gets the PADD from B'Elanna may have been dispatched to do the necessary adjustments, and to draft whatever help he needed from Deck 15, which happened to be our nerdy Big Bang theoretician Harren. Said engineer would take with him some written instructions on how to do the job, and would hand one copy on a PADD over to Harren, who'd otherwise perhaps be out of his depth in dealing with the local Borg Queen's specs and demands.

Two wrongs make a right here: power reallocation should be doable with the press of a button on a bridge console, so Kim or Seven shouldn't need to call anybody to get it done. But if it's not that simple, then it suddenly makes perfect sense that Torres would need to dispatch a guy with instructions to deal with it in situ, and possibly to draft more guys and gals to help with the nonstandard operation.

The first leg of that PADD's epic journey could then be chalked off as bureaucracy: Seven would be a stickler to it, after having been told every so often that she was taking too many liberties, and indeed everybody would feel more comfortable if the Chief Engineer herself verified that the suggestions of the resident Borg could indeed be safely carried out.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

If Star Trek made full use of 24th century technology, it would become unrelatable to the viewer, and it wouldn't make for interesting visual storytelling beyond a few minutes of "Ohh, how futuristic" (books are another matter)

In how many movies today do we see situations that can be solved by a phone call for help? How many times does someone need to know something right now, which they could just google on their phones? Technology at our fingertips is being ignored in present-day TV. What chance does the pretend future have?

 

[Timo]

To be sure, it's more unrealistic in a modern thriller if 3G technology actually works than if it is neglected... Should people trust their lives on something like that when in the real world a simple shortwave radio more often fails them than not?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

If Star Trek made full use of 24th century technology, it would become unrelatable to the viewer, and it wouldn't make for interesting visual storytelling beyond a few minutes of "Ohh, how futuristic" (books are another matter)

In how many movies today do we see situations that can be solved by a phone call for help? How many times does someone need to know something right now, which they could just google on their phones? Technology at our fingertips is being ignored in present-day TV. What chance does the pretend future have?

Maybe it's just because I've been watching alot of old sci-fi movies lately (2001/2010, Blade Runner, Back to the Future, etc) but I've come to understand that all of the grander predictions of science fiction invariably come true in really lame, understated ways. 2001's "PanAM passenger shuttle and space station" turned out to be the STS program and the ISS. Clavious Moonbase gets downgraded to a series of orbiting probes and a rover or two. The Discovery mission to Jupiter... unmanned probes. Nuff said.

I look around and realize that the future has provided us with flashier gadgets, slightly new fashions and some godawful noises that some executive somewhere laughingly calls "music." At the end of the day, even the new gadgets and gizmos are little more than high tech fashion statements and are prone to come and go (mostly go) like a feather in the wind.

By the 24th century, I expect most advances are going to be largely cosmetic anyway, with slight improvements in form and function that make various gadgets considerably more useful but hardly revolutionizing the entire landscape of human life. In this sense, 24th century tech depictions got one thing perfectly right: everybody takes the technology for granted, right up until the moment it stops working properly.

 

[The Inquisitor]

It used to frustrate me when the tech wasn't used as often as it should/could have.

I came to realise it's probably for the best. When people try to predict the future, the further ahead they go, the further the scope for error (anyone remember tomorrows world in the UK?).

I think the tech of the 24th century will be as alien to us as tech now would be for someone living in the 18th century. The tech we see on screen mixes old faves like FTL with the writers own interpretation of what they expect to arise in the future.

Relying too heavily on outlandish concepts may well be detrimental to the show. Don't get me wrong, I love all the technobabble but the general public tend to favour less tech heavy shows.

 

[FalTorPan]

Well wat started me thinking about this was the Voyager episode where Janeway takes two crewmembers that has "slipped through the cracks" on an away mission (one of them works in power requsisjon),and nearky gets them killed

At the start of that episode Seven needs more power (I can't remeber for what), so she sends somenone with a pad to B'elana, who checksit over and sends somevone else with the pad to the guy in power req.

So what is so strange about that? Well on a starship that can communicate at least withing a quadrant of a galaxy, theay can't give pads the abiliti to communicate internally on a ship?

If you ask me a more logical sequence of events wold be: Seven send request for more power from her pad,B'elanas pad beeps, she reviews and confirms the request, Pad in power req berps with order for power transfer, and Seven gets confirmation that her request has been granted.

Well that was my GBP0.02 now over to the rest of you.Am knit picking or do I have a point?

Pardon the sketcu deyaols at the top, I'll goggle tomorrow and post the episode title (that is if I don't forget )

"Good Shepherd" is one of the few VOY episodes that I've actually watched, and while I agree that the tech wasn't being used realistically here, that obviously wasn't the intent of the scene -- to show the apparent isolation, both physical and mental, of those crew people from the top-ranking officers aboard ship. Besides, it was darn cool to "fly" into the ship at Deck 1 and out again at Deck 15.

 

[ngc7293]

I don't remember the episode, but from the OP, it sounds like the writers had the idea of a message being passed along "officially" from one person to the next, as it would in the military. So, as it has been said, they were not thinking straight and put fancy tech in place of paper and shuffled it along not thinking it could skip communication barriers. (Yes there are lines of communication that must be kept, but hey this is the distant 24th century. Surely some rules would have changed with new technologies in place) Or the writers could have simply have written a better story.

 

[bn-7bc]

I don't remember the episode, but from the OP, it sounds like the writers had the idea of a message being passed along "officially" from one person to the next, as it would in the military. So, as it has been said, they were not thinking straight and put fancy tech in place of paper and shuffled it along not thinking it could skip communication barriers. (Yes there are lines of communication that must be kept, but hey this is the distant 24th century. Surely some rules would have changed with new technologies in place) Or the writers could have simply have written a better story.

First: thanks for all the replys, many interesting points.

After a bit more thinking I realised that this question probably accured to me because I am looking at this from a 2011 standpoint with wifi,3g etc beeing a fact of life. The writers had to make something that (even for sci-fi) made seance, otherwise there wold be the chance that people wold be turned off, and besides handing over pads (even with routine reports) is a great way to create situations wit personal interaction a chance for conversations to start etc. Walking thru the ship also creates (random) meetings, it is also a nice way to fill a bit of air-time whit out to much scripting, and how doesn't like seeing Seven walking down a corridor lol.

 

[SicOne]

Let's not forget that it might also be a storytelling device designed to help draw out the length of a bad episode to its full running time.

 

[Starlock]

A scene like this reminds me of all the times in TOS when a yeoman would bring an "electronic clipboard" up to the bridge for Captain Kirk to sign. So there is a precedent to all this legwork.

 

[blssdwlf]

A scene like this reminds me of all the times in TOS when a yeoman would bring an "electronic clipboard" up to the bridge for Captain Kirk to sign. So there is a precedent to all this legwork.

Of course we don't know if Kirk has been dodging the dozens of computer notifications telling him to sign and the yeoman is the one sent to make sure he signs it