Props Re-used

I'd worry more about the well-known general characteristics of a wheeled gurney, or a shopping cart, or any other piece of transportation tech utilizing tiny wheels and having a high center of gravity. That's probably the one thing high tech would replace as soon as possible: an antigrav version would supposedly be able to clear all sorts of thresholds, stairs and obstacles, as well as be used outside the ship, on uneven terrain. It might also be trivially easy to make the hover-stretchers self-propelled, or capable of propelling a paramedic along with the patient.

However, reliability issues might still exist in the brave new world. And when we see hovering meditech in the 24th century, we don't see ground clearance. For obvious real-world reasons, antigrav stretchers and chairs hover barely a centimeter over the deck carpet, on a broad flat base unsuited for negotiating any sort of obstacles. So using a classic gurney is at least sort of consistent...

Timo Saloniemi

 

We do see an anti-grav platform, about half the size need for a gurney in a corridor early in TMP. It floats about waist high.

 

...And that's practical, and what one would sort of expect from TOS, too (redoing that in the remasters would have been cool!). Later on in TNG they did it on the cheap, with stretchers and wheelchairs that reached all the way down to the floor and just glowed blue where the equipment met the carpet.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Or had wheels like Melora or the latest movie.

 

The episode by that name, not the character....

 

I did remember the reusing of those props.
I do not see Spock needing an external calculator given his mental abilities. What it was really used for I have no concrete idea.

 

The script makes no mention of it, but Mister Spock does pick up the device the moment Mr. Scott mentions that the ship "feels wrong." Mister Spock then punches in entries througout the episode as he wanders around the ship. Later, as Mr. Scott is in the access crawlway, Mister Spock asks the computer:

"Analysis on my comparison co-ordinates."

So, evidently Mister Spock had some co-ordinates for the computer to compare against. Perhaps Spock was using this thing as some kind of "taking periodic samplings and readings" device to capture some odd spacial or environmental measurements--with which he was able to determine that the ship was assembled slightly "out of phase."

 

More importantly, it gave Nimoy a bit of business to play with. It appears that he likes to play with props to make a scene more interesting.

 

its not all he plays with

 

That's between him and his wife.

 

I see Spock's "That Which Survives" device as a kind of 1960's-ish envisioning of what a combination PDA / pamltop terminal / communications device would be like. They really had no idea back then what kind of "smartphone" or "calculator" or "handheld computer" gadgets would be 10-40 years away, let alone 300 years away. So they fashioned something with a control panel on top of a "Cage" communicator body.

Ironically (unintentional prophecy? "gifted insight"?) Spock's little toy being fashioned out of a communicator would up be very close. Just replace the face of the thing and those colored buttons with an iPhone-style touchscreen and Spock's gadget could be a very logical "mini science station", giving him partial access to his station's controls while he's away from the station. (He carried it with him around the bridge, to Engineering, etc.)

 

I could see it as a sensor/analysis device.

 

^I always assumed it was a futuristic version of one of these...

...albeit one which didn't just count, but collected a sensor "snapshot" of the immediate area, and could then upload these "snapshots" to the main computer. When Spock realized something was up, he began logging perceived instances with this device, so that the computer could analyze and compare each instance, to see if a pattern of some kind might be determined.

BTW, I didn't resurrect this thread out of nowhere. It's been referenced in the "Fan Production Forum", and I imagine that there will be quite a bit more traffic from there in this thread.

 

It's a whiskey bottle from the George Dickle Distillery. I have two different sized-ones sitting on my computer desk as I type this, the original ones from the 1960's.

 

One thing that would have really helped make Spock's hand-held analysis device more realistic would have been some kind of small panel for a read-out. It wouldn't need any SFX because of the small size, but be large enough to lend credibility. Without a screen, you've no visual reference of what you're doing. The whole thing is just cluttered with buttons. It was the only device prop in TOS I felt was unconvincing.

 

Maybe not, I seem to remember Spock pecking at this device and then looking up towards the main view screen, perhaps that is the devices readout.

The wireless keyboard I'm using now displays on my computer monitor in my living room, the 32 inch flat screen in my bedroom. and the 12 inch flat screen in my bathroom next to my make-up mirror, regardless of where I am in my apartment.

My keyboard itself has no display screen.

 

Might also be the thingamabob has a tactile display; it buzzes Spock in an informative manner. Or, say, subtly flashes the knobs in different colors. But the idea that it's mostly a sensing and inputting device and only occasionally gives out information via a remote display or other terminal would also be quite consistent with the way Spock operates it.

OTOH, perhaps it's the exact opposite: not an instrument, but a remote for operating other instrumentation.

Timo Saloniemi

 

He seems to spend the episode calculating odds with it, if I remember rightly.

 

Packers won.