Okay, so I have a technical question that's been bugging me the last couple of days. Throughout the run of Star Trek: The Next Generation, we've been painted an inconsistent picture of the durability and construction method of the doors aboard the Enterprise-D. In some episodes, doors are portrayed as being impenetrable barriers which cannot be pried open by even the strongest android or the most determined Klingon warrior, while in other episodes they're shown to be flimsy affairs, which can be so easily destroyed that a human being can be thrown through them with no long-lasting ill effects. And then there's the matter of soundproofing. It seems as though the same doors that can be wrecked with the slightest touch are also completely soundproof - we see an example of this when an elderly Admiral is throwing Riker around in his quarters, and nobody out in the corridor seems to hear it, yet in other episodes, there are doors through which screaming can clearly be heard, but the doors have to be unlocked before anyone can enter. And the time that Geordi went for a ride on an out-of-control turbolift, everyone on the bridge acted surprised when he came flying out of the lift sideways at the end of the ordeal. Apparently, no one heard him screaming the entire way up the shaft, nor did they hear the wildly out-of-control turbolift. And what about the bathroom doors on the Enterprise bridge? We never seem to hear loud alien flatulence echoing through them, yet they must not be the indestructible type, since Our Heroes never once used the bathroom as an emergency shelter. Thoughts?
The bathroom doors on the bridge don't open. They're just painted on the wall of the set. Seven years is a long time for Number One to have to hold in his Number Twos...
I'm more bothered by the lack of double doors on turbolifts - yet somehow there are doors both in the cab when the camera follows the occupants and on the deck when it doesn't. Magic!
Well, if they WERE real, I'd want them to be made of the super-flimsy soundproof stuff, not the impenetrable-fortress sound-amplifying stuff, because nothing would be more embarrassing than having the sound of somebody's loud diarrhea filling the bridge in the midst of an ambassadorial tour.
How does a man get thrown through magnetically-sealed composite duranium doors and walk away from it unharmed?
Since it's a fictional material, who's to say. Maybe the door was unlocked, maybe the magnets were weak, maybe there was a flaw in the material, maybe it's a safeguard...
For sure, if I were designing the sets on future Star Trek productions, I'd definitely pay lip service to the real-life engineering of the "double doors" idea. Though I suspect the convenience of only having one set of doors was because they were notoriously hard to get working, so having to pull open two sets of doors was probably a stretch too far! Oh I don't know, if there's one thing that unites all life-forms (on Earth at least), then it's the need to poo. From the tallest giraffe to the smallest mouse, and all of us bipeds in-between, this is something that we all share in common with one another. So, I'd like to think that hearing the sound of humans in the toilet would convince our other worldly friends that we all share a common ground with them too. If anything, the sound of diarrhea coming from behind closed doors could be a subtle diplomatic tool that leads to multiple intergalactic treaties. The Federation had to start somewhere...
True, but could the same be said for the noise of Worf grunting and roaring under the strain of an unmovable turd?
Since this thread has been posted in the General Forum not the TNG forum I'll post something about TOS. You know how people's cabin doors open in TO when you just go near them like at the shopping centre, how come they didn't just open when people just walked down the corridors? I mean how did the doors know when you wanted to go in or when you were walking by. Or did they actually press buttons to go in - I can't remember this being the case. I'm trying to think of this situation in say VOY but the camera angle in VOY always seemed to be from inside the cabin not from the corridor.
Maybe the Federation employs the same technology to make their doors work as the production company does to film them? Two guys stuck inside the bulkhead pulling on ropes, and someone outside to tell them "... and open it... NOW!" whenever someone approaches.
On the TOS Constitutions, the doors could be opened either way. And, although it is SO not canon, it's worth mentioning that in Star Trek Online, the TOS Connies use the 'shopping center' technology you describe for the door sensors. Consequently, the doors off of high-traffic corridors are constantly opening at random as assorted crew NPCs walk past.
Space 1999 killed two birds with one stone with the commlock, which was part keyless-remote-entry and part communicator. I seem to recall that you had to push a button to open a door on the NX-01 Enterprise, am I remembering this correctly? (I'm too lazy to pull it up on Netflix right now.)
The NX-01 was only a figment of Riker's shenanigans on the holodeck. You can not use that as a primary source. :-P
The doors on the TOS Connies were made by the fine people of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, and were very smart. They actually utilized some of the same mind-scanning technology that was in the TOS Universal Translator, and used it to determine your intent when approaching the door. If they saw that you intended to walk through the door, they would happily open and allow you to pass through unharmed. However, if they saw that you were in a state of emotional distress because your mother just stormed out of your quarters after an argument about giving your father a life-saving blood transfusion, and you just wanted to approach the door and forlornly rest your hand upon it so as to evoke a sense of pathos in whomever may be watching, they would obligingly stay closed in order to preserve the dramatic integrity of the moment. And of course, they would sigh contentedly as they opened and closed. Because they just lived to open and close!