Lately around the internet, I have been seeing people finding it funny or outright criticizing the use of foam rocks coming from exploding consoles or from ceilings during battles in TNG. This never seemed odd to me, but it really irritates some people, it seems. So I tried to understand more.
The Enterprise-D's walls are lined with what we now know to be current-day, commercially-available acoustic foam, of the kind used in studios to control ring-y sounds. I suppose that could have been used just to look futuristic, but in-universe we are talking about a metal ship, full of rooms where people spend hours working. Carpeting the walls, or using acoustic foam, can go a long way into making the sonic environment more comfortable. So in this case I do not really see a need to imagine this as some future-tech, but that it really is acoustic foam to make the rooms more pleasant. (It probably helped in real-life recording the series, too.).
If the Enterprise-D does use foam/insulation/some-future-version-of-that-kind-of-thing to dampen sound, then it is not much a stretch that this stuff is between consoles, between decks, above ceilings, etc.
So, for example, in the much-discussed scene in Yesterday's Enterprise where Riker is showered with what appear to be burnt foam "rocks," they could be just that: not rocks, but burnt foam from the ceiling, and exactly what they appear to be.
In this case, I think some fans, and even some production staff, saw these props and thought they were supposed to imagine them as rocks. But in fact, it makes a ton of sense NOT to try to imagine them as rocks, and see them as the foam they are.
If the ship has been dampened with foam or future equivalent for sonic comfort, this approach to showing ship damage makes a lot more sense than it initially seems
The Enterprise-D's walls are lined with what we now know to be current-day, commercially-available acoustic foam, of the kind used in studios to control ring-y sounds. I suppose that could have been used just to look futuristic, but in-universe we are talking about a metal ship, full of rooms where people spend hours working. Carpeting the walls, or using acoustic foam, can go a long way into making the sonic environment more comfortable. So in this case I do not really see a need to imagine this as some future-tech, but that it really is acoustic foam to make the rooms more pleasant. (It probably helped in real-life recording the series, too.).
If the Enterprise-D does use foam/insulation/some-future-version-of-that-kind-of-thing to dampen sound, then it is not much a stretch that this stuff is between consoles, between decks, above ceilings, etc.
So, for example, in the much-discussed scene in Yesterday's Enterprise where Riker is showered with what appear to be burnt foam "rocks," they could be just that: not rocks, but burnt foam from the ceiling, and exactly what they appear to be.
In this case, I think some fans, and even some production staff, saw these props and thought they were supposed to imagine them as rocks. But in fact, it makes a ton of sense NOT to try to imagine them as rocks, and see them as the foam they are.
If the ship has been dampened with foam or future equivalent for sonic comfort, this approach to showing ship damage makes a lot more sense than it initially seems
