Ensign, raise sh- *KABOOM*

[Noname Given]

Vic Sixx said:
Under Roddenberry the shields would come on automatically, but under Berman that was no longer the case.

Actually, that was under Harve Bennet and the "Movie Era" too. 'Auto Shields-Up' seemed to dissapear after the TOS series.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Noname Given said:
Actually, that was under Harve Bennet and the "Movie Era" too.

ST:TWOK - along with ST:TFF - would have required extensive rewriting to make their "story" work had the NCC-1701's shields operated in the manner demonstrated by TOS.

'Auto Shields-Up' seemed to dissapear after the TOS series.

As Timo noted, they were reintroduced briefly during the first season of ST:TNG.

TGT

 

[xortex]

They're also thinking of renaming the town of Kabul, Afganistan to Kaboom !

 

[Timo]

Ensign Borg: "Thank you for reminding me. After all my years of training at the Academy, I forgot the standard Starfleet protocol for a Red Alert situation."

You'd be surprised at how much seasoned professionals appreciate redundant verbal cues, thick-lettered post-it notes, and felt-pen arrows drawn on the consoles to tell them which way is left and which is right today...

Diplomatic mission or not, why would enemy provocation even enter into the computer's decision making process?

IMHO because of the observed practice of any non-cloaked attack being so slow-paced that it is possible to tell a provocation from the real thing if one has enough patience. The "up at last hundredth of a second" thing would be fine for diplomacy. But the "Shields just snapped up, because there is a body approaching that will reach us in about three anxious 'Vhat is it, Keptin' lines from Chekov, two lengthy lines of educated guesswork from Spock, and a reassuring grunt from you, Sir!" would often send the wrong message to said body. And it's the latter that we see the computer most typically perform.

Again IMHO, the shield response routine should feature escalation from simple visual warning that Sulu sees on his panel half a minute before impact, to an impatient beep at the ten-second mark, to an "If you don't raise them, I will!" last warning light at the one-second mark, to a final auto-raise those 0.02 seconds before impact unless overridden.

And it may well work just like that. Our brave helsmen would simply use the override a lot, to wait for words of tactical wisdom from Kirk - as in ST6 where such patience really paid off. Note also in ST6 how the final torpedo is fired by hitting the "mode select" button: no doubt the computer was eager to auto-fire the weapons, and Chekov was keeping the reins tight by selecting manual mode, until finally at Kirk's command releasing the computer to perform the attack as it wished.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tino]

Unicron said:
It's a dramatic thing. It makes sense for the shields to function automatically, but then potential threats would seem less exciting to the audience.

Yup. It's just a TV-series.

 

[StolenThunder]

xortex said:
Jelousy is also a sin, isn't it ?

xortex said:
They're also thinking of renaming the town of Kabul, Afganistan to Kaboom !

?