Explain it to me like I was six
- Thread starter sbk1234
- Start date
I guess for me, it's because it looked so 20th century, like my big brother or next door neighbor already had it.
That's not to say that the joystick couldn't be logically functional, but a little more thought into the design of a spotlight-device would've been nice. Especially for a big-budget movie.
To be fair to Insurrection, as much as I loved First Contact, a scene that threw me off was the boarding of the escape pods. The hatches were basically the bottoms of storage containers that you'd latch on to the roofs of minivans.
(Also: I HATEHATEHATE the EMH's superadvanced 24th century camera, which was simply a remote control for a toy car from, I guess, Radio Shack or Tyco.)
It's supposed to be a manually operated steering column. How much more advanced could it possibly get? It's GOING to look like a joystick.
It's exactly the opposite of the EMH's camera, which is a lot bulkier than it needs to be. We've got cameras today that are a few inches square. So why is this thing the size of a damn breadbox?
It's exactly the opposite of the EMH's camera, which is a lot bulkier than it needs to be. We've got cameras today that are a few inches square. So why is this thing the size of a damn breadbox?
Funnily enough, when George Kirk flew his ship with a joystick in the 2009 movie, it spectacularly failed to look like a gaming device and managed to look like military hardware (and something from a pseudo-1960s military to boot!)...
Simplicity was key to that.
Timo Saloniemi
Well, that and the fact that it didn't look cheap and plastic-y as hell.
I'm just curious why the darn thing was needed to begin with. We've seen a variety of Starships do a lot more complicated maneuvers (Defiant for instance) than simply turning a bit to starboard. You could have had Riker simply punch some buttons on the helm station and the scene wouldn't have been different.
I guess if you want the six year old explanation, the reason for the joystick was for theatrics. You know your space action scene is lacking when the idea of making it more exciting is by having the joystick pop out of nowhere so you can take the center stage.
I guess if you want the six year old explanation, the reason for the joystick was for theatrics. You know your space action scene is lacking when the idea of making it more exciting is by having the joystick pop out of nowhere so you can take the center stage.
A joystick IS military hardware. And let's better not discuss nuTrek's production design with barcode scanners and IKEA lamps.
Agreed completely with this. We've seen far more tight maneuvering than what the Ent-E did with a joystick with normal ships and conn stations. It seems pointless and gimmicky. A big sign screaming "look how cool and future-y this is!" that promptly falls onto the ground.
It's one of several elements in the late TNG films that seem to have been inserted in order to be incorporated into later video-games. The joystick and the shuttle chase in INS, the jeep chase and the fighter-in-the-hallway from Nem smell of game-yness. They could have used some helm-mounted manual controls like on the Yamato or something. A cheapie pop-up joystick speaks to the lowest common denominator, and being treated as such drives Trek fans up a wall.
To me, it was done more for dramatic sake than anything else, and was in the spirit of someone grabbing the wheel of a sailing ship, IMO.
Personally, though, I sort of wished they had the TNG Tech Manual at hand--which implied that a ship could actually be flown by someone walking down a corridor with a PADD (as it could be reconfigured as a conn interface like any console could). But I suppose someone steering the ship with a hand-held device wouldn't be dramatic-looking enough...
Personally, though, I sort of wished they had the TNG Tech Manual at hand--which implied that a ship could actually be flown by someone walking down a corridor with a PADD (as it could be reconfigured as a conn interface like any console could). But I suppose someone steering the ship with a hand-held device wouldn't be dramatic-looking enough...
^ But that would presuppose that the computer is still controlling the ship's movements. The joystick, OTOH, was for pure manual control, without any computer involvement.
As for the EMH's camera: Tricorders can also scan that deep into the body, and they aren't anywhere near as big & bulky as that camera was.
As for the EMH's camera: Tricorders can also scan that deep into the body, and they aren't anywhere near as big & bulky as that camera was.
Too bad, I can't remember the joystick being mentioned in Fade In.
Well, if it was used like a Wii controller...
Which actually shows another point against the joystick because manual control can be accessed from almost any console during TNG. Picard was able to fly the Enterprise-D under manual control (also without any computer involvement) from the conn station in "Booby Trap." No joystick was required then...
But to use a 20th century prop and mostly leave it to that is pretty lazy from a design standpoint. At least try to make it match the aesthetics of the fiction it's in.
We've seen the evolution of the joystick, from 1950s planes to Atari controllers to 1990s PC joysticks. Even the PC joysticks of today have some variation between them, either ergonomically or color or number of buttons. While we've seen the evolution of the joystick, we've also seen Trek propmasters engineer every day stuff into rather great looking technology of tomorrow. This was just a Best Buy toy tacked onto a column. It's kind of akin to cops on Law & Order donning protective vests by using Spanish Conquistador armor -- sure, they serve the same purpose, but one matches the time frame and the other is a relic by those standards regardless of effectiveness (yes, I'm exaggerating, but you get the point). Just because something is simple doesn't mean it can't change.
So yes, seeing the joystick pop out over 10 years ago took me out of the film because I instantly recognized it as something I had seen in an electronics store already.
Also, as a side, I've no problem with something shown in Trek for the sake of theatrics -- that's what most of the props and special effects are for, after all. The torpedo ripping the E-A's saucer, Kirk in front of the Bird of Prey in V, the close-ups of Geordi's new contacts, the Generations Astrometrics lab, etc. But that dune buggy is still unforgivable!
But at least with my post, we're talking about design as presented to the audience, not the capabilities of the tech within the fiction. For all we know, that simple joystick is capable of many, many more complex maneuvers than a mere barrel roll, but that's not the issue either. An early TNG-era phaser looks like a mini-dustbuster, but we all know better than that.
And the fun thing is, the "devolved" joystick from the 2009 film got a much better reception than the more gadgety ST:INS version. A straight metal stick with a rubber ball at the end was found more credible than a device that in the real world evolved from this humble point of origin.
ST:INS seems to have dropped deep down the "uncanny valley" here: if something is almost realistic, it doesn't convince anybody, but if it's completely fake, it gets a much better reception.
Timo Saloniemi
An "uncanny valley" for props. Interesting idea.
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