How do they get live video feeds on away missions?

Always this has bugged me a little with TNG, they couldn't do it in TOS but we've seen video feeds from the away teams with either showing them all or a face on the viewscreen but how is the video recorded? Do the comm badges have cameras or where is the footage coming from?

 

Perhaps some little drone that we never actually see.

Kor

 

Umm, a thousand ways to do it - but AFAIK, it has never ever happened.

Away teams don't send video. They only send audio. Except if they loan the Mad Professor's comm panel when investigating him, say.

"Heart of Glory" is the one exception where they use LaForge's VISOR, showing things LaForge sees. No drones required.

(In contrast, several TOS episodes feature video recordings, made by unknown means... Say, McCoy's report on the Capellans, or the search team for the Galileo seven reporting on the giant cavemen. And Spock records video of the Guardian of Forever with his tricorder, giving us a good hint about these "unknown means"!)

Timo Saloniemi

 

My mistake but I could swear there have been one or two odd occasions when we see the away team from the Bridge.

Using Geordi's visor as a video camera is amusing. Considering their level of tech why couldn't they have put a micro camera in the comm badge? It does lots of other things why not one more function?

 

Because they mount them on their chests, & every shot of people, they would have no heads. Not a good look lol just kidding

 

The search team on "THE GALILEO SEVEN"... the Lt. was already beamed up to the Enterprise when he was talking to Kirk, very likely the back wall of the Transporter Room. The Capellans... McCoy might very well have had other Starfleet medical personnel with, and they recorded him. Probably by the same means as Spock with the Guardian of Forever.

 

I always thought it sure was lucky that Identity Crisis was the only TNG where they bothered recording what was going on planet-side. What an amazing coincidence.

 

Even more interesting... Geordi was present in both occasions, one in front of and one behind the viewing.

 

To me, it just seems that Starfleet doesn't put too much stock in video transmissions from landing parties/away teams. Even in Trek's time, there could still be some technical or camera angle limitations from handheld or worn devices that makes it not worth the bother. Tricorders could also make video transmissions redundant if they're transmitting the more important sensor or computer information back to the ship anyway (on second thought, maybe tricorders have a camera feature for recording images when necessary).

But I also tend to think that landing parties/away teams are supposed to be the eyes and ears of the ship during such missions, and that an audio link is good enough for the captain.

 

If they can (de-)materialise persons from a great distance, why wouldn't they be capable of "remote viewing" without using a physical device at the location of the supposed viewpoint of the camera?

 

True, but how would they achieve that?

For that matter where are the cameras on the bridge located?

 

That's the unfortunate thing about Trek and visual recordings - we could quite happily assume that "cameras" are utterly outdated technology and that visual recordings are made completely without focusing lenses or mirrors, being generated from hundreds or millions of distributed diffraction-based nanosensors instead. But then an episode or two ruins it all by showing that cameras are still in use.

TOS gives us one Starfleet camera - an incredibly clumsy wall-mounted lens for recording the Martine-Tomlinson wedding in "Balance of Terror". TNG shows the head-mounted rig in the "Identity Crisis" flashbacks, later seen half a fictional century earlier still in the ST:GEN prologue. And in VOY, the Doctor has his annoying holocamera.

We could further choose to argue that tricorders are perfect cameras and always fully record the visual surroundings of every landing party or boarding rave for posterity. The explicit cameras sorta ruin that, too, by showing those much clumsier devices in official use. But we further get the recurring bit where the boss asks an underling via audio "What do you see?" and the underling responds "You'd better come down here and see yourself, Sir" - an action for which the underling should get court-martialed if simply showing were an option.

ENT missed the starship by never addressing this issue. A couple of crew had pocket cameras for their role as wide-eyed space tourists. But there were no suitcams for the spacesuits, or even special planetside wear that could have mounted such doodads, even though the idea otherwise was to imitate NASA/USAF gear to much greater degree than in the fictionally later shows; a lot of the stuff was Stargate SG-1 level primitive for verisimilitude, but cameras... Alas.

Does the other "modern" show, DSC, do any better? The landing party vests have these shoulder mounts for things that could be compact lights but just as easily compact cameras. Still no visuals from away teams!

Timo Saloniemi

 

Presumably that’s one use of the IMAGE RECORD section on a tricorder (TNGTM, p. 121):

This section manages single or sequential image files recorded by the standard tricorder. The control has four divisions: FORWARD, REVERSE, INPUT, and ERASE. When used in concert with other tricorder functions, relatively complete documentation of an away mission can be achieved. At standard imaging resolution, at a normal recording speed of 120 Area View Changes (AVC)/sec, the tricorder can store a total of 4.5 hours of sequential images. Higher speeds yield a proportionately lower total recording time.​

 

Oh boy and that again seems a bit stupid considering the level of memory tech they have 4.5 hours seems like present day level memory capacity.

 

I should probably ask Rick Sternbach, but the interesting use of “area view change” instead of frame suggests they’re high-resolution holographic images at 120 per second. (And let’s not forget Spock’s miracle tricorder storing Guardian of Forever playback down to useful newspaper articles.)

 

i remember some media or something having a shoulder mounted thingy and a Google Glasses thing they were wearing.

This is another thing of.. money and Cgi.. and not having it to do something simple as a drone. I mean, back in the day, we didn't have any drones like today, so I'd say in Disco, or Picard or something would have a camera drone along with the away team ( Hell if beaming down I'd have a phaser drone or 5..)

 

These days in our age of cell phones and their cameras it does feel a bit odd when, for example, Picard asks for Riker to describe the Borg cube in 'Q Who' when they are on away mission exploring the ship.

Or.. maybe the cube prevented visual transmission, only audio was possible.
But that might not be the only occasion when a video transmission to the bridge might be usefull.

 

Does the TNG tech manual say where the bridge cameras are for when Picard and company are talking to other ships?

 

Discovery actually shows us camera drones in a few episodes, floating around. Like the cleaning and repair bots, they only come out when the budget and technology allows it (i.e. latest season of the latest show) but I think we're supposed to pretend they were always there.

 

Ah OK.