Forget the tie, go with a turtleneck and sport jacket.
How would you re-imagine the TOS Communicators?
- Thread starter Wingsley
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Forget the tie, go with a turtleneck and sport jacket.
Pshaw, you're letting your love of Steve McQueen get in the way of what Roddenberry was truly about.
Admit it, you were always more of a Bullit guy than a Star Trek guy.
I do like me a good '67 Fastback...
hellsgate
Commodore
I'd go with either the TMP-era wrist-watch design, (easy to use while battling Gorn or hiking up a mountain in Yellowstone National Park,) or go with a slight re-boot taking into account modern 2008/2009 communications technology, (Uhura-style bluetooth wrap-around voice-activated earpieces.)
If it must be updated, I must say the Motorola Krave design immediately made me think of the communicator.
If it must be updated, I must say the Motorola Krave design immediately made me think of the communicator.
If you look at what Saavik is holding when she finds little Spock in TMP3, it's not too far removed from this one...
Well, I've got a "Master Replicas" communicator and honestly, from a "human interaction" standpoint, I think it's a nearly perfect size and shape. Wah Chang was a very smart guy, and he designed it to fit the human hand. I actually wish more "cell phone" manufacturers would follow suite today... the average cell phone is actually less comfortable to hold in the hand than this thing is.
I know people want to see it reduced in size, but that's nonsense... this isn't a cell phone (which is a short-range transceiver which is totally useless unless interacting with a complex infrastructure of towers and wired networking). It's a long-range multi-band transceiver capable of sending and receiving signals capable of surface-to-orbit. That's a lot of power... and there are laws-of-physics reasons that the thing will need to be a certain size as a result. I think that the TOS size, and shape, therefore are just about ideal.
Internally (under the grid, I mean) I'd make a few tweaks.... but these are minor tweaks. The swirly-moire-pattern bit would become a video display and pickup... though since transmitting video means more data and more power consumption, you'd typically go audio-only just to conserve power, and leave it on "electromagnetic field pattern display" (aka "moire pattern") most of the time.
I'd probably do some refinement to the control panel area. Five push-button/knobs with integral multi-color LEDs for function display should be more than sufficient to do everything you'd normally need, I think, so the tweaks would be minimal. I would DEFINITELY have a data-port on the thing, however, to allow it to interface with the tricorder or with on-ship "programming stations" prior to missions. The idea would be to set it up with frequencies and any special functions (including "universal translator" data or so forth) prior to the mission... in a sort of "docking station" arrangement... and then have the guys on-mission use the button/knobs to make fine in-mission adjustments. (Of course, Spock would be able to open one up and make the tweaks directly!).
I MIGHT have the "control panel" be a flip-up or flip-down panel, for that matter... say, flip up the grid, then swing open the "main control panel" for access to the innards of the device (including a more complicated programming interface?). I'm not sure about that part though.
But the communicator is VERY well done and I'd make only the most minor of functional updates, no real changes.
(Same applies to the phaser. The tricorder, on the other hand, would inevitably require some rethinking, though I'd try to keep the same basic shape and appearance.)
Which is utterly useless without a massive satellite infrastructure in place, and are pretty large (again, those pesky laws of physics coming into play!) and so forth.
Cary - I tend to agree with you on this. I let my son play with the Hallmark ornament (he's 3) and the first thing he did was flip open the grid and use it as a cell phone. It is an intuitive design that Wah Chang nailed.
I wouldn't change much. About the only thing is the transistor inards and instead of LEDs, switch to something more derivative of OLEDs that can change functionality based on configuration. Being able to tie into tricorders (to transmit readings to the ship) and other Starfleet gear seems a no brainer.
They've done a good job (if not always great) so far, so I'm looking forward to stuff like the phasers and communicators and tricorders.
I hope it's slimmed down just a bit and made to look less like a toy.
People keep bringing up the fact that it's far more powerful than
any cellphone we have now, but everything is going to be far more
advanced in two hundred years, I think they would be able to put it
in a bit more economical box.
People keep bringing up the fact that it's far more powerful than
any cellphone we have now, but everything is going to be far more
advanced in two hundred years, I think they would be able to put it
in a bit more economical box.
The problem with this is that there are real, "laws of physics" issues you have to deal with. Energy storage may be improved dramatically (using those mystical "sarium krellide" magic crystals), and computational power will inevitably become so dense and great that you could put the entire computing power of contemporary Earth's combined computers into a single hand-held box (meaning that the LOGIC functions of a communicator would be able to dance on the head of a pin!)
But we know that communicators are transceivers... and that they operate over both normal radio-frequency and "subspace" domains. Well, "subspace" is magic, so it can work anyway you like. But RF domains are very well understood. And the reception capacity of a TOS communicator is more equivalent to one of the dishes at the "Very Large Array" sites than it is like a contemporary cell phone... that's not even considering the broadcasting capacity (which those dishes do not have). That sort of RF transmission power simply cannot be reduced in size to a "chest badge." (And if, by some magical method, it WERE reduced that much, you'd barbeque the user's chest hair every time you used it anyway!)
Let me reiterate that the TOS hand talkies likely look the way they did because they are field gear, designed and fabricated so that they would be easy to service, repair and even reassemble and jerry-rig in the field. Check out "Patterns of Force." And as subspace transceivers, they are supposed to have at least extra-system range. ("Mudd's Women")
While I'm willing to give you the "real world points" on the TOS communicator's RF capabilities ... when was it ever shown that the TNG-and-later-era commbadges were ever capable of anything but subspace communication? I don't recall a single episode that featured them being capable of any "non-magical" communication, so I think their compact size seems perfectly reasonable.
I'd make them look more like staplers. That way kids wouldn't have to use their imagination as much when they're playing Star Trek.
I think you guys are severely underestimating Trek technology.
I stand by my previous comment.
I stand by my previous comment.
There is no such thing as "Star Trek technology" except within fiction, though. There is REAL science, and then there is fantasy.
The thing about science-fiction, as opposed to fantasy, is that science fiction extends real science, adding fantasy on top of it, hopefully in a reasonable-seeming fashion. It seems POSSIBLE, given some additional discoveries we haven't made yet. But it's still fantasy when you really get down to it.
So... it's impossible to "underestimate Trek technology." "Trek technology" does whatever the writers say it does.
What those of us who are saying this are saying, is that if you try to fit "Trek technology" into the real world (as opposed to letting it be "oooo, magic") then there are limitations.
If you want everything to be script-writing magic, then just SCREW REASON and you can have exactly what you want... magic combadges that can also make a fantastic loaf of french bread if you transpose the multi-quanti-phasic inhibitor whosamacallimawhatsit.
But if you want to talk REASON and REALITY... which is what separates straight fantasy from science fiction... you've got to treat what we know of real science as the basis from which Star Trek extrapolates its version of fantasy.
And in real science, there are fundamental laws-of-physics issues with greater transmission distances requiring lots more power.
