Modern Writers & TOS Technology

[Smellincoffee]

In the 1960s when the original series aired, Roddenberry's library tapes and the computer that read then were quite futuristic, as I understand it. Digital storage took a different path than he predicted, though, as laser media became more popular throughout the eighties. Last night, while listening to Kirk and Spock discuss the 'tapes' they were using in an investigation, I wondered: how do Trek authors deal with TOS's "tapes"? How is the storage technology contemporary to Enterprise's five-year mission been addressed by Trek literature in the modern era?

 

[BolianAuthor]

Well, I look at it this way...

Are TOS communicators bulky compared to some cellphones today even? Yes. Yet, could they still be considered "small" in TOS's time? Yes, and here's why...

Consider that in our world, technology gets smaller as technology gets older, like the personal computer and the telephone. Because we have had the tech so long, that we now know how to do more with it. That having been said... that is going by using the tech we have NOW.

In TOS, you have duotronic computers, communicators with subspace transceivers, and engines that can warp space to go faster than light. I'm sure if we had to cram enough tech into a cellphone that would allow us to talk to someone literally far enough away that they'd be halfway from the Earth to the Moon, that it'd be a lot bulkier today than it is. The same with TOS's data storage tapes... back in the day, a floppy disk could barely hold 1.5 MB of data, and now we have flash drives no bigger than a small wallet, that can hold up to a TB. But again, who knows what "measurement" of data the computers in TOS time can handle? Each of those tapes could hold 100 TB or more, or some way-out strange figure we haven't even thought of yet.

So to me, TOS tech is still futuristic, because I think of it along the lines of technological evolution... yes, their tech looks bigger and bulkier than some of what we have now... but consider how much more it has to do, and how much more capacity it may be dealing with.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Even though you might record someone's voice onto a laptop with an inbuilt microphone, you're still likely to say that you "taped" them. When we record a TV show on the hard drive of a DVD recorder, we're still likely to boast the we'd remembered to "tape" the show. We now buy DVDs and Blu-rays from "record shops", even though they probably don't sell any records.

Look at the prop used for TOS "tapes": made from a square, painted wafer of balsa wood. Who's to say it actually uses any "tape" inside?

 

[F. King Daniel]

The thing in Trek that annoys the hell out of me, is the stack of PADDs in TNG, DS9 and VOY, and the clueless directors who seemed to think each could only hold one file. I was saying to the screen back in the 90's that that wasn't how it was gonna go down, and guess what? iPads, smartphones and e-readers can hold entire libraries worth of books each.

As for TOS, authors interpret it many ways. Children of Kings put a modern spin on TOS, feeling a little like a late Enterprise episode, tech-wise. Other novels have treated TOS like a period piece. Some reimagined the setting a little (Diane Duane, who as well as holographic tech and other things well beyond a TV budget from back then, put a now-dated 1980's style BBS on the Enterprise) and others simply use TNG technobabble and concepts and assume it's just the outer cases of everything that looks different (the Janus Gate trilogy, for example)

 

[Angstromdweller]

The thing in Trek that annoys the hell out of me, is the stack of PADDs in TNG, DS9 and VOY, and the clueless directors who seemed to think each could only hold one file. I was saying to the screen back in the 90's that that wasn't how it was gonna go down, and guess what? iPads, smartphones and e-readers can hold entire libraries worth of books each.

They can still only show one page at once though, and if you happen to have loads of them it might just be easier to use a few at once rather than change the display back and forth on those small screens.

Why one would use anything with a screen smaller than an iPhone for anything is probably a better question.

 

[Caliburn24]

When I was in the Army I got drafted into office work after we got back from Iraq and I had to put up with the headache of certain computers only being able to do certain things. Only some of them could access classified data, etc etc. PADDs could be rationalized to work in a similar way, meaning you might at times need more than one.

 

[Christopher]

Even though you might record someone's voice onto a laptop with an inbuilt microphone, you're still likely to say that you "taped" them. When we record a TV show on the hard drive of a DVD recorder, we're still likely to boast the we'd remembered to "tape" the show. We now buy DVDs and Blu-rays from "record shops", even though they probably don't sell any records.

Exactly. I hear people talk of shows shot on video being "filmed" and shows shot on film being "taped." And we still refer to quantities of video imagery as "footage," even if they aren't recorded on film that can be measured in feet.

Language is full of idioms based on outdated concepts. Like "loose cannon," which refers to a cannon that isn't lashed down on the deck of a sailing ship and can thus roll free and endanger the ship and crew. Modern warships have cannons and artillery built in, not rolling around like in an old pirate movie, so it's a phrase that no longer has any real-world applicability. But we still use it.

The thing in Trek that annoys the hell out of me, is the stack of PADDs in TNG, DS9 and VOY, and the clueless directors who seemed to think each could only hold one file. I was saying to the screen back in the 90's that that wasn't how it was gonna go down, and guess what? iPads, smartphones and e-readers can hold entire libraries worth of books each.

Maybe it's not cluelessness so much as dramatic license. It's easier to convey visually to an audience that the characters are looking at multiple files if you show them with multiple padds. You could have a character looking at one padd and complaining about the huge amount of paperwork she has to go through, but it takes up time that could be devoted to plot-relevant dialogue, and it doesn't convey as potent and immediate a visual image as that of the character's desk cluttered with a dozen padds.

Another example is the teaser of VGR: "Good Shepherd," which revolves around a sequence where a padd starts out in Janeway's ready room and is passed physically down through the ship to the bottommost deck. There's no reason the information had to be hand-carried rather than just sent through the computer, except that it allows for a very stylistically effective sequence conveying a sense of continuous motion through the ship from top to bottom.

It's the same reason computer users in shows and films set in the present day still use the keyboard for everything, even things that would normally be done with a mouse. The sight and sound of keys being tapped at high speed conveys the impression of work being done more effectively than the relatively silent operation of a mouse. Fiction isn't about accurately reproducing reality, it's about inducing desired emotional and visceral responses in the audience. Sometimes symbolism that departs from reality is the most effective way to do that.

 

[shanejayell]

WE also don't know how much damage the Eugenics Wars etc etc did to the general tech base in Trek. It could be a lot of knowledge was lost....

 

[Greg Cox]

I have to admit: when I wrote my nuTrek novel, I had fun giving the TOS tech a more modern feel. My rule of thumb was that if we can do it today, we can do it on Chris Pine's Enterprise. So I had characters opening multiple windows on their screens, sending each other text messages, etc.

 

[BolianAuthor]

I have to admit: when I wrote my nuTrek novel, I had fun giving the TOS tech a more modern feel. My rule of thumb was that if we can do it today, we can do it on Chris Pine's Enterprise. So I had characters opening multiple windows on their screens, sending each other text messages, etc.

IDK about the whole text message thing... IMO, it actually serves to date the piece, but in a counterproductive way... like text messaging is too primitive for TOS and beyond... a big part of the reason I just had to roll my eyes when I saw them use it in NEM... I was like "Oh, come on... that's so lame!", lol.

The best thing to do, IMO, is not try to use present-day analogs in future tech, but rather to do what shanejayell was kind of getting at... that you ought take the events of the universe into consideration, when building tech for it. For instance, as shanejayell said... how could the Eugenics Wars have affected the march onward for technology? How much did humanity have to rebuild, and so on.

And again, we're dealing with communicators that are bigger than cellphones are today, but keep in mind these have things as powerful as subspace transceivers in them... how can we know how big or bulky that tech might be when it's recently introduced, as opposed to TNG's time, when it had evolved to more compact and manageable forms?

 

[kkozoriz1]

Will NuUhura be updating her SpaceBook page?

 

[Therin of Andor]

Ha. And remember when 7-11 stores were only open between 7am and 11pm - and we thought that was soooo cool to have access to groceries at such odd hours?

 

[Christopher]

IDK about the whole text message thing... IMO, it actually serves to date the piece, but in a counterproductive way... like text messaging is too primitive for TOS and beyond... a big part of the reason I just had to roll my eyes when I saw them use it in NEM... I was like "Oh, come on... that's so lame!", lol.

Whaaa??? That made perfect sense in that context. Picard needed to send a command to Deanna at the helm without letting Shinzon know he was doing so. So he sent it silently through text rather than verbally. It had nothing to do with any sort of modern fad; it was just a common-sense tactic in that specific situation.

What's more, it has precedent going all the way back to "Encounter at Farpoint," an episode written before there was such a thing as "texting" on phones:

PICARD: Using printout only, notify all decks to prepare for maximum acceleration.
...
PICARD: Now hear this. Printout message, urgent, all stations on all decks. Prepare for emergency saucer sever.

In that case, the intention was probably similar: to minimize the risk of a verbal command transmitted over the comm system being intercepted by hostile forces.

 

[BolianAuthor]

^

That's true, Christopher, he did need to send a discreet message. But...

When TNG has PADDs, Picard could have just entered the message into a PADD, and handed it to Deanna. The whole text message thing was just a lame reference to cellphone tech, in an attempt to be cute... I mean, in the scene, they even used the .TXT abbreviation, lol. C'mon...

As for the printout message in the series pilot... I'm pretty sure that just meant that the orders would appear on the black glass wall panels throughout the corridors, and that an actual paper printout was not to be utilized.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Greg using modern-day stuff in his STXI book would eventually date it in exactly the same way TOS, TNG etc. are all dated now - and how STXI will be dated in a few decades' time. Something similar happened when Diane Duane gave the Enterprise an old-school 1980's BBS system in Spock's World, and I thought it fitted the mood of the movie-era Trek story it was telling perfectly. Every version of Star Trek is informed by the technology of the era, and this is no different.

...I really want to read The Hazard of Concealing now.

Btw, all this modern stuff from the guy who still uses floppy disks!

 

[Greg Cox]

Greg using modern-day stuff in his STXI book would eventually date it in exactly the same way TOS, TNG etc. are all dated now - and how STXI will be dated in a few decades' time. Something similar happened when Diane Duane gave the Enterprise an old-school 1980's BBS system in Spock's World, and I thought it fitted the mood of the movie-era Trek story it was telling perfectly. Every version of Star Trek is informed by the technology of the era, and this is no different.

...I really want to read The Hazard of Concealing now.

Btw, all this modern stuff from the guy who still uses floppy disks!

And who has never actually texted anyone (much to the horror of my niece).

And, yeah, in my book, it was a situation where Kirk and Uhura had to discreetly communicate without anyone listening in, so he texted her from the captain's chair while stalling the Evil Alien Bad Guy he was confronting on the main viewer . . . .

It seemed like a logical way for him to conspire with Uhura without being obvious about it.

 

[BolianAuthor]

But the point is, that you shouldn't use modern-day analogs in TOS tech, because you'll just end up failing and dating things even more than they seem now, looking back on TOS. Forget all that... just remain true to the breed of technology in-universe... after all, you're telling a story about people in the 23rd century... you don't need to dumb it down, by using texting and such things.

In any case, this is just my opinion... each author is of course free to do what they wish, but I'm telling you all that as a reader as well, I personally can never take such retconning seriously in any way. In fact, it only serves to break the otherwise carefully crafted illusion, and take me out of the moment. But again, my opinion.

And, yeah, in my book, it was a situation where Kirk and Uhura had to discreetly communicate without anyone listening in, so he texted her from the captain's chair while stalling the Evil Alien Bad Guy he was confronting on the main viewer . . . .

It seemed like a logical way for him to conspire with Uhura without being obvious about it.

Again, to use the PADD analogy... why can't Kirk just jot something down on the clipboard, and have a Yeoman hand it to Uhura?

 

[PsychoPere]

It seems reasonable enough to me that text-only messages should be possible to send between workstations on Trek starships.

 

[BolianAuthor]

IDK... why depict 23rd century people still using 300-year-old technology on a starship?

 

[PsychoPere]

I don't see how it's any different from being able to retrieve information from the ship's database on almost any monitor throughout the ship.