Original bridge screen graphics lost?
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
- Start date
To check this, I figured the best place to start would be the You May Now Watch Your Captain Battle for Your Lives Trilogy. Sure enough, in Gamesters of Triskelion, one of the providers states that the crew will be permitted to follow the action on the "viewscreen."
But the eight blinky panels at each perimeter station would not be called screens. I think they were meant to be illuminated physical indicators, not virtual-world computer graphics. The show never suggested that those panels could display anything that wasn't built into them.
Oh, I see; this question is based off the thread title. That wasn't entirely clear to me.
I think "screen" would most directly and precisely refer to the flat surface upon which the information is displayed.** And using synecdoche, one could easily refer to the entire display as a screen.
**I realize that the displays were, in real life, mechanical elements (or entirely static graphics in a few cases I believe) backlit and covered by glass. But that's not necessarily what they were supposed to be in-universe.
I think "screen" would most directly and precisely refer to the flat surface upon which the information is displayed.** And using synecdoche, one could easily refer to the entire display as a screen.
**I realize that the displays were, in real life, mechanical elements (or entirely static graphics in a few cases I believe) backlit and covered by glass. But that's not necessarily what they were supposed to be in-universe.
Naturally the word "screen" would have been used for things like the main viewer (analogous to a movie screen) or the overhead display screens that usually had starscapes in them (analogous to television screens). My point, as ZapBrannigan said, is that the status displays in the consoles themselves, like the one shown in the first post of this thread, were not intended to represent video screens, but panels of readout gauges and lights.
I don't think they would've seen it that way in the sixties. Coming at it from first principles, the word "screen" existed long before movies and video, to refer to a flat, upright barrier or partition, like a fireplace screen or a privacy screen. When magic lantern shows (the antecedents of film) were invented, the flat, upright surfaces they were projected onto were called screens by analogy with those barriers, and when video was invented, cathode ray tube displays were called screens by analogy with movie screens.
So the word specifically meant a surface on which images were displayed, rather than information. TOS was a long time before the modern age of touchscreens and glass cockpits, so most information was delivered through fixed mechanical instruments and gauges, indicator lights, paper printouts, etc. So a flat surface containing an array of such indicators would not have been called a screen. I still think "panel" would have been the most likely term.
Sure, in retrospect, we can retcon those displays as "glass cockpit"-style screens, but since this thread was initially about the actual physical displays built for TOS, my question was about what the show's producers, designers, and set builders would have called them at the time.
I don't think they would've seen it that way in the sixties. Coming at it from first principles, the word "screen" existed long before movies and video, to refer to a flat, upright barrier or partition, like a fireplace screen or a privacy screen. When magic lantern shows (the antecedents of film) were invented, the flat, upright surfaces they were projected onto were called screens by analogy with those barriers, and when video was invented, cathode ray tube displays were called screens by analogy with movie screens.
So the word specifically meant a surface on which images were displayed, rather than information. TOS was a long time before the modern age of touchscreens and glass cockpits, so most information was delivered through fixed mechanical instruments and gauges, indicator lights, paper printouts, etc. So a flat surface containing an array of such indicators would not have been called a screen. I still think "panel" would have been the most likely term.
Sure, in retrospect, we can retcon those displays as "glass cockpit"-style screens, but since this thread was initially about the actual physical displays built for TOS, my question was about what the show's producers, designers, and set builders would have called them at the time.
Probably "displays." Or "blinkie-doodads" if the sense of humor usually attributed to these folks in stories was accurate and in effect.
Two of the counterexamples to this assertion can be found at the engineering station, where the displays with the curves are plotted.
https://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x22hd/byanyothernamehd0719.jpg
But that's a mechanical display, a narrow rod that's rotated behind the glass. It's possible that it was meant to represent a video display, but it's not that dissimilar to certain kinds of gauges and readouts that I believe existed in real life at the time.
Anyway, I don't get the concept of a "counterexample" here, because it's not as if 100 percent of them have to be the same thing. Naturally if you're going to build a console displaying a variety of different types of information, there will be different types of display tailored to each one -- or at least there would've been back then, before the modern age of glass cockpits and touchscreens. My question was inspired by the specific kind of readout panel featured in the first post of this thread. Obviously there are screens on the bridge, but I'm just saying there are other types of display that probably wouldn't have been thought of as screens.
The helm console had this display in Season 1 that Sulu frequently read data off of like distance and target motion, ship status, etc. I figured that the blinking blocks was just one of many screens it could switch between for different information and the other bridge displays could do the same.
It was upgraded with the popup scanner in later seasons although sometimes a S1 shot was reused every once in a while.
It was upgraded with the popup scanner in later seasons although sometimes a S1 shot was reused every once in a while.
There is actually a little more to that:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2021-12-density-moir-
hterostructures.amp
https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2022-03-scientists-capture-fleeting-moir-excitons.amp
A history
https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/...-tutorial/10.1117/1.OE.57.3.030803.full?SSO=1
A solar foci scope might look similar—scroll down here for the diffraction effect of a gravity lens:
https://www.universetoday.com/15798...powerful-telescope-what-are-its-best-targets/
Looks a lot like a moire…
Last edited:
Is there a link to the S1 helm display? I didn't see one in your post and I'm curious about it.
Ah, yes. But a counter-counter example from “The Galileo Seven” shows an added gray bar that twitches … in real time!
In the script, this is referred to as a control panel. In fact, doing a cursory look through the appropriate scripts of the three seasons, these types of displays, whether on the Galileo or on the Enterprise, are referred to as panels.
I'm not sure of a scene where we can see it very clearly but here is one that you can make out the blocks of color on the display.
https://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x14hd/balanceofterrorhd239.jpg
and of Sulu and another helmsman looking at the display
https://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x01-2-hd/themantraphd004.jpg
https://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x10hd/thecorbomitemaneuverhd018.jpg
You can see the display replaced with the twin doors in S3
https://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x05hd/isthereintruthnobeautyhd0620.jpg
But they re-use a shot from S1 in S3's "Lights of Zetar" so the display is back on the helm control panel...
https://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x18hd/thelightsofzetarhd0035.jpg
Last edited:
I'd say it's more likely one instrument within the control panel, since that term usually refers to the entire array of controls for a vehicle or mechanism. And a display is not a control; it just shows what happens when you do something with the controls, or tells you something that you adjust the controls in response to. (E.g. a car's turn signal lever is a control, and the blinking arrow on the dashboard is a display.)
Just reporting what the scripts say.
Scripts are just starting points for a longer process. The panel in the photo appears in an insert shot, and it does not correspond to any actual component of the shuttle control panel that Latimer was looking at when he said the indicator was going crazy. So clearly the director and editor decided to stick in a close-up of some random display at that point, to illustrate the plot beat better. It would hardly be the only time that happened in TV or movies.
Similar threads
