Rick Sternbach ST:TMP Question - Science Station Lights

[FalTorPan]

Earlier today I caught a bit of Star Trek II on Syfy, and for whatever reason, one of the displays of the Enterprise bridge's science station caught my eye.

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/twokhd/twokhd0052.jpg

It's the yellow honeycomb-like display with crazy sparkly blinky lights. Rick Sternbach, if you're out there, how was this display made, and what was it supposed to indicate? (My Enterprise Flight Manual isn't readily available.)

 

[Christopher]

Well, I'm not Rick, but according to the Enterprise Flight Manual document put together to instruct the actors on their consoles, the honeycomb displays are "Computer Library Display -- Each lighted honeycomb cell represents a circuit to a special memory core." And it looks to me like they just stuck some light bulbs behind honeycomb-patterned sheets of plastic, so that each bulb's glow looked like several adjacent illuminated cells.

 

[Unicron]

There's also a set of blueprints which suggests this specific display is to show if there's an overload in the computer core and allow the science officer to transfer data to an undamaged section if necessary, in addition to monitoring normal activity. For what it's worth.

 

[SchwEnt]

Real world equivalent, sounds like it would be akin to having a large display showing the sectors on your hard drive while running a defrag. It is similar?

If so, to have that display very large, front and center at Spock's station seems to make it much more a library computer station than a science station. Much more an IT type of internal systems station than a science station.

With the expanded stations on TMP bridge, I'd think a dedicated library computer systems station might be separate from a science station. Maybe.

 

[Timo]

Might be that such a display and associated controls would normally be handled by a dedicated Records Officer - but after the Ben Finney debacle, Kirk decided to rather trust Spock with library computer control...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[QuinnTV]

Real world equivalent, sounds like it would be akin to having a large display showing the sectors on your hard drive while running a defrag. It is similar?

Yeah! This is how I envisioned the function of that display, although with real-time usage in play.

 

[Rick Sternbach]

Earlier today I caught a bit of Star Trek II on Syfy, and for whatever reason, one of the displays of the Enterprise bridge's science station caught my eye.

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/twokhd/twokhd0052.jpg

It's the yellow honeycomb-like display with crazy sparkly blinky lights. Rick Sternbach, if you're out there, how was this display made, and what was it supposed to indicate? (My Enterprise Flight Manual isn't readily available.)

Yeah, it's been answered by subsequent posts. Looks to me like they're supposed to represent computer activity similar to all of the familiar old panels from the 60s-70s. I didn't work on those, but they sure looked important.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

So how long before someone tries to reinterpret the console as something else altogether, in order to preserve a personal illusion that every piece of Starfleet technology is more advanced than our own?

 

[publiusr]

Hey, I hate this desktop for everything stuff. Everything should have its own button. keep the desktop that does everything on the PADD.

I know we have smart phones--but if I had my druthers, everyone would still havae a rotary phone--no distracted teen drivers!

 

[Christopher]

^They had car phones back in the day of rotary dials. At least, the richest people did. The first car phones were introduced in 1946, while the first commercially available push-button phones went on the market in 1963.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

The bridge consoles must have been programmable at least in part, in order to explain the occassional inconsistency in onscreen use. “Hold switch 3 to start programming, then type the desired automation sequence, then save it by flicking switch 4.” Or one could ask the computer to program it when the camera isn't looking.

 

[SchwEnt]

The TOS bridge stations seemed more programmable.
The jelly bean control buttons were quite similar for all stations and generally non-descript. You could believe their functions were programmable and variable.

TMP onwards, the bridge stations featured controls that were more specific and unique. I'm thinking of the PhoTorp loading controls and the Comm frequency slider as examples. Specific controls, individually labeled. Seems awkward to re-purpose the clearly labeled Phaser Charging buttons, whilst the TOS helm featured more general purpose buttons that could do, well, anything the script needed.