Starfleet Academy General Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Tuskin38
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The idea the everything will be "high tech" in the future is absurd.
Even the common cold isn't cured until sometime between TOS and TNG. I think I won't lose any sleep worrying if buckles and zippers are still on shirts and boots in the 23rd century.
Push a button? It should just read your brainwaves!
The malfunctions would be something.
Complaining about zippers in Star Trek? Agreed.
"The more they over-think the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."- Montgomery Scott
It's more of a functional idea than that weird holo mirror we saw in Discovery's first season.
Or the transporters built into combadges which somehow know where you want to go.
Thought controlled technology is not a weird concept for Star Trek
The tricombadge certainly seems to have a mind of its own, it just transports you where you want to go with a double tap and no co-ordinates set or order issued.
Then again, good old TNG combadges — or for that matter, good old TOS communicators — seemed to know whom you were calling even as you said their name (judging by the usual instant verbal response from the recipient), without any setting beyond a single tap or flipping open the cover. So however the tricom does it, the seeds have been there for a thousand years.
How is it any different to the universal translator which just seems to know when it should stop translating an alien language into english for dramatic effect?
Just as a general remark, a lot of the behavior of magic Star Trek tech can be explained by the computer being situationally aware of what all of the people are doing.
Yeah, as in this sort of case, for instance.
Good point. And the inconsistencies as to whether you need to tap the badge to open or close the channel and if you can just keep having a private conversation while someone is hailing you.
Yeah the universal translator is delightfully inconsistent too.
I didnt notice the tricom badge had been brought up already when I mentioned it.
It’s funny — the translator and its inconsistencies have come up forever over the years, yet I rewatched “Metamorphosis” the other day and it was specific about how it worked there (its explanation was ridiculous, but there it is): it reads the brainwaves of the speaker and interprets it in the language of the listener.
I guess you could squint and reinterpret that as it reading the brainwaves of both participants, futzing with the listener’s so that their own brain sort of fools them into thinking the speaker is speaking the listener’s language. That would take care of the “why aren’t his lips synched?” problem. (In “Metamorphosis” it’s clearly instead providing the translation in actual sound via a speaker, but never mind.)
It’s plainly nonsensical when brainwaveless physiologies are involved, but hey; it does fit the onscreen presentation in a lot of the television productions over the years (though not Star Trek Beyond, where it’s definitely synthesized translation over the original language you can still hear).
Yeah, but now they have programmable matter so it's weird.Oh, god. Is someone bitching about zippers???? Those things that almost every Trek uniform has and we pretend they don't even when they're right in front of our faces!
We use zippers in real life because it's the best of various bad options for temporarily securing two piecing of fabric together. Programmable matter however can do the exact same thing without any of the many many downsides zippers actually possess.
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