Technology level on the Kelvin timeline

[Nebusj]

I always wonder why a window on the Bridge seems so about of place? It seems to be that the ability to look outside and see what's going on when things go wrong would be a useful feature to have.

Well, it's hard to think of cases where that window would actually be all that useful a thing to have. What do you expect to see that the sensor array can't see more easily and render on the screen in convenient forms?

But it is hard to overlook times in the Original Series when something would flash out in space so bright that people on the Bridge had to cover their eyes. That's peculiar behavior for a view screen, but normal enough for a window. It still seems weird.

Treating the window as a heads-up display solves many problems, although it does still leave the questions of why not just use a view screen, and why doesn't it obscure a blindingly-bright flash?

So I don't know. I can't say the window is wrong, but it isn't the choice I'd make.

 

[fireproof78]

Well, it's hard to think of cases where that window would actually be all that useful a thing to have. What do you expect to see that the sensor array can't see more easily and render on the screen in convenient forms?

But it is hard to overlook times in the Original Series when something would flash out in space so bright that people on the Bridge had to cover their eyes. That's peculiar behavior for a view screen, but normal enough for a window. It still seems weird.

Treating the window as a heads-up display solves many problems, although it does still leave the questions of why not just use a view screen, and why doesn't it obscure a blindingly-bright flash?

So I don't know. I can't say the window is wrong, but it isn't the choice I'd make.

Fair enough but given how often things go wrong, I think having a window would be useful if the power goes out. Pretty sure that was referenced in one episode or another as well. Also, Kirk and Sulu were able to see, by eye, the distortion from Kruge's Bird of Prey in TSFS. No sensors detected it.

I think that a HUD is useful in a variety of situations, and, if necessary, I would say that there could be shutters for protection of the window for combat or atmospheric operations.

Consider the window as a "secondary backup" to quote Chief O'Brian

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well, it's hard to think of cases where that window would actually be all that useful a thing to have. What do you expect to see that the sensor array can't see more easily and render on the screen in convenient forms?

There's a little-studied tendency among science fiction works -- and among science fiction fans -- to treat sensor devices as magical all-seeing eyes that will inevitably detect exactly what you need them to see exactly when you need to see them. After all, the alien ship on the other side of the solar system should already be visible on your telescopes; its firing its engines, so the light is reaching your sensors, so your sensors can see it and your viewscreen can image it. Simple, right?

Except in the real world, sensors of all types have a finite detection threshhold, the exact distance of which depends on many things. The most important factor is the background environment, how many other signals on the same frequency that sensor device is receiving and how strong they are. Signal to noise ratio only gets worse with distance. The Atomic Rocket website has this ludicrous page where the author claims that even 21st century spy satellites are sensitive enough to detect rocket launches from the surface of pluto; mathematically, that's probably true, but in practice that rocket would have to produce several times greater luminosity than pluto's entire surface for any but the most powerful telescopes to detect it, even if they were looking right at it when it fired up. An omnidirectional sensor searching the entire sky, on the other hand, would have almost NO chance of picking that up except at much closer distances.

Back up and think about what "sensors" really are, despite the crystal ball that scifi sometimes pretends they are. There will be three or four basic types: passive, imaging, active, and probing. Passive sensors are just antenna that listen for incoming signals on a given frequency. They won't really be able to tell you where the signal is coming from, only what kind of signal it is and what (if anything) it's saying. Imaging sensors can focus on a narrower field, unlike passive sensors which basically focus in all directions at once. With an imaging sensor you can get a picture of an object or objects, maybe the same ones you "heard" on the passive set. The picture alone won't tell you what you're looking at, only where it is and what it's shaped like. These are limited too because, again, they'll have a finite threshhold of detection and if you can't pick out the object of interest from the background stars, you're not going to see it. So cue the active sensors: you cut through that pesky signal-to-noise ratio and send a blast of radiation out in all directions and listen for the echo. Maybe the active returns from a particular direction, and NOW you suddenly have a direction to focus your imaging sensors and get a better look at the target. Now it's time to figure out what the target even is; cue probing sensors like lidar, active infrared, alpha and x-ray spectrometers, etc; things that will tell you exactly what it looks like, what it's made of, maybe even judge the mass.

And all of these sensors are pooling their data through software that contains massive libraries of information and analytical heuristics of its own. Super computers chew on the numbers and tell the science officer if they've ever recorded readings like this before; if not, science officer looks at the numbers himself and takes a guess. He's seeing alloys, chemical compositions, heat emissions, thermal patterns, backscatter silhouettes, DeBrogille wavelengths, and gravitational fields so small they'd struggle to retain a system of pingpong balls. In a couple of minutes, the science officer is going to be able to tell you what his sensors have detected and what that detection probably means...

And then the Captain's gonna ask him "Put it on screen."

Is the science officer going to put his analysis on the screen, along with what is essentially a 270 page dissertation summarizing his results, with the charts and graphs, composite images, post-processed images, wave pattern charts and all the data that was used to reconstruct his findings? Or is he going to cue up one of the ship's external cameras, point it at the target, and splash a picture on the screen?

tl;dr: the only person on the entire ship who needs to have access to sensor data is the science officer who knows how that equipment actually works. The Captain doesn't need to see anything, and most of the time there's nothing to see anyway but stars, more stars, and LOTS more stars. The viewscreen is there only to display that which should be so blatantly obvious as to not require the science officer to write a dissertation just to explain what the hell is going on; no need to tie up the sensors for that, they've got better things to do.

 

[WebLurker]

Sucks for Voyager, but it doesn't change the facts.

One source overrules multipleTV series that corroborate each other?

Or that Voyager and TOS don't take place in the same universe and warp speeds in the movie era are faster because their technology is fundamentally different.

Which, it pretty much HAS to be considering all the other inconsistencies between TNG+ and TOS.

Or that there is too much connective tissue between the TV shows to separate them, hmm?

So what? They still HAD it at least a hundred years before the Kirk's time. It's not a stretch to assume the Federation would have studied those vortexes and learned how to generate them artificially for propulsion purposes; the only thing weird about it is them taking a hundred years to make it happen, but that is adequately explained by the miniaturization problem mentioned above.

We are assuming that the Xindi were willing to share.

Applying the limitations of Voyager to literally ANY other production of Star Trek in any conceivable medium is already a horrible idea...

Really?

They're full of deliberate choices that contradict some of Star Trek's other (in many cases, questionable) choices. I am FAR from willing to call them "mistakes."

Part of the reason that the prime timeline works is that the world building is generally consistent. And a mistake is still a mistake, regardless of whether it's on purpose or not (but the comics aren't canon, so no harm, no foul, just head scratching).

 

[Nebusj]

Except in the real world, sensors of all types have a finite detection threshhold, the exact distance of which depends on many things. The most important factor is the background environment, how many other signals on the same frequency that sensor device is receiving and how strong they are. Signal to noise ratio only gets worse with distance.

As opposed to ... eyes looking out a window, which apparently have infinite range, infinite resolution, arbitrary wide sensitivity bands, and no noise?

Is the science officer going to put his analysis on the screen, along with what is essentially a 270 page dissertation summarizing his results, with the charts and graphs, composite images, post-processed images, wave pattern charts and all the data that was used to reconstruct his findings? Or is he going to cue up one of the ship's external cameras, point it at the target, and splash a picture on the screen?

Um ... in what way is a camera not a sensor?

And are you really trying to propose that for any of the problems a starship might face, like, locating something somewhere in the solar system, a person looking out the window is going to do better than a person who's got instruments? Seriously?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

One source overrules multipleTV series that corroborate each other?

Except they DON'T corroborate each other. Voyager's own travel time estimates are totally inconsistent with its own stated specifications and back stage materials, to say nothing of the kind of speeds we were seeing in TOS.

Ignore TFF for a moment and go back to "That Which Survives." If the Caretaker had abducted the TOS Enterprise instead of Voyager, their return trip would have taken a little over 33 days. Kirk probably would have had time for a snack break at Megas Tu on the return trip.

Or that there is too much connective tissue between the TV shows to separate them, hmm?

Between the spinoffs, maybe. TOS and the movie era don't really have this problem, with the possible exception of "Generations."

We are assuming that the Xindi were willing to share.

Considering the Xindi eventually joined the Federation, this is a pretty safe assumption.

Really?

Really.

Part of the reason that the prime timeline works is that the world building is generally consistent.

Heh... no. You see...

DATA: According to these coordinates, we have travelled seven thousand light years and are located near the system J two five.
RIKER: Travel time to the nearest starbase?
DATA [OC]: At maximum warp, in two years, seven months, three days, eighteen hours we would reach Starbase one eight five.

Seven thousand is a pretty convenient number. Saves us the trouble of having to calculate anything, because it turns out that USS Voyager -- which is by ALL accounts supposed to be much faster than the Enterprise-D -- would be able to make the trip back to Earth in about twenty years.

Consistent worldbuilding when Scotty thinks Jim Kirk was alive and then later in "Generations" being present on the day of his death?
Consistent worldbuilding when the Trill species transforms from this:

To this:

With no explanation given?

Consistent world building where Borg transwarp conduits can be activated using an normal starship's navigational deflector, until four years later when they suddenly require a transwarp coil, until two years later when they require not just a coil but also a whole infrastructure network in place?

Consistent world building where the Borg are "not interested in your species, only your technology," and then change their mind and decide they're interested in both, and then by First Contact evolve to "Fuck their technology, let's go back and assimilate them while they were still poor and stupid."

Consistent world building where the Vorta are shown to have advanced telekinetic powers, until the writers forgot about that and just quietly dropped it from future scripts?


Star Trek is many things, my friend, but "consistent" is not one of them and it never has been. The spinoffs are already WILDLY inconsistent within themselves, so it's really no surprise they're also totally inconsistent -- to the point of almost being incompatible -- with TOS.

And with all of that, for some reason you have a strong expectation of the Kelvin universe -- for all practical purposes a complete continuity reboot -- to be consistent, not with TOS, not with the films, but with the SPINOFF series which is not even part of its original source material???

And a mistake is still a mistake, regardless of whether it's on purpose or not

No, a mistake is BY DEFINITION unintentional, so that makes no sense.

I mean, I get that you think they aren't SUPPOSED to ignore the prime universe's canon. I'm just not understanding why you think they or anyone else should care.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

As opposed to ... eyes looking out a window, which apparently have infinite range, infinite resolution, arbitrary wide sensitivity bands, and no noise?

As opposed to nothing whatsoever. The viewscreen is there mainly so the Captain and/or bridge crew can see what's going on right outside the ship. It's not there to display sensor data; that's what the fifty other smaller monitors all around the bridge are for. They might occasionally use it to display navigational data or overlay the face of whoever it is they're arguing with at the moment; that, too, is just for the Captain and helmsman's convenience.

Basically the same reason REAL spacecraft have windows. Even the Soyuz-TMA, which navigates and docks almost exclusively with sensor readings, still has that a little pod with a big round window on the front of the ship. Astronauts like windows... go figure.

Um ... in what way is a camera not a sensor?

In the same way that a deadbolt is not an alarm.

As an example. The following image was produced by a camera:

^
How many cars in this image are blue?

I wouldn't be able to tell you that with just a camera. I might be able to design an instrument that could image a specific chunk of a city and return an estimate on the number of car-shaped objects with the right color pattern, but that device probably wouldn't be just a "camera."

And are you really trying to propose that for any of the problems a starship might face, like, locating something somewhere in the solar system, a person looking out the window is going to do better than a person who's got instruments? Seriously?

I'm saying that for the problems a starship might face, like locating something somewhere in the solar system, the person at the science console is going to do better than the person looking at the viewscreen. There is, in essence, no PRACTICAL advantage to using a big monitor instead of a window, and many advantages of using the latter.

 

[WebLurker]

Except they DON'T corroborate each other. Voyager's own travel time estimates are totally inconsistent with its own stated specifications and back stage materials, to say nothing of the kind of speeds we were seeing in TOS.

If you're using higher warp factors, you need to keep in mind the change in warp scale between the two shows. Also, we were rarely given relative locations in TOS, so it does allow us to fudge some of the more improbable travel times into being in a smaller section of space than might have been originally intended. Backstage materials are not canon and so don't count. I don't recall Voyager seriously messing up with its own tech specs.

Ignore TFF for a moment and go back to "That Which Survives." If the Caretaker had abducted the TOS Enterprise instead of Voyager, their return trip would have taken a little over 33 days. Kirk probably would have had time for a snack break at Megas Tu on the return trip.

Based on what?

Between the spinoffs, maybe. TOS and the movie era don't really have this problem, with the possible exception of "Generations."

- The Undiscovered Country connects to TNG with Khitomer and Col. Worf, and DS9 with the Khitomer accords, and VOY with "Flashback."

- Wath of Khan is mentioned in "The Omega Directive" (VOY).

- The famous Klingon Empire's trefoil emblem was created for TAS.

- The backstory of the Klingon Empire, with Kahless the Unforgettable, as described in numerous TNG and DS9 episodes, follows the basics as established in TOS.

- Col. Green, a historical figure from TOS, appears in ENT.

- The basics of Earth's first warp flight, from First Contact, follow what we know about it from TOS, including the same inventor character.

- TOS characters Kor, Kang, and Koloth appear on DS9 (Kor several times, and Kang on VOY in "Flashback"), with a handful of references to their TOS days.

- The DS9 crew visit the TOS crew in "Trials and Tribble-lations" (DS9)

- TOS connects to ENT through numerous prequel stories, like the origin of the TOS Klingons, and the Defiant's fate.

Need I go on?

Considering the Xindi eventually joined the Federation, this is a pretty safe assumption.

Forgot about that. Wasn't that in a possible future, though?

Really

.

Not good enough, IMHO.

Heh... no. You see...

I'm listening.

Seven thousand is a pretty convenient number. Saves us the trouble of having to calculate anything, because it turns out that USS Voyager -- which is by ALL accounts supposed to be much faster than the Enterprise-D -- would be able to make the trip back to Earth in about twenty years.

What's the problem? The distances are different, so of course the farther out Voyager would take longer than than the closer Enterprise to get home.

Consistent worldbuilding when Scotty thinks Jim Kirk was alive and then later in "Generations" being present on the day of his death?

A.) The filmmakers have admitted that they did this on purpose because they wanted to include the character (which I think is fair). B.) Since Scotty has been in the transporter for decades with minor degradation to te pattern, it would be fair to chalk it up to him being disoriented or his memories not kicking in yet C.) This is a very minor mistake and easy to gloss over.

Consistent worldbuilding when the Trill species transforms from this:

To this:

With no explanation given?

I do wish that they had put both versions on the same screen together, but a racial variation/offshoot seems reasonable enough. We've seen the same in other Star Trek species. Also, most of the info we got about the Trill originally carried over into DS9.

Consistent world building where Borg transwarp conduits can be activated using an normal starship's navigational deflector, until four years later when they suddenly require a transwarp coil, until two years later when they require not just a coil but also a whole infrastructure network in place?

We are seeing tech across the years from a species that is constantly searching for upgrades. Also, just because the Borg use equipment to create parts of their transwarp network ("Endgame" [VOY]) doesn't mean that they would not be able to also generate new openings ("Descent" [TNG]). In fact, we know that new transwarp corridors can be theoretically created apart from the Borg's network ("Day of Honor" [VOY]). Same goes for the transwarp coil (which only worked briefly before shorting out).

Consistent world building where the Borg are "not interested in your species, only your technology," and then change their mind and decide they're interested in both, and then by First Contact evolve to "Fuck their technology, let's go back and assimilate them while they were still poor and stupid."

Q was the only one who told them that the Borg only wanted technology, so that's second-hand info, at best. Also, in their first appearance, we didn't learn that much about them, so it makes perfect sense that there was more to them then just one trait.

Consistent world building where the Vorta are shown to have advanced telekinetic powers, until the writers forgot about that and just quietly dropped it from future scripts?

Considering that the Vorta are cloned and genetically-engineered, who's to say that the Founders didn't customize some of them?

Star Trek is many things, my friend, but "consistent" is not one of them and it never has been. The spinoffs are already WILDLY inconsistent within themselves, so it's really no surprise they're also totally inconsistent -- to the point of almost being incompatible -- with TOS.

Look, the franchise is been around for decades. It's been worked on by numerous staffs. Of course there will be some hiccups along the way, or the filmmakers changing their minds when a better idea comes along. However, as I described above, there is too much connective tissue to sever them. Also, you have to ignore the many times that things are used consistently and the references back to previous stories. While there are a few cracks, the prime universe timeline and world hang together very well. This is not as inconsistent as, say, the X-Men film series, which seems to be your position.

And with all of that, for some reason you have a strong expectation of the Kelvin universe -- for all practical purposes a complete continuity reboot -- to be consistent, not with TOS, not with the films, but with the SPINOFF series which is not even part of its original source material???

Yep, I do; the first movie established that it is part of the original source material, so it should act as such.

No, a mistake is BY DEFINITION unintentional, so that makes no sense.

Semantics. Call it an "inconsistency," if you prefer.

I mean, I get that you think they aren't SUPPOSED to ignore the prime universe's canon.

Exactly.

I'm just not understanding why you think they or anyone else should care.

I care personally because the prime universe is the reason I give a darn about Star Trek. They should care because they're not following their own rules. If you don't care, fair enough.

 

[fireproof78]

As opposed to ... eyes looking out a window, which apparently have infinite range, infinite resolution, arbitrary wide sensitivity bands, and no noise?




Um ... in what way is a camera not a sensor?

And are you really trying to propose that for any of the problems a starship might face, like, locating something somewhere in the solar system, a person looking out the window is going to do better than a person who's got instruments? Seriously?

I refer you to TSFS where Kirk and Sulu detect a cloaked ship with their eyes.

 

[Nebusj]

As an example. The following image was produced by a camera:

^
How many cars in this image are blue?

In what way was this image not produced by a sensing device?

What do you think a camera does that it is not a sensor? What do you think a sensor is that a camera, static or motion, is not one?

I am completely unable to tell what point you believe you are making, or what argument you are trying to advance.

 

[fireproof78]

I think the goal posts keep getting moved in this discussion. The original question was something to the effect of "Why use a window?" and there have been answers to their advantages.
One can certainly have both; no reason to be one or the other.

Apparently that has now shifted to the nature of sensors, so I'm not really sure the question now.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The window makes sense accepting the placement of the bridge. Because you might as well have a window at what is essentially a lookout point.

But, the bridge on top is ultra-vulnerable and stupid, outside of visual coolness. But down that path, the shape of the Enterprise is stupid and nonsensical outside of its uniqueness among sci-fi vessels.

 

[WebLurker]

I think the goal posts keep getting moved in this discussion. The original question was something to the effect of "Why use a window?" and there have been answers to their advantages.
One can certainly have both; no reason to be one or the other.

Apparently that has now shifted to the nature of sensors, so I'm not really sure the question now.

I don't like the window much, it seems a step backwards, the effects of the "onscreen" moments seem to have really bad resolution, and the moving graphics it uses seem too busy and make it look like it'll age far worse than the more timeless classic viewscreen, but for storytelling purposes, it's all the same. I'm not sure its worth all the trouble. It's just a reimagining of classic prop that doesn't work for some people.

 

[wayoung]

I'd like to point out that TOS and TNG both had a (bigger) bridge window as well, they were over the entire bridge instead of in front so the whole "it makes the bridge unsafe" argument is not applicable (the bridge in all the series' is horribly unsafe and ill placed even with no windows). It makes sense to me so that even if all the exterior cameras and sensors are down you still have a last option view of what's outside. Of the many changes I dislike in the Kelvinverse, the bridge viewscreen being an AR window that can have an overscreen is not one of them.

 

[shapeshifter]

I was in favor of the bridge window before Beyond literately shattered all my expectations for it being structurally sound enough to be there.

 

[gerbil]

I was in favor of the bridge window before Beyond literately shattered all my expectations for it being structurally sound enough to be there.

Well, yeah, after the ship had crashed onto a planet's surface and survived extremely stressful conditions. Even then it was still fractured but in one piece until Kirk shoots it 3(?) times at close range.

 

[wayoung]

They should have made it from transparent aluminum.

 

[fireproof78]

I was in favor of the bridge window before Beyond literately shattered all my expectations for it being structurally sound enough to be there.

Because crashing in to a planet's surface with no shields is something it was designed to survive? O_o

I don't like the window much, it seems a step backwards, the effects of the "onscreen" moments seem to have really bad resolution, and the moving graphics it uses seem too busy and make it look like it'll age far worse than the more timeless classic viewscreen, but for storytelling purposes, it's all the same. I'm not sure its worth all the trouble. It's just a reimagining of classic prop that doesn't work for some people.

I don't it will age at all. I think, given the nature of information technology, looking at a blank screen with no information, will seem more dated. And, if graphics are a concern as far as the "aging" process, then that's what Kelvin Universe-R is for.

I have highlighted the reasons I like windows but I'll truncated them:
-Eyes can detect some things differently than sensors, and sometimes faster.
-If the power is gone (a likely scenario given the dangers of space) a window allows for navigation the "old fashion" way. I believed this was referenced some where.
-Finally, why not have a window? I would think it would be psychologically beneficial.

That's me.

 

[WebLurker]

I don't it will age at all. I think, given the nature of information technology, looking at a blank screen with no information, will seem more dated.

Maybe, although it seems like simpler tends to last longer?

And, if graphics are a concern as far as the "aging" process, then that's what Kelvin Universe-R is for.

I think that replicative fading will start to kick in if they try that.

I have highlighted the reasons I like windows but I'll truncated them:
-Eyes can detect some things differently than sensors, and sometimes faster.

We have seen eyeballing done with viewscreens.

-If the power is gone (a likely scenario given the dangers of space) a window allows for navigation the "old fashion" way. I believed this was referenced some where.

I can see the point, although, as I recall, auxiliary control on the original Enterprise was located in a room with no windows or viewscreen, so I'm not sure if a window is "needed" in this case?

-Finally, why not have a window? I would think it would be psychologically beneficial.

As to that, I can't say, although there are windows elsewhere on the ship, so I'd counter than the bridge should be outfitted with the best tech for looking in front.

That's me.

Fair enough. (I will admit that the window is something that rubs me the wrong way in a subjective manner, since the viewscreen was always a staple, so there are legitimate reasons to favor the alternative.)

 

[F. King Daniel]

Well, yeah, after the ship had crashed onto a planet's surface and survived extremely stressful conditions. Even then it was still fractured but in one piece until Kirk shoots it 3(?) times at close range.

And remember, the Enterprise-D's window on top was broken after what was a much softer landing