Telling Time in the Star Trek Universe

[jimcat]

Hello everyone,

I’m a bit amazed at how unwilling anyone is (Timo excepted, obviously) to even consider the possibility of implants. Since I started thinking about translating between languages, it’s occurred to me that in “Little Green Men” Rom actually repairs the translators (so they’re little devices that fit in your ears, at least for Ferengi). Once he’s done that, Quark doesn’t just understand the Humans, he can talk to them. They obviously don’t have implants, so how does that work? Does Quark have another unmentioned little device that translates the sounds that come out of his mouth? Does the thing in his ear somehow modulate his speech after he’s spoken? If he speaks quietly, does it translate and amplify the words? Or, since his mouth movements exactly match what he’s saying, does it act directly on the speech centres of his brain?

Even on the original series, the “Mr. Microphone” universal translator only came out once (in “Metamorphosis”) and in that story the Companion didn’t communicate through sound at all. What was happening the rest of the time? Did all the aliens really speak English? (Some obviously did, like the Iotians, but surely others (the Capellans?) must have been speaking their own languages.)

This isn’t my original idea. The novel “Spock: Messiah!” suggested language implants a long time ago, and I’ve always thought they make sense, and explain a lot. And if it is all done with a little device in one ear, or just under the skin, letting the user know the time seems like a simple additional feature. Obviously that’s a minority opinion, though.

I personally haven’t worn a watch for a long time, because they make my eczema flare up. I used to carry one around in my pocket, but I don’t need to these days. I have a phone that tells me the time if I really need to know, but that’s not often. At work, I sit at a desk with a computer and a landline phone that both have date and time displays on them, and I find that when I’m in places where knowing the time is important (like train stations), there are usually clocks, or time displays of some sort, all over. That’s a point that I don’t think’s been raised yet: there are a lot more places where the time gets displayed than there used to be. It’s not going to apply on the surface of Gamma Trianguli VI, though.

The really obvious solution would appear to be a wristwatch, but that’s ruled out by the fact that you can sit and stare at the wrists of the people in Star Trek (if you’re that way inclined), and they don’t wear watches (except in very occasional continuity glitches). Perhaps they’re incredibly old-fashioned and use the position of the sun in the sky to judge the time. They all seem to be incredibly good at it if they do; particularly since they’ll need to adjust for the particular rotation time of the planet they’re on. Maybe they have some sort of implant that handles that?

Best wishes,
Timon

 

[Timo]

I guess we just travel in far different circles. Not unlikely.

It may really be a geographical thing, Drone - Longinus as a fellow Finn would definitely be exposed to a market where wristwatch ads simply no longer exist, except as "free gift" lubrication to those who ponder ordering National Geographic or Fortune, and where males wear watches about as often as they drive convertibles (it would be the same set of males, too - not only do you have to ignore the weather, you have to ignore the disapproval of vast numbers of people who love to think of themselves as egalitarian rather than jealous). Female watches as a jewelry phenomenon haven't gone away, though.

I'm not sure what other corners of the world would have the same set of conditions, though: an innate hatred of expressions of wealth, nevertheless a hunger for gadgetry (and a pride in the role we played in the cell phone boom), a need to be punctual without "artificial aids" (it's difficult to get a Finn to take his medicine, too!), and e'en a saturation of the market with throwaway Swatches just so that they would be thrown away when everybody (and I do mean everybody) acquired a mobile phone.

...does it act directly on the speech centres of his brain?

It could be argued that the deeper inside the skull you push the UT technology, the more likely the brain itself is to take over certain functions: it's expecting to get stuff pre-filtered by many layers of senses and preprocessing neural matter, and thus should accept unconditionally what it gets from the UT implant that has been pushed past these outer barriers. Say, lipsynch would be something the brain simply assumes is there, regardless of whether this is true or not.

So, forget the ear and the mouth, and insert something into the language centers of the brain. Both input and output will now be affected, as will judgement on whether the results are satisfactory. The controls might still be exposed in the ear, much like today's vision-restoring occipital implants still are surface mounts when it comes to controls and utilities.

That’s a point that I don’t think’s been raised yet: there are a lot more places where the time gets displayed than there used to be.

...My home has more clocks on the walls now than it did when I wore a wristwatch. Then again, I also like the ticking sound.

It’s not going to apply on the surface of Gamma Trianguli VI, though.

Or inside the alien space station where the bug-eyed monster just issued a three-minute-sharp ultimatum.

Regardless of where the clocks would be hidden, there's simply too little glancing action going on in situations such as above. An inner clock would be a nice solution. But it's also possible that our heroes simply have advanced displays in their tricorders - no need to look at a screen when the device in fact projects a screen right in front of your eyes. Or inside them, for that matter.

Such a projection could and should of course be made directional, so that only the intended eye can see it, not some other eye or instrument off to the side... Not a difficult thing to pull off.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[USS Triumphant]

Clothing in the near future and beyond is actually much more technologically integrated and involved than it would seem to an outside viewer. There are tactile indicators in their underwear that are passing on information (like the time) to them at all times by varied patterns of gentle pressure against their buttcheeks. The crew knows how to "read" these pressures because they've been doing it all their lives.

Starfleet is very careful to keep their uniform underwear *very* low power and *very* limited in functionality, so that hopefully their functions won't even show up on scans and if they do, whomever has captured the crewperson will not see them as worth bothering to confiscate. Unless it's Kirk, and he really really wants them to.

 

[J.T.B.]

I wouldn't be too quick to predict what kind of timepieces would be used in Trek's version of the future, considering that 1970s clock radio technology was still being used in the late 2200s.

 

[Drone]

It may really be a geographical thing, Drone - Longinus as a fellow Finn would definitely be exposed to a market where wristwatch ads simply no longer exist, except as "free gift" lubrication to those who ponder ordering National Geographic or Fortune, and where males wear watches about as often as they drive convertibles (it would be the same set of males, too - not only do you have to ignore the weather, you have to ignore the disapproval of vast numbers of people who love to think of themselves as egalitarian rather than jealous). Female watches as a jewelry phenomenon haven't gone away, though.

I'm not sure what other corners of the world would have the same set of conditions, though: an innate hatred of expressions of wealth, nevertheless a hunger for gadgetry (and a pride in the role we played in the cell phone boom), a need to be punctual without "artificial aids" (it's difficult to get a Finn to take his medicine, too!), and e'en a saturation of the market with throwaway Swatches just so that they would be thrown away when everybody (and I do mean everybody) acquired a mobile phone.

It could be argued that the deeper inside the skull you push the UT technology, the more likely the brain itself is to take over certain functions: it's expecting to get stuff pre-filtered by many layers of senses and preprocessing neural matter, and thus should accept unconditionally what it gets from the UT implant that has been pushed past these outer barriers. Say, lipsynch would be something the brain simply assumes is there, regardless of whether this is true or not.

So, forget the ear and the mouth, and insert something into the language centers of the brain. Both input and output will now be affected, as will judgement on whether the results are satisfactory. The controls might still be exposed in the ear, much like today's vision-restoring occipital implants still are surface mounts when it comes to controls and utilities.

Timo Saloniemi

You're quite right Timo, and sending a mea culpa to to you specifically, Longinus. I'm quite aware of your provenance and yet that fact didn't even occur to me as I was scribbling away!!! It's quite interesting to hear that such is the state of affairs as regards an accessory that perhaps was de rigueur among males not so many years ago? I wonder if this progression would also be found to be the case throughout the rest of Scandinavia? At any rate, once again I'll readily admit I had those darned cultural blinkers on and was not to be deterred. Sorry.

Timo, I'm repeating myself from just a few pages ago, but your look into how such a mechanism might impact brain function, just put me in mind again, of the device that the societal menace TPC (The Phone Company) created in the film, The President's Analyst, to rake in the bucks and, incidentally, institutionalize the need to do away with individual's names in favor of numbers. The conceit was actually given a bit of a medical description as to its function. Regardless, the movie has long been regarded as prescient in regards to the loss of privacy and freedom in a nascent post-industrial society. You may very well have seen it, but if not, you might find it rather interesting!

 

[Longinus]

@Drone, well, I generalised from my position as well, not realising that the phenomenon I was observing could be relatively local.

 

[Avro Arrow]

The really obvious solution would appear to be a wristwatch, but that’s ruled out by the fact that you can sit and stare at the wrists of the people in Star Trek (if you’re that way inclined), and they don’t wear watches (except in very occasional continuity glitches).

I know someone already pointed this out upthread, but not *every* wristwatch sighting in Trek is a continuity glitch.

 

[tharpdevenport]

In regards to TNG, I think we can say with reasoning that some, if not all, stations had a clock display or at least the ability to press a button and display the time momentarily, since we saw in some instances a character on the Enterprise not directly at a panel, asking the computer what time it was. I can't recall an instance where a character was at a panel or station and had to ask what time it was.


But I think unless the time is of key importance, you wouldn't necessarily always need it in many cases aboard the Enterprise. Take for example Bridge shift duties. Correct me if wrong, but I recall an oficer coming in to relief the previous officer on more than one occassion. So obviously, to me, the person on duty doesn't need to keep track of time, but rather the person on the next shift has to know it in order to be timely and relieve the other officer. Further more, if one needed to keep apriased of the time, they could simply ask the comptuer to verbalise a certain time when reached, or at specified intervals; we only see fractions of daily duties in episodes, which are often out of the normal routine and even unique circunstances.

 

[Triskelion]

People without watches are not less vain, but less less practical, than people with watches. That they see the watch as an affectation describes their own unawareness of its usefulness.

The wristwatch was a military tool before it became a fashion accessory; as a means for pilots to gauge time without drawing attention away from the operation of their heavy machine (biplane). This, despite having a dashboard timepiece. Strapping your pocketwatch to your wrist became a symbol of industrial virility and wealth, which the public elevated to new fashion heights.

Consider the difference between a pro photographer with a cheap point-and-shoot nabbing the decisive moment - and the one still fiddling with his high-powered camera controls after the moment has already passed. Some people are just better at mastering their unrenewable resource of time.

The phone does not, in fact, make the watch superfluous to anyone but the inefficient, and those who don't mind taking up more of other people's time (and sidewalk space).

Fashion can change, as is its wont. Perfectly reasonable reflection of cultural values. The watch itself remains a more efficient solution to judging time than digging out a phone (especially in traffic @&#*! ). Personally I've never seen someone walk off a subway platform hypnotized by their watch).

I believe in-universe, it is just moot and lacks explanation. Kind of like FTL time relativity, or even FTL subspace communications. Or not falling through floors when you are phased.

The UT, as I understand it, uses non-invasive brainwave signals to stimulate a brain's language center directly. Which could somewhat explain the eye's tendency to synch mouth movement to aural patterns, in the same way it filters, reconciles and constructs depth information. Like the communicator (in which it is housed in the TNG era), much more is going on beneath the basic function. That Trek tech just "works" can be an earmark of inventive genius - the apparent equivalent simplicity of standing on top of a mountain as standing at its base.

 

[Greg Cox]

In regards to TNG, I think we can say with reasoning that some, if not all, stations had a clock display or at least the ability to press a button and display the time momentarily, since we saw in some instances a character on the Enterprise not directly at a panel, asking the computer what time it was. I can't recall an instance where a character was at a panel or station and had to ask what time it was.


But I think unless the time is of key importance, you wouldn't necessarily always need it in many cases aboard the Enterprise. Take for example Bridge shift duties. Correct me if wrong, but I recall an oficer coming in to relief the previous officer on more than one occassion. So obviously, to me, the person on duty doesn't need to keep track of time, but rather the person on the next shift has to know it in order to be timely and relieve the other officer. Further more, if one needed to keep apriased of the time, they could simply ask the comptuer to verbalise a certain time when reached, or at specified intervals; we only see fractions of daily duties in episodes, which are often out of the normal routine and even unique circunstances.

Yeah, aboard the Enterprise, it's not really an issue. It's mostly landing parties that raise the question, since timing is sometimes of the essence and yet you never see anybody looking at their communicators to check the time, let along their big, clunkyTOS-style tricorders . . . . .

 

[jimcat]

Hello everyone,

I think Triskelion is right; and it’s just one of those things that you can’t work out rationally, because it’s not real. If the audience needs a clock, one is there, even if it’s wildly anachronistic. Or when someone needs to look at a watch, as Avro Arrow has pointed out; it’s just that they only seem to be there when they’re needed, not all the time (and they’re often very obviously not there, especially in the case of wristwatches, or a giant LED clock right over the top of the Bridge viewscreen). Of course, trying to work out an explanation anyway is part of the fun, at least for me.

I don’t want to jump to any conclusions about what anyone else thinks about this, but my own attempts to link the universal translator with direct effects on the brain and time awareness has been influenced by the fact that you don’t necessarily need a display to know the time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaking_clock
(Although for everyone except possibly Data, I think it’s obvious that the information has to be “on demand” rather than continuous updates.)

Of course, there’s absolutely no way that this explanation reflects the intentions of the people making the show. I did have a quick look through the Star Trek Writers’ Guide (1967 version). It specifically says the uniforms don’t have pockets, but has no mention of wristwatches or clocks at all. I don’t think this idea steps outside what we know (or can reasonably guess) the technology could do. Whether it’s what might actually be happening is another question altogether. I’m quite taken with USS Triumphant’s suggestion.

Best wishes,
Timon

 

[Timo]

A defense of wristwatches probably is off the mark in two ways: it (usually) goes against apparent writer/costumer intent, no matter how ill-conceived or unvoiced, and it (generally) is a poor prediction of where technology will take us next.

Would military organizations of the future want to give wristwatches to their employees as "backup" in case the more convenient direct-to-eye or direct-to-ear or direct-to-brain tech fails? It's a bit difficult to see how a wristwatch, no matter how ruggerized, would survive something that disables an implant a person is intended to live out his or her whole life with... Wouldn't the person be assuredly dead in such a situation?

you don’t necessarily need a display to know the time

I did say I like the ticking sound.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nebusj]

Is there any onscreen evidence against the use of implanted watches? Such as the heroes being unable to tell the time, and stating as much?

I finally found the example nagging at me. After recovering consciousness in ``The Omega Glory'' Kirk asks how long he'd been out. Spock immediately answers with typical precision: seven hours and eight minutes.

As with all evidence of any Original Series points of technology, this information supports any interpretation you want to make. How does Spock know an interval of over seven hours down to the minute? Because he's Spock or because he's got the time check? Why does Kirk ask how long it's been if he knows the exact time? Because he didn't notice just when he was knocked out or because he knows it's quicker to ask Spock than work it out himself? Whatever proposition you want to defend, this supports it.

(Personally, I have to come down against the idea of implants, just because it feels like it runs against the general Trek ethos of non-augmented, non-enhanced humans. And it feels like the novelty of, for example, LaForge's Visor implants would play out differently if everybody had time and temperature implants for the past century. I think the implants idea makes a good bit of sense, but it just isn't the way Trek works. If I had to write a scene with a character checking the time, I'd suppose the shirt cuffs had some discrete little display that the smart fabrics of tomorrow are easily able to produce, and that we-the-audience just don't know how to recognize or decipher.)

 

[Nerys Myk]

How does Spock know an interval of over seven hours down to the minute? Because he's Spock or because he's got the time check?

The former.

 

[Draculasaurus]

Maybe they have naval style ship's bell system.
There's always plenty of beeping and stuff going on. Maybe one sound happens on the hour, and a different sound marks the quarter hours and everyone basically knows basically what time it is.

 

[Kor]

^ Such as in ST6 when the Klingons are about to beam off the Enterprise, prompting Chang's "Have we not heard the chimes at midnight?"

Kor

 

[Timo]

As with all evidence of any Original Series points of technology, this information supports any interpretation you want to make. How does Spock know an interval of over seven hours down to the minute? Because he's Spock or because he's got the time check? Why does Kirk ask how long it's been if he knows the exact time? Because he didn't notice just when he was knocked out or because he knows it's quicker to ask Spock than work it out himself? Whatever proposition you want to defend, this supports it.

Quite so. The obvious possibility: being hit in the head makes one unable to use the available timepiece coherently. This regardless of whether it's an implant in Kirk's brain, an unobtrusive piece of his uniform that's supposed to project directly to his eyes or ears, or a conventional display hidden in the clothing (or, for all we know, tattooed on his wrist).

Personally, I have to come down against the idea of implants, just because it feels like it runs against the general Trek ethos of non-augmented, non-enhanced humans.

I can see your viewpoint very well - but or heroes aren't all that human in the end, outside TOS at least. They can speak all languages; they have shunned all vices; they always live through their adventures. Heck, they can read Okudagrams! In "general Trek", humans have the high ground. There could be a reason for it - and given their curious reluctance to self-improve through genetics, good old-fashioned technology could be it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Greg Cox]

And the question of how they tell time in the future has just been answered definitively:

http://www.bradfordexchange.com/products/118030001_star-trek-cuckoo-clock.html?ipp=36&cm_ven=GPS&cm_cat=Google|Search&cm_pla=DCR_Affinity+Form|Star Trek Cuckoo Clocks&cm_ite=star trek cuckoo clock|e|Category&gclid=CKGk6KmhtMwCFQoNaQodN9YOLw

 

[Kor]

And the question of how they tell time in the future has just been answered definitively:

http://www.bradfordexchange.com/products/118030001_star-trek-cuckoo-clock.html?ipp=36&cm_ven=GPS&cm_cat=Google|Search&cm_pla=DCR_Affinity+Form|Star Trek Cuckoo Clocks&cm_ite=star trek cuckoo clock|e|Category&gclid=CKGk6KmhtMwCFQoNaQodN9YOLw

Interesting novelty item... I'm not sure I would pay $200 for it, though.

Kor

 

[Greg Cox]

Interesting novelty item... I'm not sure I would pay $200 for it, though.

Kor

And I love the STAR TREK theme, but I'm not sure I want to hear it every hour on the hour . . . .